Okay but surrealism aside all of these Southern Gothic posts are literally how the South is and I’m cackling. 

We’ve got creepy ass 24/7 diners that say open but you can’t find the staff for half an hour. 

There’s a haunted house and a murder/ghost story in every town. 

There’s always a fishing hole no one goes to because of a tragedy living in the waters. 

The woods are dark and hunting season is the only time you enter them. So many ghost stories. Haunted everything. 

The mountains are alive with the sound of screaming. 

Devil’s tramping grounds, hollers, woods, stones, you name it, we got it. 

The old people may be racist and bigoted, but they have skin-crawling tales of caution and they’re all true. 

Everyone knows someone who’s drowned. 

We’ve all got a weird cousin who left the family and never came back. No one knows the circumstances of their disappearance but they were always an “odd duck.” 

Community is a foreign concept to many until autumn. People come in droves from the mountain valleys and hollers bearing crafts and baked goods for sale. Apple butter can be smelled from half a mile away and the sound of fiddles fill the air. You will not see these people again until next autumn. 

There are cemeteries everywhere, but the ones unloved are left for a reason. 

Do not step on the graves, but behind them. If you step on them, apologize to avoid haunting. 

Old oak trees = do not fuck with the tree. 

100% Facts, I’m not even joking. 

wнαт тнe ғυcĸ ιѕ тнιѕ?

Elmo’s voice saying “I’ll fuck u up” is the best and worst thing ever

YO I SWEAR THIS SHIT IS TOO FUNNY😭🤣

what if magic was real but it was treated the way music is now with different genres and like “oh youre still into conjuring? thats cool I guess. recently ive been getting into third-wave post-necromancy, it’s some pretty heavy stuff”

“what do you mean you’ve never learned FIREBALL, it’s a CLASSIC” “idk I’m not really into evocations.” “how can you not be into ANY evocations?” “well, it’s kind of dad magic, isn’t it?”

DAD MAGIC

Seeing a person reading your favorite book is seeing a book recommending a person

Humans start out at birth with milk white blood. The more crimes they commit, the darker their blood becomes. One day, you meet your soulmate. Skip a few years, and things are amazing… Until your soulmate trips, falls, and exposes black blood…

“Dude, I have not paid for music since 2006.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that was a crime.”

“Me too, tbh.”

-fin-

Reblog if you're an artist or writer with too many ideas that you can't ever possibly complete and it's driving you mad and aaaaaah

Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after

I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.

Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.

One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation. 

The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.

And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.

In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives. 

How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.  

There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.

Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.

What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.

The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society. 

As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:

The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.

So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.  

In the immortal words of the bard himself: fucking annihilated.

instead of reporting the murder, i would like to help you bury thE BODY CAUSE DAAMN

Long before you were born, your father promised his firstborn to otherworldly beings in exchange for power. In a twist of fate, your mother also promised her firstborn to dark gods.

It was definitely the worst eighteenth birthday ever.

“You sold me to who?!” I shouted at my father, who stared back at me calmly over his morning coffee, as if we were discussing breakfast rather then him making a dark deal with supernatural beings.

“You know I hate repeating myself, Donald. “ He answered irritably, “Before you were born I promised the dark spirits of Opes my firstborn child on their eighteenth birthday. I honestly thought we weren’t planning on having children at that time, in my defense.”

I stared at him open mouthed, even the misty dark creatures hovering over the kitchen chair across from me seemed slightly surprised at his nonchalant tone. “So you guys own me now?” I asked them, my voice squeaking slightly at the last word, a bad habit I’ve had since my adolescence began.

They didn’t have eyes, but were facing my general direction, their voices low and rough, like gravel being poured onto a fresh grave. “Technically, just your soul. You should be fine, really. Plenty of people are soulless.”

“What did you even get for my soul?” I pointed a finger at my father.

He sighed, “There was this really great Porsche I wanted, but couldn’t afford.” Shrugging he added “It seemed like a good deal at the time.”

I couldn’t believe it. “You traded that car when I was five! You traded the car you sold my soul for!”

“Honestly, Donald, stop making such a big deal about this. It’s just your soul.”

I turned to my mother, who was reading the gossip/society section of the paper through this whole conversation. “Don’t you have anything to add?”

“Listen to your father, dear.” Was her helpful addition. She didn’t even glance up from her reading.

Thanks, Mom. I turned to the tall fiery beings silently standing in the corner.

“Are you guys part of the ‘dark spirits Opes’ too?”

The tallest one shook his head, his voice was high pitched liked the scream of an infant.

“No, we are the dark gods of Venustas. We are here to collect your soul as well.”

I threw up my hands “Dad! You sold me to TWO dark beings? Isn’t one enough?”

For the first time my father looked upset. “That wasn’t me! I only sold you once.”

Again my mother chimed in without looking up. “That was me, I’m afraid. Sold off my firstborn many years ago for youth and beauty.” She checked her makeup briefly in a compact and then met everyone’s disbelieving stares. “What? You think looking this good is NATURAL? I wasn’t planning on having children. If I hadn’t forgotten about that deal and Mary Jane down the street hadn’t been flaunting her nursery designs everywhere, I wouldn’t have agreed to have one.”

There was so much wrong with that. I really didn’t know where to start. The two supernatural groups were staring at each other hostilely. I braced myself for the upcoming fight.

That was when the Devil appeared in a burst of flame. He was a bit too big to fit into our kitchen, his horns broke a small crystal in the chandelier above and his two hooves were scratching the hardwood floor. My mom was going to have a field day. Although, she did technically sell my soul away so my sympathy for her was pretty low.

“I am here to claim your soul, mortal!” He cried, holding up his fist in a threatening manner. He then seemed to notice the general chilly atmosphere of the room, as well as the multiple groups of dark beings. “What I’d miss?”

My father sighed. “Wasn’t me.”

My mother shook out her paper, returning to her reading. “Wasn’t me either.”

Everyone stared at eachother in astonishment, and after an awkward amount of silence I slowly raised my hand.

“Actually, that one was me.”

The dark spirits laughed. “YOU sold your soul to the Devil?”

I crossed my arms defensively. “You think getting an all-expense paid scholarship to Harvard is EASY? Besides, it’s not like I KNEW that my parents had already sold my soul twice.”

My father chuckled. “Like father, like son, I guess.”

I glared at him. “Shut up! I’m still mad at you.”

 The Devil, the dark spirits and the fiery gods all faced off in the corner of our kitchen.

“It seems we are at an impasse.” The Devil growled, his spiked tail snapping in irritation.

The fire surrounding the dark gods grew brighter. “So it would seem.” They screeched in reply.

“We submit that we settle this in the Ancient Tradition.” The dark spirits spoke in unison.

The Devil laughed in response. “An old fashioned approach, huh? I like it!”

The tension in the air grew thick as silence settled among the three. I stared worriedly into the group, wondering if I should try to move out of the way of whatever supernatural fight they were starting.

 The three groups of beings crouched in unison on the kitchen floor, facing each other. They each raised a fist.

 “ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, GO!”

Omg

don’t invite me into your d&d group because at some point i will send you a message like “do elves have baking soda?”

don’t ask me for advice because after half an hour of researching the history of leavening i will send you a message that just says “you can only get baking soda from HELL”

I feel like they could conceivably have baking soda. Sodium bicarbonate or baking soda is a fairly common mineral found in natural hot springs. So they probably wouldn’t have it by name specifically but they probably have recipes that specify to use hot spring water in baking and that regular boiled water just doesn’t have the same effect.

for use as baking soda, sodium bicarbonate has to be specifically created using a chemical reaction – the natural form is actually nahcolite

however my DM and i did discover that prior to the availability of baking soda, older recipes called for salt of hartshorn, which could be made from the antlers of deer. the emergence of hartshorn on the scene is still several centuries too late for your average d&d setting, but it would appear not to be due to the lack of technology, just the time people realized it could be used for baking. deer are like, totally associated with traditional fantasy elves, so while it could only have been used for baking small things, like cookies, elves could absolutely still have a similar agent to baking soda for use in their cooking

Did you just tell me the origins story of the keebler elves cookie company?

I don’t want it; I don’t need it.

this scene is even more creepy when you realize Spirited Away was a metaphor for the sex industry in Japan

oh

oh

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

NO IT WASN’T, YOU JACKASSES!

“Totoro’s about dead girls!”

“Spirited Away is about sex!”

You know what I hear?

“Maybe if I make up something that sounds smart, people will think I’m smart, even if it’s a complete fucking lie!”

Hayao Miyazaki is a man of values. He’s a man who believes in the innocence of childhood and has a wonderful imagination. He believes in simplicity, kindness, the beauty of nature, and the old ways. He draws on these beliefs and his personal experiences when he makes movies.

Spirited Away was made for some friends of Miyazaki’s. Specifically, the ten-year-old daughters of some friends he invited to stay at his vacation home. It’s fairly common for Miyazaki to decide that he’s going to make movies targeted at a specific age group. Ponyo is for five-year-olds. Spirited Away is meant for ten-year-old girls, but enjoyed by a much wider audience.

I repeat, SPIRITED AWAY WAS MADE FOR TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS.

The bathhouse? Not a brothel. Based on a bathhouse in his home town, which he thought was a place of mystery and wonder when he was a kid. That scene where the bathhouse staff has to clean the polluted river spirit? Based on Miyazaki’s own experiences of a town coming together to clean up a river. This scene? It’s about Chihiro not being greedy, because Chihiro is a positive role-model for ten-year-old girls.

The themes of Spirited Away are courage, strength of character, and individuality. ESPECIALLY individuality. That thing where Yubaba takes away peoples’ names and changes their species? That’s her taking away their individuality. Chihiro’s parents are now pigs, not people. Haku’s name has been shortened so he forgets who he is. When Yubaba changes Chihiro’s name, the only Kanji she leaves spell out “Sen”, the Japanese word for “one thousand”, meaning Chihiro is just another pawn of Yubaba’s, not her own person.

You want to seem cool and intelligent? Talk about the movie’s actual themes. Don’t make up this shock-value bullshit for attention.

You stupid motherfuckers.

I’m not much of a Miyazaki fan but I loathe when edgelords try to make something light and pure into something dark and dismal, so this is worth a reblog from me.

In fairy tales and fantasy, two types of people go in towers:  princesses and wizards.

Princesses are placed there against their will or with the intention of ‘keeping them safe.’ This is very different from wizards, who seek out towers to hone their sorcery in solitude.

I would like a story where a princess is placed in an abandoned tower that used to belong to a wizard, and so she spends long years learning the craft of wizardry from the scraps left behind and becomes the most powerful magic wielder the world has seen in centuries, busts out of the tower and wreaks glorious, bloody vengeance on the fools that imprisoned her. 

That would be my kind of story.

When Princess Talia was fourteen, her eldest sister was placed in a tower.

Princess Adina was eighteen by then, and so of a marriageable age. She had grown quite beautiful, though she was more willful than winsome, and she did not care for the notion of the tower very much at all. Their mother did her best to persuade her on the subject. After all, the queen herself had been eighteen when her own parents had sent her to live in that very same tower, to be safely tucked away until her husband could be chosen, and then ride out to claim her. A tradition going back ages and ages.

Keep reading

it is so strange to me when people tell me they never had an ancient egyptian phase…like, what did you even do during your childhood? 

this is oddly specific?? and over 3000 people relate???

That egyptology book was too golden and shiny to resist

Ok but were you an Egyptology kid, a Dragonology kid, or a Wizardology kid?

All three...plus the fairy one.🤓

T.James, writing prompt #54: write about self-love (via wnq-writers)

#Inktober 2017 by Vicki Sigh on Instagram

November 1st

me to the demon in the corner of my room: ain’t u got shit to do

He’d been lurking about for days now, this shadow thing. It used to scare me, terrify me straight into insomnia. But it had just stood there the whole time. Now it seemed part of the furniture, if I’m being honest.

I started talking to it. Probably not my best idea, I’ll give you that, but it’s not like I had anyone else around. I would tell it about my day as I readied for bed. Jeff was a dick at the meeting this morning. Had the best hot dog off the best cart in the city for lunch. SIX reports due by Friday? Kellen must be trying to kill me. I even wished it good night. And it just stared, with its glowing red eyes.

One night, I had to stay late at the office. Really late. Remember those six reports? They turned into fifteen. And if I didn’t get them done for this major client, it was my head on the HR guillotine. So I stayed late. I ended up crashing on the sofa in the break room and woke up to more work on my desk. That was Thursday morning. I had to get this all done by Monday.

On Friday night, around ten, I decided to go home and get some real sleep before going back to the office to finish this insane task. And then I felt it. Something was here with me and it wasn’t the janitor.

I looked in the corner and there were those eyes again, surrounded by shadow. I sighed. I really didn’t have time for this, not here.

“Ain’t you got shit to do?” I snapped, walking to the break room for yet more coffee. So much for going home to sleep.

A growling sound, then a deep, rasping voice said, “I miss you.”

I stopped. “What do you mean, you miss me? Aren’t you a demon or something?”

“You didn’t come home. I’ve been worried. What are you doing here?”

We’d never conversed like this. It was almost comforting, like a friend would be.

“I’m working, man. I’ve got a big client coming on Monday and Kellen put all these damn reports on my desk and if I don’t get them done, I’m probably gonna get fired.” I ranted as I took off my tie and ran my fingers through my hair.

The demon paused, thinking. It moved slowly around the room, taking it all in.

“Do you want me to eat Kellen?” it suddenly asked.

I laughed, “No, don’t eat Kellen. It’s not really his fault.”

“Then what shall I do?”

I sighed and considered. What could a shadow demon do to help me?

“Do you know anything about graphic design and marketing?”

It paused its roaming. “I ate an artist’s soul, once.”

“Good enough. Just sit behind me and tell me what looks good.”

On Monday morning, the company landed the client, I got a raise, and arranged it so I could work from home two days a week. We moved to a bigger flat two months later. It makes cinnamon pancakes on Saturdays.

I love this honestly

awwwwwww

you have two options in life:

1. live with the struggle of trying to get what you want

2. live with the struggle of settling for anything less