20s, ace, she/they, open to making new friends! everything I post is for myself, to get stuff off my mind or cheer myself up. check out the stuff I occasionally write!
An elf maiden dances on feet of living wood sung into shape, planted in soil and watered when she takes them off. Every year she plants the old ones and sings a new pair. (Incidentally, the pair of peach saplings from three years ago have produced an excellent crop- She makes preserves from them, and despite the inevitable jokes about “toe-jam”, they are appreciated.)
A dwarf king has a metal fist, all tiny gears and fine wires, kept wound by a mischievous mine-spirit bound to the spring as punishment- the more it struggles, the tighter the spring.
An orc chieftaness is regularly asked for the story of how she earned the name Wyrmthrottler- she boasts of how she strangled the dragon that ate her arm, and had her shaman make a new arm from its bones, with its fangs as the fingers.
A necromancer simply re-attached his old leg bones- Sacrificing a few mice each day keeps it going.
A pirate captain lost her arm to a shark attack: a passing selkie saved her, and gave her tattoos of kraken blood. Now she has an arm made of salt-water, that grows and wanes with the tides, and swings a cutlass as well as the original. (She doesn’t sail as far these days though: she doesn’t want her wife to worry.)
A wandering swordsman was broken at the waist- his ancestral armour allows him to walk again, as long as he keeps it polished, and burns incense to the ancestors regularly.
A high priestess has an eye made from a crystal ball- to predict the future, all she has to do is wink.
A bard was struck deaf by illness- he struck a deal with the god of music. Now he wears hearing-trumpets made from his old pipes, and dedicates his every song to the god of music- the better he plays, the better his hearing. (It is said his music could make statues weep, and he can hear a mouse fart at 60 paces.)
A princess has the arm of a golem, enchanted clay with mystic words carved in- her music tutor despairs of how her harp playing has become even worse, but her calligraphy tutor is ecstatic over her handwriting.
A goblin pickpocket has an arm made of whatever he steals- no-one feels his fingers, and even if they did, they couldn’t find their possessions amongst all the rest.
A witch has eyes made from shadow and starlight, given to her in a game with a demon. Nobody dares to ask what she wagered- they aren’t even sure she won.
A warg was born deaf and blind- his people learned of his power when the nearest birds started staring at them, and dogs pricked up their ears as he walked past.
[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz
Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.
Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.
My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.
Called the county clerk.
Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.
Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?
Me: Yes, but he's a cat.
Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?
Me: He's a legal cat.
Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.
Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.
Clerk: You can file on his behalf.
Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."
Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."
Me: What's the medical reason?
Clerk: He's a cat.
Me: That's not a medical condition.
Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.
Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.
"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."
Took the letter to my vet.
Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.
Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?
Me: Excellent question. No good answer.
Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.
Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?
Vet: On what grounds?
Me: He's a cat.
Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."
Me: Perfect.
Sent it in. Got another rejection.
"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."
My roommate thought this was hilarious.
Roommate: Felix is going to jail.
Me: This is serious.
Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.
Decided that was actually the only option left.
Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.
Checked in at the courthouse.
Clerk: Name?
Me: Felix Martinez.
Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?
Me: Yes.
Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.
Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.
Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?
Me: I filed three. All rejected.
Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.
Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?
Me: Twice.
Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.
Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.
Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?
Me: You tell me.
Supervisor: This is a data error.
Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.
They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.
Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.
Me: Appreciate it.
Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?
Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.
Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.
For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.
Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.
Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.
Roommate: That's what they all say.
Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.
Fitting end to his legal career.
end id]
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
As a Greek, in response to the current controversy about Matt Damon being cast as Odysseus, I'd just like to share that one of the moments that changed my brain chemistry as a kid was reading a novelized version of the Odyssey and coming across the following description of Odysseus when Circe sees him for the first time and thinks he's hot: "his hair curled like a clematis and his eyes were very brown".
So may I present my own casting choice for Odysseus:
best thing about uncle iroh is that if you pay attention he is actually just as much of an idiot as zuko but has just mastered the art of coming across as a wise old man. the even better thing is that zuko is the only one on the planet who somewhat realizes this and no one would ever believe him because he's zuko
like uncle iroh 100% does dumb shit on purpose sometimes to get people to underestimate him and keep zuko from capturing the avatar, but other times he just, and i cannot emphasize this enough, does impulsive dumb shit for no reason other than the fact that terminal stupid presumably runs in the royal family's blood
uncle: "you never think things through, prince zuko!"
also uncle:
once got captured by the earth kingdom army buck ass naked bc he really wanted to go to a hot spring in enemy territory
betrayed zhao at the Northern Water Tribe with no escape plan and then spent 3 weeks starving on a boat
immediately went to a spa resort upon publicly committing treason
ate a poisonous plant and, in the spirit of Two Fish Hook Sokka, was going to solve the problem by eating another potentially poisonous plant
decided the safest place in the world they could go was the city he once FAMOUSLY laid siege to for 600 days
instead of lying low or giving a modicum of a shit about people recognizing him, overachieved himself into becoming one of the most well-known restaurant owners in said city
in fact overachieved so hard that he got an invite to meet the earth king (whose city he, again, once FAMOUSLY LAID SIEGE TO) which he fucking? accepted????
#no wonder zuko was constantly frothing at the mouth! he's the only one who knows the truth!#god just imagine the number of times people have seen zuko yelling at iroh#and assumed zuko was just being mean#when zuko was actually yelling at his uncle for wasting all their money bartering with pirates AGAIN#everyone assumes iroh is babysitting zuko but really they're pingponging responsibility back and forth#and zuko at least has the excuse of being 16#anyway I love Uncle Hypocrite so much; funniest motherfucker on the planet (via OP)
Here's the thing, prev, so are a lot of Zuko's dumbest ideas, like following the seals under ice at the North Pole. It did work, but man why was that even on your radar
"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.
Death by spreadsheet is an acceptable degree of separation for most in middle management. They can sleep at night without guilt for what they've done, because the system charitably setup twelve degrees of separation between their choices and the real-world harm. But do not be fooled, their choices set that harm into motion. Without their reckless disregard for human life, the harm would not be done.
I used to work at a TV station in Ohio. On weekends, we only had an 11pm news broadcast. Not much happened on weekends, ya know? I worked Monday-Friday 9-5, but someone on the weekend shift quit, so I also had to come in at 9pm on Sat/Sun to work the 11pm news. It was brutal. I worked seven days a week, even if two of them were ~3hrs.
This was a particularly bad winter. One Saturday, we had a level 2 snow emergency: That means you should only travel if you absolutely must. Like, it's not uncommon for cops to pull you over in level 2 emergencies to ask where you're going and why. It is genuinely dangerous to drive in that much snow.
I told my boss as much, how I almost crashed on the way home at 12:30am after a news broadcast. I told him I would need to call off if there were a snow emergency again during a night snow.
He told me, point blank, "If you ever call me about the goddamn snow, I will take it as a call of resignation."
And that was that! The very next Saturday, snow fell again. It was a level 2, but would become level 3 by sunup. Level 3 means driving is literally illegal except for ambulances and snow plows. I stared out the window, watching the snow, and I had to make a choice.
"Will I die for this? Will I kill myself to keep this job?" I made $11/hr.
Yes, managers work you to death. That's their job.
Every single labor protection is written in the blood of those who were literally worked to death, and business owners and profiteers would claw those protections back with glee if they could. They will squeeze every red cent from your body if they are allowed, and write off your death for an insurance payout that they'll try to pocket for themselves while hiring your replacement for half the pay they gave to you.
we have good news and bad news, my liege. the good news is that we now know what that curtsying was about: you will be pleased to know that, after several heartfelt conversations between your child, the court jesters and a myriad of singing woodland creatures, you are now the parent of a proud and joyful new princess. the bad news is that, due to a series of events related to the dragon-sized hole in her bedchamber wall,
I love the insinuation that the second the princess realized she was a girl and thus actually a princess, the dragon was there. That thing wasted no time. It heard "princess" and was like "I need no further invitation, here I come."
If you're an American with a disability who receives government assistance, you likely qualify for an ABLE account, or you may starting next
The age of eligibility for an ABLE account, allowing USAmerican disabled people to save up money without losing their government assistance for having “too much,” is going to go up to cover disabilities diagnosed by age 46 (currently it’s age 26), meaning a much larger number of people will be able to access them. As the article notes, many Americans don’t know these accounts exist, let alone whether they or someone they care for could qualify for one, so please share this information around.
It seems to me it would obviously be better if the “no more than $2000 a month” limit were simply removed and disabled people could have whatever savings accounts they chose, but this is heaps better than nothing.
Folks, friends, y’all…. esk*mo is a slur. I understand a lot of people don’t know that, I don’t want to be a dick about it, but I’ve been seeing it in fics. Wanna write “esk*mo kisses”? Just say “nuzzled noses” or something.
I’m not here to call anybody out, it’s been in multiple fics, I’m not vague posting. This is just a psa. 👍🏻
[Text Description: “Hey! Reminder: Eskimo is a slur. It means ‘snow eaters’ in Cree and is a slur against Inuit . Also don’t use ‘Eskimo kisses’. It’s called Kunik. It is a greeting mostly used for family… Kunik was how I’d greet my mom and grandmother as a small child.” /TD]
i think being able to identify and deconstruct an irrational feeling should make it go away. i literally solved your riddle puzzle master can u let me OUT the damn TORTURE LABYRINTH
Mafia boss smoking a cigar: Why’d you gotta squeal, Squealin’ Stephen? I trusted you. Now I gotta send my best goons to show you what happens when you cross the Big Boss…
Guy tied up in chair: uh…theres just one guy over there.
Mafia boss: Yeah. That’s Lil’ Tony. He’s got one of dem conditions where he’s got multiple mooks n’ his head. But when Big Tony fronts you’re gonna be in big trouble.
Lil’ Tony: We actually all agree we’re gonna kick your ass.
