Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

vassraptor:

jacquez45:

annlarimer:

kowabungadoodles:

em-kellesvig:

gutterowl:

roachpatrol:

gutterowl:

roachpatrol:

gutterowl:

roachpatrol:

manyblinkinglights:

glimmerbulb:

manyblinkinglights:

curlicuecal:

roachpatrol:

manyblinkinglights:

id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

#everybody else uses sonar or long whiskers and that thing with the sensing electrical impulses#meanwhile: humans can ‘see’ which is a thing which is like and yet unlike ordinary perception#it would also only ever come into play in the same frivolous ‘VULCAN STRENGTH’ sort of way as Spock’s extra attributes#for maximum effect vision would be faithfully written as 100% an asspull in the best way

what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now

Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.

YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.

And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.

Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.

Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.

Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!

IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.

Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls. 

Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits. 

Person 1:  I dunno, dude.  This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me.  I mean, how do we know it’s even real?

Person 2:  Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle?  That doesn’t even make sense.

Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–

Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah.  You’re insufferable.

Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.

Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…

And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like

Navigator: Warp drive engaged.  We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.

Human:  What now?

Navigator:  Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try.  So, matter can only move so fast through space, right?  Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–

Human: Ah yes.  The speed of light.

Navigator:  …oh for fuck’s sake.

Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen! 

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck. 

Captain: What?

Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?

Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode. 

Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit. 

Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck. 

The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.

“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed.  “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”

“What?” Captain gasped.  “But…how…?”

“The light knows all,” explained Hue.  “Time slows down at the speed of light.  It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”

“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.

Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”

“Damn you, Hue Mann.  Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”

“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual.  “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.” 

goddamn, you people amaze me.

I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard… 

“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”

“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”

This keeps getting better

This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.

“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”

“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”

“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”

“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”

“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”

“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”

“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”

“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”

“…That’s different.”

academicfeminist:

beyoncadelrio:

adramofpoison:

gotham-mother-of-monsters:

my problem with the ‘harry becomes lord of 2/¾/5 ancient noble houses’ trope is so unbelievably petty because its that fic writers don’t take it to the potential extreme. like, okay, you wanna make harry the bossest of bitches i get that, i understand, i have that urge too from time to time, but c’mon, be a little more creative about it please

so how about a fic where harry goes to gringotts after the fighting is all over to try to make peace with the goblin nation because this boy does not need more problems and after much hostility and some groveling and promises of future payments for damages caused a plucky goblin lass comes and shuffles harry into her tiny cube office to discuss the nature of his financial situation

(this is a grave insult among goblins. getting handled by a female, first of all, because they are supposedly less capable bankers, hello misogyny among other species, and because they consider anyone who needs help with his money to be lower than cave scum. harry doesn’t know about his. and if he did, he wouldn’t care because he does, desperately, need help)

and plucky goblin lass (who we will call PGL for short) brings out this MASSIVE tome of parchment and slams it down on her desk. a cloud of dust rises. harry sneezes and gets a terrible feeling. some of the parchment is mildewing. the stack is taller than his hand is wide. this can only end badly

PGL tells him that he’ll need to read the entire book to fully comprehend the new scope of his property and harry kind of weakly says “what??”

and it turns out that heyo, when the death eaters swore to follow voldemort with all their lives and souls and magic in their little racist hearts they actually swore a modified liege lord oath which also has the coincidental side effect of ceding all titles (and property connected to said titles) held to the lord in question too. haha how funny who knew

and that’s an ongoing thing. so voldemort was the de facto head of two dozen magical houses at the beginning of the war and he just picked up more as he gained more followers and he probably could have just voted himself and his crew into every position of the government and run the country like that if he cared to do it but voldemort was not about dat political life. he wanted change and he wanted it now. he wanted to MAKE AMERICA MAGICAL BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN. so he started a civil war and just never informed his loyal death eaters of that little fact because they didn’t need to know.

and you might think that gringotts vaults are tied into bloodlines but they’re really not. the malfoy family vault belongs to whoever is the current head of the malfoy family. normally, that’s a malfoy and his malfoy spawn becomes the next head and so it passes through the family, accumulating inherited wealth. it was a working system until voldemort got involved and exploited the ever-living hell out of it.

now this all becomes harry’s problem because it turns out that Right of Conquest is an actual thing. what was voldemort’s is now his and voldemort has has the time to accumulate A Metric Fuck Ton of stuff.

also connected to titles are votes in the wizengamot. and whoo boy, this is where harry’s problem becomes really really really problematic. because the noble families squabble over those votes like children, hoarding them and passing them down, occasionally trading them for advantageous marriages and such, but mostly jealously guarding them like the politcal gold they are. it’s such a bitterly tight-fisted market that any one family has ~maybe~ three or  four votes.

and now harry bloody potter has a hundred of the things and a completely unintentional stranglehold on the government. whoops

and then hermione would shotput harry straight into the wizengamot against his protests and things would become so hilarious i just

some jerkass attempts to increase his own salary for doing basically nothing

“how about no,” harry and his hundred votes say.

somebody attempts to tighten restrictions on where magical creatures like vampires and werewolves can work

“how about no.” harry crosses his arms. “actually, how about we repeal those bullshit laws already in place that make it almost impossible for werewolves to get a job right now, hmmmm? and how about we put something in place to catch abusive owners of house elves? and make sure they get paid? and vacation days? and healthcare? actually how about we get healthcare for EVERYBODY HOW ABOUT T H A T?”

ten generations of purebloods cry out in horror. look upon him ye mighty and despair.

the years after voldemort’s defeat don’t go down in history as The Golden Era. in fact, thanks to harry bloody potter (and some incessant nudging by hermione granger), they go down as The Decade of Frankly Astonishing Strides Toward Equality *cough* enforced by a semi-plutocracy.

(all thanks to a third tier plot never really explored by a would-be dictator YOU’RE ALL WELCOME)

Okay yes. This is well and good.

But. Wasn’t the whole point of Hermione’s subplot with SPEW and house elves is that one can’t just come in and “save” people. That things are never quite black and white as they first seem.

idgaf it’s fuckin fan fiction crack and i will read it and be happy with it as long as the pgl becomes head of gringotts somehow and treated fairly 

Someone

Please

Anyone

Make this happen

@heysidne loooooook

ozeia:

firstofallhowdareyou:

And I’ll tell you a fact about myself based off that word

holy shit do this

himynameisrollin:

fluorescentnova:

forcoloredgirlswhodgaf:

dynastylnoire:

dryyice:

rampyourvoice:

journey-to-my-throne:

dynastylnoire:

Talk to the potential land lord about making installments toward your down payment.

This is how I got out my mom’s house both times.

Each pay check start buying things you need for your place. Family Dollar has just about everything that you will need when it comes to hygiene and keeping the place clean.

If it’s safe talk to your other family members to see if they have furniture they want to donate. Most elderly folks especially have lots of furniture they don’t want cluttering their house and they will love to see you.

Craigslist has a section for things left on the kirb. I got my kitchen Cart free and delivered to me when a couple got sick of theirs

Don’t forget to buy a shower curtain and liner….just don’t lol

Once the apartment is secured talk to the utility companies before you get there. If you have no credit or bad credit they may want you to pay a deposit….I found out the hard way after I moved in. It was not a pleasant experience.

Crock pots are your friends

….you will be broke alot. If you have a car or are thinking about getting one, one job probably won’t be enough to sustain you.

The first time I moved out I had 20 dollars to last me until I was paid again. So I ordered a large cheese pizza and ate that for two weeks.

….if you are leaving an abusive situation you may question if you did the right thing a lot. I had panic attacks before and after I moved out.

This does not mean you were wrong to move. It just means the abuse tricked your brain into thinking moving out would be bad for you.

Your apartment probably won’t look how you want it to for a few years and that’s ok. It takes time to build and afford your “aesthetic ”. Don’t feel bad if your apartment is just a bed, a coffee table, and if you are lucky maybe a used sofa. The peace you will have when you close the door and lock it is phenomenal.

Oh if you eat meat chicken thighs and drumsticks are always cheap as are pork chops. Buy them in the large packs, separate them while defrosted into zip locks, throw them the freezer

Craigslist also has a free section. With enough diligence and scrutiny amazing treasures can be found.

Public libraries have free Wi-Fi and cheap printing for resumes, school projects, etc.

Most places like McDonald’s, IHOP, etc have coupon codes on their receipts for completing online surveys. End up with two meals for the price of one.

There are usually local listings for food pantries that you can get groceries from. I have the full list for the NYC area, I’ll post it later.

Also don’t underestimate the power of a thrift shop.

As someone who plans to move within the next year, good tips.

seagroot

Adding:

For boxes go to the grocery store or family Dollar type places and ask if they have any boxes they can give you. If you work in an office ask the receptionist or the folks in the mail room.

Qvc and hsn have easy pay payment options that will allow you to get items sent to you while making monthly payments. They sell some furniture, mattresses, computers, tvs, etc. Definitely better than lay away, but look out for them over charging.

Counter top dish washers are awesome if you hate doing dishes and your land lord allows them

Salvation Army usually has pretty good deals on furniture. Check with the manger for daily deals. Also check liquor stores for boxes they usually have plenty to spare and they’re always very durable. Check stores like Walmart and Kroger around 7-8pm for deals on whole rotisserie chickens for $3. They’re usually trying to get rid of them around that time. You can make a chicken salad with mayo, mustard, and red onion. It will last you all week for under $6, or you can just eat and store the chicken for a few days.

Also check out https://www.freecycle.org/ !!! We’ve gotten some decent furniture off there and you can post if you’re looking for something specific, too.

Reblog to save a life

eranss15:

devilwithasilvertongue:

umhi-im-alexis:

luvyourselfsomeesteem:

queen-arsinoe:

timonthe-fourtyfive:

winnieportleyrind:

fagvomit:

once in 5th grade my mom bought me this set of like 200 glitter pens because I had mentioned that everyone at school was obsessed with them but I didn’t really care for them so the next day I brought them to class and kids started offering to buy them so I sold them for $3 each and I made almost $500 and then I got sent to the principals office and was told I couldn’t sell them anymore like sorry that I was a natural born entrepreneur

When I was a freshman in High School our Junior/Senior classes were like 90% stoner kids. When you’re a junior/senior, you can leave the school for lunch if you want, so the majority of the kids would go hot box their cars in an abandoned parking lot a few blocks over during lunch hour.

However, since they needed time to air out, they always got back after the kitchen stopped selling lunch, and they, of course, had the mega munchies.

I started selling kids homemade baked goods at outrageous prices, but I’m a great baker so nobody complained. I was making 25 bucks for 4 muffins, and 8 dollars a brownie.

I made like 2 grand before the school made me stop selling food because it wasn’t a “school official bake sale.” but my regulars would slip me cash + orders in the hallways when we passed each other, and there was nothing in school policy about giving away food, so I would just bring them their snacks the next day. The school couldn’t touch me, I was rolling in dough, and rolling out dough, all freshman year.

Find your loopholes, kids.

born entrepreneurs…. insane…

LOL i know two kids like this.

she made some soap and offered some to my dad and said “Uh 17, I mean 7″ and I was like no, you said it right. 17.

other one sold bracelets

I know a guy in highschool who made so much money in sophmore year selling cupcakes the school shut it all down.

a kid at my school has a panini-maker so he sells paninis to other students and everyone called him Dan the Panini Man

but the campus police people shut him down because it’s not legal to sell food if it’s not a bake sale or w/e

so now he’s Dan the Paper Towel Man and he sells paper towels, but with each paper towel purchase, you get a free panini

I THOUGHT HE WAS A MYTH

Rebloggig for the Dan the paper towel man

softjoly:

hermesapprentice:

I always tell people that my cat doesn’t really like people that much even though she is really cuddly so they feel special when she cuddles them.

You are the best person

buffdolls:

indianajjones:

bana05:

brightindie:

Don’t invite me anywhere last minute I enjoy doing nothing so I need to know ahead of time if my plan to do nothing needs to be changed

This is legit and people don’t realize it.

“hey what are you doing?”
“nothing” 
“oh great! so you are avaliab-”
“no you don’t understand. I’m doing nothing.” 

I have learned the following:

“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Why? What’s up?”

Then you have the entire space of their answer to come to terms with potentially doing something, or come up with a better thing to say than ‘nothing’.

Alternately, I find that answering with ‘relaxing’, totally conveys the right mood and people then generally reply with, “ohhhh I know that feeling, no problem, go relax!”

This might genuinely change my life.

coelasquid:

I think almost every time I’ve written a situation where I planned for a character to get killed off, when I thought like “well what if I didn’t do that” the prospect of them just dying seemed like the lazy way out, or something I was just writing because “that’s how stories like this go”.

Like, years ago when I thought I was going to be on an extended hiatus I was planning to do a MGDMT graphic novel that had nothing to do with video games and just focused on the original super soldier characters. Mostly the idea was the same theme, Macho Action Dude Reacting to Movie Tropes Like A Reasonably Normal Guy, so it was gonna have all the motions of those same old conventions, but play out differently. At one point the idea was “the girlfriend character dies and he has to deal with it like an emotionally believable person and not a larger than life action guy”. But when I thought about it, that didn’t sit well with me, because even if it was trying to comment on a trope, it was still “female character gets killed for no reason other than the male lead to have a character arc about it” and that rubbed me the wrong way. So I thought, okay, what if she still gets kinda messed up, so they build her some cool robot parts and she’s like Shit Yeah! This is the best! And she thinks it’s so rad having robot parts it kinda throws off the course her life was going down because suddenly the idea of being Robocop seems a lot more exciting than nesting with her high school sweetheart. And he doesn’t have to go have emotions about a dead girlfriend, he has to learn to come to terms with someone he was very close to having a life experience he can’t exactly empathize with that put her on a road to becoming the person she’s decided she wants to be, but not the person he ever planned on her becoming. So his arc is sort of dealing with the grief of a lost hypothetical person, and learning to respect her autonomy to make decisions that he might consider “a bad idea” but improve her quality of life as she wants to live it. Which, in the end, felt like a lot more of an interesting story than “the girl dies so the main character can have emotions about it. But I only got to that point by recognizing the original idea was stale and racking my brain to do something different.

I guess what I’m saying is, when I see professional TV writers get excited about what a twist it is that they kill a beloved character in something to shake up the snowglobe so to speak, I can’t help but think that they fell into that rut of thinking “this is the convention I have been trained to attach to this story”, and didn’t even stop to think there may have been a more interesting and unique route they could have gone. Intrigue comes from giving the audience something they don’t expect to see. It’s easy to think that killing a character for shock value suits that task, but that’s become such a normal device to throw out there that it doesn’t surprise anyone anymore. It’s always worth at least considering what would happen to the story if you didn’t just go down the first path that came into your mind, because the first will almost certainly be the most well-trodden with the least surprises along the way.

captain–kitten:

captain–kitten:

You know who I’m always really happy for? The little guys who light the Beacons of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. Like their entire lives are sitting next to these pyres, just staring at another pyre, waiting for fire. Trudging up what looks to be Mount Fucking Everest and shit to get to these things, then just sitting and waiting. They can’t not be there, bc GOOD JOB TERRY GONDOR CALLED FOR AID AND YOU DECIDED TO SLEEP IN NOW GONDOR IS DEAD. So they just sit and wait, loyal but bored out of their skulls. Then one day it happens, Gondor calls for aid, and the first beacon is lighted. One by one, they ignite. And Terry is sitting there, fucking doing soduku or some shit, when he sees the flame flicker on the mountain across the way. This is it, this is fUCKING TERRY’S TIME TO SHINE. So he grabs the ignition stick leaning up against the beacon, sticks it into the small fire he has going to cook his breakfast and lunch on, barely containing his excitement as the rag-covered tip ignites. He takes a deep breath and then touches it to the dormant pyre, a mixture of awe and pride swimming through his veins as the flames lick up the wooden tiers, creating a blaze so large he has to step back. It’s beautiful, his orange and gold masterpiece. He whips around to look behind him, eye trained on the next beacon in the line. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. And then finally, another fire! And Terry can’t contain it, he jumps around the burning beacon with joy, whooping and waving his ignition stick, having completed his sacred duty. His purpose is fulfilled and realized. He is elation personified. He has done it – hefted his share of the burden, played his integral part.

Four for you, Terry. You go, Terry.

I’m watching RotK again and it’s this scene and I still can only ever think of Terry. Lightin’ that beacon, savin’ that Gondor.

magiric-magi:

slumbermancer:

slumbermancer:

Impressive wizard tattoos

This can either be impressive tattoos of impressive wizards, or impressive tattoos given by impressive wizards.

Both are good.

Consider: impressive tattoos ON impressive wizards

All right, but hear me out: impressive tattoos of impressive wizards on impressive wizards given by still other impressive wizards.

septemberpoems:

honeybee-x:

allboysarelovely:

if a girl is making you uncomfortable, YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SAY IT.

fucking crush the stereotype that men are always supposed to “want it”

It’s really such a sad idea. I remember once with my ex, I was kissing him when we were in bed, and it started getting more heated, but I could tell it felt different. I stopped and asked if he wanted to carry on, and he said yes, but I knew him well. I had to ask again before he admitted he wasn’t really feeling it at the time. It just made me feel so bad and so upset for him. I think there’s more pressure on men to be sexual. Men love sex, they’d never want to turn it down, if they do it’s unmanly, it’s gay, it’s girly. It’s something ingrained into them from such a young age. It’s terrible and wrong. They think they have no right to not want sex.

Not all men have sky-high sex drives. I doubt any man in the world wants sex 100% of the time. It’s fine to reject it in any situation, whether a planned one night stand or a committed relationship. It’s fine to change your mind before or halfway through.

Men, it is FINE for you to not want sex, and it is FINE to say no if you want to. In fact, please do. It’s not guaranteed the other person will be able to sense your discomfort.

All of this. It’s always okay to say no, or wait, or maybe not right now or whatever it is you’re feeling.

pangodillo:

cryohedron:

I wonder what kind of loot I’ll drop when I die

new ask meme, tell me what kind of loot I’ll drop when I die

rallyonward:

Terrible headcanons:

Wherever Steve is living, no matter if it’s in DC or Brooklyn, the Avenger’s tower or a cramped cabin at sea, at any given moment Natasha is either in the process of or has already broken into it. 

Steve can never catch her; she is Schrodinger’s Russian.

And while she certainly has the skills to make it appear as if no one had been there, that’s not really Natasha’s jam. She’s doing Steve a service. She is being an awesome friend.

Sometimes Steve will return to wherever it is that he sleeps (where he closes his eyes, where he falls unconscious, where he is completely unprotected and what the hell this isn’t funny, except it totally is, Steve, get with the program) – he will return, and he will find that she has brought him a little gift.

It is a gift of home decor.

She has found enormous American flag blankets and draped them fetchingly along his couch. She has found flag throw pillows and placed them artfully on his bed. She once carefully replaced all his dishes with ones that had the Declaration of Independence printed on them in full; on one fateful occasion, she found a framed Mount Rushmore lovingly rendered on crushed black velvet with generous layers of glittery acrylics. (That, she put in a place of honor above his television, with a picture rail and directional lighting.)  

Her personal best, though, is the time Steve went to the deli down the street, talked for a few minutes with the owner, helped an elderly man at the crosswalk, and gave the rest of his spare cash to the homeless vet on the corner before returning home, opening his bathroom door, and finding that she (or someone that she had inexplicably let into his very private rooms, jesus Nat why) had somehow in the intervening time completely redecorated it in the most surreal and gut-heaving rendition of country-craft Americana that could possibly be managed in the time allotted. There were aw-shucks red and white gingham curtains on the window, tied back with burlap ribbon. The toilet paper was in a stand-up Uncle Sam holder whittled from basswood and handpainted by someone’s no-doubt-very-talented aunt. The now apple-scented handsoap was in its own knitted cozy with a red chicken motif along the bottom. The curtain was, naturally, styled as a cheery patchwork quilt. And the entire room had been retiled in a jaunty red-white-and-blue striped and starred pattern that only a severely colorblind or, failing that, terribly insane person could love.

The floor tiles shifted a little when he stepped on them, rendering an unfortunate dip in the previously perfect grouting. That was the only sign that the room hadn’t always looked as if the proud vendors of a town-wide craft fair had vomited noisily all over his home.

Natasha has never admitted this was her doing. She has, in fact, never admitted to doing any of it. Steve, she will always say very seriously from where she has propped herself on several flag pillows, are you sure you didn’t do it?

She will stretch her legs, and curl deeper into the flag blanket she would have immediately claimed upon entering his living room. Pretty sure it looks like your kind of thing, Steve, she will say, and at no point whatsoever, no matter how long Steve waits, will she admit to how she got into his building, went up the stairs, broke into his apartment and placed a four-foot mounted fish above the toilet without a single goddamn witness. 

Natasha will always just smile. (She is an awesome friend.)

weavemama:

shoutout to all high school dropouts, students who didn’t get accepted into college, students who used to be on honor roll but became overwhelmed, students who study for hours but still fail tests, or student who don’t study at all due to depression/anxiety, you are all stars and I’m wishing y'all the best luck possible to get back on your feet

geekysprinkler:

how come xmen quicksilver can save 31+people, a dog, and like 5 goldfish from an exploding building and yet aou quicksilver can’t even stop himself from getting shot

sterekmess:

sterekmess:

how fucked up is it that so many men associate periods and menstruation with women “acting shitty” towards them because of pms,when women are literally the ones who go through actual pain because of the whole thing? 

I mean, dude, this is so not about you. grow up and get over yourself.

shhhhh dickwad, I’m a guy

skeletree:

hungrylikethewolfie:

inkdot:

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash.  This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.

I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.

puzzle-dragon:

Prison was not good to Team Cap.

But prison was absolute hell for Wanda Maximoff.

Sam, Clint, and Scott were all a little beat up. A few cuts and bruises, a lot of anger. Some of that's the battle. Some of that's them being arrested and thrown into maximum security cells.

But Wanda?

Wanda’s in a straight jacket and a shock collar. Wanda’s collapsed on the floor, leaning against the wall, silent, white as a sheet, and barely moving.

Wanda wasn’t just arrested. Wanda was tortured by the government.

Because how do you get an all-powerful and uncooperative young woman into a straight jacket? You knock her out, probably shoot her full of tranquilizers until she stops struggling.

Because why put her in a shock collar if she’s already restrained? To keep her quiet and docile. Because they don’t understand her or her powers, what they do or how they work, so they’ve tried to cover all the bases.

Because why wouldn’t Wanda speak to Tony; why wouldn’t she snark and quip like Clint and Scott and Sam; why wouldn’t she spit and curse and scream? The last time she tried, she got shocked. The last time and every time before that, they shocked her. She was in constant pain from moving or speaking - because every time she did something, anything the guards thought she was trying to use her powers, trying to attack them - so she decided the best option was to sit still, keep quiet, and stop fighting. Don’t make any sudden movements; don’t make any movements at all.

She’s been in this situation before, with HYDRA. But even they didn’t restrain her. At least they let her move, let her speak, let her use her powers. At least they let her throw herself against the walls, let her scream, let her manipulate the fabric of the universe. (At least she still had her brother.) She knows what prison feels like - knows confinement and pain by heart - but this is worse. 

When Steve comes to break her out, how much do you want to bet that she flinched at the sight of him? Moved into the corner when the door opened? Cringed when he tried to unbind her? Whined when he got close to the collar because she was afraid it would hurt him or her or both?

How screwed up do you think Wanda is after being tortured by people who say they’re doing it to protect the greater good?

How long before she tries to speak again? Is it just a whisper at first? Is she quieter than she used to be? Does it take her days before she’s willing to speak above a mumble, weeks before she shouts to be heard, months before she screams of her own volition? 

How long does it take Wanda to let people touch her again? Does she throw Clint across the room the first time he places a hand on her shoulder to comfort her? Does she flinch at loud noises? Stops wearing necklaces because they make her feel collared? Refuses hugs because they make her feel restrained?

How much time goes by before Wanda dares to use her powers again? How long before she lets go of the fear of being shocked for something that’s a fundamental part of her? How long before she embraces the energy again?

How long before she stops being scared and starts being angry?

jollysunflora:

vaspider:

somuchpanash:

kalany:

pfdiva:

roachpatrol:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You really want a human.

you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back 

@roachpatrol

Oh god, now I’m imagining sapient species with lifetimes of, like, a year, and there’s one family that’s been attached to, like, a pirate since she rescued the doll-sized matriarch.  She was 23 and just getting command of her first space cruiser, and because she rescued the matriach, the entire family regards her as their protector, they literally live in her bedroom until they reproduce too much (They have a litter every month), then they start traveling around her ship, and there’s entire societies all throughout the ship after, like, 5 years.

She goes down to the engine room for the first time in a decade because she has to find the head engineer for reasons, and there are literal little beasties down there who hail her as the “First guardian” and are so astonished to see her, and they want to come with her to the promised land, and she’s just like “Where?”  They describe a luxurious land of softness, and she realizes they mean her bedroom.

So she starts making a habit of visiting every place on her ship multiple times a year, bringing the little buggers to see her room and bringing them home, and her legit crew thinks these guys are hilarious and adorable, and anyone with one of them in attendance has permission to visit her room, and long story short, after 20 years, she’s like a crazy cat lady, but with hundreds and hundreds of doll-sized little aliens who literally worship her.

Alternatively, what about the story where we’re the equivalent of the sentient cats? Like we’re small and kinda funny-looking and our lifespan isn’t that great, but we bond with other species like whoa, so most starships have a human as a mascot (the long haul freighters have an entire family, maybe even a village)

And mostly we’re just seen as the cute mascot. But then every now and then the shit hits the impeller. And that’s when you get stories like “he jammed our sonar, and he had a gun on us and we thought we were done for! But, I guess he’d forgotten how flexible humans are. Our ship’s human had crawled out of her nest and behind the console, you know, in that wiring gap? She jumped on his back and ripped his antennae out! With her bare hands! He threw her into the console and she just got right back up and kept fighting, smashed her upper joints into his flaps over and over again, and she didn’t stop until he quit moving, even though she was leaking everywhere and we could see a piece of her inner skeleton! We rushed her to the med techs but we were sure she was done for. But, did you know, humans can reattach their skeleton parts?? She gets around just fine now, says it doesn’t bother her. She saved all of us. She could have just stayed in her nest and been fine, but she defended us and saved the ship. I’m never serving on a crew without a human ever again.”

“Yeah, did you hear about the crew from over Ktl'ree way? They had a gas leak in the middle of that awful nebula they’ve got, took out everyone but their humans. Turns out, their humans rewired their wormhole drive so they could get the ship home in time to get everyone medical attention. Said they figured they’d either all survive or they’d all go together. Now that’s loyalty. Can you imagine?”

“I’ve heard they’re even more fierce about defending the ship if you have a bonded pair. We’ve just had the one, since we’re short haul, but we’re looking for another one after that incident. It’s hard to find one the right age who doesn’t have a ship, though, never mind one she likes. There was one attached to another ship, they actually did bond for a bit, and the other ship offered to pay for our search for a new pair if she’d come with them. We talked to her about it—but she refused to leave us. She said ‘girlfriends come and go but we’re family.’ Can you believe that?”

“They’re amazing. I don’t understand ships who don’t have at least one. I served on a luxury cruiser that had a whole bunch, five or six families. Have you seen their young? They’re so adorable!”

“I know, right? Ours has offspring-from-the-same-parents she talks to whenever we’re in port, and she shows us pictures of their young. We’d find the room if she wanted some, but she says no, she’s not ready—but maybe if we find another one she can bond with. We’re kind of hoping.”

Yesssssssssssssss. This is awesomeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! I am INSPIRED.

… have you guys not read @seananmcguire’s stories featuring The Mice? CHEESE AND CAKE! CHEESE AND CAKE!

#Human alien#I live for this shit