truth is, underneath it all, a lot of our beliefs aren't rational, and they're formed young. all those stories of magical protagonists. secret worlds if you just had the key. creatures just out of view. all that shit we imagined doesn't go away because we got older. in a lot of ways it gets bigger, more elaborately built on.

i think we're hiding the emotionally devastating core of the walrus vs fairy debate under jokes.

you see a fairy on your doorstep? and you think finally.

“As a child I paid very little attention to authors’ names; they were irrelevant; I did not believe in authors. To be perfectly candid, this is still true. I do not believe in authors. A book exists, it’s there. The author isn’t there — some grown-up you never met — may even be dead. The book is what is real. You read it, you and it form a relationship, perhaps a trivial one, perhaps a deep and lasting one. As you read it word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and reread, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. Where, in all this, does the author come in? Like the God of the eighteenth-century deists, only at the beginning. Long ago, before you and the book met each other. The author’s work is done, complete; the ongoing work, the present act of creation, is a collaboration by the words that stand on the page and the eyes that read them.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from “Books Remembered,” Children’s Book Council Calendar xxxvi:2 (November 1977)

who are the most beautiful people you've ever seen and why are they your parents in pictures from when you were a baby

O C4PTOR! MY C4PTOR!

First stanza by urbanAnchorite, second and third stanzas by me. Apologies to Walt Whitman, Andrew Hussie, and everybody else.

O C4PTOR! MY C4PTOR! OUR F34RFUL FL1GHT 1S DON3 TH3 M3T3OR GOT S4F3LY TO TH1S SM3LLY L1M3Y SUN OUR HUM4NS N34R TH3 B1G GR33N SPH3R3 W1TH K4RK4T ST1LL UPCHUCK1NG 1 WORRY TH4T, THROUGH L4CK OF COOL, OUR M33T1NG 3NDS UP SUCK1NG; BUT O SN1FF! SN1FF! SN1FF! L1K3 B4N4N4 P13 OFFLO4D3D, UPON TH1S ROCK MY C4PTOR L13S, 4 MUST4RD POT 3XPLOD3D >:[

O C4PTOR! MY C4PTOR! R1S3 UP 4ND SN1FF TH3 SC3N3 TH3 COOLK1D SM3LLS L1K3 STR4WB3RR13S, H1S S1ST3R’S T4NG3R1N3 TH3 HUM4NS DON’T KNOW WHO YOU 4R3, YOU ST4Y3D OFF P3ST3RCHUM BUT S1NC3 YOU JUST SAV3D 4LL OUR BUTTS TH4T S33MS UNF41R 4ND DUMB - O C4PTOR! YOU 4SSHOL3! STOP LOLL1NG ON TH3 FLOOR! 1 H3R3 D3CL4R3 TH4T B31NG D34D 1S NOW 4G41NST TH3 L4W >:]

MY C4PTOR DO3S NOT 4NSW3R, H3 W1LL NOT MOCK OR SCOFF 1 DRUB H1M BUT H3 M4K3S NO MOV3, NOR T3LLS M3 TO FUCK OFF TH3 SUN 1S GR33N 4S 4C1D POPS, 1T T1NGL3S 1N MY SNOUT, K4N4Y4 BLUSH3S GR33N3R Y3T, 4ND K4RK4T’S FR34K1NG OUT; SO FL1RT, O BRO4DS, 4ND HONK, O CLOWNS! BUT 1, W1TH DROOP1NG H34D, ST4ND S3NTRY WH3R3 MY C4PTOR L13S, F4LL3N COLD 4ND D34D.

The bday she deserves :) later they’ll go to the beach with all the dogs and the water won’t be infested by deadly jellyfishes

“Thunder and Lightning. She knew them as dogs before she knew them as the sound and light of a storm.”

Art IG: Sketchylenora

The Princess Bride (1987) dir. Rob Reiner

@itspileofgoodthings:

#murder me#the princess bride#I used to think they were only good because of their chemistry and faces#(bc they actually say so little)#but the script deserves so much credit too#because even though they barely speak they say ENOUGH#and then Cary and Robin fill the spaces in between with such TRUTH#I’m obsessed with the balance in writing romance between saying too much and not enough#both pitfalls and commonly made mistakes#the princess bride strikes that balance perfectly#this exchange alone says so so so much#through their words and their expressions#the moment starts out so Playfully Hard#she’s still in her bossing him around/tossing her head at him mode#but then he stands up and looks at her Like That#and she’s suddenly caught off guard by his humanity on a deeper level#so she softens and adds the please#almost as an apology- or at least an expression of gratitude#like she knows she’s just been kind of unfair (even if just in a fun way)#and then he Looks At Her Like That Again#and says what he always says#As you wish#and he’s so deliberate with it#and it’s like- it’s like#[screams into the void]#it’s like he’s saying ‘I don’t care what you ask me to do or how you ask me to do it’#‘I will always love you and I will always do what you ask me to do’#he’s almost (almost) laughing at her a little#but more than that he’s being pointed#to let her know he loves her and look at her face in the last gif. it takes!

Me after this post:

I am WILD about how they chose to frame the romance in this movie because, like.

The book doesn’t let them be this sincere. Buttercup is stupid. Wesley doesn’t even seem to like her a lot of the time. There’s this spiteful little bit at the end about how Buttercup will lose her looks in ten years and they’ll immediately fall apart. It’s satire.

But to make the movie, to make it work in this medium, they–and this included Goldman, he was reportedly very involved in the process–went no, no. No one is going to enjoy that. Film is a different animal. The metanarrative is experienced on different terms.

So the movie version of Princess Bride, while still well supplied with genre jokes, wound up with better developed characters and relationships, in a lot of ways–the exact opposite of what you usually get in a movie adaptation–and a fucking classic, and I am never over it.

listen, if I had to deal with three magical 5 year olds alone i’d be tense too.

Tragic Gays and Absolute Dumbasses. I can’t believe we’re getting a whole extra book. Inspired by The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Fredric Burton.

Commissions are open.

Sword Mother 

a chance to rewrite

a chance to save you again

anyone else still sometimes catch themselves thinking about how after all those years of idolizing dave strider and after all that time in the void session wondering and anticipating and nervously awaiting this theoretical possibility that he might get the chance to meet him, dirk finally fucking sits down with dave one on one hours from the final battle and like wow fucking surprise motherfucker

he gets to find out his literal worst fears were ACTUALLY true! the version of him that dave knew actually did, in fact, do his level best to ruin dave’s life and was an abusive, toxic influence from day one and throughout to the point where dave can’t even look at him without flinching! 

this coming at a time when dirk is already horrendously low on himself, his relationship with Jake literally just blew up like 3 hours ago and if the AR thing went down even remotely the same way there was also that and holy hell dude what a time to be informed about the existence of Bro Strider. Dirk is sitting there thinking he was a toxic influence to Jake from moment one and probably all of his friends the whole time and here Dave is confirming everything from a parallel perspective? 

you can just see this horrible gut clenching moment when this utterly defeated Dirk just meekly accepts that this other version of himself is reflective of his true innermost self and has justifiably ruined any chance he ever had of impressing or even knowing Dave

– and then you see Dave just immediately lift it off him, even get kinda angry at him for having the audacity to even try accepting it that way, you can FEEL Dave’s fucking confusion because he went in guns blazing expecting a confrontation with someone as impossible and inscrutable as Bro was. Dave went in expecting to punch a brick wall and get nowhere, and instead he got Dirk “you’re absolutely right and I’m so fucking sorry I ruined your life” Strider 

and from Dirk’s pov, listening to this, watching this, having this realization that this dave isn’t an untouchable, aloof, mysterious and mythical heroic figure of legend at all, but that only makes him MORE worthy of idolization in all the ways that genuinely matter – and simultaneously thinking that he’s already sabotaged himself out of the chance to know him at all.

It’s like, god, you know those hyperrealistic nightmares people have sometimes that are so fucking scary because they’re indistinguishable from real life, the ones where after you wake up it takes a long time for the understanding that it was actually just a dream to hit you and then you want to cry with relief? 

For Dirk this had to have been so much like that, the whiplash between being 100% sure that Dave was just going to say what he needed to say and then never speak to him again (and knowing Dirk would have considered it completely justified and never questioned his right to do so jesus christ) followed IMMEDIATELY by Dave just being like no you don’t get it, THIS you, this version of you, what I am looking for deep down in my fucking SOUL is for this you that you are right now to be a person that I can have in my life to tell me that I’m okay, that you’re okay, that WE’RE okay – and after fifteen minutes talking to you I can already immediately tell that you ARE that person. 

Dirk’s friends were always only interested in denying the possibility that Dirk could ever truly become a monster, they could never have possibly understood just how DARK Dirk is at his most self destructive, and that’s part of why their reassurances were always hollow for him – they didn’t GET IT, right, they never could have followed the rabbit hole all the way down, so what did they know? But this guy, Dave Strider, has literally seen Dirk at his worst, has lived through the actual reality of the worst things living inside the full-picture potential of Dirk Strider, has dealt with that to great personal detriment and is fucking STILL sitting here telling him “I can tell that you are different, I can tell that you are better, and I am willing to trust you and help you to become a better person than the guy I knew because at the end of the fucking day, you are too important to me to give up on”

like yeah confronting dirk with all of that was what dave needed absolutely but BEING confronted and ultimately forgiven by dave was what dirk needed too, just as much

in conclusion homestuck is good

both of them grew up looking for a brother and they found each other at last

i sniffled, i’m not ashamed

hard lesson

ahh yes. a little over one year ago i did the thing

My eyes are damp from the words you left, Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest.

x

and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Edited to add, I just listened to that song, and it pretty much broke my heart in half: "And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones / cause most of our feelings, they are dead and they are gone."