so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie - the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels - it’s not love, it’s control.

BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.

i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…

you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’re realizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist

okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim. 

finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’

and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’

and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’

and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’ 

and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’

the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this. 

and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons. 

Slightly off topic, but Heather Dale has a delightful and very catchy song called “The Maiden and the Selkie” that is a great deconstruction of the “husband steals her skin” trope.

@princessofthehellmouth

http://archiveofourown.org/works/8838532

So I wrote a story....

The sirens giggled with joy as the sailor tapped his phone, playing back a recording of their haunting song.

Disabled Student Turns Wheelchair Into Epic Mad Max Cosplay

“Princess Leia, Rey, and Captain Phasma Star Wars fancy dress outfits, being sold at Disney Stores”

Source

Nice! Empowering, non-sexualized costumes for girls just in time for Halloween!  

Skulls carved out of different minerals. 

santasatanas

Congratz marty

I am that bird

Marty needs a pay raise.

Good job Marty ily keep up the good work

This week has sucked for basically everyone I know including me, so I bring to you

THE LUCKY LIGHTNING

It only strikes twice! 

Reblog to purge this week of all its evils and bring luck to everyone who sees it.

Because the universe is random and mostly filled with empty space, if you do not reblog this, there will be no great spiritual penalty. But it’s a cool picture so you should reblog it anyway. 

That one tower reminds me of Barad Dur. Sauron’s up to something.

That would be Trump Tower, so you’re not far off. 

I just spent the last two weeks crocheting a Catan board as a birthday present for my friend. I’ve seen a lot of DIY Catan boards, but never a crocheted version that worked in the finer details of each resource tile.

I used this hexagon pattern from Tutsplus, doing only three rows of double crochet stitches. Then I did a cream border around each tile and handstitched each tile into the Catan island formation.

All the hills, roads, trees and other elements were crocheted freehand in basic amigurumi stitches. I have no pattern, but here’s the general gist of each element:

Forest: Pine trees are simple cones started with 4 scs into a magic circle. I varied the increases and rows to create each tree in a different size.

Pasture: Sheep were mad with 4 scs in a magic ring. I then closed the ring and added 1 sc in black to create the head. The boulders were made with one bobble stitch crocheted into a chain stitch.

Hills: Each hill was created with a varied number of chain stitches. I then single crocheted around each chain length, varying in inscreases and rows to create different shapes.

Mountains: Each mountain was started with a varied number of scs in a magic loop. I freestyled a varying number of rows and increases. For the multiple peak mountains, I’d join several peaks together. Each snowy peak is just a few scs into a magic circle sewn over the top.

Field: Each wheat field is a small grouping of bobble stitches in short rows. On some fields I included boulders (see Pasture) and decidious trees, which were created with one bobble stitch sewn on top of one sc stitch.

Desert: The oasis is just a crocheted circle in a magic loop, varying in different stitches (sc, hdc, dc) to create a blob-type shape. I then crocheted around it in green to create the surrounding foliage.

After all the hexes were crocheted together, I then framed the island with varying stitiches (2scs on edge, 2hdc, 4dc, 2tr on inside corner) and did two rows of dcs. I also crocheted a large hex for the underside and sewed it to the island, which gave the board a nice solid finish.

I was planning to crochet this myself a year ago! Thank you for the tips!

BEST THING EVAR

STILL BEST THING EVAR

This is SO COOL

Sneezes

The sound of a ghost sneezing, in many cases, is that of doors creaking open.

Monster sneezes tend to be disproportionate in size to the beast: the massive wheeze quietly, while the tiny roar with the force of a sonic boom.

Skeletons often swear they never sneeze, but some do, and it sounds like eggs cracking open.

Fairies sneeze with the sound of construction paper being cut, while dryads sneeze with the sound of someone knocking on wood.

Ghouls bellow with a perfectly sung opera high note as they sneeze. It has been long suspected that they are the true inventors of opera. The Great Undead Op-pepper-ah Company takes advantage of this.

Vampires, especially the very old, sneeze with the sounds of centuries old pages turning in a book.

Mabon Craft Ideas

Fall is just starting to show her pretty face here in Northern Italy… the leaves are starting to turn Autumn shades and there is an abundance of nature bits to be collected to craft with.

So, I thought was a good idea to prepare a post, before the arrival of Mabon, with some craft ideas to decorate your altar or your house

Mabon God’s Eye

Acorn Bells

Autumn Gnomes

Beeswax Suncatcher

Beeswax Leaf Ornaments

Leaf Garland

Corn Dolls

Corn-Husk Wreath

Indian Corn Necklace

Bird Seed Feeders

Pokeweed Ink

Pine Cone Garland

Pine Cone Fairy

Harvest Garland

Apple Tealight Candles 

I hope you enjoy these fantastic ideas for decorating and celebrating Mabon, the autumn equinox!!!

Happy Mabon to everyone ! :)

 New Grell Sutcliff backpack :P

Available in my Shop

  $5 off until Sept 30th on this, or anything.  Use coupon code: SEPT2015 at checkout :)

The new baby is so perfectly small. He squeaks and makes little snuffling noises. He smells like a baby.  The name on his birth registration is Anthony, but I mostly call him squeaker.

The night he was born I read Amanda a story by P.L. Travers’ called “The New One”, from Mary Poppins Comes Back…

I’m the proudest and happiest of fathers. And now I have to go back and be a writer again, after a happy week of being someone who used to be a writer and might one day be a writer in the future, but for right now I’m cooking and changing nappies and generally making myself useful.

Congratulations to Neil Gaiman and his wife!

Hey.  I need to be serious for a minute.

I’ve been making jokes about Being Completely Done.  (Well “jokes”.  You know, sarcastic rants and comments.)

But the truth is … I need financial help.

In July my food stamps were cut from $150/month to $13/month.  That’s not a typo.  Thirteen dollars.

My brother’s SSI was overpaid for apparently the last YEAR (through no fault of our’s - they didn’t calculate it properly because he’s a minor, but the amount seemed correct, even though we submitted ALL the paperwork) so they not only cut it significantly but they’re taking out another $73/month until the “extra” is paid back.  (And yes, we went through the appeal process, but it didn’t work.)  But having it go down by $250/month is kind of a big deal.

And then our insurance was messed up this month, so I needed meds out of pocket, which was not very fun.

I’m trying to get my shit together and KEEP my shit together, but I have to be honest, I’m past that point of “out of chill” and at the point of constantly internally screaming and random crying spells.  I’ve had massive meltdowns every day for the last week to the point of not functioning.   That’s … that’s not normal for me even with constant extreme stress.  I don’t think it’s arrogant to say that I push through things that would break a lot of people, but I’m reaching the end of my rope.

I am trying SO hard to keep being strong, but at this point I’m falling apart and I’m not completely sure how to put myself back together properly.

I was raised to have a profound sense of shame over this, but I need to ask for money so I can keep us fed and housed and with electricity and that sort of thing.

If you can help, that’d be really amazing and I’ll cry in the good way.  My Paypal is sam(dot)says(dot)bazinga@gmail.com

If you could signal boost this, it’d be really great.

My bae has been holding it together pretty well, but she could use some support, hugs, money, and maybe a wishing unicorn.  Please help if you can.

With autumn almost upon us, here’s a guide to ideal applications for an assortment of apple varieties.

(Via Huffington Post from the American Express Tumblr, of all things)

So while doing some pirate research for the play I’m writing I stumbled upon one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. In the 5th century A.D. there was a Scandinavian princess called Alwilda who’s father tried to set her up to marry Alf, the Prince of Denmark. Alwilda wasn’t cool with this so she and some female companions dressed as men, stole a ship, and sailed away. Eventually they met a company of pirates who were in need of a new captain and they were so captivated by her that they elected her as their new leader. Her crew became so infamous that Prince Alf was sent out to stop them. When their ships met he took Alwilda prisoner and she was so impressed by Alf’s skill that she agreed to marry him after all and eventually became the Queen of Denmark.

I stopped caring whether this was factually accurate about halfway through because it’s completely AWESOME.

Watch: Viola Davis just became the first black woman to win the Best Actress in a Drama Emmy — and her speech is breathtaking.