(image id in alt, i hope!)
…whatever powers she may possess (@fionacreates):
…who feels things just as she should (@papaartistakabettyrose):
…whether she be the rescuer or the rescued (@vetyr):
…with hair that’s beautiful, everywhere (@stoffbergart):
…whatever journey she may be on (@jeniferprince):
…however many underestimate her (@refrigerator-art):
…however she comes to be herself (@thetranspositivitycafe):
…with or without a cape (@asknicorobean):
…whether she be a goddess of the waning moon (@painted-maypole):
…or a goddess of the waning year (@samticore):
…who cares for her family, whatever shape that takes (@druidart):
…who dreams (@strijkdesign):
Have a good, safe International Women’s Day. You deserve it all.
(Yes, this is a response to a post going around how maybe it’s okay if adults are in fandom as long as they understand that fandom is for ickle kiddie-boos and walk on eggshells. Um, no. Back in my day, we kicked y’all off our yahoogroups so we could post adult material, and rigorously didn’t post adult material if the list allowed you.)
So, back in the day, several of the authors of an LJ community that posted NSFW fic met up and had a group photo, which they posted. Apparently, some of the 18 year olds said, “Ewwwwwww! They’re all, like, oooooollllld!”
There’s actually a good reason for that.
Writing is part being good with words and part being good at turning your life experiences into something that other people want to read. Remember my previous rant about how you can’t assume a mystery writer is a homicidal maniac, and you can’t assume that a reader who likes a character has the same personal flaws as that character? There’s a reason people assume these things about authors.
See, if you’ve never fallen in love, you might think romance is when the other person brings you a dozen roses and a box of chocolates. And that’s fine! That’s romantic, too! But if you have fallen in love, you might remember the time that you woke up and went to go to class and found a bunch of wildflowers and a plastic ring from a bubblegum machine tucked under your windshield wiper. And you might remember the half touched, half about to burst out laughing expression on your sweetie’s face when you showed up to class wearing that tacky plastic ring. You might think that love is thinking the other person is the best-looking person in the world, or that love is wanting to spend your life with someone else. That’s love, too! Well, at least the second one is (the first is probably just infatuation). But if you’ve been in love before you’ll know that love is also hurting all over because your sweetie’s abusive parent died and they’re unexpectedly destroyed over it. The latter is worth a million flowery declarations.
Now, I’m not saying that no one under 30 can write. Some young people have had very full lives. And some young people have a natural talent for extrapolating from their own feelings. Virgins can write convincingly about sex, even. But the more life experience you have, the easier it is to extrapolate, and the easier it is to come up with the specific details that make things feel real and true.
If you want to become a better writer, the best things you can do are write a lot, share what you write, and live a full life. And remember, before you say adults should be banished from fandom: your favorite author is probably over 30.
I just. my heart is so sad for Ukraine. If I have any Ukrainian followers reading this, I really hope you and your loved ones are safe and well and that everything is resolved with minimal bloodshed.
Sorry to break in with this on a very much Sherlock-only kind of blog- I promise not to make a regular thing of this, but this is something that’s happened TWICE now.
This is Beyli. He’s a two-month old foal and he’s adorable. He belongs to a friend of the family.
So adorable, in fact, that a member of the public spent a nice afternoon feeding him. You feed the ducks and that’s ok. right? It’s a nice thing to do.
They fed him turnip. He choked and gave himself a stomachache as a result.
The problem is that horses can’t really burp and horses can’t vomit. Their digestive systems are fine-tuned and when they go wrong, they go really wrong. Colic in horses is difficult to treat and in Beyli’s case, like many others, proved to be insurmountable. With pain medicine not working, after 4 hours of doing their best with no improvement, the vet called time on his suffering rather than let him go on to a very slow and painful end.
A horse needlessly suffered and died because someone fed him the wrong thing. They weren’t necessarily malicious, they were just hugely ignorant. And worse, they were hugely entitled. There were already signs asking people not to feed the animals. As I said, this has now happened TWICE to the same family, and they’re by no means alone.
PLEASE Don’t feed horses that don’t belong to you.
Horses can have disorders, diabetes, allergies and dietry requirements and you have NO IDEA if what you’re giving them is acceptable or not. Even ‘safe’ things like carrot and apple could be ‘wrong’ for this particular horse. Grass clippings? Not okay. Grain? Not okay for a horse that hasn’t been regularly eating it.
Don’t assume. i have seen walkers pull up random plants and offer them over the fence INCLUDING TOXIC, DEADLY weeds like ragwort. I’ve seen horses offered dog-biscuits and bread. I’ve heard of horses being regularly fed by strangers thinking they were being under-fed, when the horse in question was on a vet-given diet to control weight and other conditions.
Don’t feed horses that don’t belong to you even little treats and things like sugar cubes because it gives them bad manners. They start biting and harassing people. It’s bad for their teeth and too much sugar is terrible for them.
In some places if the owner has liability insurance, if you can be identified, YOU will be legally responsible for the vet’s bills. And if you’re thinking ‘well, they’d never identify me’, then that’s besides the point.
Please. You wouldn’t feed someone’s dog without asking, I hope. You definitely wouldn’t feed someone else’s child.
TL;DR: Don’t feed other people’s horses. You can make them SERIOUSLY ill. Treat animals in fields like animals at the zoo: you’re welcome to look, but don’t meddle with their care.
PLEASE DON’T FEED OTHER PEOPLE’S HORSES.
reblog for a soup blessing in 2022
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
we seriously need to bring back the concept of “despite its flaws i still enjoy it” instead of ‘cancelling’ every fuckin thing in sight
https://t.co/tQNM37KsB0
<3
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
Have a cookie today! 🍪
A historical moment
we seriously need to bring back the concept of “despite its flaws i still enjoy it” instead of ‘cancelling’ every fuckin thing in sight
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) dir. Brian Henson
chag chanukah sameach let's get lit 🕎
you punch nazis!
(requested by anonymous)
Happy November!
HAPPY OCTOBER 3RD EVERYONE GO BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN AS A SYMBOL OF YOUR RESOLVE
When you realize Inktober starts in like 3 days and haven’t mentally prepared
Hey, so they’re making a Netflix Harry Potter.
With that in mind, we’re all gonna remember that JKR is a terf who has literally been cited by legislators engaged in legislation that actively harms trans people, and we’re not gonna give her any more money.
That means not streaming the new show on Netflix, because regardless of how much influence she has on the production, she gets paid for it.
We’re gonna make the show flop. We’re gonna show Warner Brothers that we don’t forget (of course, how would we forget, it isn’t as if she’s stopped), and that their business association with terfs is no longer profitable.
It is NOT like Lovecraft, because Lovecraft is very dead and his works are in the public domain. By consuming Lovecraft media, you are not giving any money to old Howard.
And don’t forget to cleanse yourself.
"just not seeing enough people talking about carl clemons-hopkins, the first out nonbinary actor to be nominated for an emmy, and the nonbinary flag gown they wore last night"
@mattxiv
I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts.
May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.
I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.
if you are seeing this, you are going to prosper. you are experiencing a new part of your life where you will bloom into a better version of yourself and flourish. abundance is coming your way; love is coming your way; peace and clarity are coming your way. you have nothing to fear and even less to worry about. the darkness around you has been the soil and you are now getting ready to sprout. you are going to prosper