#okay otherwise

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[serpentface]

The pylidaigh, a type of vampiric snow ghost, as imagined in folklore in and around the Highlands.

This is a ghost believed to come into being when a person dies in the snow and their body is not found before their soul (still trapped without its funeral rites) 'freezes' inside of it. The body then reanimates into a pylidaigh's twisted form. It looks like someone who slowly died of starvation, just a thin layer of flesh over bones. Its skin is as white as the snow itself, so pale it can blend seamlessly into a blizzard. Most of its body appears subtly stretched and lanky, save for its exceptionally unsubtle long, skinny arms, which drag on the ground behind it when it walks. After a big meal of blood, its belly swells like the abdomen of a tick.

A pylidaigh can only tread across snow and ice, and so doorways and windows are best kept clear of snowfall during the winter in order to prevent it from reaching inside. It mostly comes out to hunt during blizzards when there is little that can prevent it from catching its victims.

In spite of its fragile appearance, a pylidaigh is supernaturally strong, and can run at great speeds when it wants to. No mortal weapons can pierce its body, nor can any bonds known to craftsmen hold it in place. It is usually said that chains forged like iron but made out of ice can bind a pylidaigh and render it immobile, but this smithing technique remains tragically elusive to the average joe.

This ghost is either cast as a wildly dangerous but tragic figure, or one that is more simply malicious. In either case, it is described as experiencing nothing but bitter cold. It shivers endlessly. It retains distant memories of what it was to be alive, and it is motivated by a futile desperation to experience the feeling of warmth again.

In more sympathetic framings, it is described as using its freaky gibbon arms to capture its victims and pull them into an embrace, rather innocently trying to warm itself against their body. This inevitably fails, and the embrace becomes a bone crushing squeeze. When that too fails to warm the ghost, it rips out the person's throat and drinks their blood until the victim is as cold and drained as the pylidaigh itself.

In other cases, this more pitiable narrative of a ghost seeking warmth with no comprehension of its actions is discarded in favor of making it purely monstrous. Here it is a type of vampire with an insatiable thirst, practically a physical manifestation of the worst of winter itself. Some tales acknowledge both variants, suggesting a pylidaigh's violent attempts to warm itself may be initially devoid of malice, but turns into an act of furious jealousy of the warmth of the living after years of suffering.

The only (more or less) surefire method to permanently kill a roaming pylidaigh involves trapping it with fire. They are attracted to any source of heat, and will attempt to warm themselves with the flames (if not tempted away by a juicy living human body). The fire itself cannot kill them (as the sheer cold of their body is more powerful even than flame) but they can be trapped if kept near the fire long enough for the snow it depends upon to melt. This does not kill the pylidaigh either. The monster will remain in stuck in place (and potentially become a threat again if it snows more) for the duration of the winter. Only when the spring comes and all the snow melts does it revert into a normal human carcass (though mysteriously invulnerable to decay), at which point it can be cremated.

Pylidaigh in the wilds also revert to a human corpse during the snowless seasons, but will roam again each following winter unless it is burnt in the interim. It is of critical importance that any human corpse found in high mountain pasture is cremated- not only out of respect for the poor soul trapped as an earthbound ghost, but to prevent the threat of the possible dormant pylidaigh emerging next winter.

[kosatsatosh]

[faunandfloraas]

And now, night after night

When you cannot find your way

I'll be waiting

[sandflakedraws]

meme redraw partially sabotaged by one guy being super adorable about it

[thewomancallednova]

wait wait wait wait wait im watching the omega glory and spock does a vulcan neck pinch on someone and kirk is like pity you can't teach me that and spock is like i did try captain and like huh? the implications??? Did they like sit together in the gym, spock gently placing his fingers on jims neck, trying to show him where the right muscles are and squeezing just a little bit, not enough to actually incapacitate jim but like show him where to go and then jim tries it on spock gently??? and like obviously it didnt work but like did jim just squeeze spocks shoulder a bunch, did spock put his hand on jims, trying to correct jim's hand's stance? and like we know that humans can learn it bc of data and michael so its either a skill issue on kirks part or he just like... did it wrong on purpose so he could hold/touch hands with spock more??? has anyone written fan fiction about this??? why have i never seen anyone talk about this???

[july-19th-club]

a while back i read jane eyre for the first time since high school in anticipation of watching the 2006 wilson/stephens miniseries. it's incredible to reread these classic novels as an adult, because while i got all the words and understood the *content* as a teenager, i didn't at all find the book interesting or fun to read. anyway i think one of the reasons that book stood the test of time isn't so much the gothic intrigue and how fucked up rochester and his wife are . he sucks so bad in so many ways . but he keeps needing rescued from stuff and only jane can do it . he fucking breaks an ankle falling off a horse early in her employment with him and she's the one who helps him back to the house . his attic wife sets his bedroom on fire and jane's the one who finds him and puts it out before he dies of smoke inhalation . then attic wife sets the house on fire after jane leaves and the whole place burns to the ground, grievous death and permanent injuries, etc, etc. jane comes back yippee everything's okay again! austen heroes don't get wounded like that because they're far too sedate and busy engaging in social seasons and heathcliff is like not wounded physically so much as destroyed emotionally . but this dude strikes the balance for readers who best enjoy when a man is collapsing of various problems and literally cant survive a day without some governess to pour water on his four-poster so he doesn't fry to a crisp

ALSO . i particularly was interested in the passages just after jane first meets him where she talks a lot about how if he was a normal polite person, or even just like a normal Lord with like, a sense of propriety and good manor house manners, she'd have been shy and awkward and uncomfortable and would have hated him. but i think where some interpretations get it wrong is that she doesn't think his rudeness is HOT. she thinks it's good for her own confidence, in that she knows her own self-esteem and social comfort levels are so low that all the scripts of peerage and society make her crawl into herself and disappear. she doesn't know how to follow the scripts convincingly, she's been emotionally abused her whole life so she has no sense of self-worth, but he doesn't follow the script. which means she doesn't have to worry about following it either. which does wonders for her confidence levels because when she can just act in ways that make sense to her rather than second-guessing whether she will be Approved Of, she can actually be a person. and that's what she first appreciates about him: his ability to (more or less without trying or even noticing) facilitate that for her.

"The incident had occurred and was gone for me: it was an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something, trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive."

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[mueritos]

prince sidon makes a discovery about height differences....

(my link is trans here but feel free to imagine him as cis!)

patreon | itch.io

[xabarik]

this was supposed to be an little art of a silly pre-canon au, but something went wrong… ehh

it was based on the fact that simon and metis themselves gave phantom the nickname “phantom”. he's overall not into it (if he could be fond of it, he wouldn't be). it turned into an idea where simon, suffering from overworking and insomnia one day sees a man in the middle of the cykes residence. a strange man who shouldn't be there, who can't be there. a ghost, a “phantom”… of course, he saw no one and it is just a mirage of an inexperienced young man who cannot easily bear to work on a complicated case of an elusive spy whose existence is still in question. (at least that's what they believe) its like he is a "phantom" of worry and ambition without real face. simon doesn't mind talking to someone other than concrete walls. phantom doesn't mind answering his questions (if those can be considered as answers). sorry for long text I have trouble structuring my thoughts (+ in eng) </3

sound is from donnie darko

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

Playing around with half-dragon Warriors. Inspired by chapter 23 of @skyward-floored’s whumptober fic.

Just wanted to play with Warrior’s dragon features and what his “performance” would be in his and Legend’s uh new job 😅

Also had this AMV on repeat most the time I was drawing this so you can get a vibe of what inspired Warrior’s “dragon dancing”

[fjordfolk]

Honestly, the reason I very rarely get into actual training discussions is that I very rarely agree with the premise. I don't care to involve myself in how you, a professional or far-above-averagly engaged hobbyist dog trainer, approach your dogs. I may not necessarily agree with it, and it may not be aligned with what I would consider a harmonious household, but it's not actually my business. You can stack your dog with prongs and ecollars from sternum to axis and I'll just trust that your ethical barometer and situational reflexes are well tuned. It's not really an interesting topic for me to discuss.

But the vast vast majority of people who train, handle and own dogs aren't dedicated dog trainers. They're the people in front of and behind you in line at the grocery store. And if we can't agree that 1) a misplaced reward is probably a kinder failure than a misplaced correction and b) we owe it to the animals we brought into our lives for our own enjoyment to at least err on the side of kindness, and so the most generic public-facing baseline form of dog training should at least be reward-based, then I really don't know how to help.

[doberbutts]

Recently Youtube's algorithm really wants me to watch Schindler's List and I never had so the other night I sat down and actually watched it.

Having a lot of thoughts about it but a major one I keep coming back to is how even an immensely and deeply flawed human being can go against "just following orders" and instead put in the work to actually help.

It may never be fully enough. It may never save as many as you'd hoped. But when you have a choice to either follow orders or save your fellow humans in front of you, I hope you choose the latter.

Schindler died in poverty. He was not a renown war hero nor was he at all famous or widely beloved. But he saw that he could help, even in some small way, and so he helped.

He was a Nazi who saw what the Nazis were doing to Jews and said no more. Enough. If I can even spare those under my charge, maybe a few extras, then at least I will have tried to do something about this.

I think a lot of people do not fancy this type of activism. It is messy, dangerous, and often completely thankless. Schindler survived as long as he did after the war due to those he saved helping him with donations. He was not popular in his hometown due to his association with Nazis, he was not popular in Germany, he was not popular in Argentina. His businesses all failed. His wife left him. A movie about his deeds was released several years after his death, where he would receive none of the benefits. He went to prison multiple times for simply refusing to hate Jews.

I think a lot of people like to think they're activists, but are sorely unprepared for doing this type of work, and then in truth become activists in name only. This is hard work. But without him, another thousand or so people would be on that death toll.

He took his position of extreme power- a Nazi owning a factory almost entirely operated by Jews, making oodles of money off that cheap slave labor- and said you know what? No. I'm not doing that. I can't save everyone, but as long as they are within my factory, you will not kill my workers. As long as I'm here you aren't harming one hair on the head of any Jew under my care. You're not sending or keeping them in Auschwitz. You're not randomly executing them for entertainment. They're people. You're not murdering them.

"Just following orders" they say. But they didn't have to. They could have helped. They could have did what he did, look around and say "what the fuck am I doing here", and stop. He did. They could have. They didn't.

[i-mickdraw]

Malevolent sketch dump

[foresttt-png]

ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between... i present to you, them. Then tomorrow I shall present you with them again.

[spineless-lobster]

I’m actually about to crash tf out what do you MEAN they’re made for each other what do you MEAN they covered for each other in battle WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY HOLD THEIR SPEARS IN THEIR NON-DOMINANT HANDS WHILE AT REST BECAUSE THEY NEVER WISH TO USE THEM AGAIN!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!!!!!!