Of words and waltzes.

[sunderwight]

Mulan AU where she does get caught by the other fresh recruits while she's bathing but Mushu helps her spin it like the lake is cursed by an evil lizard demon and will turn men into women if they stay in it for too long.

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Shang is... tentatively glad that the men are bonding and getting along, even if they continue to be deeply weird about it.

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

Ling: Hey man, what's up— you've got boobs?!?!

Mulan: Uh, what boobs? Huh? Where did these come from?

Mushu: *facepalms and thinks quickly* (speaks from the shadows) I AM THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKE! BEWARE MY CURSED WATERS FOR THEY WILL TURN MEN INTO WOMEN!

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: Oh no! The spirit of the cursed waters!

[scribeofchaos]

Chi-Fu: SHE'S A WOMAN LI SHANG!

Mulan: Look-

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: WE CAN EXPLAIN!!

[One convoluted, chaotic explanation later]

Shang: ...is this why you've all been insisting we don't camp anywhere that doesn't have a lake.

Shang: and then none of you actually swim in it.

Shang: and you all keep jumping at shadows.

Shang: wait a second Ping did this happen before or after you became insanely good at fighting?

Shang: did you get better at fighting after you became a woman.

Shang: are women better at fighting than us.

Mulan: ....uh. well. maybe? no one's ever tried to find out.

Yao: [thinking very fast] y'know Captain it's just so hard to find recruits these days.

Chien Po: Real shortage of men.

Ling: Lots of women, though.

Mulan: [catching on] Without marriage prospects.

Shang: You're right, men. The spirits must have done this in order to show us that we should be recruiting women as fighters.

Mushu [from the shadows, seeing an opportunity to do the funniest thing]: EXACTLY, LI SHANG. I HAVE TRANSFORMED PING INTO A WOMAN BECAUSE YOU HAVE TOO LONG OVERLOOKED THE TRUE WAY TO WIN THE WAR.

Mulan [seeing an opportunity to get all the stories straight]: O Great Spirit, is it reversible?

Mushu: WHY WOULD YOU WISH TO REJECT MY GIFT? I HAVE SEEN YOUR HEART, CHILD, AND HAVE ALREADY ALTERED THE MEMORIES OF EVERYONE WHO KNEW YOU BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR THE ARMY. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THEIR DAUGHTER.

Li Shang: Welp, the spirits have spoken. Ping - wait is your name still Ping if you're a woman now?

Mulan: Uh. Actually, I was thinking of renaming myself. How do you feel about Mulan?

BONUS:

Mulan [climbing out of the eleventh lake the men have arranged for her to swim in]: Yeah no, it didn't work. Still got boobs. [tries to appear dejected].

Chien Po: If it makes you feel better, they're very nice boobs.

Mulan: Thanks, Chien Po.

[fluorescentbrains]

this lab safety training module is sending me

[fluorescentbrains]

I feel like whoever wrote these questions was speaking from experience

[creekfiend]

thing I am proud of: when the doctor started going on a weird rant about long covid not being real I paused and listened to his nonsense for a bit and then very calmly said, in a polite and curious tone, "you don't believe in post-viral illness?" and he like. stammered a bunch and was like OH WELL I'M NOT SAYING -- I DON'T...I just think ..! and backpedaled awkwardly while I just sat there like :3c interesting :3c thank you so much for clarifying your stance on this :3c

[creekfiend]

an important skill for chronically ill people to develop is the ability to treat the doctor as though they are simply a person you are interviewing to find out how much they know about your condition.

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Holy shit op this is LITERALLY in the book 'Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It'. Written by a guy who did hostage negotiation and then tried doing business negotiation, and mopped the floor with industry experts.

I'm fortunate enough to have a primary care doctor who knows about hEDS, but it's occurring to me that the skills in this book could be medically life changing for chronically ill folks of all kinds. Like. Literally a matter of life and death, especially for BIPOC and/or fat and/or young people who are having their issues dismissed.

[creekfiend]

HMMM interesting!! will have to check this out

[greelin]

being alive is great because there are so many different vegetables you can sauté. but then there are also the horrors

[yves-and-scessernee]

with faith and perseverance, one day we will sauté the horrors

[so-much-to-read-deactivated2025]

[half-giant-fighter]

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

i do think a lot of implausible medieval plot devices make more sense when considering the fact that these people simply did not have glasses

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

like the king arthur problem of how were these people always accidentally sleeping with the wrong person? well 1) no glasses 2) no lights and candles are so expensive 3) royal couples didn’t even sleep in the same bed a lot of the time anyway 4) arranged marriage how much do you really know your spouse anyway? maybe not very well a lot of the time 5) people are drinking a lot idk. maybe not as absurd as one might think

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

this post is brought to you by the one time i woke up at a sleepover and realized that without my glasses i could not distinguish one friend from the other. haunting. all of arthurian literature was unlocked to me at that moment

[orions-mistletoe-arrow]

My favorite headcannon I have going for LOTR right now is that the elves that are still around by the time Frodo gets on the scene are the elvish equivalent of doomsday preppers.

I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that at some point there were millions of elves on Middle-earth, and by the end of the third age, it's down to a few thousand, aka a very small portion. These are the elves that got told way back in the first age, "Hey, just so you guys know, you're totally welcome to come back and live in heaven now without any worries" and responded, "No thanks, we're good!" and then proceeded to not only hold to that but survived the next 7.000 years of bullshit including but not limited to:

Multiple continents sinking into the sea

orcs

dragons

balrogs

multiple wars with Sauron, a literal divine being

The rise and fall of several human empires

more orcs

wargs

a bunch of their territory being overtaken and burned to the ground

And all of their loved ones either dying or sailing, even though we know that grief can and will kill an elf

Like, you can't tell me that third age elves start showing up in the undying lands, where everyone has spent the last few thousand years basking in the magical equivilant of free therapy and probably have as many defence measures as a suburban coldesac, and aren't viewed as the most feral, twitchy, paranoid mother fuckers; held together by suspicion, stubornness, and at least 25 contingencies for every situation they've collectively encountered during their time in Middle-earth.

My favorite examples of feral, hyper-vigilant behavior include:

Elrond: Security clearance; sure, Turgon may have threatened to kill anyone who tried to leave his hidden city, but he also took an entire army out of and back to the city at once, and then also didn't realize that his own nephew snitched on where the city was. His security protocols sucked. Meanwhile, Elrond had hundreds of strangers coming in and out of Rivendell for over 3,000 years, at one point completely surrounded by enemies and full of nothing but a bunch of refugees, and Sauron still never found it. You can't tell me that he didn't have at least 25 security checkpoints on the way into his city(sorry, house-that means it's private property, right?), even if you didn't know they were there.

Galadriel: Paranoia; This woman was magically keeping track of everyone she knew and even did it often enought that she knew what to look for of those she couldn't directly track (gandalf) and looking into their minds and testing them. All while having Sauron constantly clawing at the walls of her mind, at least for a few years

Thranduil: Spite; it was basically only his sheer audacity holding his nuclear bunker- cough cough- sorry, I meant vast underground halls together, while his next-door neighbor was some cursed ruins, a dragon-infested dwarf kingdom, and evil, man-eating, car-sized spiders on his front lawn.

Haldir: he blindfolded the fellowship when they tried to enter his city (super secret hideout), need I say more?

Multiple examples of groups of elves jumping out of trees fully armed and ambushing anyone who wanders into their territory. And while the characters seem surprised to be ambushed, they don't seem surprised that elves ambush people in general, leading me to believe this is normal behavior.

In summary, while the elves in the LOTR and the Hobbit seem all chill and fun, I like to imagine them as the crazy raccoons of the elvish family trees that wandered in 5 hours late.

[wuxiaphoenix]

I honestly love this idea.

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[melyzard]

Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

And often, they are assholes, too.

[growingsucculents]

Legs

[sweetchimera-art]

escape

[sacrificethemtothesquid]

[sabertoothwalrus]

I can finally post the comic I did for @chilshi-zine which you can still download for free and see everyone else’s art & writing! I had a lot of fun working on this and I’m excited to finally share it

[umulata]

It's getting warmer, so don't forget to d҉̴̷̧̢̛̖͔̤ͯ̔̑̄͢͟͡͠r҉̵҉̛̠̩̥̋ͦ̆͆͟͞͡͞͠i҉̧̯̤̙͔̑ͧ̅̔ͦ́͜͟͢͝͠n̸͐̈́͟͟͝k҉̴̶̬͈̫̹͖̾̎ͭ́̍̐͜͜͝͠ ȳ̸̵̩̜͔͍̔́͟͟͢͡o҉̢̡̲͇̌͗̀͢͝u̶͖̖͆̊̈́͡͡r҉̵҉̛̠̩̥̋ͦ̆͆͟͞͡͞͠ w҉̢̡̹̮͌̄ͦ͜͟͟͞͠͞a҉͖̟̜̞̂̃̑̽͢͢͠͡t҉̷҉̢͖͔̹͛̌͊͘͜͢͠͡͡e̵̡̫̫͍͕̎ͭ̐͟͟͝͞r҉̵҉̛̠̩̥̋ͦ̆͆͟͞͡͞͠

Let Armand forcibly soothe you into taking care of yourself~ he just wants you sufficiently hydrated for no particular reason.

There's also the cousin of this silly thing- Take Your Meds

You can find both as miniprints and stickers on my shop 🌸

[kholran]

It’s finally happened.

After almost a decade on this site, I found another Tumblr user in the wild. I stopped to tie my shoe with rainbow laces this morning outside the silversmith at Colonial Williamsburg, and I heard it.

“I like your shoelaces.”

Oh. Oh no.

I responded the only way I could. “Thanks.” And then I reluctantly added, “I stole them from the president…and if that makes sense to you, I’m very sorry.”

The poor man, in full Colonial dress, stared at me for a long moment. And then burst into laughter. And said, “I haven’t thought about that in YEARS and this has never happened to me before.”

Yeah. Me neither. Not until today.

Tumblr rite of passage. Achievement unlocked.

[beggars-opera]

@victoriansecret I found your friend!!!

[beggars-opera]

[komfortabull]

Together ♡

[awakefor48hours]

Every once in a while, I wish the friendship meter from the Sims was real so that way when people tell me "I used Chat-GPT" they can visually see just how much respect I just lost for them in that moment.

[hiveswap]

Everyone go look up the song nasa banned from space

[hiveswap]

Don't forget to play it loud as fuck

[kowai-kabuki-tanuki]

please….listen to the whole thing. And imagine that you are IN SPACE in 1973 and you JUST woke up. Every time you adjust…it escalates somehow.

This song had to be designed in a lab for the sole purpose of fucking with astronauts. whoever added it to the NASA playlist was a genius.

[elodieunderglass]

theres a lot of hootin and tootin

[ironychan]

I mean no living family (that anyone knew of before they launched him into space) tracks, doesn't it?

[ironychan]

They'd double- and triple-checked. While Dr. Grace wasn't looking they'd sent his DNA to half a dozen of those genealogy companies, the ones that would tell you who your ancestors were and definitely wouldn't sell your genetic code to shady organizations. There'd been no matches closer than a third cousin. He was an only child, the son of two only children, and Eva had never found a good moment to ask if he knew he was adopted. It should have been fine.

That had been over a year ago. They'd assumed if anything came up later they would get an email, but of course the company that got the hit was the one that tried to contact Grace directly through the post, at an address he hadn't lived at in months. Now she was standing in her office, staring at a ghost in handcuffs.

"Do you want to tell me how you got in here, Mr..." Eva glanced at the contents of his wallet, laid out on her desk. "Seavers?"

"It wasn't hard," he replied. "I said hi to the girl at the gate and she let me in."

Of course she had. Whoever that was, she was fired. "Is there a reason you didn't call somebody and try to get a visitor's pass before entering a government facility on false pretenses?"

"I'd been trying the other way for two months. My fucking bank will put me through to a real person before this outfit will. That was after it took me just as long to even find out he worked here," Seavers added. "When you guys hire somebody they disappear."

There were reasons for that, and this was one of them. "Who is 'he'? Who are you looking for, Mr. Seavers?" As if she wouldn't have known by looking at him, but she wanted to hear it.

He leaned forward. Seavers may have had the same face, but there was a steel in his eyes that Grace couldn't have summoned if he'd tried. "You know damned well that I am looking for my brother."

[ironychan]

That night, Mr. Seavers got to sit alone in a cell, and Eva went through the information he'd gotten from the genealogy service and the adoption agency.

Colton Lee and Ryland Andrew, surname redacted, born twelfth of November to parents who had died only fifteen days later, when a man swerving to avoid a drunk driver rammed their car head-on. The agency had split the babies up because there were lots of people who wanted to adopt a little white boy but very few who wanted two at once. One family had moved to California two years later when Linda Seavers got her dream job as a cinematographer - her son would follow her into show business, turning a love of daredevil sports into a career as a stuntman. The Graces had stayed in Toronto, until Ryland graduated with his BSc from the University of Ontario and was accepted to do a Master's at Harvard.

Then things had gone badly wrong for both of them. Seavers had broken two vertebrae in an accident at work and had needed a lengthy recovery before he could get back to doing what he loved. And Grace had pissed off his entire field with a confrontational article, and wound up teaching middle school until Eva found him. The whole time, neither had any idea that nature had liked their genotype so much she'd used it twice.

Until four months ago. Seavers had gotten the DNA kit as a gift from his girlfriend after she learned he was adopted, and he'd let it sit around for half a year before she bothered him into sending it in. The result had come back just four days before the explosion that killed Dr. Dubois and Dr. Shapiro. Grace himself had never heard about it.

Eva pulled her beanie off and scraped her fingers through her hair. What would any of them be doing right now if Seavers had been just a little more interested in his origins?

[libraford]

An incomplete list of

Potions of Hydration!

Earlier this week I mentioned putting pickle juice in my water to replenish electrolytes. I work outside in a very hot and humid area, so it was very necessary.

Since then, a LOT of people have chimed in with their favorite hot weather drinks. I want to try... all of them. I've only had a few. Many of them are similar, but I still think its cool how many variations there are for 'its fucking hot out here and I don't want to die.'

So here is the incomplete list.

ORS (oral rehydration solution) (link has several recipes)

Shrub (sharaab)

Agua de pepino

Switchel

Posca

Ayran

Straight up drinking pickle juice (small doses)

Agua fresca

Sekanjabin

Pickle lemonade

Lebanese lemonade

Salted watermelon

Jamaica/hibiscus tea

Lebu pani

Ayuvedic gatorade

Soda chanh muôi

Suero

Aam paan

Sharbat

-

These ones were given to me without names, and were just lists of ingredients, to taste:

- water and umescu

- diluted apple juice with lemon and salt

-watermelon, lime juice, mint

- sparkling water, mint leaves, lemon or lime juice, cucumber

-coconut water, lime juice, salt

-salt, lemon juice, water

-orange juice, salt, sugar, water, lime or lemon juice

-elderflower syrup and lime juice in water.

There are probably more! Hydrate or die straight!

[draconym]

I think if you have food allergies or intolerances you should gain the ability to eat other things instead. Like sure maybe I can't eat alliums or brassicas, but I can eat tree bark and small pebbles.