#BUT THEY'RE DONE

[anarchswild]

There we have it, the extended coterie + multiple guests in their Masquerade Elysium outfits! They all had a (mostly) fun night, and several of them will be waking up with leftover Vicissitude to undo.

Never let me convince you that I can do a 10 character costume design project with a time limit ever again.

[hatake]

christmas cards are finally done 😭

[demaparbat-hp]

That infamous prison escape.

[littlelightfish]

Funny things I found out playing with language setting in Netflix while looking episode 15:

Chilchuck's scream sounds HAUNTED in brazilian portuguese. Give it a try if you can.

(You can hear it here)

In spanish dub, Senshi says: "tocó mis senos de hombre", which means "he touched my man boobs" in Spanish. And I think that's the best dub line one so far.

[therealraewest]

Laios cuts the tags outta his clothes like an autistic king confirmed

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au with Zuko and Katara Lee and Huamei

Katara is separated from her friends, and so she's left to travel the earth kingdom on her own. She stumbles across Zuko, who is similarly travelling on his own. They decide that pairing up and travelling together would be best

[its-emimi]

💙💙💙💙💙

[ariart0]

For the rest of our lives <3

[egophiliac]

doylist explanation for why Gidel is only in Fellow's non-idle lesson animations: probably something about space constraints and making sure two sprites in one seat aren't covering anyone else when they're not in focus

watsonian explanation for why Gidel is only in Fellow's non-idle lesson animations: he snuck in and is hiding from the teachers, don't give him away 🤫

(I've reached my limit of unsuccessful attempts at pulling them before I need to save keys for Halloween, so I've been living vicariously through youtube videos...but the fact that Gidel just pops up from under the desk to wave his arms around happily is really testing my resolve. D: I'm gonna die when they finally get to do alchemy...)

[stump-not-found]

A Lifetime Served in a Little Cup

pt.1 / pt.2 / pt.3 / pt.4

---

bill, babygirl, the red flags get outta there

[lotus-pear]

charm stat at debonair ‼️‼️

[mobius-m-mobius]

#the Nowhere Man who waits and the God of Stories who watches

[sixth-light]

I have had these thoughts bubbling away in my head for like...eighteen months or so now (it will become very obvious why shortly) but the discussion in this post has pushed me to write them down: I think societally we HUGELY underestimate how motherhood for primary caregivers, particularly first-time motherhood, can be a source of vulnerability to radicalisation.

There is obviously huge cultural variance here, but for a lot of cis women becoming primary caregiver to an infant in a capitalist Western society represents a time of immense vulnerability because in general you are:

Incredibly sleep-deprived (which has well-documented knock-on effects for your judgement, mental health, etc)

If you gave birth, recovering from a significant challenge to your physical health (even in the best-case scenario)

Isolated from your previous networks and communities of people in full-time work

Completely separated from the context of your prior career goals and achievements

Under huge amounts of stress to learn how to care for an infant (don't get me started on breastfeeding)

And on top of this, you are also be experiencing a huge amount of messaging about how all this is natural, wonderful, something you're meant to do, something you should love doing, and something that you must do for the welfare of their child. It's a huge amount of pressure and life change even when everything goes right and there's very little cultural space to express negative feelings about it.

Any group of people who offer community, support, and affirmation to cis women in this situation are going to have a really good shot at radicalising them into some very weird and dangerous headspaces and in fact we see this happen all the time - think antivaxxers and TERFs. It flies under the radar because of the hazy positive glow that associates with motherhood and babies and also because we don't take the radicalisation of women seriously I guess because they rarely shoot anybody, but...yeah. It is such a vulnerable time!

[fictionadventurer]

Personally, it's always a bit wild to me to see commentators interact with the Hunger Games franchise as if Collins were writing science fiction stories instead of essays with faces. She's just not that interested in fleshing out side characters or digging into the details of the worldbuilding. These characters are concepts and symbols before they're people. There's an almost mathematical precision to who and what she explores and how deeply she does it. This is a step or two away from pure allegory. If she were writing a couple of centuries ago, she'd have named her characters things like Innocence and Anger and Watch-Carefully-Your-Soul-Lest-Ye-Be-Damned, but since she's writing for modern audiences, she has to settle for puns and allusions. If she has another essay to write, she'll assign some faces to it; she's not going to look into backstories or other eras just for the sake of storytelling, and it's not a failing as a writer that she doesn't.

[wizard-loving-wizard]

you don't even have to ask. i'll beg.

Brennan Lee Mulligan / Anne Carson / Emily Wilson / Jaelyn Dennis / Anne Carson / Mitski / inanotherunivrse / Alicia Ostriker / Clarice Lispector / Source Unknown / souldistracted / @kermit-coded / Source Unknown / @professor-pants / souldistracted / Ricardo Martinez / Anne Carson / Phoebe Bridgers / @thegirlhoodtheory / Silas Denver Melvin / Mary Oliver / Bombay Bicycle Club / @autopsytableromance / Margaret Atwood

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Hot take maybe but I think Bertie would be FAR more likely to survive the first two months of Dracula than Jeeves would be. Bertie has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Jeeves consistently underestimates how dangerous a situation might get (Steeple Bumpleigh, the club book) because he’s overconfident about his level of control over any given situation. He'd handle Dracula masterfully if they faced off in England, but on Dracula's home turf? Much more doubtful.

I realize this might be a tough sell, so I will explain further (or it's not a tough sell, and I'm going to explain further because I want to). (criteria taken from @canyourfavesurvivecastledracula) Without further ado.

Would Jeeves and Wooster survive Castle Dracula?

Jeeves

Jeeves' survival will depend on how long Dracula finds him more entertaining than irritating. On that basis, I don't think he's long for this world. On the one hand, he has a huge wealth of knowledge about English society and culture that he can recite perfectly from memory. That should buy him at least a little time with noted teaboo Dracula.

On the other hand, he would be absolutely no fun as a vampire plaything. Jeeves cannot be got. Sneaking up on him while he's shaving will yield zero reaction (though that's at least good for his short-term survival--given that, although he DID take the crucifix from the old woman out of politeness, he certainly isn't going to wear it. The rules of fashion don't go out the window just because you're in a spooky castle). Then, although managing the whims of rich jerks is not an insignificant part of a valet's job, Jeeves usually does this by bending his employers to his will. Dracula is not the sort of employer this will work on. It'll just add insult to injury when on top of being impossible to scare, NOW Jeeves is telling Dracula that his favorite cloak is several centuries out of fashion and he's not allowed to wear it anymore.

Jeeves will 100% go exploring in the areas he was told not to go-- though to be fair, he MIGHT actually get away with this, what with his superpower of appearing in rooms without being seen or heard. Said superpower might save him from the brides as well (though this is by no means guaranteed). Since I find it doubtful that Dracula would come to rescue his annoying ass, not being noticed is his best defense.

There are a couple other things working in Jeeves's favor; the question is just whether they'll be enough to save him.

He DOES know shorthand, and could try to send coded letters. He might even have the foresight to squirrel away some extra stationary where Dracula can't find it. But could he get them posted? Would it even do him any good?

He certainly has enough cultural literacy to figure out what his new boss is pretty quickly. If he didn't chuck the crucifix out the carriage window, he might start carrying it around in his pocket.

Psychology of the individual, sure, but the individual in question is a 400-year-old vampire who lives in an isolated castle in a foreign country and is regarded as a terrifying mythological figure in the surrounding villages. Jeeves has never come up against anything this alien before, he's cut off from his normal resources, and opportunities to play people against each other are limited.

He probably has enough upper body strength from all that shrimping and fishing to climb the wall, so he COULD escape if he wanted to, if he survived long enough. It's just, again, that overconfidence, and also Dracula has a vast library full of rare old books that are entirely at his disposal. He's keeping his eyes and ears alert for potential escape strategies, of course, but I don't see him being as desperate to get out as Jonathan was.

There are just a lot of "depends on"s here, and I'm not convinced that luck would shake out in Jeeves's favor, all things considered.

Bertie

Bertie is so perfect for the job of Castle Dracula Prisoner it's like it was made for him. Think about it. Being held against his will in big manor houses comes more naturally to him than breathing. He's afraid of things that are scary. A lifetime of dealing with Aunt Agatha has made him the world's preeminent expert in "curl[ing] up in a ball in the hope that a meek subservience [will] enable [him] to get off lightly." He will NEVER go exploring in places he's been warned away from if nobody is forcing him to (Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's office notwithstanding. There were biscuits in there). He's both fun to talk to and easy to toy with (and extremely English). A+ prisoner. Dracula adores him.

In my opinion, Bertie is at Castle Dracula either because Aunt Agatha got some wires seriously crossed and thinks he’s going to meet an eligible potential bride (I mean, there are certainly brides there), or because Dracula has something Aunt Dahlia wants him to steal (far less likely, given that one of Dracula’s THINGS is famously not owning anything silver). Either way, he's shown himself entirely willing and able to escape down drainpipes if a sitch gets too scaly.

He DOES take the crucifix, and DOES wear it (which is what will save him during the shaving scene, because you KNOW he's going to jump a foot and cut himself like the dickens). He's read enough supernatural goosefleshers to be genre savvy about terrified old women cryptically pushing crucifixes into one's hands. I also think his sunny disposish endeared him to the villagers, and they were particularly vehement about urging him not to go. He doesn't speak German or Romanian, but he's empathetic enough to recognize Pure Terror. So by the time he actually gets to the castle, his imagination is already running wild and he's plenty aware that he is in imminent danger.

I think the biggest risk to Bertie will be the brides; whether or not he's susceptible to trances, if he thinks they're trying to marry him, it's against the code of the Woosters to turn them down. But that only becomes an issue if he comes face to face with them, which, luckily, I think is unlikely on account of the aforementioned "won't go exploring" (and if he did, Dracula would definitely rescue him).

I'm inclined to say due to his drainpipe-escape habits that he WOULD be able to climb the wall and MAY attempt to sneak into Dracula's room to look for the keys if his desperation grows to outweigh his fear. Whether he does or not, though, he does NOT have the stomach to attempt shovel murder, and therefore won't get magic brain fever, and may very well simply walk out the front doors when the people come to take the boxes away. OR he climbs his way out like Jonathan did. Either way.

When Bertie tells this story at the Drones later, Tuppy will say that no doubt it's been greatly exaggerated and all that probably happened was that he spent a couple months in an oldish house entertaining a weird loner.