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One of my favourite recurring tropes in children's and fantasy media is small, whimsical creatures randomly being depicted as extremely litigious. They're three apples tall and live in little mushroom houses and spend their time singing and dancing and making wine out of sunlight and morning dew, and then there's an Incident and suddenly they have judges and bailiffs and a thousand years of abstruse jurisprudence which they cite from a big book of statutes and precedents which is just regular size in human terms but is comically large to them. Like, where did all this come from? To all textual evidence there's like twelve of you – how do you have bureaucracy?

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Penguin Classics was so insane for this cover. Didn't know they had it in them

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so this happened to me today

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Me: “Oh, it’d be so cool to make my own socks! Oh, but I apparently bought the wrong length circular needles.”

Knitting Goblin, living in my brain with $0/month rent: “Ooh! Double pointed needles! You prefer metal needles and they’re shiny!”

My WIPs: “Or you could finish the scarf, bag, cat toy, or doll before you start a new hobby.”

Crochet Goblin, somehow paying even less rent: “Or you could try tapestry crochet? Perhaps an amigurumi dog?”

Nälbinding: “Didn’t you want to try me, too?”

Embroidery Hoop: “She hasn’t even looked at me in months! Wait your fucking turn!”

Mending: “Oh, she thinks about me daily. Patches. Embroidering over the little holes. SHE HASN’T EVEN ATTEMPTED.”

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Because I saw a post about it, although that was about the Demeter: can Dr. Stephen Maturin (everybody’s favorite Irish-Catalan surgeon/naturalist/spy) from the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian survive Castle Dracula?

Overall approach to the supernatural: Is a Catholic, although not very demonstrative about it, but that’s partly due to being attached to the British navy. He’s going to assume something is a natural phenomenon/weird cultural practice first, and be curious about both of those things, but he’s not going to reject the supernatural on principle.

Whether they would accept the crucifix from the old lady: Definitely. And he’s already a polyglot, and if he’s going to Romania he has probably been studying Romanian, so he might even get more information from the peasants than Jonathan manages to after they “forget” their German. Not sure if further information will be that useful against Dracula at this point though, if “just leave” isn’t an option. He at minimum concludes Dracula is a cruel landlord, which is going to set him on edge.

Whether they would go exploring after being told not to: Ohhhh yes. (See: Spy. Also Nosy Little Weirdo.) He’s going to go exploring on principle BECAUSE he was told not to.

Ability to manage the whims of a Rich Jerk / hold Dracula's interest: On the one hand he’s perfectly capable of being disingenuous (spy) but he’s not good at hiding it when he’s in a bad mood. I think this depends on what he’s there for. Does Dracula hold the key to the defeat of Napoleon or has he just ended up there somehow? If he thinks he’s there to do real estate business he’s going to be real snippy to Dracula very early on, which will be tough to come back from.

Facility for free climbing: Ahahahaha this man has fallen off of most of the ships in the Royal Navy. Once he tried to climb the rigging while holding onto a rope that wasn’t tied to anything. Nope. That’s not to say he won’t try. If Jack Aubrey can swing in to rescue him at the last minute (Jack canonically does this when Stephen is being tortured by the French government) then Jack can probably climb for both of them. Otherwise no.

Whether they would choose to be eaten by wolves over being eaten by vampires: There’s such a lack of vampires in his books that this is difficult to say. But he’s good at picking up and starting again after all seems lost. I think he would choose the less certain death.

Other relevant information is that he is frequently covered in blood, as he does not seem to clean up after surgery; that he is something of an insomniac except when taking laudanum, which he does in worrying amounts at various points in his canon; that he is good with both swords and pistols, although those are not very helpful against Dracula, but you never know; and that he does not know shorthand as such, but will be sending coded letters.

I think he might just manage to survive, but not without extreme trauma, which will be immediately followed by a timeskip because O’Brian loves doing that.

I did not even bother asking about Jack because he is obviously so drinkable.

@elodieunderglass likewise writes:

Do you think that Stephen Maturin has a chance of surviving Castle Dracula? Pros include being nearly-unkillable; cons include having the climbing skills of a buttered lungfish.

This guy sounds wild. And I have to say "the climbing skills of a buttered lungfish" took me out (and sounds likely to take him out as well....) One of you also mentioned a tendency to basically shed garlic bread...?

So I am hearing that he has Opinions, which yeah, might get him into trouble depending on how quickly he moves into Spy Mode. Jonathan pivots by day 3, and he's not expecting to be held prisoner by his wealthy client, so I feel like a guy who gets occasionally tortured by the French might be equally wary if not moreso.

One worry is that his attempts to get messages out might be more sophisticated and therefore more severely punished. Will Dracula recognize him as enough of a threat to necessitate killing him?

As a medical man (?) he seems well-positioned to have Views on exactly how dead Dracula is or isn't, but with his climbing acumen it sounds like no force on earth could coax him out thre window so he may not ever find the crypt - unless his powers of snooping lead him to it by another route.

Is he enough of a snacc to be worth rescuing from the Girlies I wonder? Although if he's suspicious enough going in by virtue of actually speaking the language, maybe he doesn't take the crucifix off to protect his dreams, and the Girlies have a harder time getting at him.

The insomnia I am thinking is a boon because it'll help adjust to the nocturnal schedule without entirely fraying his nerves. I think trying hard to play a role while being visibly in a foul mood might be exactly the kind of thing Dracula finds very very funny.

Ironically, if he never makes it down to the crypt, he won't get Brain Fevered by Dracula, and may well just leave out the front doors when people come in to move out all those boxes (Jonathan can't because he's all wacked out from the shovel assault and also locked in Dracula's room). I presume Dracula will have taken some measure to prevent this though? More than just saying "hey wait for the Calèche that is definitely totally coming" and then trusting him to actually do that. Hmm.

So I am inclined to say yes, Stephen Maturin can survive Castle Dracula, but is severely lacking in an exit strategy

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Baird's tapir Tapirus bairdii

With yellow-headed caracara Daptrius chimachima

Observed by infinitaselva, CC BY-NC

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this is how the movie went right

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Bittern at the grocery store

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Drumknott, Sybil, and Leonard are the only reason Vetinari remembers what food is every few hours, aren’t they.

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Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

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The plot of Macbeth was acted out by the Muppets. Miss Piggy as Lady Macbeth is the best thing I have ever witnessed and the only thing I really remember from it.

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People should use this text embellishment more

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

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how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

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It is a painful truth that actually none of my fics are abandoned, no, not even the ones that haven’t updated in five years. I still know exactly what happens next, and after that, and so on. They’re not abandoned; they’re right here, haunting me, characters climbing up my pants like kittens nagging for dinner.

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Co-signed