#he paid attention

[nylloth]

[canisalbus]

I tried to draw sheep Machete and goat Vasco (but I am not good at drawing goats, at all)

.

[legobiwan]

"First, let's get something out of the way: a human's ability to grasp reality is painfully limited. You don't even have free will! Don't believe me? Okay, rip a dollar in half right now. Didn't do it? Didn't think so!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"PS: Look what I just ripped in half! Suck it!"

~~~~~~~~

I love Stan so, so much for this.

[hualianschild]

[nelkcats]

Ember's Music Emporium

When he became King, Danny had not banned the ghosts from earth but asked them to be discreet, so instead of giving concerts that were extremely flashy, Ember decided to open a music store.

It was complicated to find a good location since she wanted to go far away from Amity, but she was aware that not all cities would accept strangers and it could be dangerous for her if they found out she was a ghost.

Money was not so difficult, Ember had collected several things during her unofficial concerts, among them: cash (besides, Danny was willing to sponsor her if that wasn't enough), and musical instruments were even easier to find as Skulker loved to build them and wanted to help her.

In the end, her little music store set up in Gotham (rusty laws, natural ecto, crazies everywhere and lots of people who looked extremely colorful, she assumed they would take her as one).

She and Skulker worked very hard at turning the dusty place they bought into something nice where everyone was welcome; they also made it a sort of temporary home, seeing as they couldn't go to the Infinite Realms every day.

And everything was a success until someone tried to attack their little business; naturally the ghosts protected it and very soon, a rare scarecrow was hit by one of Skulker's bombs.

It didn't cause much damage but it definitely drew attention. Many tried to attack after this and they kept responding (Skulker much more excited than she was about the whole thing).

But Ember was determined to not call Danny, she was sure they would get scolded about attacking people and not going unnoticed as they promised (although the rude people attacked them first and none of them were dead, or Danny would have come).

When some weird guys in bat costumes started trying to sneak into her humble music store (and they didn't even bother to pretend to be customers like the nice guy in the red helmet), she decided that maybe it was time to call the halfa. Things had gotten a little out of hand.

[riumeri]

invisibility tactics for physics-inspired psychics

[harrietvane]

So, in Busman’s Homeymoon, Lord Peter buys Harriet Vane a mink cloak worth 950 pounds (according to the Dowager Duchess’ journal entry), but he buys Tallboys for “only” 650 pounds.

Even bearing in mind that real estate really did used to be cheaper, do you understand how that is possible? Or how to find out more about relative purchasing power? I used an online calculator website which gave me some figures, but it still seems insane that one could buy an entire Elizabethan farmhouse for 2/3 the price of a garment! Very curious to learn from others who understand this better than I do.

Ah, I see my esteemed colleague @oldshrewsburyian has also had some interesting thoughts on this, so I'll link that here as well before I begin.

So, it's a legitmate question, and there's no catch-all simple answer (in the gotcha sense of 'why didn't i know that bit of cultural Truth'), but there are mitigating factors that take it from a ridiculous price comparison, to merely outlandish. Even taking into account that the coat is quoted in guineas, not pounds, and that PW says the bank valued Talboys at £800 via a mortgage (the paid price was a discount, for paying in cash quickly, which is Plot Relevant), it gets us to roughly the same place, value-wise. Or shall we say PRICE-wise, rather than value, as I'll get into below. There's several factors at play here - they mainly relate to class, and spending power:

-The house is Not That Great, in terms of the kind of property that PW would usually be buying. I mean it is still a large-ish house, big enough to have 2 adults and small children in, but it's not what would be on his radar normally. The only reason they know about it, it that it's near a place where HARRIET grew up as a child. It's not getting any high marks in particular Beauty, Convenience, or Quality - the main reason HV's drawn to it is sentiment, rather than anything else. They both know that they will have to significantly add to it, and alter it, in order for it to be a comfortable home. That would usually be out-of-budget for someone in Harriet's position, who would expect to buy something that meets her needs 'as-is'. Most people looking at buying that house would be Harriets not Peters, so it might be a tough sell.

-The house has no power, and limited plumbing: There's dark references to DRAINS by the dowager duchess, it's entirely possible that this house has no modern plumbing at all - they make the comparison that the huge palace the Wimseys grew up in wasn't plumbed until recently, but then again they do have about 800 servants, whereas Talboys is just a regular house: they will have Bunter alone (at first), with an assist from Mrs Ruddle. There's mention of "a cistern" with some basic valves, but the scullery is mentioned as having a copper, from which hot water is "scooped into a large bath-can" - a copper being, simply, a large metal basin over a fire, in effect. No running hot water, maybe no flushable loos - it's a factor. They also talk specifially about having to electrify Talboys themselves - it's candles and lamps until then. It's fancy camping. By the mid-1930s, a lot of middle-class buyers would expect a little more convenience in both water and wiring, unless they had significant support staff, which Talboys would not be expected to house.

-There's probably no farm! It's a farm house - not a wider land purchase. People like PW's brother the Duke are wealthy primarily because they own land, not because of the big palace they have (which eats money, rather than generates it). The land is what gives them spending power, because other people are paying them rent to live on it, farm on it, or both. PW's own personal 'younger sibling' wealth is also mentioned somewhere to be primarily in real estate (assumed to be in London) - sad to say: he's a landlord, and that's why he's rich. Talboys, on the other hand, as a purchase, would not, in almost any way, be expected to generate revenue through either farming, agriculture, or charging rent. Until they invent house flipping in 80 years, or until the motorway goes through in 40 years, there's not much expectation that Talboys would increase all that much in value.

-Lastly, there's a massive disparity in what The Market Will Bear when we compare a basic residence vs a luxury item (like a mink coat) in the mid-1930s. This is not particular to that time, though. Like any first-year economics student will tell you, the price of something is not it's intrinsic value, it's what someone is WILLING to pay for it. If someone is willing to pay such a price, that's the price it will be. So, we're not comapring Objects, we're comparing Buyers: the the main purchasers of a slightly run-down farmhouse located nowhere special are Harriets, and main purchasers of mink coats are Peters. Talboys is priced for Harriets. The mink coat is priced for Peters.

Compare for example, a contemporary parallel: the Hermes Birkin bag. It's a leather handbag with a starting retail price of about USD 11,400. Just for the bag. Then, you have fancier versions of the fancy bag, eg wikipedia tells me one version sold at auction for USD 380,000 in Hong Kong in 2017. Now, the Harriets of today are not buying a Hermes Birkin handbag, but they are probably trying to buy slightly run-down houses outside urban centers for (one hopes) slightly less than 380k. The Wimseys of the worlds are clearly buying Birkin bags. In that way, it's actually pretty easy to get to a place where Person A might buy a single luxury item for X pounds, and Person B might buy a whole residence for X pounds, and neither feel like they'd done something insane. The key here is in a Wimsey/Vane marriage, they run up against this concept immediately, and repeatedly.

There's a good reason the first epistolary section of the novel is almost entirely taken up with money chat - the ring, the purchase of shirts from Burlington Arcade, the marriage settlement, the gift from the bride to the groom, the mink coat, the bitchy exchange between Helen and Harriet about HV being allowed "six free copies of her book" to distribute. These people come from 2 fundamentally different experiences of the world. They might have gotten engaged using the word 'Magistra', specifically to emphasise their fundamental equality (in the context of learning and the mind, to begin with), but it can't be denied: there's gaps that need to be bridged. They both know parts of their married life will be spent in attempting to do that, hopefully to their mutual satisfaction. Mention of a mink coat for 950 guineas is a nice, neat shorthand for illustrating what's still at play between them here.

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 163

love that for him

[shroombell]

im drawing a lot of vortex during pride month.... are you trying to tell me something, texxy?

[orcelito]

showing off the commission i got from @ruporas for my fic, In the Next Life!

i'm still so incredibly excited about this. it's been some months since the story event that caused these scars, but i wanted SO BADLY to be able to see what they'd actually Look like... & Here They Are.

ruporas rendered the scars So Well, i just cant stop Looking at them... there's a Fresh & a Healed version, which ruporas was kind enough to give me without additional charge (Thank U Again😭😭) so i get to see what it looks like at different stages.

Lichtenberg Figures. in terms of actual scarring, lightning strikes that people survive don't tend to leave permanent scars, but the lichtenberg figures that they (usually temporarily) leave behind are just So Cool... Now, what happens when you get someone who can survive an amount of electricity/lightning that would be Frankly Lethal to any normal human person?

This :]

[autisticandroids]

FAMINE: That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean.

[youtube with closed captions]

dean and his father. dean and his family. dean and how bad it is.

(via @closetoyou1970)

[izzystizzys]

Fox tags along on a smuggling bust one (1) time and subsequently wishes he’d never been decanted.

Well, he’s arrested the perp a lot more than just one time, actually, but that very first tackle into a chokehold and electrocuffs more than sufficed to turn the fates against him - the fates, and Cody, the insufferable twat. They’re not actually even batchmates, the lot of them, and going by numbers Fox was decanted long before them (long as in seconds or minutes, no one actually knows), but Seventeen put them all in a training room together and then stupid kriffing Kote looked him up and down, nodded, and hasn’t stopped calling him vod’ika since.

“Why is one of the Republic’s most wanted criminals asking to speak to you, vod’ika?”, Cody asks, without any preamble, almost making Fox cut the holocall on principle. He would, if General Kenobi wasn’t right there next to the little shit. “And why do I not like his tone?”

Fox has to resist the urge to close his eyes and scream, making do with a deep sigh instead. Force curse the day Cody decided to adopt-nap him, and Wolffe following suit immediately. “Weequay, shifty eyes, stupid fucking pirate bandana?”

Cody’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and Kenobi’s eyebrows raise simultaneously. It’s more than a little creepy.

Fox rolls his eyes so hard he sees stars. “Tell him he can go space himself, unless he wants me to do it for him. And then tell him that if he sends me fuzzy fucking socks again I might just hunt him down and do it anyways.”

Past the slide of the door, Thorn’s unmistakable cackle reaches Fox. And Cody, going by the narrowing of his eyes. “Don’t tell him that, ori’vod, he’s probably into that”, Thorn calls out, gleefully, and Force Fox really should’ve kept this to himself in the first place.

He would’ve, actually, but the constant stream of strange presents into Guard headquarters is hard to miss. It was Alderaanian chocolates, last week, which Fox pawned off on the Shinies. A box from a store with a blacked out label before that, which he launched out the window with burning ears before Thire could get a closer look at it.

“Actually”, Thorn continues, happily, “I don’t think it matters much if you do tell him anything - it’s not like the Commander has been the most graceful courtée, and that hasn’t done anything to discourage our favorite smuggler.”

“Marshall Commander”, Fox hisses, because he’s a pissy bitch, and then, because all professionalism has gone out the window anyways, “This is why Stone is my favourite.”

Thorn’s wounded gasp is lost over Kenobi’s thoughtful hum, and Cody’s patented I’m-going-to-do-something-incredibly-stupid-and-you-can’t-stop-me glare. “That would explain why we have Hondo Ohnaka accosting our troopers about your flavour preferences concerning fruit candies. But the one asking to speak to you is Cad Bane, Marshall Commander.”

The string of curses Fox lets out at that is loud enough to have Mauler stick his head in the com room to ask if everything is alright, and Thorn roll on the floor with howling laughter.

Force curse the day he ever slapped electrocuffs on Hondo Ohnaka, and double-curse the one he threw Cad Bane to the floor with a scissor leg takedown.

[whoisspence]

am i weird or is this actually one of his hottest moments ever

[ducktracy]

for some reason i thought i posted these before. but let the record show that Porky has a vehement gay little man crush on an absurdly sexy supermodel voiced by Tim Curry and everything about it is extremely funny

this is the absurdly sexy supermodel voiced by Tim Curry btw

also unrelated but i highly enjoy this image

[puppypeter]

Visuals for a sleepy/hangover/was hit in the head the night before Jamie (aka Phil in Save Me s1e2)

[forcedhesitation]

astarion origin playthrough worth it just for all the extra moments where he does the "sad wet cat" face