just a telephone wire and a railroad track

where I keep my virtual bric-à-brac / ao3 / original fic / ko-fi 18+ content

[ghostdrinkssoup]

tumblr is so funny it’s just scrapbooking for your hyperfixations. like yeah here’s a gifset that’s here for no reason other than the fact that I think it’s Pretty. here’s hugh dancy for the same reason. here’s me rambling about the thing that’s been itching my brain for months. here’s me giggling in the corner. here’s unadulterated mental illness

[quotespile]

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

[segamascott]

[veliseraptor]

If fiction is only a commodity, then a writer is a mere content producer, or as McGurl puts it, a "servant" and a "service provider" while the reader is a "consumer." If a writer is a service working - a corporate employee/contractor - it naturally follows that a work of fiction is a service and is judged on whether it fulfills that service accordingly. [...] There's a subtle but key difference between being socially permitted to have your own opinion about whether something was good - whether it met your version of the implicit contract - and the decision that you are "owed" customer satisfaction in a literal, actionable sense. If you read a book or saw a movie and you didn't like it, you're allowed to say so: but it's not a mattress, and you don't get your money back. But on the other hand, if a novel or film or TV show isn't art, only more stuff you bought, then the writer does owe you, as does the corporation who sold you that product, from whom you can demand everything you want.

from Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality by Lyta Gold

[katebeckets]

idiots (affectionate)・[48/?] ⤷ 4.02 — “Home”

[exhaled-spirals]

« In all imaginative writing sympathy for the subject is necessary not because it is the politically correct or morally decent posture to adopt but because an absence of sympathy shuts down the mind: engagement fails, the flow of association dries up, and the work narrows. What I mean by sympathy is simply that level of empathic understanding that endows the subject with dimension. The empathy that allows us, the readers, to see the "other" as the other might see him or herself is the empathy that provides movement in the writing.

When someone writes a Mommie Dearest memoir - where the narrator is presented as an innocent and the subject as a monster - the work fails because the situation remains static. For the drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent. Above all, it is the narrator who must complicate in order that the subject be given life. »

― Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

[trixeclipse]

Rocky made the xenonite suit because Grace needed proper hugs ❤️‍🩹

[madmonksandmaenads]

I wish I could make white people(and not just white Americans) understand how diverse the pre-columbian Americas were. The history, religion, culture, politics was at least as complex as Europe's. There was the full gamut of religions, from monotheists to animists to ancestral religions. There were city building empires, village farmers, nomadic traders, and so many other ways to live. This is all just based on what we know, the fragments left behind and the stories of survivors of an apocalyptic plague. All this before the most extended campaign of genocide in history was waged in an attempt to wipe out those survivors.

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

Do you understand how much poorer our whole species is because of it? Can you imagine where art, religion, and science would be if we still had these vast bodies of knowledge? The stain of the colonial project will never be fully washed clean. We owe more than just the land to those we stole from. We owe them a whole future, a future that could have been brighter for all of us. If only greed and fear weren't allowed to rule this land.

[sophsun1]

The Birdcage (1996) dir. Mike Nichols

[smalllfieldmouse]

i dont care if Monday's lit. Tuesday Wednesday touch my clit. Thursday i don't give a shit. it's Friday I'm in love

[beggars-opera]

The old school lack of transparency on tumblr is amazing because you assume the people you follow must all be equivalent to you and then you see someone write “I brought my youngest to college today” and someone else write “my mom wouldn’t let me listen to Ariana Grande when I was a kid” and then your head explodes

[formerlyanon]

and we need that! keeps us humble. 

[dabouse]

Then I'm just like WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE AN ADULT

[tomboy014]

It goes the other way, too, because WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE A CHILD?!!

[dabouse]

I'm 16, that's like, barely a child

[tomboy014]

I'm in my 30s. You are baby

[digitaldiscipline]

I'm older than both of you in a trenchcoat.

[kabretoss]

honestly one of the best things we can do for ourselves is realize that people of different ages than us can still be the same kind of person as us. it's humbling and it gives everyone involved a sense of continuity, and it busts those stupid generational stereotypes media is so fond of.

[wolfythewitch]

First | Prev | Part 10

Reminder: brackets [ ] mean internal monologue/thoughts

[raviolireptile]

Drawings of scenes from the Astrobiology Immersion Program by startingatmidnight on Ao3 cause I love this fic so much

[andthepeople]

the main reason grace and rocky are sooooooooooo everything to me and to each other is because like, are they soulmates? yes. are they best friends? of course. are they doing nerd telepathy? absolutely. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!! imagine for a moment that you could never again consult a human being on anything, ever. anything that happens to you medically mentally emotionally etc you have to figure out for yourself. you have textbooks and resources you can consult but if you're delirious with pain or fever or panic you cannot reach out to anyone who knows what it is like to be a human who can help you. no one can ever tell you yes i have experienced that too. the closest thing grace has to another human being is his rock spider best friend, and he taught rocky everything he knows about being human. how terrifying must that be!! how exhausting and isolating!! and how utterly moved and relieved and floored must grace be each and every time rocky observes something about the human animal that grace didn't teach him, or deliberately learns something from mary, or picks up some mannerism unconsciously despite grace not intending to pass it along. like, i am the only human on this whole planet, there is no one here with whom i have shared bodily or emotional experience, but that's okay because you loved me enough that you became half-human too. so i wouldn't be alone. so i would have help. rocky is all of earth for grace and he became that willingly and he doesn't regret it for a second. that's a level of devotion and care and codependency you just don't see every day

[furryprovocateur]

[squeakitties]

following weird horny furries who are into shit like pooltoys and transformation and stuff is enrichment. the vitamins and minerals of posting

[squeakitties]

[twinkenjoyer-deactivated2023083]

once you get over your ass and realise you will never get some people and that’s ok you are basically immune to right wing fearmongering. otherkin? none of my fucking business

[stevishabitat]

[mandate-transgenderism]

I must not fall victim to disgust. Disgust is the heart-killer. Disgust is the little-death that brings total apathy. I will face my disgust. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the disgust has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[specialagentartemis]

Grace and Rocky, giving a tour of the Hail Mary to fascinated Eridian scientists and diplomats.

Pointing at things and explaining what they are and how the ship works, lots of awed and appreciative noises are made.

Until one of the visiting Eridians points out a specific item. “And that?”

It’s a strange, circular thing, a xenonite disk mounted upright on some sort of pivot so it can spin freely, but around the edges it has… spokes? Pegs? Sticking out of it, that hit against a stiff flap that would slow down the spinning.

It is also separated into sections decorated with crude etchings of a human and an Eridian.

“Ah,” Grace says.

“That,” Rocky says.

“That’s. Um.” Grace seems somewhat embarrassed. “That’s the sacrifice wheel.”

The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”

“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”

“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”

“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.

“Which made sense.”

“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”

“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”

Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”

“What about the wheel?”

Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.

It lands on Rocky again.

He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.

“Rocky!”

“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.

“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“

“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”

“But you WOULD have!”

“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”

“I would not! I would have done fine!”

(The Eridian scientists and diplomats are still here watching this btw. Slowly dawning on them that 1) these two are extremely not normal about each other 2) if Erid ever does another space mission they NEED to send a therapist aboard because this is what happens when they don’t)