doorbel

[doorbel]

It’s a common misconception that there are no wizards in the midwest USA. The truth is there are plenty, they just use their powers exclusively for making new and fucked up kinds of salad

[doorbel]

a scavengers reign s2 would fix all my mental problems i think

[doorbel]

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of an urban fantasy “All Fairy Tales Are True” setting where some fairy tale characters are mortals who reincarnate and live through their story again and again with no memory of their past lives, but other characters are immortal, carrying over biases and grudges and regrets from the last time they went through this.

Snow White’s dwarves keep her room exactly as she left it, and keep a wary eye on the horizon for the day she returns. When she does they treat her like a beloved daughter come home, cook her favourite meals, warn her to stay away from apples this time, and keep calling her the wrong name.

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother found her a touch ungrateful last time, and has decided not to appear to her this time around to teach her a lesson in gratitude. This Cinderella, without the memory of the last time, is still a terrified, miserable woman desperate to escape her awful situation.

The Witch in the gingerbread house has developed a thousand traps to eat those goddamned kids. She’s failed every time. She lives a life of Sisyphean torment previously known only to cartoon coyotes.

[doorbel]

Tw (pranking):

Keep reading

[doorbel]

honestly i never thought the phrase “i want that twink obliterated” was like a sexual thing. like when i read the phrase i imagine “a meteor like the one that killed the dinosaurs is summoned from the heavens and hits the twink in question” type situation

[doorbel]

Cost of living tip. Play The Sims 3 on a 5 y/o laptop to heat your whole house for free

[doorbel]

Already know I wanna send this to people on June 1

[doorbel]

i feel strongly about this

[doorbel]

They’ve been rebuilding the Tower of Babel, but this time they have a team of linguists on site. Every time God smites the builders and invents a dozen new languages, the linguists have a dozen decently sized translations in about a month and work can start up again.

The linguists have been really into it. They say the new phonemes are fascinating. As for God, I assume that at this point he’s just curious to see how far this goes.

[doorbel]

Happy birthday to the LGBTQ+! The LGBTQ+ is our favorite creature, and we here at The Wizard Council Headquarters are so happy to celebrate this month in its honor! May you all keep adding and creating your own personal LGBTQ+ creatures until your army is complete and world domination is at hand!

Happy Pride!

[doorbel]

This morning I came downstairs to discover that the dogs have invented a New Crime.

My husband get up very early for his Real Adult Job, and feeds Charleston (Black-and-cream Sighthound mix, mostly leg) and Herschel (40lb cardigan welsh crime tube), then lets them out into the fenced yard before he leaves.

I get up at the same time but take longer to boot up, so the dogs frolick about and discourage the local tree rats from lingering about the property while I get dressed/brush my teeth/try to not be psychologically crushed by The Horrors (TM)

Now it's pretty normal for me to find Herschel doing a high-speed yet startlingly efficient MC Hammer Shuffle on his stubby little legs around the base of the large honey Locust tree we have in the middle of the yard so he could keep his face pointed directly up the trunk at something in the canopy, because this his how he tries to herd squirrels.

...but Charlie is usually nearby, cheerfully play-bowing and encouraging the squirrel to come down, nothing bad will happen-!

This time Charleston is nowhere in sight.

I go outside to investigate and Herschel pauses to tackle me about the kneecaps as a greeting before returning to the tree.

Charleston is not behind the garden bins, nor in the side yard.

I am growing concerned, when I hear a telltale guilty scrape of claws above me.

Charleston is on the roof.

I shuffle out to the middle of the yard, until I can make eye contact with him.

He looks down at me, cheerfully wagging his tail, clearly anticipating praise for being such a clever boy.

I at least know how he got up there.

My house has a deck built off the second floor with a set of stairs leading up to it, and a large honey locust tree grows next to it. Part of the roof is easily accessible with a small hop from the deck.

The deck has only a minimal amount of railing ad the roof has none, so I blocked off the stairs with a board that was too high for Herschel, an inveterate explorer and criminal, to jump, but not Charlie.

I didn't worry about this at the time because Charleston is, in fact, The Best Dog In The Universe, and understands that even though he *could* easily jump various barriers, it would be *impolite* of him to do so.

Charleston is Extremely Polite and thus almost never commits any crimes.

...Almost Never.

Charlie has exactly two vices, which aren't even vices because his ancestors were bred for millennia to do these two exact things.

The first is that he is HIGHLY leash aggressive when I'm present (We were both attacked by a St. Bernard the first day I had him and Charlie has decided Strange Dogs Are Not Allowed To Approach Me)

The Second is that he has the Prey Drive From Hell.

He has chased bears and bulls with full murderous intent.

He almost got me arrested because he cut his leash to chase a pronghorn antelope in front of a park ranger.

It is only for the sake of my saftey and pursuit of prey that he will break the rules.

Today, he has his nemesis cornered

Charleston isn't clever the way Herschel is. He's never really explored using his toys as tools, whereas Herschel speedran the early stages of hominid tool use as a puppy. Arwen was a logistical sort of genius who managed to terraform my parent's yard into Rabbit Thunderdome.

Charleston's genius is... psychological.

If the Squirrels see both dogs, they run for the fence, but if they only see Herschel, they run for the tree.

Charlie is much better at tracking and guessing the route his prey might go, so Charlie runs for their preferred escape route of the tree instead of chasing them.

The squirrels compensate by running for the fence, which is farther away in general, but they have a head start on the dogs.

At Some Point, charlie managed to work out that if he stays in the shadows under the deck, the squirrels won't see his mostly-black body, especially when Herschel charges into the sunlight and catches it on his white ruff.

Charleston realized, long before I did, that there is only the ONE branch that overhangs the roof, and therefore if a squirrel runs up the tree, it only has ONE way out of the yard.

The real genius was combining all of the above into the realization that he could let Herschel charge the squirrels, run through the under-deck shadows and up to the deck and roof while the squirrels are distracted, and plant himself on the roof where the squirrels HAVE to land without them seeing him until it was too late.

-And so we stand this morning.

Herschel at the foot of the tree, preventing the squirrel from running back down and heading for the fence

Charleston square in the landing zone on the roof, at the ready

The squirrel paralyzed on the branch between them

...and me, only sort of awake and realizing that I'm probably the dumbest mammal here.

I need to figure out how to disentangle these beasts without anyone getting maimed. Charleston has the blood of his ancestors baying for the flesh of his nemesis in his ears. Herschel is dangerously close to figuring out how to get on the roof himself. The squirrel is contemplating some truly dire Maneuvers, including dropping out of the tree and assaulting me to buy time.

I haven't even had my coffee yet.

"Charleston." I say with a very aggravated sigh. "That's not where dogs go."

Charleston whimpers.

He has Disappointed (TM) me.

A fate worse than death.

He starts to walk back to the deck, but as he takes a step to leave, so does the squirrel, and he is pulled back by millennia of instinct.

This will require. Delicacy.

or delicacies.

"Stay. I'll be right back." I tell the dogs.

I go back into the house, and retrieve The Best Treat.

The Cat's Wet Food.

Both dogs crave this Most Forbidden snack with an irrational passion, and it is usually both out of reach in the cat tree AND defended by Mochi, who rules the dogs with an Iron Paw.

I return to the yard, and open the can in full view of both dogs.

"Charlie?" I call. "Do you want Wet Food?"

He is halfway down the stairs before I can finish the question.

Herschel switches his orbit from the tree to my person, and I have to shuffle to avoid tripping over them as we go back inside and the squirrel flees.

None of this is the new crime.

I go out with them later to pull Yet More Thistles, and a few minutes in, I hear a little 'huff' from Charlie.

I look up, and he's standing on the stairs, paw up to indicate he's going to jump over the barrier board and go right back up there.

You know.

...Unless there is wet food to be had.

The children have figured out how to commit extortion. I text my husband.

They're so smart! Do you think we can set them on the jackasses across the street? My husband asks, ever the practical man.

I'm going back to bed.

---

I'm a disabled writier who makes my living tellng stories. if you liked this, please consider giving me a Ko-fi tip, or pre-ordering the Family Lore book of stories on my Patreon. Thank you!

[doorbel]

I came up with this three-way table to help me (and now you, if you want) to rate things out of 5 stars. I was thinking of books and films when I made it, but you can probably use it for other stuff.

The idea is that you rate the thing on how much stuff you loved and how much stuff you hated, and those things weight against each other. There's only one way to get 5 stars or 1 star, so those should end up as the rarest ratings, wtih 3 stars being the most common.

'Spicy' means that the thing inspires emotion, whether positive or negative, while 'bland' means it doesn't affect you much either way.

An example of a 3-star (spicy) - for me personally - would be the Twilight series, because there's plenty of garbage in there but also some things that are like crack to me. I can't think of an example of a 3 star (bland) because by nature they don't stick in the mind.

(This also assumes giving 0 stars isn't allowed. That'd throw it out of whack...)

[doorbel]

hello my fellow Horror And Houses fans.... i have come to recommend the book "horror in architecture" and its sequel "horror in architecture; the reanimated edition" by joshua comaroff and ong ker-shing to you all. ive been reading horror in architecture for the past couple days and it is excellent

[doorbel]

toxic yaoi between a heavily closeted priest and an ex-possession-victim whos successful exorcism ten years prior inspired the priest not to give up on his faith, except the innocent affluent pre-teen girl who got the demon ripped out of her is now a foul-mouthed tatted up trans man who despite the circumstances happily credits his childhood possession with starting him on the path to his personal liberation, and is torn between feeling grudgingly grateful towards the priest for saving his life, resentful for the way it played out and the church's efforts to closet him to preserve his Perfect Victim status, and just pitying him for the way his life turned out afterword.

and maybe it turns out that that early infernal influence left him with some lingering demonic magic or something. as a treat.

[doorbel]

imagine a goat with a hat

STOP-

what hat did you give the goat what is the instinctual hat you gave to this goat

[doorbel]

i can read the voynich manusript but im not telling anyone what it says because its honestly problematic as fuck

[doorbel]

Name: Squeaky Hinge

Pronouns: he/her/he/her

Likes: Squeaking

Dislikes: WD-40