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[short666bread]

Longing

[catadromously]

Mother Whale's Funeral

[animalcrossingmemes]

[dycefic]

The Farthest Fuelling Station

Does anyone remember that post about space fuelling stops, because I haven’t seen it in ages, can’t find it, and it is ABSOLUTELY the inspiration for this.

#

Interstellar exploration is, when you get right down to it, no different from travel by steam, or even horse. The real limit isn’t in the power of the engines or the size of the vehicle, it’s in the supply lines. It’s in the fuel.

Fuelling stations are fortresses. Synocrystal is the most precious substance in existence. This moonlet, orbiting a dead planet that circles a minor sun, is more heavily armed than many whole settled planets. And it’s an important post, because this is one of the stations where synocrystal is actually synthesized, not just stored. There aren’t many places it’s even marginally safe to do that, given how the stuff reacts to… well, everything. When I think of how the Ancestors used to fuss over the dangers of nuclear fusion engines, and how much more dangerous synocrystal is, I can’t help but laugh.

We’re a pragmatic species. Given a choice between using an insanely dangerous fuel-source, or being limited to our own solar system by slower-than-light travel, we barely hesitated.

This particular refuel started out badly. My fuelling hours are clearly posted on the beacon. So is the notice that out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment. I’ll make exceptions for the couriers, sometimes, because they don’t always get enough notice to make an appointment and because they’re usually so appreciative, but that’s my business. I’m entitled to an uninterrupted sleep-shift, like any other sentient.

But this wasn’t a courier. This was a big ship, a trader… one of the private company traders, at that. I know they have to register incredibly detailed plans, in case of damaged or delayed cargoes, so they had absolutely no excuse for showing up in the middle of my sleep cycle and blaring alerts at me.  

I dragged myself out of my bunk, ignoring Pepper and Choi’s protests, and went over to the console. There’s one in my private quarters for situations like this, and I reluctantly leave it active on the outside chance that it actually is an emergency. Even as I got there, the contact alert blared again, and I toggled ‘audio only’. “This had better be life or fucking death,” I said, over whatever form greeting they were spitting out. “The posted hours are really damned clear.”

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[writing-prompt-s]

You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

[dycefic]

I think I’d have minded less if I’d committed a truly heinous crime. Something that warranted death. Or even if I was the kind of person who would enjoy flinging a last defiance at my execution.

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick. 

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[writing-prompt-s]

Your wife changes her hair color every season and her personality adjusts slightly. You’re secretly only in love with Autumn wife. She just came home sporting her Winter color.

[inkskinned]

it’s my fault. it’s just that when we met it was autumn; her red-orange hair and crackling laughter. there’s a little spooky in her, a lot of play. and what a better time for falling?

i didn’t realize it for the first few years - something shifting, something so subtle. the winter makes us all cold, the summer makes us all a little out of our minds. i just loved her, because she was incredible, and i was the luckiest person alive.

it’s just that i realized that spring came with sudden bursts of cold. it’s just that summer frequently raged in with fire sprouting from her lips. it’s just that winter was the worst of all, her eyes dead. it’s just that autumn loves me different; throws herself into it without the clingy sweat of summer. i used to love that summer girl, you know? i loved how wild she was, the way in summer she took every risk she could. but i carried her home drunk one too many times, cleaned up one too many of the messes she made for no reason than to enjoy the sensation of burning. and winter was worse; the shutdown, the isolation. how she became distant, a blizzard, caught up in her own head, unable to tell me what was wrong and unable to think i actually wanted to listen.

she comes home, her hair bleached white. a dark smile on her lips. the shadowy parts of her are back. they loom like icicles overhead. she kisses me with her body held at a distance, a peck on my cheek that feels like an iceberg. she makes polite conversation and we go to bed early, our bodies untouching. 

it is a lonely season, i think on the ninth day of this. winter is cold. winter is known for the death of things. when i look at her, i see the girl i fell for, inhabited by an alien. she was the first women i loved so much i felt it would kill me. i can’t leave. when i wake her up with my crying, she tells me to shush and go back to sleep. she’s different like this, quiet, doesn’t eat. 

three days later i stare at myself in the mirror. i wonder if it’s me. if the fat on my body or something in my face or the wrinkles and she doesn’t love me. i try prettier lingerie, lean cuisine, i try different hair, more makeup, try harder. it doesn’t work. she looks at me the same; that empty gaze that neither loves nor condemns my actions. 

somewhere in februrary i lose it. we’re fighting again, from car to restaurant to car to home again. we fight about stupid things, small things; i tell her i feel she doesn’t love me, she says i’m not listening. the circle goes around and around, old pain peeling back, new pain unhealing. i sleep on the couch.

i wake up when i hear her crying, white hair around her all messed up. the kind of sobbing that only comes at two in the morning, heavy and thick and hurting. my winter girl. my heart is breaking. she looks up at me like i’m her anchor. “i’m sorry i’m like this,” she says. and i start saying, it’s okay i’m here we’re married, but she just shakes her head and says, “I know this isn’t the real me.”

i hold her cold hand. she stares at the blankets. “i am different in winter,” she whispers, “i know i am and i’m sorry.” she looks at me. “why do you think i dye my hair? cut it off? get rid of the old me?”

i tell her it’s okay. we’re together and it’s okay, and then she whispers, “i’m sorry you married four of me.”

we lay there like that, her head on my chest. she falls asleep. i stare at the ceiling, thinking of the way she sounded when she was crying. how i helped put her in that pain. how i promised in sickness and in health and everything in between.

the next day i spend at the library. there aren’t enough books on how to love someone with seasonal affective disorder so i make my own, notes and pages and little ideas on post-its. and i take a deep breath and make myself a promise.

she comes home to her favorite dinner and we kiss and she’s uneasy but that’s okay. the next day i bring home flowers and the next day she finds little love notes in her pockets. i love her quiet, the way winter demands, understand her sex drive is faltering; spend more time just cuddling. we drink wine and we kiss and some part of her starts relaxing. 

the truth is there is no loving someone out of their mental illness. the truth is that you can love someone in despite of it; love them loud enough to give them an excuse to believe they can make their way out of it.

and i learn. i remember the rebirth of spring, when she starts thawing. we kiss and have picnics in pretty dresses. i remember her joy at little birds and her rain dancing. i fall in love with the flowers in her cheeks and the little bursts of cleaning. i fall in love with summer’s slow walks and milkshakes and shouting to music playing too loud on the speakers. i fall in love with her dancing, with the sunfire energy. and when winter comes; i am ready. i remember that snow used to look pretty. i fall in love with the hearth of her, with the holiday, with the slow smile that spreads across her face so shyly. i fall in love with how she looks in boots and mittens and every day i find another reason to love her the way she deserves - they way i always should have.

she comes home with her white hair and dark smile and a package in her hands. i ask to see what it is and that small shy grin comes creeping out. it’s a sunlamp packed in with medication. she looks at me with those wide eyes and that beautiful winter blush. “i’m trying to get better,” she whispers, “i promise.”

recovery doesn’t look immediate. sometimes it isn’t neat. i can’t say we never fight or that we’re suddenly complete. but each day, that tiny girl’s strength gives me another reason. i love her. i love her while she tames the roller coaster of spring; i love her for reigning in the summer storms; i love her for taking her winter and trying to be warm. it is hard, because everything worth it is hard. she spreads out her autumn leaves; mixes the best parts of her into everything. learns to take winter’s silence for a moment before yelling in summer. learns to take autumn’s spice and give it to spring. we are both learning.

one day she comes home and her hair is different, but it’s a style i don’t know. i kiss it and tell her that she’s beautiful and the inside of me swells like a flood. i’m so glad that she’s mine. every part of her. the whole. i am the luckiest person on earth. and i always have been. but she’s hugging me and saying, “thank you for helping me,” and i can’t explain why i’m crying.

this is what love is; not always an emotion but rather your actions. the choices we make when we realize our lives would be empty if the other was absent. this is what love is: letting them grow, helping them find their way in out of the cold. this is what love is: sometimes it takes work to see how the thing you planted together actually grows.

this is what love looks like in an autumn girl: it is winter and she glows.

[sarahakele]

I’m actually sobbing jesus christ

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Oh gawd every time you think it's over it gers BETTER

🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻

[blvnk-art]

From #potterbyblvnk to #potterframes.

[rizzlewrites]

Back in September 2020, as I was writing the Epilogue for LIATOTZA, I thought I’d see if @gildedshivers was available to take on a commission. Yanno, to commemorate the end of the fic. I think I might have made my inquiry at just the right time. There was a free slot open! This was the first time I’d ever commissioned anything, and SWEET MERLIN, I am over the moon happy with how it turned out. There are several marvelous versions of this piece, but this one scratched all my itches. It’s so beautiful. The whole commission process was such a pleasure.

Keep reading

[vrabia]

[morwynnelephant]

One of the students I knew at my college in WA was on scholarship from New York and accepted since the thought it was in DC. On the plane ride out here he was like... damn this is a long plane ride.

Great guy and total sweetheart but the culture shock was real. Couldn’t fall asleep at first at the dead quiet (no sirens!!)

[kevindewong]

1926. If Harry Potter Was An Anime.

[fahrlight]

I’ll always reblog it when I see it because this is the COOLEST THING I EVER SAW!

[popthirdworld]

“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

- Naomi Klein

[stele3]

This is why the media keeps pumping out articles about plastic straws and avocados that focuses on what we, individually, are doing to destroy the environment, when really the most pollution comes from multinational corporations and the only thing that will save us is global collective action.

[tomfleton]

Best dramione fics of the decade?

I haven’t engaged in fandom in a few years highkey but dhr fics are my in-flight entertainment so I’ve actually kept up with them through the years! just sat down and looked at all of my fic recs on here and my favorites on ff.net and it was honestly a wholesome experience (would recommend!). There were a TON of fics on my initial list but I ended up basing it off which ones I would still deadass reread now and which ones were very impactful on my shipping life over the years. This took me forever so yall better reblog thx :)

Year = year published, Bolded = ABSOLUTE fave of all of the faves

2010

An Affair to Remember by rzzmg - Hogwarts profs + angst

Utterly Despicable by camnz - dark af but Voldy Wins is my fave au, camnz has the right kinda twisted fics i love

Isolation by bex-chan - duh

Aurelian by BittyBlueEyes - dramione baby from the future :’)

The Persistence of Desire by Margot Le Faye (date unknown originally on hawthorn & vine) - another dark au voldy wins i adore this one even if it’s still a WIP forever

2011

Amazing Grace by rzzmg - dramione as hogwarts ghosts, time to cry

An Inconvenient Wedding by snegurochka - uh infidelity fics were my guilty pleasure in high school sorry

And We All Fall Down by Rumaan - gold standard 8th year fic

The Wrong Man by snegurochka - reiterate the infidelity comment above

2012

Thirty Times Lucky by galfoy - angsty AF

Summer of the Dragon by Lena Phoria - very lighthearted, lena’s world building is amazing, sequel is kind of insane

Difficult by @provocative-envy​ - “And then he smiled, and I was wrecked” is tattoed in my brain

The Bandit and the Cinder Girl by @xfsista​ - will forever bring me immense joy

The Fine Line Between Love and Hate by Short-circuit-Soulmate - it does have a bullying element :/ but the way it’s written makes my brain tingle like asmr-esque idk i will always love this one

Uncoffined by Lady of Clunn - voldy wins au = loml

2013

Renaissance by glass_skies - most beautifully written thing I’ve probably read in my whole life (fanfic or not)

Cruel and Beautiful World by Lena Phoria (not available online anymore but NEVER forget Bronson my king)

2014

Inverse by elesrea - fave hogwarts au, starts in 4th year which i love

The Ones Who Ran by @colubrina​ - voldy wins au

The Mind Trap by LainellaFay - get ready to cry

2015 - the last year i was still v active in fandom and adored @shayalonnie​ & @colubrina​‘s tumblr presence haha that’s what stands out for sure

Presque Toujours Pur by @shayalonnie​ - highkey just reread this last week, forever slaps, shayalonnie’s marauders fics are my lifeblood in general

Better Off Forgotten by Delancey654 - kinda twisted but interesting

The History Project by Colubrina - adorable 

2016 - highkey the year of @olivieblake​ for me - OBSESSED

Clean by olivieblake - this series BLEW MY MIND

Marked by olivieblake

Amortentia by olivieblake - the bachelorette AU !!!

Shipwrecked by Ariel Riddle - like a period film + blue lagoon 

A Past Erased by Ariel Riddle - obliviated hermione + redemption

The Lies That Bind Us by little miss moonlight - slytherin hermione love triangle melodrama that i loved

2017

Hot for Teacher by MotherofBulls - deadass funniest thing i’ve ever read

The Right Thing To Do by lovesbitca8 - honestly my favorite dramione relationship and characterization

All the Wrong Things

The Auction

2018

Manacled by @senlinyuwrites - I rarely followed fics when I was in college but this one was an addiction, the most well thought out fic I’ve probably ever read 

All You Want by @senlinyuwrites - only A/B/O whatever that is worth reading lol

Blindness by gracediamondsfear - we love a no hogwarts, growing up together angsty au

2019

Boardwalk by In Dreams - GOOD SHIT, falling in love surfing in California

Entanglement by blankfish - only forced marriage fic i’d ever read, lots of potential so far! 

[busket]

mount st helens joke for my pacific northwest followers

[peniswakt-deactivated20210717]

thank you

[puttingherinhistory]

Women in the U.S. Can Now Get Safe Abortions by Mail

The founder of a global abortion-pill provider that has never shipped to the U.S. has quietly started a new service for Americans.

Please reblog this, it could be a very important resource that one of your followers needs right now.

Both Aid Access and Women on Web are international organizations that send safe and affordable abortion pills to women globally who don’t have access to a safe or affordable abortion. If you have questions or want to know if you qualify please check with Aid Access and Women on Web

[ddrvbiblgigb]

[garfield-baybee]

Reblog to have something good happen at 1:42 tomorrow

[vintageinstepford]

This is my cat, Brigitte.

24 hours after I brought her home, I got a mindblowing job offer.  Since I adopted her nine years ago, my life has become an amusement park.  She has brought me good luck ever since I took her into my home.

I’m telling you, there’s something about this animal.  Good fortune follows her everywhere.

I don’t want to be selfish.  I have everything I need and then some.  So, I’m sharing her with you.

Reblog Brigitte and you’ll receive fantastic news in the next 24 hours.

And when you do, please remember to help your local SPCA and support them in the difficult work they do for wonder animals like Brigitte.  Any donation helps your SPCA, even if it’s just five bucks.

Kitties like Brigitte are counting on you to give back when they bring you good luck.

Thanks, and congratulations on your good news!