And so it was off to Isle Of Volpe National Park in the Bramblewood, so everyone could rest and relax and enjoy themselves in the sunshine! Alice, who was starting to feel the Fury a little bit, decided this place was a great spot to have some Zoomies and ran off, while Victor and Smiler hung out with the pets, flirting and being silly together. :) It soon became apparent that there wasn't much they could DO with the pets -- there's not that many options for playing with a cat anyway, and Shadow couldn't do much of anything with her cone on -- so Smiler flew off to search Sophie for goodies. They found a couple of plantains in the shrubbery near her base, and left behind in return that talking llamacorn toy that's been in their inventory for AGES. Look, it was a gift from Clement Frost at Winterfest one year, so I felt weird about selling it or recycling it -- but leaving it for a kid to find? That's GOTTA be acceptable!

Anyway -- with that sorted, Smiler began looking for someone to make friends with and maybe get a drink from while Victor did a little cloudgazing, then splashed around in the little fishing pond nearby. They ran into one Brian Pimental near the log bridge, whom they had a little relationship with -- but apparently had never properly met, as I had to introduce them when they flew over. O.o Asking about Brian's career solved that mystery pretty quickly, though -- apparently Brian is an Eco Inspector, which means he must be the guy who shows up periodically to make sure the gang are continuing to use clean energy and maintain a garden of decent size. Anyway, they got along well, and Smiler was able to both get a drink and use their vampiric powers to learn all their traits, while Alice returned from her run to play laser pointer with Kelly and Victor stopped soaking his shoes and pants in the pond to talk with a rabbit --

And then I got the pop-up that FINALLY clued me in as to what was going on with Kelly. Telling me that she was in labor.

Cue me stopping DEAD and yelling at my screen "WHEN THE FUCK DID YOU GET PREGNANT?!" XD Yeah, so, as it turns out, Kelly was in the family way all this time! And while I certainly didn't tell her to breed with anyone, I think I know how it happened -- namely, Kelly is one of those cats who will periodically wander off-lot on their own adventures. I think she must have come back pregnant from one of THOSE, as I believe that is a risk with an unspayed cat! Which is why you have to spay and neuter your pets AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people.

Anyway -- with me reeling from that revelation, and with kittens on the way, I figured it was best for the gang to head home. Alice finished up playing with Kelly; Smiler finished up with Brian; and Victor finished up teaching Shadow how to lie down (as you can apparently teach pets to do things while they have cones, which feels -- a little wrong?), and with a final Van Alton kiss to mark the occasion --

No, but the thing is, when I was reading Harrow the Ninth, I thought it was gonna be an Orpheus situation. I thought Harrow had fucked herself up as a means to an end, that she had a plan to bring Gideon back, that the lobotomizing and everything else was her way of getting into hell to get Gideon out.

It really made me feel some type of way when it finally dawned me that she never thought that far. I mean, you'd think it makes sense that, if GOD tells you something can't be done, you accept it can't be done, BUT IT'S HARROW WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. It is INSANE to me that she just accepted she couldn't undo Gideon's death.

The trauma of living in a death cult really got to this girl. She was so awash in it she couldn't even conceive of living a life with Gideon; a more acceptable death is as far as she could go. Absolutely insane. Harrow is not Orpheus because Harrow never tried climbing back up, she couldn't look back because she never got that far, she went into hell to sit there with Gideon forever, and it just didn't occur to climb back up the stairs.

my interpretation of adoptive bee :’)

pls don’t repost!

"I've been afraid all of my life. And you guys are really, really kind. There's no part of you that'll feel like you're just dragging me around?" "[We're] all going to do stuff the others don't like from time to time... But that's what best friends are for. We'll work through whatever we have to."

the greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return

have been perpetually rotating @bignostalgias white winter hymnal hijack inside my mind palace like rotisserie chicken i adore this life-changing au to the core my bones and teeth ache badly from thinking about them <3

Minor spoilers for the already revealed chapters of the next A Starless Clan book Wind

apparently one of main guys directing the god damn zelda movie "aims for it to be a live-action miyazaki"

and i just-

you idiot, you fool, you absolut buffoon

first of all, there is a REASON why all his films are ANIMATED, animation can do things live action will never be able to no matter how much shitty CGI effects you pump into it

secondly, given how any possible ghibli influence in totk is so clearly purely a superficial attempt of copying aesthetics and NOTHING more is making me more convinced that movie will be shit

miyazakis works have been reduced to whimsical childrens fantasy with a specific kind of aesthetic in the mindset of many and i HATE it, its so much more than that and seeing how much totk has been compared to it, again, purely bc of some aesthetics reminiscent of his movies is still driving me nuts

the zelda series, especially the most recent entry, is very clearly lacking in everything that miyazaki excels at and i am not confident that anyone in higher positions whos working on that darn movie understands any of it and will just go for the usual copying of surface level aesthetics tm

Luo Binghe really was entirely too forgiving about the whole abyss thing. Y’all talk about how the peak lords must have felt going through hell and high water for Shen Qingqiu, just for the man to still end up with Luo Binghe? Imagine if Luo Binghe had friends and they knew exactly what Shen Qingqiu had done to Luo Binghe over all those years 😬

rue is, i think, in love with the idea of love.

they set a wager. the lords of the wing will find true love in this romantic, ephemeral bloom, if they only seek it. they can win it, as though it’s a game.

they long to abolish the courts. their own court has never held any love for them - why would any other court be different? a court stifles, a court smothers, a court suffocates love. the courts must be abolished, so that love can bloom. true love, love that is unfettered by politics, or station, or duty.

they are the architect of the bloom. the hunt, the heart. the dance. the potions. they will pour love into a cup and the guests will drink their fill. fae from across the realms will fall in beautiful, perfect love at rue’s hand. 

they have become the arbiter of love. when an engagement between a cruel prince and a wild goblin is set, what else can they do but judge it unfit? it was not love, it was not true. 

they share a moment in a forest with a venerated captain. he is tall, as they are. he is clawed, as they are. he is a beast, as they are, and so beautiful for it. they fall fast, and hard, and heavy. and perhaps it is only the nature of queerness, of a life lived behind a mask, yearning for the faintest spark, that causes them to love so fast. 

or perhaps they did not truly fall in love with hob at all. for they did not see him. 

they fell in love with a reflection of themself.

except, of course, that hob is not a reflection of rue. hob is his own person, and like any real person, he cannot live up to an idea. and while rue is on a wonderful journey of revelation and self acceptance, it is baffling to them that someone else’s love does not always mirror their own.

rue, in an act of bravery and vulnerability and hope, removed their mask. and they long so very much to remove hob’s - but he has never worn a mask. he has always been exactly as he is - a soldier, devoted and dutiful. an outsider, used and abused by his court. rue’s true form was hidden by their court, while hob’s otherness has always been mercilessly exposed.

rue loves hob for the idea of who he could be, if he could simply unmask as they did. but hob needs, just as rue does, to be loved for who he is.

i cant stop thinking about them. they’re my roman empire

The number of times I've seen people argue that Bruce is a decent father and that he is not abusive absolutely blows my absolute mind.

Yes, you can hc whatever version of Bruce you want. You can even blame it all on bad writers or reject canon. You can claim comic!Bruce isn't your Bruce and main a different version of him. Those are all valid.

However, you can NOT say that he has ever been justified for hitting his kids. There is no excuse for him willingly laying his hands on his kids. It doesn't matter if the person is drunk, drowning in grief, lost in emotions, whatever. Hitting kids is not okay.

Continually, the physical abuse is a very obvious sign of Bruce being a shit dad in the comics. On top of that, there is so much emotional abuse and manipulation as well. He's shitty as fuck to his kids and there's no reason this is okay. He may love those kids, but that doesn't excuse his behaviors.

Anyways, reject canon Bruce all you want. There's certain aspects of other characters I reject, and DC stands for Disregard Canon. Feel free to have whatever version of Bruce you desire.

What is NOT okay is excusing or accepting canon Bruce's actions/behaviors as acceptable.

Out by sixteen or dead on the scene, together for-fucking-ever Ginger Snaps (2000)

listening to an analysis of sansa - by a CHILD THERAPIST i think this is a great angle, recced by @transdimensional-void - and he said something about Sansa seeming a bit lonely, which made me think about how like, for both Theon and Sansa, there’s an enddate to what they feel is a sort of misery (tho wildly different sorts of miseries) - one day she’ll be married and a proper lady surrounded by other proper ladies and not in the drab, dull north, and one day Balon will die and Theon will be Lord of Pyke and not under constant threat of death meant to be loyal to a family who cannot conceive of the stress he’s under. Contrast to Arya & Jon, who don’t have that “end date” to look forward to - Arya will never be free to live the way she wants, at some point her tomboyishness will stop being cute to the men around her and start being a sign that she’s too wild, and Jon will never be free from the taint of bastardry so long as he lives, this confusing underclass of man where he is noble by birth and yet also lowborn and unworthy is a fate he can never truly escape.

I think it explains both why Theon & Sansa romanticize the terrible things around them, with the repeated focus on beauty, on songs and stories, because they want to live up to the expectations by being the Perfect Lady and Perfect Wife, by being the Perfect Hostage and Perfect Lord, because this freedom they’ve built up in their minds has to be worth it. Theon was taken away from home for this, Lady died for this, it HAS to be worth the cost. BUT ALSO, whereas, because Jon and Arya feel there’s no reprieve coming, there’s nothing good in their future, there’s an emphasis for them on the idea that who they are now isn’t wrong, or dirty but instead a strength. They don’t deserve the bad that happens to them, but their identity as outsiders makes them suited to survive it, and their suffering has ~meaning.

But for all four of them, what ultimately matters is identity - whether they are hoping for the day when they’ll stop being who they are or dreading it, or outrunning it, all four have to grapple with a changing identity and come to terms with the idea that there is nothing wrong with who they are, but there IS something wrong in how they were all raised to believe they must change to accepted.

How to be a Real Ally and truly seize the moment when it comes.

Amity Park: US MOST HAUNTED!

Amity Park: The Faceblind City!

except the westons