sometimes-southern US dweller. in my second decade of fandom. I mostly read fic and write long reviews on AO3. multifandom, but currently (and always & forever) entranced by Victoria Goddard's Hands of the Emperor. always down to talk headcanons, sacred text analysis, or nerdy stuff. she/her.
797 posts
Featherofeeling - I Guess I Go Here Now - Tumblr Blog
amazing. This is everything. I've sort of accidentally started to discover a tiny bit of this by just…tending to my little garden bed where perennials come up (thank you, precious dwellers!) and noticing what they're going to be and occasionally moving them places. I'm at the very, very beginning, but I have sweet smelling lavender that the bees love and some birds have started coming to hang out in my little 2 x 6' area and now there are purple and yellow and light and bright blue flowers on tall stalks. It's my favorite place. Even better since I dared to hang a Pride flag!
anyway, this post is also a really fucking good metaphor for human organizations.
Imagine if baking bread was a skill any person living independently in their own house needed to have at least a passing familiarity with, so there were endless books, blogs and websites about how to bake bread, but none of them seemed to contain the most basic facts about how bread actually works.
You would go online and find questions like "Help, I put my bread in the oven, and it GOT BIGGER!" and instead of saying anything about bread naturally rises when you put yeast in it, the results would be advertising some kind of $970 device that punches the bread while it's baking so it doesn't rise.
Even the most reliable, factually grounded sources available would have only the barest scraps of information on the particularities of ingredients, such as how different types of flour differ and produce different results, or how yeast affects the flavor profile of bread. Rice flour, barley flour, potato flour and amaranth flour would be just as common as wheat flour, but finding sources that didn't treat them as functionally identical would be near impossible. At the same time, websites and books would list specific brands of flour in bread recipes, often without specifying anything else.
An unreasonable amount of people would be hellbent on doing something like baking a full-sized loaf of bread in under 3 minutes, and would regularly bake bread to charred cinders at 700 degrees in an attempt to accomplish this, but instead of gently telling people that their goal is not realistic, books claiming to be general resources would be framed entirely around the goal of baking bread as fast as possible, with entire chapters devoted to making the charred bread taste like it isn't charred.
Anyway, this is what landscaping is like.
My uncle got treed by a hippo once. Spent all night up the tree. Person he was with was injured. I always thought that maybe the hippo could...roll on him? Try to ram them? Maybe it's actually supposed to be a rhino, the one with the horns?
nope. makes so much more sense now that I am seeing these teeth. I am retroactively a bit terrified.
You ever think about how weird hippos are ecologically speaking?
There's literally no other megafauna on earth that spends the entire day lounging around in water, mostly just socializing, only to come onto land to feed at night.
I remember when I used to do education programs on hippos, most people assumed they ate aquatic plants, and that that's the whole reason they were in water. Meanwhile, hippos are basically just giant nocturnal cows that eat only grass.
As always, on this, the anniversary of his passing, GNU Terry Pratchett
"...as the poet says, we must praise the mutilated world we're all working the graveyard shift might as well sing along."
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
by Adam Zagajewski tr. Clare Cavanagh
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the grey feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
some say the goat will end in fire some say in ice from what I've read on the Wikipedia page of past Goat-destroying efforts, I'm pretty sure none of us were reckoning on absolute swarms of hungry birds but birds are also great and will suffice
there is no magic "the new generation will be more progressive as the old one dies" btw history has only had things get better because of people who didn't act like it was inevitable and acted like things needed to get better here and now and that will always be true
sometimes in knitting you just have to go 'nobody but me will notice this mistake' and keep going
now I really want to see this FBI-imagined remake of it's a wonderful life portraying the banker. what a stirring tale of following the rules and "protecting funds put in his care by private individuals" that would be
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) • JIMMY STEWART as George Bailey and LIONEL BARRYMORE as Mr. Potter
Hi, it’s me, the SAG-AFTRA strike captain and fannish person since forever with today’s update from Day 116 of the SAG-AFTRA strike against AMPTP for a fair deal in our film/tv contracts.
I’m pretty sure I saw a few of you on our picket line today (non-union folk who were clearly at a first picket) and I’m so hyped you came! I bet some of you were at other sites too. I told folks about the level of Tumblr enthusiasm (I also had to explain Tumblr) and they got really excited. The morale boost matters!
Update and info for people who want to join us at pickets below the pics.
Right now, it’s Monday November 6, 2023 in the early evening. We are waiting for news from the union (which usually works on PST and often comes in pretty late for NYC people like), but we have every reasons to believe we will be back on the picket line tomorrow as the AMPTP’s offer likely still isn’t where we need it to be on AI and streaming residuals (when I have details, I will post details).
But as we wait for official word from the negotiating committee, we must be prepared to continue to flood the lines. The way the WGA got its exceptional deal was making it clear they would walk the line as long as they had to. We need to send the same message. to the AMPTP, to the media, to our negotiating committee, and to our membership, industry, and union siblings.
Every person on the line helps. If you come at the beginning of pickets (around 9:30am) our line is usually small; if you come later (around 11am) it’s usually a giant dance party. We appreciate you whenever you show up!
If you have questions, I will try to keep an eye on this — feel free to ask in replies, reblogs, or in asks or messages to me.
The content below repeats the information I have put in previous posts for folks who may be joining a picket for the first time.
If you are in NYC or LA, we need you to find five minutes (or more) of your day and come out an join us tomorrow. If you are a fan or a consumer who has been eager for a way to help, this is the moment. If you can get to a picket line, please come.
Picketing is hard work, but joining a picket for whatever time you have to give us is easy.
When you show up at a picket location (there’s a link to find picket locations attached to this post), you’ll see a SAG-AFTRA tent. You should go there and check in.
If you’re in the union, they’ll ask for your membership card. If you’re not, they’ll either have a book for you to enter your info in by hand or a QR code for you to scan to fill out a brief online form.
They’ll hand you a sign, offer you shirts/hats/pins/stickers (all free and all dependent on what got sent to that site that day), and point out other free stuff they have that you might need — like water, snacks, and ear plugs (it gets loud).
After that, you’ll join us on the line. You can chant if you want. You can also bring noisemakers if you want. Sometimes we have dance breaks. At my site we also pause for historical facts about labor history, and have a union song singalong with live music most days.
Take a rest when you need to rest. Stay as long or as short as you want. When you leave, just turn in your sign and take off. No explanations needed.
No one is gonna quiz you on your time commitment, your actorly history, or anything else. Sometimes people are chatty, sometimes people are focused on the task. Both are okay.
Accessibility has been learn-as-we-go and imperfect. That said, we regularly have wheelchair and other mobility aid users and blind and low-vision people at our pickets. We also have ASL interpreters available at least some of the time. You are welcome, and we will make it work.
If you wanna bring your kids, bring your kids. If you wanna bring you dog/cat/bird/lizard — totally chill if appropriately leashed/contained and we will put SAG shirts on your pet if your your pet wants a shirt and we have appropriate sizes.
Picket schedule and locations for week of November 6 available at this link: https://www.sagaftrastrike.org/picket-schedule-locations (Los Angeles and New York always have stuff scheduled. Other locations are less frequent).
about to drop literally the sickest insider knowledge you will ever receive pls use it responsibly:
are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?
okay, then bring it up to a librarian
seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen
do you want a cosplay contest? a video game tournament? a free escape room? bring it up to the library. it's not a burden or an annoyance at all. it'll be like christmas came early for us
I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL
“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”
...huh.
This is the equivalent post to the ‘people who write hurt/comfort think they need outrageous justifications to take a nap’ post.
this post hasn't left my mind since i've first saw it
Since this took me a while to get:
“JESUS: Let It Snow”
However, it reads as “Jesus: Le Tits Now” or “Jesus: Tits Lenov.”
MY THEORY: the parents/grandparents who live there put up the JESUS on the roof. Some mischief-loving Youth was like 😇 grandpa, can I please put up a festive decoration of my very own in the windows? 😇😇 and grandpa was like SURE and this 13-year-old led their grandpa outside, beaming, and pointed at the windows, and either
a) grandpa was like wow, son, that’s a beautiful let it snow, thank you or
b) grandpa was like “heh, you magnificent gremlin, we’re leaving this” 😇
ID <tweet from Victoria Goddard with a book cover. It says At the Feet of the Sun and has a whale in the stars. The tweet says 'Guess what?! The 21st starts at midnight tonight! Still time to sneak in a preorder for 12:01 EST delivery of your e-book! (Print will be coming for the 1st) links below! > End ID
Hey everyone! The sequel to The Hands of the Emperor, At the Feet of the Sun, is released tomorrow! All fans of the Nine Worlds, Kip, HR, and The Household, rejoice!
Here's the pre-order (and I suppose tomorrow, the regular order link)
Warning: book may contain feelings, asexual adults, middle aged and older protagonists, cultural connection, the unmaking of empires and other unjust institutions and a deep and abiding love for the characters.
We have Marisa Mell to thank for the most iconic scene in sapphic cinema history <3
Coming back to this as I read At The Feet of the Sun, aaaaaah.
new at the feet of the sun chapter just dropped, i am losing my entire mind thanks!!!!
Au where Goncharov and Andrey survive everything, grow old together and sit on a street all day somewhere in the south of Europe
“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my life is that nice people can fuck each other up in monstrous ways. people can be bone deep kind and loving and self reflective and still lash out under pressure. people can be earnestly neighbourly and charitable and hospitable and generous and still find themselves in situations where they become selfish. people can be well meaning and easygoing and gregarious and hold deep seated opinions that turn them into vicious little bullies under the right conditions. nobody is just one thing, and nobody stays one way. every person is a kaleidoscope and they will surprise you. you will surprise yourself. it's not a warning and it's not a judgement and it's not an excuse, and it's certainly not a reason to stop trying or to stop trusting. it is just a fact.