biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

slavicafire:

see, the thing is that you can be edgy and dramatic and an absolutely dark macabre-loving bones-hoarding bastard and not be an asshole

nothing’s stopping you from being all that and a caring person overflowing with love

people who think that you have to apathetic and cynical and downward fucking mean to fit the aesthetic are just boring

being an asshole is neither an aesthetic nor a personality

epicene-street-light:

hi anon! random fact about my life: funny story of how i actually adopted the familiar of a recently deceased witch 

the year was 2005. i was 7 and at the music school. the school year was over, and i was with the other children of my music theory class, having a party in the school’s garden. there was juice and cookies and, more importantly, no adults, and a cat. there were plenty of cats hanging out in the school’s garden, because an old lady who lived in the building around the school fed them. so, we were like, 12 or so seven years old, and we saw the cat, so the natural reaction was to run towards him and try to pet him. the cat didnt give a fuck about us, he was sleeping (out of our reach) on the wall, things were normal. 

and then we heard an old lady’s voice screaming: “little rascals! stop harassing this cat! right now!!”. it was the old lady living nearby and feeding the cats, wearing all black, carrying a ripped supermarket bag, standing right in front of us. she waved her walking stick at us and we ran away screaming. then she left the garden, and was back in the street, out of sight. 

so we started bugging the cat again. 

approximatively 30 seconds later, we heard her voice again, screaming: “you should be ashamed!! leave this cat alone!! immediately!!”. and it was her, same bag, same clothes, same walking stick. we were a bit surprised to see her again, but still ran away. then she left again. 

“how could she be back so quickly?” we wondered, standing in a circle, whispering. “we didnt even make that much noise”. 

“she lives right there, in this building”, i tell them. (musical theory classes were so boring, i had noticed where she lived exactly). “maybe she saw us from her window.” 

she walked very slowly, and we could still see her. 

“someone should follow her just to make sure, so when she’s really far away we can play with the cat again’, someone says. we made a random selection and i was chosen to follow her. 

so i started walking a few meters behind the old lady. she walked from more or less 10 minutes, to the tram station. i waited for her in front of the station. i saw her get on the tram, the tram’s doors closing, and the tram starting. the next station was 20 minutes away (by foot). i made sure she wasnt on the platform anymore, and ran back as quickly as i could to the school. once there, i told the others: “its okay! shes gone, i saw her getting on the tram, we can play with the cat now!”

so we started bugging the cat again. 

and then. behind us, a voice. “this is it! im fed up with you little brats!!!! go away!!!” 

it was the old lady again. 

***

we never cleared that one mystery – the others accused me of lying, but i know what i saw – and years passed. it was now 2010. i was 12 and still going to the same music school. i made a friend of an adorable, big muscular black cat usually sleeping behind the building the old lady lived in. i petted him and played with him twice a week when coming back from music lessons. it was summer again, and i was petting the cat when a man came to me and asked me if i knew the cat’s owner. i told him no, and asked why. he sighed. “because she’s my neighbor, and she’s at the hospital with a final phase cancer. i thought maybe you were related, you kinda look like her.” i told him i was sorry for her, and he left. 

when the school year started over this year, i stopped seing the buff black cat. but another cat had arrived. she was a calico, and unless the other cats hanging out in the garden, she did her best to get inside the school and getting petted. she liked everyone, including me. she was so cute, and so willing to get adopted i convinced my parents to adopt her. she was obviously an indoor cat, having all of their reflexes, and adapted really quickly to our home. i was persuaded she belonged to the old lady, since she was used to a quiet life and arrived when she had passed away. one of the school’s secretaries told me she believed it too.

i never saw the black cat’s owner in person, but i doubt there were more than one mysterious old lady living with 15 cats and having magical powers in this very ordinary building. 

so that was the story of how i adopted a witch’s familiar cat. 

blondegingersaxon:

copperbadge:

ceescedasticity:

iguana-sneeze:

marzipanandminutiae:

derinthemadscientist:

bedlamsbard:

burntcopper:

meduseld:

penroseparticle:

My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big

“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner

A fave of mine was always the american tales where people freaked out because ‘someone died in this house’ and all the europeans would go ‘…Yes? That would be pretty much every house over 40 years old.’

‘…My school is older than your entire town.’

‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’

*American looks up at the beams in a country pub* ‘Uh, this place has woodworm, isn’t that a bit unsafe?’ ‘Eh, the woodworm’s 400 years old, it’s holding those beams together.’

A few years ago when I was in college I did a summer program at Cambridge aimed specifically at Americans and Canadians, and my year it was all Americans and one Australian.  We ended the program with a week in Wessex, and on the last day as we all piled onto the bus in Salisbury (or Bath? I can’t remember), the professors went to the front to warn us that we wouldn’t be making any stops unless absolutely necessary.  We’re headed to Heathrow to drop off anyone flying off the same day, then back to Cambridge.

“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”

We all brace ourselves.  A long bus ride?  How long?  We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible.  We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.

The answer.  “Two hours.”

Oh.

English people trying to travel around Australia and wildly underestimating distance are my favourite thing

a tour guide in France told my school group that a particular cathedral wouldn’t interest us much because “it’s not very old; only from the early 1600s”

to which we had to respond that it was still older than the oldest surviving European-style buildings in our country

China is both old and big. I had some Chinese colleagues over; we were discussing whether they wanted to see the Vasa ship (hugely expensive war ship which sank on it’s maiden voyage after 12 min). They asked if it was old, I said “not THAT old” (bearing in mind they were Chinese) “it’s from the 1500s.” To my surprise they still looked impressed, nodding enthusiatically. Then I realised I’d forgotten something: “…I mean it’s from the 1500s AFTER the birth of Christ” and they went “oh, AFTER…”.

My dad’s favorite quote from various tours in Italy was “Pay no attention to the tower – it was a [scornful tone] tenth century addition.”

My last boss was Chinese, and she said when her parents came to visit her from Beijing they pronounced Chicago “A very nice village.” 

This post keeps getting better

beachgothgay:

Walking was invented by a super cool fish who decided to risk it all

spookymoeghost:

Cyberpunk: themes of postmodernism, the horrors of neoliberalism, the limits of consciousness.
Steampunk: “what if I could wear an ugly hat”