If space travel doesn’t involve sea shanties then I think we’ll have missed an opportunity.
You see though, for sea travel you want big strong people who are capable of managing rigging. For space travel you want small low-mass people who are technically educated, as they are called, nerds. Your space shanties are going to be less booming and more squeaky.
in so far as there will be space shanties, they’ll be filk
I call shenanigans on the big strong people; sailors were young and malnourished by modern standards, and climbing around the rigging is easier if you’re small and light.
Like, I am 100% in favor of shanties in as many situations as possible, but I’m having trouble coming up with a mode of space travel that would require multiple humans to move in concert, thus necessitating songs with a strong beat to move to.
Sea chanties were for providing a strong beat to move to. Space chanties might very well arise just because we’re bored, out there between point A and point B for so long.
(Also yes, @gdanskcityofficial up there has the right of it.)
Space shanties are for warp piloting. Under warp drive, human time perception and time as measured by crystal or atomic oscillators don’t match. Starship pilots listen to a small unamplified chorus singing a careful rhythm while keeping their own eyes on a silent metronome that the chorus can’t see, linked to a highly-precise atomic clock. How the chorus and metronome fall in and out of sync tells the pilot how to keep the ship safely in the warp bubble and correctly on course.
Depending on route, a typical warp jump can last anywhere from one to ten minutes, and most courses consist of five to fifteen jumps before a necessary four to six hour break to check the engines, plot the next set of jumps, and give everyone a chance to recover. A good shanty team, with reliable rhythm, a broad, versatile, and extendible repertoire, and the stamina to do 3-4 sets a day over the course of a voyage, is just as vital to space travel as a pilot, navigator, or engineering team.
Other reasons Shanties will experience a revival in the space age:
We will sing for any freaking reason, or no reason at all, and Shanties are FUN to sing.
Deep Space is a lonely place and recruiting people suited to long periods of isolation might be a good idea. People from Newfoundland/Labrador, for instance.
SPACE WHALES
THEY’RE DEFINITELY REAL I FEEL IT IN MY SOUL
“What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor” is basically a revenge fantasy against your most incompetent co-workers and if there’s something humans love doing, it’s being petty.
Plus, no need for work songs in space? Tell that to all my colleagues who’ve come up with little ditties they’ve sung under their breath while at the computer.
“The Printer Song” and “I Will Fucking End You, Google Chrome” are my favourites.
Do you have any thoughts about David and Jonathan?
The David cycle (can it be called a cycle? Or is it more a saga? Or just a multi-generational family tragedy?) is deeply underrated from a literary point of view. It’s one of the longest stories we have of a single life in the Old Testament aside from maybe Joseph? It’s got it all; mad kings, prophecies fulfilled, self-sacrificing princes, supernatural feats, and a shining peasant king at the center with enough charisma to burn up anyone who gets too close to him and a relationship to God so intimate that he is referred to as God’s son. And the Davidic fall from grace is just….brutal, and he’s so aware of what’s happening through a lot of it. Like his devotion to God just grows more ferocious even as the bodies pile up around him, and David’s laments for his children and Jonathon are heart-wrenching. They still wreck me.
Jonathon is honestly one of the most honorable, good, and wonderful men of the entire Old Testament. His filial loyalty to his useless father and his adoring fealty of David never waver; even when Jonathon’s birthright is stripped from him, even when those warring loves quite literally kill him. Like, everyone I know at seminary is still upset about the death of Jonathon. Reviews on David as a human are mixed, but everyone still mourns the firstborn son of Saul.
So yeah, I get glassy eyed about the love between David and Jonathon and its potentially romantic nature like everyone else on Tumblr, but there’s….a lot more there. And that relationship only haunts readers so much because of how well the author captured these two reckless, hard-loving, blood-stained boys with the world on their shoulders.
my boyfriend and I sometimes struggle to be on the same page when it comes to comforting- often i just want to vent and don’t need advice, whereas validation confuses him and he wants a plan of action
to counter this, we’ve come up with a system where we ask: “do you want advice, empathy, both or neither?”
if it’s just advice, i know to go straight to action points and not spend time on fluffy words
if it’s just empathy, he knows i want to be reassured and comforted and that’s all
if it’s both, it’s time for advice that recognises how hard the situation is and is perhaps gentler in nature
if it’s neither, just a hug is really good
i recommend trying to use this in your lives! it makes sure you’re giving and getting what you need, and reduces the risk of resentment or similar
just remember that I, a registered nurse with a bachelors degree, accidentally glued a patient’s foreskin shut over his penis and had to call a urology doctor to come help me get it to retract
I had to send a page that said “I glued the patient’s penis shut. send help.”
The urology resident said, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this. Let me go ask someone else.”
It’s been like 5 days since this happened and I’m just sitting at the nurses station with some coworkers and the urology resident walks by and says “hey! Glue any penises shut lately??” And keeps on walking
THEN ALL MY COWORKERS WERE LIKE WHAT JUST HAPPENED
and so yeah, that freaking doctor exposed me and went on his way
Guys, I’m not going to ask for your prayers - I myself am not religious, but I am going to ask you to signal boost this. Marawi City in the Philippines has been invaded by ISIS, they are bombing the city and a school zone, and setting detainees free from prisons.
They say that this is a jihad, but anyone who even has a small understanding of Islam knows that Islam is not violent.
This is terrorism.
The world needs to know.
Update 1: They’re exchanging fire from both sides. Electricity is down. Friends are reporting that ISIS members are spotted in the schools and are giving them a few minutes to evacuate before they take over. Filipino media is silent.
Update 2: Christian teachers are being held hostage.
Update 3: Hospital staff being detained, ISIS flag has been raised in the city hospital. The fighting occurred not in the outskirts of Marawi, but on its streets, around the city hall and public market.
I’m sorry, I’m stringing together what information my friends are still giving me. I don’t know how long they can keep this up - a lot of them are saying that their phones are dying.
Update 4: Armed Forces of the Philippines telling people to go underground, airstrikes coming. Mortars are being prepared too.
UPDATE 5: The Philippine President and his family are in Russia. The Palace remains silent. The military is trying to invalidate ground reports to cover up their fuckups.
UPDATE 6: Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines are not responding or have deployed extremely delayed support, according to the Marawi City Mayor in a phone interview.
UPDATE 7: CNN Philippines has a livestream covering the entire thing, eyewitness reports are in, Military is still saying “we’re in full control” when that’s obviously not the case.
UPDATE 8: reports in that terrorists are targeting cell towers now.
UPDATE 9: GENERALS POINTING FINGERS AT EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TRYING TO HELP PEOPLE.
UPDATE 10: ARMED FORCES STILL LYING ABOUT THE SCALE OF THIS ATTACK. THEY SAY 15 MEN, WHEN ALL CORRESPONDENTS ARE SAYING THERE ARE AT LEAST 200.
UPDATE 11: generals trivializing the situation, saying “they don’t feel like it’ll last the night,” when people are literally saying that the fighting still continues. CNN just cut their livestream, will be back in 30 minutes, most are being left in the dark about what’s going on.
at this point, i’m at a loss for words. most friends have stopped updating 30 minutes ago. sporadic updates remain.
i am terrified. our country’s history with martial law is dark, and i never thought i’d live to see this day.
oh my gosh … Guys, spread this around. Be informed.
Oh god guys please someone do something. Please spread this make people known of this !!! Please bring awareness and if you are religious please pray to whatever god and I don’t care if your are atheists or not but you have hearts and please use them please please spread this I don’t know what the hell is up there but whatever you are please save us from this hell
On the one hand, I want to write a whole bunch of crossovers where the Animorphs meet characters from other universes.
On the other hand, every single one of them would basically be “[insert character here] is confused and alone and the world is probably ending way worse than they ever expected; the Animorphs are having a normal day.”
Can we normalize the idea that women can have deep voices? please??
Especially for trans women who feel gross or out of place for their deep voice.
Please, break the standard that all women have high pitched, perfect, feminine voices.
My car got towed on NYE, so after unsuccessfully trying every number programmed into my phone, I called my dad’s ass up at 2 AM to pick up myself and my friends to go get my vehicle out of impound (my dad is awesome. More on that later.)
Included in my group of friends was my friend Anna who had recently come forward as trans. She had very recently started presenting as a woman, and was pretty insecure in it, and had never met my father previously, so it wasn’t as though I had time to brief him on the situation. Anna was pretty shy during the whole ride, tucked in the back and letting her friends talk over her. She only spoke up after I had gotten my car back, thanking him for helping out.
The next day, I called to thank him for that night, and he asked me who was the girl with the deep voice. At first my heart sink in my guts, but without missing a beat, he started raving about how he LOVED her voice. He listed off a few actresses from his day who had had very deep voices, and how he adored it, and that kind of slow sultry speaking had been fading more and more as pop culture pushed for childish voices in women.
Your deep voice is gorgeous trans friends (and cis friends too.) it is warm and low and smooth like honey and perfect in every way. It is smoldering and evocative and absolutely beautiful.
anyway shout out to all my girls with strong jawlines and broad shoulders y'all we are so beautiful it’s unreal and don’t ever let anyone tell you different
just throwing it out there but its 200% acceptable for my mutuals to im me posts they think id like with no need for an explanation or conversation. send that good content my way
i dont care how corny iris by the goo goo dolls is bc i love iris by the goo goo dolls and i will continue screaming iris by the goo goo dolls from the top of my lungs every time i hear iris by the goo goo dolls for the rest of my miserable life
When Earth discovers FTL travel, the world never unifies into one government. When new species make contact, they are surprised to learn that the twenty strongest empires in the galaxy have their capitals on the same planet.
So now Secret Empire has revealed its Shyamalan Twist and given the readers a Good Guy Steve Rogers as well as Hydra Cap, and the kinds of dickbags who, when this whole bullshit began were dismissing people’s complaints with “oh come on, don’t you know how comics works, it’s all going to be put back at the end, blah blah blah…” are crowing I-Told-You-So’s.
Please everyone, y'all need to go see Wonder Woman on June 2nd! It’s so unbelievably important for this movie to have a big opening weekend, it will effect almost every female led action movie coming forward. Take you friends, take your families, tell other people with kids. Female action movies outside of Star Wars and Hunger Games historically haven’t done very well, we need to make sure that Wonder Woman is huge so more female led superhero movies get green lit.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has had its spending increase by $2 billion to a total of $34 billion. Trump requested this to be cut.
NASA has been granted $19.7 billion in funding, an increase even on what Obama requested. Of this, $5.8 billion is set aside for science research, including $1.9 billion for the Earth Sciences – something Trump officials said they wanted completely defunded.
$37 million has been given to NASA’s STEM programs and outreach, with $100 million total going towards educational programs, something Trump also wished, and still wishes, to cut by 2018.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest federal fund for science and academia, has been given $7.5 billion, a slight increase from 2016’s budget.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been given $1.09 billion, a slight increase from 2016. Trump wanted to cut this by 10 percent.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which faced a 31 percent cut by this year or the next, has only had its funding cut by 1 percent.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been given $3.5 billion
Renewable energies and clean energy research funding have been boosted by $17 million.
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body.
that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
on the topic of humans being the intergalactic “hold my beer” species: imagine an alien stepping onto a human starship and seeing a space roomba™ with a knife duct taped onto it, just wandering around the ship
it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.
“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”
“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.
“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”
“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”
“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”
“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”
“but then what is its purpose?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says, leaning down to give the space roomba an affectionate pat. “it just seemed cool”
this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I thought about it for five seconds and realized that if I were, say, a random communications officer onboard this ship and someone taped a knife to a roomba it would take maybe three weeks before even I was inordinately fond of Stabby. I would be proud of Stabby when I met up with my other spacefleet friends for space coffee, I would tell them about the time Stabby got the second mate in the ankle five seconds before the fleet admiral beamed on board and she swore in seven different languages in front of high command.
also by the fourth day Stabby would be in the ship’s log, he’d have little painted-on insignia, people would salute him as he went by, and someone would hook up a twitter account to tweet maniacal laughter and/or a truly terrible knock-knock joke every time he managed to nick someone.
Omg so the ting I typed up might actually happen this is gold
I am suddenly astonished that Stabby isn’t Farscape canon. 1812 was weird enough.
Stabby’s little charging dock would start accruing cuddly toys and commemorative holo-vids of Stabby’s greatest stabs. Its insignia would start off at a fairly low rank, but soon, without anyone every discussing it, everyone would know that Stabby got to take the rank of the highest ranking crew member it stabbed. The ceremony for Flag Admiral Stabby was beautiful. The captain gave a speech.
Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.
Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.
Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.
As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.
The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” - an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question - and quickly intercepted them.
Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.
Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.
Recommendations/Actions:
All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.
Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.
Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.
Cleaning unit D4.87 AKA
“Sargent Stabby” has been promoted to Quartermaster, and is now considered the superior officer of all autonomous drones on the ship. All Class #1 drones have been programmed to salute their superior with their effector, should it enter the room while they’re active.
This is less stupid than things I’ve heard that go on, on submarines.
59. There is a yardstick duct taped to the top of Gryffindor tower. It has only one purpose: with this addition, Gryffindor tower is a foot taller than Ravenclaw tower.
I’m gonna do this for black sails, since nothing was specified!
3. and ur really trashy im-going-to-hell ship
…………..I really am not ashamed of anything. Maybe Charles/Teach?
13. what is your heart-breakingist head canon
The heart can break an infinite amount of times, and so I have an infinity of heart breakinginst head canons, but here’s a recent one:
Jack’s ship is taken. He’s given a short trial in Port Royal, where he eloquently argues in Anne and Mary’s defense. “They’re both carrying my sons,” he tells the judge, buying Anne as much time as he can, his last and most important act on earth. “Hang me, hang my men, but don’t allow innocents to suffer the sins of the father.”
The judge grants him Anne’s life, and Mary’s, and one final request. He asks to see Anne.
”What the fuck, Jack,” she says in a cracked voice, hurtling herself into his arms.
”It’s no use, my darling,” he says into her hair, and oh, his voice comes out odd, too. “It’s no use. I’ve already saved you.”
”Didn’t want you to save me,” she says, and her hands dig into his back, hard. “I wanted––” she breaks off, giving him that wide, furious stare that means she can’t bear to say what she must. He finishes for her.
”You wanted me to fight with you,” he says gently. She wants to go into the ground with him. Always has. “Yes, I know. Better to fight like a man than hang like a dog.”
”Fuck you,” Anne says, and she means she loves him, so he kisses her.
”Live for me,” he says against her mouth. “That’s all I ask.”
The next day, Jack is taken to the gallows. His last thought isn’t of Anne, after all, but of Charles Vane, dead so many years ago. By all accounts he did this part very well, and Jack wants to be like him in this, Jack wants––
Max bribes Anne and Mary’s way out of prison a week later. When they sail away from Port Royal, Anne won’t let Max coax her belowdeck. She stands at the rail when they pass the cay, and the last thing she sees of Jack Rackham on this earth is his body swinging from a gibbet.
14. what is ur crackiest crack ship
Given that I treat Charles/Jack like the secret sitcom romcom happening on a murdery drama show, probably Charles/Jack.
Millennials have made it clear they most want career advancement and growth, something not every workplace can offer on demand. But in lieu of those opportunities, many companies are resorting to quick fixes in an attempt to shape culture. Whether it’s free snacks, Ping-Pong tables, or beer taps, these perks—like participation trophies before them—are trinkets that do not thoughtfully consider the symptoms of the problem before providing a treatment.
Vacation usage—a benefit repeatedly found to be more valued than raises, bonuses, and retirement plans—is a measure of trust and an important part of the work-life balance equation. Despite its value, a study by Project: Time Off revealed Millennials are not taking the vacation they earn. In fact, they are the most likely generation to forfeit time off, even though they receive the least amount of vacation days.
Research into Millennial vacation behavior shows they are afraid, not entitled. Compared to Boomers, Millennials are at least twice as likely to say they are fearful of losing their job. This cohort worries about what the boss might think, wants to show complete dedication, and does not want their bosses to see them as replaceable.
These findings are counterintuitive to the coddled Millennial stereotype that ignores the circumstances of the generation’s experience. Coming of age during an economic downturn has consequences.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) has formally introduced a bill into Congress that would require Trump to reimburse the government for funds spent on travel to his own properties, such as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.
Lieu’s bill, the Stop Waste and Misuse by the President (SWAMP) Act, states that Trump’s travel “results in the American taxpayer effectively subsidizing the president’s businesses.” The bill would also require that Trump reimburse the government for Secret Service costs derived from visits to his properties.
#tbt that time two brothers bought their own planes, learnt to fly them and disguised them as soviet planes so they wouldn’t be questioned and then flew into east germany to rescue their third brother from a park and recorded the entire operation and got away with it
no but legit this is one of my favourite stories from the 20th century it just sums up human ingenuity and how walls just don’t fucking work when people will do anything to cross them
the first brother and a friend paddled over the Elbe on inflatable mattresses in the middle of the night to escape the east. they got picked up by a Wessi police officer, who said something like “bit cold for swimming, ey boys?” and the brother says “not when you’re trying to leave the East.” because all East Germans were automatically citizens of the West too, they were taken into town and established themselves there.
the second brother scoped out a particularly dark stretch of the wall. He escaped over it to the west by getting into a high building and shooting an arrow with a steel cable attached over to another building in the west. He then ziplined over. In response to his escape, the Stasi and the Wall designers built another guard tower in the middle of the stretch so no one else could pull the same stunt.
the two brothers met up and heard that their who was still in East Germany also wanted out. So, they learnt to fly planes and disguised them as soviet planes. This was so, if the border guards saw them, they wouldn’t fire on them - they’d have to ring up the Kremlin and ascertain whether they were actual soviet planes on an organised fly-by. they flew into East Germany at dawn (recording it all on camera because you’ve got to do it for the vine even before vine exists), landed in a park where their brother was hiding in the bushes, loaded him onto one of the planes and flew out of East Germany, laughing all the way.
other great moments include - the guy who broke out of the GDR by driving a very low-slung sportscar under a barrier, the family who built two hot air balloons with their bare hands, the guy who managed to windsurf out of East Germany, the man who stole a tank (my hero), the people who removed the petrol tanks from cars so people could squeeze into the gap where the tank should have been, and of course, one of the most famous photos of the 20th century, with Eastern border guard, conrad schumann noping the fuck out of there when he was meant to be on duty guarding the wall when it was under construction in 1961
So after reblogging literally every single “humans are weird” post that came on my dash I decided it’s time to make my own!
Consider the following;
Humans are already weird space orcs that like either worship the term “fuck it” or make sacrifices to the ship’s rulebook, basically. They have a strict series of social interactions that even distinguish themselves between cultures. Deviation is rare, and sometimes ostracized, no matter how seemingly arbitrary.
So when the ship of the Vyrg’s first human shows up, they were expecting a smiling (humans smile for a lot of the time) human who will shake their first right hand.
Instead, they got a messy, spaced out creature whose hair was falling in their face and whose things were overflowing from their arms, all seemingly hobbies and random trinkets. A backpack hung on their back.
Their first words were accompanied with a (sheepish…the captain thought) smile;
“Sorry, I overslept and I forgot deployment was today! And I forgot my saline for my contacts back in my room but we’ve got to take off, right?”
Great. The crew got a dumb one.
Or so they thought, until their human explained the entire summary of how their ship’s mechanics worked, and fixed their left engine to work at maximum capacity in record time. The human followed it up with a seemingly random tangent about something called the “Stonewall Riots” and “gay rights”.
“Sorry,” Human-Clara said.
“A bit of light just reflected here and it looked like a rainbow and it made me think of it.”
Human-Clara had a tendency to speak either so fast they ran out of breath, or with so many pauses it sounded like they were gathering their scattered thoughts at that moment.
Life with Human-Clara was – odd. They kept to themselves mostly, quietly chatting with crew mates on certain days or absorbed in their transponder for others. Sometimes they would walk out of their room so wholly absorbed in yet another new hobby that the Captain feared xe’d never pull them out of it. The crew never saw a hobby finished. Sometimes when they were spoken to, Human-Clara responded slowly and distractedly, eyes distant and far away as if still thinking of something else. They regularly forgot to eat, or sleep, or take care of themselves if they were absorbed in something else. Directions had to be written down or sent to their transponder. The Captain learned to be patient, as Human-Clara seemed to excel with patience.
Human-Clara was also oddly sensitive. It was quite a culture shock for them to learn that the Vyrg didn’t really have a notion of “friends” other than immediate family, and was almost – crushed, for a few days, the Vyrg’s usual polite friendliness not enough. They seemed depressed when their crazy, thousand-lightyears-an-hour tangents weren’t paid attention to, so the crew began to adapt, and things became much more harmonious.
Sometimes Human-Clara got angry. They were terrifying when angry. It lasted only a few seconds, really. They would blow up, the explosion big enough to scare even the Captain, and after the explosion, be calm in seconds afterwards.
Stimulant chemicals made them sleepy, which the Vyrg thought was adorable. They watched videos of what they called “stims”, and flapped their hands when they were happy, and slapped them quickly and repeatedly on flat surfaces when they were really excited about knowing something. These were “stims” too. The Vyrg wasn’t sure what these “stims” were, really, but they seemed to regulate Human-Clara, emotionally.
Then they got another Human, Human-Steve. Human-Steve was often condescending in their remarks, saying that if Human-Clara “tried”, they could concentrate. It was then that the Vyrg learned what “attention deficit hyperactive disorder, primarily inattentive” was.
They panicked, a little. Was their first human sick?
“No,” Human-Clara explained. “It’s just where the connections in my brain are different, so some things I do differently. Human-Steve doesn’t have that, so he doesn’t understand”.
The Vyrg didn’t either, but their previous methods of interaction worked just fine, so they kept using those.
(If anybody wants to add anything, you don’t have too, but feel free!)
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.
Washington (CNN)Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas called for the impeachment of President Donald Trump Wednesday morning, the first member of Congress to officially request leveling charges against the President from the House floor.
“This is about my position. This is about what I believe. And this is where I stand. I will not be moved. The President must be impeached,” Green said on the floor. “For those who do not know, impeachment does not mean that the President would be found guilty. It simply means that the House of Representatives will bring charges against the President. It’s similar to an indictment but not quite the same thing.”
Reblog if you ARE a woman in STEM, SUPPORT women in STEM, or ARE STILL BITTER about Rosalind Franklin not getting credit for discovering the structure of DNA and the Nobel prize going to Watson and Crick instead.
name ur politically correct ship that no one ever questions
I SHIP NICK SPENCER WITH THE DEEPEST PITS OF HELL RESERVED FOR TRAITOROUS BIGOTED SCUM. But I mean other than that…Natasha/Clint, Vision/Wanda, Rogue/Remy, and my much-maligned-by-movies-and-ignored-by-the-internet OTP Kitty/Colossus. There is no order of preference here. Also I recently got sold REALLY HARD on Steve/Bucky (recently, ha, like three years ago Jesus Moran get your shit together) so like, also Steve/Bucky. And any marriage that makes Storm happy and a queen of a country, so by default Ororo/T’Challa.
now name ur trash ship
I do ship Natasha/Bucky, but I think the circumstances confirm me for a bad person, because I only ship them in the context of ‘I don’t remember you and you barely remember me but you can’t bring yourself to kill me so you shot me and saved my life and I woke up in your safehouse while you wiped my wounds with a gun in your other hand and I’m not sure which one of us you’re going to shoot first.’ So. Like. In the single most unhealthy available context. In a whole universe of unhealthy contexts.
Also I feel like Bobby had a crush on Hank when they were both kids and sometimes still jerks off to his best friend but I DIGRESS.
and ur really trashy im-going-to-hell ship
Elektra the unhinged murderer/Matthew Murdock the desperately earnest crusader. Fuck brutally against a wall and piece each other back together with trembling hands that smear your skin with blood. Cling to each other in your dying moments and stand over each other’s graves feeling guilt for not saving each other and guilt for not killing each other. Throw words like knives and hate yourselves for every hit even as you gloat.
Good.
who is your cinnamon roll fave who everyone loves
KITTY GODDAMN PRYDE, @EVERY MOVIE PERSON EVER COME HERE AND FIGHT ME. Also Warren and Storm, I would die for Storm.
Also Steve Rogers. I have this reoccurring daydream where Steve punches Nick Spencer in the face.
who is your sinnamon roll fave who everyone loves to hate/hates to love
I genuinely would not even know if I had one of these, Marvel has been in my blood and bones since I was too young to be on a computer unsupervised. I like the FF more than most people seem to? I really like Professor Xavier and I get really defensive when people talk shit about him?
who is your trash fave who is so problematic they probably have hate tumblrs dedicated to them
I…do not know. I think Loki makes a pretty compelling villain, but I think I’m in the majority there. I low-key want to fight whenever someone suggests that Warren joined Apocalypse of his own free will, but I AM STANDING BY COMIC CANON COME AT ME. So yeah, don’t think I have one of these.
what is ur guiltiest guilty fave fandom
Okay, listen, I will be an eighty year old woman who is made entirely of salty, salty attitude and brittle bones and I will STILL be reading my campy ridiculous 60′s comics with terrible dialogue and circus-performer villains. I know it’s not a fandom, but still.
OH I really love X-Men: Evolution and I have a whole lecture about why it’s the best adaptation of the X-Men that I’m aware of to date, but I never tell anyone that I like it for some reason, does that count?
what is the fic you want to write/read but can’t because it is too full of Sin
…so. I actually started this one (this one) and it was Good but then I realized it would be months and months of work and I got pre-emptively tired, but basically, first words soulmate AU where Natasha and her Black Widow trainee peers all got programmed to brutally murder anyone who said their words. So then Clint shows up and of course says her words and she tries to kill him before he pins her to the wall with an arrow, and they have a really terrible brutal few months where she begs him to just kill her a lot. And Clint keeps a taser on his person for survival reasons. And at least once Natasha tries to stab him to death in his sleep just to end the struggle. And Clint has a terrible awful no-good very bad conversation with Coulson about the appropriate time to cut his losses.
what is the most sinful fic you have ever read/written
what is the worst thing you want to become canon (character death, trash-ship etc)
…listen…it’s Marvel…it’s all already canon babydoll…all of it…everyone is dead…everyone has had bad relationships…everyone has been resurrected…there’s no answer here…
what is your most sinful headcanon
Do not look me in the eye and tell me that Remy LaBeau has not figured out a way to have sex with someone without touching her skin. Whether he’s put it into action or not, that’s another story, but he has DEFINITELY figured it out.
what is your cutest headcanon
Clint watches a lot of Disney movies (he looked it up, it’s called reparenting yourself) and so consequently during that couple month period where he and Natasha are basically locked in a warehouse waiting for her to fight off the worst of the brainwashing, Natasha watches a lot of Disney movies. Now they’re Avengers and they watch Disney movies after missions and shit. Steve gets invited to join them because Natasha decides that They Will Be Friends (Natasha’s grasp on how to make real non-mark friends is heavily influenced by the fact that her first real friend shot her, handcuffed her, and locked himself in a warehouse with her for a couple months, and also was a circus performer with a dubious handle on the friendship thing himself).
what is your heart-breakingist head canon
…I mean…canon…
I have others that are non-canon or fit within canon but like that shit’s a longer post that would need to be broken down fandom by fandom
what is ur crackiest crack ship
HA, Storm/Arkon, because the idea of Storm as the queen of a campy-ass warrior world makes me laugh
what is ur marginally less cracky crack ship
Fury/literally anyone, because he would be SO BITTER about growing feelings
what is ur favourite ridiculous au
It’s not actually that ridiculous, it’s kind of terrifying, but AU where Loki brainwashes Natasha instead of Clint in Avengers.
1. Name your politically correct ship that no one ever questions.
I really genuinely like Han/Leia because I am a sucker for the “I just really enjoy shouting at this person and get really furious when they risk their life suRELY THIS DOES NOT MEAN FEELINGS” thing and I feel like that’s…all of Hoth. The whole time. All of it.
Also, listen. I will die on the hill of The Damerons as a totally adoring, poly unit of heroes in which Rey sleeps with her back to the wall and her head on Finn’s chest and her fingers tangled with Poe’s, who gently traces the line of the callous on her thumb in his sleep, and Finn lies there and stares at the ceiling and wonders how the FUCK he got this lucky. (Because you deserve it, baby, you fucking deserve it.)
2. Now name your trash ship.
…I mean…Anakin is a trash can, so does Anakin/Padme qualify, or does Padme’s general quality everything lift them from the dumpster fire?
Although for real trash, you can’t do better than Rey/Phasma having really bitter angry hate sex. Before Rey figures herself out and marries her two husbands, of course.
3. And your really trashy I’m-going-to-Hell ship.
…do I have one of these? I don’t think I have–
oh no, yes I do, oh god I didn’t realize what the ship was for the fic but it was SO GOOD and I just.
Sith!Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan was not a ship I saw coming but F U C K.
It’s a really good fic okay, it sold me hardcore. It’s this series by @poplitealqueen. I should reread it because it’s been updated. I’ll go sit in a hole now.
(I just really like Sith Qui-Gon and also Darth Venge, who I don’t think shows up in this one but is a big player in Re-Entry, which is like. Yeah.)
OKAY I have an 18th century terrible medicine question. Do you know if there was a specific place on the body doctors would blister? Like, would a person be more likely to have cupping scars on their back, or their ribs, or? did they just not discriminate much?
Back and chest were the most popular in men, generally there was an attempt for symmetry because [some bullshit about balance]. In women, the back only because breasts got in the way. Arms and legs were generally uncommon because there’s a lot of movement there and a wide expanse of skin was better for minimizing extraneous damage. Also they DID actually know the abdomen was full of important squishy stuff so they were more hesitant to, you know, burn someone seriously there.
probably my favorite thing abt being a millennial is that i can lie on my resume abt shit like being proficient in excel bc i have the common sense to just google anything i dont know how to do which gives me a giant fucking edge over gen x in the job market bc somehow that strategy never occurs to employers and my underqualified ass looks like steve jobs every time i use a youtube tutorial to make a spreadsheet
Everyone in my office sings my praises for what I can do with excel for this exact reason, even though I joke with them that “I have no idea how to do that - but give me half an hour and an internet connection and I’ll figure something out for you.” I even once specifically said in response to my grandboss commenting on my excel skills, “You do realize that I just like…google stuff when you ask me to do something with excel that I don’t know how to do, right?”
But his praise didn’t change at all. There was no “Wait, that’s all it is?”
Instead, he said “Yes, but the fact that you think to do that - and that you know exactly how to phrase your searches and how to sift through the results to get the right answer, and you then integrate what you’ve learned and use it going forward - is still so much more than any of the rest of us [the other 5 ppl on my team are all mid-40s and up] can do. To you, it’s “just googling stuff,” but it’s still a unique and valuable skill you bring, so don’t shrug off the compliments so cavalierly, okay?“
And this was coming from an executive with an MBA. Don’t undervalue your googling skills, kids. It’s not lying if you know you can figure it out.
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.”
This would be an interesting read if this was a book.
Like, an alien invasion is about to start and the book is a chronicle of how the aliens couldn’t handle both humans in general and the range of environments and ended up being destroyed through the eyes of one of the aliens.
Like a caption from the book would be something like
“So we sent a recon team to this place called Russia, but all we’ve heard back thus far is about the temperatures, giant monsters with fur the humans call “Bears”, and that once again, we have been reminded of how heavily well armed almost ever human settlement is.
Thus far we have lost more than a good chunk of our forces through experiments gone wrong, unsuccessful fire fights, and above all else, the humans seem to be more worried about these strange variation of their species calling themselves “Clowns”.
I don’t know what a Clown is, but sounds as if it is the dominant faction of this planet, and considering we only just found out humans practically poison themselves with this thing called beer and only get stronger and more violent, I don’t ever want to encounter such a being.
I believe this invasion was a mistake.“
I’ve been reading a bunch of these and all I can think about now is aliens finding out about our insane ability to walk away from accidents.
“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”
“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”
“Why?”
“To find our people, of course.”
“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”
“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”
“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”
“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”
“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”
*
“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”
“Made what?”
“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”
“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”
“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”
“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”
“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”
“What is… t-shirt weather?”
“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”
“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”
“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”
“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”
*
It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.
They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.
1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.
2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them - including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.
3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.
Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.
And don’t, for the love of gravitational regularity, try to solve that problem by killing off the survivors. Just don’t. It won’t work and it just makes all the rest of them mad.
One of the new professors at my school started a knitting club and will teach anyone who wants to learn but right now I’m the only other person in this entire school who knows how to knit.
So now I have all these baby knitters wandering up to me in the hallways and between class and in the lab, wanting me to check their stitches and tension and wanting reassurance.
Which is adorable but maybe not when I am literally holding a human heart in my hand?
