It occurs to me that as much as “humans are the scary ones” fits sometimes, if you look at it another way, humans might seem like the absurdly friendly or curious ones.
I mean, who looked at an elephant, gigantic creature thoroughly capable of killing someone if it has to, and thought “I’m gonna ride on that thing!”?
And put a human near any canine predator and there’s a strong chance of said human yelling “PUPPY!” and initiating playful interaction with it.
And what about the people who look at whales, bigger than basically everything else, and decide “I’m gonna swim with our splashy danger friends!”
Heck, for all we know, humans might run into the scariest, toughest aliens out there and say “Heck with it. I’m gonna hug ‘em.”
“Why?!”
“I dunno. I gotta hug ‘em.”
And it’s like the first friendly interaction the species has had in forever so suddenly humanity has a bunch of big scary friends.
“Commander, we must update the code of conduct to include the humans.”
“Why? Are they more aggressive than we anticipated?”
“It seems to be the opposite Commander. Just this morning a crewman nearly lost their hand when attempting to stroke an unidentified feline on an unknown world. Their reaction to the attack was to call the creature a “mean kitty” and vow to win it over. Upon inquiry it seems they bond so readily with creatures outside their species that they have the capacity to feel sympathy for an alien creature they have never seen before simply because it appears distressed. I hate to say this commander but we must install a rule to prevent them from endangering their own lives when interacting with the galaxy’s fauna.”
“I see what you mean. So be it, from now on no crewman is allowed to touch unknown animals without permission from a superior officer. And send a message to supplies about acquiring one of these “puppies” so that their desire to touch furred predators can be safely sated.
Ehehehe I love this! Every time someone adds a short story to my post it gets like 90% cuter and more epic
Lets be honest, the humans would ignore the hell outta that rule whenever alone.
“So I hear that you’ve just recruited a human for your ship.”
“Yes, it’s the first time that I’ve worked with these species,
but they come highly recommended. Say, you’ve worked with a few, what tips can
you give me? I’d hate to have some kind of cultural misunderstanding if it’s
avoidable.”
“The
first rule of working with humans is never leave them unsupervised.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m serious. Don’t do it. Things. Happen.”
“But wait, I thought that I heard you highly recommended that
every crew should have at least one on board?”
“Absolutely, and I stand by that. Humans are excellent
innovators, and are psychologically very resilient. If you have a crisis, then
a human that has bonded wth your crew properly can be invaluable. Treat your
human well and you should get the best out of them as a crew member. Their
ability to get on with almost any species is legendary.”
“But Toks, didn’t you just say…”
“The
trouble is that they will potentially try to bond with anything. If you leave them
unsupervised, you have no idea what kind of trouble they can get themselves into. It was
sheer luck that the Fanzorians thought that it was funny that the human picked
up the Crown Prince to coo at him.”
“Crown Prince Horram, Scourge of Pixia?”
“The
very same. Surprisingly good sense of humour. But don’t even get me started on
that one time with the Dunlip. Al-Human wanted to know if they could keep it.
As a pet.”
“A Dunlip? You
mean the 3 metre tall apex predators from Jowun?”
“Yup. Don’t
leave your humans unsupervised.”
“I’ll uh, take that under advisement.”
“Seriously. Get a supply of safe animals for the humans to bond with or they will make their own. I mean, they will try to befriend anything they come across anyway, but without any permanent pets they can get… creative. Don’t even get me started on the time one of them taped a knife to one of our auto-cleaners and named it Stabby.
Three weeks in and when we finally caught the wretched thing, half the humans on crew tried to revolt about us “killing” Stabby by removing the knife.
“How… how did you resolve that sir?”
“Glaxcol made a toy knife out of insulation rubber and strapped that on instead. Quite a creative solution, I suppose.”
“And that sated the humans?
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
“They thought it was so funny they made a second one, strapped false eyes on springs to both and held mock battles. Then decided Stabby and Knifey were in love and now none of them will allow the others to stage fights between them any more.”
also palpatine knew leia was anakin’s daughter from the moment she made planetfall on coruscant.
of course, was more generally aware of bail and breha’s daughter; when the threat comes—and it will come, he would not be a sith master if he could not feel the force gathering like a storm—he knows alderaan will be the tip of the spear. accordingly, he has armed himself against it. why else would palpatine have pressured bail to retire from the imperial senate, and send his beloved daughter in his place?
(children are weaknesses, children are the softest, most vulnerable place, where any blunted knife can cut. he has known this since anakin came to him, wracked with nightmares of birth and death.)
but being generally aware of bail and breha’s daughter is very different than knowing leia organa, feeling her drop like an ion bomb through the atmosphere of coruscant, so screaming-loud and shiveringly powerful through the force that palpatine stops dead. it’s been over fifteen years since he last felt that raw, unchecked, untaught power—since anakin skywalker returned to coruscant after so long away, all of nineteen and long-limbed, something animal have taken up residence under his skin. palpatine had taken one look and wanted to leash it.
and now his daughter is here.
(palpatine has been making do with such puny, stunted specimens lately. crippled things, taught in the dark by vader and then presented to him as though they were something to be proud of. but a skywalker daughter, who did not even know enough to shield herself from him—)
palpatine is patient. (he has always been patient.) he does not reach out, he makes no overture; instead he gives her his glittering planet with all its pleasures and strangeness. he even pulls his spies and guards back, to give her more room to run. aldera is hardly a backwater swill, but there is nothing in the galaxy like coruscant.
on the fifth day, the junior senators are presented to the emperor.
leia organa looks so very much like her mother, that for a moment, palpatine is back on naboo, standing before another little girl with a crown of braids. but her expression is all anakin, a badly-hidden contempt behind her eyes.
“leia organa,” emperor palpatine says, extending his hand for her to bow over. “we are gratified by your coming. may you serve us as loyally as your father has.”
A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.
“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”
Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.
My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.
“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”
Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.
“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.
External image
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.
And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?
I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.
Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!
Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.
I wish this post featured the OP’s name more prominently; it’s by Libby Anne of love joy feminism, and she writes fantastic stuff. A survivor of Christian patriarchal fundamentalism, she writes about parenting from the perspective of someone working through her own traumatic experiences. I love reading her blog.
For @twistedangelsays: AU where Wolfgang takes up his uncle’s criminal empire. Obviously, spoilers for the special episode of Sense8.
So Wolfgang’s uncle was a fucking crime king. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He’s all ready to shoot the offer down and go
on his merry way—who the fuck offers
a quarter of Berlin to some safecracker just because he happened to off the old
boss, anyway—and then… He imagines Sun,
in prison because she wouldn’t throw her brother under the bus, and her dark
eyes glittering in the harsh light of her cell.
He imagines Nomi, constantly reaching out to visit them in order to not
go stir-crazy in the hiding places the American government is forcing her
into. He imagines Lito, barely treading
water against the downward drag of prejudice, and Capheus, who has already
swapped so much of his innocence for medicine.
He imagines Will, already taking on the pale look of an addict to
protect them all.
Look, it’s simple. Wolfgang has always been good at looking out for
number one, and now number one is an eighth of a whole. Looking out for number one, these days, means
making sure that he looks out for all of his fractional selves, and they need
money, and clout, and somewhere safe.
He takes the offer. He’ll figure it out as he goes.
It’s dark in Seoul when he visits Sun that
night—he’s really gotten himself in over his head this time, and he needs her
steady presence—and she gracefully flips herself down from where she’s doing a
handstand against the wall. He’s sitting
against the wall of her cell when he says, “I’ve got a fucking story to tell
you.” Sun nods, folding herself into a cross-legged
position, and he takes a moment to wonder how he’s supposed to explain.
He can’t come up with anything particularly
diplomatic, so he takes a deep breath and says bluntly, “My uncle was in charge
of a quarter of Berlin, and it turns out I’m his fucking heir.”
Sun stares at him like it’s the craziest
thing she’s heard in weeks, which he finds unlikely. “What?”
Wolfgang bares his teeth and says, “I got
promoted.”
It’s a fucking trip to explain it to the others.
Kala is disappointed, which…he wishes he was surprised by that, but it’s
not like he’s lied to her about who he is.
Nomi probably rolls with it best, except for Capheus, because Capheus is
just unconquerably happy whenever the cluster is together and no petty little
criminal empire is going to change that. He hugs Riley and gets a kiss on the cheek
from Lito and actually laughs like a kid when Wolfgang admits to the
situation. Nomi starts making
suggestions immediately, and under any other circumstances Wolfgang might be
offended, but the truth is that he needs the help, so he nods and writes down
what she says.
Riley is the first one to bring up the
obvious question, because for all that she’s quiet and shy even within their
cluster, she’s ferociously
loyal. “So,” she asks, a quiet murmur
that nonetheless brings debate to a halt, “can you help get Sun out of prison?”
Sun looks up in surprise from where Lito is
teaching her a clapping game to keep her busy in her cell.
Wolfgang grins. “Well, I didn’t take the offer for the
fucking benefits.”
It’s unfathomably weird, some month and a
half later, to have a tiny Korean woman in a business-formal dress turn up at
his door, really truly there and
scowling at his bodyguard (he only has one, and only because he couldn’t make
him leave). She’s been yelling in Korean
for five minutes by the time someone gets Wolfgang, and her frown evaporates as
she throws herself at him in a hug.
“Look!” she shouts in Korean that he
understands, dragging him outside into the perpetual Berlin rain—worse than
usual today, plastering her hair to her face.
He lets himself be dragged, because it would be bad for his reputation
if he was beaten up by this tiny woman, and Sun-Capheus-Riley-Lito grabs his
hands to spin in a circle. “I am free!”
“Yeah,” Wolfgang laughs, feeling his fractional
selves at his back. “Yeah, you are.”
…..most of alderaan probably thought leia was a jedi anyway.
I mean, one minute the viceroy is a lauded senator and alderaan’s queen is childless, and the jedi are heroes, fighting a noble war against the separatists. Then suddenly the chancellor emperor is declaring that the jedi had to be cleansed, and senator organa slinks back to alderaan in unexplained semi-disgrace, and the queen has an infant daughter who is just Way Too Pale to be either bail or breha’s natural-born child
“an orphan,” the queen and viceroy of alderaan tell absolutely everyone.
“a jedi orphan,” absolutely everyone replies. “saved from the destruction of the jedi temple. where the jedi lived.”
“no no, just a regular normal orphan with nothing force-sensitive about her! what a silly idea, our daughter being a powerful jedi. are we even sure jedi really existed? emperor palpatine makes some good points, about them never having existed.“
“we literally have 700 hours of holonews footage that’s just viceroy organa hanging out on the warfront with a bunch of jedi.”
“I don’t recall that,” bail says cheerfully. “and neither does my daughter, who is force-sensitive as a box of bricks.”
(leia is eight when she dreams of her father in the war. he is holding a sword of fire, and he breathes too loudly, harsh in her ears—she is scared, and so she reaches for him, seeking comfort,and suddenly he turns on her. he is shadow and death and that awful sword of fire, not her father at all, and he says in a breath of smoke, who—?
she wakes up to her father’s arms, real and warm, cradling her to his chest. it was only a nightmare, bail says, as she cries. shh, it wasn’t real.)
”on alderaan, they say she was an orphan rescued from the destruction of the jedi temple,” general tarkin says. “that she is a jedi too.” the footage is grainy, but tarkin can make out the shape of her well enough, the princess throwing herself against the cell door. such dramatics.
“impossible,” darth vader says from beside tarkin. the vocoder makes it hard to read his tone. “I killed every child that breathed.”
Prompt: Animorphs AU where Tobias is raised by Loren, perhaps about how it'd change the nothlit thing or his interactions with Ax?
I spent several minutes considering whether this should be an AU where Loren has her memories of Elfangor or doesn’t. I went with yes because… why not?
I was sitting in front of the TV listening to the local news about the “fireworks” at the construction site when Tobias came in and said, “Hey, Mom. Jake invited me along to check out the Sharing meeting at the beach later. Can I go?”
Cold dread trickled into my veins. I had hoped the war would never touch us. It wasn’t our war to fight; we didn’t have the weapons. But finally, it had come to my doorstep. “No,” I said firmly. “I need you help to me clean the house this evening. You’re staying in.”
“What if we start now?” Tobias said. “We could finish early and then I could catch up with Jake?”
I hit mute on the TV. “Tobias. I know some of your classmates have gotten into the Sharing. But I’ve heard about this group through my church friends. They look harmless, but they’re a dangerous cult. Has anyone ever told you what you have to do to become a full member?”
A pause. “Jake’s brother Tom says there’s a minimum number of hours of service, and then you go to a couple of special meetings and you become a full member.”
“But did he tell you what the initiation is like?” I insisted. “The ‘initiation ceremony’ is full members only.”
“No,” Tobias said, a frown in his voice. “He said it was secret. He just said that it totally changed his life.”
“I don’t trust an organization like that and neither should you,” I said firmly. “I won’t allow you to go there. Stay home and help me clean.”
Then there was the news story about the man who found a piece of metal on the beach with strange writing on it. I asked my church friend Mary to describe it to me. It took a while for the image to form in my mind, but when it did, it was unmistakable. Andalite writing. Elfangor had taught it to me.
That night, I dreamed of a thought-speak voice calling to me from the sea.
I woke up in a cold sweat. An Andalite ship had crashed somewhere off the coast of California. There was an Andalite trapped in there, using the ship to broadcast his thought-speech. And somehow, I’d heard his call. My heart ached. There was nothing I could do for him.
I got up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I found that Tobias was already there. “Tobias?” I said. “What are you doing up?”
“Bad dream,” he said.
Oh no. Had the message reached him too? Because of his heritage? Because Elfangor had touched both our lives? “What was it about?” I said, tentatively.
“There was a voice,” he said. “Calling to me from the ocean. It sounded scared. Desperate.”
Part of me wanted to tell him, after a lifetime of keeping the truth to myself. But what good could it possibly do? There was nothing he could do to help the doomed Andalite, either. So I said, “Hey. Why don’t you read to me from the book you’re reading?” It was an old ritual of ours. We went to his bedroom, and he read to me until he yawned between every word, and went back to sleep.
A month or so later, Tobias came to the house with a new friend in tow. “This is Philip, Mom. He’s here to borrow some books.”
“Yes, my name is Phil-up-puh,” the other boy said. “Puh. I am here to read book-suh.”
Playing with sounds. Just like Elfangor did in the first couple of weeks being human.
Then the boy added, stiffly, “I am sorry to intrude, intrud-ud-duh, on your solitude. Tude.”
“Come on, Philip,” Tobias said, and took him to his room.
I sat and frowned over that remark. It took me a minute to remember Elfangor’s distaste for the disabled that I’d had to train him out of, the way he insisted that they should be secluded from society. It probably didn’t mean anything. It was a coincidence. There were autistic humans who played with sound, and plenty of humans who acted weird around a blind woman. But there had to be a way to know. To be sure.
When Philip and Tobias came back out of his room, I was ready. If I was just being paranoid, I could say I’d gotten the phrase from a fantasy book. But if I wasn’t…
“Nice to meet you, Philip,” I said. “May your blade stay sharp, and the four moons guide our paths to cross again one day.”
Dead silence fell. Then I heard a sound I thought I’d never hear again – of bones grinding against each other, organs liquefying.
“Philip,” Tobias said, a little hysterically, but not hysterical enough for the morph to be a surprise. “What are you doing?”
“He’s demorphing,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “Tobias, close the curtain on the window of the back door. Just in case.”
“Mom?”
“Do it,” I said. “What if someone walks through the backyard and sees?”
I heard the whistle through the air, and the lightest press of the edge of a tail blade against my throat. «Demorph.»
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m not an Andalite. But I had a child with one.”
I told them everything. I gave enough details that they even believed me.
“You never told me,” Tobias whispered. “I met my dad, and I didn’t even know. I would have known if you’d told me.”
“And you’re fighting a war I swore to myself you’d never have to fight,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry.”
I am a star. Not in the metaphorical sense of a shining bauble to coo over and capture in camera flash, but in the fierce and wild sense of the cosmos. I burn white-hot, powered by an engine humanity cannot dream of touching, strong enough to alter the very matter of myself, to merge the unmergable atom. My parents are a solar wind and a nebula, a thing cast out and a thing destroyed, and I am what they have spun me into being as, a thing untouched.
And you are not. You are tiny. You have looked up into the sky on your little world and seen the speck of light and named me and drawn me into constellations, but you see a memory of the dead and distant past. You could not bear my present. My touch would burn you, my light would blind you, and so you cling to the small light of my past, and I spin my planets and moons in a song you will never hear, and mourn the fact that you could not stand with me as I am.
So next time you wish you could reach up and touch me and make me into that small light, remember: I am a star. You have not had a hand in my creation save to throw petty stones and place me in pretty pictures with cruel stories, and you will not have a hand in my future.
And to the small light, remember: this is only a distant memory.
Three cats died after their owners used an anti-inflammatory cream used to treat arthritis. The Food and Drug Administration warns to keep drugs away from pets; a tiny bit can be toxic.
Important for spoonies with cats!
Creams with Flurbiprofen are fatal to cats.
Brands that use this chemical (Not a complete list):
Myoflex Traumeel Capzasin
If you have cats, check your pain relieving cream for this, and keep them from ingesting it, please!
Me: man, Lito is so dramatic how did he get this way?
Lito’s Mom: throws a party with a dozen place settings and wine glasses for guests that aren’t coming and meticulously arranges the tabloids of her son having sex with another man for both of them to see as soon as they walk in just to prove a point about how much she loves and supports him
he made my wife and i (i’m a woman) a giant banner for our one year anniversary
when i was pregnant, the baby was kicking and when he touched my belly, the baby stopped and he called him a little shit
he once called and left a voicemail asking how to spell styrofoam
he flipped a table bc he saw someone hit a dog
he beat skrim in 4 days
he served in the korean war and when he came home, he learned korean so if he ever ran into a korean vet, he could “give them the same respect he’d give an american vet”
my son has two moms and there was a “special guy in your life” day at his school for father’s day so my grandpa went and showed up in dress pants and a pressed shirt bc he “didn’t want to embarrass him”. also, there was a little boy who didn’t have anyone there and grandpa asked if he could be his “special guy” and the little boy beamed
he knows all of the secrets to the zelda games
he’s had 4 open heart surgeries and can still kick your ass
my grandpa is having another major surgery so those of you who love him as much as i do, please keep him in your thoughts. i’ll try and keep y'all updated
his surgery is scheduled for the Jan 13th of this year. wish us luck
thank god for the mythbusters though because it used to be that whenever i knew i had insomnia i’d just kind of accept it and stay up doing whatever until my morning classes and spend the day feeling like shit
but then they did an episode where they established that even just fucking laying there for a half hour, not even sleeping just laying there and not even for an hour, makes a significant difference and you’ll feel way better
it has made a huge difference in my life to know that it’s okay if i can’t fall asleep, it takes a lot of the pressure off and ironically helps me fall asleep better
…i did not know this, thank you
If anyone wants to look it up, the episode was specifically the Deadliest Catch crossover ep, and the myth was that it’s better/safer when working a 30 hour shift to take a 20 minute nap every six hours rather than try to power through. They did an obstacle course test, one without naps and one with, and even though they couldn’t even sleep half the time the naps resulted in their scores doubling.
So actually I undersold it, even if it’s 7:40 and your alarm goes off at 8 just lie down and shut your eyes and it will still be better than nothing
bless you
i wish i had known this in college, but oh well
THIS NEEDS TO BE REBLOGGED ALWAYS
i’m not familiar with the episode, but once I realized this in my personal life sleeping/resting became a lot easier. i always tell people that laying down and napping are so important
If you are in the mood to write pain (and, really, when aren't you in the mood to write pain): Rachel/Tobias during the early war
*mean cackling* So when I’m in a very particular mood
about the little girl I used to be and how much she was screwed over, I tend to
take it out on my characters. Ergo, I am
banned from touching my Alleirat story until our houseguest leaves, and will
instead be writing Animorphs because how much worse could I make it. Sorry. And since this got pretty long and also there’s not exactly loads of
Animorphs fic, I crossposted it to AO3. If you like Animorphs, maybe comment on that
shit or something.
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since
the disastrous attack on the Yeerk pool, the sun still over the trees at the
edge of the forest where it butted up against Cassie’s farm. The horse she’d morphed, whose quick legs had
saved Cassie and one single woman the night before, was loose in the field, and
Rachel was cross-legged on a crate in the barn as Cassie murmured to a wounded
rabbit. Rachel felt dazed, with
exhaustion and shock, as if every blink and turn of her head demanded a fresh
calibration of her brain, a new moment of I’m
alive and nothing is okay. She’d
spent an hour in the shower after getting home, with the water as hot as she
could stand, but she could still feel the grit of the Yeerk pool floor on her
palms and feet, and kept expecting to catch a glimpse of Hork-Bajir blood on
her human teeth in the mirror.
Cassie didn’t seem much better, her hands
still where she would usually be smoothly going through her tasks and her voice
mindless nonsense, as if she was as numb as Rachel. The silence wasn’t quite tense, but there was
an unmistakable taut feeling that kept even the noisiest patients subdued and
quiet.
“Did Jake say why he wanted to talk to us?”
Rachel finally asked, and Cassie glanced up, shaking her head.
listen: fight club and pulp fiction are good movies, i love them both personally, but if a guy (and you KNOW the type of guy i mean) says they are his Favorite Movies then u need to run. RUN. plan ur exist exit strategy now. if ur texting him then just make something up. “haha i gotta go now. it was nice talking to you. bye!” if you’re somewhere with him just leave. do parkour if you have to. run like the wind. get away from that man
i have been getting messages nonstop since posting this and in response i am adding more movies: scarface, american psycho and a clockwork orange. goodbye
Me:
I'm a bad bitch! I don't take shit from anyone! I'm not nice!
Also me:
well I can't just leave this cart in the middle of the parking lot. I have to take it to the cart return. I'm not an animal. Those employees work hard.
human: “mmm love that new book smell,”
alien: “WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?”
As an anosmic human, the alien in this post is very relatable to me.
Human: Oh, man, this perfume smells beautiful. I could smell it all day! Alien: *makes note that humans like crushed flowers, alcohol, and various wood oils mixed in an aerosol form*
Human: Ugh! Good grief, who took a bath in their perfume cabinet?? Alien: *throws notepad across the room*
Human: *sneezes* Alien: …I appear to have broken our human. Human: *sniffles* Just allergies. I think you’re releasing spores. Alien: …Spores are bad. Unequivocally bad. Yes? Human: If you’re allergic…? Alien: WHY IS THERE NO ONE THING UNILATERALLY TRUE FOR HUMANITY?? Human: …I appear to have broken our alien.
BUT HOW DO YOU CATCH EVERYONES NAMES IN MAD MAX I JUST COULDNT NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRIED PLEASE SEND HELP
Wikipedia, Google, Tumblr, and this, my dude. The end result is that I have a borderline encyclopedic knowledge of the characters in Fury Road. Honestly I’m pretty sure like half of them don’t even get named in-movie, the script is probably like six pages.
a song called ‘disco inferno’ just came up on my dash and i automatically registered it as “i learn by means of hell” before i realised the title was actually english and not latin
“I learn by means of hell,” forthcoming rap album from Doctor Faustus
When we figured out that’s what Disco Inferno meant (we translated it as “I learn through suffering”), it became the motto of our Latin class at college, and the unofficial motto of my undergrad.
PLEASE DO NOT FILL OUT ANY “SURVEY” YOU GET FROM “THE WOMEN’S MARCH” ABOUT YOUR WHEREABOUTS, WHO YOU ARE, WHAT METRO YOU ARE TAKING, ETC.
INFO BELOW
If you are planning any protests of the inauguration, please be aware that you may be a target of James O’Keefe operatives. If you have spoken to anyone from Breakthrough Development Group, this is an O’Keefe front. Here are some known aliases:
Allison Brandt, Angela Brandt, Allison Moss, Allison Maass, Alyssa Harris, Allison Holmes, Ashley Nichols, Charles Roth, Dan Sandini, Steve Packard, Christian Hartsock, Brittney Rivera, Bri Rivera, Bri Rivers, Mike Carlson, Victor Kesh, Thomas Gibson, Savannah Germain, Jess Koski, Laura Loomer, Jess Jones
If you are working with Disrupt J20 specifically, you are being targeted by O’Keefe. He is apparently trying to get progressives to incite violence.
There will be moles in your campaigns. PLEASE make sure to vet your volunteers. Please get in touch with me if you believe you have been contacted by one of his operatives.
Let me re-emphasize her point, DO NOT FILL OUT ANY SURVEYS! I’m re-emphasizing because I’ve seen a lot of people re-blogging that Women’s March survey. Don’t do it!!
Please make sure anyone you know who is planning to attend sees this!
I’ve noticed this revisionist Greek myth is common wherein Persephone loves Hades and eats the pomegranate seeds in order to evade her overbearing mother, and that’s all well and good. You know, sometimes I’m in the mood for it and sometimes I’m not. But hear this: as long as we’re doing this, why is no one wondering whether Aphrodite might really love Hephaestus?
Think about it. All the gods in their immortal splendor are lining up to marry her, doing everything in their power to impress her, the goddess of love and beauty, and she choses…that guy. A god in technical terms only, a social reject who’s ugly and malformed and um, no fun. Always slaving away in his workshop when everyone else is quaffing nectar and having their eternal beach party up on Mount Olympus. They can’t believe she’d give up all of them for that.
So, because the gods do not take rejection well (looking at you Apollo), eventually they start to say to each other, well, we all know Zeus made her do it anyway. He’s gotta feel guilty for throwing Hephaestus off Mount Olympus that one time. And it quickly becomes thatpoorgirl, stuck in that workshop full of sweat and dirt and cyclopses when she could have had one of us. Because of course they’ve got love all figured out; it’s entirely technical and dependent on who’s the most charming and good-looking and not at all variable and strange and notoriously unpredictable, right?
Meanwhile Ares, only the most arrogant and brainless of the crew, can’t take a hint and is still showing up wherever Aphrodite goes trying to hit on her, so eventually she and Hephaestus decide to rig up an elaborate mechanical trap for him, using her as bait. When all the gods have laughed at him for getting caught he huffily attempts to regain his dignity by telling them, whatever, guys, you want to know the truth, I was meeting her for an assignation. And they all kind of know he’s full of it but they just accept it as the unvarnished truth from thereon in, because they’d love to believe she’d cheat on Hephaestus with Ares. They’d love it. Come on, Aphrodite, get off your high horse and admit you’re just as shallow as the rest of us.
So they talk, but Aphrodite doesn’t really care about their collective jealousy because she dotes on her misshapen genius of a husband with his sooty hands and his sweaty brow who always takes her seriously and is always so hard at work inventing astonishing new things to make her happy, and she loves the volcano they live in with its internal pressures so conducive to the formation of precious stones and its passages lit with glowing lava that so gorgeously offsets her cheekbones, and all the cyclopses worship her because even with one eye apiece they’ve still got more depth perception than most men do where she’s concerned. True it is that as a couple the two develop a reputation for not getting out much, because all those Olympian parties bore them to death and they’d rather spend time with each other (poor Aphrodite, she’s such a vivacious young thing and her husband is so grasping and insecure that he won’t let her go out and have fun), but they do all right.
THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I’M LOOKING FOR
love <3
Ok, ok, wait, but it doesn’t end there. Because Aphrodite features pretty heavily in the story of Eros and Psyche. She’s painted as the villain, her jealousy causing her to send her son to curse the girl, but that’s just not true. She knows what it’s like to be clamored over for your beauty, knows the lies that are spread, the way it sets you up as a target and discredits your mind. Aphrodite hears the mortals whisper that this human girl rivals her in beauty, and one day she gets around to seeing what the fuss is about.
She finds Psyche’s home all but besieged by suitors, but she notices the girl isn’t falling for their flattery, that she is still kind, no matter who she’s dealing with. She sees a bit of herself in this girl who aches to be spoken to, not at, and who wants most of all to be heard.
When she sends her son to the girl, she is less than truthful about her motivations. She knows if she tells him she hopes he will fall for this mortal girl it will make things awkward for him, that true love must be discovered on its own and cannot be forced. When he comes away from the encounter with her name on his lips, searching for excuses to talk to her again, Aphrodite whispers into the soothsayer’s ear to tell Psyche’s father that she is loved by a god. Frees her from the hoards of shallow admirers and gives her son the opportunity he needs to see her again.
When a year of late-night conversations fails to convince her son that it’s time to reveal himself to his beloved, she puts a bug in Psysche’s ear to ask for her sisters to visit, whispers in their ears to convince Psyche to take matters into her own hands, ensures the two can finally meet face to face. She is saddened when Eros flees, believing Psyche had betrayed him.
The four tasks Psyche must overcome to be reunited with her son aren’t laid forth out of spite, but rather to help the girl find herself. Aphrodite knows this girl hasn’t had a choice in the path her life has taken up until this point. Knows that everything was in the hands of her father, and of Aphrodite herself. She wants to make sure Psyche means it, wants Psyche to know what she’s getting into when dealing with the Olympians. Wants, most of all, for Psyche to question her own motivations, fully evaluate the situation, and then make her own choice.
Her frustration at the Olympians aiding the girl isn’t because she hates being tricked. No, she wants Psyche to break out of her shell, wants her to have the option to decide this isn’t worth it and walk away.
When the final task ends in Psyche laying unconscious on the roadway, Aphrodite searches the girl’s heart and knows her intentions are true. Knows she is ready to join the family. She kicks Eros out of the house to ensure he would find Psyche, to ensure he would come to his senses and forgive her, realize that he had been unfair to her and to ask her forgiveness in turn.
They say Aphrodite was sour about the whole ordeal until her granddaughter was born, but the truth was she hadn’t stopped smiling from the moment her son had first come home, whispering the girls name in reverence.
I liked before.
Now I find it awesome.
will someone please do a different take on icarus too
on the topic of humans being the intergalactic “hold my beer” species: imagine an alien stepping onto a human starship and seeing a space roomba™ with a knife duct taped onto it, just wandering around the ship
it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.
“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”
“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.
“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”
“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”
“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”
“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”
“but then what is its purpose?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says, leaning down to give the space roomba an affectionate pat. “it just seemed cool”
this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I thought about it for five seconds and realized that if I were, say, a random communications officer onboard this ship and someone taped a knife to a roomba it would take maybe three weeks before even I was inordinately fond of Stabby. I would be proud of Stabby when I met up with my other spacefleet friends for space coffee, I would tell them about the time Stabby got the second mate in the ankle five seconds before the fleet admiral beamed on board and she swore in seven different languages in front of high command.
also by the fourth day Stabby would be in the ship’s log, he’d have little painted-on insignia, people would salute him as he went by, and someone would hook up a twitter account to tweet maniacal laughter and/or a truly terrible knock-knock joke every time he managed to nick someone.
Omg so the ting I typed up might actually happen this is gold
I am suddenly astonished that Stabby isn’t Farscape canon. 1812 was weird enough.
Stabby’s little charging dock would start accruing cuddly toys and commemorative holo-vids of Stabby’s greatest stabs. Its insignia would start off at a fairly low rank, but soon, without anyone every discussing it, everyone would know that Stabby got to take the rank of the highest ranking crew member it stabbed. The ceremony for Flag Admiral Stabby was beautiful. The captain gave a speech.
Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.
Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.
Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.
As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.
The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” - an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question - and quickly intercepted them.
Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.
Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.
Recommendations/Actions:
All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.
Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.
Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.
Cleaning unit D4.87 AKA
“Sargent Stabby” has been promoted to Quartermaster, and is now considered the superior officer of all autonomous drones on the ship. All Class #1 drones have been programmed to salute their superior with their effector, should it enter the room while they’re active.
according to this textbook, because president hayes, elected 1876, was elected as the result of several disputed votes, he was sometimes referred to as “his fraudulency”. and i sincerely love that
My elementary school had the entire animorphs series and when I was in fifth grade I discovered them and I would check them out three at a time (I think at one point I was doing this every day) and just read through them. My teacher thought I was reading below my level and took away the one I was on and made me read "The Good Thief" and tell her how it ended before I could get it back.
This is eerily familiar, my elementary school experience looked very similar. Admittedly I figured out really quick that I didn’t want to be explaining the Animorphs to my teachers (my mom asked about the first book while I was reading it at seven and she was VERY CONCERNED–of course then she read them herself and is easily as much of a die-hard as I am), but yeah man, I know that feel.
Also I’m reading them out loud to my roommate and it’s fun times, and also-also you should ALWAYS feel free to come talk to me about Animorphs because it’s GOOD SHIT. I have a Rachel/Tobias fic in reserve that I wrote today but won’t post just yet because I agreed not to torture my roommate while she’s feverish.
"u dont know tragedy until you ship a dead girl and a bird" i feel it
son. it was sad as fuck when i first read it when i read it nearly 15 years ago and it is even sadder now because i was cold as fuck as a kid and now as an adult i have the fragile emotional state of an infant that’s been shown the first 10 minutes of the movie “up”. animorphs has destroyed me and showed me how to feel, and most of that is bad and i regret it.
Rewatching Fury Road while tipsy because houseguest, and SOME THOUGHTS:
The Doof Warrior is so fucking extra, I love him with my whole heart because. What.
Furiosa straight up tries to kill Max in that first fight. Like, he KNOWS the shotgun isn’t loaded and furthermore he wastes THREE bullets on nonlethal warning shots. SHE, on the other hand, does NOT know that, and tries to blow his head off with the shotgun, bash his skull in with the boltcutters, and shoot him in the temple with the handgun.
There is nothing I love more than that scene where Immortan Joe is coming up on them and they’re Definitely Screwed and then the door opens to reveal Angharad clinging to the outside of the rig to shield them with her body. So fucking good, God I love her so much.
The Vuvalini make me so happy. “I’m eighty years old heRE COMES THE HURRICANE.”
This movie is a really good exercise in one of my favorite lines: There’s nothing more dangerous than a true believer. And not just with the War Boys! Joe has totally bought into his own propaganda, that’s WHY he’s so dangerous.
This movie is also ALL about Actions Speak Louder Than Words. It doesn’t matter what Nux or Max says, it matters that Max warns Furiosa about the oncoming war parties and is willing to drive the rig to save them all, it matters that Nux helps them escape the Bullet Farmer, it matters that Max lets Furiosa use him as a rifle rest.
“Remember me?” FURIOSA. MY LOVE. FUCK ME UP. FUCKING ICONIC.
The loop of “Witness me” from the kami-crazy War Boy death chant to Nux’s final whisper before he saves the Wives and Max and Furiosa always wrecks me, I almost bawled in the fucking theater the first time I saw this.
Toast is a stone-cold Slytherin and I will not hear debate. “Don’t damage the goods.” Come on, y’all. Which is not to say I have strict headcanons for the others.
HA I lied, I totally do. Furiosa is a Slytherin/Gryffindor split who by nature of her situation chose Slytherin and falls back on that Gryffindor self over the course of the movie, Max is a Hufflepuff (a deeply traumatized Hufflepuff, but still). Angharad is a Gryffindor to the core, using her own body to save the others because she believes in the cause. The Dag is a Ravenclaw, exactly the kind of lunatic brilliance that Ravenclaw adores, and Capable is a Hufflepuff who throws herself into the cause for love of Angharad and for love of her people and for love of herself. And here’s the controversial one: Cheedo is a Slytherin. Her ambition is to survive, and she does whatever she believes must be done for that–flee the Citadel, return to Joe, lie to Rictus, all of it to achieve her goal. Nux earns a Gryffindor for turning his back on Joe, but the War Boys are mostly not…person enough to be sorted, just puppets, an old man’s battle fodder. Incidentally the Vuvalini are a general mix, most of them with Slytherin as an option if not a primary house, much like Furiosa. Valkyrie is the only straight-up Gryffindor, and Keeper of the Seeds is a Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff split, a rarity in the Vuvalini.
Immortan Joe is a Slytherin/Ravenclaw split, which makes him very dangerous.
I’ve always been mad vexed about it and just held my tongue bc I didn’t wanna fight but now I do wanna fight everyone who doesn’t like Jake Berenson and argues that he didn’t deserve to be the leader and that he gets too much credit for doing nothing and while I did not keep any receipts for callouts I may still write a post explaining my passions and sorry to all my followers who are gonna have to read it
I mean… Jake Berenson himself would make that argument, but everyone else should know better.
Jake made some Bad Decisions, but he did his best in a horrible situation and I will defend him for 10 pages if I need to.
I would also join in the defense of Jake Berenson.
honestly one of the most heart-wrenching, incredible images from the Animorphs series for me is from #13, where the kids, a bunch of 13 year old kids, their equally young andalite friend, and the two only free hork-bajir in the entire universe are all scared, stuck in the woods together and have decided to trust one another. And they pound their chests and scream out the mantra of the entire series free or dead in the face of the yeerk empire that threatens to enslave all of them and it just brings me to tears every time i read it
I want to talk for a moment about the infamous Trump Happy New Year tweet. We’re all familiar with it. It went like this:
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”
The general reaction could best be summed up as, “What an asshole!” But I’m glad he tweeted this, because it really clarifies things. Trump views everyone who didn’t and/or doesn’t support him as a conquered enemy. This ought to put to rest any talk of Trump “uniting the country” or “giving him a chance.” In fact, you know what, Donald?
If you are going to treat me like a conquered enemy, then I have to assume I am now living in an occupied country. And that means that from me, you get:
* no benefit of the doubt
* no cooperation
* no respect
and
* no legitimacy.
That tweet frees us all from any remaining scruples any of us might have had about rejecting his legitimacy and authority. You can’t be someone’s “enemy” and be their president at the same time.
Thank you for putting into words what was skeeving me the fuck out about that tweet, in a manner more eloquent than the “dear non-faith-specific God, he sounds like a literal supervillain out of central casting” that was springing to mind.
