#Tiny Land USA

[thefantasticone21]

Promo Code for Tiny Land USA

I now have a promo code for one of my brand partners, Tiny Land USA. This is a company that makes various wooden products and toys for small children, and some nursery items, too. This gives parents another option beyond the mainstream stores to purchase toys for their kids, and nursery items. To see what they have, you can go to https://tinyland.pxf.io/Y9VrRe. The promo code that you can enter…

[mybeingthere]

Heidi Gustafson is an artist and ochre specialist based in the rainy, volcanic North Cascades of rural northern Washington. Her highly collaborative and intuitive projects include an ochre sanctuary with over 600 earth pigments from around Earth. Called the “woman archiving the world’s ochers” by the New York Times, and the “ochre whisperer” in American Craft, her work has been featured in several books and publications.

Heidi Gustafson is the founder of Early Futures, an artistic research site with a current focus on ochre, iron oxides, land pigments, and subtle earth activism.

The Ochre Sanctuary is also included under the Early Futures umbrella: "Ochre Sanctuary is an evolving, living place that serves to protect and care for ochre, ie. iron-based earth and pigment wisdom. It’s currently based in tiny cabin in far north Cascade foothills of Nooksack territory, Washington, USA," explains their site.

"Counsel of ochres includes hundreds of rocks and dusts, across the color spectrum, gathered and offered by citizens around the planet, including spiritual and cultural ochres such as kokowai from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and meaningful planetary ochres like GOE (Great Oxidation Event ) 2 billion+ years old goethite or wastewater vivianite from Taiwanese industrial plants.

https://naturalearthpaint.com/.../researching-for-early...

https://www.instagram.com/heidilynnheidilynn

[incogrio]

since usa tour is over… beomgyu coming home to you from being away on tour? 🫣 mega fluff plz 🫶

c.bg - finally home to you

pairing: choi beomgyu x gn!reader

genre: fluff fluff

synopsis: beomgyu finally comes back from months away at tour <3

warnings: none, except beomgyu and reader being disgustingly cute

w/c: 1.1k+

a/n: thank you both for these asks!! i decided to put them into one since they’re pretty similar and i honestly couldn’t come up with two separate scenarios for my boy gyu. hope you guys enjoy!! soon i’ll have written for every member!!

COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

the kimchi jigae soup in front of you popped slightly at the heat as you stirred it with a wooden spoon. you had just finished making gyu’s favorite dish of yours. he was coming back after months working hard at concert after concert. much like the many moas who couldn’t attend txt’s newest tour, you lived off of the many clips and performance videos. your boy shined while your heart slowly shrunk in his absence.

but today, today he would be back in your arms. back smiling and back to making fun of you lovingly. all you could think about was his smile, his body and lips pressed against yours.

but you shouldn’t get ahead of yourself, he was probably jet lagged and would want to sleep soon after eating. soon, you don’t have a time limit on your love. you had just finished plating both of your meals when you heard a key meticulously being inserted into the lock.

then, it was tilted and removed. finally, you heard a hand wrap around the doorknob, and finally, you saw him. you couldn’t have moved faster if you were running for your life.

within seconds, you were in his arms once more. gyu buried his head into the crook of your neck, wrapping his arms around your middle whilst yours wrapping around his neck. he leaned forward and waddled into the house with you, making no move to let you go as he kicked the door shut.

despite your best efforts, you had started crying. “oh bear..” you muttered, voice warbling as you moved your hand to cradle the back of his head. as soon as you spoke, he dug his head deeper into your neck, whining in tiny. you could feel tears hitting your shirt. he was crying too.

you don’t know how long you both stood at the entryway. gyu took to swaying you both back and forth, soft cries turning into sniffles.

you tried to pull away, to which he whined and pulled you ever closer once more.

you chuckled, “i made you soup, bear,” you say so softly that if your souls weren’t so near, he wouldn’t have heard you.

beomgyu smiled, and nodded. he pulled away from you and simply gazed at you. he reached his pinkie to remove his bangs from his eyes.

“come, it’s your favorite.” you drag your hands down from his neck, to his shoulders and finally land into his hands. they hold onto you tightly. “might be a little cold now.” you turn around slowly, dragging him behind you by his hand. as you neared the table, he gasped dramatically at the soup as though he wasn’t the one who chose it. you giggle to yourself.

“yahhh!!!” he practically yells, settling into the seat across from you and breathing in harshly through his teeth.

he picks up his spoon, but when he looks up at you sitting across from him, he pauses.

“what… are you doing?” he says slowly, as though this is the worst betrayal of his life. you tilt your head in confusion, letting out a questioning hum.

he scoffs, rolling his eyes and reaching towards your plate and bowl. he grabs them both carefully, moving them to be in front of him. he takes your spoon and places it next to the bowl, and looks at you expectantly.

you get the message, and get up slowly with a little smile on your face. he backs his seat up as you approach, looking up at you as though this is the first time he’d ever seen you. you settle into his lap, and he takes his spoon, scoops up some soup and blows on it before lifting it to your lips. you stick your tongue out, making sure it’s not steaming before taking it in your mouth. you hum in approval. you repeat what he did, with your own spoon and bowl.

this time, however, he insists you pretend the spoon is a plane.

you sigh, making faux plane noises and swerving the spoon around in the air before finally making it to his mouth. beomgyu swallows it and his eyes widen. just when you’re about to ask if he likes it, he reaches forward to your cheek and softly grazes his thumb against the apple of it. this was the side of beomgyu that you loved. the soft side, with his loudness sprinkled through out. this was a side that only you and his members saw.

he kept his smile as he looked down at your lips and then to your eyes. he slowly pulls you closer, before slotting your lips together. you both let out sighs, your very beings melding together into one. his lips are exceptionally warm from the soup, and taste vaguely of gum and kimchi. you drop the spoon onto the table and cup his cheek. he reaches down to pinch your thigh, signaling you to face him completely.

you refuse and pull away reluctantly, “you need to eat, bear.” you say as you reach down and hold his bowl in front of you. he sighs dramatically and rolls his eyes, but takes your spoonfuls diligently. every few bites he presses a plush kiss onto your cheek, and you reciprocate happily. soon, you are both feeding each other lovingly. you hate to imagine the teasing beomgyu would face if his members caught him being so lovey with you.

after you had finished your meal, you simply sat with him for a while. he held you close to him, and you played with the short sleeve of his shirt as you asked him about the tour. he responded with whispers, pressing kisses to your hair between every sentence, rubbing his hand up and down your arm.

you look up slightly, pressing a kiss to his neck before sitting up and stretching. he whines as you separate yourself from him.

“i’llllll wash the dishes laterrrr,” he drags out, “stay with meeee..” your bear whines, pouting at you and giving you his best puppy eyes.

“oorrrrrrrr…” you respond in playful mocking, “you could help me wash them now… and then we can sleep.”

his shoulders slumped as he realized your idea was better. he didn’t respond, simply getting up with you and following you to the sink.

even as you washed the dishes, his arms stayed wrapped around you from behind.

“never leaving you for so long again,” he muttered into your neck over and over. “love you too much..”

you smiled, turning your head to press a soft kiss onto his lips and returning the sentiment.

comment, dm, or ask to be added to the taglist!!

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

CULT OF VAGABONDS: PROLOGUE

NAVIGATION || COV MASTERLIST || NEXT: CHAPTER I ||

PAIRING: Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: It all began with a white van, a gun to the spine, and five smooth words. It ended with death.

WORDCOUNT: 4.07k

WARNINGS: Abduction, blood and gore, high stress situations, angst, major character death, vomit, descriptions of wounds, canon typical

A/N: I apologize to the people who hate reading all italics - I had to do it for my own sanity since this is a flashback, lmao. I promise it’s not sticking around. Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*  

OPERATION: KINGFISHER

OVERSIGHT: STATION CHIEF KATE LASWELL, TS/SCI

OPERATIVES: CLASSIFIED

STATUS: ACTIVE

MISSION REPORT: MONDAY, 0823, CHICAGO, USA: THREE YEARS PRIOR:

It would have been kinder to take the bullet.

Your mind runs as you’re placed into a wooden chair roughly, the bag over your head obstructing everything but the thin beams of light passing through the itchy ramie fabric. Bits are glimpsed—people moving, shifting large bodies; tapping feet, and muttering voices like a grim party of ghouls.

You’re going to hyperventilate, you admit with a startling calm that bleeds into induced shock. Under the binds, your hands shake so violently in your lap that you wonder if they’ll break apart like glass—the skin fragments shattering as bones turn to sharp dust. Air gets thin. Black dots start dancing.

“Sir,” a voice to your left speaks, American, and you’re flinching away before the word is fully out, head whipping to the side as if you could make out more than a blob of black and gray. A sob lays heavy in the bareness of your throat as sweat slicks your neck. What was going on? “I…I can’t—”

“You’re excused.” 

The sound of receding footsteps and the slam of a door is scarcely heard above your own breathing, a deep inhale to help push back the void, and a wheezing exhale to welcome the next. Bare membranes of your throat reek of bile, and you think you threw up in the van that had driven you here, though you don’t remember much of that. 

Just the gun in the base of your spine and a low, smooth, voice with a British accent into the shell of your ear.

“Head down and stay quiet.” Someone had said, sternly.

Oh, it would have been kinder to take the bullet. What was it that those shows always warned you about? Never let someone take you to a second location? Your eyes wrench closed as the muscles of your numb fingers tense and loosen in an anxious pattern.

Along the floor, your feet shimmy, not able to keep still despite your mind screaming at you to try—try and disappear into molecules of oxygen and carbon. Everything had a sheen of hypersensitivity. The lights buzzed in your ears like bombs, the rope peeled back atoms of your epidermis, and the tiny groans coming from the left of you were like screams as your senses burned with a thousand suns.

But the British man had said to stay quiet—so stay quiet you did. What other choice did you have? You knew they had weapons, you shouldn’t doubt that they would use them. 

But you really wanted to start screaming your head off.

When the heavy hand landed on the top of your head, only a soundless sob fell from the strained noose of your esophagus. The bag was ripped from you with a flurry of hair and dribbling tears, sweat flying down your neck faster than Pegasus sprang from the Gorgon Medusa’s blood. 

Immediately wrenching your small-pupiled eyes closed with a whine, an invasive overhead light composed of knives stabs into your already blurry vision; your hands jerk upwards to attempt and cover the attack. Silence reigns above all, besides from the single source of that muffled groaning from beside you.

“Mhm…Erm…Hem,” it seemed like the sounds were gasping breaths of your name, hidden behind layers of gagged fabric, swathed in saliva and distress. But…how?

Who else was in this room with you and your kidnappers?

Blinking away the shock to your senses, your chin rises from your chest and your hands lower back down hesitantly. You’re ashamed to admit it, but the first thing you noticed was the state of the room.

Namely, how tiny it was. 

Peeling blue paint hides a slideshow of broken drywall, a layer of indiscernible wallpaper hanging off like broken limbs that reach to the concrete floor. Although this might have been a beautiful basement in the past, now your flickering eyes lock onto the newer additions. 

Swallowing saliva through a closed airway, the tray of silver metal doesn’t fully register with you, nor, then, does the revolver and the six bullets placed beside it. That dying innocent speck in your heart tries to persuade you to a state of fantasy. 

‘If it’s not pointed at you, it can’t hurt you…If it’s not pointed at you, it can’t hurt you…If it’s not—’ The sentiment replays over and over in your head when you rapidly look away from the weapon like it was on fire and begin to notice the statue-like men instead. 

This can’t be real…it has to be a joke. Some sick, twisted, joke.

Five of them, all dressed in black; balaclavas over slate faces tainted with grim determination. You glance over the lot of them and feel your intestines bunch, the beasts shuffling from one foot to another with a predatory gleam to the laced boots. Not one of them was lacking combat gear—vests, holstered weapons, and packs filled with God-knows-what—they looked like soldiers, but that wouldn’t make any sense. 

Your hysterics only increase when one speaks, body flinching back.

“Let’s get this started, then, shall we?” You can’t even tell which began the uttering, but the accent is undeniably British. Gruff, tainted with sharp gravel; not to be ignored if that authoritative edge was anything to go by. 

The individual with crossed arms takes a step forward, buff and taller than all of the others except for one. That gargantuan creature watches you with numb light-blue eyes and pale lashes from a place against the wall. A shiver travels up your spine, and your shirt sticks to you, but you can’t look away. 

They are the eyes of the living dead.

 “This can’t be happening…” Your lips twitch, but only you can hear your words.

The one who appears to be the leader—Buff—tilts his head, but the dark cerulean orbs don’t even look at you. They keep to your left, at the sounds of panicked scuffling and scraping wood. “Gaz.” 

Another man advances, not as robust as the first, but nonetheless built with violence. Tall. Steady. He bleeds contained purpose in the sinuses of his long fingers.

Biting your lip, number two — “Gaz” — stops near the metal table, but he doesn't look at you when your tear-flooded eyes bore into him. Your tongue is lead. 

Who are you? You want to scream. What do you want?! 

From the side of your eye, you see a flash of a navy blue suit, and your vision snaps to it aggressively. The air gets heavy and a stone sits in your guts. 

Gaping, a familiar visage stares right back at you, the build of the face and the structure of the bones reflected back onto you––slated in the very genetic makeup that builds your frame. 

A nice suit. A hurried goodbye in the morning as the butler made breakfast in the kitchen—A kiss to your forehead. Your tears slap your clenched hands, and you think you’re digging your nails into your flesh, but the thing that hurts the most is the hopelessness in your chest.

“Dad?” You sob and stare at the ragged form as your father struggles to speak around a gag, eyes running from one scuff and cut to another as the lights suddenly get ten times brighter. Damn not speaking, this was your father!

But if he was here along with you…

At that moment, all you can describe is the way your own heart was going faster than it ever had, to a point that the world swirled around you in shades of blue and red. If there was a time reminiscent of events that had never happened to you, getting into a deadly car crash or hanging onto the edge of a cliff as torrent rains battered your head, this would be it. 

The alarm in your still head was telling you that this is the end of the road. 

Your father’s hands are tied behind the chair, and you can see the signs of crimson dotting the floor from the binds, skin torn and weeping. His eyes are bathed in fear, the fast rise and fall of his lungs telling you all that needs to be unsaid. 

And his blatant fear only increases your own.

“Dad…what’s going on?” One of the men in the front shifts, standing beside the dead-eyed individual, looking away to glance in the corner with shades of blue in his orbs and a fixing of his stocky biceps. “What is all this? Where…where are we? I was just walking to school—p-passing through the old neighborhood—” 

You’re rambling through panic, and everyone just watches. They watch and watch and watch. Was this a game? A sick, twisted prank? How could they do this and just watch you panic like a bear in a trap?

A hand snaps to your father’s gag and you yell when he rages, body shifting forward feebly before a shadow descends upon you. A swift force keeps you back, and your head snaps upwards. 

You’d never thought that eyes could stay with you for all eternity—when you had a friend that moved away in sixth grade, the first thing you forgot about them was their eyes. The voice was much more important to remember; their gentle touch when they pulled you up at recess after an unfortunate collision when playing tag. But at that moment…

Never would the image of sepia-colored eyes like those leave you again. Inlaid in brown skin and below dark eyebrows. Like a meadow, brown was encircled by light—a ring of amber around the pupil and flecks of emerald, though most of that was lost by numbness.

The hand digs into your shoulder, forcing you to stay in your seat as your lips quiver. It’s not delicate, the hold, and when your eyes scrunch in pain, he somewhat lessons it though not enough to stop the sting. The man everyone called Gaz was incredibly strong. 

Something swam in the recesses of his gaze, some hidden emotion of sorrow or pity that showed as hesitation. He clears his throat and takes a glance at your now-raging father. You shake more violently than a house in a tornado; frozen and unable to speak. What was he going to do to you?

Gaz turns back to you and whispers, blinking through long eyelashes as the fabric of his face covering slightly moves, “It’ll be over soon.” British as well, but a tone smoother than the previous. The hand squeezes your flesh, and you flinch as far back as the seat allows.

He was the one that grabbed you this morning; your legs seize up like a dead deer at the familiar speech pattern. 

The man moves back without uttering another word on sure feet, and you stare after. The sentence Gaz had given you was anything but reassuring, and with your state, it was more of a threat. 

“Get your fucking hand off of her! What the hell is going on? Why is my daughter here?!” Your father’s voice fractures your gaze away from the menagerie of masked abductors, and you turn to watch him growl out in hatred; shell-shocked. “Are you after money? Ransom…? Answer me!” 

“I’d think this would work better,” Buff grunted out, dropping the gag to the floor carelessly, “if you answered me, instead, eh?... Now, where’s the shipment?” 

“Sweetheart,” your father turns to you, but your eyes always filter back to the gun—the men. The last out of the five strangers was one that you hadn’t seen move from the far corner yet. His hands were constantly readjusting over the black metal of a large assault-style rifle that you had only seen in movies. “—Sweetheart! Hey!” 

Snapping to the feral expression of your father, you suck down air you’d been taking for granted and push away the dark spots. You’d forgotten how to breathe properly. Staring into his burning eyes, a plea is stuck to your tongue and a hunched build of your spine. But making yourself smaller wouldn’t help you like it would a rabbit hiding from a circling hawk.

“What’s going on? Please, Dad, what’s happening?” The world is swirling with technicolored lights.

“It’s all going to be alright, okay?” He gasps at you, head swiveling to all parties faster than a racehorse. Buff seems to listen intently, arms loose over his chest and huffing under his breath. His deep blue eyes swivel to you, glinting darkly. “Everything is going to be alright—”

“Pick it up, Sergeant.” The command is cold, numb, and the clinking of a silver barrel connecting to a tray as it was grasped was enough to set your atoms on fire. 

The gun lays loose in Gaz’s hand, hanging at his hip as Buff moves closer to your father and bends down to look into his eyes. 

“The shipment. Tell me. I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.” In the corner, the isolated man hunches his shoulders, eyes darting from you back to your dad—but your own stare stays stuck to the gun. Ears twitch at the loud conversation as the black wave of overwhelming delirium gets larger. 

Shipments? Your fast mind runs as your eyes dart from the weapon to your father, your wrists now raw and skinned from the constant movement. 

Your dad grunts and his desperate eyes look at you, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. 

“I–I don’t know what you’re talking about, what shipments? Who are you?! If you’re after ransom money just call my wife—she’ll get you what you need.” The leader chuckles lowly while shaking his head in exasperation, pulling back as his gaze goes hard. Your father strains forward after him and repeats the same sentence as before. “What is my daughter doing here you son of a Bitch? You don’t need her.”

He turns to you, his nice suit ruined with sweat. You’d never seen your father scared—not when you’d broken your arm when you were younger or any moment later. Not until now. His pupils are small; pinched in and glossy. Like a fearful animal trapped in a corner. 

You doubted you looked any better as you blink back with a thousand-yard stare, choking back gasps and biting a cut into your lip. Constantly thinking that if you speak your head will get blown off in a shower of crimson.

“Sweetheart, this is all some big misunderstanding, alright? Don’t worry, we’ll be back home soon and this’ll all go away.” 

“Yeah, you’d like that then wouldn’t you?” Buff growls, “Go back to a cush life while your weapons and drugs fund terrorists, eh?” 

Terrorists?! Your eyes widen, turning back to the men with horror. So this wasn’t about your family's money?

“What the hell are you talking about?” Your lips move, mouth parted and eyebrows tight as your very blood seems to cool over. Everyone looks at you and the one second of courage vanishes. “‘D-dad?” 

“Ignore them,” the patriarch hisses, trying to get your attention back on him, “They don’t know what they’re talking about. They—You’ve got the wrong people!” 

“I…I don’t understand why–”

“Sergeant.” Dread seeps like poison one drop at a time to corrupt you. There was never a moment in your life where you had ever felt like you were going to die before—an innocent sentiment of invincible youth. 

But the gun being loaded puts the sense of watching a train crash right into the forefront of your mind; a sudden knowledge of your own morality. Your jaw goes slack as you hold back a scream. Steady, gloved, fingers pick up bullet after bullet and place the copper metal into a steel chamber, brown eyes hard as the stunned silence from your father physically hurts. 

Clink-shunk, chink-shunk.

“What are you—?!” 

“Last chance to change your mind.” The leader interjects, sighing, and you wonder as you hunch into yourself just how cruel this man really is. “Best pull the memory to you quick.”

“What?” Your father laughs in pain, throat getting choked up as he looks to every person, “Are you going to shoot me? In front of my kid?” 

At this point it would be more accurate to call you ‘checked out’ if the blank look on your face was anything to go by; tears were falling and mixing with sweat, but your eyes were far away. As if about to fall asleep as you watch the world pass you by from the car window. 

The leader shakes his head as Gaz finishes loading the revolver, flicking the barrel back with a deft movement of his wrist. Those brown eyes stay firmly stuck to the back wall. 

Dead Eyes sends a long look to your father, and the wide-gazed form beside him tightens his grip over his biceps, shifting large hips. The man in the corner only snaps his head down and tries to disappear. 

Electricity sizzles the air.

“No,” Buff answers casually, “we’re not…We’re going to shoot your daughter.” 

Bile hits the floor as it rockets from your mouth; hissing through the lines between your teeth and splattering to the concrete in a sound of viscous liquid. Breakfast from this morning was unrecognizable as you blink down at it. 

Someone’s shouting pleas—you’re sure it’s your father, because who else—and while you stay half-bent over the chair as your side leans on the arm, everything starts to ring. Feet struggle to stay steady on the ground below you, shoes stained with stomach acid and saliva as it drips from your chin. Over the rageful screams from your dad, the leader continues and you sputter.

“Gaz, it’s all you.” 

“Yes, Sir.” The gun raises to your head, and your face tightens as you spy it from the corner of your eye, not registering beyond words and colors fading out before wafting back in. 

Were you going to die in this basement? It seemed your body knew the answer even as your brain tried to disagree. There was no running or escaping, not a chance with all of these people. Even if you did manage it, how far would you get before a bullet was in your neck?

“Hey!” Your father yells, voice fracturing; arms twisting and feet splaying. The hammer of the revolver is clicked back and your pulse mirrors. “Hey, no, no, no. That’s not—She…She has nothing to do with this!” Your eyes slowly widen, face tilting as you still try to break through your dizziness. “I swear, she doesn’t know anything!” His face peels back, yet his eyes seem to focus on nothing as his attention hops from one person to another in distress. “Let her go and I’ll tell you all of it, okay? I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

Tell you all of it? What does that mean? You want to ask, but the knowledge that your body had chosen neither fight nor flight but freeze was heavy in your heated and pounding brain as it pulses against your skull.

Thump-thump, thump-thump. 

You count the flood of blood that spreads through your body as the taste of vomit sticks to the back of your throat. Rats squeak from behind ventilation grates but wait eagerly for a meal as particles of dust fly past your wide vision. 

Your father doesn’t look at you as you gape, and you’re not sure what to think. 

Shipments? Terrorists? What could your Museum Director dad have anything to do with that? He had to be lying to save your skin—giving these people a false reality. Yes, yes, that was it. He was trying to save both of you, you just had to trust him. 

Your chest rises and falls swiftly.

“I–I swear! I promise, let my little girl go and I won’t—!”

“I think she’ll stay right here.” The leader grunted, hooking his arms into his vest collar, pale eyelids half-closed. “Speak. Quickly”

“Okay! Just put the gun down—please!” The gun is lowered immediately, but it doesn’t make you feel any more present. Brown eyes surrounded by dark lashes meet yours for a few seconds before blinking away to the wall behind you; eyebrows minutely pulling tight.

You’d never hated a look of shielded pity more. 

“They come in at night and stay by the dry docks—I don’t know how they get here so fast,” your father speaks as a man possessed, and, strangely, the individual in the corner starts to hang onto every word. Sending your form quick glances with rapidly moving eyes. Not that you noticed. “The products all just sit there until I can come by and take inventory! Two fifteen in the morning! It’s all under my name, I pay off the inspectors every month. Check dock number seven-one-three and the blue cargo containers.”

“What?” You mutter, trying not to gag and shake as if pushing away the instinctual actions would help you focus on the bitter revelation. “What are you…” 

This is more than a lie—these are details. In-depth. 

No, your mind tells you, no he’s just lying. Everything’s a lie.

“I swear it’s only me, no one else knows about it.” The man in the corner’s feet are shifting, leg muscles testing and relaxing as his fingers twitch over the metal of his gun. Your dad looks at you from the side of his eye, guilt in his bones. “God…I–I sell everything over the auctions held at—” 

A gunshot pierces the air. 

Liquid splatters your face, warm and heavy, and before you even know what’s happening you’re releasing a scream so loud it echoes off the walls. Snapping your chin down to your chest and bound hands over your head, a great yell erupts from the men, and a clamber of skin on gear follows the dragging of feet. Grunted breath and calls of alarm. All the noise scares off the scavengers in the vents with shrieks.

“What in the fucking hell are you thinking, Private?!” The leader's voice yowls and grunts as you slowly open your eyelids, lashes fluttering over your cheeks. “We needed him alive, you Muppet!”

You find a slumped figure in the chair your father had just been in with a shuttering inhale. Slack-jawed, you look over the crater that was left of his face numbly; lips and teeth ripped apart and a caved-in skull. His hair was strewn about, and without a cohesive thought, your fingers itched to smooth it down. 

He hated when his hair was unruly. 

A navy suit you’d seen at breakfast was stained—irreparable—with brain matter and blood that cascaded down a massacred face with a head tilted forward. His nerves jump with activity, spurring fluid to the ground until a puddle forms. 

Your father was a good man. You—your father was a…good man. 

The rest of the men continue to scuffle, barking orders as more feet suddenly race from the other side of the door. Your ears tune it out. You can’t look away, not even when a hand is placed on your shoulder and you’re suddenly being forcefully turned in the opposite direction of the corpse. 

Unresponsive, your far-away look meets creased amber and dark lashes—eyes you had decided you’d never forget and now that sentiment was forged with steel and tempered to perfection. Just like you’d never forget that your father’s body was just a reach away, and it was never supposed to happen. His blood was staining your clothes; your face and hair. A bath of gore.

Dead…? No, he was just alive a second ago. He—he can’t be. How? I just saw him this morning. We were going to go into the museum tomorrow to help set up a new section.

Your mouth moves, but no words escape.

A smooth voice tries to speak to you, but all you do is watch the fabric of a black balaclava shift and strain as the noise sounds like car sirens. Gaz is attempting to shake you, lightly, and when it doesn’t help he looks around stiffly, pausing on the body before looking away to the ground in search.

Without much thought behind the action, your loose lips pull back and utter only one word. Weak. Fractured and horribly hoarse.

“Oh.” 

It was somewhat of a mercy when the itchy ramie fabric of the previous bag was refitted in one swift motion. And all the while you sit there, shaking, a hand never leaves the top of your head, holding it down.

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@fatunn​, @mh073099​, @littlegaypng​, @untitled69555​, @babybooday​, @caffeine-anxiety-and-randomfacts, @underrated-youngster​, @jupiterredolent​, @idocarealot​, @karnellius​, @latteisaqueen​, @petrat97​, @jade-jax​, @roosterr​, @escapefromrealitysm​, @renaich, @kysa32​, @human-turtle​, @aurora-basin​, @terumisworld​, @violet-phantoms​, @xxfeelmylovexx​, @neelehksttr, @nezukos-number1fan​, @20forty9​, @mdjenjen, @marrianena, @angeldaisyy, @alhaizen​, @homicidal-slvt​, @emerald-valkyrie​, @raissadoesthingslmao​, @misfne​, @hollyhopesworld​, @wasteland-babe​, @330bpm-whiplash​, @anna-banana27​, @justherebecausesafarisucks, @sunnynomoar​, @doggydale, @thecrispypotatochip, @74478328​, @blueoorchid​, @das-conk-creet-baybee

(sorry if some of these don’t work)

[artbyblastweave]

So one thing that irks me about discussions of the NCR is the idea that "they're flawed because they're trying to be America again. And Being Too Much America is what caused the War" without differentiating between the vast buildup of Nuclear Weapons and Geopolitical tensions, versus, like, being a republic and having a large-scale central state.

What's your thoughts?

I think the NCR circa New Vegas is textually intended to be repeating the USA's downward spiral. They're in the process of recreating the core dynamics of pre-war America- overconsumption of resources driving imperialist expansion, capture of the government by moneyed interests, and a prolonged conflict with a peer power that's suffering under similar expand-or-die pressures- but they're constrained from a one-to-one recreation mainly by the fact that they're working with a post-apocalyptic resource base, with the scraps left over from the last people who went down this path. Peanuts compared to the Sino-American war, but likely as close to that situation as the post-war-world is logistically capable of producing.

You see bits of this from the NCR perspective all throughout the game. There Stands the Grass is propelled by projections of incipient famine in the NCR due to rapid population growth, and you see the beginnings of this in Flags of Our Foul-Ups- O'Hanaran was sent to the Army by his family to lessen their food burden. Chief Hanlon's very first line is about how the NCR is overtaxing most sources of freshwater within the core territory, and he recounts how tiny groups of settlers backed by NCR logistics were able to take and hold a well in Baja against scores of locals; IIRC there's a cut event at Camp Golf itself where you'd see NCR rangers doing the same thing to Mojave locals encroaching on their water supply. The White Wash demonstrates that the NCR's sharecropping setup in outer Vegas operates at the expense of the locals, who can only get the water they need to support their own crops via subterfuge. If you assume that Heck Gunderson's underhanded Brahmin-farming empire in Beyond the Beef is supposed to parallel the real-world problems with the sustainability of beef farming, you start to get a sense of where all of that water is going and what structural problems (Heck Gunderson) might be in the way of allocating those resources more sustainably. There are likely more examples of this storm on the horizon that I'm forgetting.

As a result of all this, there's a level on which I think introducing the Tunnelers in Lonesome Road as a dangling White-Walker style Looming Apocalyptic Reset Option hanging over the west coast was gratuitous, not because it's Avallone grinding his axe with the idea of society rebuilding, but because it's simply redundant with the political situation already depicted in the base game- If you want the NCR to have collapsed by a future installment, just establish that they weren't able to put the brakes on in time and devolved into a completely dysfunctional oligarchy that collapsed under its own weight!

(Now, as a final note, one thing preventing me from fully committing to this take is that we honestly don't have a fantastic sense of what day-to-day life looks like for the average citizen in the NCR heartland, which I feel is kind of important. Because if the textual situation is supposed to be that the resource crisis is due to misallocation due to interests capturing the government, I like that a lot better than if the situation is genuinely intended to be that there are Just Too Many Goddarn People, because that's like. Lazy and Malthusian and leads to the usual ugly conclusions pretty quickly. More and more it's looking like the upcoming Fallout TV show is leaning into the recent decline of the NCR as a plot point, so, uh, fingers crossed they stick the landing when it comes to fleshing that out?)

[fatehbaz]

In August 1963, the Dutchveterinarian Dan (E.H.) Kampelmacher stepped on a plane to Lima, the capital of Peru. His destination: smelly factories in Lima’s port city which ground up tiny anchovy fish from the Pacific Ocean into huge amounts of animal feed. Peru exported one fifth of this ‘fishmeal’ to the Netherlands, where farmers used it to feed their quickly rising numbers of chickens and pigs in new intensive livestock or ‘factory’ farms. [...]

The ports of Lima and Rotterdam connected the ecosystems of Peruvian fishmeal plants and Dutch farms. [...] [H]ardly anyone showed any interest in what the stuff was made of. Although Dutch farmers had started to refer to their new industrial poultry and pig farms as ‘landless’ at this point in time, they did not intend this phrase to mean their growing dependence on oceans rather than land. Rather, it characterized a fundamental change in livestock farming: in the postwar era farmers could increase their numbers of animals independently of the area of land they had for growing feed. The phrase ‘landless’ erased from view that these farms in fact depended on places elsewhere on the planet. [...] [T]he fish, called “anchoveta” [were] from the Humboldt Current ecosystem [...].

Fishmeal was invisible, despite its crucial importance for two interrelated major changes in the Netherlands and the global north in general: the rise of intensive livestock farming, and the unprecedented increase in the consumption of meat and eggs. [...] How did fishmeal and its environmental impacts connect industrial livestock farming in the global north to its production places in the global south [...]? [...]

---

Shadow places are ‘all those places that produce or are affected by the commodities you consume, places consumers don’t know about, don’t want to know about, and in a commodity regime don’t ever need to know about or take responsibility for’. It is very similar to the ‘ghost acres’ concept used by environmental and global historians: the acres of land countries used elsewhere on the planet [...]. Cushman analyses the rise of the Peruvian fishmeal industry as another case of what he calls ‘neo-ecological imperialism’: the ‘Blue Revolution’ [...], to stress the connection between fishmeal production in the Pacific World and the rise of industrial livestock farming in the global north. [...]

Fishmeal fed the twentieth-century shift to industrial livestock farming – the Netherlands was among the top three fishmeal importers internationally from 1954 to 1972. [...] Animal proteins – and fishmeal in particular – played an essential role in this shift to industrial livestock farming [...]. But for poultry and pigs, animal proteins were an ‘indispensable ingredient’ [...]. Internationally, fishery landings tripled in the period 1950–1973 due to the rise in fishmeal production for animal feed. [...] During the Peruvian fishmeal boom from 1958 until 1970, [...] [t]he livestock sector started to refer to it explicitly as ‘Peru fishmeal’ [...]. The Netherlands was the second-largest importer after the USA in 1955 [...].

---

According to Cushman and Wintersteen, the spectacular rise of the Peruvian fishmeal industry was the result of [...] international interest in the Peruvian stocks of small fish suitable for fishmeal production, interest from the USA in particular.

After the collapse of the Californian fishmeal industry shortly after the Second World War, industrial fishmeal plants in Peru were realised with American marine expertise, investments by American industrialists, subsidiaries of American companies like Cargill and Ralston Purina, and second-hand American fishmeal equipment and technology. [...]

As a result, the Peruvian fishery industry changed radically during the 1950s. Rather than a being a by-product of fish canneries, fishmeal became its core focus. [...] [A]nd industrialists moved in entire fishmeal plants from the USA and Scandinavia. These plants could turn 5.4 tons of fish into a ton of fishmeal at the peak of the industry [...].

---

Angola exported fishmeal under Portuguese colonial rule (until 1975), and South Africa exported fishmeal during Apartheid (until 1994). In Chile the neoliberal dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) gave fishmeal industrialists free rein again from 1973 onwards, and Chile had replaced Peru as the major fishmeal exporter by 1980.

Social inequality was exacerbated [...]. Fishmeal industrialists made enormous amounts of money, and stock exchanges in the global north enabled speculation on fishmeal. Simultaneously, workers in the fishmeal plants were poorly paid and lived in slums with no paved roads, running water or electricity, unhealthy conditions and polluted air. Fishmeal’s volatile market resulted in labour unrest during the 1960s in Peru, and during the 1980s in Chile. [...] Many factories were moved to less-regulated places along the coast, taking the air pollution and resulting public health problems with them. One of these places was the city of Chimbote, which quickly grew into the largest fishmeal city of Peru, and became ‘one of the nation’s … most polluted cities’. [...] One place impacted by the feeding of fish to farm animals was in particular in shadows: the marine ecosystems from which the tiny fish were taken, like the Pacific Humboldt Current along the coast of Peru and Chile. [...]

The ocean ecosystems in the global south exploited to feed the industrial livestock sector in the north remained largely invisible. [...] The disappearance of the Peruvian anchoveta also made the ‘protein crisis’ move north. The Dutch livestock sector referred to the ‘true emergency situation’ of the Peruvian fishmeal crisis as the ‘protein crisis’ (‘de eiwit-crisis’). [...] But in 1972–1973 the Humboldt Current marine ecosystem created its own shadow places in both the north and the south. The extraordinary strong El Niño led to the sudden disappearance of the anchovy population [...].

---

All text above by: Floor Haalboom. “Oceans and Landless Farms: Linking Southern and Northern Shadow Places of Industrial Livestock (1954-1975).” Environment and History Volume 28 Number 4. November 2022. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[pocket-watcher]

Hi, this is based on the Northwest (USA) and a thread about carnivorus plants but: a forest that works as its own entity that lures people in with ambiance/aromas to act as food for calcium-deficient trees :)

Oh shit that’s dark!! TW I’m going to venture more into horror than horny with this one, so please be aware this story contains references to animal and human death!!

The forest called to him.

He’d felt it when he’d first come to town.

Something in the air wrapped around him, fogging his brain, like the smell of food when he was starving.

That’s when the dreams started.

He’d never sleepwalked before, but here he was, steadily trying to break out of his own house to head to the woods.

Good thing he had roommates.

Yet, he could never quite remember what exactly he was dreaming about at the time…

“I’m going for a walk!” He yelled out to the house.

“Okay!” He heard called back from the other room, whilst in here the TV was turned off.

“So…” his roommate said casually, “where ya off to?”

“What do you mean?” He said, a pit in his stomach.

“You know what I mean. Are you heading to the well?”

The well was on the edge of town. It also was next to the edge of the woods. He’d found himself drawn back again and again and -

“Seriously, man. Don’t do it. It’s not fucking worth whatever it is you think you’re gonna find in there.”

And with that the TV was turned on again.

He slammed the door behind him, heading into the crisp autumn air.

He didn’t mean to end up at the well. It’s just, he could smell something sweet in the air, coming from the woods. The scent wrapped around him pleasantly, leading him back. Always leading him back,

He signed and rubbed his eyes.

This place had been messing with him, haunting him, and he was so damn tempted to just march straight in and give it a piece of his mind.

How dare these forces control him like this?! He was his own person, goddamn it, and he could make up his own mind on what to do and where to go - screw his roommates!

He left the well behind him, marching on into the woodland.

His first thought was that it was much more damp than he’d anticipated. His boots sank into the mud a little with every step.

The next thing he noticed was how strong that sweet smell was. It was strange, clearly coming from one direction.

His mind whispered to him. Go deeper…

He felt a sort of giddiness at taking control and taking action, at finally being in these woods. See? It wasn’t so bad! Nothing scary here, nothing but pine trees and the pleasant sounds of nature…

Except, didn’t nature sounds normally include birds singing and critters racing around?

It was eerily… quiet.

Except for the squelching of mud.

He headed for a greener area, hard land, and when he arrived his first step was signalled by a harsh snap beneath his heel.

He pulled back and noticed the tiny bones.

Probably from some unluckily animal, he thought.

That was when he noticed… more bones.

In fact, a rather worrying amount of bones.

The majority were old, from small birds or squirrels, but some were… worryingly larger.

Dogs? Wolves?

He froze.

A human skull rested at the base of one of the trees.

His roommate was right. They were all right, he shouldn’t be there.

The sweet smell wasn’t just there to cover the scent of rotting corpses, it was there to lure in more prey.

To lure in him,

He started to turn back, but his head felt heavy. The adrenaline didn’t do much to stop his limbs from freezing up.

Everything titled.

His vision was blurring.

The smell, the air, it was poison.

And it felt so good, it made him feel so sleepy.

And the bed of bones looked so comfortable.

I’ll just take a little nap, he thought. The forest is so peaceful, after all.

[ludinusdaleth]

Your tags on that room poll indicate you want someone to talk about nature and the south so I'll ask, what's some of your favorite natural locations, in the south?

!! sorry if i use this as an excuse to just photodump. obviously i cant list every spot ive ever visited but heres a few i remember very nicely and have pics of

dinosaur valley state park. when it's dry, you can walk the riverbed with very preserved dino tracks, and they have a stellar horseride experience where they dont tire out or overwork the horses that i could see. (horse in pic is named cookie, she was so sweet)

heres a random special spot near my home i like to walk near (not saying its exact location for privacy), i found a fairy ring there when i was extremely little. it once was home to one of the oldest trees in the usa (second pic) but it was cut down, and i mourn it.

turner falls, oklahoma. absolutely amazing views where you can genuinely pretend you're in lotr. while i dont have pics of it this is home to one of those notorious blue holes that divers have died in. as a texan i have to begrudgingly admit this is more beautiful than a lot of north texas near it. this is near reclaimed chickasaw land with a bison herd nearby, so try to learn a bit when you're in the area.

final one ill add is a personal local-ish favorite called the heard museum! ive gone there so many times since i was a kid and while ive become heartbroken watching it lose land to realtors every passing year, it's also grown more & more beautiful to me. its main building is a tiny little museum to texas natural history with a few ambassador animals, and then theres a decent preserved area to explore. it is such a stellar example of our blackland prairie & wetlands and it's a reminder to me that even if others find these biomes ugly and therefore worth bulldozing, they are beautiful and they are home.

thank you so much for asking! i know ive made my best in fandomposting but my heart is truly always in these wilds.

[prodigal-explorer]

AN OPEN MINDED VIEW OF THE ISRAEL PALESTINE CONFLICT: NOT ANTI-ISRAEL, NOT ANTI-PALESTINE, BUT ANTI-HATE.

i’m gonna start by saying this:

the sheer amount of anti-jew hate i’ve seen on my tumblr dash is absolutely abhorrent.

and now, let’s get into the specifics of my view:

i recently went to two events that my college hosted. one was an event in which a guest speaker discussed antisemitism and how it is running rampant lately due to the israel-palestine conflict.

and the other event i went to was an israeli man and a palestinian man who are CLOSE FRIENDS, and them telling their stories and how the animosity between palestine and israel have affected their lives, killed members of their families, and yet, they were friends. because they knew that they shared two things: their birthplace and their grief.

after attending both of these events, this is what i learned: BEING PRO ISRAEL OR PRO PALESTINE IS NOT REMOTELY HELPFUL. zionism is not inherently evil. the conflict is NOT ABOUT RELIGION. it’s not the muslims versus the jews. it’s about politics. it’s about fear and trauma and hurt.

the land doesn’t belong only to israel.

but it doesn’t belong only to palestine either.

the land is land, and it’s a gift from the higher power that created this world.

if the israeli people weren’t constantly discriminated against or expelled everywhere they went, maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to cling onto the one tiny piece of land that they managed to claim as theirs.

if the palestinian people didn’t get kicked out of the place they lived in first, and weren’t treated unfairly in israel’s social climate, maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to cling the exact same way.

israel has money and power from america and other places. and israel has done some terrible things. i know that. but so has palestine. and this post isn’t meant to excuse the bombings, the killings, the genocides. that’s not what this is about.

but people are dying on BOTH sides. countless people. in the usa and in many other places, people are getting hate crimed just for being jewish because people are so pro-palestine that they became anti-israel and anti-jewish. and the same is happening to muslim people who are pro-palestine.

can you see how being pro/anti just fuels the fire more and creates more war and violence and conflict and killing? what feeds a war is the possibility of winning or losing. being on one side or the other side does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help the people. it HURTS the people. because they are having their homes destroyed due to the polarization that WE are causing due to our need to fit things into one box or another. jewish or muslim. good or evil. israel or palestine. it shouldn’t be israel or palestine. it should be israel AND palestine, finding a way to come to an agreement. to SHARE or to compromise. if not, then the war will destroy them both. two beautiful nations with such rich history and such amazing potential.

my point in writing this post was not just to express my opinion but to spread knowledge based on what i learned from accredited experts as well as people are literally IN israel and palestine and facing the effects of the conflict. most of us on the internet are just sitting back and watching, choosing to be either anti-jew or anti-muslim just to feel helpful, to feel progressive and woke and hip and in-control.

wearing a “from the river to the sea” t-shirt isn’t helping anybody. all it does is create more tension and polarity.

comparing zionism to evil and saying that all zionist’s want palestinians dead is incorrect and hateful and lowkey antisemitic.

and this goes for all the anti-palestinian hate as well, but honestly, most of my dash on here is filled with “pro-palestine” stuff that acknowledges the suffering the palestinians are going through while entirely ignoring the israelis going through something extremely similar.

before you get angry in the reblogs and accuse me of supporting a genocide (i’m not), or accuse me of being complacent (i’m being the opposite), or just any sort of hate, maybe take a deep breath and read what i wrote again.

it’s about the PEOPLE. every single person on this planet has inherent worth and dignity, and nobody deserves to be diminished to one trait of their identity.

“oh, you’re jewish? that means you’re a zionist and that means you’re pro-israel and that means you support bombing and killing innocent civilians!”

that’s actually genuinely logic i’ve seen on this website before, and it’s that sort of thinking that i want to combat. that’s the thinking that the israeli and palestinian friends want to combat.

being jewish isn’t the same as being pro israel. being muslim isn’t the same as being pro palestine. there is SO MUCH MORE to this conflict than what is being put down on social media. i beg of you guys to read a book about antisemitism. look for resources that actually dig deep, primary sources, interviews, multiple news sources so you get a nice collection of perspectives. don’t just read one article and make an assumption about an entire group of people.

and it’s so unfair to blame an entire country for decisions that are being made by the government. it’s like saying “oh everyone in america supports banning abortion” when the abortion bans were choices made by a few powerful people. not the entire country. so when critiquing a country for their choices in war, it’s so important to express that it’s the government at fault. not the people. not the religion that most of them happen to believe in. again, it’s the politics of the situation. not religions.

there that’s all. please don’t kill me or dox me or tell me to kill myself or accuse me of being a jew or a muslim (i am neither) who has control/power over any sort of media influence (i am a disabled, gay, filipino, autistic young gender-non-conformist. i have basically no clout in this society 😂). i am just stating my opinion which is a perfectly fine thing to do online.

[scotianostra]

20th October 2012 saw the twinning ceremony in Glenelg, complete with a live link to NASA, to celebrate the twinning of the village with Glenelg on Mars.

Scotland has a fine history of being the first nation to do this, or the only one to do that, and this story is no different.

The tiny Highland village of Glenelg (Earth) has the distinguished honour of being the only place on Earth to be “twinned” with a namesake on another planet!! It's a strange and unique story that started back in 2011 when NASA launched a rocket to Mars. The mission, to land the car sized rover, “curiosity” on the planet at a landing site named “Bradbury”. From there it would travel to its objective,a featured spot on the red planet they named “Glenelg”. The landing on August 6th, 2012 was like a sci-fi event in itself and eventually “curiosity” set course for Glenelg (Mars) with an estimated arrival date of October 20th, 2012.

To be honest there doesn’t usually need to be a huge reason to celebrate something in Glenelg with a Ceilidh but the then) entrepreneurial Local Development Officer Emma MacLean and a few other likeminded locals saw the opportunity to do more – much, much more!!

There were the normal simple, achievable ideas, then there were the silly ones, “lets get a USA astronaut to come over and open it”, “how about a live link into NASA”, “what about a stack of telescopes” and maybe “getting the Astronomer Royal for Scotland to come”, oh, and “what about a Martian Ceilidh?!!”

And of course they went for the silly ones – and made them happen!! Offices and boardrooms in a small village like Glenelg tend to be, either peoples kitchens or the dining room in the Inn (the preferred venue for meetings as it’s licensed!). Several people quickly lost their cooking space as laptops, printers and phones took over the kitchen worktops. Needless to say in these cases, it’s often a few people that made a lot happen but they were backed up by many more as the local groups within the community clubbed their skills together to produce the Space, Stars and Mars event.Much was done in a few short weeks but a few days before the day, things really took off.

What followed was media coverage, trucks and delivery lorries, TV cameras and interviewers. Last minute panics!! Construction of a 500 seater venue plus other marquees to host the catering, hog roast and Glenelg Geocache registration point. There were also wires, lots and lots of wires. Given that in Glenelg, like so many places in the Highlands, have very poor signal coverage for mobile phones (none at the venue) and the broadband was slooooooooow it was always going to be a challenge. The “Live Link” to Doug McCuistion, the Director of the Mars Exploration Program in NASA was finally, and very tenuously joined by a thin 300 foot cable stretched across the football pitch and childrens play park into the nearest cottage where it was plugged into a BT router – and it worked!!

The Space, Stars and Mars “opening” and Glenelg “twinning” was conducted by Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, Prof John Brown and Emma Maclean cutting the ribbon.For the main event the marquee was full as Prof John Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland introduced the talks. The “live link” held as Doug and NASA put on a fascinating presentation of the Mars missions, past, present and future, and included mock up photos comparing Glenelg (Earth) with Glenelg (Mars). At the end, the audience, including many of the local primary school children fired questions at Doug which he enthusiastically answered before the link was eventually closed and the floor passed over to Dr Bonnie Dunbar, a veteran astronaut of 5 shuttle flights accumulating in over 50 days in space. She gave an enthralling story of her life and how she became an astronaut and also her views on how space travel and exploration will evolve in the future. Finally a stunning sign was unveiled by Bonnie Dunbar and John Brown “Honoring the historic journey of NASA’S Rover ‘Curiosity’ to Glenelg, Mars”.

All in all the Space, Stars and Mars event was a great success showing what a group of people in a small village can achieve. And that’s how Glenelg (Earth) became “twinned” with Glenelg (Mars)!

As for the “Martian Ceilidh”, well after all that work you have to let your hair down a bit and needless to say, it was very, very quiet in Glenelg the next day!!

The specially commissioned “Space, Stars and Mars” sign can be seen on the side of the Glenelg Community Hall and the “Twinned with Glenelg (Mars)” road sign can be see when driving into Glenelg

A final poignant mention: 500 “goody” bags were filled with lots of great gifts, one of which was a flash drive which included a recorded message to the people of Glenelg from the late, great Patrick Moore, wishing them all the best for the Space, Stars and Mars day. This is one of the last recordings he made before passing away just a few weeks later.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Submission:

https://x.com/D_abdulkader/status/1801999041510727784 The rest are Armenian & Kurdish

I was thinking about this, theitsa. One day, people will finally realize that to find out the truth about ethnic (also religious) conflicts of any magnitude, to find out who's the victim & who's the perpetrator, they'll need to stop assigning victimhood based on who's the minority and who's the majority, and definitely not assign it based on the groups' skin colour/looks or on idelogies, or based on the history of their own country/region. We need to ask "who's the native/s,  and who's the invader/colonialist/s." And to find that out, if we're clueless about the conflict, we need scientific method. Archeology, biology, serious *and not agenda driven* academia like history etc, we need to personally RESEARCH.

We need the context, we need the maps. What at first glance may look to you, well meaning westerner, to be a tiny "oppressed minority" in a nation with an "oppressive majority" (aka ethnic nation), might in fact be the leftover colonialists in a genocided native nation, and that minority's invader ancestors butchered/drove away/genocided/violently converted the natives to the point of almost extinction in the eastern half of their ancestral lands, while the natives managed to keep free & protect in two ethnic nations only the western part and a tiny part of the eastern, with huge sacrifices and efforts and blood spilled. (My edit: Here the genocided Westerners are the Greeks and the Eastern oppressors are the Turks)

And maybe, dear well meaning person, if you enlarge the map of that country to a regional map, you will see that that ethnic native nation is right next to the colony-state of its oppressors who genocided half its people, and is very small by comparison (who's the minority now huh), and the leftover colonialists are actually the foot the colonialist nation -which never denounced its imperialism- STIILL keeps inside the ethnic nation, which it uses so it can swallow the native nation, once again, in its empire & obliterate it for good this time.

You cant brush off these facts, just for ideology, or because in your part of the world, things happened differently. Also important: colonialists change names: usa/australia is still british colony, turkey/ajerbaijan is still ottoman turkish colony, and also they can adopt (read: genocide) the name of the natives, aka what arab imperialists did outside the Arabic peninsula aka their Only native lands. They call themselves Egyptians, Libyans, Lebanese etc. but Arabs arent the natives there, they're the colonialists, its insidious, and it fools many well meaning people.

ΥΓ. Ελπίζω να 'σαι καλύτερα θείτσα, αν κ δεν ξέρω με τέτοιες ζέστες, είπα να μην στείλω μήνυμα και 'χεις κι άλλο (μεγάλο!) να απαντήσεις αλλά με έπιασε οίστρος και εκφράστηκα πιο καθαρά απ οτι συνήθως οπότε είπα να το στείλω τλκ ^^

[aromantisk-fagforening]

I'm gonna share what I was referencing in tags I think, this article on NRK

They translated what he said like this to Norwegian nynorsk (the language the article is written in, one of two languages called Norwegian)

Vi er nedst når det kjem til evner per elev på nesten alle lister. Og vi bruker meir pengar per elev enn noko anna land i verda.

Which I can translate back as

We are at the bottom when it comes to abilities per student in almost every list. And we spend more money per student than any other country in the world

And then there's statistics:

Ifølge dei siste tala frå OECD blei det brukt 6,8 prosent av BNP på utdanning i Noreg i 2022, då var 6,5 av dei frå det offentlege. Same året blei det brukt 6,1 prosent av BNP på utdanning i USA, og 4,2 prosent av dei var offentlege utgifter.

which I can translate as

According to the latest numbers from OECD 6,8% of the GDP was spent on education in Norway in 2022, and 6.5% was public spending. The same year 6.1% of the GDP was spent on education in the USA, and 4.2% was public spending

Oh I guess they literally just debunked his argument. Well then. Glad I checked. (first time around I just skimmed this article)

tbf I'm pretty sure the USA has a lot bigger of a GDP, even per Capita, though obviously the population is like 1000x Norway's. (Norway's population is smaller than NYC's, though tbf bigger than all other cities, but yeah, tiny country)

If you ignore public vs private it's not entirely stupid, but you shouldn't cause it's about public spending, he's talking politics.

[sula0kim]

um sula's info page!

I will give all the credit to @skenisasleb for most of the way how is made

P.s theres a lot of text so be warned! And most of it is spelled wrong SORRY English is not my first language :((

WOOO LETS GET STARTED YAYAYAY

INDUCTION

Sula Morioka is a Mexican-Japanese girl that when to the famous town of South Park around when she was 7 years of age, she if fairly normal but she’s really a suspicious individual not really trusting everyone who se meets one of those people can be listed but that a long list. anyways like any Asian girl in the South Park elementary she is really into the classic yaoi storyline as she soon explore about sexuality and some what, soon she realized that she’s a pansexual

friendships and some what.

she’s really good friend with Andy as one they’re both Mexicans and they can communicate in Spanish as well they have the love for Chikimon they vibe really good and as well Andy helped sula with the whole Lexi’s death

But for kin is another story as sula didn’t trusted kin at first but soon sula began to open up with kin interacting more with him and learning his backstory a bit more. And when they get older they become into a sibling dynamic as well with Andy. Most of the time the 3 hanging out with each other in a daily basis to try and help kin in a way

PLOT AND FAN EPISODE

“EVERYONE GETS DEPORTED”

so every single Mexican (people who are at least 50% or more Hispanic) get well you know deported and also in a way for the Hispanic to stay the have to pay their own ‘American’ fee (mostly it’s a lot of cash, so in a hurry Sula’s parents tells all of her and her siblings to somehow find and job and get the amount for said fee. Now for the episode sula goes and gets both Andy and her self a job in a old but popular dinner (sula get to become a waiter and Andy a cashier)

in a turn of events the USA government makes a tiny change that only the children what was born in the USA land shouldn’t play the fee

‘A CHIKIMON ADVENTURE’

Sula has always been a chikimon fan ever since she was really young and so when chikimon go came out she became obsessed with the game as she tried to get her favorite chikimon pikpik. But not just any pikpik but a shiny pinkpik with perfect stat and everything, as she tries to get the chikimon she one almost gets run over by a truck, two walks into a dog fight, three she somehow founded a company and at the end her phone gets really broken and just dies as well her account is lost when she finally get the chikimon.

‘MUSICAL PROBLEM’

(This is a short one bc it happened to me and it was my only idea)

in the last year of fourth grade all of the fourth graders are taken for them to either pick an instrument to play, and sula chooses to play the clarinet and she gets written up and so fifth grade shows up and sula goes to get her instrument and they get her a ‘violin’ so she’s a tad confused by how different the instrument, and one night she’s trying to practice and instrument talks, sula pissing her self up.

so without a thought she break that ‘violin’ up

EXTRAS

Yay furry sula! Yes she’s a furry and her fursona is a coyote.

This is like something for like when TSOT but in as sula likes to be different she becomes into like of a therian. Don’t have it fully clear but I will update it soon I hope :p

sulas first appearance 1,2,3

[smoll-stace]

Story #1

!THIS IS NOT A PROMPT! please do not copy or use my ideas/designs without my permission.

(this is a wip of 1/2 stories I'm planning on writing if you would like to see more of this please go to the poll i will link) (both stories are gt btw)

Out of the two stories this one is more fleshed out in world and mechanics.

(art included)

It follows 3 main characters. Skoll (mc) Alric (potential lover/enemy) and Ryu (basically little sister of the trio)

Skoll is in a mechanic scholarship at the local university which was built solely for the design and creation of making robots to protect the city.

The robots are made to protect the city from the poisoned plants that have taken over the majority of the land on earth. Virginia one of the only states to keep the majority of it's population safe because of a city called Clean Earth (now the capital of the disbpanded USA) (note: they do not live in Clean Earth, they live in a small town near Clean Earth called CapeArche)

Ryuu and Alric also in the college.

Alric is a model from a rich family who supports the college funds.

Ryuu is a child prodigy (16) who is obsessed with creation and making things function the way her mind sees it.

Somehow they all come together and make a robot.

And now for their designs!

Skoll: Cap

Alric: blonde

Ryuu: teal hair

(the image with the two robots is how Skoll and Alric would look in their Mechs.)

Lastly this is the writing style You will see throughout this project! (Small snippet less then 500 words)

CapeArche. Just a tiny little town on the outskirts of Virginia. You've probably never even heard of it because of course, if you're reading this, you are from any time but the present. I know, rude of me to assume my time period is the present but for simplicity's sake I will assume it is. In my moment in time, the earth is very different from how you see it then. Now I won't go too deep into it since this is a recording of everything and sooner or later you will piece everything together on your own. Sadly I won't get to talk to you one-on-one like this very often in this recounting, and you will just be an observer of the events. I wonder who this will reach honestly, what they will think of me… as a villain or a love-struck hero. I'm guessing that my first impression wasn't very promising. But even so, I'd like you to take a moment and hear my side of the story.

-Recorded memory of year 4026 CapeArche (AP) -after poison-

Thankyou so much for sticking around for the whole thing! :D

Hope you all have an awesome day!

Here is a link to the poll: poll

And here is a link to the other story competing with this one: Story #2

[scretladyspider]

I hate America. I hate being American. “Oh you’re so free you have so much” my government regularly uses my tax dollars to fund wars — and as I write this, a genocide — without my consent. America has been at war 2/3 of my life, killing people for America’s own political power. I have no say in if my tax dollars go towards basic infrastructure and things like free healthcare or bombing innocent people who just happened to be born near something the American government wants. They constantly expand the military instead of providing healthcare and education and food to their citizens, creating such poverty that many who join the military (any branch) do so just to pay for college to try to get a better life. My government is using my tax dollars not to help the citizens of Gaza, but to supply the IDF with weapons for an ongoing massacre for a tiny strip of land that’s important in a book that was written over two thousand years ago and which no one can really agree on the meaning of anyway. Those who are deployed either don’t come back or are abandoned by the government they fought for when they do, no matter if they went because they agree with what they were ordered to do or because they were that desperate and manipulated for a better life that they were at the end of their rope. Around 130,000 - 200,000 veterans are homeless. There are no safety nets, not unless you’re rich. My government has funded murder of millions in the name of a few people getting a little bit richer and continues to do so. If you become homeless, you didn’t work hard enough, even though most jobs barely pay enough to survive. If you don’t have a savings account, or generous family, or if you lose your job, you will also be homeless. Nearly every state has “at will” employment, meaning you can be fired at any time and not given reason. Simultaneously race, gender, religion, and disability are supposedly protected under equal opportunity employment. Many in my government want to erase queer and especially trans people from existence and are trying to make it happen. If you get fired due to some type of discrimination, you need money to hire help to take your employer to court. Judges are elected but often run unopposed, but when they are opposed this can drastically effect how they rule a court case. The prison system is modern day slavery and for profit prisons are legal, and common, and just, a thing that actually exists. Medical care is decided by insurance companies, not patients and doctors. This is determined by the cost and risk factor, not what’s best for the patient. Politicians are still advocating for Israel, no matter what they do, but also doing nothing to fight rising antisemitism in the USA. Politicians decide whose vote counts where. Its “majority rule” in democracy— except for the presidency, which os decided by “electors” who are not chosen by the people and who, depending on the state, don’t have to use their electoral votes for the state’s popular vote. Police are so overpowered they often get away with murder and even laugh about it. Children are regularly massacred in schools and teachers somehow can’t understand why they don’t want to do their homework or are acting out in class. People who want gun control are treated as being just as extreme as the people who can’t recognize that their defense of their “hobby” has killed countless people and will kill again and safety from gun violence shouldn’t be a matter of luck. My government is ignoring an ongoing pandemic which has killed and disabled millions of people already. Corporations decide my rights on their own interests by how much money they give what politicians. Studies have been done, and what the people want isn’t likely to pass because money is what matters most. My government is backing the current president of Israel, who has defended the choice to bomb hospitals. I am not proud to be an American. Why would I be? This is broken.

[masonhawthorne]

What I read in April!

Many times this month I have thought "oh no! I've not posted April's reading list yet!" and then I continued to not post it.

But now is the time.

The Hungry Earth, Nicholas Kaufman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heiress of Duniyasar, Derin Edala ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Obsidian Island, Aiden Powell ⭐️⭐️

From the Depths Anthology, Ed. Mike Ashley ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Community Minded (ss), Carmilla Voiez ⭐️

Conversion Therapy (ss), Carmilla Voiez ⭐️⭐️

Their Heart a Hive, Fox N. Locke ⭐️⭐️

City of Bones, Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Meeting Infinity, Ed. Jonathan Strahan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rosemary & Iron, Dorian Valentine ⭐️

Bridging Infinity, Ed. Jonathan Strahan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reach for Infinity, Ed. Jonathan Strahan ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Infinity's End, Ed. Jonathan Strahan ⭐️⭐️

The Beetle, Richard Marsh ⭐️⭐️

The Forty Hour Train Murder, Derek Des Anges ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oedipus the King(sp), Sophocles trans. David Greene ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cold Fire, Dean R Koontz 😡

The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich(nf), William l Shirer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So this month felt pretty slow, but I actually did get through quite a few books. Where I really got bogged down was Cold Fire by Dean Koontz, but we will discuss that in a moment.

This was my first reading of Oedipus the King in any form, and I have to say that it was a fantastic experience. Even getting the book was a really nice experience. Not that there are many occasions where getting a book is a bad experience. Anyways. I had decided to stop by the local Collective Bookshop in town after work, because I had seen their posts on the facebook community groups about how they were raising funds for the next year of their operation, and I thought well, I could be part of the community and go buy a cup of coffee and maybe a book or two. So I did! It's a weird sort of space up some stairs from the main road, and I think it probably used to be an apartment or something because the layout is not very shop-like. Which is nice, the different rooms each have some seating space, and every wall is full of shelving which is full of books. Different genres in different rooms, artwork on the tiny bits of wall not obscured by books, and a decent space for small community events like book launches, art shows, and video game nights. I found a very nice copy of Oedipus the King, and my sole complaint is that it is a standalone play, and now I really want to read the other two Oedipus plays that Sophocles wrote. I also found a paperback of Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, which I haven't gotten around to reading yet. But y'know. Soon.

Oedipus the King is one of those plays that as I was reading it, my latent theatre kid pathology started waking up. I could imagine how I would stage it, and the kind of casting that I would want to do, and how many fun ways you could use the chorus for dramatic effect. I even know which local theatre group I would trust to do the staging with enough flamboyant set dressing and costume design. I read it on the train to Sydney, now and then reading aloud some of the most killer lines for the friends I was travelling with. If you like reading plays, do give this one a go, the dramatic irony is delicious, and just about every character has some ripper smart arse lines.

And from there, we'll have to discuss something less fun. Cold Fire by Dean Koontz. Now, granted, the first three quarters of this book are very fun. It's an action-movie-like plot with some pretty cool set pieces, and characters that are fairly cardboard cut-out-y but in a way that works just fine for an action thriller. Unfortunately after all of that run-up, the book entirely fails to stick the landing in a way which retroactively makes the whole thing awful. The plot is essentially that there is a man travelling around the USA (and around the world), showing up in random places just in time to save random people from random events where they otherwise would have been killed. He then leaves without sharing his identity or sticking around to talk to reporters about his deeds, and so for a long while, this goes under the radar as a bunch of unrelated local interest stories. Until one day he happens to perform one of these rescues while a journalist is already on site, interviewing someone else, and witnesses the whole event.

The journalist corners the guy, gets his name, and they part ways. She then goes back to her unsatisfying job, writing about small town stuff, and she gets an idea. Maybe she should investigate the guy, and find out what he's really up to. So she finds a whole bunch of news reports that can be linked back to him, and starts putting together a timeline of the crazy rescues he's been doing. Meanwhile this guy is off rescuing some people as usual, and so on and so forth. Eventually the journalist decides to track him down at home, and finds his house, starts canvassing people who know him to find information, and then she shows up at his place and demands to be let in with the threat of writing a big story about what he's been doing. So he lets her in, and at this point the story falls apart.

Cold Fire sets us up with a few options for what might be happening, some of which are very cool, some of which are a bit goofy, and then it goes with the goofy option, with a side order of misused psychological terminology, and a baffling about-face from action packed set pieces, to a sedate tour of a small town, including a long slow interlude at a retirement home. Apparently, the main guy is a psychic, with DID (not that what is represented here resembles DID, but we'll get to that), and one of his alternate personalities is eeeeevil, and has been doing all of the horrible scary things that the protags have been stressing out about. Such horrible scary things as: feeding death threats and psychic torture directly into the journalist woman's mind, while they're supposedly falling deeply in love over the course of three days, and she sets out to 'cure' his DID with the Power of a Good Woman.

The thing is, the 'DID' in this story sure does read a lot more like maladaptive daydreaming. Apparently after the trauma of watching his parents be murdered as a kid, this guy got heavily invested in a sci-fi novel about a kid who speaks to an alien living in a space ship in the pond on his family farm. He then psychically then manifests his own 'alien presence' on his grandparent's farm, but adds the figure of an evil alien who wants to do bad and naughty things. The character 'gets messages' from the 'good alien' which are how he gets the information on how to perform his daring rescues, and he has nightmares about the 'evil alien', and is afraid that the 'evil alien' is going to show up and do...something bad. The alien 'personalities' aren't taking over so that the guy can get through a truamatic time, they're fantasies that he has the power to make visible because he's a psychic.

Anyway, the whole thing's a moot point because after a long, boring conversation at the retirement home, the journalist loves him hard enough to exorcise the mental illness out of him or whatever. It sucked, and at that point I was so annoyed at the experience of reading this book that I had to put it down and do some vigorous pacing around my office.

Did I mention that the 'evil alien' (the main dude) psychically tortures the journalist woman and threatens to kill her? Like a lot? In graphic detail? And she decides that she needs to marry this guy? Immediately?

Ugh.

A more interesting reading experience was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L Shirer. The author had been a journalist, posted in Germany for the duration of WW2, and after the war had access to files and documents that the US seized after the fall of the Reich. It is a very interesting book as an artifact of the time it was written in, and as a recount of first-person experiences of the author being a reporter in that time and place. The of-its-time of it has bizarre moments, though. For instance there's a vibrant homophobia which pops up at various points throughout the book. It was striking how often the author was able to rightly point to examples of Germans being 'duped' by what he thought of as obvious propaganda, and outright fabrications, but then that he turns around and does the same thing with his own prejudice. It's an interesting example of reportage which makes use of the writer's own experiences, but I probably wouldn't rely on it for strict factual accuracy for events outside of the author's personal experience.

I'll finish off here with an honorable mention for The Hungry Earth. It wasn't the greatest book I've ever read, but it was fun! It is what I would call a 'fungal horror', and it is actually a fairly shining example of its genre. Finally. I think fungus has such a great potential for horror writing, but it seems like every time I find one, it ends up being bad in weird and uncomfortable ways. Usually to do with gender. If you want to have fun, fungal body horror, check out The Hungry Earth.

And that's that for that.