THIS IS SO INCREDIBLE

THIS IS SO INCREDIBLE

4 Inch Window: Happy Holidays

In which I pay tribute to @cesperanza's 4 Minute Window in a slightly different way.

See intro here for more explanation. Chapter One here. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve. Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen. Chapter Fifteen. Chapter Sixteen. Chapter Seventeen. Chapter Eighteen. Chapter Nineteen.

And while I am at it, allow me to thank you all so much for being so excited alongside me! Especially @albymangroves, @revolutionaryjo, @monicawoe and of course... @cesperanza

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"Hey!" Bucky shouted up the steps. "Come here, give me a hand with—"

The door to the apartment opened and Steve popped his head out. He stared, then came out onto the landing.

"It's not heavy," Bucky explained, shifting the trunk, "but it's awkward, and I don't want to make more of a mess than I--"

"I thought we said," Steve said reprovingly, coming down the stairs, "that we weren't gonna do Christmas."

"Oh, is that what you meant?" Bucky asked, and shoved the top of Christmas tree at him. "I thought you were saying we shouldn't be born in a manger or something." Steve rolled his eyes and grabbed ahold of the tree, and then they began to haul it up the steps and into the apartment. "You say it every year--every year, Steve—and I stopped believing you in, like, 1936 and you're still saying it—"

"Because you don't listen! You say yeah, sure and then you don't listen and—look at this, this is enormous," Steve said, and to be fair, the tree did look bigger in their living room than it had looked on the street.

"You're right, I don't listen. I ignore you, because you always say 'Let's not do Christmas,' and then you get me something even though you said you wouldn't so that I look like an idiot, and then I get us a tree and you say, 'Why did you get a tree?' and then you say, 'Oh, this is nice," and you like it. Tell the truth."

Steve stepped back consideringly, head tilted, and then said, "Well, it's festive."

"Oh, shut up and get me some wood for a stand," and later, they sprawled on the sofa and drank hot chocolate and looked at the tree, which they'd covered with tinsel and bits of colored paper, a box of ornaments from the dollar store. - Scenes From a Marriage: A Month of Sundays

Can you spot all the Easter Eggs? (Wrong holiday, I know, but...)

As we used to say in the olden times.... &hearts, and to all a good night.

(Un enterrement à Ornans [A Burial at Ornans], 1849 - 1850 - Gustave Courbet - WikiArt.org)

oil on canvas

this is just one of those good things

“My mom painted this and said no one would like it. It’s her 2nd painting.”

“I painted somebody’s mom”

“Took a while and not perfect, but i painted the guy who painted the other guy’s mom”

“I painted the girl who painted the guy who painted the other guy’s mom who painted an egret”

“I painted the guy who painted the girl who painted the guy who painted the mom who painted a bird”

“When it sinks in that I stayed up most of the night to paint a meme for internet points…”

another AMAZINGGG thing

Awesome Childhood Spelling

Uhh…where it says “looked” read “lopped”. lol This is based on the original tweet you see up there by Twitter user @Sal_Perez4 (see the original tweet here).

Apparently a part of the reason why farmed bees stay in the beehives that humans build for them is because the farm hives are safer and sturdier. I don't know how a busy Discord server's worth of bugs that only have one brain cell each would logically conclude that the humans protect them from outside threats, illness and parasites, but if I understood right, the bees would be free to move away and build a new nest somewhere else any time they'd want, and they simply choose not to.

You know how in almost every culture, people have some concept of "if I sacrifice something that I made/grew/produced to the Gods, they will ward me and my harvest from evil"?

So, in a way, don't the bees willingly sacrifice a part of their harvest to an entity not only far greater than them, but nearly beyond their comprehension, in exchange for protection against natural forces wildly outside of their own control?

So tell me, beekeepers, what are you to your bees, if not a mildly eldritch God?