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]
lwoorl asked: 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.
Anonymous asked: omigosh congratulations on your thesis!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH
NOT ONLY IS THE THESIS COMPLETE, BUT I ALSO JUST GOT BACK FROM THE ANNUAL THESIS BURNING
AS YA DO
Anonymous asked: 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
