#and i'm like NO

[dizzying-faust]

I swear if it isn't Faust that is the most mischaracterized in the Guilty Gear fandom it's Ky...

[rollercoasterwords]

Loved your little essay on your characterisation of Bellatrix and all your interpretations of the Black sisters are like just wow 10/10 I 100% agree.

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your opinion on Narcissa’s relationship to her sisters and how that affects her thoughts on like love and the pureblood system. Like do you think she resented Andromeda as much as Bellatrix did?

Basically I just love reading your character analysis posts + your opinions on them. If you’ve already spoken about this though pls ignore this ask 😅 love your writing xx

thank u!! i enjoyed writing that little bellatrix essay lol

for narcissa i actually have a whole fic from her pov where i get into a lot of this stuff about her relationships + worldview, but!! i love talking about it so i will take any excuse to do so xx

okay so for narcissa in a canon universe, there are a few key details about her that i really focused on while writing her character. one is that she is, of course, a youngest sibling and the baby of the family. the other is that while bellatrix and andromeda look so similar that they can almost be mistaken for each other, narcissa is canonically blonde, pale, and blue-eyed, meaning she looks very different from the rest of her family.

taking these details into account, i interpret narcissa as a character who desperately wanted to fit in to her family as she was growing up. i imagine that--again, because of the pureblood patriarchal emphasis on carrying on family names--her father, cygnus, would have been disappointed to have three daughters and no sons, and as the last child, narcissa is sort of like...the final, greatest disappointment, in a way. she was his last chance for a son, and she let him down. i also imagine that because narcissa is described as looking so different from the rest of the family, she probably takes after her mother--meaning she's just another reminder to her father of what a disappointment she is. not only is she not a son, but she doesn't even look like someone who carries the family name, instead taking after her rosier mother who failed to produce an heir.

so from birth, i imagine narcissa grew up with just this...constant awareness of her father's disdain. as a young child, of course, she couldn't understand what she'd done wrong, only that there was something wrong with her, which i think would have pushed her to desperately try and fix whatever it was that was wrong by doing her best to be the perfect pureblood daughter that everyone said she should be.

i also imagine narcissa as someone who sort of lived in the shadows of her older siblings. based on what little canon information we have, bellatrix and andromeda both seem a little more fiery and intense, whereas narcissa is a bit more quiet and passive (or at least, she seems that way until she's backed into a corner). i imagine narcissa as someone who was sort of babied by her older siblings, with bellatrix taking on that older-sister sort of motherly role that i described in my little bellatrix essay that made her seem larger than life and like the epitome of a perfect pureblood woman, everything narcissa was trying so hard to be. i imagine that andy was a bit more of a rebel, sort of like the fun older sibling who narcissa could goof around with, because andy didn't have that same crushing pressure that bellatrix was dealing with. still, i think both bella and andy would have been very protective of narcissa while growing up, and while i think they would have all been incredibly close and loved each other very much, i also think that protectiveness would sort of...emphasize this feeling that narcissa isn't quite their equal. like, she'd always be the baby of the family in their eyes. and to her, that felt a lot like she would always be trapped in her sisters' shadows.

i think as narcissa grew older, she--like both her sisters--would feel this growing dissastisfaction and unhappiness with her life within the pureblood system. but in the same way that bellatrix couldn't question the system itself without having to confront her own powerlessness, i think that narcissa also couldn't bring herself to really question pureblood culture and tradition on a fundamental level, because her whole life--her whole self--had been so fundamentally shaped by trying to fit in so that she could make up for what was "wrong" with her (being born a womannnn). so like, if trying to uphold pureblood tradition is making her unhappy, it's not because the tradition itself is fucked-up--it just means that narcissa is getting it wrong, that she's failing to do her duty, that she isn't being a good pureblood woman. y'know? like, she's been primed from birth to blame herself for any failure to fit into this system, rather than take a step back and ask herself if this system is even something that's worth fitting into.

when andy runs away, i think narcissa would feel just as betrayed as bellatrix, but it would be like...a different kind of betrayal. for bellatrix, it's the betrayal of feeling like you've given your whole life to protecting and raising this little sister so that she can have a good life as a pureblood woman, and then having that little sister throw it back in your face--your protection, your guidance, your love. like everything you sacrificed for her was worthless, meaningless. that's the kind of betrayal bellatrix feels, imo.

but for narcissa, it's the opposite. it's the person who was supposed to love you, supposed to protect you, supposed to always be there for you--and she suddenly abandons you, with no warning, completely blindsiding you. and leaving you all alone for the first time in your entire life. for narcissa, andy's betrayal is more about abandonment than anything else. and similarly to bellatrix, i think andromeda running away would have pushed narcissa further into the arms of pureblood tradition, just because it hurt her. and it's easier to turn that hurt on the muggleborn who lured her sister away than it is to question the entire system they're all so embedded in. it's easier to believe that her sister's been corrupted by blood traitors and the impure, because what else is she supposed to think? that andy just didn't love her enough to stay? that andy abandoned her in a fucked-up house that they all knew was fucked-up, even if they never said it out loud?

and personally, i really like the idea that andy was engaged to lucius malfoy and ran away to marry ted, meaning that narcissa was then engaged to lucius in her stead. i just think it's a fun little way to twist the knife on all this!

but yeah, after andromeda left...well, i think it would have been pretty much unthinkable to narcissa to do the same. because she was angry, and hurt, and so of course she was never going to do what andy did! of course she wasn't going to abandon her family, and her duty, and her sister. of course she was going to be a good pureblood woman and marry lucius malfoy and make her family proud.

and then once she marries lucius i just. imagine narcissa being so incredibly unhappy. and it's like. she's done everything she was supposed to do. and she finally starts to realize that it didn't matter. that no matter how hard she tries, abiding by all this pureblood culture and tradition is never going to make her happy. but by that point the war is raging, and lucius is getting in deeper with voldemort, and...i think narcissa just would have kinda. checked out. just not really cared about who's fighting and who's winning and who's losing, because she's already lost the game. and the only person she really has left (aside from, in my fic, alice) is bellatrix, who's becoming more and more fanatical about voldemort, and it's like...even if narcissa knows, now, that it's all a sham, she can't leave bellatrix. bellatrix is the only person who was always there for her, who always protected her, who never abandoned her. and so i think that's part of the reason that narcissa, though she never became a death eater herself, would stand by her death eater husband and her death eater sister. because for her it all becomes less about the greater good and these systems of power, and more just about the individual people left in her life that she loves.

i think this sort of characterization tracks for a lot of her actions during the second war in canon, where narcissa herself seems less invested in the actual blood purity rhetoric and more just. focused on keeping her son safe, at all costs, no matter what it takes. because by the time she has draco everything else is falling apart, and i think her son would have essentially become her entire world and pretty much the only thing she had left. and those are my thoughts on that!

[halogalopaghost]

OMG I GOT SO MAD AT JACKBOX GAMES LAST NIGHT!!!!! Playing murder trivia whatever it's called and they asked me which stones are birthstones and my smug ass is like HAHA I work in the jewelry industry and I love rocks watch me sweep this one

And I got it WRONG because the GAME only counted the CLEAR birthstones and not the TRADITIONAL ones like BLOODSTONE

[asoftspotforangels]

some of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:

Point Defiance Steps

Mates

Rising Tides

Vashon Steps

[emilnikos]

love it when my friends say "you would do numbers on Tumblr" buddy I am on Tumblr. and the number is 3

[shiisiln]

#The lyrics FEEL it doesn't matter if they make sense

This is like 90% of the music i enjoy

Ok am I, stupid or do a fair portion of the lyrics to Kiss From A Rose just not make any sense at all

[ladyshinga]

Doctors should snark at each other more, be a bit mean. Not for no reason, mind you. But if five doctors blow me off about symptoms and doctor number six FINALLY runs actual tests and gets a diagnosis, I think it should be Doctor Six's right to call up the other five and tell them they're lazy pieces of shit. That should be socially encouraged. Those first five doctors clearly can't listen to patients, but maybe another doctor might finally get to them.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

that article going around abt firefox's new ad program is annoying bc it's phrased as though "mozilla has finally TURNED on its people and is SELLING YOU OUT for cold hard cash!!" when. that's not what's happening. it is specifically being implemented to discourage tracking behavior, and literally all the data they are giving to advertisers is aggregate and anonymized, which is like, the opposite of what that post wants you to worry about, lol

[beaft]

do genuinely find it fascinating how indeed.com is like the biggest job-hunting website out there and yet manages to be profoundly useless in every possible way

[crow-caller]

as a child there's nothing cooler than a kid who gets subjected to evil experiments and gains special abilities. it's even cooler if these abilities also cause unfathomable suffering to use/against others. children love stories like this.

[captainjonnitkessler]

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

[teaboot]

Sometimes I think a lot about my mom's cat

My mom's cat is a common domestic shorthair we found on the side of the road as a kitten

Regular cat, not a maine coon or one of those massive breeds. His mom was smaller than a loaf of bread

But in a sort of a Clifford The Big Red Dog situation, he grew super fast, and really really big, and took a super long time to stop growing

Worried that she was overfeeding him, she eased back his portions, but he stayed a massive round baby

When he started having kidney problems, she took him to the vet.

The vet took a look at him and said, "holy fuck, what are you feeding him", checked the nutritional listings on his chow, and told her "Yeah, maybe he's reacting badly to the amount of grain in this, try a meatier diet"

So my mom wound up special-ordering this specific high-protein prescription cat food made of like. Kangaroo meat or some shit that cost like sixty bucks a bag

And, as typical act two in an episode of House, he somehow got worse on the fancy specialized stuff that was supposed to be Primo Athlete Olympic Feline Blend

Like. WAY worse. His guts were inflamed and his kidneys were shutting down and he was all sore and HE WAS STILL HUGE, just miserable and sad

So shetook him back to the vet, where they had to help him pee (he was apparently close to bursting and had some kind of blockage too) and went "Yeah no this is NOT normal and we don't know what's going on, we're gonna do some tests but in the meantime you should go back to what he was eating before, at least that wasn't actively killing him" so she did

And he still wasn't great, but he also improved

And so they take his blood and do an ultrasound and a couple g's later she gets a call back like "this is gonna sound crazy, but we want you to put him on a low-meat diet. Just the least amount of protein and iron and shit. We need you to find the grainiest, filler-iest dollar tree kibble available and give him some of that bad bad shit"

And my mother is a woman of science. So she did

And he GOT BETTER

His energy picked back up, inflammation went down, he started drinking normally again, got back to pissing like a fuckin champion

And so it turns out that out of all the random ass freeway bonus cats we possibly could have scooped out of a ditch, WE got the one-in-a-million freak of nature with a SPECIFIC genetic defect that means a paleo protein free range diet is essentially poison and he THRIVES on cheap ass garbage

Like. He medically NEEDS junk food

I dont really understand how that works, but i cant argue with results.

If we had four of him, they'd outweigh my mom. And he's FINE

Also blind, but that's unrelated

Im not using him as a symbol or a metaphor or anything. I just keep catching myself thinking about my mom's Big Fucking Cat

[posalis]

[mod2amaryllis]

i love being married to a straight guy. this morning we were parallel chilling and i glance at his computer and he's watching a drill fight tournament. as in, guys attaching drills to the same rod and turning them on until one breaks. to find the strongest drill. jose noticed me staring and rolled out of the way so i could see the screen. he knew every drill brand and told me their quality and price. i watched the whole thing without comment. the violence was enchanting. i never would have found this. he's a vector to an entirely alien, often beautiful, world.

[some-pers0n]

How it feels getting obsessed with something new and then realizing you're going to spend anywhere from a week to the rest of your life thinking about it