#lots about this book

[jarofstyles]

Angels I’ve never read malignant before do you recommend

[angelicgarnet]

the way people online talk about autism is getting really weird, like do they know that neurotypicals still have interests? that someone being passionate about a hobby doesn't mean they're autistic? you guys know that right

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[adriles]

they are Cancelling me for dealing with my grief as best i can . also for the vicious war Crimes

[krysmcscience]

I have some questions about karaoke night, Alex Hirsch. Very Important Questions. Which I will happily scream at a poor hapless baby triangle who can have no answers for me, and possibly also does not have object permanence yet.

Follow-up that is I guess suggestive, but let's be real here, Bill's a fucking triangle:

Dude slipped right into his birthday suit, lmao

this is so stupid :D

Anyway, I don't care what anyone says, this brilliant individual knows what's up - Bill is absolutely way more of a monsterfucker than Ford could or ever will be, full stop.

[freakcliff]

many things about the chronicles of Narnia made me irrevocably insane at the small age of six years old but one of the big ones was the bit in prince Caspian where caspian blows susan's horn to try and summon help and it summons the pevensie kids like. that's crazy ok. that's insane. imagine at 12 years old you're given a horn thats purpose is basically summoning divine intervention & then years later someone blows it and summons YOU . I'm crazy !

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[paintedcrows]

Holiday Classics

Been thinking about Ford watching the 70s Animated Lord of the Rings Movies... (companion comic to this post!)

[ciderjacks]

dwarven brew

+

[inbabylontheywept]

Babylon and the Duck of Butter

I have a gift for falling in love with random objects. One time, my aunt got me a little rubber chicken, and whenever I squoze it, a little egg thing popped out. Very silly. Except that chicken became something like my best friend. I carried it with me to school, and I kept it with me in my pocket, and whatever social hazards there were about Being The Guy Who Got Stressed Whenever His Rubber Chicken Was Missing were far outweighed by being The Guy Who ALWAYS Had a Rubber Chicken On Him. There's a lot of comedic opportunity that comes with always having a good prop on your person.

Of course, the chicken did eventually. Explode. And such was my grief that I did not eat for 36 hours. This was very stressful for many people. Mostly my mom. I was a very strange child to work with. She took parenting so incredibly seriously, and then I'd pitch her these curve balls like refusing to eat for a day and a half because my rubber chicken died. No parenting book tells you what to do when that happens. You just have to feel it in your heart.

A less tragic story of an object that I fell in love with was a large, foam toad that I found in a trinket shop. The toad was the size of a very large grapefruit. Much too large to carry with me to school (thank god) but enough that I could move it around the house, to keep me company during my solitary pursuits. If I was reading, the toad was there, and if I was tinkering with legos, the toad was there, and even when I slept, I would wrap the toad up in layers and layers of blankets, and then spoon it. I did this until the rubber coating on the foam started to wear out, and the foam started to get brittle and break down and leak this repulsive yellow powder. Then I simply put the toad in the playroom and would consult it on matters of great importance. Eventually I stopped doing that, and someone took the opportunity to dispose of it. Not sure who. By the time I noticed its absence, too much time had passed for me to actually be sad. As an adult, part of me thinks I would have maybe liked burying the toad, but part of me also thinks I might have refused to part with the toad, which would have resulted in it leaking more repulsive yellow powder into the house. So I understand why that decision was made. 

I want to state that this does not happen often, and it does not happen on purpose. I don't choose to fall in love with random objects. And it's always a little bit embarrassing when it happens. 

Which brings me to my wife. 

Before meeting my wife, I did not often go to places with crowds. I didn't really think of it as avoiding them - those places just didn't seem fun to me. But she liked those places, and I really liked her, and being with someone who really likes something can kind of sell you on liking it too, so I'd take her to places and watch her Visibly Enjoy the Fair and go: Alright. The fair is pretty sweet.  

Which is a thing that happened. After fourish months of dating, I took her to the fair. And she fell very visibly in love with a large series of quilts, and she stayed near them for a while, which she thought was very embarrassing, and I got to pretend to be understanding as an outsider, because I thought it would be much more impressive than also being the type of person that would fall in love with a quilt. 

Do not do this. The gods punishment for my hubris was that the room next to the quilts was full of butter sculptures, which was an entirely new thing to me, and I immediately fell embarrassingly in love with all of them. It was like the biggest, sappiest non-sexual crush you've ever had, but not only did the other person not recipropcate, they could not, because they were made of butter. I actually got yelled at for pressing my face against the glass, which is fair, but also, I hadn't realized I was pressing my face on the glass, I just started leaning forward because after approximately 30 minutes of staring wistfully at a cow made of butter my legs got tired. And I think I should be given some grace for that.

Anyway. My wife was very patient with me taking more time to look at the butter sculptures than the average person might spent at the Louvre, and she also felt much less embarrassed over falling in love with a quilt, and we had a good laugh about it on the ferris wheel. 

A few weeks after that was my birthday. And I don't know what I expected, exactly - but I did not expect what she did. 

Dear reader, she made me a butter sculpture. Of a duck.

She picked a duck, because our first kiss was at a Japanese friendship garden. It was our second date, and she'd made up her mind not to do any kissing until the third date, but as we sat on the grass, a duck walked past me, and I'd just seen the hold-duck-gentle-like-hamgurber meme,

so I sort of impulsively reached out and snatched it. I honestly didn't think it would work. I don't know who was more flabbergasted, me or the duck. But we looked at each other, and then I looked at her, and then she looked at the duck, and she looked so incredibly envious that I assumed that must have wanted the duck so I just handed it to her.

It turned out she was actually envious of the ability to just grab a duck as it walked by, but she accepted the duck and stroked it a few times before releasing it. (She also made up her mind to kiss me in that moment, which was very nice.)  

Anyway.

She made me a butter duck of my own. Obviously, I fell in love with it immediately. I cleared out all of the freezer-portion of my mini fridge, and I put the duck in there, and for the next several months, when I felt sad, or lonely, I would open the door up and spent some quality time. Just me and my duck.

But this is, of course, not the end of the story. 

Because.

After several months. 

The mini fridge died. 

I really didn't use it that often. It was mostly my duck storage container. But one day, I walked by it, and it struck me that it wasn't humming. So I opened the door, and it was just. Far, far too late. The duck was dead. Dead dead. Turned into a foul-smelling slime dead. 

I cried. I did. After the rubber chicken thing, I thought I had changed, but I had not changed, and the unexpected death of my butter buddy left me pretty shook. I texted my then-girlfriend now-wife about how sad I was, and she actually came over to help me say goodbye. We didn't even bother scraping the duck out of the mini-fridge, we just said our goodbyes to both and threw them together in the nice dumpster behind the chapel, because it seemed appropriate to put it in God's dumpster. And it did actually help quite a bit. I certainly did not go 36 hours without eating again. 

And that was, for some time, the end of the butter duck. 

However. Three (or four?) years ago, for my birthday, my wife was looking around thrift stores. And she found something interesting. 

The original butter duck had an odd pose. She'd sculpted it laying flat, intending to raise it up later. But the butter was less flexible than she thought, and she was afraid of cracking it so she left it down which left the duck with a very elongated, very in-motion appearance. And she found a brass statue of a duck in the same, running posture.

It wasn't the original. But it was oddly on the nose. It was a yellow brass, it had the same strange posture, the same crude little face feathers. 

I think it was $3, but it remains perhaps the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I got very choked up when I unwrapped Butter Duck, The UnDying. 

Pic provided.

[elucubrare]

there's this horrible school of attempted literary criticism on here that holds that 1. everything in any given author's work is autobiographical, especially if it seems "real" and 2. those themes seeped into the work subconsciously, revealing something about the author that they're either trying to hide or unaware of themself. it drives me up a wall, since it seems to deny the fundamental skills that make people good writers: the empathy to imagine and portray experiences that one hasn't had oneself and the ability to take one's personal emotional experiences or worldview and fold them, consciously, into the unworked clay of a narrative.

[notrobinsomethingworse]

Alternative Titans Tower scene

Jason, wearing his original Robin suit (that’s sized up to ‘fit’ him: Do you remember me?

Tim: Did you seriously think I was gonna be scared seeing you wear panties?

Jason: what?

Tim: Like Jesus Christ I’m 13. I don’t want to see you wearing underwear. I can see the outline of your di-

Jason: wait no-

Tim: Like everything just hanging there. Did you even look in the mirror before coming here?

Jason: No- that’s not the point.

Tim: God dude. I looked up to you and now I have to see this? It’s gonna be in my goddamn brain forever. I’m gonna close my eyes and it’s gonna be you in those fucking short-

Jason: Can we move on?

Tim: I don’t even think I can. It’s just stuck in my brain now. I’m not gonna look at Robin the same way now and I’m goddamn Robin. God. Do I start avoiding my reflection now? Dr. Freeze is gonna be a nightmare. It’s gonna be like one of those mirror mazes but with pictures of your di-

Jason: Are you done?

Tim: God no. They warned you never meet your hero’s but never because you had to see them in some scaly panties. Seriously I can see you asscrack from he-

Jason, cocking riffle: Okay you’re done.

[chalkrub]

reminiscing about childhood books after that ask - all due respect to cool sleek movie toothless....but to me, he will always be a mean little gremlin

[adriles]

when we’re done with our overwhelming grief we’ll eat i guess

[mymycorrhizae]

Daniel's memories of Alice being memories of Armand

Daniel first mentions Alice in episode 2 of season 1. He's served a dessert that he mentions he ate after asking his first wife Alice to marry him in Paris (a city significant to Armand). Why are Louis and Armand serving him something that would remind him of Alice? Hmm. He goes on to describe a unique physical trait she had:

I remember finding this a weird detail when I first watched this scene. But after the scene of Armand taking off his contacts to reveal his vamp eyes, I feel like it could be a reference to that. This still felt like a stretch but the proposal scene from today's episode convinced me.

Louis asks Daniel what Alice said when he proposed to her and Daniel suddenly has a memory of Armand from the past.

The timing of this memory as he's being asked about Alice can't be a coincidence. He looks at Armand in confusion. And when he finally admits that she said no. It's ARMAND who replies that she wanted to say yes.

Why would Armand know this? Why would he feel the need to tell Daniel this after seeing him looking wrecked by the memory?

And then there's Louis' remark about Daniel feeling more comfortable holding Alice's hand in Paris than in America:

Earlier in the episode, Louis talks about Paris being less racist than America. I think this line is about him thinking Paris is also less homophobic than America.

It's not the first time Louis hinted at Daniel being bi or gay.

I don't think this memory is about Daniel literally asking Armand to marry him. But pretty much the equivalent when you are a human in love with a vampire. He probably asked Armand to turn him so they could spend eternity together and Armand said no.

[scooterscoob]

it’s like there’s an audience.