My Mom And I Are Always Debating What Color Things Are, Like I’ll Say Something Is Blue And She’ll

Merry Christmas from the Christmas Wilf :) 

Also remember the other day when I said Leela was on my top 10 companions list? Wilf is definitely on the list as well. (Actually, who am I kidding, there’s no way I could actually pin it down to a top 10 list. But Wilf is still one of my favorite companions.) 

ain’t no party like a wilfred mott christmas party

I figured I ought to tell the story of my blog background (which gets into the story of my blog) and give credit as best I can for the picture I used to make it. Also I should probably warn you here and now that I tend to ramble. 

So, first off, I have to admit that I can’t give exact credit for the original picture I used; I got it from Google Earth a long time ago, and now that they’ve changed the photos layer, I can’t find the original anymore. I’ve tried a reverse google image search, but it doesn’t come up. All I can tell you is that it came from Narrows, Virginia, or the surrounding area, and it’s of the New River. So, if you’re the photographer who took this picture, let me know how you’d like to be credited (or if I need to find a new background image). 

I love this picture, though, with the tranquil water reflecting the mountains and that lone tree jutting up on the left. It has a nice balance, or perhaps a good visual flow, and it reminds me of home. (I’m originally from Blacksburg, Va, and Narrows is a little over half an hour west and a smidge north of home.)

Anyways, I’m also posting the various stages of my photoshopping (well, actually, I just used the “markup toolbar” in Preview on my Mac to edit the color of the image, but that doesn’t work as a verb as well as photoshop does). 

Aside from my general love of all things purple, I also wanted to tint the picture purple so that it would be a picture of “the Lande of Violet Mists”. The Lande (with an “e” for artistic flair) of Violet Mists is a fantasy land and somewhat of an in-joke going back to the blogspot blog I made Sophomore year of high school. It has a vague mythos on said blog--in bits and pieces, such as the one I have in my blog description here--but it’s mostly more of an aesthetic theme than a properly developed literary location, though I have written bits and pieces set there. Remind me to dig some of those back up and see if any are worth sharing here, actually. 

At first made this edit for aforementioned high school blogspot, and I did try to set it as my background there, but I couldn’t get the formatting to work. When I started this tumblr, though, I was happy I had it in reserve. 

So, basically I tinted the picture pink and turned the temperature towards cool (aka blue) to make it purple. I think I also decreased the sharpness to give it that atmospheric haze and boosted the saturation some to intensify it. I decided the first one wasn’t purple enough, so I made the second one, but that one just looked too unnatural (and a bit too pink) so I went back to the first one (each time I started a new edit, I made a copy of the original so that I could have each step as a separate image) and made it just a little more purple. I liked that one, and I just inserted a translucent square to have that more opaque region in the middle where posts go. That wasn’t wide enough, though, so I actually took a screenshot so that I’d have an image in proportion with my computer screen and copy-pasted the image onto that and stretched it wider, and that’s how I got the final image. I suppose this isn’t necessarily specific enough to be helpful as a tutorial, but hopefully it gives the gist of how I edited my background picture. When in doubt, add purple :)

You’re never too old to get cuddles from Momcat, no matter how much bigger than her you get! :)

Weird girl solidarity is when I complimented the gal at the gas station checkout on her decorative owl and she immediately began demonstrating some very good owl calls for me, and I attempted to mimick her and hoot back, but what came out of my mouth was more of just a flat wooooo sound with no trill because apparently being unable to roll my r's has also sadly stunted my ability to make a proper owl call. Still, it was fun standing there making owl noises at one another for a bit :)

D’aaw :) I love how Spicy Watson’s art always has such lovely bright colors. It’s really such a pretty art style. Also: overly formally dressed baby children. Plus, all of the family feels :) Very sweet.

just like gertrud…

[PLEASE DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE]

Here you go friend. Enjoy :)

SOMEONE FIND ME THE HOW MANY NIMONS SCENE CAUSE I CAN’T FIND IT PLEASE AND THANK

Whenever I post something and I’m hoping people notice it, a little voice in my head starts singing “notes give me notes I do need them” to the tune of “drugs give me drugs I don’t need ‘em” from Na Na Na...

Ooh okay so I’ve been thinking, and hear me out. I know Spike has adapted and become pretty thoroughly modern and Punk Rock and all that, but never forget that, as a human, he was a Victorian gentleman. So, I like to imagine that every once in a while, he does these random little Victorian things, like sending Buffy a truly weird Christmas card like one of the above or wanting to tell a spooky Christmas Eve ghost story. 

Granted, in life, proper little aspiring Romantic Poet* William said he didn’t like to discuss “dark, ugly business”^ such as the “rash of disappearances” that had been going around town (spoiler alert: the ones caused by the vampires that were soon to turn him, but I digress) so maybe that suggests he wasn’t the biggest fan of the Christmas Eve ghost story before his turning--although it’s also possible he simply wasn’t big on true crime (nor the people telling it, since they often made fun of his poetry) but he was still down for a spooky story enchantingly spun on a dark night by the fireplace; I know we don’t get a ton of pre-turn William--but either way, after becoming a vampire and thus becoming into Dark, Edgy Things, I’m convinced he would have loved a scary Christmas Eve ghost story, and I like to imagine he carried that forward with him even after getting into the Ramones and Nirvana and hair dye. And whatever Passions is; I should really look that up. Huh, I guess it’s basically just a soap opera. But in any case, we know the guy likes to tell a good spooky story, like that time when Dawn comes to visit him and he’s regaling her with his own gruesome exploits, so we know he has a talent for suspenseful tale-telling. Even after getting his soul back, I don’t think that storyteller aspect of him goes away (although he probably prefers fictional stories to his personal history now). 

So, one year, Buffy gets a Christmas card with an illustration of Santa stuffing a kid into his sack or frogs falling on ice, and on the back there’s an invitation to Christmas Eve ghost stories in Spike’s crypt (does he move back into a crypt? I’m just into season 7 now and he’s living at Xander’s at the moment but I do still picture him in his crypt) and anyways I miiight have to write this fic now if I can get around to it. As much as I love punk rock Spike, I still want him to be a little Victorian sometimes :)  

*I know he’s technically from after the Romantic Era proper--he was born shortly after it ended if you take Wikipedia’s end date of 1850 and consider that he was I think 26 when he was turned in 1880 (which is firmly in the Victorian era)--but I still feel like Romantic Poet is what he was aspiring to be.

^I looked up a transcript for the quotes; thanks go to this site

P.S. Along these lines, I’ve also been thinking about whether Spike would go Christmas Caroling. I do very much doubt that soulless vampire Spike ever would, but I’m fairly confident that pre-turn William would do it happily; so, my question is, would now-reensouled Spike be willing to go caroling, or would he still be too Edgy? These are the real questions about Buffy’s soul lore we should be asking, haha. 

Victorian Christmas cards were bonkers

Yeees, this is the parallel that immediately came to mind for me too! Oswald is speaking Ed’s language now :) Or perhaps he actually has believed in fate all along. 

Either way, I do hope Ed noticed and appreciated that particular turn of phrase. I think it’s reasonable to imagine he picked up on it, given how word-oriented he is; surely word choice like that doesn’t slip past someone who spends so much time and effort manipulating words via riddles. 

Anyways, I’m just thrilled to see them back together again :) Huzzah for Nygmobblepot submarine adventures!!

Fate