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

caprette:

lettersiarrange:

Imagine if Alya and Marinette got into an argument because Alya was tired of Marinette never facing her fears and talking to Adrien. So Marinette, enraged and determined to prove Alya wrong, storms over to Adrien and says “You wanna go?!?”

It’s only after Adrien nervously chuckles and hesitantly backs away that she realizes that she forgot the “to the movies with me” part of her sentence

writing-prompt-s:

Aliens invade Earth and everyone finds out that they’re actually huge nerds who fall in love too easily and really love cats.

See now this is great because it basically implies that the aliens invade Earth, guns a-blazing, and STOP DEAD the first time they see a cat and do the standard “OOOOH FUZZY THING” coo and drop their guns and the cat’s owner comes out and makes friends with the aliens and suddenly the invasion turns into…like a very large parade with a lot of cats and alien affection.

setepenre-set:

gatheringbones:

concept: Aliens who have absolutely no cultural or personal use for humor as a concept, but are very adept at figuring out socio-linguistic systems and how to manipulate them. Being funny makes humans more comfortable and easier to negotiate with, and it’s easy enough once you familiarize yourself with a particular culture and set your speech synthesizers to the correct setting. 

and i mean sure eventually they’re great at it, but at some point in time a group of haggard aliens in a room somewhere compare notes on irony, hyperbole, and cultural references, with one exhausted individual clicking “No, Gxiiijhux VIII, puns are a no-go, puns are counterproductive, I don’t care if Susan emitted optimal pleasure decibels, everyone else in that room hated you.” 

Gxiiijhux VIII finds xemself unexpectedly annoyed at the Merchant-Leader’s correction. 

Although further experience indicates that the Merchant-Leader is right about the puns, Gxiiijhux VIII somehow cannot help xemself from clicking out several more of them during the next negotiation session. (All of the humans in the room groan except for Susan, who, again, emits optimal pleasure decibels)

“You need to stop,” the Merchant Leader clicks in frustration.

(But Gxiiijhux VIII can’t seem to stop.)

Gxiiijhux VIII realizes halfway through the trade negotiations that xie is more interested in causing Susan to emit the optimal pleasure decibels than in the successful negotiation of a lucrative trade regulation treaty. This causes xem much stress and confusion.

Eventually, the marriage of Gxiiijhux VIII and Susan is included as a feature of the treaty.

(Gxiiijhux VIII’s former associates breathe a sigh of relief as the merchant ship pulls away from the space station, leaving Gxiiijhux VIII, Susan, and the terrible puns behind.)

Gxiiijhux VIII never does quite get the human concept of humor, but xie is quite content to spend xyr life listening to Susan make the optimal pleasure decibel sounds anyway.

tarathefeminist:

Okay, this is such a yucky subject, but unfortunately it could happen to anyone. I just went through ALICE training at my school and I wanted to share what I learned just in case

1. Get as much information out as possible. Obviously the best tactic for this is like in a school setting announcing over the PA where the shooter is and what he looks like. That way people not near there can get away

2. GET AWAY. Run. Get out. Don’t huddle in a corner like school lock down drills teach you. Pretty much no school shooting death has been someone the shooter chased. They’re there to hit as many easy targets they can then kill themselves, so don’t just wait for them to shoot you. Make a barricade if you can to buy yourself time then find a way to get out.

3. If you run out of other options due to circumstance or proximity, throw something at the shooter. Do something to surprise them and throw off their concentration. They’re generally not trained to ignore distractions. So throw things at them, then SWARM them. The strongest body builder you know couldn’t fight off 5 people at once. Everyone grab a limb ( grab the one with the gun first is the beat option obviously). If you’re not able to coordinate efforts, just find the bravery to dive at them. Statistics and psychology say that others will join in help once they see one person taking action.

4. This is a scary thought, but good to know. If you are shot and conscious, chances are VERY high you’ll live. Like 85%. Humans have a habit of getting shot so doctors and first responders have gotten very good at fixing them. So just keep in mind that (while it won’t be pleasant) its not over if you get shot. Remember that when you’re deciding whether or not to dive at the shooter.

5. If you happen to get the gun away from the shooter, kick it away and secure it (put a trashcan or something over it) but DO NOT PICK UP THE GUN!! if the police get to the scene and see someone waving a gun around, who do you think they’ll shoot first? Secure the gun and the bad guy, but do not hold the gun ever.

Again, not a nice thing but I know a lot of teacher blogs follow me, plus it could happen anywhere. Pls be safe. If you have questions ask because maybe they covered it in my training!

Also: in the event that someone has been shot, grab something like a shirt and apply as much pressure as possible.  It will not be fun for anyone involved (applying pressure tends to make the pain level skyrocket), but slowing the bleeding raises your chances of survival significantly.

sourcedumal:

thomas4th:

prismatic-bell:

thedreamingbutterfly:

You hear all these “you’re not a real fan unless” and it lists a hundred things, but I met a dude today who saw my Deadpool pin and asked what my favorite story arc was, and I explained that while I loved Deadpool, I was new to Marvel (I only really got into it a year and a half ago) and hadn’t been able to find a lot of the comics. Instead of making a face or a derogatory comment, he just offered to send me all the stuff he had. That is a true fan.

I told the guy at the comic shop when I went in for Black Widow that I’d seen a few Harley Quinn panels on Tumblr and thought it looked badass but didn’t know where to start because my entire involvement in DC fandom was watching the Batman cartoon as a kid. This guy sitting at one of the tables playing Yu-Gi-Oh, wearing a comic shirt and carrying a definitely-hardcore-fan amount of swag, spins around and goes “dude! You’ve never read DC? Check out the back issues wall. They’ve got all kinds of Harley Quinn.” He then proceeded to explain how “New 52″ was a spinoff, and had some split opinions in the fandom, but either continuity is good as long as you pick one and stay with it so you don’t get mixed on what’s going on. 

True fans love to see other people loving the stuff they love.

See how easy it is to be “that cool person who helped me get into X” instead of “that asshole who made me feel bad for not knowing everything about X”?

IT’S NOT EVEN DIFFICULT TO NOT BE A SHITLORD. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. And you never had one.

This. Be a helping hand not an asshole gatekeeper

humanityinahandbag:

ikrit:

@ 14 year old side of tumblr

Please stop giving away so much personal information about yourself. 

It doesnt seem like it but your blog is visited by hundreds of people with hundreds of different intentions weekly (or hell daily if ur a popular blogger). And posting your height, age, gender, privileges, all of your triggers, gives away a lot of information that you may regret posting later on.

The internet is a very scary place. Full of people who could do you harm with that sort of information.

You all have to understand that nothing on the internet is ever truly deleted or gone. So you REALLY have to be careful about what you post and say.  

A lot of you are keen to posting opinions online and as we all know on the internet opinions are going to anger a lot of people. 

People could potentially track and harass you. It is a very dangerous world full of messed up people. And as minors you should all be very wary of who you trust online and think twice before you post something. Just posting “please dont follow if youre _____” isnt going to help from that.

ALSO

@ 14 year old side of Tumblr

Please stop posting your skype address.

I know it’s tempting to make new friends. And I know that faceless people are easier to talk to. But it’s dangerous. And we’re not trying to parent or berate you. We just want you to be safe.

Trust me.

Down the road you’re gonna realize you made a lot of dumb mistakes trying to be friends with the world. The world isn’t made of all friendly people. And I truly adore your optimism. I’m the same way.

But I’d rather you learn in a safe setting then after putting yourself in harms way.

Love,

the 21 year old side of Tumblr.

arcticfoxbear:

xtremecaffeine:

roachpatrol:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

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

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

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

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

You really want a human.

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

“One time, I was trapped in an asteroid belt when the main fission compensator blew. Normally it’s no sweat, right? But for no good reason, the backup has failed as well. So the light on the dashboard is saying ‘Abandon Ship’ but we’re in the middle of an asteroid belt, y'know? We’d never make it out alive. So anyway me and the rest of the guys are just like, well, I guess this is our lot in life, we’re done for. At least we have enough power to send transmissions to our broods and go into hibernation and maybe some other group of dumb fucks can find us out here.
But then, right, the human goes crazy! She jumps up on the table and starts shouting about how we’ll never surrender, right? It made no gods damned sense! But somehow, she won us all round and we’re all pumped up.
Then she started marching around the ship, gathering up all the spare cabling, tape, those little paperclip things they always demand to have on board?
So anyway, she goes into a trance, starts building something, and we’re just like, well, even the human has gone nuts, must be because they can’t go into hibernation naturally.
So anyway, after a few minutes she jumps up and starts screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, takes this bizarre sculpture thing to the engine room and wires it in place of the fission compensator’s tertiary manifold.
And somehow, somehow, it works.
So we limp to the nearest base, and they test this heap of junk, and it should have never worked, there’s no possible way this tangle of cables and bent wire could possibly interface with the engine’s systems, let alone work with them.

But there’s another human at the station and they just look at it and nods, like this is the most natural thing ever.

Apparently, the pile of junk was inhabited by one of their ancient gods, name of Ma Kyver?

And THAT my broodlings is why we take a human with us.”

Report from Cultural Researcher Qulix’tch to Home Swarm University:

Re: Human Survival Rates As it Relates To Diet:

Dearest colleges, I am ever grateful for your kind communications and support. I have compiled all collected data and attached it to the overview for your perusal. Let me say first and foremost that the rumors that I was sent to investigate, ie that humans were the first observed truly omnivorous species, have turned out to be a gross understatement.

It is not simply that humans can eat both vegetative flesh and animal flesh, not even  that they can eat anything in between but seriously, they eat everything regardless of it’s inherent nutrient value and risk factor. Indeed this increases their odds of survival but from an intercultural interaction standpoint it is a little weird, and creepy, let’s be honest, that it seems like their first thought when encountering something new that isn’t a rock is  “Can I eat this?”

Mostly they prefer plant matter as (thank whatever deity you will) they seem to be squeamish about eating sentient beings and the odds favor that plants won’t be. It has also come to my attention that our particular eight-legged and multi-eyed form, added to our chitinous outer membrane is particularly unappetizing to them across their multi-culture. This is reassuring but hardly a firm deterrent as they have an instinct set that drives them to make digestible anything that isn’t inherently.  

The nutrients are trapped in an unusable form? No worries, the human just finds something combustible, builds a fire, and heats it till the undigestable fibers or whatever release the nutrients.

Is the edible bit protected by spikes, spines, and thorns they might just grab a rock and beat it until the edible bit is avaliable.

They carry around vats of acid just in case they need to add it to the mix to denature large proteins.

I kid you not they have hundreds, hundreds, of  different species of microbes on their skin, in their mouth, in their digestive tract that help them break down what their own systems won’t.

If the nutrients are contaminated with unfriendly microorganisms they count on this friendly micro-fauna, as they call it, to fight them off.  Failing that they have developed an entire subculture devoted to brewing poison of just the correct potency that it kills the intruding microorganisms while leaving them alive.

And if there is no plant matter they can eat? They just find a (hopefully) non-sentient species that can break it down for them and wring the proteins and nutrients out of them in ways that don’t bear mentioning. (see appendix Eggs, Milk, and Meat)

It has been reported, if you can believe it (and with humans why not), that on their own planet. In an ocean that is full of fish that they can eat with no processing at all, there is one species that is particularly poisonous to humans. Instead of avoiding it and eating the swarming fish species that are so benign that they can be eaten without even the basic heating, humans pay to have a specialist in food preparation known as a chef go through a complicated ritual to remove the deadly toxin. They will do this even when the non-toxic fish flesh is readily and far more cheaply avaliable.

Then, even when they have enough nutrients they will masticate whatever inorganic substance is at hand in some odd, seemingly unconscious ritual. The humans I encountered seemed to have a preference for writing utensils for this purpose

I hope the information I have gathered will prove useful.

mellivorinae:

capitulism:

The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.

June 12, 2016. Putting a date on this for when it gets reblogged months from now by people who think the post is about something from 30, 40 years ago.

oudeteron:

wetwareproblem:

Not when used as a self-identification, and not when used as an umbrella term within the community, at least.

See, here’s the thing: The most common identifier used by bi, pan, and trans people to describe their sexuality? Queer.

Given that multiple studies have shown that bi people alone comprise about half the community, that makes it by far the most common term we use to describe ourselves.

What’s more, it’s not just an identifier: it’s a rallying cry. It’s a banner the whole community has assembled under forever. “We’re here, we’re queer” is a cliché for a reason. It’s a statement of power, and of pride - yes, we’re weird. We don’t fit into the “acceptable” categories cisheteronormative society gives us. And that’s a good thing. It’s a call to demolish those “acceptable” boxes, to build a world we’re all part of.

Its rejection is a relatively recent move by the same homonationalism that brought us “Bi people don’t belong,” the thrilling sequel “Trans people don’t belong,” and the stunning conclusion “Ace people don’t belong.” It’s a deliberate strategy employed by respectability politicians seeking a seat at the table - taking the work we’ve put in and distancing themselves from us so they can tell the straights “We deserve your respect because we’re just like you! We even hate queers!”

(And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the community suddenly forgot the massive, massive overlap between “queer” and “poly” when building the very self-conscious image of two clean-cut upper-middle-class smiling young professional men or women either. Anything that wasn’t “respectable” enough had to go. My deepest thanks to the person who pointed this out.)

In the rush for our place in an oppressive hell, we’ve lost our revolutionary edge, lost our fire, and lost a lot of what drove us in the first place. Fuck. That.

I’m queer, and you will never take that away from me.

It’s nice being Tumblr Old and having some recollection of the self-identifiers we used before this website. The slogans alone should tell you the motivators behind using “queer” as opposed to other terms. There was “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” There was “queer rage”. There was “not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you.” That last one especially shows rejection of any neat essentialist boxes – go away with your binaries, your easy categorization, and last but not least your respectability politics.

I’ve never seen “q slur” used before Tumblr, and even that only in the last maybe two years. I’m not playing the whole “you kids turn everything into a trigger” game, that’s not the point. My point is that almost uniformly older LGBTQ+ people on this website associate “queer” with empowerment, and it’s teenagers and early 20-somethings (who are almost the same age group as me, I’m 27) constructing this idea that it has always only been a slur, that it’s more prevalent than any other slurs still in use, and that this is somehow the “historically correct” view of the term and everyone using queer is ignorant of history. Which is just not true.

So anyway, here are some great functions of “queer” that aren’t replicated by any other term:

1) Wide relevance. Queer can be related to gender, sexuality, or both.

2) Opacity. It can be a stand-in for some other term (gay, bisexual, trans, etc), or it can actually mean something else altogether! Something that isn’t fully covered by any of those categories!

3) Queer could, therefore, actually function as an umbrella term (yeah, I know I can’t get away with that in the present climate, thanks for that). Calling everything gay, as has become the norm on Tumblr, isn’t only sticking it to The Straights ™; it’s also sticking it to all the LGBTQ+ people who don’t identify as gay specifically (not to mention straight trans people), and who never see ourselves brought up in casual conversation anymore. It’s back to “gay rights” style language.

And you know what, of course it is, because “LGBTQ+” and other versions of the abbreviation aren’t catchy. “Gay” is catchy. “Queer” is catchy. But for some reason, gee I wonder why it could be, “the community” has decided to eliminate precisely the term that does actually by default encompass a wide range of identities. And replace it with one that again gives primacy to “gay” as the default descriptor, as if the rest of us just don’t matter or should be happy with being “obliquely included” (that is to say, erased). We’ve come up with all this specialized terminology for gender and sexuality, but when it comes to being actually talked about aside from specifically describing yourself in an intro to your blog, it’s underused.

I could go on about how targeting “queer” disproportionately affects MGA and trans/nb people, including people with multiple marginalizations, who especially are likely to have a problem with all these discrete one-dimensional categories and feel that “queer” expresses something the other terms can’t. But that’s already covered in the OP under good old respectability politics.

TL;DR: You can’t just take away a term that many, many people in the community have been actively using for decades before your latest iteration of SGA discourse and expect no meaning to be lost or broken.

whateverdun:

if you’ve ever left me a message asking me if I’m okay, or liked a post in which I was ranting about my bad day, or liked a selfie, or just anything nice like that- just know that I remember you, I am grateful for you, and you made my day better with your tiny gesture.

koscheiis:

shenko:

demisexualmerrill:

Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?”

Omfg

MY TIME HAS COME

so you’d need a bouquet of geraniums (stupidity), foxglove (insincerity), meadowsweet (uselessness), yellow carnations (you have disappointed me), and orange lilies (hatred). it would be quite striking! and full of loathing.

I adore this person.

just-shower-thoughts:

“It’s Raining Men,” and “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor,” are about the same event, but wildly different perspectives.

soulsthatknow:

I am really interested in these tag posts so here is another

the
cry
baby
love
see
ha
happy
perfect

sfiddy:

queenafro-dite:

jean-luc-gohard:

The “friend zone” and unrequited love are not the same thing. Unrequited love is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, I am sad about that.” The “friend zone” is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, you have therefore wronged me.”

Unrequited love is, “My unilateral crush is my problem.” The “friend zone” is, “My unilateral crush is your problem.”

Again for the ones in the back

Louder.

letsjuststayinside:

enliven-ed:

You have permission to eat. Even if you:

• haven’t exercised
• eaten too much yesterday
• eaten too much today
• don’t know the exact nutritional value of the meal
• have gained weight
• aren’t feeling hungry ‘enough’
• feel like you don’t deserve it 

i definitely needed this.

writingfish:

clarkesquad:

i cant believe we actually have a gay feminist version of supernatural……. with a fiercely protective female lead, her smol queer sister and her confident yet dorky gay girlfriend, where the plot twist is characters are brought back to life and fan favorites are confirmed to survive the season, where all the men are either the butt of a joke or pure eye candy except for the moc who is just as complex and intriguing as the women im just. what did we do to deserve wynonna earp. i love-

WHAT’S THE SHOW NAME?

where

is

this

show

cryptfly:

drag0nfeathers:

candycanebuckybarnes:

peterquilltingcircle:

anh62950:

coffeeandpunkmusic:

miss-elsaba:

hey-look-a-hufflepuff:

les-etoiles-de-la-boxe:

pancakereport:

cinder-ember:

sammywhatammy:

redheadeddisneyfreak:

sheriffwxy:

totalspiffage:

soulpunchftw:

agatharights:

musicofthestage:

crutchiee:

tbbackus:

lucasbieneke:

Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”. 

There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.

or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out

best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere

During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well

Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.

Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.

So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).

This is wild from start to finish

I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)

In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger

My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.

i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show. 

my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.

in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.

so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-

PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.

the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.

During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?

Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.

The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.

Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.

Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.

Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.

Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.

Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.

Sunday Night:  Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.

Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.

In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional

Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience. Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength. So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face. I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage. From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.

This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash

My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.

My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.  

This may be my all time favorite post. 

I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.

Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them

In my Freshman year of high-school we put on a performance of Les Mis. In said play there’s the scene where Javert and Valjean confront each-other by the bedside of the now dead Fantine. well, Javert Had his prop weapon (I can’t remember if it was a sword or truncheon,) but Valjean didn’t have his. So we the Crew decided during our builds that we’d rig up a chair to break so our Valjean could use one of the broken legs as a club kind of thing. For all of our shows it went off without a hitch, but for the last one we decided to have some fun.

Originally we really just weakened one of the legs so it would break off after our Valjean hurled the chair on the floor, but for the final chair we too saws and cut into everything. All the legs, the back poles, everything. We cut it just enough so that our Valjean would be able to sit in the chair and not break it, but when he tossed it on the ground? Chaos.

And that’s what happened.

All we told him before the show was “When your toss the chair on the ground, give it your all.” And so when the scene came all of the crew gathered behind the legs and assorted hidden places of the stage to watch. When our Valjean hurled the chair to the ground it shattered. Wood and splinters went in practically every direction and I’m sure that I even saw our Fantine flinch as she feigned death. There was no chair leg left for him to use.

So we all got to witness as our Valjean fended off Javert with naught but a splinter.

Fun times.

My father was once in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Early in the play, the main character finds a corpse in the dining room window seat and there’s a hilarious scene of him trying to hide it from his aunts who keep coming into the room. However, somehow the dining room table broke, a leg came loose and nearly collapsed (along with the nice table setting on top). So this scene was instead played as the main character trying to hide both a corpse and a very precarious dining range from his aunts. It was way funnier than usual.

At intermission crew was able to replace the table.

In act two, the nefarious brother returns in the middle of the night. He changed his line about the unchanged nature of the house. “It hasn’t changed a bit since I was kid……except they got a new table.” The audience was in fits.

amemait:

cryptfly:

ts-porter:

ts-porter:

ts-porter:

iztarshi:

ts-porter:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

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

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

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

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

You really want a human.

“Looks like someone for you.”

Jon kicked Ginna’s boots, which were currently resting on the table, and she glanced over toward the door. A clump of knee-high aliens, plump and round and covered in golden fur, were lifting their little pink noses into the air - scenting the air in the bar.

Sashrans. Perfect.

Ginna quickly downed the last of her drink and dropped her feet to the floor. The Gentleman of Fortune was full to the gills of professional companions looking for work, she wouldn’t be the only one in here with a fondness for sashrans. She needed to work quickly if she wanted a chance at whatever job these ones were hiring for. The sound and vibration of her boots caught the attention of the group, and Ginna followed it quickly with a greeting in the quiet shushing sounds of their own language.

A universal translator would take care of most of the talking, but by knowing a little of their language Ginna proved she had worked with their kind before and cared enough to learn it. Caring was probably the most important skill a companion could cultivate.

It paid off. The group of sashrans centered quickly on her and darted over, still in their clump.

“I am human Ginna, companion for hire,” Ginna introduced, tapping the side of her visor to activate the display.

“Sala and Rini, with crew. Spice collectors,” the largest of the sashrans introduced, tapping at their own earbud. Their information began to stream onto Ginna’s display, while her own would be playing in their ear. She was proficient in everything from weapons to mechanics to medicine, xenobiology to politics, and of course survival in any kind of situation from atmosphere decompression in space to a tsunami on a planet. The more varied the knowledge they had the better a companion a human could make, and Ginna prided herself on being one of the best.

As for the sashrans, they’d found a jungle planet with a plant that was delicious to their senses. Cultivation efforts had failed thus far, so the price was high enough to support the risk of hunting for it on its home range. A six-month tour was on offer. It seemed they’d contracted with another professional companion a few times, a man named Drix, and Ginna quickly switched over to the guild’s internal records to see what he had to say of these sashrans and the planet they were harvesting from.

The sashrans themselves would be able to check what Ginna’s former employers had to say about her too.

Drix had enjoyed working with Sala and Rini’s crew, it dripped out of every line of his reports. He’d included good detail about life aboard their ship and the risks of the planet, that Ginna would have to look into closer later to be prepared.

All she needed to know at the moment was that they paid well, the risks were not unacceptably high, and that they treated their human companions well. It sounded like a job for her.

“Sala and Rini and crew, I would take this job,” Ginna told them.

The sashrans shushed and buzzed together, their tones sounding happy to Ginna’s relatively untrained ear, and she hoped she was reading them right. They were such beautiful little creatures, and she’d always enjoyed working for their kind before. They were close enough she could have reached out to touch them, pet their soft velvet fur, but she resisted. Touching them uninvited would be rude.

Finally they turned back to her. “Sala and Rini and crew will, with joy, contract to hire companion Ginna,” the lead one answered.

Contract negotiations went quickly enough, using the standard guild template and modifying it here or there as both parties preferred and agreed upon. Sashrans were easy to haggle with, not like the argumentative akskar. Soon enough Ginna had a contract and three days to prepare her effects for travel.

“It has been a pleasure,” Ginna told the sashrans. “I look forward to being your companion.”

She would have expected them to leave, then, go get their own things ready for launch. Instead the smallest one pushed forward - all wrapped in pale gold velvet fur and their sweet little pink forepaws resting on Ginna’s knee.

“Companion Ginna will now engage in petting for promotion of pack bonding?” they asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Ginna reached out toward the sashran, let them smell her palm, but it seemed this sashran wasn’t shy at all. They immediately pushed their head into her hand. There was nothing in the galaxy so soft as a sashran’s fur. Ginna dug her fingers in around the ruff of the sashran’s neck, gently scratching, and then smoothed the fur all the way down their back.

The sashran made a dreamy-soft pleasure sound, and Ginna mimicked it back. “Oh you sweetheart,” she murmured. Already she could feel that little melting tug in her heart, that protective urge that set some humans on the path to professional companionship.

Come hell or high water, Ginna was going to keep these sashrans safe.

Aw, yes. Look at the adorable scifi! I’m proud to have inspired it.

(I’m so glad you enjoyed it!)

Six months was just about right for a jungle planet tour with a group of sashrans. Ginna loved Sala and Rini and the crew to distraction, and there was still nothing in the galaxy softer than sashran fur, but she was ready to move on. Being regarded as furniture a lot of the time, once they were used to her presence, got tiring after a while. Sala and Rini weren’t looking for a permanent companion, and Ginna wasn’t looking for that either. She’d joined the guild because she wanted to see the universe and meet all the peoples in it, after all.

The spice expedition had been a great success. The sashrans’ hold was full to bursting of dried twigs and leaves, and Ginna had gotten a healthy bonus on top of her already generous pay. There’s only been the one incident with a large angry herbivore who decided the sashrans were infringing too close on its breeding grounds. Still, Ginna had thwacked it in the face with a dead branch and distracted it long enough for the sashrans to make their escape, and only gotten the one cracked rib for her trouble when it tried to run her down.

Ginna hugged and kissed each sashran on the crew one last time. “If you ever need me, don’t hesitate to call,” Ginna told them, wiping a stray tear. Sala and Rini and crew endured this human foible, and were off to sell their goods.

The Gentleman of Fortune was the same as ever, serving interesting foods and drinks from across the galaxy and full of professional companions between tours. Her friend Jon had shipped out with a hunting pack of akskar, but May was finally back from er three-year stint in a lintran colony and they had a lot of catching up to do.

It was great to be back among humans, it really was. Ginna sent some money home and laughed and drank and celebrated with people who had the same base template and urges she did. For about two weeks, it was great. Then Ginna got that itch again and started watching the door of the Gentleman of Fortune, scoping out her options.

Vivid jehes, stolid orhides, hovering mellisugans - none of them felt quite right, and Ginna didn’t approach any of them. Other companions gladly worked up contracts and left for exploration expeditions and disaster relief efforts and new colonies.

Then a big bull barbax pushed into the bar, weight resting on xir heavy knuckles and ducking far far down to fit but still scraping xir cracked and weathered shoulder-spikes on the frame. The barbax swung xir heavy head from side to side, small beady eyes - well protected under a heavy brow - sweeping the space.

Perfect.

Ginna jumped up to stand on top of her chair and screamed as loud as she possibly could. The barbax rocked back, then sprang forward toward her, slamming xir knuckles hard against the floor in pleased approval.

.

Three days later Ginna was shipping out for a nine month tour with a crew of barbax miners. The desert planet they were headed for would be a nice change of pace from the muggy humidity of her last tour, and the barbax being so much bigger and heavier-armored than she was meant she didn’t have to worry about being a body guard on this trip. Much more relaxing.

Barbax liked shiny things, and already they’d bought Ginna a cute cropped jacket with imitation shoulder spikes to match them, and several bracelets and necklaces. It would have been rude not to wear them, and Ginna had to admit she looked good even if it wasn’t her usual style.

The bull barbax, Zab, absently grabbed Ginna by the waist and settled her on xir shoulder. Ginna easily settled in between the big spikes - they made good handholds as she was carried onward to the ship.

“Twisted xeno freak!” some human snarled after Ginna and the barbax crew. “You’re a traitor to human-kind. You make me sick!”

Gina laughed. “Jealous you lack the emotional capacity to cut it as a companion?” she mocked.

The xenophobe’s embarrassed and angry expression was the last thing Ginna saw of the station. Then the ship doors closed behind them, and she turned to face her next adventure with a smile.

Ginna returned to her home base at the Gentleman of Fortune absolutely glittering with platinum and rough citrine.

A fact - For all their strength, a barbax is not fast enough to evade a nest of sand snakes. For all their armor, a sand snake’s teeth can still pierce them.

A human companion, fueled by adrenaline, is more than fast enough to evade. But they might instead dive in between the panicking barbax and destroy the sand snakes attacking them.

Another fact - a sand snake’s venom is deadly to a barbax. Their blood coagulants are destroyed and they bleed out from even such a tiny wound. Their armored hide is too strong for the tourniquet that might save them. A human, bitten by a sand snake, gets off with a painful wound and some bruising.

Ginna tied her bandana around the bleeding wound on her thigh and got to work. Zeb and Gnar and Agi were bitten. The crew, their family, piled around them, drumming against their hides in mourning. They had two hours to live, according to the barbax medic.

Ginna delivered a cure in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes with the clock racing. Thirty minutes far too long, with death creeping up on her friends. She drew a liter of her own blood, repurposed a mining centrifuge to separate it, and filled three big syringes with plasma. Her red blood cells would be toxic, foreign to the barbaxes bodies. She could only hope her plasma was less so.

They might die of it; but they would die if she didn’t try.

Facts - the only place a barbax is tender enough to be injected by even the strongest medical needle is in the vein along their gumline.

- it takes five minutes for blood to circulate all the way through a barbax’s body.

- it takes another minute after that for a sand snake wound to clot, and the blood loss to cease.

The barbax crew trumpeted and pounded their knuckles against the floor with surprised joy. And only then, only when the slow bleeding had finally stopped, did Ginna sit down and cry with relief. She was shaky and dizzy from drawing so much blood, and badly bruised from getting jostled by the panicking barbaxes, and the wound on her own thigh was very painful now that she had nothing else to focus her mind away from it, but she’d done her companion’s duty and saved her friends.

She was fussed over, tended to and praised. She explained what she had done, and was given far more sweets and water than she could possibly consume to replenish herself when she explained that’s what she needed to recover.

Zeb and Gnar and Agi were sick for a week, with the aftereffects of the sand snake poison and purging their bodies of her alien plasma, but they lived. That was the important part.

It turned out that having given a part of herself into the barbax (nevermind that it was just plasma and their bodies purged it afterward) Ginna had done literally what was done symbolically for a barbax crew-bond. She was now crew-bond to the barbax she’d saved, and since Zeb was the senior bull and crew-bond to the entire crew, that meant she was too. She was family - married to the whole lot of them, in essence.

Ginna was not exactly sure how she was going to break that to her moms.

Thankfully the barbax had a laze faire concept of marriage. None of them thought it odd that Ginna planned to leave still at the end of her contract. They would have gladly kept her if she wanted to stay, but she didn’t.

They would have weighed her down with a quarter ton of jewelry, to be decorated the same as one of them, but thankfully Ginna talked them out of it. Her crew were miners by trade, but they were craftspeople by inclination, and they made her beautiful sets from the platinum they were mining that weren’t too heavy for her fragile human limbs. The style was armor-like and spiky and set with beautiful rough citrine that would have been discarded as mining waste otherwise.

Ginna wore it proudly. She spent one last evening drumming with the barbax crew, and then she was back among humans, back at the good old Gentleman of Fortune. Elizabeth was fresh back from the jungles of Shur with a lathan colony, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Ginna was in no rush to head out again. She took some classes offered through the guild, brushing up on her knowledge base, and pondered her options carefully. She wanted something new, something different.

Late one evening - or maybe it was early morning by that point - a faint high note echoed through the Gentleman of Fortune. There was a collective intake of breath, an uncomfortable quiet, and Ginna looked to where everyone else was looking. A roughly human-sized shimmer was drifting deeper into the bar.

A tintillian. Ginna had never actually met one, she’d only ever heard of the telepathic aliens. They were not strictly corporeal in the same way most contacted species were.

The tintillian chimed again, hopeful, almost plaintive. And no one was answering.

Ginna was singing back the tintillian’s note before she really thought it through. It chimed again, a lower note thankfully or Ginna might not have been able to hit it, and Ginna again mimicked it. As Ginna held the note, it chimed a double note in harmony with her, and drifted closer.

The note Ginna was singing cut off, her heart in her throat, but the tintillian recoiled and drew back before it touched her. Began to drift away.

Metal. Right. They couldn’t abide concentrations of heavy metals and Ginna was encased in platinum. Ginna began ripping all her jewelry off, stacking it in a loose pile on the table. What had possessed her to wear so much of it?

“Help!” Ginna pleaded, turning her other ear toward Elizabeth as she struggled with the earrings. “Liz, please.”

Elizabeth laughed and relented, quick to help her out of all her platinum. Ginna took her boots off too, they had metal eyelets. And her pants had zippers, so they had to go. And her bra had an underwire, so Ginna wrestled that out through her sleeve and finally stepped toward the tintillian in just her shirt and boxers.

No one else was trying to approach the still-chiming tintillian. Telepathy was beyond what most of them were comfortable with. There would be no universal translator for this interaction, it would be direct. Mind to mind.

At least Ginna halfway stripping was far from the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the Gentleman of Fortune.

Ginna sang the note again, and the tintillian harmonized and moved back toward her. It changed as it got closer, until Ginna was almost looking at a mirror - a transparent shining woman. It lifted its hand, and Ginna echoed the motion. Her fingers were shaking, but Ginna cleared her mind and was full of only curiosity and affection when the tintillian merged hands with her. Like a point of golden light.

Suddenly, through it, Ginna was weightless, boundariless, her self wrapped around by the fear and curiosity of the others in the bar. Ginna laughed aloud, that joy echoed, rebounded, and strengthened as the tintillian drifted forward to merge completely.

Ginna’s affections were bare, all the connections she’d made with her contracts exposed, her trainings mulled over, her self weighed and judged and found adequate. The burning curiosity that had made her approach it pushed Ginna to delve into the tintillian in turn. It was all starlight and nebulas, ancient and brand new.

The job on offer was midway between exploration and rescue - a star nursery where an expedition of the tintillian’s mind-mates had disappeared. They had two months to map what they could, and recover the lost mind-mates if possible.

Ginna’s physical and psychological needs would be met, and the terms of her regular contract were seen as acceptable.

The merge faded, and the tintillian winkled out - off back to its vessel to prepare. Ginna dropped back into her own body and sagged into her chair.

“So?” she was asked, people crowding around. She didn’t need the tintillian to practically feel their burning curiosity.

“I got a two-month contract,” Ginna said.

She took a small seated bow for the cheers that echoed through the bar, and accepted the celebratory drinks that were passed her way.

First professional companion to contract with a tintillian. This was definitely going to be one for the history books.

[ THE END ]

I will write no more of these. Thank you! I’ve had a lot of fun in this ‘verse.

If you want to read about Elizabeth, please turn your eyes toward the very cool fill that Chrissy did utilizing the Gentleman of Fortune and companions guild concept. [link]

(if anyone else uses these headcanons please let me know I’d love to read it!)

(lol I lied have another Ginna fic)

Loren’s first run as an apprentice companion was supposed to be an easy one. A short contract, with low danger and a seasoned companion of the guild as mentor. Loren got along great with both Jon and the akskar crew. Every conversation was an argument, a test of skill and ingenuity. Some humans found akskar to be exhausting, but Loren felt right at home. It was just like being back at the old shipyards with er sibs.

So it was great, it was really great until they ran into danger way above Loren’s paygrade. Space was dangerous, vast and unexplored and unpredictable. So on Loren’s first practice run e ended up stranded with a dead ship on a dead planet. At least Jon and the akskar weren’t dead too.

Theirs wasn’t the only ship downed.

“Jon? That you?” A voice crackled faintly in through their companion visors while the akskar were still folding their long limbs into their own protective gear.

“Ginna!” Jon answered, relief obvious in his voice as he tapped the side of it to answer. “I’ve got an apprentice and a family of young akskar politicians. What have you got?”

“Jehe musicians and a dead ship. My scans show a cave we can shelter in near enough to both ships for scavenge. Coordinates incoming.”

Loren had no idea how this Ginna had managed to scan for a cave through the radiation bursts, but e was glad of it. Loren was surprised the coms were still working when everything else was totally fried–but they did say that companions guild coms and universal translators were always the last thing to go. They could pass through the pinch of a black hole undamaged, they said.

Jon relayed instructions, which Loren and the akskar followed, so they were weighed down heavy with emergency supplies and broken ship bits when they headed out onto the planet’s ravaged surface.

Ginna and her crew had already made it to the cave and were sealing it into a habitable zone by the time Loren’s group arrived. Loren couldn’t tell much about Ginna other than that she was tall and she’d managed to keep her jehes from fluttering and panicking, which was impressive.

Once they were sealed in, and the akskar were comfortable enough to start a circular argument and the jehes to rest, Jon pulled Loren over to conference with Ginna. Ginna’s hair was all tight corkscrew curls tied back with a bandana, her smile big and friendly, when she took off her helmet.

“We’ve got food, we’ve got water, we’ve got radiation shielding - but we’ve only got about a day’s worth of air,” Jon started, once brief introductions were over.

“A day and a half,” Ginna corrected. “The akskar and jehes balance each other out a little bit.”

“And I can give us another two or three if I can repair the jehe and akskar air filters, or splice them together. There’s got to be enough working parts between them to make one functional filter.” Loren volunteered. It wasn’t so different from tech splice e’d done as a kid, just to see if something could be made from what was supposedly junk. Loren had grown up doing this stuff.

“Air first.” Ginna nodded. “Then we need to get word out, let people know where we are. It’s time to call in favors. What are our best contacts, other than the main guild office?”

“These akskar are offshoots of the grand trunk,” Jon said, which Loren had not known. They were practically royalty! Minor royalty, but still. “If we get word to the trunk, they’ll send help. And their line is allied to the fruiting bough consortium. One of their main officers owes me a favor.”

“Good,” Ginna nodded and turned toward Loren as if expecting em to chime in.

“I don’t…” Loren floundered. “I don’t know anybody.”

Ginna’s expression softened. “First time out?“ she patted Loren’s shoulder when e nodded. “Don’t worry. Jon and I have both been in tighter spots and lived to tell. I’m thinking my best contact will be the barbax miners. A little radiation storm like this is nothing to them, and they’ll send people if I call. I’m kind of married to over fifty of them now, they keep expanding the crew.”

“Married? To fifty barbax?” Loren boggled, but Ginna and Jon just laughed.

“It’s the kind of thing that happens on accident,” Jon said. “It far from the weirdest thing you’ll see if you stick with the guild.”

Loren kind of hoped e’d live to see weirder things. Being stranded on a dead world with two dead ships was bad. Really bad. But Jon and Ginna kept joking back and forth with each other, smiling and laughing. And if experienced companions like them were in good spirits that had to be a good sign.

Loren worked on the air filters. E worked on the air filters for a very long time. Loren got one working at about 31% to give them another half day, and then went back to the ship to scavenge parts from the kitchen to get the other one up to 67%, and that was the best e could do with what was available.

“I couldn’t have done better myself,” Jon praised. He and Ginna were working on cobbling together a communications array that would punch through the radiation storm, which was difficult with everything fried. They tried and tested and argued companionably back and forth–when they weren’t looking out for the crews they were contracted to. The emotional labor of keeping the akskar from falling into despondency while confined and the jehes from fretting themselves sick, and keeping them from antagonizing each other with their different needs and ways of being, was weightier than Loren would have expected.

Jon and Lauren had their work cut out for them figuring out new arguments and games to play with the akskar to keep them entertained. Ginna spent a lot of her time grooming and singing to the jehes in their own chirping language to keep them calm.

That was what being a professional companion was all about.

Not that Loren was all that sure e was going to get the chance to earn professional status. One day became two, became three, and nothing any of them tried was working to get a message out. Loren scavenged from both ships over and over again, with Jon and Ginna and alone, but nothing e brought back helped.

Loren couldn’t give up, though. That was why peoples from all over the galaxy hired human companions. Because humans didn’t give up, not until their last breath. Loren repurposed parts of a water filtration unit to get the more broken air filter to 72%, but that was only going to give them a few more days, and e went back to figuring out ways to make a stronger emergency beacon with Jon.

Ginna didn’t.

Loren found her up in the top of the cave, right by the entrance where their radiation shielding was weakest. She’d stripped down to her underthings, her body marked with scars here and there, and decorated over and around them with gleaming ivory-white tattoos against the warm brown of her skin. Loren could see the languages of akskar, sashrans, barbax, and others she wasn’t familiar with. Ginna was sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed and face turned up to the dark sky. She was humming a long droning note under her breath.

“What are you doing?” Loren demanded.

“Trying to think in tintillian,” Ginna answered in a faraway voice, not opening her eyes.

“What? Why?”

“We can’t send a pulse, ping, or beacon out of here strong enough. So tintillian.”

Loren stamped er foot. “What good is thinking like another species going to do!? You could be helping us brainstorm better ideas. You can’t just stop. You can’t give up and die. We’re companions! Our contracts are counting on us!” Loren’s voice broke, tears far too close to the surface, and Ginna finally opened her eyes.

“Nothing in the galaxy can communicate better than a tintillian. They are connection,” Ginna explained, very gently. “They’re not individual. They’re like… fractals. Music where each note is a symphony and what we perceive as an individual is just the echo of a single riff. I contracted with them, once. I was inside it for two months, like a misplaced f flat in a nebula-choir of angels and starlight, and sometimes I can still feel it. Connect.”

Loren’s breath caught at the realization. “Stars and galaxies. You’re that Ginna,” e breathed. She was only one of the highest ranked professional companions, and came up in dozens of case studies. She’d provided the baseline measurements for companionship in more new species than anyone else. There wasn’t a species she’d shun, or a challenge she’d back down from.

Ginna smiled, that warm friendly smile that immediately forgave Loren for interrupting and being suddenly starstruck. “I’m that Ginna.” She tapped her visor where it was laying beside her. “And I’ve got two hours left before I have to do a radiation decontam, so I’m going to spend them being a very loud f flat.”

“Right. Sorry,” Loren backed away as Ginna’s eyes closed and she took her hum back up. “Thank you.”

Loren retreated, awkward stumbling back over er boots, and hyperventilated at Jon for a little bit. Jon just laughed.

“Careful with that puppy-crush, kid,” he teased. “Ginna’s ace. She doesn’t go for anybody.”

About an hour and a half later–when Loren was in the middle of a spirited game of leapfrog with the akskar crew to keep them entertained–Ginna returned. There was a pinging sound, like metal heating under the sun, a faint smell of ozone, and Ginna walked into the main part of the cave haloed in a shimmering glow. There was music, vast and incomprehensible under her voice when she spoke.

“Strip to your skivvies, Jon, and figure out what you want to say to the guild! We’re in contact.”

I LOVE GINNA I LOVE HUMAN COMPANIONS

EEEEEEEEEEE

morgynleri:

jabberwockypie:

delirieuse:

vantwinblade:

sonoorousmusic:

Imagine, guns are illegal, someone breaks into your house with a gun, they’re a criminal so they don’t care that they’re not allowed to have a gun. They shoot you and your entire family because as a law abiding citizen you don’t have a gun to defend yourself. Sounds like a good idea, huh?

I grab my 500 dollar short sword and kill the fucker with that. Guns are shit in CQC.

Also! If you own a gun, you are more likely to be shot with it!

ALSO! Unless you keep your gun loaded and ON YOUR PERSON AT ALL TIMES, and not with your gun safely unloaded and locked up in your gun safe, you’re still likely to get shot by your hypothetical home invader.

Oddly, I am American and do not own a gun. I also recognize that I neither NEED a gun, nor do I know how to use one safely, so I sure as shit should not HAVE a gun.

If guns are illegal, there are fewer of them to be bought, and ammunition is far more difficult to obtain, and most criminals who are going to randomly break into a house aren’t going to have the resources to acquire both.

And you’re assuming that the people inside this theoretical house don’t know how to use at least something in their house as a weapon that isn’t a gun. Which is not a terribly good attitude to have. Everything can be a weapon, if you have the right mind set.

So you know, yeah, making guns illegal sounds like an excellent idea.

Like, shit, dude, I know a half-dozen ways to kill someone on purpose with the little kitchen knife in my drawer, and a solid baker’s dozen ways that I could manage it accidentally, and as a result I’m careful as shit.  And that’s something with real actual applications beyond killing things, that’s a cooking implement and I’m careful as shit.

The thing I’ve always kept in mind is this: a gun has no other uses.  A gun exists to kill things, that is why you’re taught to never, ever point a gun at something you don’t intend to shoot, whether it’s loaded or not (and yes, I do know how to use a gun, I have training).  A gun exists solely to kill.  Even if you’re using a gun to protect yourself, you’re protecting yourself with lethal force.

So…uh, yeah, I wouldn’t be too upset about at least something to limit the availability of a gun.  

transgenderteensurvivalguide:

Emery says:

Hey, everyone! Dysphoria is a real pain in the butt to deal with, and I know it can be difficult to find ways to lessen it or distract yourself from it. Since we get a lot of asks from people who are looking for tips to help manage their dysphoria, I thought I would make a masterpost to help everyone out. Here we go!

General Tips

-making a music playlist of your favorite songs

-cleaning and/or doing laundry

-name and pronoun affirmations (you can make yourself some cards with your name and pronouns on them and carry them with you and/or ask supportive friends and family to verbally participate in these affirmations)

-wearing clothes that you feel good in (shoes, hats, dresses, sweaters, accessories etc.)

-taking up a hobby that you find enjoyable (skateboarding, making bracelets, writing, learning a new language, playing an instrument, joining a tabletop gaming club, etc.)

-watching YouTube videos (let’s-plays are my fav!)

-dyeing your hair and/or getting a haircut (this can make you feel like a million bucks)

Tips For When Dysphoria Makes You Want To Self-Harm

-holding an ice cube in your hand

-writing in a journal (it can be extremely therapeutic)

-listening to music

-taking a hair tie or rubber band and lightly snapping it against your wrist (it provides stimulation without causing you any harm)

-playing a video game (a puzzle game or fighting game might be particularly helpful since they require a lot of concentration)

-going for a walk (exercise can produce feel-good endorphins in your brain)

-watching a funny youtube video or doing tongue-twisters (laughter also produces endorphins)

-taking a hot shower (they’re particularly great for relieving tension)

-practicing breathing techniques (inhale for 8 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds)

- drinking tea (something like chamomile, mint, or peppermint is best)

- coloring (I personally really like ones that feature Disney characters!)

YouTube Videos That Talk About Dysphoria

-FTM ~ what is dysphoria (uppercaseCHASE1, white transman YouTuber)

-NON-BINARY DYSPHORIA?? (OutOfThisBinary, a channel run by several nonbinary YouTubers)

-HOW I MANAGED DYSPHORIA (Kat Blaque, black trans woman YouTuber)

-QAC 26 - Gender Dsyphoria: It’s Complicated. (a rant) (QueerAsCat, black afab nonbinary YouTuber) 

-DRAW MY LIFE (princessjoules, Vietnamese trans woman YouTuber) Tw: mentions of transphobia and abuse

Articles About How To Deal With Dysphoria

-5 Ways to Support a Trans Person Experiencing Body Dysphoria (everydayfeminism.com) Tw: mentions of alcohol abuse and suicidal ideation

-20 Small Things To Do When Gender Dysphoria Gets You Down (buzzfeed.com) Tw: self-harm mention, period mention, “biological sex” mention

-How do I deal with dysphoria (Neutrois Nonsense) Tw: use of trans*

Charlie and Lee say:

You don’t need to have dysphoria to be transgender, but many trans people do have dysphoria. And, gender dysphoria (for those who have it) sucks. So, this is some added advice from the mods on coping with it!! (The key is distraction, and trying to remember that it will get better one day)

• Check out our dysphoria tag! You’ll see other suggestions on things to do, and Qs from other people who are dysphoric. Remember, you aren’t alone.
• Journal about how you feel. 
• You could have one journal for negative things, because it feels good to get them out, and another journal for positivity and notes to yourself. Or you could write everything all in one place, it’s up to you. 
• You could also post on a private sideblog, or type in notes on your phone if you don’t have access to a physical journal
• Take deep breaths + practice some grounding/calming/meditation techniques.
• It’s a good idea to do something that makes you feel extra valid as your gender, like packing, binding, tucking, and wearing breast forms.
• Maybe trans feminine individuals could put on makeup, or clear nail polish, or use flower-scented body wash when they shower.
• Trans masculine people could put on a button up, or masculine-coded clothing, or make a beard with makeup.
• We had a whole assortment of recommendations a while ago for music that helps people when they feel dysphoric because they can sing along. You could try to sing along to music, or lip synch if that makes you feel better.
• Practicing self care, ex. taking a bath with a bath bomb (if that doesn’t induce dysphoria) to wind down.  Maybe having tea and going to bed early?
• You feel like sh*t: interactive self care
• Talking to and getting in touch with other trans friends/people you may know, who will understand what you’re going through and are willing to support you
• Take a walk and/or exercise a bit!! Even if you’re unable to do that because of disabilities, get some fresh air and new scenery!
• Find little things to appreciate about your body, or try not to think about it at all. Remember, this is about what helps you best, and it’s different for everyone.
• Spend time with a pet, if you have one!
• Try to work on planning your transition. Have a goal, and plan how you’ll get there.
• This could make you feel worse, or make you feel hopeful, like it’s more real and you’ll be ready for it.
• Gather information about legally changing your name where you live when you turn 18 or the age of legal adulthood, read up on the effects of hormones, look at different surgery techniques and surgeons and prices, etc.
• Start saving money now, even if it’s only a few dollars a month, or a few coins. When you turn 18, you’ll be informed and ready to start your transition, even if it involves saving money for a few years after to be able to afford it. It’s possible, and you can do it!
• Watch other people’s transition videos, and read their transition blogs. Again, this may help or make it worse, but you will be better prepared.
• Go to your local public library and read a book, if you can! That might distract you, and it’s fun.
• Listen to music, wear comfy clothes, curl up with a blanket, and chill out. Be cozy!
• Have a countdown until you’re 18 (you could use an app or write it in a calendar) or a countdown until you’re able to get a new shirt or whatever you’re looking forward to.
• Get organized! Clean things, sort through your things, make lists of what you need to do, color code, or whatever you want. It’ll help take your mind off things, and you’ll be helping yourself later.

Distract yourself! Watch TV, play video games, or waste a few minutes on one of the websites below, or do crafts:

tap the keyboard to play the piano

listen to rain

cute little games

click on the ad to donate food to pet shelters

free rice.com

NASA pic of the day

gibberish essay typer for fun

military time clock that changes color

play echogenesis (basically click on stuff and listen to music)

make designs

drag your mouse for an expressionist painting

this website just says “heeey” and “hoo” repeatedly

do nothing for 2 minutes

look at calming scenes and listen to relaxing music

it does the car dealer balloon thing when you move your mouse

sound effect drums

dramatic music plays while the things you type fall off into space

click on the boxes to make electronic music

comic asteroids explode

colorful sand layers

whale follows your cursor

watch indie movies

rabbit: watch netflix online with a friend

watch netflix with a friend

find the song that was playing in that show/movie

How to Download Songs or other Audio from Tumblr

infinite jukebox

play all the music posted on a tumblr blog

code academy: learn to code

learn a new language

learn new stuff

learn sign language

draw something or edit pics

make homemade playdough

make stress balls

print mandalas to color

cool crafts

Some more links:

Ren’s list of distractions

Social Dysphoria: The Game

Tips to feel more feminine

Transfeminine dysphoria when not out

Virtual makeover

Period coping

How to feel more androgynous

Here is a list of places you could contact to talk to someone if you’re feeling suicidal. Please, reach out and get help. We can’t answer suicidal asks for legal reasons, but we care about you.

Reblog this to tell us how you deal with dysphoria!

thegirlwhocutthemoonintwo:

delirieuse:

smallercomfort:

words-writ-in-starlight:

fempunkandkittens:

officialaphnetherlands:

ancientnorthmartian:

“Doctors who spent years studying the human body”

Do you mean doctors who spent years learning about abled white cis men’s bodies

do you know anything about the world besides what you read on tumblr

Okay but this is true?? Shut up with your bullshit, the medical industry for a very very long time has used the able bodied white cis male as their standard and that has very real healthcare consequences for a lot of people.

Do you know why most women don’t know when they’re having heart attacks? Why heart attacks kill more women than men? Because symptoms of a heart attack are different for women and the ones that doctors usually recognize and publicize are the symptoms experienced by men. Do you know why it’s so difficult for Black and Brown people to get diagnosed if they have skin cancer? Because doctors have been taught to recognize it on white people. People of size are constantly told that their problems are entirely because of their weight and doctors don’t even bother to look beyond that to be sure that’s the case. So those people have medical conditions go undiagnosed properly for years, and die in the process.  Fuck, even just the fact that people think it’s okay to charge women more for healthcare because “they have extra parts” (?????) is indicative of the way the male body has been considered the standard for fucking ever. And the healthcare needs of disabled people or trans people? Forget about it.

OP is 1000% right. The medical industry has used the able cis white male body as their standard of care for CENTURIES and that has real consequences for the rest of us today. It’s getting better but it’s not where it should be. So fuck off with your snarky commentary, you’re wrong. The healthcare industry is not equipped to handle the needs of people with disabilities, women, PoC, trans people, people of size, etc. and that’s in large part due to the fact that the established body of medical knowledge was created by studying able, cis, white male bodies almost exclusively.

Hey there folks, speaking as a trained EMT and a pre-med student, I can confirm that the above person is approximately 7000% accurate.  In my EMT training, I would repeatedly ask ‘’but what if my patent is a woman” or “what is my patient is a person of color” and at first all I got was shock.  Then I got confused bumbling.  I got some answers–basic symptoms of a heart attack in women, how to recognize cyanosis in someone of color, the basics of how to work with an autistic patient or someone who for whatever reason can’t communicate well with you.  In fact, EMTs and other EMS workers are getting a lot better at learning the differences between the health care for a person of color or someone disabled.  We were even told that we would need to ask our patients for their biological sex (I know, I’m really sorry, I know that there are people who find this intensely uncomfortable or even harmful, but there are real medical reasons for this and most decent EMTs will use whatever pronouns you ask them to).  But most if not all of the answers we were given about women were directly related to gynecological issues.  The guys teaching me?  They were good guys.  Nice.  Funny.  Smart.  Devoted to caring for patients.  Impassioned about protecting people, especially women and teenaged girls, from assault.  Largely not sexist toward me or their coworkers.  Hell, they were even smart enough to say “listen, boys, the women in this class have a higher pain tolerance than you, they just do, and as a rule if a women says their pain is a 5 on a scale of 1-10, assume it’s somewhere around an 8” when a kid laughed during the gyno unit.  But they just didn’t know what to say when I asked “so if you’re supposed to palpate the patient’s chest, what do you do if your patient’s a triple-D” or when I asked “so if your patient gets menstrual migraines, how do you know if this headache is a stroke or not.”  They had never been taught.  This is a real problem, one that many medical professionals work hard to remedy once they start practicing.  But this is not bullshit.  At all.  The standard patient is a cis white guy with no disabilities or chronic illnesses.  It’s a huge fucking problem and I’m going to need you to step down with your bullshit, there, friend.

This is an issue with mental health too, where people of color (black and Hispanic people especially) are less likely to be taken seriously with mental issues, and where community outreach for these groups is very very different from the kinds of programs that might be effective for white people.

Autism is rarely diagnosed in women because the symptoms doctors look for are all specific to men. Doctors used to blame depression and other mental illnesses in women on a misbehaving uterus, and it’s still a struggle for women to get their symptoms taken seriously enough to merit proper treatment.

Mental health for LGBT people has a long history of being an oppressive shitshow, given how long it took the medical community to stop pathologizing sexuality and gender identity. (Conversion therapy is still legal!)

As well as autism rarely being diagnosed in women, it’s also harder for a person of colour to be diagnosed, as it’s perceived as being a middle-class+ white man’s disease.

And! We didn’t know how large the clitoris was until THE NINETIES because no-one thought it was worth investigating. Thanks to a female researcher in Melbourne, Australia, we know that it’s roughly a wishbone shape, and has two ‘legs’ that extend down under the labia majora. 

(I am proud of my memory as I read this in a book five years ago, but here’s a link. The researcher’s name is Helen O’Connell.)

Yes yes yes

thorneofbriar:

onceyougodutch:

chasertiff:

Okay, so he’s got a girly face, and he wears tights and some high boots. Sure.

But check out that noble steed. That’s one ready-to-kick-ass-and-take-names steed.

While other princesses just run away and leave nothing, Philip gets AN INVITE TO HER HOUSE. He gets a song, a dance, and a first date.

He comes home, just to tell his dad he’s not going to marry the princess because he’s in love.

No. Other. Reason. He rides in and is just like, “I met the girl I’m going to marry. Now I’ve got a birthday party to be at. Bye Dad.”

Now how much do you think his dad weighs? That short fat little man? Probably pretty heavy.Not a problem for Prince Philip.

And then he gets jumped by goblins, both hands tied behind his back

But that’s not enough to stop Prince Philip.Oh no.

He breaks his hands free and starts chucking goblins.

Look at that face. That face. The “BITCH JUST YOU WAIT” face. He may be tied down by a dozen goblins but he’s not gonna take no shit from this witch.

In fact, he’s so strong, she ends up keeping him chained to the wall, but he still fights back.

Now when he finally does get free–

He’s ready to go into battle UNARMED. He don’t need no shield or sword, he’s going to go punch Maleficent’s face in with his fist. If Flora didn’t stop him, he probably would have, too.

Backed up against a cliff edge, nowhere to go. Fighting off goblins. But there’s so many and just one Philip.

NBD I’LL JUST JUMP AND SLIDE DOWN THE ROCK PILE IN MY SKIN-TIGHT TIGHTS.

Gate closing?

who gives a fuck? certainly not prince philip.

Lighting hitting rocks around me?

NBD BRO

Giant forest of thorns?

Bitch, get out of my way. I’ve got a princess to save.

Giant dragon of hell?

CHARGE HEAD ON.

Fire? Dragon? Burning dry twigs? No. Fucking. Problem.

Just smack that bitch on the nose.

Sheer cliff face? Fire burning behind me? Back to a wall?

Calm down guys, I got this.

I’LL JUST FUCKING SCALE IT ONE-HANDED.

And fight the bloody beast from 500 feet high, with literally nothing to save me if I fall.

Lose the shield off the cliff?

JUST STAND THERE AND SMILE ‘CAUSE I’VE GOT A FUCKING MAGIC SWORD THAT’S GOING THROUGH YOUR HEART BITCH.

Just chuck it. Straight through.

Then jump out of the way…

And survive. That’s what happens to bitches who mess with the woman I love.

Get the horse.

Get the girl.

EXPLAIN NOTHING.

that’s how he EARNED his happily ever after.

Srsly. The most bad. ass. prince. disney ever wrote.

I 1,000% never thought of it from this point of view before and am now screaming Too Hot, Hot Damn, Made that dragon wanna retire man.

“EXPLAIN NOTHING”

CLEARLY I need to watch this movie again.

agoodflyting:

There’s something I find painfully sweet about the fact that Leslie Odom Jr. won the Best Actor Tony instead of LMM.

Like

Burr. You did it. 

You did it. You finally beat Hamilton at something.