I came here to attack and I'm having a good time

Side blog//Sociable introvert, I'd love to talk to some new folks! 95% mobile MR ROBOT The Illiad and The Odyssey (HECTOR TRASH) GoT ASoIaF Good Omens Brooklyn 99 Parks and Rec The Good Place Hadestown Barry Black Sails North and South Much Ado About Nothing Fleabag Lucifer Pride and Prejudice Emma Hamlet Roswell New Mexico Hannibal Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Vikings Les Misérables Rogue One Star Wars Sense8 Bodygurad (2016) Outlander Broadchurch I Medici Plan Coeur Sherlock Matrix Speed Harry Potter ...

[highdensityrabbitsituation]

underrated part of tennattate much ado: benedick’s slow but steady realization that beatrice is right about men and the accompanying face journeys 

[briefly-fading]

Mm, finally some good fucking content about much ado that deals with its alarmingly relevant theme

[ask-tinycas-nsfw]

Ooh wow.. 

[after this]

[ask-tinycas-nsfw]

After our celebrations, he told me he wanted to try something…

[ask-tinycas-nsfw]

At least once a week, every few days at times. Some weeks are more um.. eventful than others…

[ask-tinycas-nsfw]

Yes, stimulating them enough will result in orgasm.

[roughentumble]

my friend just told me that there's a secret second dashboard that solely contains posts from people you've turned on post notifications for, and when i click the link in the messages it opens it within the tumblr app, so the tumblr app also has a secret second dashboard for post notification blogs, and the only way to access it is to open the link for it within the app.

i literally love tumblr

[thesecretmecbook]

[vis-tes-reves]

Harnessed

[prismatic-bell]

writing-prompt-s:

Valhalla does not discriminate against the kind of fight you lost. Did you lose the battle with cancer? Maybe you died in a fist fight. Even facing addiction. After taking a deep drink from his flagon, Odin slams his cup down and asks for the glorious tale of your demise!

Oh my god, this is beautiful.

A small child enters Valhalla. The battle they lost was “hiding from an alcoholic father.” Odin sees the flinch when he slams the cup and refrains from doing it again. He hears the child’s pain; no glorious battle this, but one of fear and wretched survival.

He invites the child to sit with him, offers the choicest mead and instructs his men to bring a sword and shield, a bow and arrow, of the very best materials and appropriate size. “Here,” he says, “you will find no man who dares to harm you. But so you will know your own strength, and be happy all your days in Valhalla, I will teach you to use these weapons.”

The sad day comes when another child enters the hall. Odin does not slam his cup; he simply beams with pride as the first child approaches the newcomer, and holds out her bow and quiver, and says “nobody here will hurt you. Everyone will be so proud you did your best, and I’ll teach you to use these, so you always know how strong you are.”

————

A young man enters the hall. He hesitates when Odin asks his story, but at long last, it ekes out: skinheads after the Pride parade. His partner got into a building and called for help. The police took a little longer than perhaps they really needed to, and two of those selfsame skinheads are in the hospital now with broken bones that need setting, but six against one is no fair match. The fear in his face is obvious: here, among men large enough to break him in two, will he face an eternity of torment for the man he left behind?

Odin rumbles with anger. Curses the low worms who brought this man to his table, and regales him with tales of Loki so to show him his own welcome. “A day will come, my friend, when you seek to be reunited, and so you shall,” Odin tells him. “To request the aid of your comrades in battle is no shameful thing.”

———-

A woman in pink sits near the head of the table. She’s very nearly skin and bones, and has no hair. This will not last; health returns in Valhalla, and joy, and light, and merrymaking. But now her soul remembers the battle of her life, and it must heal.

Odin asks.

And asks again.

And the words pour out like poisoned water, things she couldn’t tell her husband or children. The pain of chemotherapy. The agony of a mastectomy, the pain still deeper of “we found a tumor in your lymph nodes. I’m so sorry.” And at last, the tortured question: what is left of her?

Odin raises his flagon high. “What is left of you, fair warrior queen, is a spirit bright as fire; a will as strong as any forged iron; a life as great as any sea. Your battle was hard-fought, and lost in the glory only such furor can bring, and now the pain and fight are behind you.“

In the months to come, she becomes a scop of the hall–no demotion, but simple choice. She tells the stories of the great healers, Agnes and Tanya, who fought alongside her and thousands of others, who turn from no battle in the belief that one day, one day, the war may be won; the warriors Jessie and Mabel and Jeri and Monique, still battling on; the queens and soldiers and great women of yore.

The day comes when she calls a familiar name, and another small, scarred woman, eyes sunken and dark, limbs frail, curly black hair shaved close to her head, looks up and sees her across the hall. Odin descends from his throne, a tall and foaming goblet in his hands, and stuns the hall entire into silence as he kneels before the newcomer and holds up the goblet between her small dark hands and bids her to drink.

“All-Father!” the feasting multitudes cry. “What brings great Odin, Spear-Shaker, Ancient One, Wand-Bearer, Teacher of Gods, to his knees for this lone waif?”

He waves them off with a hand.

“This woman, LaTeesha, Destroyer of Cancer, from whom the great tumors fly in fear, has fought that greatest battle,” he says, his voice rolling across the hall. “She has fought not another body, but her own; traded blows not with other limbs but with her own flesh; has allowed herself to be pierced with needles and scored with knives, taken poison into her very veins to defeat this enemy, and at long last it is time for her to put her weapons down. Do you think for a moment this fight is less glorious for being in silence, her deeds the less for having been aided by others who provided her weapons? She has a place in this great hall; indeed, the highest place.”

And the children perform feats of archery for the entertainment of all, and the women sing as the young man who still awaits his beloved plays a lute–which, after all, is not so different from the guitar he once used to break a man’s face in that great final fight.

Valhalla is a place of joy, of glory, of great feasting and merrymaking.

And it is a place for the soul and mind to heal.

[thoodleoo]

Any opinions on Hector of Troy?

i have a lot of opinions on hector and they’re all “hector is sexy”

[briefly-fading]

Dude fucks, but he also loves 😔😍☹️

[montereybayaquarium]

New Monterey Bay Aquarium Spotify Playlists Just Dropped!

Tunes for tuna. Pieces for pisces. Vibes for tides. Head into the weekend with some curated Spotify playlists picked out by Aquarium staff! Match them up to our livestreams or rock(fish) out with some music to soothe your sole: 

Krill Waves Radio

Relax, focus and flow with some ambient, mostly instrumental lofi hip hop beats from our YouTube Krill Waves Radio video series! All music © Chillhop Music 

Our Favorite Tunas

Let a little ocean into your life with these classic tunas, perfect for every sea-son.

Float On with the Drifters Team

Comb jellies. Sea nettles. Moons. These are the jams our team listens to while caring for our Jellies/Drifters Gallery!

Jelly Cam Jams

Drift away on waves of chill instrumental beats with our Jelly Cam playlist. 

Sea-lestial Sounds (Moon Jelly Cam)

Wishing on a sea star for a soundtrack to enhance your relaxocean while watching our Moon Jelly Cam? Whale sea what we can do. 

It’s a Bay-utiful Day (Bay Cam)

Wave goodbye to anxiety—this playlist of chill instrumental music is shore to relax and calm while you’re watching our Monterey Bay Cam! 

Sway This Way (KF Cam)

Swayt! Swayt! Don’t tell us—you need some sweet instrumental songs to sooth your sole. A playlist for the Kelp Forest of us, if you will. 

Chasing the Blues Away (OS Cam)

Feeling blue? Time to tuna in to our Open Sea Cam and its playlist, swimming with mellow and cinematic instrumental beats to chase those blues away. (“I’m blue da ba dee da ba di” not included) 

Birb is the Worb (Aviary Cam)

Songbirds, meet shorebirds. We’ve got a delightful and light selection of instrumental sounds perfect for pairing with our Aviary Cam! 

You Otter Listen Up (Otter Cam)

Paws what you’re doing. This happy, upbeat instrumental playlist is the pawfect accompaniment fur your sea-cret Sea Otter Cam sessions (that’s what second monitors are for anyways, right?) 

Pengwinning Tunes (Penguin Cam)

Birds of a feather listen to this collection of whimsical instrumental tunes together. And watch the Penguin Cam with it. 

Take and Elasmobreak (Shark Cam)

And fin-ally! A collection of fintastic instrumental music to dive into while watching our Shark Cam!

[remade-joan-burned]

Can't get over the prominence of the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in my childhood. Can't get over the prominence of the moral of God above family and friends in my childhood. That always tore me apart.

[leave-it-all-behind]

I remember asking a staff member at my camp “how do you have faith like Abraham, I want to believe I could trust God that much, but I don’t think I could”. I felt so guilty for not fully trusting God.

[jesuschristopus]

Yeah, it was pretty wild to go from, “you only need faith as small as a mustard seed,” to “you need to have so much faith that you would kill a family member for god’s shit and giggles.” 

[pickledchickenetti]

Look y’all I know that’s how that story is taught but literally that is not the moral of the story, Abraham failed that damn test, and I will stand behind this interpretation until I die.

[remade-joan-burned]

Today on: why I despise the fact I was brought up christian despite my grandparents being jewish

Every time I see shit on how judaism treats issues and stories differently from christianity I feel like I've been sorely cheated. I hate whoever converted my father.

[leisurelypanda]

This is why I can't think of myself as Christian in the way American Christians define their religion. American Christians seem to love this idea of God wanting us to have blind, unquestioning faith. It's not the kind of faith I'm capable of.

I have to question. I have to argue. If God told me to jump, I would ask why. If the reason wasn't something I liked, I would refuse. I would argue.

This is what faith should be, but instead, so many Christians in America prefer the lazy version where asking questions is considered a bad thing.

[helsdaughter]

I have embraced full on agnosticism and that is unlikely to change. But this is is a huge improvement over the Christian Standard "love god the mostest" moral of Abraham.

[somehow-furious]

Yes yes yes and yes! This interpretation makes so much sense, which isn’t even saying much as the generally accepted Christian version doesn’t make sense at all. From a purely Christian perspective, there is a weak argument that God was foreshadowing the death of his own son by asking Abraham to do what he knew Abraham could not do, and what God would do himself someday. But I was never satisfied with that because I couldn’t imagine that God would be satisfied with Abraham if he was the type of guy to kill his own son for the arbitrary reason of “because I told you to do it.” It makes much more sense that God was testing the waters so to speak, trying to see if Abraham had a moral backbone and uh, turns out he didn’t. And this blind faith mentality is exactly what allows for harmful doctrines to fester, see for example, most of the Christian churches’ stance on queerness. “Why is bad to be gay? Idk, cuz God said so and therefore I am morally obligated to perpetuate a teaching that literally causes human suffering and death.” And it’s so painfully ironic that Christians in particular would fall into this kind of thinking, because the whole point of Jesus was to “free people from the law,” especially when that law is oppressive and/or arbitrary. 

Anyways, I totally agree that rather than praising Abraham for his unquestioning obedience, God was more like

[riskovbeingfree]

Long interfaith dialogue about a complex ancient story ending in a John Mulaney gif. Tumblr, that's what I appreciates about you.

[clairenatural]

i had a dream that sam and dean took cas to an art museum and showed him all these paintings of angels and it was like that scene in vincent and the doctor and cas said these paintings are beautiful because they depict the angels as human when a true angel could never be described as anything but monstrous and i woke up crying

anon i love this SO much. i love it so much i had to write it. this is 1.4k, destiel, human!cas

They’re making their way out of the city, monster killed and day saved, when Castiel sees a poster, pasted up on the side of the plywood wall of a construction site. It’s an angel—he doesn’t recognize the artist, but he’d guess late 19th century. Be Not Afraid: a History of Angels in Art, it proclaims, the logo of the city’s largest art gallery tucked into the corner.

Castiel stares at it. The angel on the poster stares back, wings spread and staff raised. Valiant. Something in his heart twitches, but it’s hard to place. He still has his blade, tucked safely into the trunk with the rest of their frequently used weapons, and he never had wings like that; even the shadows, the ones they showed to humans, were simply the closest representation to the real thing possible in this dimension (his back aches anyway, dimly, his human body reacting to the loss as if they were real severed appendages. He ignores it).

Dean notices, because of course he does. He stops, because of course he does, and flags Sam down before his long legs can carry him too far ahead. “Hey. You good?”

Castiel isn’t sure how long he’s been staring at the poster, but it’s long enough that Dean is obviously concerned. “Hm? Oh. Yes, I’m—I’m fine.”

Dean nods but doesn’t move. He considers the poster. “Art gallery, huh?” he asks, avoiding the obvious elephant. Castiel appreciates it. He nods back.

“I’ve never been to one,” he offers, as explanation. It seems odd—he can remember the painting of the Sistine Chapel, he remembered watching with fascination as humans began collecting the smaller paintings into collections and museums, but he’d never been inside one. It hadn’t seemed necessary. Humans collect art in large boxes to remember their history, but Castiel has seen it all.

Dean seems surprised by this. “Seriously?” Castiel nods, and there’s a pause, and he’s about to turn and keep heading towards the car, and Kansas, and home, when Dean claps him on the shoulder and turns to call over his own.

“Sammy! How do you feel about seeing some art?”

“You want to go to an art gallery?” Sam sounds incredulous, and is closer behind him than Cas expected. He hadn’t noticed him retreat the half-block he’d managed to gain on them.

“Yeah, why not? Come on. What happened to ‘a little culture wouldn’t hurt, Dean?’”

"What happened to ‘I’ve got plenty of culture, eat your damn burger?’”

“It’ll be fun, Sam,” Dean counters. Something in his tone has changed. Cas doesn’t think too hard about it.

There’s a long pause, and Cas knows there’s some sort of communication happening he can’t hear or see. “…Okay,” Sam concedes. “Okay, sure. Yeah. Let’s go.”

So they do.

Dean makes a comment about “haven’t been in one of these since I was a kid,” before they all fall into the hushed silence of the museum floor. It’s nice—nicer than Castiel had expected. Not in aesthetics; the building is sleek, and modern, and the art is obviously beautiful. But it’s nice to be there. It feels almost Holy—humans, funny creatures they are, with their habit of treating their own culture with the respect of something divine, creating houses of worship out of museums and libraries and living rooms. 

He wanders through the various exhibits but doesn’t really pay attention until he ends up in the exhibit from the poster. He’d managed to lose the Winchesters halfway through the photography exhibit, when both the brothers had gotten distracted but Castiel had continued onward anyway, on a mission, and by the time he finds himself walking into the angel exhibit, he’s on his own.

He comes to a stop in front of one of the largest paintings in the room. It’s not the same angel as the poster. It’s several, actually, looking over what appears to be Mary and a baby Jesus. The angels are beautiful—smooth, flawless skin. They have long hair that looks soft, even in paint. They’re wearing white robes, and their wings are white and dove-like. None of these angels have several heads, rotating bands of fire, or thousands of eyes. They’re beautiful, but they aren’t angels. The human who painted this didn’t know that, of course—none of them did. Humanity was faced with the concept of divinity and conceptualized it as a version of itself.

“The real things ain’t as cuddly, huh?”

Dean’s voice startles him, which he hates, both because he hates being startled and because he’s still adjusting to Dean being able to sneak up on him.

“I was just thinking,” he starts, pretending he’d known Dean was there the whole time, “you paint us like we’re human.” Not ‘us’ anymore, he reminds himself, but he brushes that thought off. Not now.

Beside him, Dean snorts. “Yeah, well. If you’d told any of those Renaissance guys that the real angels are dickhead balls of celestial intent, they’d’ve arrested you for heresy.”

Castiel shakes his head. “No.” he pauses. “Well, yes. But that’s—” he turns to face Dean for the first time. He notices Sam over Dean’s shoulder, focusing intently on a painting a few feet away and obviously pretending not to listen.

“My father—God—Chuck,” he cycles through, which will never not be weird, “created us first, but not in his image. We weren’t worthy of that. Only you were. Humans, his perfect creation, modeled after their creator. But then—” he turns back to the painting and gestures to it. “You created us in your image. You thought about divinity and you couldn’t conceive anything more Holy than yourselves.”

Dean shifts. He tries for a laugh, but it comes out short. “Well, damn, Cas. Way to make a guy feel self-centered.”

Castiel turns back to him. He blinks. He frowns. That’s not what he meant. “Most of my siblings thought so,” he agrees. “But I always thought it was an honor. Look,” He turns again and reaches out for the painting, only remembering a few inches from its surface to not touch it.  “This one has a lyre. You always paint us playing music. But music, art….these are human things, Dean.” He lets his hand fall, but keeps his eyes forward.  “We’re soldiers. They don’t teach us to play the harp in Heaven, they train us to fight. But these angels are…soft. Kind. Angels you trust to protect. The kind of angels people pray to, build churches to.” He looks back at Dean, who is staring at him with a frown. He holds his gaze, steady, and takes a deep breath before finishing. “I wish I was—that any of us were—worthy of being depicted this way. I wish we were the angels you paint us as.”

There’s a long pause while Dean searches his face, obviously trying to decide on the right reaction. If they were at home, Cas thinks Dean might reach out and hug him. Instead, Dean reaches out to clap a hand on his shoulder—he lets it linger there, and Cas knows what it means, so that’s okay, too. “For what it’s worth,” he starts, and his voice is softer than the last time he spoke. “You’re the closest thing to those angels that I’ve ever seen.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but Cas smiles sadly as he turns back to the painting. “I’m not any kind of angel anymore,” he points out, and tries his hardest to keep his voice neutral.

Dean squeezes his shoulder and tilts his head, trying to recapture Castiel’s gaze. “Hey. Look at me.” Reluctantly, he looks back over. “Your wings weren’t what made you a good angel, alright?” he brings his other hand up to poke into Castiel’s chest. “That was all in here.”

He sounds like he’s quoting the Wizard of Oz, and Cas wants to make a joke about that, but he’s also never wanted to kiss Dean more. He doesn’t, because they’re in a museum, and they’re still working up to that, but he makes a note to do it later. Instead, he reaches up and pulls Dean’s hand away from his chest, linking it in his own and squeezing.

“Thank you,” he says, earnest, and it’s for everything.

Dean smiles. He understands. He squeezes back.

[arcadianambivalence]

This is so sweet, I had to make something for it:

[indigenoustiktok]

[licoricefern-deactivated2021091]

The books listed and links for them at GoodMinds.com, owned by Achilles Gentle (Skownan First Nation):

Political/informational: 

Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel

Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview by hereditary chief Umeek, E. Richard Atleo (softcover edition and PDF available through UBC Press)

Fiction: 

Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson (highly recommended!) 

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

Not in the video, but if you have a middle/high schooler in your life or want to read it yourself, I recommend The Barren Grounds by David Alexander Robertson

Poetry:

This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

This Wound is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt (not available at GoodMinds.com - available from UMN Press)

Islands of Decolonial Love by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Comic:

Three Feathers by Richard Van Camp

[indigenoustiktok]

Thank you very much!

[boonelibrary-deactivated2021120]

In addition to these titles, we have a few blog posts with suggestions for kids and teens (start here and there are links to our other posts): https://www.bcpl.org/undiscovered/board-books-picture-books-to-celebrate-native-american-heritage-month/

AND don’t forget about the Heartdrum imprint: https://issuu.com/harpercollinschildrensbooks/docs/heartdrumbrochure_final

[indigenoustiktok]

Beautiful, thank you!

[blaruto]

“The Switch” is the first transgender sitcom in history starring trans/non-binary lead cast, this is EVERYTHING

[lizawithazed]

wait wait did I just watch a trailer for a show where a woman gets fired for being trans, loses her apartment and then moves in with her best friend who is an NB… environmental… assassin??

I… I need to watch this show

[freshest-tittymilk]

Okay but this looks hilarious and I wanna watch it

[caffeinated-cockroach]

Okay so the first season is already out and they have to sell 100k copies to get the green light for season 2 so go here http://www.welovetheswitch.com and give them your money

[evieplease]

Reblogging so I can find it again

[void-kids-stuff-deactivated2021]

“then why do you need a crossbow?”

Me in my head: well… because crossbows are fucking cool.. obviously.

[thatdisasterauthor]

This looks freaking amazing.

[haltraveler]

The cast of the Original Trilogy had cliched, boring character concepts that were executed wonderfully enough for it not to matter. 

 The cast of the Prequel Trilogy had interesting concepts that were executed poorly enough to make them seem utterly stupid. 

The cast of the Sequel Trilogy had amazing, thought-provoking concepts that were executed in the town square and put up on pikes as a warning to others.

[adventurecore-suggestions]

my grandma embroidered little flowers on her clothes like i do and she taught me how to cook asparagus so it actually tasted good and she wrote about grief so simply that i could make sense of it when i was a child that had just lost a grandfather and sometimes i wonder how much of me is made of her and how much of me is my uncle and how much is my best friend and how much is my little sister. i wonder how much of them is me.

[mothdogs]

A few years back, I got really interested in this topic. I read a book by a man named Douglas Hofstadter, who’s the director for the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University. One of the foremost American researchers of the science of cognition, Hofstadter has written a lot of books, but the one I’m most familiar with is called I Am a Strange Loop. Strange Loop’s focus is on determining how, exactly, does consciousness—individuality, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, desires, a sense of personhood—arise from inert and unthinking molecules? After all, atoms don’t have personalities. But yet people, who are only atoms all told, somehow do.

The crux of his argument is that humans are self-referential feedback loops. We take in information from the world and incorporate it into how we react the next time we receive information. A whole section of Strange Loop is dedicated to Hofstadter’s concern with the memory of his late wife, Carol. She died suddenly and he was left wondering what parts of her, if any, can “survive” in his memory. And he eventually concluded that every human is a combination and response to all the other humans they’ve ever interacted with:

As long as you remember someone—a dead friend, a relative, a beloved pet—your experiences with them, the way their personalities influenced you, in turn affect the way YOU act and interact with others. Personhood is a self-replicating concept. Your actions ripple out in ways that can never be fully seen or understood. In a vast, cosmic sort of way, no one ever really dies–they live on in their friends :-) 

[clementiens]

“We are all curious collages, weird little planetoids that grow by accreting other people’s habits and ideas and styles and tics and jokes and phrases and tunes and hopes and fears as if they were meteorites that came soaring out of the blue, collided with us, and stuck. What at first is an artificial, alien mannerism slowly fuses into the stuff of our self, like wax melting in the sun, and gradually becomes as much a part of us as ever it was of someone else (though that person may very well have borrowed it from someone else to begin with).”

[arahir]

Sorry to bother you, but do you have a link to that one post you made on Twitter about making your own custom breaks on ao3? I thought I bookmarked it but now I can't find it. 😩

here’s the link!

how to make custom page dividers on ao3

(1) find or make your image

there are free use page dividers available on google. you can search to get ideas. the trick is to get it to the size you want in your chosen editing program, and to make the background transparent. select > color range is much more efficient than using the wand tool. 

tip: keeping it monochrome and keeping the background and inner details transparent is helpful to people who use skins with a different background color!

(2) upload it somewhere

i use tumblr since it’s quick and fast. save as draft or load it to a separate page on a theme or really anything you want. just get that baby uploaded and copy the url. 

(2.5) (optional) add ao3′s in-house page separator 

ao3 calls this “horizontal line” and it’s useful because it can help you denote where you’ll put your new code because its html tag is

which is easily searchable in the mess of html you’re going to have to sort through. it looks like this:

(3) put in the page divider.

so now on your uploaded fic you’ll want to go to the html tab instead of the rich text tab and put in your coding. it will look like

the img src is the image. the alt=“Page Divider” is so screen readers won’t get confused and will just say “page divider” when they come across it. the width tag you can mess with as much as you want until you find a size that works for you! you can switch back and forth between rich text and html to see how it looks as you’re working. this just ensures that no matter how wide the person has the page (desktop vs mobile, for example, it will stay the same size in comparison to the page:

(4) add it everywhere

if you went through and added the horizontal line page divider, this will be easy. just search control+F for

and replace it everywhere you find it. 

and that’s it!! you’re done!! here are some examples of what you can do with it:

have fun with it!!

warning: ao3 likes to add random paragraph tags around these page dividers. i’m sure there’s a way around this by moving where the

tag is or something else but i’ve always had to go through and delete extra spaces that pop up around it when i edit my fic. that’s why it’s best to save your custom dividers for the last step. beware!! it’s not a big deal but watch out for it.