"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
#extradirty
h
PR's Tumblrdome
d e v o n
sheepfilms
todays bird
No title available
Game of Thrones Daily
NASA
Not today Justin
No title available
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Love Begins
will byers stan first human second
Janaina Medeiros
Stranger Things
dirt enthusiast
Kaledo Art
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from Philippines
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Morocco
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Philippines
seen from Malaysia
@schereereblogs
'You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorised, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honour to hold hands with a child’s imagination in this way.' ~Meg Medina
Meg Medina is an award-winning American children’s book author of Cuban descent.
This is an awesome use of what is probably a master's degree if not a doctorate and I am 100% thrilled that she shared it even though it was embarrassing and she squeaked.
Thank you, adorable scientist, for making people's lives better.
As an Australian, THIS WOMAN IS A FUCKING GODSEND.
this is Hannah Fry, Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
Ryan Gosling and James Ortiz as Ryland Grace and Rocky PROJECT HAIL MARY
A mark on your forehead identifies the god you must worship to stay alive, usually by joining its local church or temple. Your mark is unknown, meaning an old, forgotten god sponsored you. To survive, you must either find an old temple to worship at, or do the arduous task of building a new one
Nobody in your small coastal village has ever seen the Godmark that you were born with. It’s a dark russet sequence of criss-crossing lines, with a vertical arrowhead on the left and a circle on the right, just over where your brow meets your temple. Some of the traders who come down from the mountain say it looks like one of the scripts used in the hinterlands, but not a language that any of them recognize.
“If she’s got the temperament for it, she should try her luck inland,” they advise. “No point her starting a temple here if she’d find her people elsewhere, with a little searching.”
At first, your parents are reluctant to send you away. Though you’re well-behaved and diligent in your chores, you’re a sickly child with no God to worship. And besides, you’ve always been the dreamy type–inclined to lose track of time watching the path of rain droplets chasing down the window, or the fronds of an anemone as it sways in a rock pool.
Instead, they send you to the temple of the Storm to learn all you’ll need for your own God. You are happy there, for a time: making up beds and serving food to the castaways who pass through, keeping vigil at the lighthouse, burning incense and praying with the loyal widows and orphans of the drowned.
One such widow, an old, old lady, touches the mark on your forehead. “I recognise those letters. We wrote this way in the town where I grew up, way off past the mountains.”
Your heartbeat quickens. “What does it say!?”
She squints, eyes engulfed by wrinkles and hidden behind smudged glass. “A… Ar… Oh, I can’t remember how to speak it. I left before I learnt my letters properly. There was a war, you know. But I remember,” she says, mistily, “the most beautiful pink and white flowers used to grow, on the borders of the wheat fields…”
You try to ask more questions, but remembering the war distresses her, and so you speak of other things. When she’s drifted off to sleep, you get to your feet, go home and tell your parents: you are leaving in search of your God.
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, daughter. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
the funniest man on the planet
don’t know if this is as ~deep~ as i think it is, but by all of gaston’s own personal standards of identity/values, the beast is a better man than he is: brawnier, bigger, fightier, & of course every last inch of him’s covered in hair
ohmigod, it’s true though! the beast was basically gaston, and the ticked off fairy turned him into the purest manifestation of his toxic ideals to make him learn to be less of an ass
…..now I really wanna see the version of the movie where instead of dying, the curse passes from the beast to gaston!
except gaston doesn’t have a swag ass castle to sulk in, so he’s out running around the countryside, hiding in forests and stuff, alternately terrorizing the populace and being hunted. it’s a turnabout of his “peerless hunter” backstory– he is now both the monster and the prey.
untillllll he, idk, meets some humble woodcutter(?) that takes him in when he’s wounded or offers him shelter in a storm? and etc, etc, LIFE LESSONS, toxic masculinity slowly vanquished. (ooh, or maybe it should be like–a flower seller or herbalist or some feminine-coded profession he would have devalued to really set up a foil.)
also the gaston-beast needs antlers. terrifying claw-hooked sprawling antlers. antlers for all of his decorating.
BRUH
So if the curse is transmittable, is there a way to - rather than breaking the curse with true love- transfer it to some other asshole who happens to be nearby? Because that would kind of explain why the enchantress decided to go knocking on the doors of dickish eleven-year-old princes on stormy nights, and also why she seemed to look hideous until she suddenly transformed and then ‘cursed’ Adam. Maybe the enchantress was also a beast, and maybe there are two ways to ‘get rid’ of the curse. One is to have true love break it, but the other is to just sort of pass it on to someone the curse decides is worse than you are.
And the curse, rather than seeing ‘ah well he’s just a kid’ and not taking, instead went ‘oh he’s a kid - so his dickishness is also the fault of his caretakers’ and then applied itself to the entire damn castle.
Enchantress was probably like ‘…uh, oops? Oh well lol not my problem anymore’ and skipped off, after feeling juuust bad enough to tell Adam about the True Love option. But not the transfer one because what if he comes after her and the curse decides that after a week of beastification, he’s less of an asshole than she is now? Not risking it.
So Beast and Belle hook up and Beast thinks it’s the True Love cure, but in actuality he gets cured after the fight with Gaston because the curse decides ‘welp this guy is DEFINITELY a bigger asshole’ and that’s why the timing is kind of… odd Belle really does love him, though, but maybe the shift back is supposed to be more gradual with a love cure, because true love really does linger more in gradual adjustments and quiet moments than in grand displays. It’s a slower process (the time limit was really just the enchantress trying to make sure that the prince would hurry up and go that route for curing himself, and not waste time trying to track her down - it’s total bullshit, she’s a con artist, that’s what got her into this mess in the first place).
The slow cure is what happens with Gaston, instead of getting a declaration and then a magical girl transformation sequence back into his sporty lumberjack self, he just, bit by bit, starts to look more Gaston-y again. It spreads out from the eyes. His fur starts to get a bit thinner, his claws start to soften, his teeth no longer fill up his mouth like a packet of razors. At first he thinks it’s just because he has a place to stay and access to, like, brushes and warm water and stuff like that. But then he wakes up one morning and his antlers are shedding, and he can definitely see more of his old face than he used to.
His woodsy herbalist ‘friend’ doesn’t really say anything. He’s heard of curses and things, and he doesn’t like to pry - he’s just the sort who sees a need and tries to help with it. In the end, it’s really not Gaston’s looks (in either form) that when him over. It his skill, either, because Gaston can’t really hunt much without risking being seen and having to leave and possibly getting his herbalist in trouble for housing a monster. It’s just his company. Talks by the fire. Quiet mornings spent side by side. Sheer boredom, and a begrudging sense of indebtedness, have Gaston asking about his host’s tasks, and then offering to help with them. He’s insufferable about it at first, of course. But after a while he finds that he likes the scent of herbs, and that gathering is as interesting as hunting, and he even paws carefully through a few of the herbalist’s notebooks.
Being trapped gives him a somewhat better appreciation for books, though he still never loves them.
At night he can venture outside, just so long as the moon isn’t too bright. He takes to sitting on the roof, and looking up at the stars, and remembers… it was his mother who taught him how to read the stars. In case he ever got lost. His father died when he was fairly young, and Gaston had done his best to try and make up the difference. And he had done; he’d been a good hunter, he’d kept the village fed through a lot of cold winters, but he’d never quite been able to escape the sense that he needed to absolutely make certain that he was following the right script. That there was something about him that didn’t… that wasn’t what his father would have wanted. Or his mother, either. He had a long list of things that made a man worthwhile, and maybe that was part of the reason why he had set his eyes on the one woman in the village who refused to give him the time of day.
Because that list included marriage and a house full of children, not quiet nights in a tavern, looking for too long at the woodcutter’s arms.
But even if he had never really wanted Belle, he had been angry enough at not winning her, too. Even if the script never really made him happy, he still wanted to follow it. Wanted to be the kind of man who could. The man who killed every beast and conquered every challenge.
He can’t go back to that life, now. It’s not even an option anymore.
The knowledge is an unexpected - but very visceral - relief.
The next morning, Gaston is about a foot shorter, and the cleft in his chin is back.
It’s more than a year, though, before he looks human enough to ‘arrive’ at the little village near to where his herbalist lives. He introduces himself as a friend of the healer’s family, an old friend who used share correspondence with him, who’s come looking for work. The townsfolk find him to be a quiet man, burly but skilled, and more boisterous if you can get a few drinks into him. Though, he avoids the tavern more often than not. Some folks talk about him and his herbalist, living out in that little house all by themselves; but Gaston’s skills quiet most tongues, and the way his eyes sometimes catch the firelight, and his teeth seem just a little too sharp, manage to quiet others.
Years pass. It is, funnily enough, only when Gaston looks almost entirely himself - though still different from how he used to - that trouble really comes, with the mayor’s son, who decides on a dare to vandalize the herbalist’s door and destroy some of his best plants.
Gason is only meaning to make the boy pay for the damages, when he goes and finds him out in the fields. But he’s barely had time to get impatient with the brat’s sneering - seventeen, god, he had nearly forgotten how insufferable he was at that age, too - when he feels a weight leave him. A weight he has grown so accustomed to, that he had long forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be there.
There are no witnesses to the change that happens in the field, though later, many people in the village will whisper that a werewolf must have savaged the mayor’s son. All Gaston can do is offer the boy some advice, before he flees in howling terror:
Find kindness, first.
Couples receive “parent points”, which they can use to purchase their children. Most parents wait for a few thousand, but you chose to buy the cheaper, 100 point child.
Shane knows what it’s like to be a 100 point child. He knows how it feels to see potential parents–potential families–come through the facilities doors, faces bright with excitement. He knows how it feels to see them reading the little plaques on the nursery doors, scanning the lists there for the right bits of knowledge and etiquette and grace that they want their baby to have.
He knows how it feels to see their faces pinch outside the window before they hurry to the next room.
Shane grew up in a 100 point nursery. They had torn, ratty, books and no teachers, and when snack time came, the tray was pushed through a slat in the door. They were called “unruly” and “damaged” and “stupid.” A lot of the other kids threw tantrums and broke furniture (and sometimes other kids). A lot of the other kids went quiet after the first few years when they realized they’d never be adopted until they were old enough (or pretty enough) to be useful. A lot of the kids cried and didn’t stop until they got taken away or were aged out.
Shane’s grown up a lot since aging out. He put himself through school, got himself a job, shed his 100 points like the torn clothes he’d left the facility in. He’s powerful now, successful, and he’s grown out of the twisted nose, big ears, and gap-toothed smile that had made him one of the less attractive 100 point babies. Or maybe he’s grown into them. Who’s to say?
It’s taken him a long time to get enough Parent Points to do what he wants. Being a man is, for once, somewhat hindering as most of society equates “parental” with “maternal.” He’s lost count of how many social workers have politely hid expressions of surprise when he told them he wanted to adopt stag, that he’s willing to take the classes, get the grades, make the oaths to get even one Parent Point.
Keep reading
This obviously won't fix everything, but one thing that genuinely helps my depression is looking for the next small reason to be content.
Right now I'm indulging in coffee and a bagel.
Sure, it'll be gone in 10 minutes, but that's still 10 minutes of today that I spent knowing that this chive and onion cream cheese tastes bomb.
People who've cracked the code on romanticizing your everyday life are so right.
If I decide the small things are sacred, no one else gets to decide they're not.
Never coming out to my mom as aroace but telling her I don't like cake is just about the same experience
"but everyone likes cake"
I don't
"you've had cake before"
Didn't like it
"but there's that one cake you like"
It's just the one cake I'm willing to eat if I have to eat cake but I could do without it
"how can you not like cake"
Hate the textures and the taste is overwhelming. I like other sweets but not cake
"but cake is so good"
I still don't like it
"you haven't tried every type of cake"
I don't want to because I don't like the concept
Anyways my best friend once brought up ice cream cake when I said I don't like cake and my response to that is
That's not cake, that's ice cream. It's cake shaped ice cream. It looks like a cake but it's ice cream. I guess that's what our relationship is. Ice cream that looks like cake and everyone says there's cake but you and I both know there is no fucking cake it's a goddamn ice cream served in some fancy unconventional manner it's ice cream and anyone who tries to tell me that it's cake is a dumbass
Anyways I told my mom I don't want cake for my next birthday
That part is unrelated to my sexual orientation
Some truths about the publishing industry because I certainly got blindsided when going in. Now I'm so broken by this industry I struggle to encourage aspiring writers lmao
went to my best friend’s house last night and saw a little plushie dog and plushie cat that had been sewn together down the middle into a two-headed chimera. I said, “did you do that?” she said, “yes, I saved them.”
turns out at her old job when the last two plushies hadn’t sold and became deadstock, her boss told her to cut them up and throw them out. so she cut them each in half, preserved their heads, and then rebuilt them together.
cannot stop thinking about the way these little plushies were approached with the instinct of a Vampire or some sort of ancient god. “Let me save you [turn you into a monster].”
The fact that the beheading was at the order of a superior, and the solution was to create some sort of monster of disobediance to the letter of the law instead of just lying and saving them adds a certain mythological resonance.
I was having writers block and so I took a break and soon enough it was 3 in the morning and I had impulsively sewn together a tiny mouse you’re welcome
For those of you who asked, I have made a sewing tutorial on how to make your very own Peaches the Mouse!
I see people reblogging this with “to buy” but this pattern is free??? Someone even asked me “why don’t you charge money for it, it took you forever to put the document together” and I said “Not a lot of people have money and if they have some fabric scraps and a couple of buttons lying around they can make themselves a little mouse friend for free and that might make them happy and that makes me happier than receiving money???” Make yourself a liddol creacher! Heals the Soul!
You know what fantasy writing needs? Working class wizards.
A crew of enchanters maintaining the perpetual flames that run the turbines that generate electricity, covered in ash and grime and stinking of hot chilies and rare mushrooms used for the enchantments
A wizard specializing in construction, casting feather fall on every worker, and enchanting every hammer to drive nails in straight, animating the living clay that makes up the core of the crane
An elderly wizard and her apprentice who transmute fragile broken objects. From furniture, to rotten wood beams, to delicate jewelry
A battle magician, trained with only a few rudimentary spells to solve a shortage of trained wizards on the front who uses his healing spells to help folks around town
Wizarding shops where cheery little mages enchant wooden blocks to be hammered into the sides of homes. Hammer this into the attic and it will scare off termites, toss this in the fire and clean your chimney, throw this in the air and all dust in the room gets sucked up
Wizard loggers who transmute cut trees into solid, square beams, reducing waste, and casting spells to speed up regrowth. The forest, they know, will not be too harsh on them if the lost tree’s children may grow in its place
Wizard farmers who grow their crops in arcane sigils to increase yield, or produce healthier fruit
Factory wizards who control a dozen little constructs that keep machines cleaned and operational, who cast armor to protect the hands of workers, and who, when the factory strikes for better wages, freeze the machines in place to ensure their bosses can’t bring anyone new in.
Anyway, think about it.
Construction wizards to turn back time to root out wood worm and strengthen old buildings.
A wizard tailors who transmutes cloth into fully made clothes without seems and leaving behind no scraps
A wizard who works in public transit, timing out teleports with detailed schedules, time magic, and enchanted communications, sending dozens of people to far away cities for a day or work or leisure
A team of wizard gardeners tend to trees grown far outside their native range, and ideal climate, encircled with runes and fed potions to grow none the less
A wizard sits in their office in the aqueduct, re-casting the spells that allow its precious water to flow to the city uphill
A wizard fisher casts water repelling spells on the sailors and the stairs, keeps the hoist on the anchor from rusting, casts balls of heat that keep everyone warm below decks. Their real job is to herd fish together so they can be caught in single huge nets, and keep them cold as the boat returns to land.
There are so many possibilities outside of “stodgy academic who wears ugly robes” and “Very good holy man who helps everyone and the fact they’ve never had a job is never brought up” and “evil wizard toiling away on great evils in his evil tower in the evil country.”
Intern wizards who spend all their time grinding diamonds, gathering bat guano and baking tiny tarts for spell components so that their masters can cast the really cool spells.
- Police wizards using necromancy to solve crimes, and truth spells to stop fraud.
- Wizards who work as artists, creating vast complex arcane art works, perhaps an angry battle hardened wizard animating a mural like Picasso’s Guernica that illustrates the king’s crimes during the last war, to a Banksy style activist that cast zone of truth on the town’s financial district and mayor’s office… Or even just a simple necromancer who for a few gold coins will bind your Spirit to a moving portrait so you can Harry Potter yourself after death.
- Wizards who tour creating pyrotechnics, and illusions for famous Bards. Wizards who record and recreate famous, historical records, plays and speeches using illusions
- Wizards who offer legal services such as divining court cases, augering divorces, casting runes for mergers, and creating contracts that are more than just legally binding.
- Wizards that sell prefabricated Dungeons built in pocket dimensions ready to be installed in local castles and keeps. They have show rooms with traps and puzzles on display, like a home security service office
