Tbh all of these fake stories going around and they’re so obvious but if any of them said “so I work in retail” id be “okay yeah” because the weirdest shit goes down when you work retail. It could say “so I work in retail and today Jesus came in and turned all our water bottles into wine” and I’d be like “shit that’s wild what’d your manager do”
Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles,
tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they
don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight
them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit
space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely
as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the
process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and
accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually
happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.
THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.
Yeah, I love this.
Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms - they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.
Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.
All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.
klingons: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way
klingons: why do you let them run your federation
vulcan science academy: look
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip.
vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how.
vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want.
klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation
Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.
you know what the best evidence for this is? Deep Space 9 almost never broke down. minor malfunctions that irritated O’Brien to hell and back, sure, but almost none of the truly weird shit that befell Voyager and all the starships Enterprise. what was the weirdest malfunction DS9 ever had? the senior staff getting trapped as holosuite characters in Our Man Bashir, and that was because a human decided to just dump the transporter buffer into the station’s core memory and hope everything would work out somehow, which is a bit like swapping your computer’s hard drive out for a memory card from a PlayStation 2 and expecting to be able to play a game of Spyro the Dragon with your keyboard and mouse.
you know what, I’m not done with this post. let’s talk about the Pegasus. the USS Fucking Pegasus,
testbed for the first Starfleet cloaking device. here we have a handful
of humans working in secret to develop a cloaking device in violation
of a treaty with the Romulans. they’re playing catchup trying to develop
a technology other species have had for a century. and what do they do?
do they decide to duplicate a Romulan cloaking device precisely, just
see if they can match what other species have? nope. they decide, hey,
while we’re at it, while we’re building our very first one of these things, just to find out if this is possible, let’s see if we can make this thing phase us out of normal space so we can fly through planets while we’re invisible.
“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.
“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.
there
must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human
engineering students at Starfleet Academy, and every week in every
single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like “our
assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and my one human classmate
built a chronometric-flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten
it.”
Humans get mildly offended by the way they are presented in non-human media.
Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”
“That was ONE TIME.”
There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity.
And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”
There are entire serieses of horror movies where the premise is “We stopped paying attention to the human and ey found the technology.”
reblog for new meta.
RE that last line: McGuyver.
“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.
for the random fic titles: "spring will be here soon"
Since you didn’t specify a fandom….this is the story of the girl Jaylah.
Her people are from a high tundra part of their world–even after she forgets the name of her planet, the name of her people, the name of her family, she will remember this. The shimmer of the sun at midnight, the dance of stars at pitch-black noon, and the song of the wind over the snow-layered ground will stay in her dreams all her life, a tiny scrap of peace. Winter on the high tundra is dangerous, even in the cities-and-starships age, and Jaylah’s people never quite managed to forget their heritage of cold nights and terror. The promise of new life, of melted snow and living things, is the hope their people holds up to get through the days of unbroken night, the vow they make in the darkest moments of their life to fight on.
As a little girl wondering if the sun will ever come back, Jaylah’s mother strokes her hair back from her face and whisper that spring would come soon, so soon that Jaylah wouldn’t even believe it.
In Krall’s dungeons, as Jaylah sobs silently, hands pressed to her mouth so hard that her teeth draw blue bruises on the white skin, her father hugs her to his side. “Spring will be here soon, you’ll see, precious girl,” he whispers–a lie, but the familiar words soothe her tears and make her mother, bleeding out slowly from a gash to the leg, and her mama, pressing her hands to her wife’s skin, smile faintly.
When her mama is taken, still smudged blue with her mother’s blood, she kisses Jaylah forehead and her cheeks and promises, “Spring will be here soon, little snowflake, little darling.” A lie, but a warm and gentle one, bittersweet.
When her father dies, and she runs until she can’t breathe for tears, she curls up in a mountain cave, far too close to the search parties scouring for her, and she lies to herself, “Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. You just have to stand up.” And she scrubs her face with her palms and pulls herself upright.
She tells the lie a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, every time a new circuit breaks or she hasn’t eaten in twelve days or she is run off from a precious salvage or she can’t stand the loneliness any longer. Spring will be here soon, Jaylah. Get up and meet it on your feet.
Years from now, she’ll be an ensign sitting cross-legged on a chair in the Enterprise mess hall, surrounded by the bridge crew and Montgomery Scotty and Doctor Bones, her red Operations uniform a bright contrast to her white hair and a glass of scotch from Montgomery Scotty’s illicit still in her hand. (She will know, by then, what a nickname is, but she will insist on her old names for them, at times like this, when they are together and laughing.) Captain James T will smile at her, and Montgomery Scotty will clap her on the back as he tells them about how she repaired the replicators and stopped them from turning all the food purple, and she will think that perhaps she was not lying to herself all along after all.
the funniest thing in the entire pirates of the caribbean series is definitely that one scene in At World’s End where they have parlay but davy jones is part of it, and rather than have him stand in the shallows or something they get a big bucket of water and have in stand on it on shore
who thought of that idea? who thought “put davy jones in a bucket of water” and had the guts to suggest it aloud? and then who went “hey that sounds like a great idea!”
at some point someone told davy jones their idea was for him to stand in a bucket of water and he agreed to it
ok but notice the trail of buckets behind him meaning he walked from the ocean through three other buckets of water before he got into the one hes standing in
It’s even funnier when you consider how he must have figured all this out in the first place.
Some folks are asking “well, if he can avoid the no-dry-land curse simply by standing in a bucket, doesn’t that ruin his whole motivation?”, but he’s not on dry land here.
The parley takes place on a sandbar - which, for the unfamiliar, is a temporary “island” of sand deposited by breaking waves, unconnected with the shore, that spends most of its time submerged, being exposed only at low tide.
What Jones is doing here is rules-lawyering his curse. Can you imagine the trial and error he must have gone through in order to determine that this would actually work?
“Okay, do islands count as dry land? How about parts of the shore below the high tide mark? Reefs? Shoals? What if I stand in a pool of water on a shoal? Does it have to be seawater, or will any water do? Does it have to be a natural tidepool, or can it be something artificial, like a bucket?”
What I am saying is that there must have been a process.
Pretty sure that this implies that the reverse - a bucket of sand, floating on the water (big bucket with just a bit of sand), would qualify as dry land. That’s absurd, so I’m pretty sure that his lawyer pulled a fast one over the curse governor.
It may be absurd, but the text of the film bears it out. Davy Jones can sense the presence of his heart while it’s at sea, but not while it’s on land (indeed, that’s why he buried it on land in the first place: to break his connection with it) - yet placing the heart in a simple jar of dirt conceals it from Jones’ awareness just as surely as burial on land does, even if the jar is on a boat at the time. Suitably prepared vessels filled with dirt absolutely count as dry land for the purpose of Jones’ curse.
Then the reverse should also be true. If he buried it in a jar of water, no matter how far inland it is, he would be able to sense it. So by this logic, any container of seawater counts as not dry land, ergo, the bucket is a perfectly viable loophole.
Not necessarily. It’s traditionally a lot easier to accidentally get whammied by a curse than it is to weasel around it - I figure that’s why he’s using multiple layers of indirection here. He’s forbidden to set foot on dry land, but it’s technically not dry land (it’s a sandbar, a non-permanent landform exposed only at low tide) and he technically didn’t set foot on it (he’s standing in a bucket of water). It’s entirely possible that either one of those things alone wouldn’t make the grade.
okay but this all raises one further, very important question: if it’s specifically “dry land” he’s forbidden from, what about wetlands.
can Davy Jones fight you in salt marshes? can he throw down in a peat bog?Swamp Battle?
Today one of my students threw a stuffed animal across the room and it landed directly in a plate filled with paint
And I had it narrowed down to a few kids but no one would confess so I made them all put their toys away and have five minutes of quiet time to Reflect on Their Behavior
During that five minutes of relative silence, this group of three year olds INVENTED A NEW CLASSMATE, named him, and unanimously blamed him for throwing the toy across the room
There was not a single weak link, they were all ride or die
pssssst talk to me about Schuyler sisters in reincarnation AU. or more Alex/John whatever. rolls away.
The Schuyler sisters! My queens! The rest of the AU is here!
Alicia Laramie is seven years old when she remembers. Her parents bring home a little girl, and she
looks different from the olive-wood skin and tumbling black curls of Alicia and
her parents and her little sister Maggie—this girl all gold-tinged ivory skin
and silky dark hair framing solemn black eyes.
She’s a year younger than Alicia and her parents haven’t even gotten out
“This is Lisa Tian” before she’s rushing forward to enfold the girl in her
arms.
“Eliza,” Angelica whispers into the girl’s long dark hair. Bemused, the girl hugs her back, and Angelica
says, “I’ll take care of you, Eliza. You’re
the best thing in my life, I’ll choose your happiness every time.” The girl is confused when Angelica stands
back, but she gives a smile, the same sweet smile Angelica remembers, and it’s
good.
***
When the fifth grade class goes
to the Grange for a field trip, Lisa spends three hours in semi-hysterical sobs,
refusing to go through the front door, and the terrified tour guide calls the
first emergency number on her phone. Twenty
minutes later, a sixth-grader spills out of a cab and swoops down on her like a
hurricane in rose and gold, and Eliza clings to Angelica like the last lifeboat
on a sinking ship.
“It’s okay, Lizzie,” Angelica soothes.
“Angelica, I—I–”
“I know,” Angelica sighs, stroking her hair. “Take a couple deep breaths, ‘Liza, it’ll
pass.”
“I miss him,” Eliza whispers into Angelica’s hip, and the stroking doesn’t
pause.
“I know,” Angelica says. She
gives a small, rueful smile. “That part
won’t pass.”
Eliza laughs a little at that, muffled by Angelica’s jacket, and her
grip tightens.
***
So…when Maggie Laramie is fourteen their house gets robbed. She gets caught and held at gunpoint, and she
barely manages to not say “My father
has gone to raise the Minutemen.”
Instead she steadily states that he’s called the police, and when the
three guys in black scramble like their lives depend on it, she smiles at her
sisters.
“Maggie, that was amazing,” Mrs. Laramie says breathlessly.
“Peggy,” she corrects, and Angelica and Eliza glow.
I am totally normal and would never murder a person without a GOOD REASON for doing so, that being said, I’m having this problem where the corpse I stored under my floorboards is making a weird heartbeat sound and was wondering if anyone else is having this problem and if you know any tips, tricks, quick fixes etc for this because it’s inconvenient and very annoying thank you and God Bless
is this website possessed by the neglected ghost of edgar allan poe now
“So it’s a necklace,” Ezekiel said,
frowning. “What’s it going to do for us
again?”
“It’s not just
a necklace,” Jake said, pushing Ezekiel out of the way. “It’s the last relic of the Romanov
family. Story goes,” he added in a
hushed tone, reaching out to touch the small ruby pendant with a reverent gloved
finger, “that this was that saved Anastasia Romanova’s life.”
“It’s a ruby the size of a penny,” Eve
observed, leaning against the desk with an eye on the door of the Annex. “I don’t see that thing blocking any bullets
any time soon.”
“Right, because logic matters so much here,”
Ezekiel muttered, and Jake laughed. Jenkins,
at his desk poring over a text that appeared to be in a dialect of English that
had passed out of use some time before the Renaissance, made an annoyed sound.
in happier news I had a student answer the question “what is in the room” with “a pretty professor” and spent the next twenty seconds incapable of speech as I tried not to inhale coffee and die, so there’s a good language professor/student au for yall
when ur like “im gettin a gay vibe” and your straight friend is like “uhhh idk that seems….forced….” and u gotta pull out your fuckin phd from gay college and your private gay detective license and your federal bureau of investigaytion badge like sit fuckin down buddy i got credentials and also an opinion the truth is out there my guy
Chat Noir beginning to suspect his Lady’s identity through frequent visits to Marinette’s balcony
She gives him delicious baked goods, blankets when he accidentally ends up sleeping over, an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, and eventually (she swears she’s only doing it to shut him up) gentle fingers to scratch at the spot behind his ears that makes him slump into a pile of blissful goo.
And by observing her, her infectious smile, the freckles lightly dusting the bridge of her nose, the midnight hair framing those impossibly familiar blue eyes…Chat’s resolve crumbles.
She’s too much like her, like his Lady, for it to be anyone else. Her voice - so clear and confident, her bravery when standing up to Chloe’s bullying, her sharp wit that only seems to come out when he’s facing her behind the guise of an alley cat…
Not to mention he catches a glimpse of a small red thing flitting around her head every now and then, and with his enhanced hearing, can hear it talking to her.
Marinette’s a miraculous holder, and Adrien’s in love.
But he’s not sure if she feels the same way…on either side of the mask. And it scares him. Ladybug simply rolls her eyes at Chat’s advances, and Adrien seems to make Marinette rather uncomfortable.
He’s lost his mother, his father’s never there for him, and he can’t lose his best friend and first love, too.
So he dials back on visits to his princess, not only to protect himself from rejection but also so that he can’t kiss her like he desperately wants to; he stops kissing Ladybug’s hand in greeting, and keeps his distance.
His friendship with her is one of the most precious things life’s ever given him, and he refuses to let his love for her get in the way of ruining it.
Till a particularly rainy day arrives, and Adrien finds himself unable to stop the tide pulling him ever closer to her.
Chloe’s talking about Chat Noir, and he snaps out of his mid-afternoon daze.
“I personally don’t see why Ladybug needs him. She’s quite capable of saving the city without him. All he does is get in her way,” she remarks absently, inspecting her perfect manicure, Sabrina nodding in agreement.
Something in Adrien deflates, and he pretends he hadn’t heard that.
“He doesn’t deserve to be called a hero, remember that time he completely destroyed my room-”
“Don’t you dare say that about him.”
Everyone listening looks over in shock, and Marinette’s standing with Alya in the doorway, brows furrowed in a way that makes her the spitting image of Ladybug facing an akuma.
Adrien’s heart is beating so fast he wonders whether it’s going to stop any minute. He can’t look away or pretend he isn’t listening anymore.
Chloe smirks and opens her mouth to retort, but his Lady cuts her off once again.
“He’s loyal to Ladybug, and he’s unbelievably kind. He’s devoted to saving Paris just as much as she is, and without him on her side, she wouldn’t be here today!”
If Adrien’s blush could get any redder, it’d be worse than Nathanael’s hair right about now.
“He’s just as important and heroic as she is, and he deserves every good thing in the world. So don’t talk crap about people you barely know, or about people who do a heck of a lot more for the world than you do!”
Chloe’s stunned at the girl’s ferocious defense of the black cat, but she sneers even though she’s cornered. “It sounds like you have a bit of a crush on him, Marinette. Careful, wouldn’t want a dirty street cat like him to hear. He’s nobody’s hero. He hasn’t even been seen in some time.”
Marinette fixes her with a glare, but her voice softens. “He’s my hero,” she says simply. “And I’m willing to bet there are many others who’d say the same. He’s my hero, he’s Ladybug’s hero, and he’s…he’s someone I miss very much right now.” Her voice seems to break then, and she turns on her heel to walk out the door, leaving Chloe and the others gaping after her.
Adrien is utterly floored. Completely, irreversibly floored, and he can’t muster any coherent thought except to find Marinette as soon as possible.
His head is buzzing. Marinette…Ladybug, she’s missed him. Missed him while he tried to give her space and keep his distance, when all she’d wanted was for him to be right next to her.
She’d sounded so passionate and sincere when she defended him that perhaps, perhaps she might love him, too.
It’s still raining when evening arrives, and she finds her drenched kitty shivering on her balcony, after such a long time.
It’s still raining when he presses his lips to hers right then and there, and she lets him kiss her the way he’s wanted to for so, so long. She’s warm and sweet and strong against him, and they melt into each other.
It’s still raining when they reluctantly break apart, Marinette pressed up against him, drenched from head to toe just like he is, chests heaving and cheeks flushing.
His miraculous beeps a warning-Plagg hates the rain- and he moves away to hide his face as he detransforms. What if he, Adrien, isn’t enough?
She cups his cheeks and meets his gaze. “Minou, I’ll love you no matter who you are underneath that mask. Please, please don’t go away again,” she implores, as if she’d read his thoughts.
He doesn’t deny her, knows that he can’t ever deny her anything, and he breathes out a promise.
Donald Trump is exactly the kind of person that Jesus would have thrown out of the temple and beaten with a stick, and the fact that so many self-identified Christians want to put him in office tells you pretty everything wrong with white American Christianity.
Because Jesus had authority at temples and beat people.
I 100% can’t tell if you’re joking here but he actually did chase people out of a temple at least once for using religion for their own selfish gains, complete with literal table flipping and improvised whips
So really it’s not that he would have trump thrown out as much as he would storm in and accuse him of turning his father’s house into a den of thieves before upending a table on his head
Dude, Jesus not only chased them out, he broke stuff they were selling, let loose all of their animals, and fucking flipped all the money-changing tables.
Jesus 100% would have been chasing Trump out with a table leg.
My freshmen year roommate was a complete fucking disaster but he would throw parties and everyone would pass out in our living room and every morning I left for class at 7am I would just get little choruses of “have fun at class, good luck” from hungover stoners and let me tell you, as someone who thrives off attention and positive reinforcement, this setup really worked for me
So i’m moving out on my own soon and my dad wants to make sure i know how to cook and he just called me downstairs and threw an apron at me and was like “WELCOME TO CHOPPED”
Ok my mystery ingredients are: canned potatoes, frozen spinach, frozen green beans, and tilapia
And he shoved them all under a cake platter so he could do a dramatic reveal
He keeps referring to himself as Tim Allen and idk if he’s trying to be funny or if he is just confused as to what Ted Allen’s name is
HE JUST YELLED “SUDDEN DEATH” AND PULLED A BAG OF WALNUTS OUT JFC DAD TED ALLEN WOULD NEVER DO THIS TO ME
Alright so we’re doing Walnut Crusted Tilapia on a Bed of Spinach with a side of Microwaved Green Beans and Canned Potatoes. Gourmet cooking at its finest.
He has been narrating everything I’ve done and whenever I’m about to fuck up he runs to the kitchen table and pretends to be a judge like “Interesting choice preheating the oven to 300°…I’d do it to 350°”
My dad told me I only have three minutes left but I think he said that three minutes ago so idk if he’s serious? IDKIDKIDK EVERYTHING IS A BLUR RN AND I HAVENT EVEN PLATED WHAT AM I DOING ON TUMBLR
Ok so apparently “throwing things on the plate in a panic” isn’t plating, but it tasted really good. Also, I didn’t get chopped, but my dog did because she wouldn’t stop barking at the neighbor.
I feel so accomplished and idk I think I’m ready for the actual show keep an eye out for me, guys
Psst John and Alexander meeting in your Hamilton Reincarnation fic series?
WOO, I am literal Laurens/Hamilton garbage, tell your friends. All In One Spot AU
John has been at Columbia for a year and, honestly, he’s starting to
think that he was wrong, that no one else is here. He walks past the law center every chance he
gets, and he doubles the time of the walk from his dorm to the natural sciences
building every single day to pass Hamilton Hall. The statue is…reassuring, somehow,
Alexander’s fine-drawn face cast in bronze and a quill in his clever
fingers. When John’s tired, or he’s had
a bad night, full of nightmares with bayonets jumbled in with cars, the cinch
of a noose tangled with the static of a television, he’ll stop and look at the
statue until he can breathe again.
It’s not all bad. John is in New
York City, and he finally gets where Alexander was coming from all those years
ago, this might legitimately be the greatest city in the world. It sure beats South Carolina, hell and
gone. He’s introduced himself to
everyone as John, here, and even admitted to a handful of people that he was a
soldier in the Revolution. He doesn’t
have any close friends, but he doesn’t have any enemies, either, and the handful
of familiar faces who see him when he quietly attends a Pride parade don’t say
a word. He’s taken a handful of
prerequisites for a biochem degree, in the pre-med track—he always wanted to be
a physician last time, and his father is too distant to fight him this
time.
He spends a little money on a sketchbook or two, on a set of pencils,
and draws old faces, tries to imagine them in the modern world. Lafayette, eyes bright and smiling, dressed
in a suit. General Washington, hands
folded behind his back—no matter how many times John tries to give him a modern
military uniform, his long heavy coat takes shape. Aides and friends and soldiers whose faces he
half-recalls, in t-shirts and jeans and flannels. And Alexander, a thousand times Alexander,
Alexander in modern clothes, in his Continental Army uniform, in shirtsleeves,
in the coat he wears in the statue. A
few times, in the safety of his locked single room, John carefully sketches
Alexander stretched out in their cabin at Valley Forge, lit in candle-flame and
all smooth planes of muscle and skin, smiling at John, soft and sated. An entire sketchbook fills itself with
Alexander, over John’s first year at Columbia.
my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion
“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”
“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*
*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”
“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”
imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues
“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”
a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises.
“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.”
“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”
Finals are killin me man, any way you can tell another story? You've been like my salvation this week.
hahahahaahahaha literally a year later!!! literally a year. never be my friend, i will forget to answer your emails and constantly double-book my time.
ANYWAY, someone else (@ TUMBLR: what if….you tried…..not being QUITE so bad at messaging??? just a thought!!!! just an idea to try.) asked me for another Boarding School Story™ and i was racking my brain trying to think of something, because contrary to what i feel like might be popular belief, i didn’t get up to too many hijinks in high school.
i mean i was in our version of detention a lot but that was for things like “skipping breakfast” and “being late always” and “writing an inflammatory speech about how unfair it was that we had to eat breakfast in the dining hall when we could be using that time to SLEEP” and “dyeing my hair with bright streaks against the express written rules of the student handbook”.
okay in hindsight i was actually….. in detention….. a lot.
they used to email our parents every time we were in detention and it got to the point where my mother emailed our dean of students and asked if, to save time, she was only emailed when i WASN’T in detention.
but i feel like i wasn’t a troublemaker???
like okay objectively i was…in trouble often but–
the POINT IS, my young and very gentle delinquency aside, the only time i was ever in like, real trouble is the time that my boyfriend and i got stuck on the roof of the boys’ locker room in the football stadium.
i guess the important background info here is that where was an hour every night between study hall and final dorm sign-in that students were allowed to leave their dorms and ~mingle with one another, though there were all kinds of rules about where you could and couldn’t be.
school was like “you have to be in a lighted area” and students were like “lmao.”
there was also a hilarious rule during co-ed visitation on the dorms that you had to have “your door open and everyone had to have at least one foot on the floor at all times” which is an adorable way to try and curtail the Teenage Get Down.
anyway, the boyf and i were looking for a cool fun place to hang out and talk about, god, i don’t know, whatever it was that we talked about.
a few things about this boyf:
we had a spanish class together and he was very tall.
he had a lot of other good qualities, including “he was so nice to me all the time even when i was horrible” and “excellent deadpan” but my initial interest was because he was SO. VERY. TALL.
a pretty good summary of our relationship as a whole was that he called me to be like, “hey, we’ve been….talking a lot…….i was wondering what you were trying to do with that” and i was like “uh———i wasn’t——i like—-UHHHHHHHHHHHH” and he was like, “WELL DO YOU WANT TO LIKE, GO OUT??” and i was like, “SURE BUT I HAVE TO GO NOW BYE”
ah, to be young.
so boyf and i went for a fun little adventure looking for some ~privacy and struck upon the BRILLIANT idea of scaling the locker room building and hanging out on the roof, because nothing says “romance” like “the smell of a football equipment”. so he managed to find a ladder somewhere and up we went. a lovely time was had by all until i looked down at my watch and realized i had five minutes to be back on dorm.
“oh, shit,” i said, and getting to my feet and jogging to the edge of the roof. i looked down.
“hey, boyf?”
“yeah?”
“where did you put the ladder?”
he looked up. “i left it where you’re standing.”
i looked again. #confirmed for no ladder.
“are you sure?”
“yeah, where else would i put it?”
“well, where did you get it?”
“i don’t know, i found it….on……the grass………”
A WORD OF ADVICE: don’t ever just assume that ladders left lying around are for public use!!! they are ALMOST NEVER for public use.
“is it possible that was someone’s ladder, and they came and took it?”
SPOILER ALERT: it was possible!!! in fact, it was probable!!!
SPOILER ALERT #2: it was, in fact, security’s ladder, and security had taken it, assuming, of course, that two idiot students hadn’t just taken their ladder and climbed onto a roof that they 120% were not supposed to be on at 10pm.
“well,” said boyf.
“well,” i said.
“i could jump down and then catch you,” he offered.
we looked at one another. we looked down at the ground. we looked back at each other.
“you’re not THAT tall,” i said.
so, our options:
jump off the roof.
call for help.
accept that we now lived on this roof forever, build a home out of what we could scavenge, and never face the consequences of our actions.
“so, do you want to just live here?” i asked. “we could be happy.”
“PLEASE HELP,” yelled boyf. “WE ARE STUCK ON THE ROOF.”
boyf was more willing to accept responsibility for his actions than i was, which is also why he was willing to try to be friends when we broke up and i hid in my dorm room for a solid 3 months until he graduated.
after a few minutes if our shouting, security and the coach of the football team–who must have just been on duty?? i don’t think they like, called him every time there was a football stadium-related incident.–gathered at the boys’ locker room and glared up at us in the dark.
“HOW did you even get UP THERE,” shouted mr football coach.
“there was a ladder!” boyf protested. “it was right there! it was a public ladder!”
“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PUBLIC LADDER.”
“i’m gonna jump down,” said boyf again.
you know, all these years later i’m still not sure if he was nobly trying to take the brunt of the scolding or just like…. really wanted to jump off the roof.
“please stop trying to jump off this roof!!!!!” i snapped.
after probably five minutes of incredibly awkward two-level scolding, in which we sat with our legs hanging off the edge of the roof and the football coach said things like, “WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS,” and “WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN” and “IT IS SO EASY TO BE ANY OTHER WAY THAN THIS” security arrived with “their” “ladder” that “wasn’t” for “public use” or whatever.
i don’t know if you’ve ever been scolded while literally looking down at the authority figure you’ve pissed off but like, it is incredibly weird.
like on the one hand you feel like you have all the power, because you’re like “LOOK AT THE TINY PEONS BELOW ME,” but also you know logically that you don’t have all the power and you have to at least look contrite because in 5 minutes you’ll be on the ground and then the authority figure will hold all the cards again.
also it just feels rude to have your shoes dangling above an authority figure’s head but like, what else are you supposed to do?? it’s weirder to stand???
standing feels aggressive when you’re on a roof looking down???
EMILY POST CAN YOU WEIGH IN HERE
boyf and the football coach walked me back to my dorm.
“uh, bye,” i said, feeling for some reason like i would never see boyf again and we were both going to prison.
“GOODNIGHT,” said the football coach. “YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM THE DEAN.”
*********
“you can see why it might seem….to outside parties…..like you were on the roof for……private reasons,” said the dean, scolding both boyf and i outside the chapel just to remind us that we had let not only ourselves down, but also probably jesus.
“WE WERE STARGAZING,” boyf and i said in tandem.
“but you can SEE why it might SEEM like you were doing something ELSE,” the dean said. “if it happens again i’ll call your parents.”
“if it happens again i’m totally jumping off the roof,” boyf whispered to me when the dean had turned away.
A request from @littlestartopaz: Polaris
AU set in the American Revolution?
AHAHAHAHA
YES. This turned into kind of an ode to
Ade North, the woman in command of Polaris, and I have no regrets.
So Polaris is a covert part of the colonial
army, stealing patriots out from under the noses of the redcoats. Ade North—North
for the star, North for the sky, North for freedom—is a grim-eyed escaped
slave, and she knows the risks of what she’s about to do, but she storms
straight into the base outside New York City.
The General—slave-owner, she
diagnoses immediately, at a glance—isn’t the first one she finds, but rather a
hot-tempered red-haired captain who grins at her when she tells him that I just walked through gunfire to get here,
boy, do you think I’m about to run because someone might try and hang me? He vouches for her, and some strings are
pulled, and…well. Her old master is a
Tory. She’s not afraid of taking advantage
of double-standards when they’re held out to her in both hands. And Ade North has never in her life backed
down.
I scrolled back as far as I could on the tag for “The Cask of Amontillado” and I still can’t find a single reason why everyone’s posting about it all of the sudden
Look a little bit further, in the very back
My friend, I must confess I still cannot see it in the dim light of the tumblr search function.
don’t worry it’s definitely back there look closer
so i get a lot of asks about lipstick, because i wear it a lot and talk about it a lot and tend to speak in declarative sentences. but since i usually end up saying basically the same thing, i figured i’d just put it all in one place.
first of all let me say: i fucking love lipstick. if i had been consulted at the beginning of the world, my top contribution would have been, “make sure society is real chill about everyone wearing lipstick who wants to, regardless of gender. make that a priority. right after that we can address why you felt the need to create cockroaches.”
here are just a few reasons why lipstick is the bomb-dot-com:
you can just change!!!! the whole color palette!!! of your face!!!
the second you put lipstick on, you are instantly the star of a music video. what’s your jam right now? turn that shit on. look at yourself in the mirror. you’re now in a hella artsy one-shot music video where it’s just you in the mirror looking FRESH. TO. DEATH.
remember when you were four-ish and your school or your parents or your one friend with all the nice shit brought out that 64-shade box of crayola crayons and your WHOLE BODY started vibrating because you were SO PUMPED about crayons?
lipstick is like that, except you get to put those crayons on your face.
don’t act like you didn’t want to rub those crayons all over your face when you were four.
don’t you lie to me. i’m your FIBS. we’re family.
anyway, the point is, wearing lipstick is the best. you should wear whatever color you want, whenever you want, but if you’re feeling ambivalent about it, here’s how i, personally, decide when to wear what.
TWO NOTES:
NOTE 1: just because this is how i do it does not mean it is the right or only way to do it. i’ll bet this is not how rosario dawson does it, and lbr, if we could all be more like rosario dawson and less like me, we would be.
NOTE 2: if you are of a gender that society likes 2 be a dickbag to about wearing lipstick, and someone is a dickbag to you about wearing lipstick, listen. i will spit in their mouths. okay? you look amazing. you look way better than those dickbags.
LIPSTICK: YOUR GUIDE TO PUTTING CRAYONS ALL OVER YOUR FACE.
REDS
there are two reasons to wear red lipstick. the first is that you want to be and feel so smokin hot that there is not a single person in the world who doesn’t look at you and go, “WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?”
the second is if you wake up and think to yourself, “i would like today to be that gif of obama kicking open a door. just the whole day. fuck you, doors.”
PINKS
pink is to red what a TV episode is to a whole season. pink is mr. darcy saying, “i love you, most ardently,” where red is that scene in brokeback mountain where they do it for the first time.
red hits you over the noggin. pink probably winks at you across the room from the party. you’re like, “WHAT DOES THAT WINK MEAN?”
pink shrugs. “idk,” says pink. “figure it out.”
pink probably runs an Aesthetic Blog.
you probably follow it, even though as a general rule you hate Aesthetic Blogs.
my point here is that pink can have a hundred thousand different uses and applications, dependent on the shade. nicki minaj wears lots of different pinks. do you feel like you want to be gently pushed on a swing in a meadow by your doting lover, who calls you my sweet? that’s a desperately light pink. do you want to make a point about femininity not being a synonym for weakness? that’s a probably magenta. maybe pastel, but aggressive neon. probably, but not necessarily, matte.
pink is complicated. so are you. embrace pink.
PURPLES
wear purple when you want someone riding a bicycle to crash into a flower stand because they are distracted by your striking beauty while you walk down the street. for this particular feeling, the darker the purple, the better. like the dark purple skin of a perfect plum. nothing says “bored luxury” like plum lipstick.
lighter purples are trickier. lighter purples are great for Nighttime Parties, particularly Nighttime Parties Where You’re Going Out To A Space Designed For Copious Public Drinking. i personally only wear neon purples in clubs–which is to say, i never wear neon purples–but i have a friend who wears them to brunch, and to be honest she brings the hotness of the whole group up an entire level. if you’re wearing neon purple, you are immediately the most important person at the table, so wear it on days when you want to wield that power for good, not evil.
MAROONS
maroon is a Business Lipstick. a Workplace Lipstick. maroon says, “i’m hot as shit, but i’m also incredibly competent.” maroon lipstick says, “i’m not here to talk shit about nancy at the water cooler, todd. i’m here to do my job, and do it better than both of you.”
maroon lipstick says, “yes, you should promote me.”
maroon lipstick says, “I’M AN ADULT. I MIGHT OWN A TOASTER THAT BURNS THE PITTSBURGH PENGUINS LOGO INTO MY BREAD, BUT I SWEAR TO GOD I AM AN ADULT.”
or, you know. whatever.
that’s just an example.
maroon lipstick also goes with pretty much everything. i always keep a tube of maroon lipstick in my purse in case of emergency.
NUDES
“nude” is a complicated question, because it covers such a wide range of skin tones. like, lupita nyong’o and i have wildly different ideas of what color makes our lips “nude.” so this section isn’t really about a color, but more of whatever-color-nude-is-YOUR-color-nude. it’s a category, not a shade.
nudes are good for a lot of occasions. nudes are good for looking like a Hot Young Parent Whose Partner Took The Kids For The Day. nudes are good for “I Just Woke Up Like This.” nudes are good for Sunday Meal With Your Parents. nudes are good for that scene at climax of a romance movie where for some reason you, as the protagonist, are standing in the rain, and you are crying because you’re in love with somebody but something with a capital S has come between you. they’re also good for a montage about you getting shit done in your life, like cleaning your apartment or studying for an exam or packing to leave for a long trip abroad.
i recommend gentle music when you’re wearing nudes. really poetic, emotional shit. joni mitchell. the avett brothers. tracy chapman.
you know what? scratch that. just put on “fast car.” listen to “fast car” on repeat the whole time you’re wearing nudes.
ORANGES
look, i’ll be honest. i don’t know. i don’t trust orange. i’ve seen people look beautiful in orange lipstick but it makes me think they’re hiding something.
are you hiding something? wear orange.
BLUES/GREENS/ANYTHING “WILDLY OUTSIDE THE REALM OF HUMAN FACE COLORS”
there is no right time to wear these colors. there is also no wrong time.* a few examples:
it’s the weekend.
you just got back from “woofstock,” a dog festival.
you genuinely love dubstep (for some reason).
you genuinely love the new ryn weaver album (for obvious reasons).
fucking todd at work brought in VEGETABLES WITH HUMMUS instead of a cake for his birthday. i mean, it’s your birthday, todd, but like, VEGETABLES WITH HUMMUS???? for your BIRTHDAY??? god, who even raised you.
*a small correction: maybe don’t wear these at funerals. i’d stick with neutrals or maroons at funerals.
A BRIEF ADDITIONAL NOTE
when it comes to applying lipstick in public (rather than, idk, excusing yourself to the bathroom or whatever), i’m of two minds. on the one hand, it pleases me to imagine that people just think that my mouth is always this color, even when there is no conceivable blend of genetics that could render me with a sparkly purple mouth.
on the other hand, like, fuck it, you know? whenever i catch someone watching me apply lipstick in public i kind of feel like that part in the “feeling myself” music video where beyoncé is wearing a chicago bulls one-piece and goes, “i stop the world! world, stop.”
no matter how bad it looks for trump right now, you must go out and vote for hillary clinton and the democrats on election day. you must go and vote. people die for the right to vote - use yours. do not get complacent.
