You Know, I Didn't Get An Email From My New Friend Jonathan Harker Today! He's Been Emailing Me Every

When I think about it, I think one of my favorite things about the Curse of DarKastle lore is how it presents an almost comical inversion of the classic Beauty and the Beast story. Instead of being rude to and angering a witch who curses him to be trapped in a beastly form until true love can break his curse, Prince Ludwig gets startled by a witch and howls, to which she responds by bestowing werewolf powers upon him--I don't think the ride specifies, but it seems like he can turn at will? Or it may have been more emotionally linked. But in any case, it's not presented as a curse (in spite of the ride's name -- I think that comes later when everyone gets trapped as ghosts, at least in my interpretation) but rather as a gift in service of his "dark destiny". She prophetically tells him that he's going to become the "wicked ruler of a corrupt kingdom" and then turns into a wolf herself and actively guides him in overthrowing his parents and ruling the kingdom with an iron fist. It's like the same setup as the witch in Beauty and the Beast, only instead of trying to teach him a moral lesson, the witch in Curse of DarKastle looked at this awful little prince and went "I can make him worse" and then enabled and encouraged his many subsequent murders. It's such a wild story setup for a ride and I kind of love how bonkers it is.

Maple is looking at ME!

Willa is looking at Everyone (with disdain)!

cats LOVE to look at things

And again, on the eve of opening night for A Year with Frog and Toad, I find a second Frog and Toad related post, which, yet again, corresponds directly with a song from this show I’m in. 

Either the number of Frog and Toad things I’m running across on tumblr tonight is a sign, or this is some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon specific to being in a certain show... Is there a theatrical version of that? Or maybe Baader-Meinhof isn’t the right term because I didn’t just learn about Frog and Toad, but it’s like that thing where one suddenly sees a thing everywhere just when it’s relevant. Is it a different type of cognitive bias, perhaps? Does anyone know the correct term for being in a play and then seeing things relevant to that play just before the show opens?

Like, I haven’t noticed any Frog and Toad-related content since I joined tumblr in November and the night before we open, I see two things. It’s crazy. Well, I guess I’ll call it good luck? 

But yeah, this one’s Frog’s solo. A very sweet little song. 

i just think this is so important and i think this is the greatest life lesson you could learn in your childhood, or at any age (from Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel)

Another thing I wish could’ve happened in Gotham: Oswald’s family interacting. It seems like we’ve met most members of his family, but pretty much all of them one at a time. It works for the plot, but we don’t get much family fluff because of it. So, these are exactly the sort of character interactions I’m so glad to find in fandom. Gertrude would’ve made a great grandma, and I bet Martin would loved going to visit her <3 All of this is just so adorable and cute and I love it. Whatever happens in the show, Oswald will always have a happy family in fandom :)

spending time with grandma!!!

Returning to the matter of my phone screensaver, I have actually done a separate home/lock screen for the first time, and this is now my lock screen because I was just in a Spicy Watson mood when I was setting my screensavers. 

I’ve also had a lot of wanderlust lately, and it’s just about exactly a year ago right now that I got home from my study abroad in London (and other places in the UK, but the longest portion of it was in London). At one point I stood in almost exactly the spot this picture would’ve been taken from if it was a photo, in fact--well, not precisely at this angle, but along the walkway by the river near the London Eye.

I know it’s meant as Sherlock fanart, and I can definitely hear the theme song playing in my head as I look at it with that in mind, but I love that it’s also subtle enough that it just makes me feel like I’m there. I don’t know if there are any Thamesside hotels in the right spot to have this view, but the purpley-sparkly sky makes me feel like I’m sitting on the crisp white sheets of a bed in the window of one such hotel room, gazing out against the fading light of the sunset as the stars slowly come alight during a power outage apparently because you could never see that many stars from there sorry I know this is no time for realism and the hum of the street begins to dull for the night, giving way to the rustling of the river. It’s just very tranquil when I’m not overanalyzing it and transportive and, again, purple is my color so it’s great for that too. There’s just a particular, unique feeling to sleeping in a hotel in a city, and this piece has that feeling to it. 

Inspired by Sherlock!

Redbubble

Hogwarts kills it with their holiday aesthetics, though. It feels like just yesterday that I was praising their Halloween décor, and now I see these great Christmas gifs going around again. Maybe not everyone at Hogwarts knows what they’re doing, but the decorator sure does! 

(Okay, so like half of these are just snow, but still.)

“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”

Aaaah the feeeeeels, the beautiful, complicated feels. 

Looking forward to these two living happily ever after and occasionally making empty murder threats against one another whilst being clearly in love... 

You paid Hugo Strange to save me? Why? What was I supposed to do? Let you die?

Shoutout to Long Face by the Vampire Lestat for being an actual real song that actually made it onto my top 100 songs this year btw. Do you think Lestat will make one of those little "thank you fans" videos to thank all of us who streamed his music?

More pretty multifandom Christmas art :) 

Ooh, and 42 easter eggs? Challenge accepted. 

Okay so I don’t know all of these fandoms but I’m just going to go through the ornaments, top to bottom, left to right, and make my best guesses. I should put it below one of those cut thingies in case anyone else wants to play. 

1. Illuminati pyramid with a top hat. 

2. The One Ring

3. A tribble, perhaps? Or it could be wookie fur. Nah, I’m going with tribble.

4. Jack Skellington

5. The Death Star

6. I believe its name is Totoro?

7. Star Trek logo/badge

8. It’s not the right shape to be the Iron Man thing... Is this that from that Detroit Become Human thing people have been posting about? No, those robots have circles on their temples. Gah, it looks familiar and I’m probably going to be kicking myself later, but I’m not getting it. 

9. Deadpool

10. Sherlock--Moriarty’s apple

11. EXTERMINATE! DECORATE! WAIT! It’s a Dalek :)

12. The Starship Enterprise

13. The Golden Snitch :)   (Is that capitalized? It might not be capitalized.)

14. The Cheshire Cat

15. Na na na na na na na na Batman!

16. Anything hiding in Scooby Doo, aka the classic eyes in the bushes?

17. Okay so this is the hippo/horse thing that I didn’t know what it was last time I reblogged something from this blog, but upon scrolling further through this blog I learned it is neither hippo nor horse but is rather a “moomin”. 

18. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit... Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, but a hobbit hole, and a hobbit hole meant comfort. 

19. Iron Man (is it two words or one, like Superman? Ironman?)

20. Hmm.... clearly a spaceship but I’m not sure which one. I’m thinking Star Wars. 

21. The “N” seems to go with the “R” and the “U” below it, spelling “RUN”... Oooooh it’s Stranger Things, I get it. My first thought was still “Run, you clever boy, and remember”. 

22. The Deathly Hallows

23. The Avengers’ logo. 

24. BB-8

25. Sherlock’s home address

26. Waffles, to go with Stranger Things in #21

27. I think that’s one of the Game of Thrones house logos--the “winter is coming” one? Are they the ones with the giant wolves? 

28. No-Face, which admittedly I mostly remember from Adam Savage’s cosplay. 

29. Hmm... um... The pufferfish from Finding Nemo?

30. Platform 9 3/4, of course. Train leaves at 11 o’clock sharp, no time for dilly-dallying.

31. R2-D2

32. The Elf on the Shelf? No, this one is less creepy. Is it the one from the Rudolph movie?

33. Definitely Star Wars. Is that Han Solo’s one, the Millenium Falcon? I think so.

34. I am (baby) Groot.

35. Mjolnir

36. The Tardis! 

37. Continuing the Studio Ghibli theme, is that the Kiki’s Flying Delivery Service kitty? 

38. The Polar Express lantern?

39. The Infinity Gauntlet

40. Captain America’s shield

41. A book on palm reading?

Oh dangit I’m one short. Did I miss one? How did I miss one? I’m still not seeing it--oooh wait, is it just the fact that there were 42 things, and 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Okay that’s what I’m going with since I really don’t see anything I’ve missed. 42, the number of items itself is the reference, final answer. 

Well that was a fun multifandom quiz! I hope other people do it, too. I want to compare results. 

I wish you a very fandom Christmas! *_____* (It’s may be a little bit late, but anyway!) P.S. Can you find all 42 “easter eggs” on this Christmas tree?

Wearing a Texas t-shirt that I bought at a Bucee's in Houston and eating stuffed crust Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple: this one's for you, Doug Eiffel <3