#Buy Code

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I bought a Good Omens book and when I came back home and logged into Tumblr, everyone was discussing how Good Omens was actually "Slav coded", whatever that meant.

[blorbologist]

PSPSPSPS-

I bought two eSims for gazaeSims, and look at this absolutely GORGEOUS Perc'ahlia doodle @jadequarze made at my request! 💕

She's doing an incredible thing in offering doodles in exchange for proof of donations for Palestine! If you were hesitant to donate, Jade has links to a few good sources. It's so easy to offer help - and to get a beautiful doodle of your OTP or OC in return!

More info on where to donate + how to send proof here!

Happy She Wear He Coat day! Free Palestine! 🇵🇸

[stefisdoingthings]

i put my hand near my mouth so i know i'm still breathing

[tmos-time]

throws march eridan out into the internet like a farmer feeding corn to his chickens lol

[the-ace-with-spades]

I'll never write it so gonna post the abandoned idea for it here (also as a reminder, all my fic ideas are for grabs unless stated otherwise so if someone wants to pick it up, be my guest)

Red strings of fate/Soulmates AU

You are connected to your soulmate by a red thread only you and your soulmate can see and touch (and cut). When your soulmate dies, the thread solidifies and becomes heavier, as long as the distance between the soulmates was the time one of them died — almost like a chain.

Jake and Bradley find out they're soulmates early on in flight school — it's hard not to when the thread pulls tauter and tauter until they finally meet in the same classroom and they can see the other end of the thread for the first time.

There's fascination, there's the thrill of sneaking around (they should disclaim it, as soon as they learn, so it can be put in their records, but they never do) and everything is new and bright. They start to treasure the string, turning around their fingers and finding joy in noticing the other end twitching and pulling — with time, they notice the motions translate over the tread no matter how far away they are.

They make up a system of pulls and tags, using Morse code and it becomes something else, they become something else — in the air, wordlessly in sync, on the ground, talking to each other whenever they want, during sleepless nights and separate schedules and long-distance deployments.

Until.

Things start getting complicated. Bradley has commitment and abandonment issues, Jake's an all-or-nothing type of guy and just being soulmates isn't enough.

They go their separate ways. Bradley still, sometimes, when he can't sleep and the night makes him feel like nothing has a sense or a purpose, sends little messages down the thread. He never gets replies.

The day they meet again at the Hard Deck, Jake suspects Bradley is coming for the same assignment. The string’s been getting lighter and lighter the whole night, dropping down, no longer stretched to its limit.

They try to ignore the string the whole time the training goes on, but Mav still suspects. He doesn't say anything, but he feels like history is repeating itself.

When Mav and Bradley are arguing in the debriefing room and Warlock comes in, he doesn't say anything but Mav looks down at his own wrist and his face turns white and Bradley knows at that moment.

(Whether Mav and Ice are soulmates and married or they are soulmates but Ice still married Sarah, that's up for discussion).

During the whole funeral, Mav rolls the invisible thread around his wrist, moving onto his arm when it's not enough.

It's at that moment — Bradley decides Jake will never have to do the same.

The minute he turns around for Mav, he makes up a plan in his head.

They find each other in the snow, and argue, but by the end of it, Mav is making up a crazy plan and they'll try to return in one piece. Try being the keyword.

He pulls on the string, the thread between his thumb and index finger.

Mav frowns. "What are you doing?"

"Sending a message before we go."

He repeats it, just in case Jake hasn't realized in time to catch the whole thing at first. And then he starts looking through the pockets of his life vest.

“He’s not walking around with a dead man’s chain, Mav.”

Mav tries to stop him the second he realizes what Bradley is going to do but it's too late — with the same knife he cut his parachute off, he cuts off the thread, close to his wrist, letting it fall limping into the snow, red almost looking like droplets of blood.

It takes Jake a minute to realize that the tagging is a physical feeling, not just wishful thinking formed by his imagination.

The carrier deck is a mess, the foxtrot teams returned, Phoenix is now arguing with the admirals about Rooster's position — he might not be dead, sir — and the ringing in Jake's ears doesn't stop until he looks down at his wrist, and sees the string moving, the pulling a rhythmic, well-known motion.

Aloud, breaking up the vivid discussion about Maverick and Rooster's status, he says, “Rooster is alive, he’s—he’s talking,” and it almost feels like it's someone else using his voice.

“What do you mean, Hangman? His comm is silent.”

“Can feel it on the string, it’s still red and he’s— he’s tugging in Morse code,” he says. He closes his eyes and lets himself be pulled by the wrist. “S-O-R-R—Sorry, he’s—sorry and—and—I-L—Shit, no.”

I-L-Y

The string flops down, loose. “No—”

He cut it. He cut it because it's still red and not gray but still too limp and he knows it. His wrist feels too light, too free.

When Bradley lands on the carrier, his wrist is bare and the thread pools around Jake's feet. It doesn't magically reconnect when they touch, when they shake hands.

Jake tries to desperately find the other end, carrying rolls and piles of it with him as he follows Bradley to the med bay.

“Jake, just—just cut it,” he tells him. “It’s going to connect you again in a day or two.”

Jake ignores him, pulling miles and miles of the thread into circled piles next to Bradley's bed. He can't see the floor — it's just red and red and nothing else.

“No,” is all Jake says. “Not to you.”

It'll find him a new match, connect the thread to someone else, to someone who isn't Bradley.

"Bring me some scissors," Bradley says. He almost feels bad, when Jake's gaze turns up to him, glaring with shiny eyes. "Just do as I say for once."

Wordlessly, looking like it pains him, Jake brings him disposable scissors.

Bradley grabs his hand before he can move away, pulls about three feet of the thread from the pile, and cuts off the excess on the floor.

He wraps it around his own wrist, the string thin and soft, and a little clumsily ties it into a loop over his arm. When he leans away again, the thread takes a second, taut, and then stretches with the distance, like it has always done.

Jake stares at it, too focused and too absent. "That's the shittiest knot I've ever seen."

Bradley huffs. "Well, you gotta learn to live with it."

[shittymihodaily]

Day 9: I had a conversation with someone on pony town one time about them being friends

(first image reference)

[fuctacles]

Unusual, but maybe not in a bad way

Eddie's shoes might look good, but they were never a good choice for summer rains. He kept forgetting that and letting the reality of his fashion choices hit him hard in the face. Or knees.

The bus had a moving plate in the middle that usually wasn't a problem but today wasn't usual. Today the rain was pouring and Eddie's phone was at 15% because he had been too lazy to plug it in before falling asleep. So today he had to switch seats to one next to a charging port and as he was making the short voyage, a few things aligned perfectly to make today unusual, and in a bad way.

The rotating plate was wet from the rain.

The soles of his shoes had no grip.

The bus turned left.

"Shit."

Eddie gathered himself off the wet floor, cursing his shoes, the weather, and the throbbing pain in his knee. Without looking up he fell heavily into the seat that was his destination, afraid of the amused stares he might catch. His dignity? Gone. His pants? Well, they were torn already anyway so one new hole didn't make much difference. His knee? Bleeding, apparently. As he rubbed his knees, one of his hands came out red. He groaned.

"Of fucking course." He just had to hit something sharp on the usually safe and relatively smooth surface. 

When he was reaching to plug in his phone, someone grabbed the pipe just above the USB port. Eddie looked up and found a man looking down at him. He also realized the golden frames of his glasses complimented his hazelnut eyes beautifully.

"You should clean this up," the man said instead of making fun of him or asking if he was okay. No, he was holding out a packet of wet wipes like some kind of saint.

Eddie hesitated for a moment but while his dignity might be gone, the gorgeous man in front of him wasn't. He took the offered wipe.

"Thanks," he murmured, wiping the cut and the surrounding skin, cleaning off sand and blood.

The man dropped a backpack on the vacant seat next to him. Eddie eyed the pins attached to it; a couple of dinosaurs, a Hufflepuff crest, ‘protect trans kids’, and… a bisexual flag. Score.

"Pirates, Hello Kitty or dinosaurs?"

"Huh?"

"Band-aid," the man clarified, shaking a small tin can he fished out of his backpack. "I work with kids," he added like it explained everything. Well, it kind of did. Upon opening, the tin revealed an assortment of colourful band-aids.

Eddie hummed in thought, considering his choices.

"Dinosaurs."

"Good choice," the man praised with a smile, probably the same one he showed to the kids. Was he a teacher? Because suddenly all the teacher-student porn scenarios gained a new appeal. Where skimpy pencil skirts didn’t work on Eddie, a soft green jumper just might, apparently.

The man handed him a dino band-aid, apparently expecting him to apply it himself. Well, of course. They were two strangers on a bus, after all.

Disappointed, he put it on the cut, missing the amused tilt of the teacher's lips.

"Do you need anything else? I have some candy; lollipops, gummies…" The man flipped through the contents of his bag.

"Gummies?" Eddie's interest was piqued.

"They have colourful fillings and a tiny dragon on each wrapper," he advertised, offering him a small baggie to choose from. Again, his tone reminded him of an adult talking to a kid. This shouldn't be working on him as well as it was.

"Can I have two?" he asked, looking up into these stunning brown eyes. The level difference was not helping. Has he not sat down on purpose? To tower over poor Eddie's tiny metal heart?

The man smiled as he took a quick conspiratorial look around.

"You can even have three, just don't tell my kids," he whispered

"I ain't a snitch!" he assured and picked up two green candies and an orange one. Because red flavours belonged in the trash.

Or apparently in the plush mouth of a handsome stranger, since he picked one of those for himself. Maybe Eddie didn't hate them that much, after all. He could make an exception. Especially if he could taste them the fun way.

"You sure you don't want a lollipop? Water? Extra band-aid?"

Eddie shook his head adamantly but had a nagging feeling the man was stalling. His gaze dropped to the flag badge, giving him an instant shot of courage.

"Your number?"

The soft teacher's smile turned sly, and he knew he took the right step. His metal heart thumped in his chest, the sound resonating against his ribs. What a fun feeling.

"Better hurry up, my stop is next."

Eddie nearly dropped his phone in his haste to put in the string of numbers.

"What do I…?" he asked when the empty ‘name’ box stared at him from the screen.

"Steve," the man offered, just in time for the bus to stop. The doors swung open, and he was gone, but while the physical distance between them grew, Eddie now had the comfort of having him in the palm of his hand, hidden behind a number.

>> Thanks for the candy! 🖤 - Eddie 

[Steddie masterpost] [Ao3] [ko-fi]

[snivyartjpeg]

and they were roommates

[neonseagreen]

Funny story. Today I 𝗕lissfully went 𝗜nto my drawing program to create some fanart for one of my favorite artists, 𝗟emon Demon. Ha𝗟fway through, 𝗪eirdly eno𝗨gh, my left eye began to bu𝗭z and ac𝗛𝗘 and my vision blur𝗥𝗘d. My hand 𝗦tiffened and moved 𝗨nusually, as if it was being 𝗖ontrolled(I assume this is another case of the ol’ “art powers manifesting at the crac𝗞 of dawn” effect). Funny, though… my vision h𝗔sn’t refocu𝗦ed, and my drawing doesn’t seem to look anything like Neil Cicierega. I wonder what happened…

Anyways, here’s the art!🫶🫶🫶💕💕💕💕💕

I found a second version in my layers that I don’t remember making. It gets creepy with some eye-g0re, so I’m gonna leave it under the cut.

[delphinidin4]

I am allergic to the word "success". I have been ever since middle school, when it was plastered all over the planners the school gave us.

Screw success. Try for contentment.

[risingsunresistance]

hey an important bit from squid's video if you aren't planning on watching it. if you're a hypixel player and you plan on buying anything from the store like ranks/gems/etc, use code squid! not just to support him, from now to april 22nd, all of the money he makes will be going to the sarcoma foundation, including a portion of the money that goes to hypixel as well since simon agreed to donate some!

[iknityounot]

I've opened an Etsy Shop!

You can find me at Pigeon Knits on Etsy.

For right now I am starting off with some hats, some of which are pride themed!

Use PRIDE2024 to get 20% off a pride hat for the rest of this month!

If you are interested in a custom design, shoot me a message and we can see what I can do! I also plan on updating the shop regularly, so please favorite the store on Etsy so you will get notified with my new products!

[just-watch-and-calculate]

a failing hard drive (and a mental health revelation)

(written by an adhder off their meds: I will go off on tangents)

(the data seems to be safe now)

(this post is about two things which feels a bit weird but the point I want to make is somewhere where both things overlap)

a lesson I learned from this:

back up your data! do it now! yes, NOW!

it started a few weeks ago when I changed linux distro from suse to arch (though it also started earlier. human starts are hard to define. me and my neurodivergence and my pc and hard drive and my mental health struggles that most if not all nd people have in some form didn't just pop into existence when I started installing arch).

I had unplugged two of my drives to protect the data on them from any mess-ups during the install process. (I should've made backups, yesterday evening would have been less scary that way).

the installation went fine, but it took a few days due to mild lack of sleep and me not using archinstall, but I succeded. (and after accidentally uninstalling the login manager on my laptop and briefly reprioritizing to fixing that because I couldn't get the gui to launch manually without the login manager)

and I was proud of my setup. one minor thing, the drive my /home folder (that's where the user accounts' data is) started its off-on spiel it sometimes did when the cable wasn't plugged in properly. (at that point it had not seemed alarming. I had unplugged it prior and was already familiar with this happening)

it had messed up something with i3, I rebooted, it was fine. I knew what drive it was because I can hear its whirr and the clacking of the head going into its off position when it turned off. I love how it sounds. that I can hear how it is 'alive'.

so I opened my pc, unplugged the drive and plugged it back in. and it was fine for a few days.

after it had happened (or maybe only after the 2nd time it happened on arch) I also looked up if there were tools to assess drive health and installed the smartmontools package. I do not know if I would have been a bit slower in noticing when my drive started to fail, maybe the sounds alone would have worried me enough. quite possibly not. ultimately the s.m.a.r.t. output got me to start a backup of the raw data though, but not by actually warning me directly of imminent failure. it estimated about 20000 more hours of use (edit: that is untrue. I just misinterpreted something).

I think it also went off-then-immediately-back-on a few more times before and after that; but that and the following were the two instances that caused my OS tho struggle before the hard drive failed.

after the second time it happened, upon rebooting, the drive would just do its off/on routine while fstab was trying to mount it on 2 consecutive reboot attempts but failed. mildly panicked I booted the live arch usb I had previously installed from and tried to figure out what to do. I didn't back up my data then. I should have. I had planned to set up backup automation then but not yet got around to doing so. I should have done so.

it was unlikely to be the cables' fault, but yet again I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in. yesterday I found out why that was futile. it did its off/on routine after I'd tried getting a more taxing game to run, but i3 was fine, and so I continued, mildly worried. the second time it happened, not long after, I checked the s.m.a.r.t. data. Because I'd sent all the interesting bits of the data to someone the day prior, I was able to look up how it had been before. still, it estimated about 20000 more hours of drive use (edit: that is untrue. I just misinterpreted something). but the count of PhyRdy->PyNRdy was off the charts. from about 300 in a prior power cycle it rose to above 18000. then, eventually it even reached 19000. online advice on this was: back up your data. now.

and so I did, finally, back up my data. the easiest option with now ramping up andrenaline (and a cold I was still recovering from) was using dd. I made sure the infile and outfile were the right way around and off I went, copying all the disk contents to another disk. (or rather, the contents of the partition I was mainly using)

it went ok at first. then the occasional off/on, going by how the drive sounded. ok, I hope you make it, buddy. please, at least long enough to save my data.

then it wasn't just clack-spin-down-fully-then-spin-up-again. it was stumbles, the clack sounded different, had different timing, it didnt spin down fully before spinning up again. (for clarity: by spin down I refer to the motor inside reducing in speed until it is off, like when shutting down my pc.)

the copying stumbled. a bit past halfway it stopped. i/o error. disk dump (dd) had exited. smartctl just told me "inqury failed". my os seemed to think the disk was still there. it just wasn't responding. not presumably unmounted this time, just not responding. the last temperature readout had been a bit above 40°C. high, but it should be fine, right? the PhyRdy -> PhyNRdy statistic was 19806 at last readout. my hard drive was definetely failing now. dying.

I called someone with more IT experience than me; adrenaline was definitely kicking in now. we opted to shut down my pc and try getting the rest of the data after waiting 20 minutes. giving my hard drive a break. it did not make its usual sound when shutting down. it must've spun down at some point before and not spun up again. I braced for the worst, for the first half of the dd to only contain the data I've had older backups of and for the rest to be lost.

my hard drive had just needed some rest. ddrescure came to the rescue, I copied the remainder of the data with not many auditory "complaints" by the hard drive. then turned off my pc to unplug that drive. it could rest now. it had done its part. I no longer needed to fear that my data would be lost. as of writing this I'm combining both halves of the backup on it into one file to mount it and see if my data is intact. odds are looking good but I should make sure. (as of my 2nd draft I'm mounting the file. fingers crossed.) (as of finishing the 2nd draft of this fsck reports the backup's filesystem as having a bunch of errors. I hope my data is salvageable. mounting the file worked but that is a lot of errors from fsck. gonna do a full ddrescue now.) (the ddrescue is nearly finished; the two halves should be recombinable now, ddrescue just has important syntax differences compared to dd. my data is most likely safe.) (the data backup seems to be fine now!)

I miss the way that hard drive sounds. I miss hearing it start. I miss its hum. I miss the hard drive that, quite literally, made my pc home. I only was at home on arch once I had moved my user data to the new home directory. (finally it wasn't my deadname anymore. being trans was now, accidentally, a way to keep my suse and arch user accounts nice and separate)

/home was home, and now it was failing. dying.

how odd, to be feeling (slight) grief for a hard drive.

and now for the mental health realization:

I've anthropomorphized that hard drive in some places in this post. while it was actually failing I was somewhat doing that most of the time (you can make it, buddy! please, please just try to keep going a bit longer. once my data is safe you can get a break.)

and I realized why that is.

one part of it is just that I have the tendency to anthropomorphize things, like the chocolate snowman who I found out had a name only after I had already eaten it. I felt sad, and a bit silly. I'm never buying chocolate with a name like sammy again.

but there's more to it; and it isn't coincidence that I am putting this in a post about a failing hard drive, rather than that chocolate snowman. not only did I humanize that hard drive when it was "struggling" - I also do it the other way around: taking "schedule maintenance or the equipment will schedule it for you" also as a reminder to take the breaks I need because when I need them they will happen eventually. so I better listen to my body and take breaks when it isn't already a bit too late.

I'm treating myself like the machines I humanize because when treating myself as human what sneaks in is treating myself as someone who should be this good little neurotypical girl. treating myself as who I learned I should be instead of treating myself as me.

treating myself as human has failed somewhat. between being trans and being ace and being neurodivergent, I'm not human in the way I was taught I should be. and with this baggage, I need a better angle at this to be able to take care of myself in a way that will allow me to heal.

I stopped trying to view self-care through my neurodivergent mask. it's not this vague lifestyle thing. it is the basis of my well-being.

I started viewing it as 'self-maintenance'. maintenance is important. it is basis for continued operability. that much is simple. it is specific to what is being maintained. I couldn't exactly have treated my hard drive as a dripping faucet. it would have been nonsense for me to try and save my data from my windows installation which I'm much less experienced with. (and besides, it's windows. I actually use OS as an analogy for my neurodivergence sometimes, I do think it works in many aspects. there are many different linux distros. mine takes a bunch of extra work but works better for me.)

it would be nonsense to try treating myself like a neurotypical person. because I'm not. and it would be nonsense to view this "self-maintenance" as something to do only whenever I've got time between my failing hard drive and uni and having gotten sick. it is important.

short bonus bit - the magnus archives has helped me cope with the fear I felt for my data a bit. and since it continues being an intense interest of mine I'd like to discuss that. just beware of spoilers, I'm not sure off the top of my head when the concepts I'm talking about below stop being spoilers

it is interesting that one of the hypotheses of what is going on with the failing hard drive is that the temperature is somehow why that drive is failing - considering the lightless flame is all about things like this data loss. so hi desolation, I hope to never meet you again. please do not cause the digital equvialent of a housefire (overheating(?) /home) ever again.

running the full ddrescue now, it seems putting a cold pack next to it calmed it down. poor thing really was suffering from heatstroke at normal operating temperatures it seems

[elegyofthemoon]

$3 off eSIMs for Gaza

I have a referral code "AMITLTTP" that'll take $3 off eSims you buy from Nomad

For further information on how to purchase eSIMs and how to send eSIMs please use the following:

Gaza is running low on eSIMs, so any purchases would be greatly beneficial for them to stay connected and receive the help they need.

[ezioauditore-s]

mirage has everything classic assassin's creed coded from wanted posters to hiring factions to subtle native words to pickpocketing to unlocking an outfit through collectibles BUT WHERE is the classic upgrade real estate passive income feature. EVERY assassins must be both ruthless killer and meticulous landlord