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letsbelonelytogetherr

— nn. (via eternaldroplets)

letsbelonelytogetherr

— 6:59 AM by Shane Koyczan

fromdarzaitoleeza

Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

fromdarzaitoleeza

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

what-even-is-thiss

I keep hate-reading plague literature from the medieval era, but as depressed as it makes me there is always one historical tidbit that makes me feel a little bittersweet and I like to revisit it. That’s the story of the village of Eyam.

what-even-is-thiss

Eyam today is a teeny tiny town of less than a thousand people. It has barely grown since 1665 when its population was around 800.

Where the story starts with Eyam is that in August 1665 the village tailor and his assistant discovered that a bolt of cloth that they had bought from London was infested with rat fleas. A few days later on September 7th the tailor’s assistant George Viccars died from plague.

what-even-is-thiss

Back then people didn’t fully understand how disease spread, but they knew in a basic sense that it did spread and that the spread had something to do with the movement of people.

So two religios leaders in the town, Thomas Stanley and William Mompesson, got together and came up with a plan. They would put the entire village of Eyam under quarantine. And they did. For over a year nobody went in and nobody went out.

They put up signs on the edge of town as warning and left money in vinegar filled basins that people from out of town would leave food and supplies by.

what-even-is-thiss

Over the 14 months that Eyam was in quarantine 260 out of the 800 residents died of plague. The death toll was high, the cost was great.

However, they did successfully prevent the disease from spreading to the nearby town of Sheffield, even then a much bigger town, and likely saved the lives of thousands of people in the north of England through their sacrifice.

So I really like this story, because it’s a sad story, because it’s also a beautiful story. Instead of fleeing everyone in this one place agreed that they would stay, and they saved thousands of people. They stayed just to save others and I guess it’s one of those good stories about how people have always been people, for better or worse.

auroranibley

It gets better.

Here’s the thing. One third of the residents of Eyam died during their quarantine, but the Black Plague was known to have a NINETY PERCENT death rate. As high as the toll was, it wasn’t as high as it should have been. And a few hundred years later, some historians and doctors got to wondering why.

Fortunately, Eyam is one of those wonderful places that really hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years. Researchers, going to visit, found that many of the current residents were direct descendants of the plague survivors from the 1600s. By doing genetic testing, they learned that a high number of Eyam residents carried a gene that made them immune to the plague. And still do.

And it gets even better than that, because the gene that blocks the Black Plague? Also turns out to block AIDS, and was instrumental in helping to find effective medication for people who have HIV and AIDS in the 21st century.

Here is a lovely, well-produced documentary about Eyam and its disease resistance. It’s a little under an hour. Trigger warning for general disease and epidemic-type stuff, but also, maybe it will help you have some hope in these alarmly uncertain times.

cryptid-deity

[Image 1: a photo of Eyem’s abbey and graveyard.]

[Image 2: a photo of a stone basin.]

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

i keep forgetting the sky does that

cant-beelieve-it

melts?

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

basically yeah, just in very slow motion

time-lapse photography needs to stop teaching me things my psyche is a frail and stuttering sandcastle unwoven by the tides

weaselle

that’s the view as the sun pulls us through space like this

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

PLEASE STOP TEACHING ME THINGS I IMPLORE YOU

foispan-deactivated20240228

es a Nap meg ugy megy korbe a Tejut kozeppontja korul, mint korhintan a pacik

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

my translation app did a thing

nightmareeyest

Hi, Hungarian here. They’re saying “and the Sun is going around the center of the Milky way like the horsies on the merry-go-round”

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

this is DELIGHTFUL information I thank you

fantodsdhrit

curse the firmament as much as you can let it out straight on the floor a mute nail paint remover night talk to yourself through wind upending eucalyptuses a body plucks wildflowers wildfire consumes tongue dipped in currant you mush beads hanging out on lintel beam fade into whirs the abhorrent entirety of truth

catilinas

Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things

primulaceas

Alice Oseman, Radio Silence

heateron

- louise glück

quotespile

“All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring of those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.”

— Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats

quotespile

“We sat there in silence. A masculine silence. Thick and strong. Oh, I’m full of shit. We were terrified and clueless.”

— Sherman Alexie, War Dances

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

tumblr ask me about mlm skeletons

escaped-cryptid

I’m asking

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

your co-operation is noted and will count in your favor when the Great Tally arrives. Presenting:

straight skeletons

gay skeletons

three seemingly-similar wikipedia articles, and yet:

(this post is part of a series critiquing biased wikipedia writing. you can request more on ko-fi)

fuckyeahchinesefashion

©耳朵_du_Lac

crunchbuttsteak

If I had a nickel for every big name Harry Potter fanfic writer who started their own cult, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.

lookingforsarahjay

Oh man, are we talking about Snape wives?? I because every time I remember them I just have to stare off into the distance for a while.

crunchbuttsteak

I’d have three nickels.

merry-kuroo

What is a Snape Wife? Someone fill me in on all these Harry Potter cults 😂

iamthecraftmaster

Snape wives (or as they called themselves, Snapeists) were an online cult made mostly of middle-aged women who believed the following

Severus Snape is an omniscient, unkillable entity residing on the astral plane.

Snape is the one true god.

Snape possessed JKR to write the Harry Potter books, but she got several things wrong; most importantly Snape dying.

The spirit of Snape abandoned JKR because she wasn't good enough for him and created the Snapists instead.

Snape chose several Snapists that have a special connection with him to lead his religion.

Snapists can serve Snape by marrying him and becoming sister-wives (there was lots of debate on if they could have boyfriends/husbands other than Snape in the real world).

Snape contacts his followers who are worthy, both in dreams and by possessing real life people.

To be worthy of Snape, you need to be... basically a tradwife. Obey Snape in all things, never question him, don't be independent, be pretty, be thin, only have feminine hobbies, etc.

The snapewives wrote a crazy amount of fanfiction about Snape, both erotic and otherwise. Plus they had their own prayers, ceremonies, shrines... shit was wild. The whole religion fell apart when one of the leaders criticized Snape and was subsequently bullied out of the community and another decided that the one true god was actually Jethro Gibbs from NCIS.