This Nocturnal Fright

Harley Quinn in Paradise #1 (2024)

Okay, so I have had this idea for a crack pairing, and I need to share it. 

The year is 1816. Napoleon has been exiled on Saint Helena and mainland Europe is once again safe to travel. Caroline Bingley, her sister Louisa Hurst, and her brother-in-law Mr. Hurst decide to summer in the Carpathian Mountains, which have been relatively untouched by the recent conflicts. While there mingling with the local nobility at a ball, Caroline meets Count Vlad Dracula. The two marry after a short courtship where others applaud the suitability of the pairing of Caroline’s fortune and Count Dracula’s land and title.

Caroline arrives at her new husband’s castle for the first time and finds it a mess, but Caroline Dracula is not to be daunted. With all the experience of a woman who has been assisting her brother in his estate running for years prior to his marriage, Caroline sets about getting the castle in tip-top shape. New furniture and upholstery is ordered, stonework is repaired, and styles are updated. If the Count is adverse to these updates, Caroline is not inclined to notice. She is mistress of the house now, she need not consult her husband in its appointment. 

Dracula is puzzled by the reactions of his new wife. When she encounters his wolves, she refuses to be frightened and simply cites her prior experience with her brother’s hunting dogs as she tells the wolves to heel, and they actually listen to her. If he crawls about the walls, she chides him for his behavior, saying that he is displaying a lack of manners. No matter what he does, though either a self-centered obliviousness or a prideful and bossy manner that refuses to accept that she might be less than prepared for anything, Caroline will not be frightened by Dracula. The Count is at a complete loss for how to handle her.

Anyway, time passes, hijinks happen, and eventually Count Dracula falls in love with his Countess and ends up changing to conform to her. The two possible endings that I see for this are that either Caroline remains completely oblivious to what her husband is for her entire life or she becomes a vampire and the two of them terrorize the country as equals. 

The end.

One of my favorite fairy tales from my childhood is Tam lin

generally speaking when it comes to mental and physical health, if you're asked "do you struggle with this" and your answer is "no, Because I Have A System," then your answer is actually yes

Also, for ADHD symptoms specifically, if they ask something like, "Do you have trouble waiting your turn in conversations?" and your answer is, "No I'm a grown up I don't interrupt people," but you are constantly finishing sentences for people in your head and have formulated three replies before they finish talking.... the answer is yes, yes you do.

And if you can stay in your seat but are constantly bouncing a leg, clicking a pen, tapping out a rhythm on your thigh, or otherwise fidgeting, the answer is, yes, you do have trouble staying in your seat.

Neurotypicals do not require iron clad self control and three coping techniques to sit still during a meeting.

What if your answer is "No, I don't have trouble waiting my turn because I can't tell when it's my turn so I never take my turn."?

*taps sign*

Adding this, which sticks with me, in addition to systems:

Domenico Fetti, Sleeping Girl, detail, ca 1620-1622

Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

"Oh! Vax. Did you need something or…" "Mm, just a soak. Mind if I join you?"

#‘el pastel promedio tiene tres leches’ es en realidad un error estadístico. El pastel promedio tiene 0 leches. Leches Georg#quien vive en una cueva y absorbe 10.000 leches al día#es un valor atípico qeu no debería haberse contado (via @deathbycoldopen)

I don't speak Spanish but I understand every word

I appreciate 'adn' being preserved in the form of 'qeu', that's absolutely beautiful.

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"

I'm really enjoying the growing consensus in the notes that there's an Eternal Rivalry Between Vampires and Werewolves now, entirely because the werewolves, sick of Dracula's bullshit, have unionized.

Today I saw a leaf that looked like a frog and I was like haha nice and then it hopped because it WAS a frog and I started crying bc life is really full of everyday miracles including but not limited to experiencing frogs

you got camouflaged dude. If you were frog prey...... hoooo boy

"how can m/f ships be good-" first of all through the power of bisexuality anything is possible so write that down. second of all if we start othering ships based on gender and nothing else we're no better than the opposition. third of all you need to watch more addams family

I know people mean well when they say it but hearing the phrase “you know your body best” as someone with chronic illness is so funny, like man no I don’t I ain’t got no clue what that fucker’s planning and I’m scared to find out

Them: Listen to your body!

My body, whispering in the night: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn

This has been driving me insane.

I used to be *good* at search. It was a whole thing - I found people's "lost songs" or their unknown-source childhood stuffed toy or whatever from Google.

Now, you can't search for the exact brand/design name of something and get accurate answers. It drives me spare on Amazon - if I search for XYZ and you don't have any, or you only have 2, tell me that.

I wouldn't mind if it said "Here are 2 XYZ. Shoppers also searched for..." Instead it'll just throw a random, barely-linked pile of results and you have to wade through every single one to see if the thing you want exists.

THIS. For ages I used to say that I had "high Google-Fu". I could find *anything* because I knew how to use strings to enhance searches. The string commands haven't even worked for well over a year or more, far before they put in this infernal (and often wrong!) AI BS on top.

I used to be able to search for recipes and easily eliminate unwanted ingredients with a -. For example I'd look for low-carb desserts but without the zillions that use peanut butter simply by searching for something like:

low carb chocolate dessert recipe -peanut

And I'd get a slew of on-point suggestions. For some time now if you do -peanut Google ignores the - and assumes you want recipes stuffed with peanuts.

Where it's even worse now is now you get directed to sites full of bogus AI recipes that don't even make sense. But they have peanuts in them.

I used to be able to use reverse image searches to find out who made that awesome art so I could give credit in my share. They've removed that ability entirely and replaced it with Lens, which is AI BS just showing you more like what you looked for. (Rebecca Watson complained about this in her recent video about JD Vance jizz cup rumours and I apologise for that sentence but...yeah. Watson is great, go find her on Youtube and subscribe because she went into detail about how Google has become less and less useful for debunking.)

This isn't just about Google inserting shopping ads instead of what you wanted to learn about. That's bad. But the results now are just *broken*. The tools we used to have to make searches better have been removed. Google no longer wants us to find the answers we seek, but the answers they want us to have, and that's super creepy and dangerous.

And the alternatives are either using Google in the back end or have other significant barriers to use.

This sucks.

Duckduckgo and all the other alternatives work this way too, now.

Verbatim search, guys!! Go to "Tools," and enable "Verbatim."

It's a pain in the ass, but it still works!

1) yay, thank you

2) WHAT THE FUCK WHY DID THEY HIDE IT

Okay so verbatim search is a life saver on the eyes alone??

I forgot search results used to look so normal

Ive seen people be like in modern fantasy like "oh the pritagonists can just look up spells on their phone how do you solve that"

Imma be honest most people who go on recipe websites and book every recipe they see don't even use them lmao why would with be different

Given how terrible most recipe websites are i can only imagine how bad spell websites would be

Having to navigate someone's entire life story of how they became a witch in order to get to the part where they actually talk about the gods-damned banishing ritual

the number of 'easy 3 step spell to fly' that at best do nothing, and have a good chance of doing something very bad to you is non zero

Three words "BuzzFeed Spell Hacks"

five minute witchcrafts

the scry guys

i hate when i, a completely healthy person (very chronically ill), get sick (flare up) for no reason at all (i exerted myself way past my limit just cuz i didn’t wanna be “annoying”)

1) Put four pills on each side. The heavier side has the pill. Take the four pills from the heavier side.

2) Put two of the potential pills on each side of the scale. The heavier side has the poison pill.

3) Take the two potential pills. Swallow one. If you survive, you are holding the poison pill. If you die, you have eaten the poisoned pill. Either way you will find out which one it is for sure

1) Weigh 6 of them, 3 on each side 2a) If both sides are equal, weigh the 2 you didn’t use before. 2b) If one side was heavier, pick 2 of the 3 and weigh them. Heavier one is poisoned. If they’re even, it’s the 3rd.

Well, all I can say is that we all have our methods and some of us are more willing to take a risk in the name of science