the things you find in bloodstone circles

Bill: 5'6"

Barry: like 5'1"

Lucrezia: 4'11"

Agatha: like 5'3"

Klaus: 7'

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

I heard this person say "uhhhh yeah can I get a prosquito sandwich please?" and I knew I'd never be the same. Prosquito. Prosquito. Its everything to me. I haven't been able to stop saying that lmfao. This is my spinch. This is my bagel and creem cheems. This is my ranibow sprimkle.

Read an article in the local paper submitted anonymously by a woman who got a DUI two years ago.

My first instinct was to hate her. Because I hate drinking and driving. Viscerally. Anyone who knows me knows how intense I can be about impaired driving of all kinds (drunk, high, tired). It’s not worth it. It gets people killed. I lost a good friend to a drunk driver. Don’t ever. I’ve gotten in fights with people! I have stolen keys!

“Don’t ever” was, in fact, the point of her writing it. But not because of the danger posed to others. Because of how much a single DUI had ruined her life for two straight years. This also didn’t garner much sympathy from me, because obviously the REAL reason not to drink and drive is because you could kill someone. What do I care if someone irresponsible is inconvenienced?

Anyway, this woman was pulled over after leaving a bar where she had two beers to drive a few blocks to her friend’s place. This didn’t really make me more sympathetic because I’m a hardass when it comes to drinking and driving, but she wasn’t pulled over for any kind of impaired driving. She was driving perfectly. It was clearly the kind of stop that happens late at night when the cops are just fishing. The cop made up something about her stickers being placed wrong or a faulty light, before making her take the normal physical impairment tests (as someone with dyspraxia these scare the shit out of me, but that’s neither here nor there) which she passed just fine. In fact, her driving was perfect, her reactions were perfect. But then came the breathalyzer. And her blood alcohol was just too high.

She got arrested.

And the rest of article was her detailing her attempts since to try to get her license back.

The for profit companies she had to take classes from, the for profit companies who make you pay to install the breathalyzer in your car, how if you are able to plead poverty to get aid for that installation you also have to commit to going once a month to a for profit company that will calibrate your discounted breathalyzer and how if you don’t go your car will get remotely bricked and how the pandemic interrupted the hours of these places without notice meaning her car needed to be towed when she missed an appointment after the place was closed when she expected it to be open, how this added to her sentence, how she lost her insurance.

As I read this, I thought, sure, about how much I hate drunk driving. About my knee-jerk, visceral lack of sympathy. And I asked myself:

Does any of this actually make me feel safer?

And it doesn’t. It doesn’t make me feel any safer at all. This woman was writing this article to say “Don’t drink and drive. Not even once. It’s not worth it.” But what I got from it was, these punitive measures aren’t preventing people from drinking and driving. They’re just… giving cops and for-profits fun new ways to mistreat and exploit normal people. People we, people I personally, can feel disinclined to protect because of judgments we have about them.

Meanwhile, people are still going to drink and drive.

And I thought about what would work. What would make me feel safer. And you know what would make me feel safer? If people who hadn’t planned ahead could still get a ride home. I’d much rather someone call the police (or a service that’s one of the many we institute to replace them) and go “I drove here but I don’t think I’m safe to drive home” and have the reply be “someone will be right there”. Then a pair of public servants show up, one to drive you home and one to drive your car home, and you get home safe.

I would love for traffic safety to be, like, the actual goal of how we manage traffic laws.

But more than that, punitive attempts to control people, blatant disproven behaviorism, doesn’t work. If your political philosophy is about finding the “bad” or “undeserving” and ensuring they struggle, I can’t identify with it. It’s hard to come up with a type of “common crime” that I have more disdain for than drinking and driving, but disapproving of the way this woman has been treated is not the same as justifying her actions. I don’t care! I don’t care if she learns her lesson! I don’t care if I like her! Everything you’re doing to her for a single breathalyzer failure is not keeping the roads safer!

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

Source

like, leaving aside issues like “how much of the clothing is supposed to be made of literal plastic and to what an extent do the Tridentarii actually look like they washed out from Disney Channel while everyone in universe still thinks those are appropriately regal looks”

but just like

think about the skull paint

think about the makeup team designing different daily skull styles for Harrow to wear depending on the episode to emphasize or limit different expressions—what designs will humanize her or make her intimidating or evil, and what angles can the actor work? what designs will make it seem impossible for Harrow to look warm or scared or vulnerable—which lighting will then allow the viewer to see those expressions so clearly below the paint's fake gesture?

think about how much storytelling can be done with the different degrees of Gideon's sloppiness—is her skull still simple, bare-minimum but a little more careful, almost respectfully painted, as she grows to genuinely want to serve Harrow?

think about everyone's clothes—

Judith wearing the exact same thing every day because she has 10 of the same suit—Marta going along with it but with a few small personal details, like changing her braids, the occasional discreet bracelet, she takes off her shirt after being injured in the duel and there's a couple sailor-style tattoos, on one ocassion we see the band of her underwear and it's fucking camo

whereas Pal and Cam wear smarter clothes like capes with stylish hoods and a tasteful brutalist brooch upon arrival and at the dinner party because good impressions are important, but immediately ditch that in favor of trusty, well-maintained techwear archaeologist suits, with customized and hand-sewn extra pockets for specific tools (I homosexually need Pal, well-shaven and combed upon arrival, to soon develop stubble and walk around his bedroom with a half-buttoned shirt as he becomes absorbed in research… anywayyy)

and Corona literally has a different fit and makeup in every scene that somehow impeccably matches the specific brand of charm she needs and interacts beautifully with the color of the goddamn room (Ianthe's colors are always struggling with the environment), and the lighting and angles always favor her somehow, except at the end where she looks a mess

Corona and Ianthe making makeup choices that makes them look more or less different from each other depending on how well they're getting on that day

the Fifth always wearing the kind of understated, elegant and refined but simple outfits that do not scream “rich” at a quick glance but are impeccably tailored to their bodies with high-quality fabrics and the few tasteful bits of jewellery cost more than the average citizen can make in ten years

and the teens wearing carefully scruffed hair and a bit of tasteful goth under-eye makeup to express their child soldier angst and then looking genuinely destroyed and with real eye bags during their last few days,

and the Lady of the Seventh looking like Crimson Peak pulled a Paul with Mamma Mia!, only for us to eventually meet Dulcinea as she is, and she just wants to be cozy in her kitsch hand warmers and let others think she's cringe without giving a fuck

can Silas's clothings somehow look like they've just been starched and ironed before every single shot

does Harrow only take a few, extremely ornate and hand-embroidered but antique and worn pieces of clothing that she needs to get creative about combining, reflecting the Ninth's combination of devotional culture and poverty? does she wear the same two veils pinned in fifteen different ways? do her bone ornaments grow linger and spikier when she wants to be more intimidating? is her embroidered megacatholic death metal gothic lolita popess attire still made of fucking like, nylon, because only Abigail and Magnus can afford imported natural fibers from the colonies, and Abigail wearing a wool sweater is the epitome of excess? I'm sorry, it's just I keep thinking about how Gideon's clothes are synthetic and paper and salads are a rarity in this culture