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what are people's favorite niche ice cream flavors. mine are superman and blue moon (specifically from the midwest like michigan/indiana/wisconsin), van leeuwen's royal wedding cake, and jeni's wildberry lavender

#perry's sponge candy #berkey creamery's russ digs roseberry #turkey hill box of chocolates which I don't think they make anymore #stewarts shops's crumbs along the mohawk

imissthembutitwasntadisaster

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

#to be quite honest it might be Gate A4 #basic as that may be #that or Scribe by Patricia Smith

animentality

i-speak-dinosaur

@planeposting

feather-bone

Fisher! Sometimes called a Fisher cat - not a cat, doesn't fish. They're in the mustelid family with otters and weasels. They hunt hares and rodents, like squirrels and even porcupines. Well known in my native New England woods for their haunting call, which sounds exactly like a human child screaming!

#art #I remember learning about fishers on a camping trip when I was young!#to Parker Dam maybe?

basiliskonline

jeanjauthor

THIS, writers. Unless your characters are very wealthy (can pay people to be very industrious in growing, spinning, weaving, sewing on their behalf) or live in a post-textile-industrial-revolution world (aka modern/futuristic), they're not going to have that many clothes.

What they will have is protective outerwear. Aprons are a very real necessity for a lot of jobs, from cooking to blacksmithing and beyond.

Women wore aprons and housecoats into the 1940s and 1950s when doing cooking & cleaning because it was still a bit expensive to own a lot of clothes...so this is within 100 years. Within living memory for many folks.

Coveralls were created to protect clothing, and were handed out as uniforms by factories because the workers complained that their own clothes were getting damaged by their workplace. (Unions helped with this, strongly encouraging the companies doing the damage to their regular clothes to step up with replacement garments that could get damaged and then replaced by the company whose work was damaging them.)

Businesses started having their employees wear uniforms to make them look good and as a signature of their company (UPS brown, for example), but unless the design teams are idiots, those outfits are going to be stitched in ways that you can move easily & comfortably while doing your assigned tasks.

In corporate culture in Japan, the salarywomen are often given a uniform dress to wear, and I know of one business that held a work-slowdown because the way the sleeves of those dresses were cut and stitched, they literally couldn't bring their arms forward to type on their computers in a comfortable way. The company balked at replacing the uniforms, until a section manager agreed to let his female workers wear their own "office-dressy" clothes for a day...and productivity leaped forward by over 200%, literally because they could move their arms and position them comfortably.

Another example of those who effed it up are the officers' uniforms for the Germans during WWII, which were focused on looking fashionable--and they were!--but were horrible to don quickly, awkward wear in actual combat, etc, and it took them far too long to "drop trousers" to use the bushes in a swift, efficient, and safe manner. (Not saying they didn't deserve to be shot for supporting such an evil regime, but you should be able to go to the bathroom without worrying that it'll take you over a minute to put your clothes back together enough to run for cover in summer.)

Prior to the 1700s, servants in manor houses & noble estates often did not wear a uniform; they just wore whatever they had, and depended on aprons and watchcoats and whatever to protect their clothes. Then it became a status symbol to put one's servants into uniforms, also known as livery. If you could afford to do that then, by gum-golly, you were wealthy, and people could literally see that you were wealthy!

As for those famous black maid's dresses with white aprons that every manga loves to draw? Black dye was still a bit expensive, but black hid most stains. White aprons were protective, and were to be changed out frequently...and it was far easier to bleach cloth than it was to dye it black, plus the stark contrast was very eye-catching, and since the aprons could be swapped out frequently (very small amount of cloth compared to a whole dress), the fact that your maidstaff were wearing clean aprons was another sign of how wealthy you were, rather than just making the maid wear the apron all day long, progressively getting dirtier and dirtier.

With all this said, how valuable clothing was also affected how armies moved. Throughout most of recorded history, armies were composed primarily of men...but there were almost always 2 categories of women who followed them on the campaign trail. One, of course, was sex workers (for obvious reasons), but the other was Laundresses...and the laundresses would be ransomed first, ahead of the sex workers, if captured by enemy forces. (Not all were women by any means, btw, but the majority were, so I stuck with that gender.)

They worked hard to get the clothing clean, helped with getting leather armor clean, and provided other grooming services such as lice-combing. "But Jean, why would getting the soldiers' clothing clean be that important?" Dudes, dudes, my dudes...if you need to take a piss or a shit, combat will not stop for you. Peristalsis will happen mid-sword-swing. This was one of the sources of "deadly infections killed many of the fighters who went to war," and laundresses literally cleaned that shit up.

When you're a warrior in an army, marching off through the forests of Gaul, you can only carry so many spare sets of clothes because you're also carrying your armor, your weapons, and your rations, etc, etc. You will want to take care of your clothes, because you don't have many replacements, and you won't get many replacements.

So, writers, when you're writing about pre-industrialized cultures...go easy on how many clothes people own. Also realize that accessorizing can make an old outfit look new, which includes small parts of the clothing that can be swapped out for other pieces in a mix-and-match style.

...One last note:

The most expensive, time-consuming part of building a Norse ship to go a-viking on wasn't the actual ship, which took many men 2+ years to craft. It was the sails, which took many people, males and females, 3+ years to spin and weave and stitch together. There are literal stories of brash sailors robbing other norsemen of their sails because thieving it was faster & easier. (It also explains a lot of the fury of certain blood feuds between clans & holdings, if you think about it.)

thaylepo

Bringing this back to writers again, your period fantasy or historic characters are also going to know how to do upkeep and basic repairs on their own clothing. Laundries and tailors might be a thing in their world, but spot-cleaning and being able to mend small tears before they become big ones is crucial when off doing quests or campaigns or world-saving missions or what have you. Garments are expensive to replace. It may be sexy to have your hero discard their bloody, torn, and ruined shirt after a fight, but even if the garment is ruined beyond repair or wearability, woven cloth is still so valuable that it's worth keeping and cleaning to be turned into something else (legwraps, bandages, resewn into a hat, or used as patches to repair other garments, etc.).

We live in an unprecedented era of wastefulness, where our clothing is often so cheap (and cheaply made) that it's barely worth the efgort of repairing once it begins to wear out, and so easy to replace that we end up amassing more than we need of it. Even less than a hundred years ago, this kind of frivolity was reserved for the EXCEPTIONALLY wealthy. Even fairly well off people would continually recycle their old garments again and again. (Think of Cinderella's mice making that old pink dress into something new with just bits and pieces of the sisters' discarded accessories.... taking ribbons or lace or whole sections of an old dress to use in a new one was very common until quite recently!)

And never underestimate the usefulness of rags. If the clothing is beyond all repair or salvage, it has a new life as rags. You can wrap food in them, stuff them in your shoes for warmth and fit, pad your pillow with them, use them for cleaning, for bandages, for tying and belting your drawers, for patches.... rags are invaluable in a world where paper towels and disposable hygiene products do not exist.

alex51324

This, and I'll add, vast secondhand market in clothing. That one simple tunic would cost the equivalent-in-labor of a new car today, and it would change hands as many times as one.

People in Ye Olden Times--the earliest garments we have evidence of, up through the middle ages (and well beyond, for all but the wealthiest people)--didn't wear simple, box-shaped garments because they didn't know how to sew anything fancier.

They did so because a Big Rectangle had the most resale/re-use value, since it could be tied, laced, belted, or otherwise fastened to fit a wide range of bodies. The same garment could be worn throughout pregnancy, as well as before and after. If it was no longer needed, it could be passed down or sold to virtually anyone. And when it became worn at the seams or hems, it could be re-sewn as a slightly smaller rectangle, and still fit a lot of people.

In Renaissance Europe, clothing got a lot more structured--and to a significant degree, this was as a status symbol. If you wore a fitted, short jacket over tights and those silly-looking puffy shorts (or a doublet, nether-hose and trunk hose), everybody who saw you would know that you could afford to buy all that fabric and then waste a bunch of it by cutting it into very specific shapes.

And if it fit well, then they'd also know that you were (probably) the first owner of said garments. Because the clothes were still expensive, they'd still be passed down, but there was a lot more need for clothing resellers, where secondhand clothes could wait for a buyer whose body they would fit. (Used clothing was a common gift or tip for servants, and if it was something they couldn't wear, they'd sell it.) In this way, clothing styles would percolate their way down the class ladder, both in the form of actual garments that had once belonged to a very rich person, and dupes made with simpler/cheaper materials and techniques, and perhaps modified for practicality.

And that's how you get fashion cycles: once something starts showing up on too many of the common people, the rich would move on, either exaggerating the trend to a point that, outside of that fashion context, looks ridiculous--

Like these silly, silly shoes:

(Note: these are probably exaggerated; the name of this picture is "Young Man Meeting Death," and we're presumably supposed to see him as a frivolous type of person who is about to find out why he should have lived a more serious and pious life.)

--or going in a different direction entirely.

So yeah, if you're writing secondary-world fantasy, give some thought to where the clothes are coming from, and how that's going to affect the styles and choices the characters make. If your working-class character in a Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Land is wearing fitted clothing, either that society has magic spinning and weaving technology, or your character is a serious fashionista/o, who is putting in a lot of time and effort into the project.

Similarly, if that type of setting has courtiers in a dazzling variety of impractical and elaborate garments--and several different outfits of it apiece--that implies a significant degree of urbanization and upward mobility, driving a secondhand market for those items, as well as providing the skilled labor to make and maintain those types of clothes. (You know these?

There was an entire trade centered on washing & ironing these things. Separate from actually making them, I mean. It involved tiny, specially shaped irons, and buckets of starch. Royalty or major nobility might have a servant dedicated to this highly specialized labor, and people a little lower on the ladder would send them out to be done. Ideally, you'd have each of your ruffs washed and re-set every time you wore it; people did re-wear them to save money, but they got droopy fast--hence the emphasis, in paintings featuring this trend, of crisp stiffness.)

nerathul

How would this all compare to leather and hide based clothing? As the material doesn't need spinning and weaving, only tanning, cutting and sewing would it be cheaper and more common?

quill-of-thoth

So. Not a tanner or a cloth maker here but - tanning can be very chemically specific. For those curious my perspective is of an animal pathologist's assistant. I have cut up several cows.

You do have the opportunity to amass a lot of leather if you hunt large animals, but post the adoption of farming and herding, most people are not feeding themselves that way. And there is just more small game overall. Leather is not necessarily easier, quicker, or less expensive to make than cloth, it just depends on what resources you have that are most abundant.

So the steps to making leather are as follows:

(Under the cut because, uh. I know this stuff from my job, which is “open a dead animal and let the doctor see what’s wrong with it” and most of it is messy.)

3) Assuming you have completed steps 1 and 2, you need the chemicals to tan the animal. Historically brains have been used a lot. DO NOT DO THIS if you are a modern person who wants to hunt for meat or leather. Prion diseases like CWD live in the brain, as do a lot of viruses that will kill or disable you painfully and slowly. It’s a relatively low risk (compared to things like accidents with your hunting gun) but it’s a risk you do not have to take. Yes, this is why some states want you to turn in the heads of any deer you shoot, regardless of how many points they have. This is part of how we tell you if the deer you shot is actually safe to eat, and not full of said viruses that will kill or disable you painfully. The other thing that you need is a steady location and a fuckton of water, because these bitches need to soak for a long time. Way longer than soak times for retting flax or other plant stem fibers. And in multiple different solutions of the foulest smelling shit that you can imagine: in addition to brains, the steps included soaking in urine, possibly dung if you didn’t have enough brains, salt curing, soaking until the hair is loosened and then scraping all that off, and then the actual tanning, which is soaking it in a high tannic acid tree bark solution until it’s ready. You can skip some of these steps, especially if you are, say, a paleolithic hunter gatherer. But your leathers will degrade faster. They will be less comfortable and less good for your range of motion. So the production of leather is not necessarily less time consuming than cloth. It is also resource expensive at many steps – from start to finish you need animal wealth, mineral and plant resources, time, and a lot of water that you don’t need urgently for something else, like irrigation or watering your livestock. You’ll also want to do your tanning away from where you eat and sleep, because, the odor of fermenting cowhide is not fun. Finally, it is way more difficult at every step to construct a garment out of leather: cutting it, using an awl to punch holes in it so you can actually sew, or boiling it into shape. It’s also a specialized process when it comes to the chemical aspect, more so than cleaning wool or beating flax, both of which you can produce way more of (eventually) as a small household in the middle of nowhere. Spinning and weaving are both activities you can pick at slowly – you can also get a very small child to spin yarn acceptably with practice, freeing up your adult hands to do things like the weaving, while you really can’t bring your tots into your leather working and expect them to do anything but get underfoot. And shitty cloth smells way better than shitty rotting leather. And none of this even scratches the surface of the material property reasons why a society may prefer leather for some applications (saddles, shoes...) and cloth for others.

jackironsides

Addendum to the leather reblog above, but salt is also historically very expensive, and pretty crucial to most of the older European methods of hide treatment I was able to find when reading up on tanning a few months ago. I can't remember if you still need it if you're using alum, but alum is still something you're going to have to buy in order to process your skins. (From what I read, tanning with brains was an Indigenous American technique, which was rapidly adopted by the colonisers bc of its efficient use of resources that are easy to hand, but modern American sources tend to drown out everything else when looking at historical stuff online without institution access, so I wouldn't state that categorically.)

The original thread is why I cringe every time I read a fic in my home fandom – which is roughly Fantasy Medieval/Renaissance in technology – that has main characters tear each other's clothing to show how excited they are for boning down.

In a premodern context, if someone tore my clothing carelessly, let alone deliberately, we're not fucking. We're no longer on speaking terms. They're dead to me. A shirt is bad enough; at least those were comparatively disposable, and could probably be repaired in a way that's unnoticeable when you wear it (shirts in most premodern European societies are underwear, not outerwear), but a doublet? Fuck right off into the sun.

‘Ooh, you can tell how ~horny~ I am for you because I crashed your car in order to get into your pants.’ That's what you sound like. Tear your own fucking shirt if you're that keen.

It's such an incredibly modern trope to me. I could MAYBE understand it if it's supposed to be a flex on how wealthy someone is, but my poor as shit blorbo with his hand-to-mouth existence who owns three shirts MAXIMUM should not be doing this. Would not be doing this.

The earliest I could see that trope as plausible in my mind is the Victorian period. There was still a healthy second-hand market for clothing, but clothing production had become far more mechanised than it ever had been before, and tearing a shirt probably wouldn't send you to the poor house. (But please still don't tear a suit jacket or a woman's bodice. That's hours of sewing work alone, even after the advent of treadle sewing machines. What's wrong with you.)

aetherograph

Don't forget dyeing, which had to be re-done and was itself a whole fucking profession.

Indigo is one of the hardest natural dyes to start a pot of, especially without a thermometer or indigo white, so once you got that pot started you kept it going. Indigo also has to be processed into a water-soluble form by treating it with ammonia. How do you source ammonia in a pre-industrial world? Well, the local piss barrel at the tavern is full of something that will certainly turn into ammonia if you let it sit. There were almost wars over the argument of whether the dyers should have to pay money to take the piss from the tavern or whether the publican should pay THEM for the SERVICE of taking away the piss, which after all is garbage.

Dark or vivid colours are expensive, and natural dyes are not fast--that is, they fade with washing and sunlight and wear, so you have to keep re-dying them every so often. Black in particular was VERY expensive, moreso than ANY other colour. Certain fibers dye very well and certain ones do not.

Yellow and green were favourite colours of the common folk--bright yellows in particular were very easy to get with cheap dyestuffs, and you see bright sunshine yellow very often in medieval art of ordinary folks. Denim blue was middling expensive. Purple, pink, and orange did not exist as perceived colours--remember, colour is a function of language. Meaning if you don't have a word for the colour, you don't perceive it. Red was difficult and the only thing more expensive than red was, as I said, black.

Dyers and fullers had smelly jobs and worked with piss--their workshops were, like the tanner's, on the edge of town, and downwind if possible.

Oh yes, what's a fuller. Well, wool is full of oils and stuff from the ship, and you need to eliminate those if you want the fabric to be thick and warm and insulating. So you need to soak it in urine and use your feet to rub it over a special textured surface to get all the oils out and shrink and felt the fabric. Loden, felt, and duffel are all fabrics that require fulling in order to become.

Spinning was done by most everybody all the time every day; that's why you see pictures of women with long distaffs leaning on their shoulders as they go about, in some art of ordinary life in the middle ages. You could spin all day while doing everything else. Weaving, however, was a profession, usually male, and weavers were very respected people in all societies that had them.

Pulling the fleece was an activity that you had to do before the wool could be spun. The process for turning a sheep's wool into a garment consisted of many more steps than shear, spin, weave, sew.

Shear

Pull the fleece: this involved sitting around with everyone and pulling the long guard hairs away from the undercoat. A lot of stories, songs, and gossip happened during this process. It also leaves you with very nice soft hands from all the lanolin.

Comb the undercoat hairs with a brush or comb to line up all the fibres in the same direction. This leaves you with rolags or roving.

Spin using a distaff and drop spindle. This takes forever. But there was a very important, revolutionary machine that came up the silk road to Europe and changed--and I cannot emphasise this enough--EVERYTHING.

This machine eliminated the drudgery of spinning, spreading from the East to Europe starting in the late 1200s. It freed up women's time to do more, and made spinning itself a job you could make money doing--the word "spinster" is the term for that profession, and elderly women suddenly could have money of their own, support themselves. This was very important!! This was a labour-saving machine that gave more power to women in Europe and made the making of fabric and fiber faster and easier than ever before!

5. Dye the threads. It's much easier to dye skeins of yarn than it is to dye fabric or garments in pre-industrial ages, so dyeing would be done at the yarn stage. Dyeing the yarn also means you can do things like have the weft be one colour and the warp another. This results in some of the most exciting and beautiful fabric in existence:

6. Weave the fabric. The loom was another piece of technology that was constantly being improved upon, because society was built on looms. In fact, the predecessor to the computer was the loom! Look up a video of a jaquard loom sometime, you'll see it uses punchcards to "program" in the different patterns of the fabric it produces. The song "four loom weaver" is actually "power loom weaver". Power looms were another improvement that made weaving faster. The luddites were the first labour strike and organization, and it was about? That's right, WEAVING.

7. Fulling, polishing, and other finishing techniques. Moire is made by calendaring. Felt is made by fulling. Polishing, waxing, and all kinds of other techniques are used to make all the different varieties of fabric that exist. The way we live now is sad and pathetic, we don't come into contact with much in the way of variety of fabric anymore. Everything is disposable, paperthin and made of plastic or cotton or bamboo, knits mostly. When you get into historical costuming, you meet all kinds of fabrics--lush brocades, velvets, and coutils, and silk. But it's NOTHING compared to the hand-woven fabrics of times past.

Machines can make fabric fast, but it's looser than when a human is doing it. The density of some hand-woven fabrics is so great that you don't need to hem them! Likewise, the translucency of some ancient linens made in Egypt is still a mystery we're trying to figure out how to reproduce, because machine-spinning and machine-weaving meant we LOST these techniques. People who spin and weave and hand-make fiber their whole lives can make it as thin as a spider's gossamer, and not even machines can do that today. Machines are wonderful and humans should not have to labour so much if a machine can do it, but it's worth noting that just because it's made by machine doesn't mean that it's better quality, just that its cheaper and faster to make. I'm sure if we tried, we'd find ways of machines being able to do it, especially with the "sort things and detect things" algorithmic programs software engineers have come up with, the ones that detect cancer and so on.

8. Sewing the garment. I'm putting a note here for sewing bc sewing by hand is a lot easier and faster and better than by machine sometimes. I hand-sewed an entire pair of pants and the hems were utterly invisible when I was finished, it was astonishing. I also used a running stitch for most of it and that's. That's the normal stitch to use, you just backstitch every ten stitches or so and then keep going. It wastes far less thread than a sewing machine. To make those pants I only needed three stitches: running, backstitch, and whipstitch. And I learned by watching Nicole Rudolph when she's sewing, she does the same stitches for the most part! There's speciality stitches for locking in the ends of corset bones (flossing) and so on, but the majority of the long seams are just the running stitch! Needles and pins were precious commodities in pre-industrial times, and there are letters between John Adams and his wife Abigail that illustrate this, which were famously made into the latter half of the song "Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve" in the 1969 musical 1776.

Needles were at first made of bone, hand-carved, in very ancient times; but needles and pines of steel and brass were also produced later on as metalworking tech started being able to do so. These were very precious, and the little tiny strawberry that hangs off a traditional tomato pincushion, the one full of what feels like sand? That was for cleaning the rust and tarnish off your needle, so it would go through the fabric easier. You can still buy bone and brass needles in the traditional style from historical merchants, and try for yourself sewing the historical way!

Many people in fact already practise an ancient form of fabric and garment-making: Knitting and crochet! There's a much older predecessor to these, called nalbinding, that is very interesting and practised with roving rather than spun and plied yarn, and uses a flat wooden or bone needle. It creates very dense, not very stretchy things, and was used by the Norse. Nalbound things are VERY cold-proof, and eventually felt--and that's a good thing, felt is very warm stuff! My mom made me a nalbound hat once and I miss it every winter.

Now, garments were not just fabric of course. People have liked decorating everything since time immemorial, and embroidery, buttons, beads, and other things were used. Another type of decoration, one very popular in the SCA, is TRIM! Trim is made by weaving on an inkle loom, which looks like this:

This one doesn't have the cards visble, but the pattern can be produced with cards that can be turned:

This produces a brocade, and yes, you can weave letters or all kinds of patterns into the "tape" that is produced. Depending on what fiber you use, and how fine the threads, these can be trims or hair-ribbons or shoulder-straps or all kinds of things!

Lace was also a very precious and complex form of decoration, and pieces of lace were so incredibly expensive and treasured that they were passed down as heirlooms. We're used to lace being white or maybe cream, but at certain points in France, blue lace could be found. And nothing is really stopping you from dyeing your lace, or using dyed threads to make it, other than fashion and convention.

Of course, places outside Europe (which is my speciality and has been my whole life) have their own fabric and decoration techniques, from the wax resist of batik to the special tie-dye from Japan called Shibori, to ikat, to the quilling of many North American Indigenous people (not to mention wampum beads, hand-carved of shells!). Everyone likes to decorate themselves and their clothing!

patheticprogrammingperson

@elodieunderglass, this seems right up your alley, at least in the latter parts.

elodieunderglass

Thank you so much!

tuesday-is-a-good-day

“there’s no platonic explanation for this”

Well there is actually, they’re friends. They’re friends and they love each other and it doesn’t mean any less than if they were dating and they loved each other. They’re friends and that means devotion and affection and loyalty and love, and there is no point in which that love reaches a level that immediately indicates that their relationship must be romantic.

#gabriella and sonya

e-seal-deactivated20210319

Necromancer that doesn’t know they’re a necromancer and thinks they’re just a really good emt

raimagnolia

That is the funniest thing i have ever read

ofgeography

the thing was, she wasn’t going to be able to pass the recertification exam, and she couldn’t figure out why. annabelle studied. she practiced. she pulled out every trick and shortcut she’d learned during her two years as an EMT and none of it worked. she just – she didn’t get it. it made no sense.

“wake up,” she urged the dummy, pressing her hands to the pulse points on its wrists. “come on. what the fuck.”

“yeah, i don’t think that asking nicely is going to do the trick,” hank said, his eyebrows raised. his helmet, the special one they’d decorated for him with craft supplies from michael’s when he’d gotten promoted to firestation chief, sat askew on his head. “i can see now why they didn’t pass you.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “it’s a psychological thing,” she said. “it’s like, you give the brain an instruction and it follows naturally. and the pulse-point thing always works. i don’t know why it’s not, like, in any of the books, but i swear to god it’s worked for me every time.”

it was true that annabelle had the best record on low body counts, which was good because she was the smallest person on the team not counting Georgie, who was a corgi. jake and lillian were always making fun of her for having been the shortest of their whole rookie class. but it hadn’t ever been a problem before; annabelle rarely had to carry anybody out, because she was good enough at getting them on their feet.

but none of that would matter if she couldn’t pass her stupid recertification exam, because they’d take her badge and she’d have to go be, like, a doctor or something.

hank blew out a long breath and sunk down to where she was kneeling on the station floor in full fire gear, giving CPR to the practice dummy, whom they called dierdre. there was a little light that went on when you’d saved its life. it had been a dull gray for an hour now.

“look, AB. i know you’re a good firefighter, and i know you know how to deliver CPR. just do it like you do it during an emergency. you’re overthinking it.”

“but this is what i do during an emergency!” annabelle cried, throwing her hands up. “i put my hands on their pulse points and i use psychological mumbo-jumbo and they just get up and walk!”

hank blinked. “…really,” he said, voice flat. “people who’ve been inhaling smoke for half an hour just … get up and walk.”

“the brain is an incredibly powerful organ,” said annabelle, shrugging. “look man, i don’t know, okay? but it works. i haven’t had to actually do CPR in like a year and a half.”

he gave her a long, quiet look and said, “well….huh,” before pushing himself back up onto his feet and frowning off into the distance. “keep practicing,” he said after a minute, and left her there.

-

hank switched her team.

“what the fuck, man,” she said, sliding into the truck next to him as the sirens went on. “i can’t get CPR on one fucking dummy and suddenly you don’t trust me to do my job without supervision?”

carl and bethany very carefully did not meet her eyes in the rearview from the backseat. bethany pulled a magazine from beneath the seat and said loudly, “look, carl, jennifer aniston and brad pitt are getting back together.”

“thank christ,” said carl. “i’ve been really worried about jen.”

hank gave annabelle the flat look that had gotten him promoted to firestation chief in the first place, the one that said i’m your dad and you don’t want to disappoint me. as always, annabelle wilted underneath it, sliding down in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. it was a difficult feat in full gear but she wanted him to know she was feeling sullen.

“i trust you completely,” hank told her, his voice a light scold. “i want to see you in action so i can help you figure out what’s going wrong with the dummies. sometimes it’s hard for the brain to accurately remember everything that happens during a crisis.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “i told you,” she said. “it’s just – it’s the same thing every time, I’m not like, blacking out.”

“great, then i’m about to learn a cool new trick,” hank said serenely, and pulled the truck out of the lot. annabelle kept her gaze focused out of the window, watching the city pass as carl and bethany talked loudly about which celebrities were dating which other celebrities and who wore what better. she tried to swallow down the nerves that tightened her throat. maybe the dummy was right. maybe she was doing something else and didn’t remember it. maybe the last two years had been a fluke and she had no business being a firefighter. maybe she was about to get fired.

there wasn’t a fire, though the alarm was going off. instead they found a bag of smoking popcorn and the collapsed heap of a forty-five year old bachelor type, down to just his boxers and a pair of slippers with llamas on them. he had no pulse.

hank held carl and bethany back, directing them to deal with the smoke from the popcorn; annabelle he pointed toward the resident with a jerk of his chin.

she sighed, kneeling by his side. she pressed her hands flat to his heart and then dragged them across his chest and down each arm, to his wrists. with her thumbs on his pulse point, she hissed, “let’s go, man. up and at ’em. you’re not meant to die in your underwear while cooking popcorn, come on.”

she held her breath for a few moments, conscious of hank’s eyes on her, and let out a long sigh of relief when she felt his pulse jump beneath her, watched his eyes flicker. “what the fuck?” he asked, voice a croak. “what happened?”

“you gotta eat more vegetables, bud,” annabelle told him, and looped his arm over her shoulders to help him get to his feet. she was so relieved she could have wept, but instead met hank’s eyes with a challenging glare. see? she thought. i told you. “let’s get you to the ambulance.”

-

“the bad news is that you have a lot of practicing to do if you want to pass your recert,” hank said without preamble, showing up at her apartment. she didn’t think she’d ever seen him in jeans before. it was weird. “the good news is i understand your problem now.”

annabelle stepped aside, beckoning him in. “what problem?” she demanded. “it worked! you saw it work. that’s the opposite of a problem.”

hank shrugged. he handed her a trifold that he’d clearly printed off at home. it said so you think you’re a necromancer. annabelle blinked down at it, and then up at hank, and then down at the trifold again. “i … don’t understand what’s happening here,” she told him honestly.

“i’m not in the community and they’re kind of cagey, so i can’t really tell you a lot,” hank told her, stilted and visibly uncomfortable. “but i have a cousin who is, and um, i just want you to know that this doesn’t change anything. you’re still who you’ve always been and you have my complete support. we’ll figure out how to get around the recert. maybe i’ll – i can put you on admin duty to give you time to study. we’ll say it’s because of an injury.”

“hank,” annabelle said, with some urgency. “hank, this flier says the word necromancer.”

“yes,” agreed hank, looking relieved. “oh, good, you’ve heard of it already. i thought i was going to have to have the whole your body is changing talk.”

annabelle shook her head. “no, i – hank. you know that … um, you know that necromancy isn’t real, right? people can’t bring other people back from the dead. that’s crazy.”

“annabelle, not four hours ago you instructed a dead man to stand up and he did.”

“okay, he wasn’t dead, obviously. he was almost dead, at best.”

“no. he was dead.”

“i felt his pulse! it was very faint!”

“you called his pulse. no one else would have felt it, because it wasn’t there except in response to you.”

“hank, what the fuck.”

he shrugged. “read the flier,” he instructed. “and bring dierdre home with you. you’re going to have to practice a lot if you want to get recertified, considering you haven’t one time had to use any of the skills you learned the first go around.”

he bussed her temple as he went by, letting himself out of her apartment with a friendly wave. annabelle looked down at the flier in her hand with a frown. when she unfolded it, the first page said, everyone’s necromancy journey is different, but most people discover their gift by accident. have you ever brought a pet back to life? touched an elderly relatives hand and seen some of the color flood back into their face? or perhaps, more subtly, been able to keep cut flowers alive long past their purchase date?

annabelle looked at her kitchen table. she’d had the same vase of tulips on it since she moved in, three years ago. it was true they periodically started to wilt, but she usually just changed their water and they were fine, popping back up one after the other as she slid them into the fresh vase.

“well shit,” annabelle said, letting the flier fall from her hands.

#writing

writing-prompt-s

you and your best friend are superheroes who studied under the same master. He’s one of the strongest while you’re one of the weakest. When you ask him how, he confusingly asks you “Didn’t you take of the restrictor bands master gave us?”

sacredabyssrenegade

But imagine if they hadn't and start crying because it's the only thing they have linked to their master after the master died a tragic death, so they refuse to take them off and just becomes a greater hero in despite of it.

#story

doyoulikethissong-poll

Best liked song after artist reveals 801-810

Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song

Olivia Rodrigo - Drop Dead

Billy Idol - White Wedding

Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé - Telephone

Bloodywood - Machi Bhasad

Anesti Danelis - I'm So Tired

Take That - The Flood

Mora Sti Fotia - To Pehnidi

Nomadi - Toccami Il Cuore

Tristam & Braken - Flight

Voting ended onMay 31

What song did you personally like the best out of this round? Did a song make an impact right away or did it require the full version? Did the artist reveal change your opinion for better or for worse? Tell me in a reblog! :D

(note: this is not a popularity contest or to vote for a favourite artist out of loyalty 💖 it's still about the song.)

Give the songs a re-listen to refresh your memory!

801 here 802 here 803 here 804 here 805 here 806 here 807 here 808 here 809 here 810 here

or listen to a quick recap here:

Visit Original Link

#okay I am going with White Wedding but really it's a tie with Toccami Il Cuore #I had to go based on which I'd rather listen to right now

doyoulikethissong-poll

Do you like this song? #820

Yes I like it, I already know it

Yes I like it, first time listening

No I don't like it, I already know it

No I don't like it, first time listening

Voting ended onMay 31

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖

✨ Artists and titles will be revealed with the full song after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update!

Visit Original Link

⚠️➡️ Yes, spoilers includes posting the lyrics. Please don't spoil. There are other ways to have fun with the post if you reblog it, maybe be sneaky/witty about it with obscure references. Have fun while following the rules! 😄💖 Fandom blogs/communities are welcome to reblog, but please keep that as far as it goes with spoilers!

#I really did not know a lot from this band until recently #gotten a crash course from a local station my husband and I started listening to recently #I think I've liked everything I've heard!

The Best Grandma Could Give Her

@flashfictionfridayofficial Most of my fics get finished after the deadline lately and I don't always think they're worth posting anyway, but I like this one!

“Dude, is there something you want to tell the rest of us?”

“Hm?” said Kaitlyn, with a mouth full of roasted potatoes.

Henry pointed at her hand.

“Oh!” Kaitlyn laughed, tilting her hand to look at the ring on her finger. “It’s not from a guy. It only fits right on this finger. It’s from Grandma. She left us all something—all the grandkids—and Dad gave them out to us at her house Wednesday night. This was mine.”

Miles, who loved lists, supplied the rest of them: “I got her favorite coffee mug, from a lodge she stayed at one time. Our other cousins got this jacket she made from scratch and a little painting of the ocean she bought from the guy who was painting them. And Jess got a notebook.”

“Jess?”

“Yeah, you’d think it would go to me, wouldn’t you? Dad said it was for Jess.”

Jess sighed.

Henry turned to her. “Was there something else you wanted?”

“No, it just makes no sense why she left me a notebook.”

“Was there something in the notebook?” Isaac spoke up.

Jess gave a frustrated shake of her head. “Just an address.”

“Just an address?” Isaac repeated, eyebrows up.

“That’s what I said.”

Kaitlyn sighed, loudly and pointedly. “If you two are going to do this, I am going to leave. Your grandmother just died—” She directed that at Jess, and then the equivalent at Isaac—“our grandma just died. Please try to get along.”

“Let’s go get some cookies,” said Miles, catching Kaitlyn’s eye. She hopped up and went. Henry followed, taking his plate to throw out.

“I’m not starting this,” Jess informed Isaac, in a carefully tolerant tone. “You’re the one that’s starting it. All that’s in the notebook is an address. I checked.”

“You haven’t figured out what the address is?”

“No. Don’t say that like you know what it is.”

“It didn’t take much to figure it out.”

“Like it’s so obvious? She wasn’t your grandma.”

“Okay, but if Bubbe”—who was both Isaac’s and Jess’s grandma—“left me a notebook even though the last time I used a notebook was in school when I had to, and there was something in the notebook, I’d assume she left it for me because of the thing in the notebook. It wasn’t her address, was it?”

“No.”

“So it was an address she wanted to give you. Probably in a way that nobody else would know about it. Is there something she’d want to tell you without anybody else knowing about it?”

Jess stared at him.

Isaac stared back, lowering his voice. “There is.”

Jess took a couple of breaths. She glanced over to see if their siblings were coming back, but they were over by the cookie table talking to Pearl, one of Grandma’s best friends. “My grandpa,” she said.

“Your grandpa died—Oh.” Isaac glanced over at the siblings too. “Your grandpa, the one you’re actually descended from.”

Jess nodded. “Her first husband.”

“If he was a husband.”

Jess started to argue with that. She stopped. “Yeah,” she admitted, “I guess you’re right. I always thought they were married but I’m not actually sure about that.”

“So,” said Isaac.

“What?”

“What am I supposed to do with the address?”

The ‘it’s obvious’ note returned to Isaac’s voice. “Go there?” At Jess’s reaction, he softened his tone a little. “Or if you don’t want to go there, write a letter.”

“He might not still be there. It’s like decades later. I’m not asking a random person ‘Are you my grandpa?’”

“It’s not decades later. She just left you the notebook. Presumably she made that decision recently. She was still all there mentally, right?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t know she was dying. It kind of came out of nowhere.”

“But she knew she was old, and something could come out of nowhere. She wouldn’t have made the plan of ‘what to leave my grandkids’ more than, what, ten years ago? Maybe? And she could have changed what she was leaving you at any time. Was she the kind of person who wouldn’t check up on something like that?”

Jess looked down at the table, pressing her lips together.

“If you don’t want to do anything with it, that’s up to you. But it’s what she left you. If the last thing Bubbe left me was a clue to something I’d wanted to know for years—”

“Okay, okay, okay.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Jess looked up. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah. Your grandma wanted you to know. And I think you want to know. And now I want to know. If you wait too long, you will be getting into ‘Now it’s been years and he might not be—”

“When do you want to do it?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, then added quickly but not too harshly, “so you don’t chicken out.”

Jess swallowed. “Fair. Okay. Tomorrow.”

#my writing

laurasimonsdaughter

Janet: Yeah, so I went to pick roses in the woods and was seduced by a changeling fairy knight and he got me pregnant, but I told him I sure as hell wasn’t having his baby without him around to care for it. So I stole him from the Fairy Queen and married him.

Margaret: I wandered into faerie woods too! Ended up bespelled by an elf lord and had seven children with him. But eventually the oldest freed me from my trance, so I ran back home with them and had my father burn the woodland down.

Isabel: Good on you! I was charmed away from home by an elf knight blowing on his horn, but he tried to kill me. So I tricked him and stabbed him to death with his own dagger.

Janet: …so Tam Lin and me are still looking for godparents for our second and third, how about it?

#story

doyoulikethissong-poll

Best liked song Runners-Up 701-800

Madness - Our House

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe

Shaggy featuring RikRok - It Wasn't Me

Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Livin' In The Fridge

Eminem - 8 Mile - Lose Yourself

Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby

Rag'n'Bone Man - Human

TLC - No Scrubs

Voting ended onMay 29

These are the songs that got into second place of your choice in the Showdown polls for the seventh round of a hundred songs.

What song did you personally like the best? Did a song make an impact right away or did it require the full version? Did the artist reveal change your opinion of the song itself for better or for worse? Tell me in a reblog!

(note: this is not a popularity contest or to vote for a favourite artist out of loyalty 💖 it's still about the song.)

Give the songs a re-listen to refresh your memory! 01 here 02 here 03 here 04 here 05 here 06 here 07 here 08 here 09 here 10 here

or listen to a quick recap here:

Visit Original Link

#I swear 9 days out of 10 it would be Human #but apparently today is the 10% and I'm going with Kiss Me

lizardperson

dressing up

[on ao3]

fandom: original work (ocverse - warcrimes au) rating: m wc: 764 prompt: #fff356 into the mirror for @flashfictionfridayofficial

---

"Adelaide." Helena clears her throat awkwardly. "I have a favor to ask."

Getting up from behind her desk, Adelaide smiles at her. "Sure, what is it?"

She takes a deep breath. "That fundraising banquet next week… I still think it is a massive waste of time, but Nathaniel has made it very clear that he expects me to 'dress up'. In fact, he insists." And Helena hates it. It's not like she dresses like a slob or anything, but apparently, trading her lab coat for a simple blazer, like she would on that occasion, isn't 'fancy' enough. And apparently, there will be a lot of important people who care about fancy. This is ridiculous; she's a scientist, not a decorative mannequin. "Unfortunately, fashion isn't exactly my forte. So I was wondering if you could maybe give me some pointers."

#writing #hey someone else doing a realistic story for a prompt that seems made for supernatural! I do that sometimes #I definitely relate to helena's predicament #though I have a set fashion consultant #(though it sounds like now Helena does too?)

drowning-in-cacophony

glass mistakes

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial Prompt 356: Into The Mirror

[Summary: If her other-self could trick a way free, then she can find the way too]

Well. This was a mistake.

The frosted glass feels cold to put her fingertips against, so she flinches back and grits her teeth, though the latter is mostly for the irritation. Not quite rage – that’ll come later, if she doesn’t manage to fix this fast enough – but it’s enough to make a muscle jump in the side of her face. In the hallway behind her: a winding path that’d lead her into a world horribly familiar and not quite, there’s a shuffling, a crinkling of crystal.

“Don’t say you warned me.” She pre-empts him.

“You shouldn’t stay at the surface,” he says instead, a weary sigh. “You’re not going to get back out again.”

“So you say.” If her other-self could find a way free, enough to work those tricks and swap their places, then she can find the way too. First thing she’s doing is demonstrating why crystal isn’t usually the best material to make a person out of.

Her breath, as if to cement the point, the differences between them, leaves a trace on this side of the mirror. Just for a second before the cold steals the warmth away.

“You won’t.”

“Is it impossible to leave from this way?” She already knows the answer, with the swap. Her pesky little mirror-self slipped out, wove a tale; he spoke to her through the glass, his warnings she’d debated and failed to take proper heed of. Another irritation, future rage. If she’d been a little quicker to accept then she’d have been quicker in raising her guard.

“It’s impossible for you. Think about it this way: if you got free, would you leave this mirror traversable?”

Shit. She’s got to think about that. The fact that anything she would do might be happening. Reflections not only of form but mind; all things considered, the person out in the real world masquerading as her is her. A person of crystal but her. If she wants to beat this, she has to think differently.

She turns from the glass, the hallway that stretches out beyond it, her hallway. Dusty and creepy and there’s a reason she’s never come down it before and now she’s discovered the reason she never should have made the exception. Her eyes narrow, pin into his shabby shoulders. No one looks too energetic on this side. She’s trying not to read into that.

“This can’t be the only way out.”

The dark – because it’s dimmer here too, an exhausted breath of a candle compared to the bright shine she’s used to, another thing not to read into – keeps his eyes shrouded, hidden. The perfect place for secrets to hide. He’d warned her before with plenty of knowledge. He’s got to know something more, she can tell it. After all, he’d kept way away from her mirror-self, as if he knew that would put him at risk, but he’s kept plenty close to her.

Meaning: she can get him to help her.

“It’s only going to depress you, staying there,” he says, trying to return to an earlier argument. Her resolve strengthens; she eyes the hallway behind him. She doesn’t really want to leave the mirror. To delve deeper into this world feels like a mistake, her instincts rousing and shaking their heads. Looking at the creepy hallway from her own world keeps her attached, safe in that toxic way. It’s real, if she’s got her eyes on it. However, getting free completely is more important. She’ll just have to brace her shoulders. Either way it’s this: risk going in deeper or waste away peering out of a mirror.

“You’re going to show me the other options,” she tries to command. “I know there are ones. It’s all over your face.”

“My face is in the shadow and is notoriously hard to read.”

“And yet.” She raises an eyebrow she’s unsure if he can see with all the dimness. Still, it’ll translate in her voice. A quiet confidence, enough to sway him. If she doesn’t flinch, he’ll bow. It’s how she’s done everything else difficult she’s had to do in her life. It’ll be how her mirror-self is getting by, reshaping to a life that’s not quite her own.

He sighs. A long rattling sound, like wind through a badly made wind chime. She doesn’t think it sounds very natural even considering; combining it with the shabbiness, the darkness, the hunger in which her mirror-self had snatched this chance, she’s got another thing not to read into.

“There’s no point in trying,” he says, but he’s starting to move. Down the hallway. Guiding her.

“No harm in showing then,” she replies and forces her reluctant feet to follow him. She can’t help but glance behind her. To the mirror, the narrow rectangle quietly hanging behind her, a small spill of light trickling in from her rightful world. Her skin shudders to leave it behind; I’ll be back, she promises. Not to this mirror, but to her world.

She doesn’t let mistakes stay unchallenged for long.

#ooh so interesting #writing

doyoulikethissong-poll

Do you like this song? #812

Yes I like it, I already know it

Yes I like it, first time listening

No I don't like it, I already know it

No I don't like it, first time listening

Voting ended onMay 26

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖

✨ Artists and titles will be revealed with the full song after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update!

⚠️➡️ Yes, spoilers includes posting the lyrics. Please don't spoil. There are other ways to have fun with the post if you reblog it, maybe be sneaky/witty about it with obscure references. Have fun while following the rules! 😄💖 Fandom blogs/communities are welcome to reblog, but please keep that as far as it goes with spoilers!

#oh yeah

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