So I’m going to be bitter and old here for a minute.
The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.
This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.
It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.
Like, fuck off?
Fuck off.
I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.
And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like
Fucking, why would I ever.
Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?
I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.
I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.
The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.
So yeah.
Queer as in fuck you people in particular.
And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.
I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.
My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.
but it’s fuckign not.
We spent decades pulling the danger out of it.
And ‘m not going to let it sneak back in.
Every time someone says “queer is a slur, you shouldn’t use it” I feel like they’re trying to fucking gaslight me. Like, I was there when it got reclaimed. I read “Queer Science”, I saw the “Queer Studies Departments” in college and the majors in Queer Theory. Kids do not get to invalidate my life out of ignorance. And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with, because how would the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about know to invalidate that word?
You go. Reclaim that reclamation. I’ll probably use LGBT+ and queer interchangeably, like I always have, and if some kid tries to lecture my 47-year-old ass on the matter I’m just going to have to look at them over my imaginary librarian glasses and tell them “no. you’re wrong. Go back to school, kid, you need to remember you’re sharing the world with adults and there is a consensual reality you have entered into. You don’t get to make it up from scratch any more than I did.”
And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with
Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs.
That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question:
what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines?
and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?
The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride.
So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles).
If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.
I’d laugh and clap at the ingeniousness of it all, if it didn’t involve obliterating decades of community history, solidarity and reclamation efforts.
Please note this. Regardless of how you personally feel about the word, this backlash against it happened much more recently than many people seem to think. And it’s worth pointing out who benefits from the backlash, and it sure as hell isn’t the people who gave decades of their lives to make the word a sign of inclusivity and acceptance.
ok but have any of you thought about pacific rim from the perspective of the precursors
it’s like. you just bought a new house, but it’s infested with termites, so you call the exterminator thinking “alright, yeah, just get those termites gone and then we can get moved in”
the exterminator drops off the face of the planet. you never hear from them again. so you send in another, and you just keep sending them, and it’s always the same. you’re wondering if there’s something up by this point.
and then one of them comes back, battle-torn and bedraggled like “THE TERMITES HAVE BUILT HUMAN-SIZED CONSTRUCTS OUT OF SAWDUST AND SCRAP WIRING AND ONE ESTABLISHED A PSYCHIC LINK WITH ME.”
by this point you’re saying “what the entire fuck.”
so you call in the best of the best, the Elite exterminators, and guess what? the termites slaughter them all in a coordinated assault, and then come to your house disguised as one of the exterminators and set off a pipe bomb in your garage.
Gretchen: On the International Space Station, you have astronauts from the US and from other English speaking countries and you have cosmonauts from Russia. And obviously it’s very important to get your communication right if you’re on a tiny metal box circling the Earth or going somewhere. You don’t want to have a miscommunication there because you could end up floating in space in the wrong way. And so one of the things that they do on the ISS – so first of all every astronaut and cosmonaut needs to be bilingual in English and Russian because those are the languages of space.
Lauren: Yep. Wait, the language of space are English and Russian? I’m sorry, I just said ‘yep’ and I didn’t really think about it, so that’s a fact is it?
Gretchen: I mean, pretty much, yeah, if you go on astronaut training recruitment forums, which I have gone on to research this episode…
Lauren: You’re got to have a backup job, Gretchen.
Gretchen: I don’t think I’m going to become an astronaut, but I would like to do astronaut linguistics. And one of the things these forums say, is, you need to know stuff about math and engineering and, like, how to fly planes and so on. But they also say, you either have to arrive knowing English and Russian or they put you through an intensive language training course.
But then when they’re up in space, one of the things that they do is have the English native speakers speak Russian and the Russian speakers speak English. Because the idea is, if you speak your native language, maybe you’re speaking too fast or maybe you’re not sure if the other person’s really understanding you. Whereas if you both speak the language you’re not as fluent in, then you arrive at a level where where people can be sure that the other person’s understanding. And by now, there’s kind of this hybrid English-Russian language that’s developed. Not a full-fledged language but kind of a-
Lauren: Space Creole!
Gretchen: Yeah, a Space Pidgin that the astronauts use to speak with each other! I don’t know if anyone’s written a grammar of it, but I really want to see a grammar of Space Pidgin.
I’ve repeatedly seen British people make fun of American food for apparently always being either “too sweet or too salty” but our cuisine is still pretty mild compared to a lot of other countries, and having repeatedly tried British food, I’m pretty sure the term you’re looking for is “having any flavor at all.”
Britain invaded over half the world for spices and then decided they didn’t like any of them
“You know the difference between subjective and objective, right? ‘Some rabbits’ is the former, ‘three rabbits’ is the latter, and much more accurate. So I’m going to need you to be very clear when you say there are 'a few’ dragons outside.”
I would kill for more howlie stories. Particularly the one where everyone dressed up as women. Please? I have coffee, bacon, and a genuine grenade (not sure if it still works) from 1942. (Ps pls embarass the golden retriever known as the Star Spangled Man as much as you can. It's funny.)
well, us howlies were willing to do downright stupid stuff for even stupider reasons, so it never took much effort to talk everybody into doing something really really dumb. usually i was the one trying to keep everyone for getting their stupid selves killed, but im proud to say that this particular occasion was all my doing.
so its july 1944, and nazis are still occupying paris. we were sent in to pick up some crucial info from a resistance informer in the heart of the city. but at this point we were already starting to be recognizable, so we needed to disguise ourselves to get through the city. the higher-ups hadnt been specific on how exactly to conduct this particular op, so, left to our own devices, we naturally concluded that we should dress one of the most overmuscled commando squads in the allied forces as women.
we were good at special ops, not logic.
i think whoever suggested it was joking, but in typical howlies fashion, we took things waaay to far, and soon enough we were sourcing dresses and wigs. dum dum and pinky and gabe and jaques and falsworth and morita had to shave their mustaches off. dum dum cried.
morita managed to get his hands on some makeup–he refused to tell us where from–which was great, until we realized that none of us had any idea what to do with it. but then steve admitted what exactly he’d been up to with the ladies of the star spangled show. turns out that aside from hauling their luggage everwhere, he’d also been on hair-and-makeup duty nearly every night. i guess the ladies decided to put his artistic skills to use, because the man knew his way around a blush brush. (the rest of us were not sure what a blush brush was.) even in 2017, he can still do a contour like nobodys business, because he apparently decided that was something worth knowing. so steve did our makeup, and all of us learned how to do lipstick. more useful combat skills for the howlies dossiers.
falsworth had a friend who ran a really fantastic underground drag show, so he negotiated wigs in return for promising to send steve over to help with a show sometime. we did not tell steve about that promise until later. gabe found the dresses, and i dont know where he got them, because they were somehow big enough for us.
except for steve, who has the waist-to-shoulder proportions of a pizza slice. he got stuck halfway into a dress–caught with one arm in, his head and other arm out–with his fully-made-up face slowly turning redder and redder. all of us tried, but we could not wedge steve into that dress.
so instead we put him into a wheelbarrow full of garbage.
the rest of us–the worlds burliest but most well-made-up ladies–set off in groups of twos and threes through occupied paris. happy sam pulled the short straw and had to wheel along the stevebarrow, which not only stunk but was heavy as hell. the nazis working the checkpoints must have liked their ladies large and muscular, because we made it through to the drop point with no problems, aside from falsworth getting a little to in to the flirting. steve kept griping, but we kept telling him garbage is quiet steve, shut up.
we made it to the drop point, this big old house on rue des grands augustins, one of those huge mansions. but what we’d carefully avoided telling steve was who exactly the house belonged to, because his birthday was the next day, and this–aside from being a crucial intelligence mission–was his birthday present.
the house belonged to pablo picasso.
so we all slipped in through a side door, and when happy sam and the steve barrow finally caught up with the rest of us, happy sam turned it over sideways and out tumbled a very irate, still made-up steve in his captain america costume.
he was pissed as hell until he realized who exactly the weird little guy covered in paint was, and then he blushed so red i thought he’d cook the makeup right off his face, and he started stammering like that time in first grade suzy miller said he was cute.
anyway, he and picasso got along like a house on fire, and the rest of us enjoyed some proper french cooking while they babbled art at each other and scribbled in each other’s sketchbooks. picasso drew steve a portrait of himself, which is why one of steve’s battered stained sketchbooks is valued at 700 thousand dollars. it’s because halfway through theres a bunch of picasso sketches, and a little painting of captain america wearing makeup in a heap of garbage.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”
Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”
‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’
“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”
‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’
“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”
‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
“what if i just straight up break down in class and scare the shit out of ms neo so that she’ll postpone the test?”
“is it too early if i have a breakdown in january?” “its the second week, man.” “i know.”
“let’s all just collectively skip the national exams, fuck the system!” *aggressive cheering*
in a really choked up voice, “i have rights.”
“what if i become a monk? do monks have to take exams?”
“in this context, what does ‘rapid’ mean?” “FAST AND FURIOUS”
“did y’all do the chem homework?” *collective ‘no’s* “alright, good. nobody be a wimp and do their homework, alright? if we’re fucked, we’re all fucked together.”
“wait, you mean to say that this school still teach fun stuff like music??”
*scandalised gasp* “you stole my circle template’s virginity!” “all i did was hook a finger through one of the holes!” “exactly!”
“i bought this $2 knee guard just because i want to pretend that i’m injured so that i can sit out of PE.” [slides knee guard on] “i have three consecutive tests after this and lord knows i need all the extra study time that i can get.”
in an increasingly panicked voice, “i can’t just do my lit homework in 30mins!” “well, i did.” “what did you put for characterisation and further analysis?” “i said the protagonist was a fuckboy, and then proceeded to write 3 paragraphs and a conclusion consisting of utter bullshit on why he’s a fuckboy.”
“don’t they call people from Germany, germanese?” said by a top student.
“i think i’m a hermaphrodite.”
“fuck, i hate this. can i just be an escort? or have like 67 sugar daddies?”
in the middle of physics class: “i’m leaving, i’m fucking leaving. i’m going down to the canteen to buy takeouts of 3 fishball noodles. y’all want anything?”
“i want the saddest pepe the frog meme you can find as our class logo.”
“i found a salsa dip in my bag, anyone have some chips?” [a girl sighs, puts down her calculator and reaches into her sports bag] “i do.”
What happens once you kill yourself? Because I'm ready to go.
You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself
Dragon Age: Oh You Want to Romance a Dwarf? Well, Uh, Maybe Later
Dragon Age: If You’re Tired of Fancypants Tolkienian Elves That Have Everything Handed to Them on a Silver Leafy Platter, Have We Got a Story For You
Dragon Age: Sing-Along With Mother Giselle!
Dragon Age: We Put the Eyyyyyyy in Morally Grey
Dragon Age: Every Ancient Order of Honorable Warriors Is Probably Corrupt and/or Keeping More Secrets Than Your Entire Party Put Together
Dragon Age: Those Barriers Can Totally Be Broken Without Magic of the Opposing Type, We Lied (Oops)
Dragon Age:How the FUCK Are You Swinging That 8-Foot Sword
Dragon Age: There’s Either a Billion Dragons That Are a Mild Nuisance Or Ten That Will Violently Destroy You, There Is No Middle Ground
Dragon Age: Chances Are Flemeth Will Never Die, Ever
Dragon Age: If Joan of Arc Got a Little Out of Hand
Dragon Age: Every Time We Tell You Somewhere Is Terrible It Probably Isn’t That Bad (Except Maybe Kirkwall)
Dragon Age: Being an Elf Means You’ll Never Ever Be Happy and Literally No One Cares (Except Possibly Someone Who’d Just as Soon Destroy All of the World, So, Good Luck with That)
Dragon Age: The Myths Are Mostly True and The History Mostly Isn’t
Dragon Age: Magic Is Evil and Terrible and Will Make You a Monster Unless You’re the One Doing It (Or You’re Friends With the One With the Fancy Title)
Dragon Age: Generally Speaking, Everything You Thought Was True Is Probably a Huge Lie Spread By People In Power So They Could Stay That Way
Dragon Age: If You Thought the Real Church Was Fucked Up…
and last but not least
Dragon Age: If You Think You’re in Control, There is Probably a Mage Among Your Friends Who’s Scheming Something That Will Make You an Accessory to Murder and/or World-Destruction But Hasn’t Told You Yet (Sorry)
Our Spitzer Space
Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets
around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area
called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a
rocky planet.
Assisted
by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of
these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of
known planets in the system to seven.
This is
the FIRST time three terrestrial
planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure
both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.
All of
these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under
the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in
the habitable zone.
At about
40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is
relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located
outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as
exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are
planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.
In this
animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area
representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the
star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant
liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of
the star.
Using
Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and
developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh
and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.
For
comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would
be the size of a golf ball.
Based on
their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further
observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but
also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.
The sun at
the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool
that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer
than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1
planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.
The
planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was
standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see
geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes
appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The
planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of
the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual
day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those
on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and
extreme temperature changes.
Because most
TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one
another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto,
Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also
tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than
Jupiter, yet much warmer.
How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?
Spitzer,
an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited
for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light,
whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely
positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the
planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the
system.
Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some
light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can
determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long
it takes for the planet to orbit the star.
The
TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to
study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will
help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space
Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be
able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and
other components of a planet’s atmosphere.
At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like:
Some of them are so chill that you can ditch most of class so long as you can handle the final.
It’s all about playing it by ear.
YOU DON’T ASK TO GO TO THE BATHROOM PLEASE SAVE YOURSELF THE EMBARRASSMENT.
It is NOT harder than high school. You’re more or less ready for it if you do ok in high school, ok?
Seriously. I got A’s in AP classes yet was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to handle college.
Surprise surprise?
AP classes are harder than college classes.
No joke.
College professors are a lot more liberal on what counts as a “right” answer.
Plus they give you points for caring.
Some classes give you points just for showing up.
There’s an atmosphere of controlled panic, and you are not the only one.
You can pretty much go up to anyone and say god life is a nightmare and finals are gonna kick my ass, and they’ll go saaaaame, regardless of how genius they’re supposed to be.
Seriously.
College student here.
High school teachers are the WORST of liars.
They’ll tell you college is a “whole nother level” but that’s such horse shit.
High school is a standardized sheep counting facility.
College is a research lab full of cats that may or may not do what you expect.
Honestly my parents have been talking to me about college for years, and I’m legitimately drowning in anxiety. This is the single most helpful, relieving, beneficial thing I have ever fucking heard, and it’s off a shady website where we go to rant about our fandoms and political views. And I am 100% okay with that.
Some Belated Valentines 2k17 Highlights from Flower Land
- The giant Russian man who stormed through the door while we were quite busy and shouted “Whoooo is helping me? I need BEST FLOWERS in the WORLD because I have BEST WIFE!!”
- The old man who picked up his roses at 8 AM and when I said “I hope she likes them!” giggled and said “These oughta keep me outta the dog house for at least a week!”
- At 3 PM: “I need a delivery of tulips to the south side today.” “We aren’t doing any more deliveries to the south side today.” “I should tell you that this is on behalf of my client {Redacted Football Player} of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.”
- “Hey, boss, I have an order from FootballPlayer of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.” “Don’t you mean FootballPlayer of The Bears FOR NOW?”
-“Okay tell him we’ll do it but he has to buy all our remaining tulips.”
- One guy wanted to buy a teddy bear holding a real rose so I made a teeny tiny rose bouquet for the bear to hold and it is easily the cutest thing I have ever made.
- This same guy grabbed a 55 dollar arrangement from my table and brought it to me and said “Add flowers to this until it is 200 dollars.”
- Valentine’s Day makes some men crazy.
- When the last man came in to pick up his arrangement twenty minutes after we were supposed to close everyone who was working shouted his name in unison and it was Hilarious.
- All the parents sending flowers to their single professional daughters. Almost all of them made me teary. People from all over the country have daughters who live in Chicago and are single and they all wanted to send their single Chicago daughters flowers.
- “A man is calling and he says you are his best friend?” “What?” “He has an Eastern European accent?” “OH! It’s the man who has the best wife!”
- “I would like 100 roses.” “That will be 600 dollars.” “I would like 12 roses.”
Due to the well of my friends’ “def not an axe murderer” date recommendations drying up, I have turned to that most sacred of modern relationship institutions: online dating. As a very busy person trying to get it in with other very busy people, I prize honestly and directness above all else when it comes to profile creation. I include full body shots in my photos, try to minimize the use of MySpace angles in selfies, and write at the very top of the summary/caption/profile that I am fat. Not “curvy,” not “thick,” not “lots to love”–I’m f*cking fat. I’m not ashamed of it, but I also known that weight is a dealbreaker for lots of people. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
About a year ago I met “Evan” via Tinder. We exchanged friendly messages for a few hours one night and agreed to meet up for drinks the following evening. I waited for a full hour past the designated time, and just as I was getting up to leave, the texts started rolling in.
“I can see you sweating from here.” “How long does it take you to roll out of bed every morning?” “Is there an earthquake or are you just getting up for more pretzels?”
Really idiotic, juvenile shit. Four separate numbers, commenting on things like my clothes, which clued me in that the senders were nearby. This went on for 15 minutes before I finally saw Evan, trying to hide in at a corner table and giggling with a group of buddies. I made eye contact, saw that he saw me, and then walked out. The texts kept up until I blocked the numbers a few hours later.
I ran into Evan about 3 weeks later. We got on the same elevator, and he tried really hard at being super interested in the emergency phone instructions. I just confronted him, and he admitted it was just some “game” that him and his friends play. He knew I was fat before agreeing to meet up; they all did, because that’s what they do. Match up with fat women, then either ghost them or “troll” them at the meet-up. It was also kinda obvious he’d never seen any consequences from this bullshit, as he was sweating pretty hard and looked more humiliated than I felt. I just said whatever and walked out, expecting to never see him again.
About a month ago, some local foodie wrote a great review of the restaurant I own, and we’ve been slammed ever since. In the past, I stayed mostly in the kitchen, but I’ve been doing more and more front-of-house stuff lately, and Valentine’s Day I was working a bit of a split between the two.
I saw Evan just as he was pushing in his date’s chair. My name isn’t on the restaurant, and he didn’t see me. I checked the section up at the hostess stand and saw that one of my favorite old-timers, Nan, was going to be his waitress. I went to the bar till, took out $400, put it in her hands, and said, “This is going to be your only table for the rest of the night. You are going to make this the worst date he has ever been on.”
She spilled every single thing she brought out to the table, all over him. I was waiting for him to blow up on Nan, but he bottled it up, obviously trying to make a good impression on his date. She seemed like a perfectly lovely lady; I told Nan to make sure everything was good for her and terrible for Evan.
She poured ice water on his d*ck. She smacked the back of his head with the edge of a tray. Spilled soup on his shirt. Dropped every fork he asked for. I personally oversalted his food, used the shit liquor for his drinks, used flour instead of sugar on his dessert. To be honest, I don’t know why he didn’t just walk out. He must have really wanted to f*ck this woman.
Finally, he cracked. Demanded Nan find the manager and bring her out. I was only too happy to emerge from the kitchen with my chef’s coat and say what, I’m not ashamed to admit, I’d been planning out all night.
“I would have said hi earlier, but I didn’t want the earthquake to disturb your dinner.”
I will savor the look on Evan’s face for the rest of my life.
He was a little too flummoxed to explain, so I pulled a chair up to the table and introduced myself to his date, Amanda. Told her how I met Evan. Showed her some fun old messages. Then I told gave her a voucher for a free meal on her next visit and told Evan to get the f*ck out and never come back.
why does so much post apocalypse media have people wearing straight up bdsm/fetish gear like. do the kinksters watch the world ending and think “oh boy i can wear my bondage gear in public now”
thats actually exactly what happens
What I wanna know is why the spiky kink warriors are always the bad evil marauders. They might be into some weird shit and unafraid to show it but that doesn’t mean they want to go around killing dudes. They’re a tight-knit bunch. A lot of them are queer. They understand the importance of community.
If the government collapses and all laws come to an end, the people rampaging around killing and looting are gonna be like, frat boys and 4chan rejects. You can mistrust the bondage raiders all you like but they’re definitely the ones you’re going to run to for help when the neoliberal blood cultists and Nazi meme demons lay siege to your survivor enclave. There’s gonna be gayboy berserkers busting up slaver gangs and burning down warboy frat houses. The assless-chaps leather daddies and weird petplay people are gonna be the accidental peacekeepers of the post-apocalyptic world just because they’re the only motherfuckers who understand the importance of consent anymore.
Listen. Don’t come to me asking how to get the secret cadre of bisexual death commandoes to protect your wretched tent village if you’re scared that we might call in the kinksters for backup. I don’t give a shit if they dress up like dogs and spend all day writing poems about butt plugs. There’s assholes out there acting like Vlad the Impaler on a meth bender and you’re afraid of seeing a nipple. Fuck you. If you really want to get rid of the MRA death gangs you’re going to have to accept that a lesbian chainsaw dominatrix or two might be involved. It’s the fucking post-apocalypse my guy we gotta weigh our priorities here
Per the IRC fundraiser: I would LOVE to read a blurb about Steve Cap eviscerating David Duke (or any other white supremacist) a la Chris Evans on Twitter :) (Hi. Thanks for using your powers for good!)
This didn’t go quite in the direction I hoped when I started, but I hope you like it anyway, Anon!
Steve got a Twitter – really, Steve was assigned a Twitter – when he joined the Avengers, but he didn’t use it very often. He didn’t care for it, and forgot about it for long periods of time. People followed him, but didn’t expect much in the way of content.
Then, one day, a tweet popped up from his account.
You shouldn’t punch Nazis in the face. You will incapacitate a Nazi for longer if you punch in the side of the head or the genital area.
What followed was an eyebrow-raising, thirty-tweet essay in which Captain America laid out the basics of hand-to-hand combat and offered advice for most effective techniques. Every time he could have used the phrase “your opponent” or “the other person”, instead he used “a nazi”.
When someone pointed this out to him on twitter, he tweeted back, ‘A nazi’ is fewer characters.
It was an amazing afternoon, but the news coverage of Captain America’s brutal new twitter branding didn’t really hit a frenzied pitch until the following day, when someone tweeted, So you think I should be punched in the face for my opinions?
Are you a nazi? Steve tweeted back.
I voted for Trump.
There was a gap of about half an hour, and then Steve replied, #trump wants people I love to die; at least to be unprotected from violence. Why wouldn’t I strike someone threatening my loved ones?
At which point the President of the United States tweeted, Pathetic Captain America wants to punch the landslide who elected me. Captain: you’re fired!
And Steve tweeted, Donald Trump is scared of me. Watching a sad old man try to fire someone he doesn’t employ is hilarious.
After which it appeared the President may have lost his mind; his tweets, growing increasingly erratic, eventually threatened a nuclear strike against New York unless Steve resigned.
Bring it on, I’ll punch that too, or didn’t you hear about what happened the last time someone tried? Steve tweeted.
At which point the President’s twitter went dangerously silent.
The following day, the White House announced that the President had been admitted to the hospital with ‘cardiac issues’, and was expected to sign resignation papers at noon.
“I’m hearing that the rest of the GOP finally pushed him out. I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Tony said.
“Jarvis was the one who advised me on how best to bait him,” Steve replied, stretching smugly.
“Pence isn’t exactly a cake walk.”
“No, but he’s never going to try to nuke New York, and he’s not so irrational he’d announce the attempt on social media,” Steve said. “My job is to make sure dangerous psychopaths don’t threaten the United States. One down,” he added, grinning.
Your Spouse goes into the bathroom only to come running out 15 seconds later. Clutching you close they tell you they fell into another dimension and what felt like seconds to you was a 1,000 years to them. They now want you to follow them back because they have built a life for you there.
which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right
literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme
2nd two letters of your mother’s last name Last two letters of your father’s last name
ok but have you considered iron bull rounding a corner and throwing a snowball thinkin it’s like dorian or the inquisitor or krem he’s gonna hit but he hits vivienne in the face instead
his high pitched scream can be heard for miles
“Why’s the Iron Bull running?”
“I don’t know, your worship. But if you ever see Bull running away from something, it’s best to just fall in beside him and run in the same direction.”
if you ever feel like you’re doing badly at dragon age the first time I ever played I gave morrigan two swords and alistair just had a shield
Currently doing my very first playthrough (my roommate @lathori just got Inquisition on her new PS4) and the Inquisition hasn’t even moved to Skyhold yet, and somehow I have been attacked by an inordinate number of bears.
I’m not kidding, these bears did a better job of annihilating my party than any demon we’ve faced, I got down to a sole survivor twice in two minutes of the same attack. Almost every time I leave Haven this happens. Not one bear, not two bears, but SEVEN BEARS all told, I swear to god I’m more paranoid about these fucking bears than anything else, it’s a goddamn relief when I see a rift instead.
So, Shakespeare’s impact on modern culture is felt by basically everyone.
Even if you’ve never seen ‘Romeo And Juliet’ performed, you’ve probably seen a tv episode using it’s general plot.
Or seen West Side Story.
So, how does that work for Thedas, where, as far as we know, Shakespeare doesn’t exist?
Does he exist and we’ve just not heard of him?
Or are his works just…not there?
Maybe he has a Thedosian equivalent? I wouldn’t really think that Shakespeare himself would be included in Thedas, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that there’s probably a really popular playwright somewhere around. Or maybe even…a popular author…who publishes several books…that are well known in many countries…oh my god.
HOLY SHIT.
Nah, because Shakespeare was a bit if a hack who wrote for money, his works were basically just dick jokes…that even royalty loved…whose works were given too much importance…After the fact….oh no
1000 years later: “There is no way the Viscount of Kirkwall could have written the Tale of The Champion andThe Tale of The Inquisition and everything else that’s been attributed to him as well as fought alongside all those people! One person is not that talented! Not to mention, where would he find the time? And that crossbow? Such technology was clearly not possible in 9:30 to 9:50 Dragon. Simply preposterous!”
An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):
… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.
Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.
What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.
However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.
Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.
It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …
This is beautiful.
I am so glad that I have seen with my own eyes, a parody of anti-stratfordians with Varric Tethras as Shakespeare.
When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.
My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.
I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.
Holy shit
how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?
Oh hey bc I’m sick and I don’t see this around a lot, let’s talk boarding school AUs! Because yeah, college AUs are good start, but there’s a few fun details that make boarding schools stand out:
First of all, everything you read in fanfic about situational gayness is true. I’m serious. When you’re set up to live, work, and play at school (and usually with strict controls preventing you from leaving campus) you start to seek affection wherever you can find it. One of the reasons I didn’t realize I was bi for years was how completely normal it was for people to cuddle regardless of gender or sexual preference. Packs of completely straight-identified dudes and even dating het couples would curl up and do homework on the regular. Imagine how confusing it would be for your OTP if they first met bc they were cuddling in a puppy pile along with tons of other potential partners.
Not all boarding schools are for the rich. Some are reform schools. Some are organized around a specific topic, like science or the arts. Some exist simply because students are spread out too far to commute back and forth. My school was sponsored by the government, so the most I had to do was pay for supplies and a train ticket up there once a quarter. (Yes, just like Hogwarts.)
The true enemy is the staff. Not that bullying doesn’t still exist, but when you live together 24/7, a funny thing happens. You might not always like each other, but you quickly start to realize you have a common enemy - the adults in charge of this zoo. And when you have a common enemy, it’s easier to get along. 99% of our teenage spite was redirected from each other to the security guards who prevented us from innocently taking each other’s clothes off in the bushes, which meant we didn’t beat the shit out of each other so much.
Related, everyone becomes an exhibitionist. Similar to the confusing lines around being gay/straight/whatever, when you’re trapped at school you have no place to go to get it on. So when people do become involved, they either have to find a super secret hiding place (like a jammed elevator) or get used to banging next to three or four other couples at the one makeout spot with low visibility. (Which may change weekly, given the aforementioned staff. I remember one time watching a lazy security guard mount a giant headlight assembly on a pole, stand back, and sweep the high beam back and forth over a hillside. Half-naked couples scattered like rabbits.)
You will probably almost kill yourselves once a semester, but it will be okay as long as no one notices. Unless you’re at one of the mythical rich kid schools where idk, everyone has their own helicopter, you pretty much have to invent your own fun. My school had restrictions around tvs and video games because blah blah “being healthy”, so we also spent a lot of time outside trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Protip to staff: this is actually way less healthy than video games and computers, because bored teens can and will fucking destroy themselves by accident. Example: one trend we came up with was human versions of all board games, not just chess. This sounds kind of adorable and innocent, until the incident where we attempted Human Jenga. Protip to everyone else: DO NOT PLAY HUMAN JENGA. Even if you’re being very careful about stacking people, eventually the sheer weight of the stack will start to smother the people down below even if you thought their chest was clear. And if they can’t breathe, they can’t let you know they are dying. We almost lost the bottom row over that. (No staff ever found out.)
Prank wars are real, and they get out of hand. Again, when well-meaning adults force you to make your own fun: fun is prone to escalate. Food fights become whole dorm events; nerds get revenge by fucking with goddamn everyone. One time some friends and I got access to a guy’s computer, put a back door in it, took control of his machine remotely and convinced him he’d created an emergent AI. Another time I got line of sight to a window in a rival dorm and took down their computer every time someone started a paper. In retrospect these are all extremely dick moves but uh I was not always aligned good in high school.
That’s all I can think of for now - go forward and sin with pride!
You learn how to sneak around really well….
Shit yeah that is also true
My roommate had a boyfriend who learned how to climb gutter pipes for illicit visits at night
Also we played Assassins a lot on campus which required both stealth and intense paranoid
You were assigned a target name and snuck around school with a plastic knife at all times ready to stab them
Jeez! I learned how to be invisible and literally hide in front of the dorm counselors faces. It was so wild. One evening after lights-out I snuck down to a friends room and was literally 3 feet away from the door when the dorm counselor came in. All they needed to do was glance to the right.
Another time I was sneaking to my girlfriend’s room after lights-out. My dorm counselor (different one from previous story) was still awake and her office was still wide open. She was sitting in a chair watching TV. Did I mention the chair was facing the door? So, I recalled all the stories about no sudden movements blend into the background etc. I creeped by pretty as you please without her even noticing that I was there.
A friend of mine became the equivalent of a mob boss. She had people who owed/did favors for her and she monopolized the ramen and soda industry within the dorms.
Also, one never stops jumping at the sound of jingling keys…..
Every now and then, the Marauders fandom gets upset that James was chosen to be a Head Boy when he wasn’t a Prefect.
But of course he was.
It started in the autumn of his fifth year. The fifteen-year-old marched through the corridors, feeling rather important, a badge pinned to his robes.
Filch caught him within the first five minutes. To be fair, James hadn’t tried to run. (If he had, he would have gotten away). He had no reason to. Still, the caretaker grumbled threats of torture as he dragged the Chaser to Professor McGonagall’s office.
“Pretending to be a Prefect,” Filch snarled.
“I’m not pretending you old—” James eventually broke off as he realized that there was no use shouting at the lump of clay that was the caretaker. And so, he turned to Professor McGonagall and said, “I’m a temporary Prefect for the night.”
“Are you?” she asked, with a flicker of amusement. “I don’t seem to recall appointing you as such.”
“You know, Sirius’ brother told me something interesting the other day,” James said. “Did you know that if you looked at the night sky, you could see a star that represents them both? Isn’t that strange. Look for yourself, Professor.”
And she glanced out the window and saw the stars in question. Right next to the nearly full moon. Her face gave away nothing, but she curtly dismissed the caretaker, who seemed surprised if not furious.
“Surely you want me to stay to deliver the punishment?” Filch asked.
“There will be no punishment,” Professor McGonagall said curtly. “You caught a Prefect out of bed. That’s not exactly against the rules, is it?”
James could have hugged her.
As soon as the caretaker was gone, she pushed the tin of biscuits towards James. It didn’t even need saying at this point. He grinned and took his favorite kind. She always had them.
“I didn’t even think…” she whispered. “It’s not full for another three days.”
“I know,” said James. “But he’s really sick this time.”
“He should have told me,” she said. “I would have given him the time off.”
“Yeah, well,” James shrugged. “You know Remus.”
She smiled; she did indeed.
“Did he brief you on your responsibilities?” the professor asked.
“If by ‘briefed’ you mean ‘went into a three-hour lecture on what I should or should not do’ then yeah.”
“You know that I can’t make this official,” Professor McGonagall said. “People would talk.”
“Nah, I know,” James said.
“You can’t brag about this.”
“I know.”
“You can’t abuse your privileges.”
“I know.”
“Take another biscuit.”
He grinned and did so.
“I believe you have work to do,” she said.
James gave her a mock salute and marched away. He performed Remus’ duties all night, never once abusing the power, knowing that doing so would tarnish Remus’ reputation. He performed them the next two nights as well and told a very skeptical Professor McGonagall that he was sick on the night of the full moon. (”Oh dear,” she said. “I hope your illness stagnates.”)
Truth be told, James was a Prefect almost as much as Remus was.
They were some of the only times in his term at Hogwarts that he solemnly swore that he wasn’t up to no good.
IM MAKING THIS CANON! I declare it canon!!! So be it!!!
@asktheboywholived
