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After the Bath

or, Why All Fairies Have Pointy Ears

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I started using Head and Shoulders ten years ago for itchy scalp and dandruff, and then for ten years I have not had itchy scalp and dandruff, so I thought “why do I still buy shampoo to combat itchy scalp and dandruff when I do not have itchy scalp and dandruff,” so I stopped buying the shampoo for itchy scalp and dandruff and can you guess I have now? Can you predict what currently afflicts me? It’s alright if you can’t because apparently I fuckin couldn’t either

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The Wheel of Fortune. Art by Mariya Tobischek, from the Ukrainian Night Tarot.

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Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

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When you are used to the no-nonsense, no-context approach of medieval Irish stories, trying to read Old Norse saga literature does feel kind of like you're being told a medieval story by Uncle Colm from Derry Girls.

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Theory: you have some sort of secret ritual you do while making borscht so that it always comes out to your liking and are superstitious that way.

To be honest, I've always regarded cooking soups, all kinds of soups, as some kind of alchemy, an arcane knowledge that my female elders possess and I do not.

I do not have a special ritual that helps me always cook borsht, or shchi, or chicken noodle, or something else perfectly. I drop ingredients in a pot and wish for the best.

I do add a drop of lemon juice to the borsht in hope to keep the beet color dark, but I am not sure it works, really

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Reblog this post to ask mutuals to tell you their weirdest theory about u

EDIT: Fair warning this post is cursed and predictions are 7/10 times correct, play at own risk

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Started rereading The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery thanks to posts by @batrachised, and a few things stood out.

First, I think this may be LM Montgomery’s angriest novel. It’s very funny, but it’s also very angry. In the Anne and Emily books small-town small-mindedness is satirized, but often with an affectionate or gently amused note. Not here! The satire is biting. Valancy’s family are small-minded, dried-up, without love or sincerity or purpose.

Secondly, the book is specifically angrily Christian. It sets itself furiously against an empty religion that consust of going to church, saying the right things, and never causing any scandal. Valancy’s path to liberation is bracketed with Biblical references. When she goes to keep house for Roaring Abel and Cecily, she feels, “Old things had passed away; everything had become new,” a reference to Revelation (“the old order of things has passed away”; “I am making everything new”). At the moment when there is a chance of Valancy turning back, when the minister comes to browbeat her into it, she is saved by a “still small voice” in the of her consciousness, a reference to God speaking to the prophet Elijah in the book of 1st Kings. Valancy’s first major change is going to care for a sick, socially outcast, and dying girl whom everyone is avoiding because she’s not ‘respectable’ (she got pregnant outside marriage and her father is regularly drunk) – and Valancy does so out of love and compassion, not a barren sense of duty, and she finds joy in it. The echoes of the Gospel fighting against the Pharisees are very strong. She is rejecting the lifeless religion of respectability and compliance and choosing a Christianity that is characterized by joy, love, and liberation.

Third, I had completely forgotten about the rosebush and it made me laugh! It finally getting roses after Valancy hacked it to pieces is probably accurate horticulturally (some things do need to be pruned!) and also a fantastic metaphor for Valancy’s life. It is only when she hacks off the carefully-tended green leaves of obedience and being ‘well-behaved’ that she gets the roses of life and love that had been eluding her.

Fourth, the similarities between Valancy and Jane Eyre stand out to me in that the difference between each of them being “small and insignificant” or “elfish and bewitching” largely lies in whether they are fulfilled or are being trodden on, whether they are free or being kept down, and whether they are seen through eyes of love. Although Valancy does specifically make Barney Snaith promise that he has no other living wives! 🤣

Fifth, the futility of Valancy’s attempts to avoid censure and trouble from her family by “behaving”, which just lead to the same handful of minor things (eating a jar of jam as a child, losing a spoon) being continually cast up to her, while as soon as she starts rebelling they’ve got too many things to handle!

Sixth, the intense limitations on her life, the way the least things are treated as dangerous (going out without a flannel petticoat in May!) leaves Valancy not safe, but rather with very limited ability to assess actual danger. Going alone to the Chidley Corners dance was actually a very bad situation for her to be in, and both Barney Snaith and Cecily knew it! But all the things she “wasn’t supposed to do” (which was practically everything) were all of a piece to Valancy, so she had no basis for understanding that!

And seventh, the twist about Barney Snaith’s identity is in retrospect telegraphed pretty heavily, especially when the passage below is later followed up with his forest-creature friends at the Blue Castle.

“I’ve been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker’s doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them…Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.”

This line made me hope that LM Montgomery got to read Jack London:

“Those silences at the back of the north wind got me. I’ve never belonged to myself since.”

The Northland Wild!

A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.

Finally, the book doesn’t revolve around Valancy and Barney on the island as much as I though. They get to the island on page 151 of a 250-page book! It seems roughly split into five parts: 1) An introductory section showing in grim detail the sheer depressingness of Valancy’s life; 2) Valancy’s initial rebellions; 3) Valancy at Roaring Abel’s; 4) Valancy’s marriage to Barney Snaith and her Blue Castle; and 5) Valancy after she realizes she is not going to die.

It feels so much more modern than LM Montgomery’s other novels, too! You don’t imagine a car in Avonlea. Or movie theatres! They don’t belong there! But this one takes place in the Muskokas of Ontario, so those things can exist without profaning the sacred soil of Prince Edward Island.

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PSA to Naturalized Citizens in the US

Some time ago I went to request a new ss card on the social security website and it said I wasn't a citizen despite being naturalized over 15 years ago as a kid. Then found out my parents and siblings have the same problem.

If you're a naturalized citizen of the US check on the Social Security website

You're unfortunately going to have to make an account if you don't have one and confirm your identity.

When you're done request a new card (even if you already have yours) and it'll tell you what the status is

There's an issue where some people were never told they had to change that status with SS after naturalization and that it doesn't automatically change

I'm of the belief that no one should be illegal and fuck ICE all the way, but this is a way to make sure that my fellow immigrants, documented or not, are safe

Please reblog to boost.

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We have an actual word for what's going on with Trump and Mask

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I've worked on a book about russian folk epics in January and it's finally out. One of the biggest number of illustrations I've ever done in one project.

Solovei (Nightingale) the bandit — a killer with a deathly whistle that came through many transformations with time. The classic chthonic antagonist, he had various snake and monster features, which soon made way for traits of the Turkic people (aka the usual threat to Rus). In XVII, however, he can already be seen depicted in Polish clothing! A fun titbit on how the image of an antagonist can evolve with time and geopolitical changes)

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Comm🌬️

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Maiko week 2025 day 2: Ba sing se university AU

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Just some lovely mermaids and ladies for the May's tail end.

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Siuan Sanche, Daughter of the river, Clever as a pike :’) I miss her !!

(prints available here!)

commission for @/viszneki.art on instagram

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