Sparkly Kitty!

The show I’m currently in with my theatre company opens tonight (I almost missed making my customary opening night eve post, but I think it still counts as long as I do it day of!), but since it’s an original work written by our director, I couldn’t just search up the show on here like I usually do. So, since the show explores themes of home and what it means to be home, to go home, to have a home, and what makes a home, I decided to search up pictures that remind me of the place I still think of as home--the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I haven’t lived amidst them for nearly a decade now, but there’s still something in me that only settles when I feel the arms of the mountains wrapped around me. I still felt it immediately last summer when we were driving out through Ohio--there’s a point in the state when it passes from flat lands to hills to the edge of the mountains proper, and the embrace of the mountains always feels like a homecoming to me. When we moved while I was in high school, I was sure I’d move back to Virginia as soon as I became an adult, but now I’m 26 and I still live in the Midwest. Most of the people I know back home have moved away; all my closest friends from the street I used to live on are now off in New York or California or Oklahoma seeking their own life dreams, and though I still love the place, it’s harder to return when I no longer know the people. The things that made up my home have been scattered, divided and strewn across the country, leaving me to choose between the places and the people I’ve thought of as home--and often, I choose the easiest thing, staying where I was planted. Home is a difficult thing to find. I don’t mean to get too philosophical and sad; where I am has its own charms, among them the theatre family that sparked this whole post, and there are things I’d miss about here too. 

But when I think of home and what it means to me, I can’t help seeing images like this in my mind’s eye--softly rolling mountains bathed radiant violet in the setting sun’s light, fading to misty periwinkle in the distance beneath pink clouds. If I could stick my face through the screen and breathe that crisp mountain air, take a sniff of those pretty flowers (phlox I think?)--well, my nose would already be deep in the screen, haha. When I mutter wistfully to myself “I miss home”, this is what I’m picturing. I love this gorgeous photo :)

Anyways, we open tonight, and two people dropped out of the show last minute so I’m going to be doing a quick change to a scene that I have only rehearsed with the other actress twice now, so... wish me luck and broken limbs! 

Thank you this has been invaluable to me as an actress developing this character :)

contrary to popular belief, Mercy Lewis actually lives naked among the raccoons in the forest that surrounds Salem

Well... heck. My mom literally just called me and told me this was happening (”I know it meant a lot to you when we visited it, so I wanted to let you know”, she told me) and I just... didn’t really know how to react. Honestly, I opened tumblr to kind of distract myself, but then I suppose I am glad to know some more facts and specifics on exactly how bad it is. 

I did look up the video of the tower collapse, too. Wow. It does feel like a gut punch to watch. 

But I am glad most of the stone structure of the building should be alright. I was in first grade when we visited it, and I would love to go there again; I know you can’t exactly order a new church spire online, but hopefully they can get it fixed.

Thank you for the information. My prayers are with you.

notre dame is burning.

this is ok.

it has happened before. it will happen again. it has been lost before. it will be lost again. and again. and again. and again. art and architecture are transient, and temporary, and 850 years may seem like a lot to the individual, who will live maybe 100 if they are very lucky and very healthy, but even the pyramids at saqqara have only existed for about 6000 years and that’s still not all that much, if you consider the grand scheme of things.

yes, this is terrible. as someone who is deeply religious and literally a professional historian with a focus on art and architecture, this is terrible. im mourning. im gutted. im horrified and upset and miserable. but.

it’s not over.

victor hugo wrote hunchback because notre dame du paris was in the process of collapsing and falling apart, and revitalized the entire world’s focus and love for this church, and that was not even 200 years ago. it led to it being renovated.

the roof has fallen in. the scars of fires are on its buttresses. the rose window has fallen out. the beams and piers have collapsed. the spire has toppled. the stones have suffered, and will suffer again, but it is not gone.

renovation work is essential. sometimes things collapse and burn and break and have to come back. it’s not a terrorist attack, it’s renovation, an accident, but we have so much evidence, history, carefully documented everything on one of the most studied places in the world.

it’s not the end.

One of the things I love about having a tumblr now is tracking down all the great fanart I’ve appreciated for so long and getting to share it and sing its praises properly :) The lovely Christmas Tardis picture in this set was my first phone screensaver when I started using my first smartphone last Christmas. (Yes, I’m very behind on technology for a millenial.) I love all of these so much, though. The style feels like proper, old-fashioned book illustrations, gentle and fantastical and nostalgic--and, of course, Christmassy :) 

In response to the “which door” question--well, the cheating answer is the Tardis so that you could visit all of the other worlds with it ;) Honestly, though, I would choose the Tardis first for the sake of variety--I mean, how could you turn down the whole universe, past, present, and future? Second place is harder to pick, though. Probably Hogwarts, followed by Middle Earth and/or Narnia--I think those two tie for a close third. Each promises similar fantastical adventures. Wonderland and 221B would be neat, too, but they’re lower priority. I don’t actually recognize the door below the Tardis with the hippos (or horses?) and the lighthouse. Whatever fandom that is is probably laughing at me now. In any case, I love how each door leads to adventures :) 

“The universe is big. It’s vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles.” 

— The Doctor

So if some bizarre Christmas miracle was about to happen with you and all of those fantastic worlds become actually properly real - what door would you choose? ~_^

Also, I have temporary added all of this illustrations to my Redbubble shop, so if you want some of those Christmas cards - it’s better to hurry because they may  disappear from there any second now ^^’

Here is the link: redbubble.com/people/illustore/collections/341550-christmas-cards

When Dracula was giving his big speech about all the battle triumphs of his family over the years and he mentioned "that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova," I lowkey read it as "Casanova" at first and I thought that Dracula was just throwing shade at his weird horny cousin who slept around a lot. I was like "oh I didn't know they were related" until I looked at the word closer, lol.

Gerard is just... a fascinating human. This is somehow both surreal and strange and yet surprisingly relatable? I had never thought of the images a book created in my mind as happening behind my head rather than in it, but his explanation of that is intriguing. Also the thing about climbing into your own head? Deeply relatable. 

Also I appreciate the Barbara cameo :) At least, when I see squirrels in something Gerard-related, I now assume that they are his tame squirrel friends. 

(read top to right, then bottom to right)

Back in February, Gerard contributed to a comic/prose anthology, along with several other artists/authors, called The Secret Loves of Geeks. He wrote a short 4-page comic on the subject of love. It’s very Gerard. Anyway, here are pictures from my copy. I haven’t spotted any chatter about this in the tags yet, so enjoy! Also, the full book can be purchased here– and it’s well worth it, because all these stories talk about love in all kinds of forms, all sorts of genders and sexualities, etc. Really a great thing that he participated in! 

Absolutely the cutest of all vampires <3 

Just thought I’d show off some of my favorite ~#aesthetic~ roller skating pics :) I don’t skate *solely* for the aesthetic but I sure have fun with it--it’s definitely been an excuse to buy some fun new socks! (Check out the ones in the first pic--they have roller skating dinosaurs on them for peak roller skating vibes ;) ) 

There are a few very nice Nygmobblepot wedding pictures out there, but I think this one has to be my favorite--it’s so action-packed and, really, the most “them”, because can you honestly imagine these two having a wedding that doesn’t involve some form of explosions? 

Funny story about this one, actually. I saw it on Pinterest once when I was clicking around, but then I clicked on something else and lost track of it, and I couldn’t find it in my history or anything because Pinterest is weird like that. I tried googling “Nygmobblepot wedding”, but sadly, it doesn’t come up (although some other very nice pictures came up which I’ll also have to share--or I guess reblog; this isn’t facebook--some time). So I spent the next couple of weeks clicking desperately through Nygmobblepot art on Pinterest trying to find this one again so I could save it. I never did find it that way. Eventually, I looked at the Nygmobblepot art I had already saved to my laptop to see if I had anything in a similar style, and as luck would have it, I did have some Spicy Watson art in my folder already, and I managed to recognize the art style and follow the watermark back here. It’s a really nice feeling to find such lovely art of your ship, but it’s even more amazing when you find it, lose it, spend weeks looking for it, and find it again! :) 

troublemakers

[please don’t repost anywhere]

This is such a thorough photo analysis! Oswald and Ed are just so deeply fond of each other; it’s lovely. 

And, though I’m a bit behind and won’t be watching the finale tomorrow or checking my dashboard until I have a chance to catch up, it still seems like a fortuitous night to reblog some Nygmobblepot things from my drafts folder... 

Oswald looked so proud when he told Barbara that Ed figured out a way to get out.