And I Suppose I’d Be Remiss If I Didn’t Also Reblog The Lovely Part 2! Dancing, Romance, Political

This looks like it belongs in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and I very much want to pet it and find out how soft it is... Also, I’m quite curious what sort of sound it makes.

Also I just looked them up and these pretty babies are endangered. Good on you, mysterious person’s hands taking care of this precious polka dotted baby :) 

Baby Eastern Quoll, Bruny Island. Tasmania, Australia

Alright, I think I’ll end the day’s mass Christmas rebloggings here, with some good old fashioned Nygmobblefamily fluff :) Adorable as ever. Also I love the detail in the pattern of Oswald’s robe. This art is just so cozy and snuggly and sweet; I can feel the warmth. 

The lady I work with also does Christmas in January, actually. I think it’s an Eastern Orthodox thing--she’s from Russia. Well, they had a family Christmas this Saturday, but she’s mentioned the January Christmas thing to me before, too. I think they might do both. 

So, Merry Christmas and joyous holidays to all :) 

Here you go anon! I kept this one in the queue for today.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate today! 🎅🎄🎁🥂

I hope you all have a nice day (regardless of holidays) and that you have fun on New Year’s Eve as well. I got 3 more days of work and then I’m on holidays. (We celebrate Christmas in January. Crazy, I know.)

Putting on eyeliner this morning for the My Chemical Romance concert and thinking about how many other fans might also be doing this at the same time; thinking about how many fans have done their eyeliner for a show over the years in the past. Thinking about Gerard doing his own eyeliner. Achieving spiritual union with the MCR fandom through slightly messy eyeliner.

Here you go friend. Enjoy :)

SOMEONE FIND ME THE HOW MANY NIMONS SCENE CAUSE I CAN’T FIND IT PLEASE AND THANK

Flynn Carsen is a mood. 

And also either preposterously wealthy or achingly deep in debt, though it’s probably the former because at a certain point I think they stop giving you loans. 

But I can’t blame him; if I had unlimited money, I too would have 20+ degrees and still be in college. 

you ever think about how the whole librarians franchise began thanks to flynn carsen getting kicked out of college because his professor thought he had too many degrees and not enough of a social life 

I figured I ought to tell the story of my blog background (which gets into the story of my blog) and give credit as best I can for the picture I used to make it. Also I should probably warn you here and now that I tend to ramble. 

So, first off, I have to admit that I can’t give exact credit for the original picture I used; I got it from Google Earth a long time ago, and now that they’ve changed the photos layer, I can’t find the original anymore. I’ve tried a reverse google image search, but it doesn’t come up. All I can tell you is that it came from Narrows, Virginia, or the surrounding area, and it’s of the New River. So, if you’re the photographer who took this picture, let me know how you’d like to be credited (or if I need to find a new background image). 

I love this picture, though, with the tranquil water reflecting the mountains and that lone tree jutting up on the left. It has a nice balance, or perhaps a good visual flow, and it reminds me of home. (I’m originally from Blacksburg, Va, and Narrows is a little over half an hour west and a smidge north of home.)

Anyways, I’m also posting the various stages of my photoshopping (well, actually, I just used the “markup toolbar” in Preview on my Mac to edit the color of the image, but that doesn’t work as a verb as well as photoshop does). 

Aside from my general love of all things purple, I also wanted to tint the picture purple so that it would be a picture of “the Lande of Violet Mists”. The Lande (with an “e” for artistic flair) of Violet Mists is a fantasy land and somewhat of an in-joke going back to the blogspot blog I made Sophomore year of high school. It has a vague mythos on said blog--in bits and pieces, such as the one I have in my blog description here--but it’s mostly more of an aesthetic theme than a properly developed literary location, though I have written bits and pieces set there. Remind me to dig some of those back up and see if any are worth sharing here, actually. 

At first made this edit for aforementioned high school blogspot, and I did try to set it as my background there, but I couldn’t get the formatting to work. When I started this tumblr, though, I was happy I had it in reserve. 

So, basically I tinted the picture pink and turned the temperature towards cool (aka blue) to make it purple. I think I also decreased the sharpness to give it that atmospheric haze and boosted the saturation some to intensify it. I decided the first one wasn’t purple enough, so I made the second one, but that one just looked too unnatural (and a bit too pink) so I went back to the first one (each time I started a new edit, I made a copy of the original so that I could have each step as a separate image) and made it just a little more purple. I liked that one, and I just inserted a translucent square to have that more opaque region in the middle where posts go. That wasn’t wide enough, though, so I actually took a screenshot so that I’d have an image in proportion with my computer screen and copy-pasted the image onto that and stretched it wider, and that’s how I got the final image. I suppose this isn’t necessarily specific enough to be helpful as a tutorial, but hopefully it gives the gist of how I edited my background picture. When in doubt, add purple :)

The other day I was walking out the back door at work and a crow startled me and I can tell I'm far gone on the Vampire Diaries because, just for a split second, something in my brain went "Damon? Is that you?"

My mom asked me to knock a spiderweb down for her the other day (she's very afraid of spiders and I kinda like them so I'm the household spider deal-wither) and I was like, "but mom! Free Halloween decorations!"

It's still up. For now, at least.

the spiders in my house watching me put up spider webs as halloween decorations

So, I’ve been reading the Buffy Season 8 comics, and I have a question. Well, several questions actually, but these are all about one particular panel. 

[Image ID: A screencap from the Buffy Season 8 comics which shows Dracula walking away from Renée and Xander, cape swooshing behind him, left hand raised in a dramatic flourish as he speaks. His speaking text reads “It’s not possible, manservant. These powers you speak of--they’re part of the ancient magics.  I risked my very soul to attain them. I am their worldly guardian.” The word ‘soul’ is italicized in his speech. End ID]

Does... does this mean that Dracula has a soul?? 

And if so, how long has he had one? Did he have it when he faced Buffy at the beginning of Season 5? Did he get it between then and now in the comics, and if so, how and why, or else how and why did he get it in the first place? Was he cursed like Angel, or did he fight for it like Spike, or is there some other way to get a soul in the Buffyverse? Why would he want one if he did get it willingly?

Is this otherwise unmentioned soul the reason why he’s willing to fight against other vampires by Buffy’s side in this arc of the comics, or is he another example of a soulless vampire acting for the common good for probably at least partly selfish reasons like Spike circa season 5 (although it’s worth noting that Dracula is doing it without a chip)? Is it because he really likes Xander (as a friend or as a crush), or just a personal grudge against the Japanese vampire group that, in his eyes, “stole” his powers?

Perhaps more significantly, does this make Dracula a third eligible party besides Angel and Spike who might be the subject of the Shanshu prophecy, seeing as he is also a vampire with a soul?? (And how mad would Angel and Spike be if that turned out to have never been about either of them this entire time?)

Or, am I jumping on the soul thing a bit too much? Could he maybe speaking... metaphorically for some reason? Does he mean something different by “soul”, like say, the poetic essence of who he is as a vampire or his honor or some such, rather than his human conscience as it is to Spike and Angel? 

Or is he aware of his soul outside of himself somehow, like how when vampires don’t have their souls they’re apparently just out in the nether somewhere, available to be summoned when called upon? If it can be put at risk but isn’t inside of him, then is Dracula’s human soul in some sort of Heaven somehow while his vampiric self is causing mischief on earth, and yet somehow vampire!Dracula is aware of his human soul elsewhere and is aware that his earthly actions may somehow put it in jeopardy? But Spike and Angel seem convinced that they’re fated for hell for being vampires (which irks me, but is a rant for another day), so why would Dracula be an exception? Could he have somehow sold his soul for these powers when he didn’t even have access to it? Does he just mean that he risked his soul back when he initially became a vampire specifically to attain access to these powers? But wouldn’t the specific use of the term “risked” and not “lost” imply that, while there was peril to his soul, the peril ultimately did not persist, hence his soul was neither lost nor damaged, only at temporary risk of being in some sort of harmed state? 

Why would the comic writers put emphasis on the world “soul” in a throwaway line that isn’t revisited at any point in Dracula’s stint in the comics so far (I’m just through with the Fray crossover arc now and no one has said another word about this that I can recall) when vampire soul lore is such a complicated and contentious aspect of the Buffyverse? Did they just... forget the significance of the whole soul thing? What could this line possibly mean other than that Dracula has had a soul this whole time without mentioning it to anyone, and yet he casually let it slip while talking about his secret transforming powers? 

To put it more briefly, I’ll quote Xander in “Something Blue”: What? How? What?

Okay, so it turns out I have many questions. Well, some of that was more like my own speculations and theories posed as questions since I was on a roll, but anyone can feel free to respond to any of the many questions I put here, honestly. It’s such a small moment but I saw the word “soul” there and it just sent me reeling because... well, it raises all of my above questions and then some. Anyways, I’d love to hear the fandom’s thoughts on this and the possibility of Dracula being a third vampire with a soul(tm). 

Edited to put an actual TL;DR: Dracula implies in this panel of the comics that he has a soul!? Thoughts??

No hate to Star Wars, but Earth is a really awesome planet and this is a super cool post! :) 

Oh, and speaking of pink lakes, this reminds me of Lake Hillier in Australia (image source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-hillier) 

And also, I know people get all excited about Hoia Baciu forest because it’s supposedly haunted and an alien sighting hotspot or whatever, but just aesthetically, I think the curvy trees would be a neat look for a far-off planet. (image source: https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/109706/hoia-baciu-forest-beyond-the-legend-explores-one-of-transylvanias-greatest-mysteries/)

(image source: http://lilianausvat.blogspot.com/2015/03/hoia-baciu-forest.html#.XB3An9MrKXQ) 

And speaking of funky looking forests, did I mention the rainbow eucalyptus forest in the Philippines?  (image source: https://matadornetwork.com/trips/75-places-so-colorful-its-hard-to-believe-theyre-real-pics/)

(image source: https://www.elitereaders.com/rainbow-eucalyptus-tree-philippines/) (*note: I have not read or verified image sources; these are just from whence I got the pictures.)

Yeah, sci fi in general could do well to take more advantage of these things. Like, I know filming in quarries is a time-honored Doctor Who tradition, and I’m not suggesting an end to that. Welsh quarries are neat, too :) But the world is full of a great many fantastic sights. 

why are star wars planets more boring than earth and our solar system like sure we’ve seen desert, snow, diff types of forest, beach, lava, rain, but like… 

rainbow mountains (peru)

red soil (canada/PEI)

rings (saturn’s if they were on earth) 

bioluminescent waves

northern lights (canada)

salt flats (bolivia, where they filmed crait but did NOTHING COOL WITH IT except red dust?? like??? come ON)

and cool fauna like the touch me not or like, you know, the venus flytrap.. and don’t get me started on BUGS like… we have bugs cooler than sw aliens

BASICALLY like???? come on star wars you had one (1) job where are the cool alien species