#If I did wrong

[vettir]

The Schwarzwald is one of the oldest forests in the world. Schwarzwald Tourismus has a great many jobs, mostly related to tourism, but a few, such as mine, focus on conservation. Some places have never really been good for anything but forestry or mining, and even then, some places... Are avoided. A small handful of us work in covering that area. And after your first week, if you're judged to be suitable, you're introduced to the reason they're avoided. Kobolde, Hexen, Werwölfe, even der Großemann. I didn't faint or pee myself on seeing them, so I was considered a good candidate for permanency. After 10 years, I've met some of the less outgoing groups and individuals. The Alpe, some Eschenfrauen, one Aufhocker (who insists he only goes after criminals, and doesn't kill them any amore), even a Lutzelfrau.

On the day that things changed, a Klagmuhme came up to me. I had heard her wailing the other night, she usually calls out one or two times a year, most often in the winter. However, this was the first time I saw her. An old woman in a black dress, with a long white scarf. "Ah, Evron, yes, der Großemann said you'd be here. There is a problem. A man died, but not of nature. He was killed."

I took this somewhat stoically. "Kind aunt, can you take me to the body? If this was murder, I will have things I must do."

She smiled at me, with a cobweb across her face obscuring any teeth. "A good boy you are. Yes, follow aunt Trauer, I will take you there." I nodded, and followed. At some point, I could not tell you when, she changed appearance into a distorted black figure. "After this, I must return to the Wildejagd. Still, if you need me, speak to der Großemann. He has kin throughout the forest."

We arrived at the man. His throat had been cut, with a knife or a razor, that much was obvious. His eyes were open but unseeing, and I sighed, then pulled out my radio, nodding to aunt Trauer. "This is Evron Jös. We've had a murder." I read off my GPS coordinates, then sat there to wait with the body.

As I waited, I looked at the body. "Aufhocker, is that you?" I asked.

A snort came from behind me, as I turned I saw a small, wizened figure. "No... I'd not take Trauer into my games. Better to sneak into a church and drink the holy water. Less painful. Still, I feel an itch. The criminal is still nearby." I nodded.

Forest forensics is a very old profession, with some very new toys to play with. However, nothing useful to track the murderer was found, although we did find several stab wounds on the poor fellow's back. His name, it turned out, was Anshel Kaan. On hearing that, I felt it was a little personal. The ground had not caught any useful tracks that could be followed, so the murderer probably would not be caught. I frowned, thinking of what I had been told.

That night, I sought out der Großemann. What he is, versus what legend has of him, is very different, and his name is a misnomer. So I took a jar of flies, and found a very high web, and released them underneath. 15 minutes later he descended from the trees, showing all eight of his limbs. The modern myth of the Slenderman, I think, took much from him, despite being invented from a forum board post. His voice sounds as if a hundred different clicks and rustles formed vowels and consonants, and his voice alone has been known to make some flee in fear. "Jaaaa, Herr Jöststs?" I outlined what I knew, that Trauer had said to reach her through him, and what the Aufhocker had said. "Ah tststso. I will tstsee that your distststants kin hasts... Whichtch do you prefer?"

"Alive." I gulped. "But fearful."

His face, once you see it up close, is truly terrifying. Too many eyes, and a Glasgow smile instead of a proper mouth. Never actually noticed a nose. "Ah. Tststsuchtch funnnnn." His upper limbs moved him back up into the trees. And that night, the Wildejagd hunted.

We keep a few places designed to allow people to stay the night, winter nights can be dangerous. Most of those can also be made into makeshift jails, although that's rarely done. I was waiting at the nearest. Aufhocker once rode a thief into one of them, the poor idiot confessing in a mixture of thickly accented Swiss German and Piedmontese. He returned what he had stolen, and I judged he'd had enough, so I let the guy go, bringing it down to the glassblower he'd stolen it from with an admonition to be more careful about charming tourists. I could hear the noise, it seemed half the mountain was alive tonight, but in came one clear voice, swearing in English, with an American accent. A woman. Meanwhile, I could also hear the jeering and mocking voice of the Aufhocker. "Yes little murderer, run for me! Make it to shelter and you might live out the night! Yes, just a little further." I could make out the horns and the swooping figures of some of the Wildejagd behind her, and hear the clicking, rustling laughter of der Großemann. She came out of the treeline, making a beeline for the lit open door, not even noticing me. "Fuck, you kill one fucking Jew and the whole forest comes after you? I thought this was Germany!"

I frowned. Whatever else she was, she had strong nerves. She ran inside and collapsed, panting. I moved in quickly, before she could catch her breath, and cuffed her, linking her cuffs to one of the recessed chains before she was able to realize what had happened. "FUCK!" What followed was a tirade of profanity and slurs that I feel no need to repeat. I will admit to being impressed. I spoke to the door, briefly.

"Aufhocker, I think you were too cautious with this one."

"Evron, I tell you, this one nearly knocked me off!"

I sighed, and turned back in, closing the door behind me. She looked up at me. "Evron. Of course. Only thing that would turn everything against me is fucking Jew magic."

I sighed. "I am no user of magic. And most of these folk were here long before my ancestors fled to this land. No, I simply treat the hidden folk of the Schwartzwald with respect, and they treat me in kind. But you. You hate me and my people for existing, and tell lies so you can say you are righteous. And, in a twist of delicious irony, the laws you will be tried under were last updated in 1941. But you have angered the Wildejagd. Once you have gone through our justice, they may decide to go further. By your motives, you will be tried, and convicted, of Mord." She started yelling some more invective, but I was uninterested. I walked up the stairs to where the more useful tools were, and called in that I had caught the murderer. Then I started looking up Anshel Kaan's family. I felt they deserved to know the truth.

You’re a park ranger of a very dense forest and you take care of everything, including the supernatural cryptids. One day, a murder happens in your forest and the culprit evades the authorities. You then politely ask the cryptids for their aid in the culprit’s capture. They agree.

[starridge]

why did you do it

[euniexenoblade]

Honestly, it can stand as it's own post. The tobacco industry is evil they want to get you smoking yadda yadda you've heard it a million times and like. I think we hear it so much but that a lot of the younger generations in the us dont really get why there's such an aggressive anti smoking campaign, I think people buy into the narrative South Park has spun about it "the cigarette companies are all upfront about it and people still chose their service and everyone against smoking are just obsessive fascists" and it's like. Genuinely, the cigarette companies are some of the most evil entities this world has ever seen. From knowing cigarettes caused cancer before anyone else and lying about it, to being the reason the majority of 50s television existed (shows like I Love Lucy existed to sell you cigarettes) to specifically making flavors of cigarettes and cartoon mascots to sell to kids. And I'm not saying that if you smoke cigarettes you're bad but I do really want the tobacco industry abolished and have it's wealth distributed to the society it controlled for so fucking long.

Seriously, go read about it. They did shit that manipulated the country, politics, and the lives of your parents and their parents, and likely their influence is affecting your life in this day and age still.

[redsray]

the funniest part of any Robin meeting the JL is that every Robin is so distinctly different from the previous one in terms of personality and vibes that the league literally gets backlash. and like, I don't blame them. not to mention that they are non-meta children that dress as a traffic light and fight crime alongside batman in gotham on a nightly basis. i'd also be a bit concerned. Batman, literally The Night of Gotham personified in the League's eyes, coming into a JL meeting: This is Robin, my crime-fighting partner. 11-year-old Dick Grayson, dressed in the brightest primary colours possible, vaguely hidden murder behind those eyes, never stops moving even for a moment: Hi! Superman: That's a child. That's-- Bats that is a child. You let a child--? Batman, deadpan: You try to stop him. Would you rather he try and murder a grown man with a wire?

Batman: This is Robin. 12-year-old Jason Todd, with the biggest grin on his face, about 3 books in his hand, stars in his eyes and a distinct street-kid drawl: Hey!!! Green Lantern: That's ... that's a different child. What?? Jason: I stole his tires :) Batman: Tried to. Jason, stage whispering to the League: basically did. Green Lantern: that is a different kid, right?? I'm not seeing shit??

Batman: This is Robin. 14-year-old Tim Drake, bo staff clutched in his hand, a wary and tired expression on his face, more on the quiet side, the literal walking definition of don't judge a book by it's cover: hello Flash: Where do you even find these-- Tim: I found myself.

Batman: This is Robin. 17-year-old Stephanie Brown, literally blonde, with a shit-eating grin, eyes full of nothing but mischief and the most explosive personality you've ever seen: hiya!! Superman: I give up. Stephanie: I know, I have that amazing effect on people.

Batman: This is Robin. 13-year-old Damian Wayne, a literal wet cat that will hiss at you, has a sword, the most judgemental stare you'll get from a teenager, ready to jump anyone there: Green Lantern: WHY DOES HE HAVE A SWORD?! Batman: ... he came with the sword.

[hinamie]

trick or treat!

[rendevok]

Happy pride to sexy lawyer enjoyers everywhere

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

*displays textbook symptomatic behavior of my own disorder that I am well educated on* what’s my deal why am I like this

[chickenhoops]

Currently obsessed with this gay pigeon couple up for adoption and I think tumblr will be obsessed with them too.

[bloobydabloob]

I literally could not know less about welding I just wanted to draw him doing that

[chloesimaginationthings]

The next game in the FNAF security breach era..

[protoctist]

i know ryoko kui is a real one because she wrote 97+ chapters of a manga about fantasy ecosystems and food chains and not once did she write the phrase "survival of the fittest" (it's a bad phrase) (it's a social darwinist phrase even) (hated amongst biologists) (doesn't make sense) (darwin didn't use it) (coined by an business major) (one of the worst phrases in pop science) (no good)

[mysticalcats]

i believe he is slaying as the kids say

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

People playing Elden Ring and looking for the "good" demigod to root for are missing the point. Pick your favorite mass murdering war criminal megalomaniac with mommy issues and endlessly simp for them like the rest of us, cowards.

[wulfhalls]

corrupted godhood. reluctant false messiah. prophecy as a creeping all consuming malady. does the oracle see the future or make the future? the horror of trapping yourself inescapably on purpose. the chains of destiny dragging you towards the path you are fighting tooth and nail to free yourself from. there never having been a chance to begin with. no other choice to make. but making that choice regardless.

[hinamie]

mentor