uhmm. swap carpet stuff.

slapping some doodles in procreate dreams

for science

“The prince just fell in love with Cinderella because of her looks!”

Wrong. Okay, picture this–

So there’s the prince, okay? He’s like, smack dab in the center of the ballroom, and he is like, horrifically aware that this whole ball thing is a result of his dad falling into a panic about the royal lineage or whatever and he’s stuck listening to highborn girl after highborn girl, all lined up, introducing themselves like, “Oh yeah my family’s been a longtime supporter of the crown, and I think you’re cute, *cough* I’ve been told I have child-bearing hips *cough* Who said that? Anyway–” and Princey boy is just smiling through it, he has been the center of attention for entirely too long, he misses his emotional support horse, and is just internally like “Someone please kill me now.” And then… he sees her–This isn’t a love at first sight thing, this is a ‘what the hell is going on over there’ thing, because this girl has not gotten into the Debutante line for a solid 45 minutes. 

She’s just at the hors d’oeuvres table going HAM on the prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, and like, she’s polite about it, she’s happy to move aside for other people grabbing punch and canapes (and she’s really so sweet with the wait staff, it’s kind of cute because they’re like… definitely not used to being acknowledged) but it’s like, “Damn girl, did you not eat today?” and then the prince is kind of stuck with the uncomfortable thought of ‘how many girls starved themselves to fit into a corset for this.’ And then the Prince realizes he’s missed the past 4 Debutante introductions because he’s watching Mystery girl hork down crab rangoons. So he’s like, “Excuse me” and manages to break free from the never-ending parade of girls who will hop on his dick for status.

 And as he’s approaching Mystery Girl, it’s kind of hitting him that something’s not quite natural about her. Not fake, but not quite real. But at the same time this whole evening’s been just a whole circus of people acting fake as hell, so like, someone seeming a little off doesn’t seem bad, necessarily. And he sidles up to her like, “Hi,” and she’s like, “Oh–hey, have you tried the tapenade?” and she points to one of the plates, and at this point, he could hit her with the “You don’t know who I am, do you?” deal or the “Very funny, I see your play” deal, but at this point it occurs to him that, no, he hasn’t had anything to eat throughout this whole damn ball, partially because of being stuck in the debutante parade, partially because of nerves, and there’s something so disarming about the question that he grabs a crostini and she still seems so food-focused that it doesn’t seem possible that this is a play. So they both grab little plates and ditch the party.

She pretty much clears her plate in under two minutes and then has half of his plate, he’s cool with it, mostly he’s just absolutely fascinated listening to her.

See here’s the thing about Cinderella:

1. She doesn’t know he’s the prince. Like yeah, he’s been at the center of the room, but she’s kind of spent half the party eagerly looking around everywhere she’s allowed to go (”Have you seen rose garden? Have you seen the solarium??” further confirmation that she doesn’t know who she’s talking to) and the other half stuffing her face with food. 

2. She assumes she’s never going to see anyone here tonight again, and no one recognizes her, so she has no filter.

So she’s just talking about whatever with this guy. He seems cool. She talks about her friends, who are rats. She makes little outfits for them. Sometimes they bring her little gifts. She is already the coolest person the prince has ever met because of this. She pretty much offhandedly talks about whatever is fucked up about the kingdom that would take his advisors two hours of hemming and hawing and watering down to address. She just says it like it’s nothing, just funky little things she’s observed, and again, she’s not aware that he’s the prince, but it’s still pretty damn bold to bring up at a literal royal ball.

She… seems to have the majority of graces that lots of girls from Respectable Families™ have, but there’s something strange about it, something simultaneously broken and hardened, like the way you can see where ice has thawed and re-frozen. Also the way she talks about her family, and the way she avoids talking about her family– is raising several red flags, not in the “Oh this is another person trying to take advantage of me” sense, but in the “Oh fuck, something’s gone really wrong and you need help” sense and also lowkey a ‘damn is she even getting fed?’ sense. But he can’t say, ‘Hey, that’s not fucking normal for people to say that to you or treat you that way. We need to get you out of there,’ without sounding crazy himself, so for now, he’s just going to chill, make sure she’s comfortable, and keep enjoying the evening. She’s somehow befriended like 4 of the waitstaff so they’re willing to cover for them while they disappear for a little bit, and they get plenty of time to talk, but eventually it hits her that she hasn’t danced yet and she’s like “Come on! I bet we can make the prince jealous!” and he just bursts out laughing at that like “hell yeah, let’s make the prince jealous. He’s a real asshole.” Like clearly she’s having a good time, so who is he to make it weird? So they head back to the ballroom and they dance. And our girl, Mystery Girl, Cinderella, while they’re dancing, becomes acutely aware that everyone is staring. That doesn’t seem quite right. Like, yeah she’s hot, she knows she’s hot, but at least a good third of the party should still be focused on the prince, right? Where is that guy, anyway?

Oh.

Oh wait.

Oh shit.

And Princey Boy actually picks up on her realization and they whisper argue for like 3 minutes. “Why didn’t you tell me?! Now I feel like a goddamn idiot!” “I dunno it was nice being treated like a normal person” “Well me treating you like a normal person makes me a goddamn felon or something did you consider that?!” “Hey–Hey–it’s cool–you’re cool–I think you’re amazing, and if anyone says shit about you, I can shut it down.” “Well I don’t like that! That’s fucked up!” “I agree. It is fucked up, but I believe in you, and I think you should have a chance, and I’m here to back you up. I know power is fucked up right now. I know. But are you cool with working with me to change that?” And our girl Cindy pauses on that for a couple seconds, because.. she’s just spent hours with this guy and like.. she knows he’s a good guy, she knows he means well, so she’s like, “I don’t know how long I can actually work with you.” and the prince is like “Look, I know your home situation is complicated right now, but I really think we can–”

And then the bell starts ringing.

It’s midnight.

And then she takes off in a panic, and our prince just met the coolest person ever, and like, he’s pretty sure whatever situation they’re headed back to is fucked up, and all he’s got going to find her is a shoe. A shoe. 

the only way this works for me is if he also has prosopagnosia, aka facial blindness. in any version of this story, it’s just ludicrous to think that he can’t even string together a physical description of her. but this was total gold. i want to see a cinderella who horks down crab rangoons and has no filter lol

Ah yeah prosopagnosia, a reasonable explanation, however that lends to the other plot hole that there were countless others at the ball who could have recognized our girl Cinderella, including her Stepmother and Stepsisters. If the evil Stepfam recognized her, it would be all over. 

Thankfully the Fairy Godmother thought of something for that.

So picture Cindy, she’s in the garden under the hazel tree where her mother was buried, she’s just gotten the kickass dress, she’s doing the skirt twirlies, she’s checking herself out in the reflection of the garden fountain, and all of a sudden this horrible realization falls on her and she whirls over to look at her Fairy Godmother like, “WAIT. If my stepmother recognizes me, I’m dead. I’m so dead.” 

And Fairy Godmother is just like, “Oh pffft kiddo don’t sweat it. There’s a memory charm stitched into the dress.”

“Memory charm?”

“Oh yeah. Fae standard. There’s already illusion spells on the dress so no one’s gonna recognize you, and like… once the dress and the carriage and everything disappear at midnight, pretty much the only space you’ll occupy in people’s brains is like… they’ll basically remember you as a cloud of white noise. A talking cloud of white noise–they’ll remember what you say, but not the sound of your voice.”

“I don’t know what white noise is.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait–” Cindy perks up, “Everything’s going to disappear at midnight?”

“Yep. Everything,” The fairy godmother is smacking her wand against her palm, trying to figure out how much juice is still in it.

And then this ripple passes over Cinderella’s face. “Even the slippers?”

“The slippers?” The fairy godmother glances up.

“I just…” Cinderella fidgets with her dress a little, “I really like them. They’re so pretty and there’s… I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. I wouldn’t sell them or anything, and I know It would be much harder to hide the dress so I figured I couldn’t keep it… but… I just hoped I might have something so I’d know this night wasn’t a dream. Just something to take out from time to time and look at…” She seems to catch herself and straighten up a little. “But I understand. You’ve already done so much, I should be thankful for–”

And Fairy Godmother is massaging her temples like “Urrrghhhh oh god you’re making the face–Okay. OKAY. I’m bending like 15 rules for this but…” she snaps her fingers and the slippers on Cinderella’s feel just a little heavier, “There you go. The shoes are physical and permanent. But hey–HEY–keep track of them. This means the memory and illusion charms don’t work on them. These are going to be the only recognizable things about you from this night. You got it?”

And Cindy nods.

“I mean it! After this it’s going to be months before I can muster up enough magic to turn into a starling murmuration and peck your stepfamily’s eyes out. So I can’t protect you before then.”

“…w-what about pecking out eyes–?”

“Okay! Ball time! Go kiddo, go! Go! Go! Get in the carriage! Go!” 

everything about this video

IM NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING SHUT THE FUCK UP

[transcription:

Have you ever wondered about like cave paintings?  Like, “What were they doing?  These don’t…  look very good,” -chuckles- In fact, almost every cave painting has Spaghetti Lines, which are webs of lines drawn over-top images, which you can see here.

-picture changes to a grayscale image of a deer standing in tall grass-

And here’s an example of natural Spaghetti Lines in nature, but we’ll get to that in a second.

-picture changes to a photo paleolithic drawing of a mammoth.  Alongside the photo is a tracing of the drawing, to clarify the lines-

The second weird thing is like sometimes animals are given extra body parts, like here the mammoth has two trunks.  And here, there’s a drawing of an antelope or a deer, it looks like, that seems to have two heads.

For a long time, people would assume like maybe the Spaghetti Lines were just some kind of paleolithic graffiti, and maybe the animals were these kind of religious creatures that they had mythologized.  But then, in 1993, a German scholar went into this cave in southern France, and it changed everything.

Unlike the other caves he had been to, this one was very poorly funded, so it had no artificial lights, and he had to be guided in by a local farmer, with nothing but a flickering lantern to guide his way.  Here is how he described the experience. 

He said, “M. Lapeyre finished his story and wanted to move on.  I encouraged him to remain and to slowly swing his lantern back and forth a few feet from the cave wall.  As he moved the light, I saw the colors of the tectiform begin to shift.  When the lamp arced to the left, the blacks faded, the browns became red and the red intensified.  When the light moved to the right, the pattern reversed, creating a shifting color scheme. Moreover, the engraved lines under and around the tectiform became animated.  Suddenly, the head of one creature stood out clearly.  It lived for a second, then faded as another appeared.  The spaghetti lines were no longer a confused two-dimensional pattern.  Rather, they became a forest or a bramble patch that concealed and then revealed the animals within. By firelight, a secret of the cave painters was exposed.  In the space of a few moments, I saw cuts and dissolves, change and movement.  Form appeared and disappeared.  Colors shifted and changed.  In short, I was watching a movie.”

Understood this way, the antelope with two heads, under the dance of the firelight, is an antelope going from grazing to checking for predators.  And the mammoth with two or three trunks becomes a mammoth in motion, swinging his trunk.

There’s something beautiful to me about knowing that hundreds of thousands of years ago, ancient humans descended into the depths to watch movies.

/end transcription]

I’m watching a documentary about rats and this guy is like “they say there’s a rat for every single person in New York City” and I know he’s talking about like population numbers but it kind of sounds like he’s trying to tell everyone in New York that they have an individually assigned rodent friend and I think that’s beautiful.

The next big thing in fandom: Rat Soulmates

Well I’m here, when do I get to meet my Buddy Rat?

As I approached the near-empty parking lot that practically hung out over the Hudson, I took my 78th look at the pamphlet that had arrived on my doorstep yesterday: my 16th birthday.  The pamphlet said, 

Congratulations on the 16th anniversary of your birth. Please report to: Rodent Assignment Terminus #1 13th Avenue Manhattan, NY 

Honest to God, I had no idea there even was a 13th Avenue on Manhattan but here I was.  After about two minutes of look around, I spotted the ramshackle little kiosk in the corner of the floating block of asphalt and pavement.  It was surrounded by mini traffic cones forming an impromptu runway that led right to the small window carved in the side of the slanted hut.  I knocked on the window sill and waited.

The tiny window slid open and the wizened face of an old lady appeared.  By my rough estimate, she was approximately 170 years old.  “Name?”  She croaked, taking a drag off her cigarette with shriveled lips.  

“Uh… Addison.  Addison Sharpe.”  I held up the pamphlet with my eyebrows up, letting her know I also did not know why I was here.  

The window slammed shut and I heard the bustle and groaning of the old lady getting up out of her seat.  

To my surprise, she appeared outside the kiosk with a metal wire hanger-looking device with a hook hammered into the end.  She shuffled three feet to a tiny, manhole cover and slipped the hook through one of its holes.  I rushed forward to offer to do it myself but to my utter shock, she lifted the manhole up and to the side with no more effort than it took her to slam the small window of her kiosk.  She removed her cigarette with one hand and cupped her mouth with the other.  “Addison Sharpe!”

A low, unholy sound emerged from the depths of the hole in the ground.  It sounded like 8 million chairs squeaking across a poorly-waxed floor.  It sounded like 32 million claws clicking and clacking their way across a cement car port.  It sounded like the asthmatic breathing of a mass of nightmares.  It got closer… and closer to the top of the hole.

A single rat, about the size of a small chiuahua, emerged from the hole.

“Look, he got dressed up for you,” the old lady wheezed affectionately, and casually moved the manhole cover back into place.

The rat in question appeared to have a pink bow on his head, stuck there with what I can only assume (and hope) was gum.  He regarded me, whiskers twitching, beady eyes staring. 

“I like your bow,” I offered.

The rat hobbled towards me, latching onto my pant leg with sharp little claws and climbing until he reached my hoodie pocket, where he settled with a decisive sigh.  

I turned to thank the old lady, but she slammed the door of the kiosk in my face.

This is the most magical thing that’s ever happened in response to dumb shit I said on tumblr. I love you. And I like the bow, too.

this… this belongs on my blog

I swear, even if you haven't seen FMA, I think you might appreciate the fucking talent! 🤩

Episode 3 Poster

Coming 7/29/21. Art by @o-lanterns​

goth mlm wlw solidarity

How vaccine works

Artist: https://space.bilibili.com/404216060

I thought I’d share with Tumblr the best screenshot edit I’ve ever made. Not necessarily best in quality, but best in concept.

Did I work too hard on this?

Yes

Was it worth it?

Absolutely

I would be remiss if i didn’t do a Mystery farm version 💅🏾

Just my own little take on this. Hope you like it!

I’m on my Balance relisten and this bit from ep 1 of the suffering game was way cute

Ko-fi link <3

fun with smear frames

part 1

[x]

Hobbes and Me

[Gif set of a black and white video of two men being Calvin draped in a towel and Hobbes in a big fur coat, acting out this comic]

You know I actually think it works better as a gif set than a video, you keep the comic timing of the original.

lol i agree