I had always gotten vague Sherlock Holmes vibes from Lockwood & Co. I thought this was just associations with London and mystery stories, but then I looked up where Marylebone is in London. It's the very same neighborhood as Baker Street. It's where the Sherlock Holmes Museum is. That cannot be a coincidence, can it?

Which is making me lose my mind because the books are almost written in a Watsonian way. Lucy is the narrator and arguably the protagonist, but she also tells Lockwood's story. It's his name on the cover.

Like Sherlock, he's a bit posh and keeps to himself and altogether a good person even though he's got a bit of an arrogant streak. Ultimately, despite appearances, he's motivated by his overwhelming concern for others. He always seems to have the right connections at the right time (look me in the eye and tell me Flo Bones doesn't serve the same narrative function as an Irregular). It's not a one-to-one comparison by any means, but the influence is there.

One especially important difference is that Lucy is the one with the exceptional ability, able to sense things no one else does, which is a break with Watsonian storytelling because the general rule is that the Watsonian narrator never outpaces the subject of his story (this way of framing a story was very popular in the late 19th/early 20th century and served mystery stories well by having an audience stand-in, Poirot stories also use this approach).

Lucy doesn't do that at all though. Partly because she's an unreliable narrator. Mostly because she very much is the protagonist, but her and Lockwood are partners in much the same way that Sherlock and Watson are. And by that I mean they understand each other and they work better together than they do with anyone else. Lucy starts on rather unequal footing with Lockwood, but as the books go on, they develop into a true partnership. They protect each other above anything else.

Jonathan Stroud, please I need to know if I'm imagining things here.

I told you guys I was going to create one more 'do it for him' meme for all of the internet to see.

Have a spooky April fools everybody. 👻👻👻

Oh that post sparked something in my mind. I’ll post it here as not to derail too far, BUT.

People, particularly traumatized ones but really most people I talk to, have a problem with blame. It’s such a… a thing now that everything needs to have a cause. Everything needs something to be fought against.

When I first started therapy, it was so easy to just blame. I blamed my parts for how I felt. I blamed my parents for how they fucked me up. I blamed myself for being traumatized.

And then one day I just… stopped. Because what good was it doing? I couldn’t fight my parents, nor did I want to. I wasn’t going to fight my parts — even there, done that, didn’t work and just made things worse. And I fought myself already. What good did that blame give me?

So I stepped back and just told myself. “It’s nobody’s fault. And it sucks. But that’s the truth, and I’m still here, and I can pick up these pieces.”

It’s easy to want to blame everything on others. Blame the anti-endos for unsafe spaces. Blame the pro-endos for misinformation. Blame endogenic systems for the lack of medical resources.

But… at the end of the day, is that really the full story? And what good does that blame do?

Yes, I could rally against how endogenic systems have made things harder for me in the medical world. I’ve actually mentioned it a few times on this blog. But that’s not a thing of blame for me — it’s acknowledging a fact. It has made things harder, but blaming endogenics for a flawed medical system won’t do anything to fix the flawed medical system.

What good is it to blame endogenic systems when it does nothing to change things? It’s not their fault. It’s just a byproduct of existence. And sure, you can bitch and complain about the medical system — but the instant you start directing those complaints to endogenic systems, you’ve misplaced that frustration.

Also, keep in mind that anger is a secondary emotion. It works in tandem with another. I imagine a lot of anti-endos who yell about how endogenics steal resources are acting as fear with their primary emotion. I know cause that’s what I used to do.

This became rambling. Woops. Hard to focus today. Regardless — before placing blame on someone or something, it might be a better idea to ask what that blame is supposed to be doing.

Is it just me does does Suyako Kamado (Tanjiros ancestor) look kinda weird in the anime……

When she looked like this in the manga?

Like they completely changed her eye and kimono color to one’s that seem to clash with one another. Also since it seems like their going to stick with this design what are they going to do about Sumire (Suyako and Sumiyoshis daughter) since she inherited her mothers eye color?

Honestly I think they should have just stayed with the original color scheme but it seems to be an emerging habit since they also changed the human form of Daki and Gyutaros eye and hair color as well.

i have to make a post that i'll get crucified for but its actually not my fault its the fault of a music journalist in the 90s who was actually saying the exact same thing but in print and also decades before me

“oh noooo a trans lady took her top off in front of the white house!!!” yes and i fully support her in this course of action TRANS RIGHTS AND TRANS WRONGS WAHOO

difference between hyperfixation and special interest

usually when I ask or google “what’s the difference between a hyperfixation and a special interest” the answer will be something like it depends…

a. how long it lasts

which doesn’t work because I’ve had relatively short lived spinterests before, only lasting around a month or two, and there are allistic neurodivergents who have hyperfixations last a long time according to them

b. what disorder you have

which, yes, only autistic people have spinterests but we also have hyperfixations as well so that doesn’t help??

I find that they feel different, and that’s coming from someone who usually has to actively think about how they’re feeling to know what they’re feeling(and sometimes that still doesn’t even work)

a hyperfixation is almost more noticeable to me when I have it? like a pair of jaws with it’s teeth in my brain, all buzzy. it grabs me and shakes me around and is a more loud brainworm, but also more easy to shake off for me.

in the case of TMNT, it started off as a ROTTMNT hyperfixation, loud and bright and “I HAVE TO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW ALL THE TIME” but it wasn’t so casually my whole life

a special interest is different in that after a while I wonder “do I even still have it?” and then I’ll literally have been thinking about the thing on and off ALL DAY. I’ll think I’m free from it and then the second someone mentions my spinterest I’m uncharacteristically excited and it’ll be all stims and infodumping for at least a good few minutes.

I’m not super sure since I’ve only really known that some of my things were spinterests somewhat recently, but a hyperfixation will make me do the same thing every day until my routine’s broken, whereas a special interest is a more subtle brainrot. I wonder if it’s still there and then everything I make and reblog will be it

maybe it is a time thing but I really do feel like they feel different

hyperfixations feel… hyper, for lack of a better word

special interests I might not notice until I go “hey wait is this my fifteenth fanfic today??? damn okay” I forget how extreme it is until I’m almost exploding because I saw a turtle in a walmart. it’s just part of my brain at a certain point, it becomes my life very fast

hyperfixations, no matter how long they last don’t feel so casual in my brain, they drive me to be constantly doing things relating to them, pulling at my brain until I’m back to watching a show. a spinterest will be quieter about getting me to do a thing, and then by time it goes “YIPPEE” I’m already watching the show and kicking my feet like a teen girl in love

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.

"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."

translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"

It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!

very this

if you took a language class in school (any level, any language) did your instructor assign you a name from that language? like, when i took french in high school i was assigned a "french name" that i had to use in that class. did anyone else experience this?

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

missing ranchers forever and ever and ever (a redraw of THIS from a year ago)

[click for better quality! + closeups under the cut]

Charles answering with “we have a good relationship” to a question about beating Max is like the direct opposite of Lewis answering with “I remember the first time i looked up the girls. When I met my girlfriend. I remember the first time having sex” to someone asking if he remembered meeting Nico

Lewis tries and fails to deflect in the most unconvincing way possible, Charles chooses to expose himself very clearly

Weird tactics but ok guys 🙄

despite being more often than not a "rules as written" fan over "rule of cool", i really do love me a good "rules be damned, i'll give you this awesome moment" call. like matt giving fcg the otohan kill despite what her hp was at or brennan giving cerrit an extra mage slayer reaction attack at the end of calamity. honestly, if anything, i think the fact they mostly play by the book makes these moments even better because it really has that extra weight towards those decisions to put the rules aside.

SYDNEY SWEENEY for Frankies Bikinis (March 2023)