#sometimes I'd help

[n1et]

I made myself hot chocolate from scratch today. It was really nice; reminded me a bit of my trips with my godfather.

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[cannibalspicnic]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022- ) 1.01 | In Throes of Increasing Wonder...

Eric Bogosian as DANIEL MOLLOY

[sunlit-mess]

I can only take so much, but lately, they have replaced my reflection. And realize I'm just as bad as them.

[piiinkfreak]

He lost a bet.

.

.

.

[originalaccountname]

There was one line in that last volume right before where the pages had been torn out. It was something the protagonist said to the assassin. “People live to save themselves. It’s something they realize right before they die.” - Oda Sakunosuke, Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era

He had told me his name the first time we met. I had forgotten it for so long, but it was only just recently that I remembered. His name was Souseki Natsume. The same name as the name of the author on the cover of that novel. - Oda Sakunosuke, Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era

[the-sunlit-earth]

a lot of clipping to fix, but hey I got it moving at least! I'll get the Telvanni robe properly physic'd if it's the last thing I do >:0

[raayllum]

me reading a post i made like 3 days before S6 came out and quaking because

Sometimes I think about the gap between the thematic perception of a theme/character versus how they themselves perceive the same thing. I think about it in regards to Rayllum a lot. For example, in their actual relationship, they’re pretty healthy. However, thematically — identity wise — they are codependent to a super intense degree, wrapped up and incredibly dependent on the other person’s construction of their sense of self

Callum doesn’t see his relationship with Rayla as anything negative, ultimately; she’s loving and brave and she saves people, she saved him, and he saves her right back. He’d do anything not to lose her, because that’s the Right Thing to do to him, even if it’s not automatically ‘the right thing’ for the rest of the world’s safety.

We also know that Rayla fundamentally doesn’t see anything wrong with Callum, either. “It doesn’t matter” that he did dark magic before (2x07) and it likely won’t ultimately matter to her again. She has so much faith and trust in him and his ability to do the impossible that the idea of Aaravos possessing him again in an awful way is downright hard for her to fathom. 

[mcyt-cats]

do you ever have to like. check references to remember cat names. or do you just have a mental database of every cc cat ever

Great question! For like the first two years of running this blog it was basically just a mental database. Like genuinely I just knew them. There's a few cats that I've always had trouble telling apart (like Minx's cats or Martyn's cats) but I used to be able to ID most of them off a photo without you even telling me which CC owned them.

These days it's a bit more to keep track of, I update this blog less often, and I spend less time stalking CCs on social media for cat photos. It is much more difficult for me to remember all their names. So right now, if I forget a cat name, I normally just search this blog for the CC name. My tagging over the years has benefitted me because it allows me to double check things very easily!

[arttsuka]

Augustus: *throwing a tantrum* "DAD WHY AM I LIKE THIS"

Octavius: "Well, I didn't sculpt you but it seems they ran out of marble."

Augustus: "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT STINKS HAVING NO HANDS"

Jed: "Or legs."

Octavius: "That's not helping."

Omg you can't just say that Jed!

[johnslittlespoon]

"i'm just a girl" me, a 23 year old man, whispering to myself as i research b17 turret machine guns to see if a metaphor i want to use in my gay wwII pilot fanfic makes sense (i've never held a gun in my life)

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 7 thoughts

hmm. hmm. that is the sound if me pondering what i just watched.

(i understand that this episode was an analysis into mulder's self-destructive behaviors when faced with overwhelming grief, but. that does not mean i enjoyed vampire hookup time)

well. we shall start from the top!

i read that it was an episode about vampires which i thought was a weird narrative choice because. hello. scully still gone??? but then i remembered that i too ignored the main quest in skyrim to hunt some vampires and that i had no place to judge

(granted, my main quest wasn't finding scully though. might have given that a bit more priority than saving the whole world. because she IS my whole world)

we open with a guy that looks like joe biden meeting with an attractive young woman. they're making out in a hot tub and we just know someone is gonna get slurped upon. and woe, it be upon us! double vampire attack.

back in DC, mulder gets his old office back! it's covered in plastic. he takes some of it off. he adjusts his calendar from may to november, so we see how much time he and scully had been assigned to other tasks, which also has me wondering how she managed to get a new house that quick.

(also, this calendar is... scantily clad women posing next to tools such as hammers and saws. was this allowed? was this acceptable? was it normal? were the 90's a lawless wasteland and mulder an irreparable freak?)

well. scully is an x file now, and he puts her glasses and id into an evidence bag and closes the filing cabinet which was sooooo evil. but he can't bring himself to put her necklace away. oh man. oh he's gotta have it in case he finds her. he has to hold her close. i'm Fine this is Fine.

so. he goes out to california to deal with the joe biden looking fellow being murdered. and he is not wanted on the crime scene. we know this because someone greets him by saying "nobody called the bureau" and he says "well, they should have" and lifts up the tape to let himself in. because one thing about him is that he's gonna let himself into a place he isn't wanted.

he sees the writing of a bible verse in blood on the wall and says something about their grasp of biblical knowledge being "feeble and literal" and i was like okayyy need to have a theological discussion with him

he then scares the other guy who originally wanted to kick him out by reciting a LARGE amount of facts related to similar cases and it's very much giving photographic memory. got me thinking, have we ever seen this man forget something? (directions don't count. they're confusing. but everything else sticks in that man's brain)

he just needs one thing: a phone book. which he uses to call a blood bank and ask about a new guy. who must be the vampire who did this!

so he rolls up to the blood bank and i'm over here struggling because i do Not Do Blood, and i knew at this point this was gonna be a tough watch, but i didn't anticipate the non-blood related reasons why this would be true

anyway he's sniffing around the blood bank and he hears some slurping and wouldn't you know, this dude is tearing into a bag of the red stuff like it's a capri sun. somehow he gets him into custody, where the dude refuses to talk because the lights are on, and mulder comes in with a lamp he put a red filter over, because he was prepared for vampire interrogation.

the vampire is going on about how what he did isn't murder because it's not like animals hunting prey is murder which is. not the greatest approach in terms of legal defense. mulder tells the guard that the guy is delusional and it's best to play along, and he believed this to be true... until he, quite literally, burned to a crisp in the sunlight. and died.

he's talking to the coroner and rattling off a bunch of vampire facts and says he didn't believe in vampires which is so funny to me because like. why is that where you draw the line, my friend. not at bigfoot and definitely not at aliens. but man. vampires are just too out there for spooky mulder. until now!

the coroner has a very funny line: "you are really upsetting me... on several levels" which seems to be the general effect fox mulder has on people. and also because i felt the same way about his dumbass actions during this episode.

coroner finds a stamp on the dead body's hand, which seems to come from a nightclub. so naturally our fbi agent ends up there.

you often see posts saying that "(insert character here) should be at the club". i fear that this is not the case for fox mulder, but it's possible that it's his suit and tie that are throwing me off. he just doesn't seem like he belongs there. i ask myself, where should he be instead? perhaps some sort of star wars convention would suit him better. a book signing with some author he likes. idk, an interior decorating festival. not here.

i shall use my verbatim words to walk you through the next scene:

"pause. he's talking to a woman who was looking into a compact without a mirror. so. vampire suspect. and now why are they getting so close together. and getting a drink. okay now they're leaving to a new spot together? AFTER she admits to vampirism"

(here she did some stuff that required me to look away from my screen due to my Weak Constitution. but also it would have felt necessary to look away anyway because it was getting... charged)

she tries to get him to... suck on her finger... but he won't do it because aids. which is fair. i think that's a smart move, actually. it's just that getting flirty with a vampire he knows was involved with a ton of killings was such a stupid move, i don't know why it's now the braincells start to kick in.

that kills the vibe, though, so she gets another guy to take his place and things escalate.

mulder pulls in at a restaurant called ra. nice! the sun god! and he is... through a window, witnessing some more slurping action. he seems to want to intervene and save this poor soul being feasted upon...

but the poor soul is no poor soul at all! he comes out and decks mulder, and delivers this line with stunning conviction: "i don't know who you are, freak, but we're two consenting adults" and with this, he is forced to flee.

and yeah. it made me laugh. my expectations for the genre were subverted. he signed up for that shit! what he did not sign up for, however, was the next part, where he was killed by the other vampires.

cut to investigating the crime scene. mulder has brought along a forensic dentist, which is a job i had no idea you could go into. he needs to see about those bites, which are very human.

next they go to vampire woman's house. it's a very nice place. mulder... opens her oven. and sees a loaf of bread in there. and i'm thinking, man, i hope this doesn't go where i think it's going. baked goods... ovens... i never want a vampire pregnancy arc. but he cracks open the loaf and something red spills out and somehow, this to him means that she is gone and isn't coming back. he can read the signs of the bread. so add that to his resume. what did the bread tell you, my liege?

he seems to have stayed in her house, however, because he's there when she's back, and says he knows she was using the bread as a charm to ward off evil. because apparently that's an eastern european thing, blood bread to warn off evil. sound off if any eastern europeans in the chat wanna confirm or deny.

anyway. he's IN this woman he thinks is a vampire's HOUSE? what the hell. mulder seriously i need you to stop and think. like you should have stopped and done some thinking a while ago. honestly i'm not mad i'm just disappointed. and he's like "i want to save you come with me before they kill you" ohhh big tough man needs to save her huh. make him feel good inside. huh. certainly no ulterior motive here...

she's monologing about her horrible childhood and how sweet blood tastes. um girl. don't lie to him like that. i have busted my lip open before that stuff does NOT taste sweet and dangerous. it's like a penny with rust that you found in a parking lot.

it seems her vampiric origin story, if to be believed, is that things simply got too kinky. which is a new take on the genre.

(it's also about being caught in an abusive relationship and the damage that inflicts, but it seems abusive boyfriend came into vampirism at his kinky parties and things escalated from there. which. well. it blew the eyebrows clean off my head, to be fair)

at this point we see that he is WEARING SCULLY'S NECKLACE? he says something like "it's from someone i lost" and she says that she "hopes he finds her"

i did not like the undertones here and certainly not the overtones. because i knew where this was going. he was shaving in her bathroom. and let me tell you something: there is only ever a shaving scene in media because the writer needs a way to get some blood out of someone's body and into the real world. and man. i knew it was coming.

but what i didn't see coming was her SHAVING HIM??? girl. i am uncomfy. and she does, of course, cut him, and then they kiss. aggressively. terribly aggressively. can anyone answer what was going on in a satisfactory manner?

but the gag is: the original vampire- who burnt to a crisp in the jail cell, and was the abusive ex she spoke of- HE'S WATCHING THEM THROUGH THE WINDOW!

he breaks in and taunts the vampire woman about how he had to "wait for her to finish" and i was like cool. thank you SO much for that mental image i'm super happy with it. i definitely don't feel like i need a shower. but then he's going on about how he can't be killed.

here, at the tail end of the episode, we learn the rules of vampirism in this world: a vampire cannot be killed by a non-vampire. and a non-vampire BECOMES a vampire by consuming the blood of a believer and also taking a life. it is only here we realize that this woman is not an actual vampire yet, she just appropriates their culture by drinking blood unnecessarily.

mulder's still sleeping in her bed and she's like "you need to leave" and she stabs the wall to make her evil ex think she's killing him. but when they go to break out, mulder ties him up quite handily and he gets in the car to escape with vampire woman. until ANOTHER vampire woman jumps on the hood of their car. and main vampire woman knocks her out for a bit by running into her with said car, which is super effective.

mulder's leaving the place in shambles, his shirt still unbuttoned, wandering down the side of the hill. back at the house, now that we know the vampire rules, main vampire woman says she can finally kill the evil vampire ex. and he's like how!! you haven't had the blood of a believer or taken a life. so. she licks the blood off her hands (unclear if it's hers or mulders tbh) and says she'll take her own life. and drops a match after pouring gasoline.

so. that brings that to an end. and shabby looking mulder sits on a hill as he learns all four in the house died.

the episode ends with him playing with scully's necklace. which i don't even sort of feel like unpacking right now but maybe another time.

probably not, though, because i just didn't like this episode. and yeah, a lot of it comes down to me not wanting to see mulder hook up with people who aren't scully. can you blame me? is it so wrong to have preferences in this world?

but also, narrative wise- do you honestly see the guy fucking off to cali while scully's still missing to deal with an unrelated problem instead of devoting every hour of his life to finding her, like we saw him do in the last episode? you expect me to think he just puts it off for a lil while? the guy who, just last episode, pulled his gun on the ski lift operator to get to the top where she might be a little faster, and then choked his one and only suspect out of fury? you're thinking this is the guy that's gonna go soak up some west coast rays?

and yeah, he was obviously not himself through the episode- very cold and analytical- but c'mon. we all want to bang a vampire. he's not special. i just personally wouldn't do that if my friend were gone. like how is that gonna help the situation. be so for real. time and place!

and also the whole only learning the rules of being a vampire about 5 minutes before they need it to be plot relevant. that annoyed me too.

overall, mulder, like i said, i'm not mad, just disappointed.

let me know what you thought on this episode- i try to not be a hater, but i also understand that hating in small doses can be good for the soul. if it's a widely beloathed episode i'll feel better in my judgement as i join a long tradition of haters who have come before me.

[bartholomewillustrated]

What? Did you think I was going to miss the 3 year anniversary of the game that flipped my whole damn situation around?

For the event please enjoy the First Ever image of Karl and Laz kissing vwv)/

Happy 3 years to the advent of these terrible husbands, So far along and ai still love ot just as much and want to work in that world the same as I did in 2021 (9T^T)9

I'd say more but my phone's dying and I'm exhausted and being honest I was throwing this together anyway when I fuckin suddenly remembered what day it was ;;><>

[sysig]

A very normal scientist doing very normal gene splicing experiments (Patreon)

[knickynoo]

Alex + his emotional support briefcase/pillows/stuffed animal

[craftykit1]

yeah yeah custom themes are cool and all but can you please make sure your like + reblog buttons are visible and functional