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Swedish Cottage by Ricardo Feinstein

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A Girl’s Best Friend by Margot Quan Knight, 2002

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good morning everyone I just went to ask my cat why she was making noise but I got caught between saying ‘fuss’ and ‘ruckus’ so I actually asked her “is this what all the fuckus is about?”

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literally my favorite moment in the book. eight-year-old me read and cried. I won’t finish it, but I like this fragment

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“They were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent–they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which buildings, bridges, and church all displayed, seemed to charm them even more. They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else’s) that they would not have been at all surprized to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city–until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful.”

— Chapter 52, A family by the name of Greysteel

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“King Henry’s counselors agreed that fairies were naturally wicked. They were lascivious, mendacious and thieving; they seduced young men and women, confused travellers, and stole children, cattle and corn. They were astoundingly indolent; they had mastered the arts of masonry, carpentry and carving thousands of years ago but, rather than take the trouble to build themselves houses, most still preferred to live in places which they were pleased to call castles but which were in fact brugh–earth barrows of great antiquity. They spent their days drinking and dancing while their barley and beans rotted in the fields, and their beasts shivered and died on the cold hillside. Indeed, all King Henry’s advisers agreed that, had it not been for their extraordinary magic and near immortality, the fairy race would have long since perished from hunger and thirst.”

— Chapter 45, Prologue to The History and Practice of English Magic by Jonathan Strange

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Tubbs versus Starhouse: A Warning to All Magicians

Tubbs versus Starhouse: a famous case brought before the Quarter Sessions at Nottingham a few years ago.

A Nottinghamshire man called Tubbs wished very much to see a fairy and, from thinking of fairies day and night, and from reading all sorts of odd books about them, he took it into his head that his coachman was a fairy.

The coachman (whose name was Jack Starhouse) was dark and tall and scarcely ever said a word which discomfited his fellow-servants and made them think him proud. He had only recently entered Mr Tubbs’s household, and said that previously he had been coachman to an old man called Browne at a place called Coldmicklehill in the north. He had one great talent: he could make any creature love him. The horses were always very willing when he had the reins and never cross or fidgety at all, and he could command cats in a way that the people of Nottinghamshire had never seen before. He had a whispering way of talking to them; any cat he spoke to would stay quite still with an expression of faint surprize on its face as if it had never heard such good sense in all its life nor ever expected to again. He could also make them dance. The cats that belonged to Mr Tubbs’s household were as grave and mindful of their dignity as any other set of cats, but Jack Starhouse could make them dance wild dances, leaping about on their hind legs and casting themselves from side to side. This he did by strange sighs and whistlings and hissings.

One of the other servants observed that if only cats had been good for any thing–which they were not–then all this might have had some point to it. But Starhouse’s wonderful mastery was not useful, nor did it entertain his fellow-servants; it only made them uncomfortable.

Whether it was this or his handsome face with the eyes a little too wide apart that made Mr Tubbs sp certain he was a fairy I do not know, but Mr Tubbs began to make inquiries about the coachman in secret.

One day Mr Tubbs called Starhouse to his study. Mr Tubbs said that he had learnt that Mr Browne was very ill–had been ill for all the time Starhouse had claimed to work for him–and had not gone out for years and years. So Mr Tubbs was curious to know what he had needed a coachman for.

For a little while Jack Starhouse said nothing. Then he admitted he had not been in Mr Browne’s employ. He said he had worked for another family in the neighbourhood. He had worked hard, it had been a good place, he had been happy; but the other servants had not liked him, he did not know why, it had happened to him before. One of the other servants (a woman) had told lies about him and he had been dismissed. He had seen Mr Browne once years ago. He said he was very sorry he lied to Mr Tubbs, but he had not known what else to do.

Mr Tubbs explained that there was no need to invent further stories. He knew that Starhouse was a fairy and said he was not to fear; he would not betray him; he only wished to talk to him about his home and his people.

At first Starhouse did not at all understand what Mr Tubbs meant, and when finally he did understand, it was in vain that he protested he was a human being and an Englishman, Mr Tubbs did not believe him.

After this, whatever Starhouse was doing, wherever he went, he would find Mr Tubbs waiting for him with a hundred questions about fairies and Faerie. Starhouse was made so unhappy by this treatment (though Tubbs was always kind and courteous), that he was obliged to give up his place. While yet unemployed, he met a man in an ale-house in Southwell who persuaded him to bring action against his former master for defamation of character. In a famous ruling Jack Starhouse became the first man to be declared human under English law.

But this curious episode ended unhappily for both Tubbs and Starhouse. Tubbs was punished for his harmless ambition to see a fairy by being mad an object of ridicule everywhere. Unflattering caricatures of him were printed in the London, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield papers, and neighbours with whom he had been on terms of the greatest goodwill and intimacy for years declined to know him any more. While Starhouse quickly discovered that no one wished to employ a coachman who had brought an action against his master; he was forced to accept work of a most degrading nature and very soon fell into great poverty.

The case of Tubbs versus Starhouse is interesting not least because it serves as an illustration of the widely-held belief that fairies have not left England completely. Some are invisible and some masquerade as Christians and may in fact be known to us. Scholars have debated the matter for centuries but without reaching any conclusion.

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Astarion with the Head of Cazador.

Just for fun.

Reference: "David with the Head of Goliath" Caravaggio, Rome.

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i think a worm/parahuman game but its just a life sim would be fun

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all demographics and time periods and geography taken fully into consideration, some people were just born to lose

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dude i just got shot i need you to suck the bullet out

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Still my favourite Babylon 5 photo

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My fail loser Durge who’s bad at everything

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What the fucj is that creature

ab. 1616-1620 Willem Pietersz. Buytewech - Courtship

(Rijksmuseum)

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I enjoy how the mentally unstable internet lesbians talk about Joan of Arc like she's Laura Palmer

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