Me if I was alive in 1700s… ✒️
translation from turkish the guy: are you hungry? are you really hungry? didn’t they feed you in the street? you poor thing. let me give you something then. come. come. do you like spleen? it’s hematinic. (this sentence wasn’t the exact translation but it’s the best i can come up with) like this look. let me give you some spleen. this much. is this enough? get it.
this is so cute. I love the butcher chatting away and the cat responding, him pulling out a package of meat and showing it, just like he’s dealing with any customer.
one of those posts that makes me happy every time I see it
Does anyone want to see the presentation I made on what historical fashion trends we should bring back and which should burn in hell I made for a PowerPoint party?
The people have spoken
In conclusion: Wear what you want and be funky
PRIDE OPOSSUMS!!!
He scream at his own ass UwU
Feel free to use as icons!! Just please credit me in your bios!!
Candlenight’s Exchange Gift for Bearmageddon: “An Unforgettable Night” (fic & art)
Written for the @thecandlenightszone exchange as a gift for @bearmageddon. Ficlet is also over on AO3!
Magnus is absolutely not nervous.
The way his knees are knocking together with an audible clatter that he’s worried his soon-to-be father-in-law will hear from his place next to the altar is completely unrelated to nerves. The sweat he surreptitiously wipes off his brow with the perfectly starched cuff of his dress shirt has nothing at all to do with anxiety. And the legion of butterflies making mincemeat of his insides? Yeah, definitely not fear.
Because Magnus Burnsides has never been afraid in his entire life.
But there’s something about the silence before the music starts and the guests rise to their feet to usher the bride down the aisle that sends a cold shiver down his spine. Will she show up? Has this all been a dream? There can be no other explanation for the fact that this woman -- this beautiful, strong, confident, talented, clever woman -- would have willingly chosen to become his wife today.
As the guitars pluck out a gentle harmony and the sunset sky at his back begins to fade to a crimson and tangerine glow, Julia appears at the other end of the aisle. The wedding dress that her sisters helped her sew in secret (The groom isn’t supposed to see the bride before the wedding, and that includes the dress, Mags!) is pearly white against the deep umber of her skin, and the ivory petals of the flower crown set in an arch above her temples seems to glow against the backdrop of her dark curls with a preternatural light. Her eyes, wide and bright, are set on his face as she begins the long walk to the arbor, and he can see the muscles twitching in her cheeks as she works hard to suppress her signature full-toothed grin in favor of a more demure smile.
His eyes are drawn to the bouquet in her hands, a massive, living thing that spills from her grip and drapes down the front of her pale gown like a fragrant waterfall. The identities of the individual flowers -- pink carnations, blue forget-me-nots, and white yarrow framed by a wreath of full-leafed ivy -- come to him with surprising clarity. He isn’t sure why he knows their names as neither he nor Julia are particularly adept at gardening, but the longer he stares, the faster his brain shoots out information about genus types and flower language. He’s just about to parse through the meaning of the carnations when he feels Julia’s hand on his and he realizes that she’s finally at his side.
The ceremony itself flies by in a haze of emotion and words he barely hears. It’s too hard to focus when Julia’s fingers are entwined in his, too difficult to remember when he’s supposed to put the ring on her finger when her lips are so close and her cheeks flush just so. Before he knows it, the cleric has declared them man and wife, and Magnus doesn’t wait until he’s finished with the pronouncement before leaning in for the kiss he’s been desperate for since the night began. He is not in the least bit surprised when Julia meets him halfway, reaching up to grasp his face in her flower-sweet hands.
As they walk back down the aisle together in the soft gloaming of early evening, arm in arm and heads tilted together, a dozen fireflies flicker in and out of the dispersing guests like miniature stars suspended in the immeasurable space of their happiness. Julia rests her head on his shoulder and Magnus closes his eyes, just for a brief second, so that he can savor this moment and remember it for all time.
It was, after all, an unforgettable night.
Kravitz had it all thought out. He got down on one knee after a day about town doing everything Taako loved. He could quite see Taako’s expression since he was silhouetted in the setting sun, but it was probably a grin.
“You’re kidding!” Taako said, voice all laughter and joy.
“I’m not,” Kravitz said, promptly forgetting everything he had planned to say. “But, uh, do you wanna get married?”
“I was gonna propose, you bitch!” Taako said.
And thus began the Proposal War.
Kravitz wasn’t crushed when Taako refused to marry him then. Because, knowing Taako, something bigger and better was in store. The next week, after a late-night of revisiting the Chug ‘n Squeeze, Taako got down on one knee and over dramatically proposed.
Kravitz refused on the grounds that Taako was cheating.
They went to a fair for the midsummer festival. They snuck away from the crowd and Kravitz proposed again. Taako shoved the ring back into his hand with a laugh.
They stayed up all night after a hard day, drinking cocoa and watching bad movies. Taako proposed in the morning light, with tired eyes and a bright smile. Kravitz shook his head and fell asleep against Taako’s shoulder.
Taako came home after a school meeting, angry and frustrated. Kravitz made a bath for him, washed his hair, pampered him with kisses. Once he was thoroughly calmed down he snuck a “marry me?” between suggestions of dinner and Taako almost agreed.
“That’s playing dirty,” Taako said, splashing him with the bathwater. “How ‘bout you marry me?”
“Not with that attitude,” Kravitz said and Taako pulled him into the tub.
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT…..
Have I not told you guys this story?????
I must have mentioned it. I must have mentioned it at some point.
HAVE I SERIOUSLY NOT TOLD YOU GUYS ABOUT MY HORRIBLE 7TH GRADE PHANTOM FIC????
Okay, buckle up, buckaroos, here we go. This might get long because I can’t shut up, but I’ll put some nice pictures in here to break up the wall of text:
The year is 2004. The film has just come out. I, a 13-year-old closet goth for whom everything is worthy of an overdramatic Shakespearean reaction, watch the movie. It is my first exposure to Phantom besides the silent film; I have never seen the musical before now. So I watch it.
And that’s it. I am gone.
I know, with the single-minded conviction of a medieval Christian martyr, that this is what I have been waiting for. This is now what I would live for.
Me, stumbling into the Phantom fandom, aged 13:
And it did.
IT DID.
But, like any 13 year-old in 2004 whose sole ambition was to be Amy Lee and also Anna Valerious from Van Helsing at all times, I had to rewrite the Phantom’s ending.
I had to.
And it had to be dramatic.
I actually remember sitting down to write this thing in my brown, spiral-bound, Mead 5 Star notebook at, like, 10 pm on a Saturday night after aggressively photosynthesizing the entirety of Fanfiction.net’s Phantom section on my dial-up AOL connection.
Above: Me at 13 about to pen a cultural touchstone with my hot pink gel pen while the Lizzie McGuire Movie soundtrack plays in the background.
I was ready, people, I was flexin’ my knuckles for a fix-it fic and I was full of whirling hormones and crying for no discernible reason other than the fact that I’m a crier, but also, I was 13 and “Erik is so lonely!”
The fic essentially went something like this:
The story plays out as usual, and at the end, Christine leaves with Raoul. Erik–-who looked like Gerard Butler in my brain because I had no other basis of comparison and also, I thought he was hot, thereby completely missing the “ugly” point, but whatever–-Erik breaks all the mirrors and cries and wanders down a corridor and cries some more.
Above: “He’s so SENSITIVE.”
The mob breaks into his lair, but they can’t find him. Even though, ostensibly, they should have been able to, because he really didn’t go far. I think I wrote that he “stumbled through a nearby corridor,” nearby being the operative word here, meaning the mob was either the worst mob in history or just really, really stupid.
Above: “The mob will never find me here.”
Okay, so the mob leaves after looting his lair (he’s got, like, millions of francs stuffed in the walls down there, can you blame them?), and at this point, Erik lets out the breath he’d been holding–-oh, also, I should emphasize again that this is Gerard Butler Erik, so he’s ripped and wearing that torn puffy shirt and those unreasonably tight leather pants and riding boots, even though he has not been anywhere near a horse. And I amended the film so that thick, dark Dracula hair was actually his hair and not a wig, because I wanted it to “fall wetly” into his–here we go, I definitely remember this–“piercing, ice-blue eyes.”
Above: Truly hideous. Look at it for at least eight more minutes to take in the full scope of abjection laid before you. You can even zoom in if you want.
Actually, I think I gave him two different colored eyes à la Crawford, but I don’t remember what the other color was; probably red, let’s be real, because I was toying with a “HE WAS A VAMPIRE THE WHOLE TIME” reveal that then 13-year-old me thought was a stroke of literary genius.
So ANYWAY.
Ripped Erik is stumbling away and crying in his torn puffy shirt, his 8-pack heaving with his sobs, when he lets out the breath he’s been holding and collapses to his knees.
Then, faint with hunger–
(I don’t remember why he was faint with hunger?? I just remember writing that phrase, which is truly a baffling little tidbit because obviously, he’d been well-fueled enough to stage the whole Don Juan fiasco, and I hadn’t even established that hunger was an issue at play, here, so unless Erik was hypoglycemic and needed to keep his blood sugar levels up, I cannot explain his hunger fainting. My only explanation is that I was a fainter as a kid, so I just assumed most people passed out whenever things became vaguely inconvenient.)
Above: Fanfic Erik after not eating for about 2 minutes, which, honestly? Same.
–faint with hunger, he passes out on the banks of the underground lake and eventually rolls straight into the water.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the entire opera house is on fire from the chandelier crash. People are screaming. I wrote that “hundreds were dead” and that “mothers wept over their children,” which also concerns me in hindsight, because while I fully support introducing children to the arts at an early age, can you imagine trying to explain to your friends why you took your 5-year-old to see the horniest self-insert opera of all time, Don Juan Triumphant?
Above: “I’ll find her if I have to burn down all of Paris and also this bastion of cultural and artistic nourishment, the very things I have sworn to protect and honor, but whatever.”
So the opera is burning down and Paris is in an uproar. Cut back to the cellars. Erik, still passed out, is now borne by the “furious currents”–I kid you not, I remember that phrase–of the opera lake–
(the underground, stationary, man-made lake, mind you, with no currents at all in real life; like, none)
–and his unconscious body starts to float out into the lake, spurred on by those furious underground lake currents with which we’re all so intimately familiar, until he drifts out from underneath the opera straight into the Seine.
Above: Turn your face away from the garish light of day.
Side note: I have never been to Paris, but I am reasonably certain that the Seine does not connect to the underground lake in the opera house. Which makes the fact that Erik floated all the way out to the Seine even more impressive.
Oh, by the way, the whole Seine was on fire.
I wrote some inexplicable science into the fic about the opera’s “oil stores” exploding in the chandelier crash fire and then leaking into the Seine, which caused an oil spill that subsequently set the entire river on fire.
A few things:
- I had no idea the Paris opera house was as oil-rich as a field in Texas, who knew?
- Hey, 13-year-old me, that’s not really possible because the Seine didn’t even connect to the lake underneath the–
- You know what? Forget it.
Above: The Paris Opera House is the world’s leading petroleum supplier, followed only by Saudi Arabia.
So the Seine is on fire, and all of Paris is panicking, and here comes unconscious Erik floatin’ on down the river like the world’s ugliest, most ripped baby Moses.
Also, he was face-down.
Which should have meant:
- Immediate drowning.
- Immediate resuscitation, followed by violent choking and spluttering up water.
- Death in some other, inescapable way because there’s water, water, everywhere, and also, it’s ON FIRE.
Above: Fanfic Erik, awash in a fiery river, just vibin’.
But Erik didn’t drown or catch on fire or die in any other inescapable way. Miraculously, as if guided by the hand of God, he kept on floating down the fiery Seine, FACE DOWN, without needing to breathe, apparently, because he was a vampire. Maybe.
But I hadn’t established that at all and wasn’t even sure that’s where I wanted to go with the story, so really, Erik was just some guy floating face-down in the river, miraculously not dying the entire time.
And this is where it gets so-bad-it’s good:
He just kept floating. He kept on going.
On through the Seine out of Paris, out of France, and into–
–you guys ready?–
–into the ATLANTIC OCEAN.
WITHOUT WAKING UP.
AND WITHOUT DYING.
Above: Renaissance trade route with the New World? NOPE. This is roughly the route fanfic Erik went.
Does the Seine even empty into the Atlantic? Does it? I don’t know; I’m an American. None of us know anything about any geography, ever; we’re all idiots, and apparently, we don’t know anything about how DROWNING or BEING MORTAL work, because in my fanfiction, Erik just kept right on floatin’ all the way across the ATLANTIC MOTHERFUCKING–sorry, Mom, but sometimes a well-placed f-word is just great–the ATLANTIC MOTHERFUCKING OCEAN.
This, I wrote, took “approximately six weeks.”
Which, sure, may have been a realistic travel time for, say, a steamboat, but for an unconscious Frenchman who is floating FACE DOWN in a LARGE BODY OF SALT WATER for SIX WEEKS without proper FOOD OR HYDRATION?
HOW?
Now, I did very well in science class. I did. You probably read that sentence and went
but I promise you, I did. I theoretically understood that it was impossible to survive such a journey.
But I just artistically decided that Erik could do anything he set his mind to.
Plus, I obsessively binge-watched I Shouldn’t Be Alive, and documentaries about parents who lifted cars off of their children in a surge of adrenaline that gave them superhuman powers, so I assumed that sure, an average 40-something-year-old guy could absolutely survive a six-week journey floating across the Atlantic Ocean face-down in a coma.
Oh, yeah, here’s another fun little tidbit: on his way across the Atlantic, he passed the iceberg that would sink the Titanic, because sure, why not at this point?
So eventually, he floats across the ocean and right into where all that tea wound up in 1773: Boston Harbor.
I remember writing something to the tune of “he bobbed into the harbor” which makes me picture his head banging up against a dock or Erik floating stiffly into American waters like a buoy.
Above: Oh, lawd, he comin’.
Yes, he was still unconscious. And face-down.
It’s nighttime when he finally drifts into the harbor, his sexy, Byronic antihero clothes still miraculously intact, and lo and behold, a hot Mary Sue (American, unnamed in the fic because I couldn’t decide between “Lena” and something else that was incredibly awful like “Persephone” or “Artemis”) just happens to be walking along the shores of Boston Harbor when she spots an unconscious man, face-down, in the sand.
(The Boston beach in my mind looked like a California beach, because that was the only beach I’d ever been to, never mind that Massachusetts and California are absolutely nothing alike other than being unbelievably expensive to live in and full of very loud, very opinionated people, heyo, same.)
She “exclaimed, her voice as pure as a bell”–yeesh–and dropped her “basket of violets”–what the hell? Who is carrying violets on a deserted Boston Harbor beach at, like, 2 am? –to rush over to help the man, her skirts rustling, her black hair flying.
And just at the moment she falls to her knees beside him, he wakes.
Perfectly fine, mind you; just ill enough to be romance-novel sexy. You know. “Faint, delirious, heaving.” Whispering and/or moaning, “Christine.”
Naturally, the unnamed OC isn’t bothered by his hideous (it’s really not that bad, it’s more like mild acne, calm down like 85%) face, because her father was a former–
–here we go again, kids–
–a former Civil War general who was also a doctor who was also Abraham Lincoln’s best friend.
(You bet your ass I found a way to wriggle Abraham Lincoln into a Phantom fanfic. This is America. I can do whatever I want.)
Above: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
So she was like, “I don’t care about your perfectly fine and objectively extremely handsome face, you are beautiful exactly as you are and also, I, too, am a trained doctor and also a singer and a dancer and impossibly strong, because I am able to lift up this ripped stranger and haul him over my shoulders and drag him back to my spacious apartments overlooking Boston Harbor.”
Erik fell back asleep/into a coma at that point, just so you know.
And that’s where it ended. I didn’t know where it was going, other than “hot American Mary Sue nurses Erik back to health and teaches him to love again and they live happily, sexily ever after, but in America, and they open a school where Erik is the head music teacher and his hot wife is the hot Other Teacher and they love all the little children equally,” which still sounds more plausible than Love Never Dies.
Above: Live your dreams.
Thirteen-year-old me shelved the fic and then forgot about it, until I was cleaning out my room in 10th grade, found my handwritten magnum opus, and, so mortified I could feel my butthole shriveling up into my trachea, I shredded the whole thing.
Now, look, I’m not saying the loss of that piece of literature was equivalent to the fire at the Library of Alexandria, but, I mean….
…he floated across an ocean.
All for love.
(That was the tagline.)
Hello OP can i tell you that
1. you’ve permanently altered Phantom Of The Opera for me 2. this is the single greatest thing I’ve read. 3. I’m in forced quarentine right now and spent most of today sobbing like an idiot about current events but reading this has cured my depression, watered my houseplants and trimmed the cat’s nails.
Bless you, this is a thing of beauty. I absolutely would read this if you ever decide to post or publish it.
This is the best thing you’ll read all day, trust me.
this is fine everything is fine
so like. kravitz but with vitiligo representing bones all over his body.
i needed to get this out of my head.
NEW FIC ALERT!!!
"Relic! The Balance Opera" (introduction and chapter one) is live on AO3! Have you been infected yet?
Join us for this long-awaited cross-over of The Adventure Zone and “Repo! The Genetic Opera.” Updates every week!
i think about this every day
C O N T A I N M E N T B R E A C H
[ID: Two elven toddlers, both with tan skin, green eyes, and thick, curly hair. The one of the left wears a pale blue shirt, the other wears a warm, light grey. They are both wearing teal green shorts and light brown shoes. They are running away in excitement. End ID]
Bonus babey under the cut:
Harry isn’t quite out of his teens when it fully hits him—the war, the blood and the guts spread across the corridors of Hogwarts, the screams and sobs, the nightmares, the shadows that never seem to leave him.
It’s too much.
He gets a flat in London—Muggle London. Hermione and the Weasleys give him space. Kingsley ensures the wizarding world gives him privacy. Not that some aren’t reluctant. Rita Skeeter releases articles every day, wondering when their Boy Who Lived will return.
But Harry doesn’t see those articles.
He tries to forget who he is for awhile.
His flat is cozy. He stuffs it with plants and paintings and books. He has a cat (or three). He wears sweaters and blazers with corduroy pants. He goes to the market every morning to buy fruits and vegetables. That’s where he meets the kindly old woman who lives down the street.
She lived through World War II and so many other wars, wars that Harry has never experienced but can only imagine.
She goes to his house and she goes to hers. There’s always tea and small cakes and dinners and cocoa—apparently she believes that a teenager needs cocoa—and baking and reading and knitting.
Harry uses magic to brew the cocoa one day, not realizing that she’s standing in the doorway. She calms him by telling him that she knows all about magic.
Their conversations shift after that. They talk about their favorite creatures and how hard it was to watch them perish before their eyes. They talk about the wall that seemingly gave way to let them enter the magical world. They talk about lions and friends and family and love and betrayals and life and death.
“When did you leave?” Harry asks one day.
She pauses, a hand resting on his cat’s head. After a moment, she looks up with a heaviness in her eyes, a heaviness that Harry sees when he looks in the mirror everyday.
“I was young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. But I had already grown up. I didn’t want to leave, not really, but it became too much.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Some days I do, some days I don’t.”
“Yeah…”
It’s a few months later, when he’s helping her shovel the first snow from her walkway, that he asks, “Did you ever try going back?”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” she says, shoving a cup of cocoa into his hands. “I was shut out as soon as I hesitated.”
He pauses, nearly dropping the cocoa, before whispering, “That’s horrible.”
“What about you?” She escorts him inside, her cane tapping against the floor that he’s magically heated to warm her feet. “Would you be welcomed back?”
“Oh, yeah,” Harry says. “Til they turn on me because they don’t like the color of my shirt or because I sneezed the wrong way or because—you name it.”
She laughs and he smiles.
“Imagine that,” she softly says. “Rulers of our worlds and we’re not even allowed in them.”
“Imagine that.”
He does go back to the wizarding world, of course, but he never forgets his London flat. He visits the street from time to time, knowing that Susan Pevensie will be there, ready to push a cup of cocoa into his hands.
Pride Succulent Pins
You asked and we (hopefully) delivered! Here are some more subtle pride pins we’ve come up with for you!
If you have any requests, feel free to send us an ask!!
this is it. the happiest video
wholesome
This has to be the highlight of their work day, just a random cat that’s the most adorable thing *v*
Guys, we need to spread this. It’s to cute to be lost in the deep depths of the internet.
It’s to damn cute I’m gonna die now
This is the best one I’ve seen yet.