I need a way to say this character makes me feel insane amounts of lust but not in a sexual or romantic way

Guards, dissect this man

No it's too clinical I need something that emphasizes the feral desire to devour

Guards, sous vide this man

Guards, prepare this man for dinner

Guards, rend this man asunder

Guards, hand this man's heart to me on a platter so that I may devour him

Guards, resurrect him I didn't like that last phrasing

Guards, grate his soul and sprinkle it over my dinner

MY LIEGE, MAKE UP YOUR MIND

Oh then why don't you come up with something then if you're so SMART

I'm gonna eat his ass.

I've met him in person btw and he's a fucking sweetheart

[ID: Text-intensive Twitter thread from the Shapeshifters chest binders Twitter account in reply to a post by artist and author Ursula Vernon. Vernon says, A non-zero number of you apparently did not know that The Last Unicorn was a book before it was a movie. It is by Peter S. Beagle. It is made of spun glass and fairytales and iron knives and there are individual lines that I would give my lungs to have written. Shapechangers replies, I saw him every year at NYCC for several years straight, bought something at his table, asked him to sign it, and we spoke. He remembered me from year to year, no small feat at that con. He remembered which stories he'd told me. One year I came back with a different gender on. He squinted at me a bit and said thoughtfully, "I've seen you before in this place." All I had to say was, "last year you told me the story about the inoshishi." And his face cleared, and he leaned in with a grin and told me about a German guitarist who he traveled with, twice. Who transitioned between the first and second time, so he'd gotten to meet this person all over again on the second round. It was a wonderfully kind way to let me know that everything was fine. I was fresh out of the closet and I needed that, and maybe he could see it. The Last Unicorn is the best book in the world and I will defend it and its author til I die. the end. /end ID]

I don't usually talk about celebrities; artists, when I do, and I'm keenly aware that one needn't be a good person to be a hell of a heartwrenching artist. But Peter S. Beagle has written a few of my favorite things in the world, he's an excellent singer and filker, and this Twitter thread was dreadfully important to me. I don't want it going away as Twitter becomes Shitter, because it's so often bad news, isn't it? It's important to me to share trans joy.

He is an INCREDIBLY sweet man.

Duck Amuck | Director: Chuck Jones | Studio: Warner Bros. | USA, 1953

NOT ME YOU SLOP ARTIST

This is a close up? A CLOSE UP YA JERK! A CLOSEUP!

Alright, let’s get this picture started! (The End) NO NOOOOO!

One of the defining moments of animation history.

“Ain’t I a stinker?”

In Babylon 5, didn’t one of the non-humans think Daffy was the god of frustration?

Holy shit, this is nearly 70 years old. This would have been right on the heels of color television being commercially available to the public.

@amayatepes look at this

LMAO

Huh. That’s just a whole ass Daffy Duck cartoon.

Everything about this cartoon is top-notch. The timing, the animation (watch Daffy’s different walks) the art; this is a treasure

It is a tragedy that this is not credited.

I saw these guys live and it was a phenomenal experience, The cellist is called Abel Selaocoe and the band is Chesaba, which includes a percussionist and bassist.

They are all incredibly talented and charasmatic on stage. If they are ever in your part of the world, go see them!

Here is the full performance of this piece

On related note, a few years ago, the Entomological Society of America officially discontinued the use of "gypsy moth" and "gyspy ant" as common names for Lymantria dispar and Aphaenogaster araneoides. L. Dispar is now known as the "spongy moth," so named for the appearance of their eggs, but I don't think a new common name has caught on for the ant species yet.

These changes we brought about, in large part, by the advocacy of Romani people in academia. You might not think that bug names are a very serious issue, but I believe that language matters. These species became known as "gypsies" because their attributes were likened to certain stereotypes and negative perceptions of actual Roma, so the continued use of those names reaffirmed those negative associations in the public consciousness. Slurs and pejoratives can never be truly decontexualized.

In my mind, one of the biggest obstacles that Romani people face when we are trying to advocate for ourselves is a lack of recognition as a marginalized group that deserves the necessary consideration. Even for seemingly trivial matters, like bugs or comic book characters, the way that people talk about us-- and talk down to us, when we get involved-- is telling. So, I always think that changes like this are a win, because it means that people are willing to learn and grant us the dignity we deserve. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to effect change in your own field, even arts and science.

Colleen Moore’s fairy tale castle dolls’ house. Moore was one of the most successful silent film stars (famous for popularising the ‘Dutch boy’ bob), and she started creating this dolls’ house in 1928. She enlisted the help of professional planners and architects, such as Horace Jackson, the set designer at First National Studios. The entire house can be broken down into individual pieces and packed into specially designed shipping crates, and from 1935 to 1939 Moore took the dolls’ house on tour through the U.S. to help raise money for children’s charities, which proved hugely successful. Moore gave the dolls’ house to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 1949.

Me: Okay guys remember that it’s important in improv to establish your characters at the beginning of the scene.

Students: ok

Student 1: Hello. I am the president of the United States.

Student 2: Hello madame president. I’m William Shakespeare and I’m here to assassinate you.

This is the best opening to a scene I've ever heard of

Here’s how the scene actually went as nearly as I can remember.

Student 1: I’m the president of the United States. How can I help you?

Student 2: I’d like to make a complaint about the Vice President.

Student 1: Okay let me just get out my chalkboard where I tally complaints about the Vice President. Let’s see, that makes five… hundred! What’s your complaint?

Student 2: Well you see, I’m here to assassinate you, but I don’t think that guy should take over when you’re dead.

Student 1: Okay let me make some calls. Beep boop beep boop beep beep beep. Hello? I’m here with— What’s your name?

Student 2: I’m William Shakespeare.

Student 1: I’m here with William Shakespeare and he convinced me we need to replace the Vice President. When? Let me ask. — When were you planning to assassinate me?

Student 2: I mean I was thinking like, as soon as I was done talking to you.

Student 1: Okay sounds good. Yes we need to replace him right now, one moment. Beep beep boop beep. Hello? You’re fired. Bye. Ring, ring. Oh, it’s my assistant again. Hello? What’s that? Oh, they want to know if you’re the same William Shakespeare who wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Student 2: Yes, that’s me.

Student 1: What’s that? He’s been dead for four hundred years? Okay thank you goodbye. Sorry they said you’ve been dead for four hundred years so you can’t assassinate me.

rewatching elementary now with the knowledge Jonny Lee Miller had started with his own sobriety and recovery whilst filming is honestly transcendent. He is so GOOD. he is gut-wrenching. The scene where Sherlock explains his sobriety feels like a leaking faucet that requires constant maintenance and offers only not to drip in return - jlm does this thing with his voice where he's on the verge of tears but bored all at once. He's wrecked by a feeling he's utterly sick to death of having. It's such a compassionate performance. On another level it is truly crazy to me that we have so many Sherlock Holmes adaptations so eager to make Sherlock an addict, but Elementary is far and away the only adaptation that does that and takes the addiction seriously. Perhaps in part because of JLM's real life recovery, but we'll never know. On a rewatch, it's a lot :')

— Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

I love the sorrow in which you wrote this

The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core

I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.

Hold on let’s do this properly:

Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.

Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely don’t think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.

The Velveteen Rabbit - doesn’t wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.

Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh

The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.

Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.

Richard Scarry - actually I can’t make a call on this one

Animals of Farthing Wood - I … don’t know.

Wind in the Willows - Toad’s a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade

Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldn’t walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.

Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.

Oakapple Wood - monarchists

Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.

Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I don’t know a thing about him

The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.

The Narnia creatures - don’t all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists

Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?

Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in children’s literature as exemplified by the Usborne “See Inside Germs.” Ultimately more data is needed.

Thoughts on Toad and Frog?

They’re American

This post is bigger than me now but:

I feel like this is us OP

the primordial serpent

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

Discworld and Hitchhiker's Guide are siblings. twins who walked in different directions. i dont have to explain. u get it.

Discworld Heritage Post

Linocut prints by William Hays. ~ Dawn ~ After the Storm, 2016.

I’m on this guy’s mailing list and I have to say it’s real good old school fun, like having an uncle who emails you slightly misspelled emails and then there’s a print.

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

despite mass arrests by NYPD and several students (including rep ilhan omar’s daughter) being suspended for their participation and having their university identification deactivated, the gaza solidarity encampment is still going strong well into its second day. def recommend following independent reporter talia jane who is taking part and providing live updates. (talia was the first reporter to break aaron bushnell’s self immolation in february; she was one of the reporters he contacted personally prior to the protest.)