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The chronicle of the monk Herbert of Reichenau for the year 1021 ends “My brother Werner was born on November 1.“ 

1021 was not an uneventful year. The emperor began a campaign into Italy. Illustrious abbots died. There was an earthquake. But Herbert took the time to note, at the end of the year, that his brother was born. 

Of such acts of tenderness is history made. 

OK, so my partner, himself from another country than me, comes from an intercultural marriage. This leads to many fascinating conversations, and sometimes incredulous stares when I do something that seems self-evidently rude.

One of the places this intercultural thing pops up is: his mom's side of the family thinks burping is extremely rude, but doesn’t care about farting. Meanwhile, his dad's side of the family thinks farting is terribly rude, but will let out a belch right there at the table. The number of times they’ve offended each other!

I think about this all the time when somebody says ‘oh my god how rude so-and-so was!’ Like, buddy, in whose mental schema?

(Though I think both sides would probably blink at an Officer Toot Toot! during a wedding.)

Bruce seems like the type of person who'd never be comfortable farting around his partner. Hal probably wouldn't care I bet. My friend and I were discussing silly relationship things like farting and I thought of this lol, what do you think?

Okay so this is probably irrelevant to your question, but I have a friend whose boyfriend WILL NOT stop farting unashamedly. Not like it's constant or anything, he's not like Walter the Farting Dog or something. It's just. . . there. And he will fart ANYWHERE. In a movie. In a store. While at dinner with his boyfriend's parents. In front of ANYONE. When asked about this (as my friend has), he protests, "But I have IBS!" Like, he is not getting that no one is asking his intestines to stop producing excess gas, he is just being asked to expel said gas more discreetly, like a normal adult human being. The hypothesis being challenged here is that IBS causes loss of all gross motor control in the anal sphincter, is what I'm saying. So now whenever his boyfriend farts, my friend has taken to announcing cheerfully, "Officer Toot Toot, reporting for doody!" in a booming voice that makes it impossible to IGNORE the fart and also (if you're me) to stop laughing.

Anyway, they're getting married next year. Odds that he will fart during the wedding? Moderate to high. Odds that my friend will scream out OFFICER TOOT TOOT while the priest is trying to pronounce the blessing? Even higher. Would not miss this wedding for the world.

(Kind anon who told me they always look forward to my insightful rambles I hope this does not disappoint)

Oof. I’ve seen the original post before, but the reblog added a crucial layer. The “we” in the bit about what humans are like is complex.

You know how canaries were historically brought into coal mines, because if the mine was full of carbon monoxide the canary would die first and the miners would be able to escape before they died too?

I just found the greatest thing.

This is a canary resuscitator.

When the miners notice the canary getting sick with carbon monoxide poisoning, they can close that circular hatch so no more gas gets into the canary cage, and open the valve on that oxygen tank to keep the canary breathing. In other words, they made a spacesuit for birds.

By immediately giving the canary access to clean air, the miners can save it from the poison. The bird lives. To be clear, this is not for economic purposes, this was specifically created because the miners felt bad and wanted to save the bird.

Isn’t that just the perfect demonstration of what humans are like? We started sacrificing small creatures to save ourselves, and then felt bad and spent our valuable resources on saving the critters too. Because yeah the canary was the only way to test for CO, but it’s a living creature too, dammit!

new at the feet of the sun chapter just dropped, i am losing my entire mind thanks!!!!

the fact that we need 8 hours of sleep is ridiculous we should only need 4 and the other 4 should be used to be cozy in your bed and rub your legs together like a cricket and listen to music and think about your little scenarios

answered a scam call today and had the most bizarre conversation

"You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself"

(I've just finished reading "Frankenstein" and I suddenly wanted to do nothing else but draw a fake cover-art. As you do.)

im so srs humans were made for art and friend and food and beddy bye. i mean this

You would think so, but it’s not! I swear this fic exists. They end up bonding over the one character (Harry? Draco?)’s longstanding service there, which sheds new light on his personality. The other character finds new kinship and belonging at the center.

Hello! I've been looking for a fic from a while ago (might not even be on AO3). Harry and Draco meet again after the war at a center for troubled youth in Muggle London. One of them has volunteered/worked there for a long time; the other is new. A woman administrator notices that one of them is just like the other lost boys who come through there (I think Harry). Maybe they paint a fence? I've been looking for weeks! Help?

Sorry, we could not find this fic. Maybe one of our followers can help!

when people talk about writing ‘the next Lord of the Rings’ they think it’s all about the wars and the languages and the histories, and Aragorn brooding in the corner of an inn and the Balrog roaring in Moria and the ruins of Isengard, and that’s how we got Game of Thrones and several dozen cheap fantasy knock-offs every year, not to mention whatever nonsense the Amazon show is going to produce

but Tolkien’s wars and languages and histories stemmed from his love of creating - of words and history and mythos - and that love infuses into everything he writes, and if you miss that then there’s no way in hell you can replicate it

and the people who want to write the next Lord of the Rings because they want to write the next epic don’t get that the story is about the hobbits’ soft and simple lives and Bilbo’s poetry and Sam’s love language being food and Eowyn discovering hope after depression and Gandalf making fireworks for hobbits even if he is a literal angelic being, and Aragorn weeping over Boromir’s body and Theoden’s kindness to Merry, and Beregond betraying his most prized orders to save Faramir, and the unlikely friendship between Gandalf and Pippin, and the even unlikelier friendship between Legolas and Gimli, and Sam and Frodo singing to each other in Mordor, and Boromir sacrificing himself for the hobbits, and Sam’s simple love for Rosie, and the restoration of the Shire, and the friendship of the Fellowship surviving down through the ages, and peace after war and hope in darkness, and the love between a gardener and a gentleman pacifist being literally the only thing that saves Middle Earth

and that is why people who try to recreate Lord of the Rings by starting with war always get it wrong. you have to start with the love, or it’s nothing: just another empty history

I wanna tell a story.

So, rewind a little more than a year. I'd just started my new job, which is unimportant to the story apart from the basic nature: I get on the phone with people to help them open financial accounts, and I spend maybe 15-30 minutes helping them do so. It's complex, the computer systems I have to use are finicky, and it's laden down with a lot of bureaucratic red tape.

My very first day live on the job, I was a nervous wreck. There were so many things I needed to keep track of, and I was having to talk to people over the phone for the first time in years, which meant my voice dysphoria was at an all-time high.

Then I got this client. I don't actually recall his name and I couldn't tell it to you even if I did, so let's call him Bob.

Bob was elderly and had lived a hard life. He was transferring the contents of his pitifully small 401k from Walmart into a more accessible account, and I was helping him set that up. He came on the line cranky and more than a little paranoid. He asked me repeatedly if we were going to tell the government about his money, grumbled at me about the information I had to collect to get the account opened, made a few political statements with which I heartily disagreed. It was not a bad call, but I was definitely on edge.

Then it came time to set up a beneficiary on his account -- someone who would inherit the account if he passed away.

And he paused, and then he said, "My daughter."

I asked for her name and date of birth for the listing, and Bob told me. But then he went on.

"I want to tell you about her," he said. "She's very special to me.

"You see, I didn't always have her. Years ago I had a son. And my wife and I, we loved our son so much. He was our perfect boy. We watched him grow up, he made it into college, he got a job. I never went to college, you know? But he did. I was so proud of that.

"Then, one day, he disappeared. Stopped calling, stopped visiting, stopped everything. Six years, we didn't know what had happened to him, if he was alive, if he was dead, nothing. It was..."

He paused there, his voice creaking like it was about to break. I could see where this was going, and I was rapt.

"Then we got a letter," he went on. "From her. She told us everything, explained it all. That she was--" He paused, then said "transgender" as if it were a foreign word that he wasn't entirely sure how to pronounce. "That he'd -- she'd -- disappeared like that because she was afraid of what we'd say. What I'd say. Maybe what I'd do. But she missed us and she wanted us to get to know her as she really is."

He paused there, pretty clearly waiting for my reaction. I said something -- I barely remember what -- about how scary it must have been for her, and how hard for Bob and his wife not to hear from their child for so long.

"It was," he agreed. "But you gotta know this. I love my daughter." He said it with his whole being, with every bit of power and meaning that his thin, aged voice could hold. "I love my daughter, and I'm so proud of her. She's getting married next month, and I thank God for letting me live long enough to walk her down the aisle, just like every girl deserves. She is the light of my life."

At the end of a long, intimidating, tiring day, his fierce love for his trans daughter took my breath away. I'm always going to remember Bob -- remember how he wasn't perfect, wasn't progressive, didn't really know the etiquette or the language, but how deep and intense his love for his daughter was. How he told this to me, a stranger, as though daring me to say even the slightest rude word about her.

There is love in this world. Sometimes, it comes from the people you would least expect. It might not look quite like you think it will. But it is out there.

"I love my daughter," Bob said, intense and emphatic, and I will never forget the sound of his voice.

As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.

Because it’s the Glorious 25th, I am of course thinking of Sam Vimes today. 

And the thing about Vimes as a hero is that he’s so extreme in personality, but also so deeply relatable. 

Carrot, for example, (and of course it’s not an accident that Carrot is there as comparison) is your typical fantasy hero.  And he’s not relatable at all.  He’s Good in a way that most people will never be, can never be.  There’s something God-touched about his goodness.  And his goodness isn’t…super effective.  I mean, it is a little.  But no, who is it that really creates and continues the sweeping change of Discworld, over and over again?  It’s Sam Vimes.

Sam Vimes, who spent most of his life drunk and in a gutter.  Who burnt out from his unfair job, unjust world, and unappreciated caring and gave up.  For YEARS AND YEARS he gave up. 

Until he finally met a situation that was so intense it forced him to care again.

And lord, that is so COMFORTING.  That you can fuck up your whole life for a couple decades and then still answer the call when it comes.  Save the day and push for changes.  Be the sand in the gears of industry, fight impossible odds and win over and over, while complaining about having to do it the whole time. 

Vimes as we mostly know him is a character our world desperately needed.  Someone who keeps pushing and pushing against overwhelming injustice, even when it seems like the powers that be are stacked so high against you. 

But also how much more powerful to say “this character was once a total waste of space.”  He was ground down by daily life and constant injustice.  But he didn’t stay that way forever.

And god if that’s not inspirational as fuck. 

#IsBruceWayneBatman: a social media au | Part I

Bruce Wayne drinking at a gala to keep up his secret identity: *crashing into tables, threesomes in broom closets, drunken shenanigans, vodka and tequila everywhere*

Bruce Wayne actually drunk: *after four beers has to be physically restrained from drunk texting Jason “im sorry” with the laughing crying emoji next to it because he thought that one was the sad crying emoji*

*sits down to write a smut fic* The plot of this smut fic is that Character A believes himself abandoned by God.

This looks great! It’s not The Fic, though. :/ Anyone else have ideas? Harry is really good with the kids, loves working with them. Hermione and he are a team.

Hi, this might be a separate fic request. I remember a story in which Harry and Hermione co-found a school for Muggleborn children who are going to integrate into the magical world. Harry is really good at working with them, even though everyone in the magical world thinks he should be having a more 'important' job. Draco has some relative who comes there.

Sorry, we could not find this fic. Maybe one of our followers can help!

So speaking of ADHD, a lifetime of people looking at me funny or misinterpreting what I’m saying has made me Really Sensitive about repeating myself. Because if the issue is that a person *heard* what I was saying but still asked me to repeat myself, odds are they are just going to stare at me in incomprehension, and the thing I was so passionate about saying will all of a sudden seem foolish or I will feel not-belonging, and they will get awkward while I want to go make myself small in a corner for a while. (Funny, this does not happen around fellow adhd-brains, who usually get the connections I make.)

So, actually making a choice to speak into the room a thing that I just blurted out goes against a lot of ingrained habits. When I say “it didn’t matter,” it is probably me going in my head “oh shit, I am disappointed again, first mistake was saying something that was risky in the first place, second was fucking it up even more with my mumbling, let’s make it go away please.”

But I don’t want that to land as “you don’t matter.” So I will repeat the thing.

Just something I really want to share on here because it’s important.

Thank you @valokki​ & @lostdrarryfics​, but oddly enough it isn’t that one! The Muggle London youth (I think teenage boys) are definitely part of the plot, and either Harry or Draco had volunteered or worked there for a long time before the other came along. Hmmm.

Hello! I've been looking for a fic from a while ago (might not even be on AO3). Harry and Draco meet again after the war at a center for troubled youth in Muggle London. One of them has volunteered/worked there for a long time; the other is new. A woman administrator notices that one of them is just like the other lost boys who come through there (I think Harry). Maybe they paint a fence? I've been looking for weeks! Help?

Sorry, we could not find this fic. Maybe one of our followers can help!

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

One thing that helps me calm down about intra-left-wing sniping and the reality that the big center-left coalition inevitably includes a lot of ridiculous nonsense, is to remember how ubiquitous seances were to progressive politics in the 19th century.  Like, e.g., Frederick Douglas had to go to so many seances. Many, many political strategy sessions around the country had to include feedback from the ghost of Moses who spoke to us via morse code.