#lucy zillion

[wonder-vixen]

[apoemaday]

Field of Skulls

by Mary Karr

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,    and if you're predisposed to dark — let’s say    the window you’ve picked is a black postage stamp you spend hours at, sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love    Lucy reruns have gone off — stare

like your eyes have force, and behind any night’s taut scrim will come the forms    you expect pressing from the other side.    For you: a field of skulls, angled jaws and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.    They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals roam your very block, and even history lists    monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters    unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps    that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet — that’s him    rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought, for it proves there’s no better spot for you than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing    the bad news piped steady from your head. The night    is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way,    you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine    and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all    your remembered loves. If the skulls are there — let’s say they do press toward you against night’s scrim — could they not stare with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,    at the force your hands hold?

[aidenoconnell]

a dino-mite birthday!

Aiden doesn't know how long he stays up the night before Ellie's birthday but the entire living room, kitchen and parts of the backyard are all decorated. It was a tag team for him and Luci for a bit, but then he told her she needed to stop and rest. There's a zillion balloons, different banners, streamers, decor with dinos but it's not over the top or cheesy in his opinion.

It's not like Aiden didn't have this growing up, Kim and Leo gave them everything they could. Aiden wants to do that and more for his own kids too, try too.

The next day comes way too quick and he's in the kitchen making blueberry pancakes, punching out dinosaur shapes with a couple of cookie cutters too. He really is that above and beyond dad, isn't he?

[connectingconstellations]

Another ch. 19 sneak peek

Because I know it's been a zillion years since I've updated lol

I am writing I promise I'm just also busy. But there's another ball in this one!

“We do what we must,” Mrs. Knox said. “Are you here to find yourself an American?” “Lucy!” Mrs. Adams chided, aghast. “Oh, no, I’m actually–”  “Most of the officers are married, of course, but I believe General Alexander – that’s Lord Stirling, technically – has a nephew about your age.”

[tenebris-lux]

Van Helsing is so reluctant to just tell Seward, “It’s vampires,” and really who can blame him? So he dances around the issue and leads up to it, trying to put Seward in a more “accepting of the strange and mysterious” state of mind, bombarding him with a zillion examples of the unexplained…. Finally, Seward has had enough.

“In God’s name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?” I cried.

He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke:—

“They were made by Miss Lucy!”

Seward didn’t use his full name, but addressing him as “Professor Van Helsing” has the same energy. And now that he’s saying ‘get to the fucking point NOW’ and Van Helsing has run out of lead-ups and can’t stall anymore… he tells him. The way he’s covering his face with his hands is just so … ‘oh god, I have to actually say it now.’ He’s completely at the mercy of Jack’s reaction. Will Seward keep listening? Or will he kick him out and never listen to him again? Or will he try to have him committed? He’s probably silently begging that Seward at least keep listening and not just close off. (By the way, I LOVE the way Seward’s voice got more and more exasperated as the entry went on in Re: Dracula, until he said the line like, “what—do—you—mean?” Perfect. And then the slow inhale/exhale of rage afterwards. Chef’s kiss.)

[walkswastes]

☢ ╼ LUCY MACLEAN PLOTTING CALL! So I am attempting my return. Please, please plot with me. I have a zillion au and plot ideas I came up with while I was staring at my ceiling and barely functioning. And now I am prepared to share them.

[ellizablue]

Have you read/seen TBOSBAS yet? Watched it again today and then saw your fic update and my first thought was that your take on Lucy Gray’s pov would be AMAZING

Yep, read it when it came out and have seen the movie about a zillion times! I’m already having tons of fun playing around with the fact that elements of the snow/lucy gray relationship mirror elements of finnick/annie and the implications of how that might have colored snow’s response to odesta + his subsequent actions towards them in the OG series + WSMB canon (there’s a lil bit of this introduced in the recent update 😊)

Would love to take a stab at LG’s POV one day!

[booksellergothic]

Halloween Day 14

Today, a poem.

Field of Skulls by Mary Karr Stare hard enough at the fabric of night, and if you're predisposed to dark—let’s say the window you’ve picked is a black postage stamp you spend hours at, sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love Lucy reruns have gone off—stare

like your eyes have force, and behind any night’s taut scrim will come the forms you expect pressing from the other side. For you: a field of skulls, angled jaws and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania. They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals roam your very block, and even history lists monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet—that’s him rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought, for it proves there’s no better spot for you than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing the bad news piped steady from your head. The night is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way, you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all your remembered loves. If the skulls are there— let’s say they do press toward you against night’s scrim—could they not stare with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs, at the force your hands hold?

Mary Karr, “Field of Skulls” from Viper Rum. Copyright © 1998 by Mary Karr.

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[taraljc]

I ended up reading all the Lockwood & Co novels, am waiting on Corgi editions to reread, and am trying to figure out what happened to Tom Rotwell. Did we ever find out anything apart from Marissa and Tom fell out, and his adult son grandson currently runs his agency?

ETA: I have a lot of questions about the timeline.

SPOILERS FOR ALL 5 NOVELS AHEAD!

I know the TV show is set a decade after the books and in the books Fittes and Rotwells first case The Mud Lane Phantom was in 1962, and Marissa died at age 40. But where is Tom's gigantic tomb and statue? Or did Marissa bury him literally and figuratively?

If they fell out only 5 years later in 1967, he still would have been all of 20 or so when he founded Rotwells. Yet Steve is greying when he first appears in book 3--and it's implied that the gate he created under the department store was his first, so he can't be rapidly aging the way Marissa did.

And who was Grace Peel, and how did she die? Was she really a martyr? Or was she just another person ground up and spit out by Fittes' ambitions?

Why did Tom and Marissa fall out? What's the real story there? Did he know when they first teamed up that Marissa was in fact the source of The Problem? Because it's not as if Marissa Fittes is a reliable narrator.

All we know is they both died young--and Marissa died in her 40s, prematurely aged by her trips to the Other Side. But did Tom know Marissa was in fact possessing her own granddaughters body, and had murdered her own adult daughter? Did Steve Rotwell even know anything about that, when he planned the attack at the Chelsea carnival?

What actually happened to Penelope Fittes soul? Was her consciousness suppressed, or was she completely ousted? How did Marissa even know how to possess a living body? What actually is Ezekiel? Could Tom see him with his Sight?

For that matter why is it that Talent fades? Is it physiological, or something else? Because one way to keep control of The Problem is definitely to limit who can see Visitors to children (who are presumably malleable and also immediately distrusted by adults).

Clearly Marissa Fittes never lost her Talent, so does that mean Lucy won't either? Does it have something to do with prolonged exposure to Type Three Visitors? Or is it like how due to the way our inner ears grow, there are high frequencies that even at high decibels people over 25 can't hear?

I'm just full of a zillion questions about who knew what and when, and how. Who started Sunrise? How does Tom fit in with the Orpheus Society? Who founded it?

I'm going to end up writing a novella. *facepalm*

EMETA: I should stress that me having a zillion questions in no way is this a criticism of Stroud. In fact, it's more likely a consequence of the books being written first person from future Lucy's point of view, and therefore the readers are limited to what she experiences and learns. I suspect that if the books had been from George's point of view, we would know way more about everything that happened from 1962 to 2017 before the first book, rather than little hints here and there because George is 300% all about the problem with like 5% of his consciousness reserved for Flo.

[vintageandroid]

I posted 4,197 times in 2022

That's 1,786 more posts than 2021!

86 posts created (2%)

4,111 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ratsintherosebush

@olliesaurus-rex

@tinsnip

@thatoneweird

@natalieironside

I tagged 4,187 of my posts in 2022

#laugh rule - 442 posts

#dracula daily - 210 posts

#star trek - 202 posts

#art - 183 posts

#queer stuff - 129 posts

#food - 117 posts

#tumblr - 105 posts

#alfred molina - 96 posts

#ds9 - 95 posts

#solid life advice - 91 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#i have a bit of it anyway (don't ask me to pronounce the word bag it's stressful) but if i'm working with customers i go full lutheran mom

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Book Review Time!

I reviewed @natalieironside's new book, In the Court of the Nameless Queen, on my 18+ blog! I've been wanting to branch out into book reviews anyway (I usually review sex toys) and this was a hell of a way to dive in.

Is this an erotic novel in a fantasy setting, or an erotically charged fantasy novel? I dunno, but there's spider-fuckin'. And I loved it. This is exactly the kind of erotica I've been looking for while complaining about other erotica.

[T]hat’s actually what I enjoyed most about the erotic elements of this story. Almost every sex act really meant something to the characters—sometimes learning things about themselves, sometimes finding freedom or validation as they explored their sexuality. In one case, a character accepts that she’s trans by being dommed into it, and it’s an absolutely beautiful sequence. As someone who has a whole tag dedicated to kink as a coping mechanism, I loved seeing sex and kink used to genuinely improve and enrich the characters’ lives.

Curious? Check out Book Review: In the Court of the Nameless Queen.

(The review does contain affiliate links to Amazon, but this was not a sponsored post.) Thanks again to Natalie Ironside for working with me!

-

(Queer Earthling is my 18+ sex blog. If you’re interested in supporting a sex-positive, queer, neurodivergent weirdo, check out my support and affiliates page!  If you’d rather not see these on your Tumblr feed, feel free to block the tag “Queer Earthling.”)

Aphobes, bi/panphobes, trans/nb-phobes, anti-kink, TERFs & SWERFs DNI

242 notes - Posted January 25, 2022

#4

i may be going crazy rbing dracula daily stuff today because Van Helsing is my favorite, with his zillion degrees and quirky old man charm and his LOLCat syntax. I'm delighted at all the folks finding out that he is not in fact a sexy action hero but rather, y'know. That.

335 notes - Posted September 3, 2022

#3

I hate you ad-friendly censorship I hate you unalive I hate you seggs I hate you numbers in place of letters to the point of incomprehensibility I hate you sanitization of social media to the point of sterility

346 notes - Posted October 10, 2022

#2

Dr. van Helsing is out here giving Lucy brandy, blood, and morphine all in the space of like 3 paragraphs, I love 19th century medicine.

1,481 notes - Posted September 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

My first instinct is always to get super pissed at Mrs. Westenra at this point but tbh, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing of 97 PhDs, it wouldn't have hurt anyone if you'd explained the necessity of the flowers to her BEFORE she decided to "help." You didn't have to explain the details.

Honestly (some spoilers) a huge number of the issues in this book come from the men deciding not to tell the women what's happening to "protect them" only for that to lead directly to bad things happening. I'm sure there have been papers written on this. Was this an intentional statement on Bram Stoker's part? I really don't know.

1,938 notes - Posted September 13, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[tuulikki]

I’d love to see OP’s movie, count me first in line at opening night, but… I dunno about the opening shot at “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” At Mina was in that movie. At least Lucy was in it. At least Quincy was in it. At least Jonathan was in it. There are a lot of movies and none of that is a given.

I’m just so puzzled. Why does everyone hate the Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie and not all the other equally inaccurate whackjob Dracula movies? Is it just because that’s the only movie people saw, then they read the book, and so got upset because… they hadn’t read the book before and their impression of the movie’s accuracy had been wrong? That’s the only way I can make sense of this sense of betrayal directed at only one movie out of dozens. For heaven’s sake, where’s the Nosferatu the Vampyre hate? What about Dracula 2000? Any Dracula by Hammer Horror? Blacula? Dracula Untold? The 1924 stage play?

And if we’re really gonna talk about heinously faithless adaptations of vampire literature, how about literally every single Carmilla-inspired movie ever made?

Dracula movies have been in their own divergent path of evolution since the play. We all want to see an accurate Dracula one of these days, but if you roll up to an extant Dracula movie it’s gonna be weird and, if even slightly faithful, horny. The book was weird and extremely horny for its original audience, after all.

It’s really okay?

Dracula fans have already read the books and know Dracula movies are whack.

People who see the movies but haven’t read the books aren’t fans, so we don’t need to care about their uninformed opinions.

We have the option of choosing from among a zillion movies of dubious quality. Or we can watch none. It doesn’t matter even a little. So… why all this outrage directed at a movie that came out over 30 years ago?

Ok, listen up movie and tv people.

What we need 0 of: sexy Dracula, Mina as Drac’s reincarnated lover, Lucy being blamed for her murder because she’s ‘too sexy’ and ‘she wanted it’, blatant Jonathan erasure, blatant Quincey erasure.

What we need 100 of: the Harker Supernatural Detective Agency.

Starring:

Mina ‘I’ve got a typewriter and now that’s you’re problem’ Harker, following the paper trail of every monster that dares to step into her country.

Jonathan ‘Everyone I’ve ever met is my friend’ Harker, buying beers and chatting with all the witnesses to gather up more clues.

Dr. Jack ‘I’m supposed to be the smart one but I’m weirdly good at break-in’s’ Seward, the one who can do whatever science /technology/ B&E that is needed but loses his glasses when they’re on his head.

Lord Godalming, Arthur ‘The Bankroller’ Holmwood, giving them the funds to travel, send wordy telegrams, and buy sexy new all-black vampire-killing outfits each episode.

Quincey ‘The Muscle’ Morris, here to politely tip his hat at passers by and then pop into an alleyway to curb stomp Jack the Ripper or something.

Lucy ‘Everyone would die for her, how does she always end up in these messes’ Westenra, who is the sweet and beloved friend of everyone in this office but somehow remains blissfully unaware of the supernatural nature despite being targeted by nearly every monster of the week.

Guest Starring Prof/Dr/Esq Van Helsing (his title changes every appearance) who rushes in to lore drop and dunk on Seward, smile lovingly at Lucy, then rushes back off to Amsterdam.

And if it absolutely has to have a reincarnated character, then it’s not Mina; Van Helsing is the reincarnation of Dracula’s ex-spouse who constantly rolls in to ruin his plans whenever he shows up.

And Dracula has a mustache, damn it!

[wonder-vixen]

[ofaither]

୨୧˚♡* ♱    starter call, accepting.    ( @he11inquent​ )

                the  ladder  to  the  hayloft  feels  like  imagination  and  the  wildness  of  childhood,  though  she  finds  that  the  feeling  is  hollow,  shallow.  a  brief  step  and  then  it  is  gone.  her  sisters  still  adore  it,  to  june  sofia  and  lucy  claire  it  is  their  princess  castle,  to  leah  anne  a  place  to  bring  the  radio  that  was  never  supposed  to  leave  the  house,  to  mary  rose  a  quiet  place  in  a  house  full  of  noise  and  to  abigail  brooke  it  is  a  hide  away  from  her  mean  older  sister  that  doesn’t  let  her  wear  makeup  or  understand  her  at  all.  but  before  all  of  them,  it  was  hers.  and  now,  it’s  hers  too.  but  not  like  it  is  theirs.  they  had  listened  when  she  told  them  to  stay  away  for  a  few  days,  or  however  long  it  took,  for  the  most  part,  but  not  without  questioning,  especially  from  the  ever  curious  twins.  and  lying  was  a  sin,  so  she  tried  her  best  to  only  go  out  to  the  hayloft  after  she  had  put  her  sisters  to  bed.  at  least,  most  of  her  sisters.  abigail  brooke  refused  to  sleep  until  laura  lee  did  because  she  was  a  teenager  now,  too,  and  leah  anne  was  becoming  rather  mischievous,  herself.

                atop  the  ladder,  covered  in  as  many  blankets  as  she  could  spare,  was  tate.  she  smiled  with  a  warm  empathy  as  she  brings  him  dinner,  leftover  from  what  she  had  made  for  her  and  her  sisters.  which  is,  of  course,  the  first  thing  she  apologizes  for.    “  i’m  sorry  it’s  cold,  i  tried  to  get  here  as  fast  as  i  could.  the  twins  wanted,  like,  a  zillion  stories  and  they  kept  getting  up  after  i  put  them  to  bed.  i  swear  they  never  give  me  this  much  trouble  on  a  normal  day,  it's  like  they  know,  or  something.  ”    i  think  it  would  be  easier  if  you  just  came  inside,  almost  slips  out,  but  shame  runs  through  her  like  a  burning  river.  she  never  could  find  the  line  between  kindness  and  scandal,  but  she  does  know  that  her  parents  would  not  react  kindly  to  her  keeping  a  boy  in  the  barn,  at  least  not  at  first.  she  sits  across  from  him,  pulling  her  cardigan  tighter  around  her  body  to  keep  the  chill  of  the  breeze  between  the  rafters  out.    “  is  it  getting  any  better?  ”    she  feels  ridiculous  for  asking,  and  immediately  wishes  she  hadn’t,  but  that’s  how  she  feels  about  most  things  that  she  says.

[lingthusiasm]

What if the IPA looked like weird nerd art and you could put it in your pocket?

The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is sometimes called the periodic table of linguistics -- an important technical diagram that's also visually interesting and which many linguists hang up on a wall, carry around inside a notebook, or simply know the exact keystrokes that'll get them to a page to type or listen to it.

Like with the periodic table of the elements, the layout of the IPA chart is a key to what the symbols mean: from top to bottom, the chart goes roughly from sounds where the mouth is the most closed to the most open, and from left to right, it goes from sounds where the constriction is the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. This means that many linguists only know well the parts of the IPA that they encounter regularly in languages they work with, and rely on their knowledge of the overall structure to retrieve other parts on occasion. Hence the need to have it handy to refer to.

But there's also an important way in which the IPA chart and the periodic table differ: art. If you want a handy reference chart of the elements for your wall or your pocket, there are hundreds of possible designs, ranging from subtle, minimalist designs that look like cool nerdy art to intricate, maximalist designs with all the technical detail you might possibly want to refer to.

With the International Phonetic Alphabet, most people are still printing out (or occasionally stickering, or laminating) the same greyscale diagram from the International Phonetic Association. We, your Lingthusiasm cohosts, have a lot of affection for this classic design, which we've spent many hours poring over (especially the forbidden grey areas, ahem), but we also wondered, wouldn't it be cool if there was a more subtle, minimal version that would look more like weird-yet-stylish nerd art and less like a diagram from an academic paper?

Well...we know a linguist-artist. So we put this idea to Lucy Maddox, who's brought you previous Lingthusiasm art such as the space babies, the schwa never stressed pins, the "thanks" and "congrats" greeting cards, the bouba/kiki shapes, and more. And Lucy was excited about it too!

After many months of back-and-forth on coming up with and refining the design, we're very excited to share the near-final design with you! 

[Image description: an abstract, minimalist* rendering of the International Phonetic Alphabet as a grid of white, sans-serif letters on a midnight blue background, with no row or column headings. Bright green is used as an accent colour, for solid green circles around the voiceless consonants; white circles with green font for the rounded vowels, and narrow green borders around the lateral sounds. There's a small lingthusiasm logo in the bottom corner and a translucent "demo" watermark splashed in the background.]

*Yes, we know there's a syntax theory called Minimalism as well, which this has no real relationship to because it's a different subfield. Consider it a bonus easter egg!

(By the way, the design still has "demo" on it because, while we've checked it with several very helpful phonetics/phonology friends, there remains a possibility that there's a typo somewhere which the linguistics internet at large will tell us about before we get it printed. Hey, did we mention -- if you notice a typo here, now would be a GREAT time to tell us about it before we print a zillion copies.)

We've actually recorded a whole episode chatting with Lucy about the design process, which will be September's bonus episode, but a few brief notes about our design inspirations until then:

First, we were inspired by the ad-hoc IPA diagrams that linguists draw quickly on blackboards and notebooks when they want to discuss a point, which just have the minimal amount of information, and which generally don't have any labels for the rows or columns. So we ditched the labels. This is an IPA chart for people who already understand the general principles of reading an IPA chart, even if they don't quite remember all the symbols -- everything should be figure-out-able based on its position relative to common, well-known symbols. Same with the various circles for non-positional information: if you know that the difference between /p/ and /b/ is that /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced, you can deduce that the solid green circle also indicates voicing for less familiar symbols. Or, if you're inclined to puzzles, this is an IPA chart for people who enjoy the challenge of decoding what some cool-looking symbols mean based on some familiar ones with maybe an assist from Wikipedia or a clickable IPA chart.

But wait -- this left us with a conundrum. The main consonant and vowel charts are totally decodable based on position. But there are also two other extra consonant charts which contain a grab-bag of other symbols arranged in no particularly decodable order. Simply removing the headings from these charts left them confusing. But after all, the IPA sounds are all produced with the same vocal apparatus...could we just fit them all into one diagram? It turns out that this (eventually, after much tweaking) looks really neat. And, we think, even makes these oft-disregarded consonants easier to remember.

Oh and by the way, since the 1900 version of the IPA chart had the consonants and vowels all on the same diagram, what if we included the vowels on there too? (We could not, alas, figure out a way of arranging the diacritics to make their meanings decodable from position only, so in the end we omitted them. If anyone does figure this out, please do let us know and we can talk about a revised version.)

With such a cool-looking IPA design, we also wanted to make it exist as a durable, tiny, lightweight object that you could carry with you everywhere and which might even be useful for secondary purposes. Which brings us to...lens cloths!

Lens cloths are a small, durable format for a reference image and you can use them to clean glasses, sunglasses, screens, camera lenses, and so on. Plus, they're a kind of merch we've never been able to do before, because lens cloth printing companies want you to place orders in the hundreds or ideally thousands.

Thousands? Oh, that brings us to The Plan:

We're going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That's the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we've never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it'll be worth it!)

If you want several IPA lens cloths, to give to friends or to make double extra sure you never leave home without one, you can also join the higher tiers (or stick around if you're already there). Patrons as the Ling-phabet tier will get 4 lens cloths and patrons at the Phil-ling-thropist tier will receive 12, in addition to the other rewards at those tiers.

We've ordered sample lens cloths from several different companies and we're really pleased with the quality of the company we're planning on going with -- the design will be entirely sublimated into the microfibre material so there's nothing to scratch your lenses, and it has a satisfying thickness and image resolution. The lens cloth production company estimates about a 2 week turnaround on ordering, so we expect we'll be mailing the lens cloths in late October or early November, which *should* be plenty of time for the major winter gifting holidays, assuming the supply chains cooperate.

We do also want to make this sleek aesthetic IPA chart design available on posters and possibly other objects (tell us what you'd be excited about in the comments below!) but that's going to take a second phase of design work to also make the design look good as a rectangle in addition to a square and figure out some additional colour options to go with a variety of decors. To be honest, running the square design as a special offer is also a bit of a test-run/fundraiser for the rectangular stage of the design, since we've already put quite a lot of our own energy and paying-the-designer into it. If people aren't as excited as we are about this idea, then maybe a rectangular version and/or more colours don't need to exist. Which would be fine too! But, I mean, c'mon.

If you know other linguists or linguistics fans who might be excited to have a snazzy aesthetic IPA chart that they can carry around with them (plus, y'know, get access to the usual Patreon perks like bonus Lingthusiasm episodes and a Discord server that's enthusiastic about linguistics), please help them find out about this before it's too late! We are not planning to ever order a second batch of IPA lens cloths, so this is your one chance to get them.

Whew, that was a long post! Here's the highlights: 

[Image description: What if the International Phonetic Alphabet looked like weird nerd art? Get this design (arrow to previously-described abstract IPA demo) on a handy-to-carry lens cloth (image of those microfibre cloths you clean glasses with; these are not the actual cloths but just to give you an idea of the genre). (Tiny abstract drawing of Lauren & Gretchen silhouettes from the website.) We're placing one bulk order for everyone who's a Lingthusiast patron or higher as of October 5, 2022. Sign up at patreon.com/lingthusiasm]

Stay lingthusiastic!

Gretchen and Lauren

[su-angelvicioso]

@fuckmeyer Wifey these tags are not gold but PLATINUM!!!

You are right, no one likes to consider those things when it comes to her and it’s a damn shame because it makes her character SO much more layered and real, but ppl would rather label her as completely “evil” “unfeeling” as if that’s revolutionary and hasn’t been done a zillion times before lol. They’d rather her stay boring and one-dimensional so they intentionally disregard all of these really interesting details that give her wayyy more depth than the typical, unseasoned, copy-paste villain they so desperately want her to be L0L.

I never understood it because… how is that fun? Making her like every other cookie-cutter villain when technically, she’s not. You’d think ppl would want to explore that and play with it a lot more instead of fighting so hard to keep her in a box she never belonged to begin with…

I always thought it funny how some treated her as “cold” and “unfeeling” and then canon tells us the exact opposite. Clearly she was not unfeeling if her entire descent into darkness was the loss of not only her family but her entire sense of security. I don’t think people understand she was left with Nothing in the middle of a dangerous war among EVERYTHING else that had happened lol. In fact, ALL the bullshit they make up to degrade and undermine her is pretty much debunked in every piece of information you get about her in canon, some of it from Jasper himself lmao.

She’s supposedly some big bad unfeeling old hag that Jasper is repulsed by… Jasper says different lol. (his actions show different too but that’s another can of worms lmao). He describes her as a “tiny brunette” who “looks young enough to still be called a girl” and has a “soft, musical voice”… and technically they’re all old, they’re literally vampires. They’re all 100+ years old lmfao some ppl sound so goofy with their digs. XD

Not only Jasper, but all other sources state in some way that they had a bond. Therefore, it’s hard for me to believe she’s “unfeeling” if she’s able to form so many significant relationships with ppl that aren’t blood related… Jasper, Nettie & Lucy, Her vampire family…

Hard for me to believe she’s unfeeling when she found herself a whole loving family as a whole Vampire when she literally DIDN’T have to do that at all, and she went mad when she lost them… it licherally makes ZERO sense to completely disregard all of that and reduce her into the typical lacking ass type of characters/ships that they’re used to lol.

She has all of these RICH underrated details that make her MORE than “nothing but an evil temptress who wants to hurt everyone in sight for no reason” *eye roll*. I mean yeah it can be fun to play with that when it’s done the RIGHT, un-gross way, but when you seriously characterize her like that and that’s ALL you do?? Not cute, not original, BORING!😴, YAWNING!🥱, SLOPPY! 🤢 … LAZY!👎🏽 Tomato!🍅 Tomato!🍅. If you claim you like her, and you claim she’s one of your ‘faves’ and you do that bullshit Pick Another Fucking Fave please because ur lying lol! (Disrespectfully <3) like you can really tell who actually knows her character and who doesn’t lol. I won’t even touch on their useless denial surrounding Jasría because then I’d be here for hours afjdfjlskdk.

“She feels so much but is required to feel so little” -@fuckmeyer

EXACTLY QUEEN ILY!!! <3

The anniversary of the day Maria’s family were brutally murdered in front of her is always the hardest day for her to get through. It feels like it lasts forever. She mostly tries to avoid thinking about it but on days like those it creeps up on her.

I headcanon that María has something like Survivor’s Guilt. Sometimes she’ll relive that day over and over again and sometimes it’ll feel so real and it will send her into a panic attack.

She feels responsible for their deaths. Even though there was practically nothing she could do to stop or prevent it, she was raised to be prepared and capable and ready for things, to be a fighter and a survivor and protect the things/people she values. So to her; losing her family, watching helplessly as they were murdered felt like failure to her.

Sometimes she berates herself, feeling as she could have done more, to save them. Maybe one of them died trying to save her, perhaps they told her to run. To save herself but she couldn’t bring herself to do it until they were all dead and she had no choice.

When she met Jasper and they began working together it was easier for her to push those thoughts and feelings away and bury them. However, on the day of the anniversary all those feelings and thoughts come rushing back. He’d caught her alone whispering harshly to herself one time, having felt the depressing emotions coming from her domain he wanted to check on her. She reacted harshly ordering him to leave, not wanting anyone, him especially, to see her like that. There was another incident where he’d caught her, she’d been reliving it all over again, She was too far gone to try to stop and hide it and she didn’t have the strength and was in no shape to try to push him away so she allowed him to help her. This was the first time she opened up to him, even if it was just a little and it was the first time Jasper realized that she wasn’t all she made herself out to be. That she had another, deeper side to her, and that there was something going on. They bond over that. She becomes a lot more receptive to his offers of help when he notices it’s becoming overwhelming again. He offers better ways to handle it. To this day she is still thankful to him for that.

She feels as if she should have died with her family. This may manifest at times in her acting reckless and seeming to have a death wish, not caring if she dies or not. Feeling alone and empty, she sometimes wonders what’s the point in it all; but then she reminds herself that dying would be a waste. Her family would want her to survive, to live on for them and so she pushes it down and trucks on doing all she knows how. Hiding and escaping her pain through other means of gratification.

[bebe-benzenheimer]

so that bit about Lucy's teeth looking longer because her gums were shrinking just reminded me of this shitty YA book from a zillion years ago called Sweetblood (one word or two? Who knows, who cares) about this diabetic teen so goffick she makes Ebony Dementia D'Arkness Raven Way look hipster, and she's convinced her illness is connected to vampirism so she hardly ever takes her meds and maybe she falls in with a group of other vamp wannabees and lands in the hospital at the 85% mark, whatevs...

Anyway, early on she hands in some report about how people suspected of being vampires in ye Olde days could've actually been diabetic and one sign was the shrinking gums because old timey food and medicine was terrible...

Ugh, no thanks Mr. Stoker for reminding me of that chick and her constant internal monologs of "I am X, I am Y" like a worse version of Fight Club.