it really bothers me that so many people on this site treat ableism like it’s black and white.
just now i saw a post where op was like “i’m glad that spinners are popular because it normalizes fidgets and decreases stigma” and someone replied like “no!! it’s absolutely TERRIBLE that neurotypicals are using these fidgets because when they get in trouble they make things harder for mentally ill kids!!” and like you guys do realize that? you’re both right? it isn’t a decisive fact that neurotypicals using fidgets is either good or bad, there are both benefits and consequences that need to be taken into consideration.
a few months ago there was a post going around that was like, *neurotypical voice* why are you bouncing your leg, and somebody reblogged it saying that the post was ableist because autistic kids can get overstimulated by leg bouncing. i go to a school for the mentally disabled, and i’ve been in this exact scenario, my classmate wasn’t able to focus because i was bouncing my leg and although i felt bad i told him that i wouldn’t be able to stop for long because i do it subconsciously due to my adhd. he wasn’t being ableist for asking me to stop, and i wasn’t being ableist for saying i couldn’t, we just both had different needs. in the end, our compromise was that i went to work in the computer lab.
you have to understand that there is always more than one side to issues like these, and that we should be striving for understanding and balance over demonization of one side and blind support of the other. this is especially relevant when people on both sides are mentally ill or disabled, because sometimes symptoms will clash and you just need to deal with it.
researching 17th century piracy tonight. came across this:
One popular pastime amongst pirates was the mock trial. Each man played a part be it jailer, lawyer, judge, juror, or hangman. This sham court arrested, tried, convicted, and “carried out” the sentence to the amusement of all. (x)
how widespread could this have really been? how would it have gotten passed from ship to ship? can you imagine a pirate crew at a tavern, bragging to another pirate crew about how good they are at playing pretend? why was their go-to game “legal system”? were they performing incisive satire? is this some sort of pirates-only inside joke that’s been lost to the ages?
update: the mock-charge in the mock-trial was piracy
they used to pretend to try each other for piracy
as a stress relief
ok but it’s got to have been a lot of fun to be the pirate defense lawyer, for the pirate accused of piracy, to attempt to argue to the pirate judge, in front of a jury of pirate peers, that your client could not possibly be a pirate
!!!
“Look, matey, I know a pirate when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.”
“No no he’s not a pirate, he’s, he’s law abidin’! Remarkable man, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!”
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
ok, but like odysseus’s player was definitely the asshole who fucks up every plot point homer wanted to introduce into the story. agamemnon accidentally orders everybody to go home and the troops are about to set sail? odysseus’s diplomacy modifier says otherwise. some asshole’s trying to provoke mutiny and desertion in the ranks? an intimidate check makes it not a problem. they’re losing battle after battle? stealth check into the enemy camp and straight up sneak attack the sleeping trojan allies to death. achilles is dead and the war is all but lost? FUCK YOU my giant wooden horse and my bluff beg to differ.
when it comes time for odysseus to play his solo campaign, the DM just rubs his hands together ominously and laughs.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: You spot your enemy in battle. What do you do? Paris’ player: I fire an arrow at him, ignoring his armor. *rolls a 6 for accuracy* Homer, the DM: You hit him where he has no armor, but in a non-vital area. Achilles’ player: Damage done? Paris’ player:*rolls a natural 20, gets a 4 point bonus from Rage* Homer, the DM: Lethal. Achilles’ player: Fuck…
Homer, the DM: Alright,
your wife’s suitors are attempting to string your bow. *rolls behind screen a
few times* A few of them fail miserably.
Odysseus’s player:
Alright, let me try. I pick up the bow.
Homer, the DM: The
suitors begin laughing and jeering at you. Give me a strength check.
Odysseus’s player: *rolls
nat 20*
Homer, the DM:
You string the bow. Thunder booms. A cat dies in a nearby house. One of the
suitors busts a nut. Your glamour is starting to wear off.
Odysseus’s player: As
my glamour wears off, I shoot an arrow through all three hoops at the target.
*rolls nat 20*
Homer, the DM:
The arrow flies through the hoops and skewers the target. The suitors notice
your glamour wear off and are terrified. None of them have ever seen you in
person, though, so none of them recognise you.
jewish men really broke their backs to make their place in the comics industry and make a powerful statement back in the 40´s/50′s and now comic companies use nazi imagery because they think it looks cool. real life nazis are making a comeback and they legit turned heroic symbols into nazi propaganda. marvel and dc really are doing that. wow
What if I titled this paper “Fuck Nick Spencer: Time for Authors to Take Responsibility” and just ended it with a picture of me flipping off my teacher
everyone acts like bucky was the troublemaker in the steve/bucky relationship but steve picked fights with everything that moved and bucky went to a science convention for fun
You know I’m surprised the Galra aren’t terrified of humans like they kidnapped three of them and then four more shot off into space and promptly formed Voltron and killed their emperor in what I assume to be a few months
Like I would just leave earth the fuck alone after that shit
not to mention that the very first one they put in the arena beat their reigning champion
I just heard this woman say “you procrastinate because you are afraid of rejection. It’s a defense mechanism, you are trying to protect yourself without even trying.” and I think I just realized what was wrong with me.
Yep, this is a very, very common reason for procrastinating. It’s also why procrastination, even though it’s often associated with laziness, is a fairly common trait in a lot of people with anxiety and perfectionism issues.
This idea - You’re not lazy, you’re protecting yourself - hit me really hard while reading, of all things, Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which turns out to be as much about how brains work and how relationships work as how orgasms work.
In an early part of the book she talks about Fight/Flight/Freeze responses to threats–the example she uses is being attacked by a lion. You fight, if you think you can defeat the lion; you run away, if you think you can escape the lion; and when you think there’s nothing you can do, when you feel the lion’s jaws closing on your neck, you freeze, because dying will hurt less that way. You just stop and go numb and wait for it to be over, because that is the last way to protect any scrap of yourself.
Later in the book, she talks about the brain process that motivates you to pursue incentives, describing it as a little monitor that gauges your progress toward a goal versus the effort you’re expending. If it feels like too little progress is being made you get frustrated, get angry, and, eventually, you… despair. You stop trying.
You go numb and wait for it to be over, because that’s the only way left to protect yourself.
So it occurred to me that these are basically the same thing–when facing a difficult task, where failure feels like a Threat, you can get frustrated and fight it out–INCREASE DOING THE THING until you get where you’re going. Or you can flee–try to solve the problem some other way than straight on, changing your goal, changing your approach, whatever. Fight or flight.
But both of those only apply when you think the problem is solvable, right? If the problem isn’t solvable, then you freeze. You despair.
And if you’re one of those Smart Kids (Smart Girls, especially) who was praised for being smart so that all tasks in the world came to be divided between Ooh This Is Easy and I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT AND IF I FUCK UP I WILL DIE, then… it’s pretty easy to see how you lose the frustration/anger stage of working toward a goal, because your brain goes straight to freeze/despair every time. Things are easy and routine or they are straight up impossible.
So, you know, any time you manage to pull yourself up and give that lion a smack on the nose, or go stumbling away from it instead of just falling down like a fainting goat as soon as you spot it on the horizon, give yourself a gold star from me. Because this is some deeply wired survival-brain stuff. Even if logically you know that that term paper is not a lion, it really is like that sometimes.
[…] Boyega is fast becoming one of the most recognizable – and bankable – stars working today. As Josh Gad said of Boyega during the panel for The Last Jedi panel at Star Wars Celebration, he’s already a cultural icon thanks to his role in Star Wars. As Boyega continues to gain more and more fame for roles outside of Finn, we could be watching the birth of Hollywood’s next big star, in the vein of leading men such as Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney.
[…] His post-Force Awakens career choices have all been smartly made, balancing sci-fi with realism. In particular, his choice to take the lead in Bigelow’s upcoming film shows a savvy when it comes to choosing roles. Bigelow’s work is consistently in the running for best picture, so needless to say her return to film is already generating Oscar buzz. As the film’s frontman, Boyega will no doubt receive similar buzz, potentially elevating him to a critical darling as well as box office draw. His decision to launch his own production company, Upper Room Productions, also marks another intelligent career move; Upper Room Productions will also be one of the companies producing Pacific Rim Uprising. Not only does this give Boyega more creative control over his own roles but it also gives him a much more versatile skill set, ensuring he’s not relegated solely to work in front fo the camera.
[…] It is that charm that will help him make the leap from character actor to bonafide star. It takes charisma to be a true movie star, and Boyega has that in spades. Videos of him reacting to The Force Awakens‘s trailer have view counts in the millions. His interviews are, if you’ll pardon the fangirl terms, a vortex of charm. Stars such as Smith or Clooney are very charismatic; it’s part of their inherent charm. Boyega has enough charisma even at this early point in his career that he could probably hold his own in a film with them. After all, he managed to more than hold his own next to Ford. Is there anything he can’t do?
Most importantly, Boyega is a breath of fresh air. He is passionate about his art, and it shows in his performances. Gone are the days of simply coasting to stardom on looks and a role in a big budget franchise. Boyega works hard at his craft and yet is effortlessly charming. He deserves stardom, and in fact seems born for it given the graceful way he’s accepted his newfound Star Wars fame. There is no worry about whether or not he’ll burn out after Episode IX concludes. Instead, it’s become a discussion of whether or not he’ll receive his first Oscar nomination by the time he’s thirty.
if you don’t acknowledge that platonic relationships might be the most important ones in somebody’s life, just remember that the trap that vader & palpatine tried to set for luke at cloud city pretty completely relied on that fact and sith lords are officially better at this than you are
do
do you think they somehow figured out that was the only way this was gonna work for them
like i don’t know how you’d even figure out but
do you think palps was just like “aw yeah. gonna corrupt another skywalker. easy-peasy. same as last time. we just gotta wait for him to fall in love and – OH COME ON”
it’s even better because luke is a pretty friendly dude, so presumably palpatine had to go through all the spy reports and figure out who his BFFs were out of basically the entire rebel alliance. his gunner dak? fellow pilot wedge antilles?? who?????
meanwhile vader’s lurking in a corner going “wow my son has so many friends, he must be a great guy. do you… do you think he’d like me?”
“HE IS A TRAITOR ON THE RUN FROM THE EMPIRE, HOW DOES HE EVEN MEET ALL THESE PEOPLE,” shouts palpatine as he scrolls through tagged photo after tagged photo on rebel facebook.
this is the best caption anyone else has added to this post since i made it thank you for your contribution
i used to get self-conscious over the smallest things but friends let me tell you that today i had to smuggle a furious 8ft python onto the bus during the school rush and not a single person noticed. not one. if people don’t care enough to notice a shopping bag writhing and seething with barely-contained reptilian hatred then i promise you that no-one will pay any attention to that blemish you’re fretting about or how you’ve done your hair
Question, why are you bringing a 8 ft python into a public bus? You know that this reptile can kill anyone inside there?
buddy she’s a snake not a flying death tentacle
snakes are not evil killers out for blood, and length doesn’t mean lethality! my biggest guy is 11 ft– if i have him around my neck, both his face and his tail touch the floor– and even his species struggles to take down anything bigger than a small-to-medium dog
the worst damage that my 8fter is capable of is when she decides to do an impression of a blood-pressure cuff and makes my arm go a bit purple, and even that’s just when i humour her dreams of being big and scary and let her squeeze her hardest before i unwind her like a bratty garden hose
as long as you’re not some sort of magical tumblring rat, you’re fine
Okay, I gotta ask…
1. Why was she angry?
2. Where were you taking her on the bus? Is there a leash-free snake park where you live?
I need to know.
1. she’s a cranky ass in general, but her mood was absolutely not improved by eating a bit of a snake hook, getting stuffed in a sack, experiencing an hour of adelaide’s finest public transport, and having a vet jam a tube into her stomach
2. i think all of australia is technically a leash-free snake park tbh
I am so glad there was follow up on this post explaining why the snake was on the bus!!!
I just love the myth of Persephone, i mean the real, original version of it, because it’s not like she got kidnapped, no, this bitch was la-de-da-ing in a meadow and she just happened to find an entrance to the Underworld and she was like “Imma check this out”. And she just wanders into the Underworld and discovers that hey this place ain’t too bad.
Meanwhile Hades is in the background “????? UM??? PRETTY GIRL??? WHY ARE YOU HERE?????? YOU AREN’T DEAD???”
And Persephone (who was originally called Kore just a little fyi) just looked at him and said “I like it here. I’m staying.”
And Hades kinda just went with it, until Demeter started throwing the temper tantrum of the millenium upstairs and Zeus had to intervene because this shit was getting out of hand and its actually his job to be admistrator of justice. Which considering the shit he gets up to is kinda histerical but that’s another story there.
And basically Persephone wasn’t a prisoner or kidnap victim at all she just really loved the Underworld and her (eventual) husband, and the Greeks feared her arguably more than her husband because Hades could be reasoned with but Persephone was the one laying the smack down on sinners, and really, who wouldn’t be at least a little scared of someone who’s name means something along the lines of “the destroyer”
Basically, Persephone is amazing and everbody needs to get on her level
i think the best part of that myth is that Zeus decided to change Kore’s name to Persephone (basically “the one who brings chaos”) only because she wanted to stay in the underworld and SHE WOULDN’T FUCKING LISTEN then Zeus, all-mighty king of the gods, kinda gives up and goes “fine, but you’re going to visit your mom” “also, I changed your name” “get rekt”
Also, if I’m not mistaken, Kore means “little girl” so imagine going from that to “chaos bringer”
I mean, going from little girl to chaos bringer sounds like a p solid deal to me, sign me up.
This may not be the version of the myth that’s commonly known and taught. But is is the original, from before it was altered to scare Greek/Roman girls into submission. Persephone was a badass bitch.
Chug your ale each time Dickens introduces a new character.
Do a shot each time you look over your shoulder during 1984. Two shots if you get up to close the curtains.
Slam a Red Bull every time you turn the page in Wuthering Heights. Just to stay awake, really.
Take a sip of wine for every Biblical sin you’ve committed. Start at Genesis.
Drinking with friends
Take turns trying to recite the infamous 11,282-word sentence from Ulysses in one breath. Whoever stops first has to drink the most.
Smuggle booze into a library. Or go to your bookshelves. Pull out books at random, playing “Never have I ever” with books: “Never have I ever read Throne of Glass,” etc. All who have read the book in question must take a drink.
Take turns reading passages from The Bell Jar aloud. Whoever cries hardest must be cut off from alcohol immediately. This is followed by a group hug and gentle rocking.
Group-read a Shakespeare play and take a shot whenever there’s a joke about venereal disease, gender roles, or sexual relations.
I know most people associate LUSH Cosmetics with white girls and bath bombs but products from this beautiful company have faded my scars and stretch marks, completely gotten rid of my acne, fixed my dry skin problems, thickened my eyelashes, laid my edges, made my hair grow like crazy… I can go on and on. I’ve actually never tried the bath bombs, but their skincare and haircare products work magic.
Fading Scars / Stretch Marks Organic Therapy Massage Bar
Extra Dry Skin King of Skin In-Shower Body Conditioner, Skin Drink Facial Moisturizer, Sultana of Soap Bar, Tender is the Night Massage Bar, Each’s a Peach Massage Bar
Acne Fresh Farmacy Solid Cleanser, Eau Roma Toning Water, Full of Grace Serum Bar
Thickening Lashes Eyes Right Mascara / Lash Milk
Edges R&B Hair Moisturizer (if you put this on your edges before wrapping your hair, they’ll be relaxer-straight when you wake up, lasts about 12 hours), Dirty Styling Cream (cream-based edge control with a matte finish, no more shiny or crunchy edges)
Hair Growth NEW! Shampoo Bar, Retread Hair Conditioner
I was asked to list the rest of the products I currently have in my possession, so here y’all go!
FACE / HAIR STUFF
Magical Moringa Facial Moisturizer Oh my lordy. Let me tell y'all about this stuff. It’s marketed as a moisturizer but I use it as a primer because when you put this on your face, it’s completely matte. Like completely. All day. And it will lock your makeup in place like no other. You can sweat in it, swim in it, whatever. Shit won’t budge. Ever.
Jason & the Argan Oil Shampoo Bar Amazing for volumizing. It made the three bundles in my head look more like five when I used this thing the first time, I kid you not. Also gives your hair a really natural shine. I only use it when I really need a volume boost, otherwise it’s just too much.
No Drought Dry Shampoo If you have a weave, you need this stuff. Period. A lot of times, the natural oils in our scalps (referring to my fellow black women here) are too heavy for Brazilian, Peruvian, etc hair, and so it’s easy for weave to get weighed down between washes. Shake this stuff in your hair, brush it out - bam, flow city.
Honey Trap Lip Balm My favorite lip balm, ever. Really improves the texture of your lips and seals in moisture. However, this is not for fixing chapped lips - use Ultrabalm for that first, and then this to prevent them from chapping again. Also, pro-tip, if you apply it before liquid lipstick, your lipstick won’t crease or dry out all day.
MASSAGE BARS
Strawberry Feels Forever Smells like fresh strawberries! Has a much thinner consistency than the other massage bars, so it can be used every day, like a solid lotion.
Soft Coeur Smells like chocolate and honey, and is ridiculously moisturizing. More heavy-duty than the other bars, so I like to only use this one on spots like my knees, heels, and elbows.
From Dusk til Dawn The shape of this one is amazing. It’s shaped like a cone, so it gives a deep massage when you’re using it. Definitely recommend if you have any sort of muscle pain.
SCRUBS
The Rough with the Smooth This stuff smells soooo good. Like cotton candy. I use it before I shave because it really does an amazing job at removing any dead skin and it doesn’t leave a residue, so it won’t clog your razor. However, it’s a sugar scrub, so it melts super quickly.
Ocean Salt This is a heavy-duty scrub. Really amazing if you have dry, flaky skin, and the healing properties of the salt are really great if you have acne. It’ll dry it up and heal it super quick.
Cup o’ Coffee Face & Body Mask I’m on my fourth jar of this already. The coffee beans are ground up just enough to give a deep, yet gentle scrub and the caffeine in the bar really does wake up your skin and make it look brighter. Great for the morning.
Buffy It smells like a vacation, that’s really the only way to describe it. It’s an exfoliant bar and body butter mixed together, so you rub it all over while you’re still in the shower, and then rinse the sand off. After, rub the oils in and pat dry. No need for lotion after because it seals in the moisture from your shower.
SHOWER GELS / JELLIES
Rose Jam Shower Gel Smells like roses and has a really bubbly lather. More cleansing than moisturizing. I like to use it before a more moisturizing soap because it’s great for removing dirt and oil from the skin.
The Olive Branch Shower Gel A long-time favorite of mine. Great for dry skin, as it has a really creamy lather versus a bubbly one. Also, the smell is very calming and lingers for a long time.
Needles & Pines Shower Jelly It’s a solid shower gel (consistency of jello), and it smells like Christmas trees! I like to store it in the fridge and use it when it’s hot outside, super cleansing and refreshing.
SOAPS:
Roses All the Way Personal favorite! Smells like roses & vanilla ice cream. Super moisturizing and so, so creamy. Definitely buy if you suffer from dry skin.
Yog Nog Very moisturizing and the scent lingers for a really long time. Smells like snickerdoodles and eggnog.
Bohemian Not at all creamy, as it’s an exfoliating soap. It’s great to use on dark spots like knees and armpits because the exfoliants soften the skin and the lemon juice evens out your skintone. Smells like lemons.
Karma Another favorite. It has a super thin consistency but is still very moisturizing, so it’s a good shaving soap because it won’t gunk up your razor. Smells like incense and patchouli.
Figs & Leaves Smells like dirt and grass, in a good way. Super cleansing. As in your skin will literally squeak after using it, so I recommend using an in-shower moisturizer like King of Skin after using it.
OTHER:
Atomic Toothy Tabs Solid toothpaste that you crush up in your mouth. It sounds weird but these things are phenomenal. They really leave your teeth squeaky clean, and are the sole reason my teeth are so white - I don’t use any whitening products. This particular kind smells like cloves and cinnamon.
Ultrabalm All Purpose Balm This stuff is amazing. It’s an all-over balm for rough spots. I use it in the winter time on my hands and lips, because they get dry. I also use it year round on my face where I get dry spots, as it doesn’t clog pores.
Silky Underwear Dusting Powder Another holy grail. If you could turn cocoa butter into a powder, this would be it. It’s not drying like baby powder, it’s more silky (it’s also talc-free). I use it between my legs to prevent chafing and under my boobs when it’s hot outside to prevent sweating.
This is actually so helpful because a lot of times I go into lush and I just end up getting pink things and things that smell good because I don’t know what other products are worth purchasing!
TALK TO PEOPLE. okay so I only worked there as a seasonal, but these overly polite, overly talkative salespeople have to do 3 demos an hour! SO if they ask if you want to try something, let them. They know what they’re doing and they will tell you everything you want to know about the product and what it will do for you.
The worst was when I had customers saying that they were just looking because they didnt know a thing about what they were looking at. A lot of the products look identical on the shelves, but they are all specifically tailored for different needs.
Fun facts:
86% of all products are vegan, the rest are vegetarian
everything is ethically sourced, including the charcoal which comes from recycled forest fires
Lush will cut ties with their suppliers if they dont treat their employees nicely enough
Lush saves 10% of their spending budget for emergencies, like when a well broke down in one of their suppliers companies over in Kenya and Lush found out they were lowering women into the well, that money didnt just go to repairing the well, but for getting them a second well as well.
Lush even makes perfume but the scents are about stories instead of smells. There’s a little booklet for each one. My favorites are Dear John (about the owner, Mark, not knowing who his dad was) and Dad’s Lemon Tree (which he made after meeting his dad)
Lush also makes makeup, although they are working on getting more pigments
Lush is 21 years old and in 57 countries!
Charity Pot is a lotion that is low scent as not to mix with your other scents, is a lot of cocoa butter, and 100% goes to grassroots charities, they dont even pay people to make it, that’s how good it is
If you bring in 5 black pots (wash them please, they are dishwasher safe) you can get a free fresh face mask
Lush is the inventor of the bathbomb and most of them have essential oils in them and cocoa butter, so they’re not just fun, but they’re actually really good for your skin
There is a Lush Facebook page but more importantly is that there are local Lush facebooks. You can ask them if something is in stock and they’ll get back to you as quickly as possible (the Alderwood location takes only a few hours)
Anything that looks like a big brick of product is sold by weight. Just ask and they will cut you off a piece to fit your budget
FREE SAMPLES. Feel free to ask. They do NOT want to sell you something that is not right for you
Everything is handmade with commercial kitchen like equipment. This is why things don’t always look the same, because the recipe changes and different people are making it. Leave room for error and basically Guenivere likes adding more pigment than Brendan does but Brendan makes seasonal stuff that’s fantastic. It’s not that it’s gone off or is poorly made. There’s a little sticker that shows you who made it and it also has the expiration date on it
It the ingredient list is both green and black, the green is for natural ingredients and black is for synthetic.
If you go in and they dont have something because it was a seasonal or it’s no longer being made, do not be sad. The same scent may be in another product but more importantly, you can still get it. THE LUSH KITCHEN puts out products that are no longer being made every night at midnight (UK though so time stuff). There’s exclusive merch on there too, including bags and aprons and shirts. Everything goes really really fast though so you have to be ON it.
reblogged to the wrong blog because it took 4 attempts to reblog at all!
this is…nice
My daughter worked at LUSH before college and just seriously…they are an amazing company with highly educated salespeople who want to help you find things that will make you feel, look and smell your best.
IF YOU NEED TO CALL 911 BUT ARE SCARED TO BECAUSE OF SOMEONE IN THE ROOM, dial and ask for a pepperoni pizza. They will ask if you know you’re calling 911. Say yes, and continue pretending you’re making an order. They’ll ask if there’s someone in the room.
You can ask how long it will take for the pizza to get to you, and they will tell you how far away a dispatcher is.
This is okay advice but not 100% accurate. Pepperoni pizza is not exactly a secret “code” among law enforcement.
We have gotten calls like these using other topics as a disguise. Do what you can safely to express to the dispatcher you need help. They cannot just hang up on you unless the issue has been cleared. If you absolutely cannot talk or are too scared, call and put the phone down or in your pocket so the dispatcher can hear. If possible try to at least say your location because they don’t always get correct information about your address when your call populates.
Dispatchers are trained to pick up on unusual situations and to go with them to get you help.
A’IGHT PARTNER OF A 911 DISPATCHER HERE: Pizza isn’t some secret code, but dispatchers are trained to pick up if someone is having to lie on the phone about who they’re calling. The most important thing is to give them an address. They can send cops to an address, and yes, ordering pizza is a good way to get away with giving your address away on the phone.
Important information to note: locating where you are isn’t like Hollywood portrays it. Dispatchers/police can’t just pinpoint your location within seconds. It’s a long process that isn’t always allowed (they literally have to go through your cell phone carrier company and sometimes the carrier says “no you can’t pinpoint this person”).
most dispatch centers in the US, including the one i work at (boulder, colorado), have text-to-911 service these days. so even better than calling, just send a text to 911 (!!! IMPORTANT !!! include the address/location of where you are IN THE FIRST TEXT YOU SEND so that if you become unable to use your phone after that first text, we at least know where to send help). if the dispatch center in your area doesn’t have a text service, you will receive an automated text back saying something along the lines of “The 911 answering point in your area does not support text-to-911. Please call 911 instead.”
in that scenario, where you end up needing to call but still can’t make it known that you’re calling 911, there are plenty of things you can do to communicate that you need help depending on the exact circumstances.
if there is a person with you who is threatening to harm or kill you, and your call to 911 would only make things worse, try to call as discreetly as possible. with smartphones these days, you don’t even have to unlock your phone to call 911. simply get your phone to the unlock screen where you would enter your passcode and there should be a button at the bottom of your screen (sometimes at the top) that says “Emergency Call.” just hit that button and you’re good to go. also keep in mind that you can do this from phones that haven’t even been activated yet (just be aware however, that if you’re calling from a deactivated phone, and the call gets disconnected somehow, the dispatcher will NOT be able to call you back like we can with activated phones because there is no phone number attached to a deactivated phone).
from there, after you’ve pressed the emergency call button, if the person threatening you is yelling at you, simply keep an open line. your phone’s microphone is more powerful than you think, and can easily pick up someone in the same room yelling at you. if you’re able to do so without dramatically escalating the situation, yell back at them, and try to throw in some details about where you are. also try to throw in details of whether or not there are any weapons present (guns, knives, baseball bats, golf clubs, whatever).
the biggest thing we care about when taking a 911 call is the address/location. if you’re not in a building, give an intersection. if you don’t know the roads you’re on/near, give a landmark. a big building. a strangely colored building. a specific grouping of buildings together. we’re trained to be extremely familiar with the landmarks in our jurisdiction, and usually those landmarks will be in our computer system as well.
also, just be aware that if you call 911 with an open line and we don’t hear anything, we will hang up and call you back immediately, so make sure to answer the next call you get. this can actually help you out because it can be an excuse to step out of the room to take a phone call. if you can’t step out of the room to answer when we call you back, try to at least answer the call and give us something.
now, if you’re calling 911 in a situation where you can call us just fine but can’t talk because someone might hear you, try whispering. if you can’t even whisper, press a button on your phone. if we hear even something that tells us there’s a person on the other end, we will make every attempt to ask if that person can hear us before we hang up and attempt a callback. a common method of communicating with someone who can’t talk is to have the caller tap on the back of their phone, or press a number on the keypad. if this is the method of communication the dispatcher is using with you, they’ll usually use a “tap once for yes, twice for no” method. pressing buttons on your phone’s keypad makes an audible beep sound to the person on the other end, i.e. the dispatcher. once a “tap once for yes, twice for no” dialogue has been established, the dispatcher will ask you yes or no questions. just try to answer them to the best of your ability. again, the most important thing is an address/location. also, if it’s at all possible, call from a landline, not your cell phone. thought landlines were useless? think again. landlines are required to register to an address, so if there’s a landline available, use it, don’t use your cell phone. that way, if you can’t tell us where you are, it’s fine because we’ll already have an address.
i feel like i should make some kind of a master post about this stuff in the future.
I hate you so much. As per our conversation, you absolute heathen: Borgias Star Wars AU Cesare as Leia Lucrezia as Luke Micheletto as Han Fucking go. I hate you so much.
This is the first of two Star Wars AUs, this one is mostly because I profoundly wanted an AU where Cesare was literally a prince of an entire planet and also I wanted Lucrezia to have a lightsaber. I am currently working on another one for @wildehacked in which everyone is in the much more obvious position of being Sith.
Cesare doesn’t expect a rescue, as he sits in
his cell, back to the wall and one leg stretched out in front of him with the
other bent close to his body. The
ceremonial robes of Alderaan are heavy, uncomfortable at the best of times and
these…these are not the best of times.
Deep red cloth rubs against his skin, raw and tender from a few rounds
with a torture droid, and he ignores it.
He told them nothing—he has no profound alliance to the Rebellion, but
the image of the great and terrible Darth Sixtus wading through the endless
dunes of Dantooine had amused him, and after their young general turned their
weapon on Alderaan…
Well.
Cesare is (was) hardly beloved of his people, raised by the stern and
austere Viceroy of Alderaan, della Rovere, but that was his planet, and after
it was gone, he denied the Empire information out of sheer spite. It had been worth it, to see the towering
dark figure of Sixtus storm out of the room in a rage.
Still, though. His planet is gone, and they didn’t love
their distant prince, and the Rebellion trusts him only on the weight of his
adopted guardian, who was well known in the right circles for his totally
ruthless devotion to the cause. Cesare
sent away the information he had been told to care for with the droid, a PA-L0
unit more willful than was good for it.
It might make it to the Sforza woman della Rovere had intended it for,
or it might not—either way, it is out of his hands. The Rebellion won’t expend the manpower to
send a rescue mission, and the Empire has a new planet-killer to play with. He’s confident he won’t live long enough to
find out whether PA-L0 made it or not.
It’s something of a surprise, then, when
alarms go off and his cell door opens to admit the shortest Stormtrooper he’s
ever seen.
Cesare silently arches an eyebrow. Princes grow up in the public eye, especially
on bustling Core worlds like Alderaan, and Cesare prides himself on the ability
to show no response to any disaster.
He’d had to cultivate it, after the second time he was caught with
someone who, perhaps, should have been off-limits.
“Are you lost?” he asks dryly, and the
Stormtrooper reaches up to wrestle off their helmet, and Cesare’s mouth snaps
shut in surprise.
It’s not the hard-faced man he expected. Instead it’s a woman, a girl, really, with a
youthful face and hair like sunlight pinned up in a knot, and she smiles at
him, perfect tiny teeth a string of matched pearls behind her pink lips. She looks about his own age, maybe
younger. There’s a sharp tug, like a
cord anchored somewhere in Cesare’s spine is pulling him toward her, and he has
the sudden inexplicable urge to brush her hair back, the wayward coils of spun
gold escaping around her face.
“I’m Lucrezia Borgia,” she says, dimpling at
him, and he tries to assemble words to reply.
“I found your Paolo unit. I’m
here to rescue you.”
Cesare has made worse snap decisions in his
life than take a rescue wearing the face of an angel, he concludes in under a
second. They run.
They find another false Stormtrooper, and
this one is far more like what Cesare expected, a man with eyes like stone and
a dispassionate expression under the smudged blood on his cheek. Lucrezia calls him Micheletto, and Cesare
snatches a blaster off a dead Stormtrooper to toss at him.
“My lord,” Micheletto says with a slight
incline of his head.
“This is Cesare della Rovere,” Lucrezia says,
as if Micheletto doesn’t know who he is.
“He gives your orders now. Take
us back to the Condottiere, and we’ll
find Caterina on the way.”
They do find Caterina. Just in time to watch Sixtus cut her
down.
“I knew her brother,” Lucrezia says coolly as
they crowd into the cockpit of Micheletto’s ship, the Condottiere. It’s a bit of a
wreck, but he pilots it like a master, as skillfully as he had cut down any
Stormtrooper in their path. “He was an
unpleasant man, to say the least.” She
fingers the silver hilt at her hip—a lightsaber, she tells Cesare quietly, apparently
once the possession of her father. “You’ll
forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over her corpse.”
“Of course,” Cesare says, and she smiles at
him, and he takes it like a blaster bolt to the heart.
Some other highlights…
Lucrezia brings down the Death Star, her eyes
closed and her X-Wing guided by something at the center of her chest, something
cold and bright as a Tatooine moon. When
she lands, laughing and giddy with triumph, Cesare snatches her up around the
waist and spins her around, and he smiles at her, and she thinks idly about
kissing it off his lips. Micheletto
smiles his faint smile and kisses her cheek like she’s a lady of status. Lucrezia gets an award. Micheletto, a killer and a criminal and a
bloody hand for hire, insists that he should not, and Cesare does not argue
with him.
Cesare finds the leader of the Rebellion, an
ex-Senator named Machiavelli, very much to his liking. It is common knowledge that Machiavelli has
something of an affection for the ex-Prince of Alderaan (it’s something Cesare
asks himself often—is he still a prince at all, if he has no planet?), and
Cesare is not above leveraging this to his purposes.
Lucrezia kisses Cesare on Hoth, after she
almost dies in the cold, her skin still flushed from the incredibly hot shower
she just took, and he clutches her to him like she’s as ethereal as
sunlight. Her golden hair hangs around
them like a curtain, in her quarters, and the red lines her nails trace over his
shoulders and chest sting bright and clean, and Cesare thinks that he has never
loved someone like he loves this woman.
Cesare kisses Micheletto in an asteroid
field, during an argument, and again on Cloud City, where an old acquaintance
turns them over to Sixtus, and it’s harsh and bloodied and hungry. They fuck in dark corners, still half-dressed
and breathless, and Micheletto swears allegiance like he’s praying to a god,
like Cesare is a force of nature, like Cesare is the Force. Cesare leaves bruises shaped like
finger-lengths and the curve of his lips, and they’re still there when
Micheletto is frozen in carbonite by Darth Sixtus.
Lucrezia spends all of thirty seconds
training with a withered old Jedi named Orsini before she rushes away again,
not even pausing at his warnings as she takes flight for Cloud City. When she arrives, there are terrible
revelations about her family—Darth Sixtus, once Rodrigo Borgia, a power-hungry
general from the Clone Wars. On the Condottiere, she cries into Cesare’s
shoulder, her severed hand aching, and he kisses her tears away, her sunlight curls spilling over them
both.
Cesare saves Micheletto. He does not care to be asked why he takes
such a risk for a man he professes to be a simple instrument.
Lucrezia, with a new silver hand like a piece of art, discovers that there is another
Borgia—there was a third, an elder brother gone missing as a small child,
before the Death Star was destroyed, but the young general died with his weapon
and now there is only one. Her twin
brother, Cesare Borgia, Prince of ex-Alderaan.
“But I will say the most drunk I’ve ever been was when I had moonshine, and it wasn’t the first time I’d ever had it, but I’d never had a lot of it ‘cause my step-dad was like ‘here’s a pinch of moonshine’ and I was like ‘I don’t like this’.
But I drank a bunch with my neighbor and then we ate, it was peach moonshine and they had a peach soaking in it, and we ate the peach. And what I remember from that night is literally not a damn thing. But I woke up the next morning, there was dirt in my bed and I had stolen a hymnal from a nearby church.
So the lesson here, kids, is please drink responsibly. Don’t break and enter into the house of the Lord.”—Molly (@ofgeography) on responsible drinking, from the most recent episode of Wait Wait What’s Icing? @waitwaitwhatsicing (via thatwasfunwhileitlasted)
I saw a post that was like “mutuals =/= friends” like whoa okay I always thought of mutuals as low key friends but that’s fine let’s make people more insecure of their relationships than they already are
Bruhs, if we are mutuals you are 100% at least low-key level friend to me.
I follow you = acquaintance
Mutuals = low-key friends
I’ve replied to your posts at least twice = high key friends
I actually use the message system to talk to you = I really really like you and probably talk about you to people irl all the time
IF YOU NEED TO CALL 911 BUT ARE SCARED TO BECAUSE OF SOMEONE IN THE ROOM, dial and ask for a pepperoni pizza. They will ask if you know you’re calling 911. Say yes, and continue pretending you’re making an order. They’ll ask if there’s someone in the room.
You can ask how long it will take for the pizza to get to you, and they will tell you how far away a dispatcher is.
My flat-mate’s date for the night was almost as drunk as her. She had passed out in her room and locked the door. He refused to leave because he wanted to have sex. He also demanded food because he was dealing with “whiskey dick”. He didn’t like the lack of food in the fridge. I called 911, did the stuff stated above, and he was getting PISSED about how long the “order” was taking. He took my phone, demanded they “hurry the fuck up”. Police arrived two minutes later, arrested him, and helped me file a police report. Pressing charges wasn’t necessary because he had warrants on him from THREE different states for the very thing he planned to do to me. Several months after this happened one of the officers informed me he was charged with two felonies because he crossed stay lines, and will be serving no less than 35 years in prison. The officer ripped into my flat-mate about her bringing home complete strangers, while drunk, knowing full well this shit could happen.
This was 14 years ago.
Do the pizza order, do it as calmly as you can. The dispatcher I spoke to said things like this:
“If he’s drunk say you want mushrooms.” I said I want extra mushrooms.
“If he’s threatening you with sexual assault say you want onions.” I said I want onions.
She went like this with different toppings and sauces for a description of him, like pineapple if he’s blonde, black olives if he’s tall, extra large if he’s tall, etc.
They’ve heard this sort of coded call before. They’re trained for it. They will understand what you’re saying. Order the pizza.
hello i hope you’re eating and drinking and sleeping in all the required amounts. dont die.
Anonymous said:
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF MAKE SURE YOU EAT HAVE YOU EATEN GO EAT SOMETHING (DRINK WATER) (BE SAFE AND DONT DIE) YOU CAN DO IT
Anonymous said:
DO THE WORK YOU CAN DO IT *CHEERS YOU ON AGGRESSIVELY, BUT IN A GENTLE FASHION* (THERE IS NO NEED TO REPLY TO THIS)
I don’t know if these were all the same person checking in once a week or what but y’all have really been keeping my going through the last push on my thesis and I’m going to go through my inbox and actually clear out all of these messages because they’re sweet as hell.
Just to expand on this post about calling 911 and asking for a pizza to secretly ask for help:
The post is based on a Super Bowl commercial, which itself was based on a Reddit post that’s never been verified as true.
There is no actual pizza code with toppings and shit that dispatchers are trained in. If you come across someone who has heard of the commercial, they might understand. If you come across someone who’s never heard of it, they might think it’s a prank call and hang up on you.
A piece of actual advice to help you in this situation is to dial 911, then hang up without speaking, then turn the phone off. 911 will attempt to call you back, and when they’re unable to reach you, they’ll dispatch a unit to your location under the assumption that you need help and your call was interrupted. This will work 100% of the time, whereas the pizza trick will only work if the dispatcher has heard of the commercial/urban legend.
Also, the toppings thing was a complete and total fabrication and whoever wrote that should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.
If you’re on a cell phone, the dispatcher DOES NOT KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. You do need to find an excuse to give them your address, and ordering food is the best excuse. A 911 dispatcher will not just hang up if they think you might be prank calling them, they’ll ask you if there’s an emergency and you can say “yes,” and say your address and whatever else you need to say to keep your cover (like a pizza order). This doesn’t rely on any code, it relies on the fact that 911 dispatchers are trained to send a unit no matter what—as long as they know where to send it.
This is actually a huge problem with 911 dispatchers, they DO NOT KNOW YOUR LOCATION
It seems like a basic thing you would expect an emergency service to be able to figure out, but they DON’T, THEY CAN’T, UNLESS YOU TELL THEM
When I was in a car accident and had to get my mom to the hospital last year, it took 5 minutes just for me to confirm with the 911 dispatcher that they knew where I was, and even then I watched while they whizzed past the street where we were waiting. The most crucial thing first responders have to know in the case of an emergency is where you are. Don’t skip this information, please.
So today started out dumb, but this afternoon was AWESOME.
I’m on the porch attempting to construct a railing for the stairs when I notice a weird noise. Like, a kind of droning or buzzing? And it’s getting loud. So I investigate. It’s coming from the neighbor’s yard.
It is a metric fuckton of bees. I have never seen so many bees in my life. It is a fucking swarm of bees, and I have been reading about bees because I got a wild hair a few weeks back about wanting a hive of my own, but haven’t yet convinced Husbandthing, and there is suddenly a SWARMING HERD OF WILD HONEYBEES IN THE NEIGHBOR’S YARD.
I see postings on the neighborhood page all the time for feral swarm collection, but I also know the guy in the house across the alley just set up a hive. “Hey I think your hive escaped,” I text him.
He calls me back about three minutes later. Turns out, the swarm he was supposed to get never came; the company went out of business and his order got cancelled, and he’d found out HALF AN HOUR AGO. And he says he’s got a friend who is a professional beekeeper, and he’s going to go pick her up and would it be okay if they came and got this swarm please please please?
So Bee Neighbor and Professional Beekeeper show up and immediately don bee suits. Apparently there is fierce competition for feral swarms, and the swarm in the neighbor’s tree is HUGE, and also twenty feet off the ground, and Bee Neighbor wants them very badly.
The tree the bees are in is in a yard belonging to neither of us, so we go knock on the door, but there’s no answer. I knock on the house adjacent to it, but that guy’s not home either. Finally, I text the neighbor on the other side of me to see if he’s got contact info for the property owner, who is incredibly shy and in three years has never made eye contact. No luck.
So…we trespass. We get my extension ladder, and Bee Neighbor climbs the tree while Professional Beekeeper stands on the ladder and walks him through the swarm collection. Turns out, you just shake the swarm into a box, and as long as the queen makes it into the box, the rest of the swarm will eventually follow. Bee Neighbor has never collected a swarm before (this is, in fact, his very first swarm of bees ever) and it takes the two of them the better part of an hour in the tree trying to shake the swarm into the box.
Bees eventually get into the box. Bee Neighbor gets out of the tree without dying, and Professional Beekeeper examines the swarm and makes pleased noises. At this point, the box is the neighbor’s driveway, and about two thirds of the swarm is still milling around the box all confused. Since the neighbor isn’t home and we can’t contact him, he risks coming and parking right in the middle of a huge cloud of bees. Professional Beekeeper doesn’t want to move the box too far away, because we risk the milling bees losing the queen’s scent and never going into the box. An equidistant point between the current location and Bee Neighbor’s yard is the top of my recycling bin.
So they put the box of bees on my recycling bin, and I text Husbandthing.
Now I have a box of bees that I am babysitting. They’re being all lazy and dopey and bumbling around. I think I might be in love. Bee Neighbor will pick the box up later tonight and put them in his hive, and then the bees will be MY neighbors too!!
THIS HAS BEEN THE BEST DAY EVER
#beekeeping #also we left a note on the absent neighbor’s door #hi sorry we trespassed #but as you can see from your security cam footage #there was a giant cloud of bees #and we came and got them #we figured you did not want a yard full of bees #and we will love them #yours very sincerely #the friendly neighborhood bee team [Tags by @sacrificethemtothesquid]
Do you think the animorphs could have win the war if Eva had not been taken by the Yeerks?
Eva’s right about Marco: he’s a sweet kid, even to the point of delicacy, and he has no understanding of the vileness of the world. He’s never tasted death, never watched one parent disappear while the other decayed. The world has not yet made him hard, has not honed the sharp edges of his mind into razors and armored spikes.
This time around, when they’re all standing around arguing in Cassie’s barn, Marco becomes first the one to agree with Tobias. “Think about it, man,” Marco says, grinning at Jake. “Turning into animals? Saving the planet? It’s like something out of a comic book.”
“Our parents would kill us if they knew,” Jake says slowly.
“That’s why they’re never gonna know,” Marco says, laughing. “How about it, huh? We rescue Tom, we kick butts, and depending on how that goes we’ll talk more later.”
After the mission goes more wrong than they ever could have imagined, after they learn what hell looks like and lose a fight against the being who rules that hell, Marco misses nearly a week of school. His parents are worried, of course, but neither of them can get a straight answer out of him. Marco keeps his trap shut, because he knows this much: if Tom could be a controller, then anyone could be.
Still, Marco loves his friends, and he can’t let them face danger alone. He helps them infiltrate Chapman’s house, and the construction site afterward. He goes with them to take down the yeerks’ supply ship, grumbling the whole time about how they’re all gonna die. He rescues Ax, and does his best to stifle the nightmares that follow their encounter with the sharks. Each time he gets home, he’s met at the door of his house by Eva, who is growing steadily more concerned and doesn’t know what to think of his increasingly-flimsy lies.
He says to Jake, “This is going to be my last mission,” and this time he means it. They barely make it out of that mission alive, and even then only because of the grace of Visser One (whose human host is a young engineer named Allison Kim) and her ongoing conflict with Visser Three.
Marco quits; Jake doesn’t try to stop him. Marco agrees to stop morphing entirely, and so he walks home—and straight into an intervention.
Eva and Peter don’t know whether Marco has joined a gang, started taking drugs, fallen in with the wrong crowd, or what. All they know is that the withdrawn silences, the nightmares, and the free-falling GPA are all recent developments. They have questions, and they’re not letting him get away without answers. They tell him that they’re here for him, but also that they are going to leave town to go spend some time in Eva’s sister’s cabin in the woods for the next five days, and he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
“Actually,” Marco says, “five days in the middle of nowhere sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all year.”
Even this kinder, gentler version of Marco is still Marco: he watches both his parents carefully for the next seventy-two hours, and can hardly believe the relief he feels when they go that entire time without leaving their tiny corner of nowheresville long enough to access a yeerk pool.
When those seventy-two hours are up, Marco sends a mental apology to Jake (who, although Marco doesn’t know it, is starving out a yeerk of his own at that very time) and then starts answering his parents’ questions. He tells them where he’s been going lately. Why he and Jake have missed so much school in the past two months. What the nightmares are about.
Eva and Peter think he’s crazy at first, because they’re God-fearing suburban Americans who have never once considered the possibility of aliens outside of sci-fi. They start to listen a lot more closely, however, once he morphs a wolf in front of their eyes and then changes back.
When the entire family gets home and Marco discovers that his best friend spent three days as a controller in his absence, he immediately rejoins the team. Peter disapproves sharply of Marco continuing to fight. Eva asks Peter, tears in her eyes, what choice they have in the matter. It’s not like the human authorities are doing anything to combat the yeerks. It’s not like they can fight back themselves. And so they get in the habit of sending Marco out the door (or a window) any time Jake or Cassie calls, always begging him to let them know he’s safe the instant he can.
Funny enough, though, they do find ways to fight back.
Eva listens to their description of the Veleek in careful detail, then she loads Jake and Cassie and Marco into the back seat of her sedan and instructs them to take turns morphing. For nearly six hours she barrels up and down Highway 1 at speeds which leave Marco shrieking in terror at the turns, playing keep-away with the tornado monster until at last Visser Three calls it home in exasperation.
Peter simply hands over his laptop to Ax and asks for help in “fixing” his code for the long-distance communications array. Ax does one better and helps him design a program which gets them a permanent connection between the andalite home world and Marco’s own living room. He stops by to call his parents twice a week, and once a month gives carefully-edited reports on the resistance to the andalite high command.
At first, Eva nudges Ax into staying for dinner after his twice-weekly calls home, on the grounds that she’s never in her life seen someone eat her cooking with that much enthusiasm. However, it’s not long before she convinces him to bring Tobias by as often as he can. It does them a lot of good, even though neither one of them will admit it outright, to have a safe place to get inside when they need it.
Eva doesn’t love it, but she starts doing a lot of the kids’ homework as well. She always does her best to quiz them on Algebra concepts or history dates when there’s time, but she also understands that sometimes the war has to take priority.
Peter installs an air mattress on Marco’s floor on a semi-permanent basis, and gets in the habit of lying to Jean. Because Jake’s just a kid, at the end of the day, and there are a lot of times at the end of the day when he’s too wrecked or exhausted from yet another mission gone bad to face the thought of lying to his family.
Eva dislikes David right from the moment Marco first brings him home, but she keeps that opinion to herself. She sits patiently through the entitled little brat asking her where she’s from (implying, of course, that “San Diego” cannot possibly be the full truth) but also tells him that if he even thinks of borrowing their phone without permission she will make him regret it for the rest of his life. With effort she ignores his repeated attempts to undermine her authority (she’s not his real mom, as he feels the need to remind her constantly) but when she catches him stealing money from Peter’s wallet, she snaps and grounds him on the spot.
David immediately morphs into a lion, unsheathing hooked claws as a growl builds inside his throat. It takes a force of will Eva didn’t even know she had, but she stares him down without flinching. Cold sweat is running down her back, but there’s not even a trace of a tremor in her words when she orders him to demorph now, young man, in her best Mom Voice.
Miraculously, he listens. He sulks about it all afternoon, whining to Peter and to Marco (neither of whom is remotely sympathetic), but the fact is that he can’t bring himself to kill a human. Not yet, anyway.
When David disappears two days later, Eva asks Marco only once what happened. He tells her in two or three halting sentences, and afterwards she hugs him until he finally stops shaking. She explains what happened to Peter, and neither one of them ever brings it up again.
Marco’s house becomes the natural convergence point for all their meetings. It’s only three doors down from Jake’s house, a five-block walk from Rachel’s, and close enough to Cassie’s usual bus route that she has little trouble getting there. They don’t really converge there for the location, though. They come for Peter’s willingness to cobble together a fake Bug fighter distress signal on the fly, for Eva’s no-nonsense questions about whether they’re sure it’s a good idea to attack Joe Bob Fenestre’s house before they know what they’re getting into. They come for the cinnamon cookies that Ax eats by the trayful and the links to forum discussions about the latest yeerk activity.
It might be a cliche, but the truth is this: at Marco’s house they are safe. And in that small bubble of safety, they have freedom. The freedom to talk openly about new morphs without fear of being overheard. The freedom to come and go through the sunroom skylight that Eva leaves open at all times. The freedom to be vulnerable and scared and not sure where they’re going with this war. The freedom to be kids, and to ask an adult for help.
Eva talks to Rachel for nearly three hours about her own parents’ divorce, and what it was like to realize she’d probably never see her dad again. Peter keeps a stock of paperback novels in the living room, never minding when Tobias tends to return them with talon marks in their spines. Eva teaches Ax how to cook cinnamon cookies and churros, chicken fajitas and western omelettes. Peter becomes ever more convincing when assuring Walter and Michelle on the phone that Cassie is simply a delight to have around as she and Marco help each other with homework.
Marco kills Visser One, and Allison Kim along with her, one sunny afternoon in May. Visser Three witnesses the whole thing, not lifting a finger to intervene. The kids have gotten in the habit of telling Peter and especially Eva absolutely everything, but this is the one thing Marco can never bring himself to tell.
The war ends eventually. Maybe it’s not better, or worse, than it would have been if Visser One had chosen a different host. They take longer to figure out how to defeat Visser Three without Eva’s insight to the way yeerk leadership works, but they get there in the end. Tom dies. Rachel dies. James and Kelly and several thousand humans and hork-bajir and taxxons die. Seventeen thousand yeerks meet a terrible icy death in the vacuum of space; Eva finds out about it later and can’t bring herself to disapprove.
One week after Rachel’s funeral, Eva is watching Marco’s latest NBC segment when she hears a knock on the door. Muting the TV, she goes to answer it and finds Jake on her doorstep once again. This time he’s got a backpack over one shoulder and a worn duffle bag with the name of a basketball team that rejected him tucked under the opposite arm.
“Hi,” he says softly, voice hoarse as if from tears. “Things with my parents are kind of a mess right now, and I was just wondering…”
Eva pulls the door open all the way. “Of course, honey. Stay as long as you’d like.”
Some way to stop seeing bowler hats or glowing cigarette butts from the
corners of his eye. Sometimes he swore he could smell them, unwashed
bodies muted with mud, a godawful stench really, but his godawful stench. His men.
“And he did indeed look very fine. You’re still better.” He rocked up onto his toes and kissed Bucky’s cheek. “Go tell ‘em Mister Stark approves and appreciates the rush job.”
Thankfully, Pepper simply laughed instead of taking offense. “Good heavens, your mother is almost as bad as mine! I didn’t even know she read the New York papers until she called and asked me all about you after the gala. Next thing I know she’s going to be unearthing the hope chest she started for me when I was sixteen.”
“Jus’ go to the tenth floor,” he said, he said, slurring a little; vodka always went to his head, along with whiskey, tequila, and scopolamine. “I can get you the right sort of gun.”
“These are special, aren’t they?“
Steve raised his eyes to meet Buck’s, then, and
he held Buck’s gaze for a long, still moment before he nodded and turned away.
He carefully laid the two pennies in the exact center of the big table, side by
side, two bright glints in that dark expanse.
“Yes, Master,” Harold says. “Forgive me, Master.”
He lets John take some of his weight, walking down from the stage. A bittersweet feeling: trust John doesn’t deserve.
There’s a wry expression on Arthur’s face as he watches the
two of them leave, Merlin hanging on Cenred’s arm. He hates himself for putting
Merlin in this position.
Unbeknownst to him, someone else is also watching them leave
from across the room, and the smile playing on her lips signals doom.
“There is no such thing as dignity in death. Their brains
have stopped functioning, everything they are, were or ever could’ve
been is already gone, all that’s left is a rotting pile of meat.”
He gave his sister a disturbed
look and watched her cringe, aware of her own morbidity.
“Sorry, that
was… insensitive.”
Nothing about him particularly was in disarray, but he felt rumpled. The stain on his shirt, garishly red under the fluorescent lights, had already set but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
There were more difficult things to deal with now.
“You
are not among the plethora of the faceless. I know you may not have wished it,
and perhaps I am partially to blame for the circumstance, but your involvement
with the auxilia has undoubtedly caused many to notice you as an individual.
All it takes is a particular person recognizing you as a man with an identity
and your value alters its state.”
More vultures moved in, and a flock of gulls gusted away with the wind. In the corner of Will’s eye they appeared a great winged cloud, flapping and calling to each other. The stranger closed his sketchpad and stood, his feet meeting sand as he walked away.
Dessert was passion fruit mousse and chocolate ganache tarts, served with a selection of cheeses and sweet wines. It was well past midnight, and when he was accosted by the ruckus of guests falling, uproariously, into the swimming pool fully clothed, Will Graham decided abruptly that he had had enough.
He showed himself to the kitchens.
Thomas touches the tips of his fingers to his jaw, just beneath his ear. The barely-there contact sends a stubborn shiver of yearning through his chest. “We have never been able to keep each other safe,” Thomas says quietly.
Micheletto’s gaze flicked down to follow the path of
Cesare’s hand, then looked back to his eyes, patient.
Cesare pressed his lips together, considering. He needed…he didn’t know what he needed.
“What would you ask of me, my lord?” Micheletto asked
quietly.
Hey just thought I'd let you know that the Eurovision Song Contest actually has a really deep history. It was started as a way to unite Europe after WW2 and it worked! People send their support to other countries by voting for their year's entry. Over the years it has become a bit flashy or tacky, but the core idea of unity still stands! I know this mightn't make much sense to you, but this song contest is actually a really big deal to some people 😊
My dude, I think you’ve got me wrong here, I think Eurovision is fantastic. I’m thrilled that it’s a thing. The history of it is amazing. I’m even MORE thrilled that y'all get so much genuine delight out of it, because I’m a big believer that just because something is campy or absurd should by no means decrease people’s enjoyment of it.
That doesn’t make it less bizarre to see that stuff start to scroll across one’s screen like an annual reminder of the capacity of the human animal for Weird Performance and Questionable Costumes.
a. hamlet and horatio are having a badly-hidden affair from the start. they’re trying to keep it secret and act like they’re Just Guys Being Dudes
they’re terrible at it. every time they make eye contact they forget the ends of their sentences and get distracted
(this canonically happens in the text - ‘give me that man / that is not passion’s slave, and i will wear him / in my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, / as i do thee. — something too much of this.’ you can’t tell me they didn’t get distracted by making out and have to reluctantly drag themselves back on track during this sentence)
play opens with a montage of them making out in corners of the castle corridors and having to jump apart any time people walk by
this also explains why horatio’s apparently been in denmark since the funeral but he and hamlet are talking like they haven’t seen each other in forever when the play opens
b. ophelia is also really gay and she and hamlet are pretending to date in order to get their various relatives off their backs.
hamlet and ophelia lying on the floor taking turns to drink soda out of the same bottle, writing the world’s fakest love letters to each other and laughing so hard they’re crying
‘nonono wait ive got it, “doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt i love”’ (wheezing) ‘WHAT’ ‘idk?? straight people like that stuff?? do they?’ ‘you’re asking me??? your guess is as good as mine dude’
‘IM PUTTING THE WORD ‘BOSOMS’ IN IT’ ‘NOOOOO’ ‘IM DOING IT’ ‘my father’s going to have to read this you’re the WORST’
c. ophelia knows that hamlet is pretending to be mad - she doesn’t know why, but he asks her to help him out. this means that all of their confrontations are as melodramatic and extra as possible, interspersed with moments of frantic conspiratory eye contact.
ophelia, pulling out all the stops, ‘FATHER i have been SO AFFRIGHTED hamlet came with his DOUBLET UNBRACED and HELD ME AT ARMS LENGTH and STARED AT ME….. all this after i stopped encouraging his love…. what can it MEAN!!’ ‘mad for thy love?’ ‘….idk i can’t say for sure but yes definitely that’s what it is and you should probably go tell claudius that now’
the ‘get thee to a nunnery’ scene becomes way more enjoyable if ophelia’s in on the plan and is helping to convince claudius that hamlet’s mad
basically ophelia deserves more time being happy in this play
and if she gets this, then things get REAL SAD REAL QUICK later, because then hamlet kills polonius, and she starts to wonder if she really knew him - was she right to trust him? had he been using her? had he really been mad; should she have noticed; could she have stopped him? she HELPED him, what if she made things worse by playing along? and now everything’s gone to shit and her father is dead and she’s desperate and alone
whys zenyatta the new “uwu hes such a cute cinnamon roll” character on tumblr now
it took me a second to realize you were talking about overwatch cause at first i assumed you were talking about the retired racehorse.
why do you know a racehorse by name
Listen you, Zenyatta fucking dominated a few years ago when she was racing. She’s one of, if not the greatest racehorse in my lifetime. She won 19 consecutive races on her 20 race career. (She came in second in her final race. Lost by a few inches. Mike Smith, her jockey, broke down crying afterwards and blamed himself for the loss.)
Watching her was an incredible, exhilarating experience. Seriously look up any of her races on YouTube. She was an amazing closing finisher. She’d be dead last until the very end before just blowing past her competition and leaving them all in her dust at the last moment.
She also had serious fucking personality. Before each race she would prance and paw at the ground, like a human athlete limbering up before competition. The most star quality I’ve ever seen from a horse.
I am literally the most casual horse racing fan you’d ever meet but yeah, I know Zenyatta by name. Also I have not a fucking clue who this Zenyatta character tumblr likes is. So you know, to each their own.
