#NOT an ask in-meta

[is-it-cute-gf-au-edition]

(OOC: For clarification Jellyskink gave me permission to write this ask as Dr. Oleander! I definitely want to thank her right away for her permission and for her second opinion when it came to writing this all up lol.)

(Wait would this be considered an ask or some kind of email?? Idk let's just say it's both or something lmao.)

To the owner of the "Is it cute" pet blog,

I hope this message finds you well. My apologies for the delayed response, as of recently work has certainly been vexing as I seen to be seeing more and more clients as the "weirdness" border increases it's reach.

It's come to my attention that my dear, sweet, Calamari has been causing mischief for people again and for that I simply cannot apologize enough!

How my darling little Callie gets out of my apartment sometimes is a mystery to me. My guess is perhaps she slips past my legs as I'm rushing out the door in the morning for work.

At the moment I'm afraid I can only offer my condolences and some compensation money-wise for the pet fish my sweet little angel has taken from you. We can discuss more in detail on this topic in particular privately. I cannot stress enough how sorry I am on Calamari's behalf.

For future reference I shall definitely take note that Calamari seems to enjoy visiting your home every once in a while, perhaps with both our efforts we can figure out why Calamari does this?

I swear my sweet little darling is usually much more polite and sweet at home! Sure she can be a bit... quirky.

One odd thing in particular she does is bring back random things with her to proudly show off what she's hunted or found. *Uploaded is a picture of Calamari sitting proudly with her collection of random items and prey she's caught. Certain Fords may recognize some items in the pile*

Surely a fellow pet adorer such as yourself understands how oddly charming pets can be despite the odds? I'm not sure what to do with the random items Callie brings home though. I've tried taking them to the police station but I've had no luck there, that and Callie seems to get a hold of them again the day after...

Anyway, while I cannot confirm or deny Standford Pines as a patient of mine due to patient confidentiality laws, I will state for the records I've spoken to him before at a few cat shows before.

I've personally never noticed him holding ill-will torwards my beloved feline friend, however I will make note for future reference to keep an eye out for anything of that matter.

Sincere Regards,

Irene Oleander

[email reply]

Hello, Dr. Oleander! I'm a big fan of Calimari, so it's lovely to hear from you.

Interesting that she collects so much stuff. Would you like me to post the collection on my blog? A lot of my followers follow pet show stuff, so if she's getting them from her co-contestants, we might be able to get some items home.

It is interesting that she's running away and seeking me out. Not to get too specific, but I don't live anywhere near your office.

Thanks,

- P.G.

[twenty-qs]

Everything between Jayce and Viktor can really be traced back to their childhood inciting incidents and it’s killing me.

Jayce: a miracle saves him and his mom, forever imprinting him with the certainty that miracles do exist, they can be controlled, he can save his loved ones no matter how awful things get, if he can just be smart and bold and quick enough.

Viktor: he saw the horror of what Singed had done—of forcing a creature to live against its will, of the degradation and terror of being fundamentally changed. For a while he thought he understood Singed, when he decided that he was willing to throw away all his principles to survive his own body. But he didn’t, really. He didn’t understand. There was still a line he would not cross. He wanted to die human.

It’s fitting, then, and unspeakably tragic, that Jayce is the one who played Singed’s role in the end. Because you can’t ask Jayce to let a loved one go, when he knows there’s a miracle that can save him, the solution is right there, it will work if you will just let him try—and so he forces a change onto Viktor against his will. He traps him into the Arcane, takes apart and reassembles his body, strips him of his selfhood and humanity. All so that Viktor will live. Singed wasn’t talking about the desperation not to die—he was talking about the desperation not to lose someone you love.

And so Viktor is…changed. He lives, whether he wants to or not.

And so Jayce loses him anyway.

[akanemnon]

We don't talk about the scar

[das-a-kirby-blog]

kirby test print

[classpectanon]

hello homestuck kinnies that live in my computer

i finally went ahead and made a classpect quiz based on my personal conception of how things work. that means it's probably one of the more accurate classpect quizzes out there. consists of two parts. 20 questions total. go take it, share it, argue about it, whatever. have fun.

[dclovesdanny]

DcxDp prompts

Dan/Danny/Dani additions 1/5

Danny is adoption bait to the Gotham rogues.

Danny only went to Gotham university because it had a lot of ambient ectoplasm and he could fast track to the arrow space department in Wayne enterprises if he worked hard enough. He didn’t need adopting, he was already 19 years old and had a (strained, very distant) relationship with his parents. When he moved to Gotham, he expected to have to deal with people wanting to make him a new Wayne, not with all of the Gotham rogues immediately trying to adopt him.

So what if he defended Killer Croc from some asshole cops, accidentally exposing his fangs and had a conversation about being dehumanized with him that led to them having dinner on Wednesdays?

So what if he got into a serious conversation about the green gas effect and pollution (Sam had taught him well) with Poison Ivy that result in him coming over for dinner and Harley Quinn declaring him a ‘sweetheart’?

So what if he directed Frostbitw to help Mr. Freeze and now Nora invited him over for brunch on Sundays?

So what if he had a wonderful conversation with the Riddler in which they traded space themed riddles which lead to Riddler seeking him out sometimes for a game?

So what if he helped Mr. cobble pot by making him intangible when some people were driving by in about splash mud on him and he now had a part time job there as a bouncer?

So what if Grundy played tag with him every other Thursday and called him Little Death and offered to eat his chemical engineering teacher who gave him a low grade because he didn’t follow safety precautions?

This didn’t mean he was adoption bait. Shut up Sam.

[lizardkingeliot]

I can't stop thinking about the way Lestat was punishing himself. Not only denying his body the blood by feasting on rats. Denying himself modern comforts. Vanity...

He was also denying himself true music. Denying himself the pleasure of playing. Sitting there in his sad little shack caressing a plank of wood on which he'd carved himself the facsimile of a piano. Caressing the immobile keys while a concerto being played by someone else leaked out from the speakers of his iPad, what appears to be his one and only modern luxury.

In season one, Louis referred to music as Lestat's last remaining link to humanity. And honestly, I know we joke about rockstar Lestat. I know it's kinda campy and goofy. But Lestat getting back out into the world by playing music feels very significant in the context of... all of this...

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about the way ghost doesn't hesitate to start killing shadows when graves betrays them but soap only takes one hostage

you can almost hear the voice in his head telling him it doesn't have to be this way; they can still talk it out

"i'm calling shepherd"

his first instinct when confronted with betrayal is to play it by the books: to go up the chain. that goes against everything we've seen him do. he bucks authority at every chance except for the one time he's confronted with the barrels of his allies' guns

he wants a peaceful resolution; for the first time we've ever seen, he doesn't want violence to be the answer. there has to be another fix, a solution that doesn't end with him killing the same men he's been working with; his friends

nothing's happened yet

it doesn't have to go this way

but ghost has been betrayed before. he knows the way this ends; either with him six feet under or his enemy

he doesn't hesitate

it's only when they knock alejandro out that soap shoots; when they spill the first blood and cross a line they can never come back from

only when ghost orders him to run and he has to cover his retreat

and somewhere along the line, between civilians’ screams and taunting voices, between his shaking breath and ghost steady in his ear, that naivety is stripped away; his trust turned to teeth that he uses to sink into throats of men he'd have given his life for

"be careful who you trust, sergeant; people you know can hurt you the most"

he's learned the price of trust

just like ghost did

but unlike ghost, he has someone to guide him through the aftermath

"good advice, It"

[alexkablob]

Something about the inherent Lest/Maddie parallel that exists in Arcane S2—each of them the honeypot relaying the pillow talk of the clueless aristocrat they're sleeping with back to who they're really loyal to—and the way it reflects how Mel learned more from her mother than she likes admitting to herself (or than Ambessa ever gave her credit for until the very end) because, on the surface, they both use the same tactic to keep an eye on their potential rival.

And yet! Mel's compassionate treatment of Lest (a trans woman sex worker who she considers a genuine friend, is protective of and willing to accept criticism from, and who she refuses to consider expendable) contrasted to Ambessa's contingency plan with Maddie (a radicalized fascist who she converted into an asset by convincing her she was a more effective leader than Caitlyn and who was, in the end, eminently expendable) is one of the starkest illustrations of just how different Mel is, and how much better a leader of the Medarda clan she's going to be.

[preseriesdean]

Let's pretend for the moment you're not entirely insane.

SUPERNATURAL 2.07 | The Usual Suspects

[dunmeshistash]

Does mithruns fake eye make him look crosseyed or not i cant understand he always looks different

I don't think it counts as "crosseyed" his prosthetic just doesn't move while his healthy eye does, like here he's looking to the side and slightly up while his prosthetic stays the way it always is (in the middle with the eye mostly closed)

It's just always like that no? Sometimes it fully or almost fully closes, and when he blinks both eyes blink but I think it probably just doesn't have the full healthy muscles to be able to move (since it was quite the traumatic injury) but I don't know that much about eye prosthetics

Here's from a very quick google search

However, it is important to understand that prosthetic eyes and shells do not move on their own, and eye movement may not be 100% restored.

I don't think the demon left much to work with

[mspopstar]

If even Kirby isn’t a huge fan of Magolor…do I even want to know how the rest of the gang feel about him now? 😭

"Haha... For now I just try to keep my distance. Ahaha... Time heals all wounds, right? ...Right?"

-Magolor of the Lor Starcutter

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[sapphorror]

The Narrator's perspective only gets more horrifying the longer you think about it. Like, imagine being an Echo of yourself—one of many, all made to serve a very particular purpose and knowingly living on borrowed time, if 'living' is even the right word for your current state of pseudo-existence.

You've inherited the mission of a dead man—it's literally the only thing left that you can do before fading, so you sure as hell better believe in it; the alternative would be unbearable. Only you keep failing. With every loop that you don't remember, your lack of agency in this situation becomes starker—you can influence small things, sure, but it becomes increasingly clear that you have no real power, no matter how personally invested you are in the events unfolding in front of you. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to meaningfully engage with the world.

Worse—every loop you're made aware of is another time you've failed, with unimaginable consequences, though you had no control over these previous iterations of yourself and can't even learn from their mistakes. Everyone around you is operating on a shared perception of reality that you are not part of, will never be part of. After a few repetitions, you are, ironically, the least informed person in the room. All you have left to go on is an evidently outdated script. At the same time, everyone else is experiencing a contiguous version of you, comprised of parts that are, in some sense, also you, while at the same time existing at a complete remove from your current perception of self. Whatever you don't know you did—that's you now. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to define your own identity, never mind know what it is.

Even worse—this has trapped you within a stagnant hell of your own creation. Nothing you say or do really matters in terms of your own self (the rest of the world is a separate issue entirely). Anything you've come to believe—say, for totally hypothetical example, that you were wrong actually and your envisioned paradise is really a hell beyond any you had the capacity to envision—has about as much permanence as a drawing in the sand. 'You' will continue, exactly as you were, no matter how much you might like to change your behavior. Every possible future has already been set in stone. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to say anything you haven't already said.

For some reason, no part of any of this has made you feel more comfortable and at peace with the general concept of finality.

The really, truly absolute worst part, though?

There is no one for you to blame but yourself. And that's exactly what turns your story into such a tragedy.

[aphel1on]

AURGH auwarghh the autistic parental trauma... the epi was wacky hijinks then dropped this on us out of nowhere... (sobs) laios... laiiiiooooos

[katakaluptastrophy]

Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

The politics of the anniversary dinner

Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

John and Jesus writing sins in the sand

John and Nona's echoing chapters

John's motivations

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship

The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House

Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?

Overthinking House religion:

What do the Houses believe about death?

Was M's nun a Franciscan?

Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures

Ritual scarification

Sacraments and sacramentals

What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?

In defense of Silas

There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship

Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice

Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion

A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice

Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'

The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent

Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?

Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships

Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN

Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:

Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world

The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre

The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake

John Gaius and John the Baptist

Instantiating the Trinity and the Second Resurrection

What's the significance of Paul?

St Paul's theology of gender and sexuality and the House theology of cavaliership

Maundy Thursday: consuming another for eternal life

Harrow and the Harrowing of Hell