#actual conversation i've had

[up-to-some-good]

Traditions (5/9)

I know twelve is a better number. Twelve fics for the twelve days of Christmas and all that but holy shit that's much. Anyway! Here's part five!

CW: child abuse

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24 December 1975

Sirius Black was missing. The Prophet had published the news that morning. "Black Heir Disowned: Whereabouts Unknown" was the headline. The story had been about Walburga and Orion disowning their eldest son and naming Regulus heir. There had been one line about Sirius himself, stating that neither the Prophet nor his parents knew where he had gone after leaving Grimmauld Place.

Remus has Floo'ed straight to the Potters' home, only pausing to tell his mother where he was going. He had expected to find Sirius there, hopefully uninjured, but instead he was greeted by James and his parents, waiting hopefully by the fire. They all stood up when he came through the fire, before seeing who it was and sitting back down in slight disappointment.

"He's not here?" Remus asked, sitting down to join their vigil.

"Not yet," James said, staring back at the fire. "He's not here yet."

They had known for years that something was wrong at the Black household. Sirius would come back to school exhausted, thin, and hiding bruises more often than not. Recently, things had gotten worse. Sirius had been receiving letters from his parents almost daily since his sixteenth birthday. They had started as page long tirades, which Sirius completely ignored, but got progressively shorter until the day before the Christmas break, when Sirius received only one line: "You will fall in line."

He had acted unphased all term, constantly saying he was fine and trying to act normal, but the marauders knew better. At first, he seemed to be looking for trouble, moreso than usual. The he became quiet and distant. He had barely said a word in the first few weeks of December, even skipping his yearly Christmas traditions with Remus. Whatever was going on, it was bad.

And now he was missing. He should have been at the Potter house already, or at least have sent a note or something if he was delayed, but there was nothing. There was no way to track him, so all they could do was wait for word of his whereabouts, or the boy himself.

So that's what they did.

The sun was setting and they were about to give up for the night when Sirius finally appeared, limping through the front door with a backpack and a bloody nose.

"Sorry I'm late," he said breathily. "London is a bit of a far walk from here."

And then he collapsed.

An hour later, Sirius was settled in bed in what was now his room, healed and fed by Effie Potter. He had a broken nose and ankle, a few bruised ribs, and was exhausted from the journey over and the aftereffects of dark magic. He was scarily thin and dehydrated, but he was safe, and even managed to joke a bit with the Potters while they tended to him.

Remus sat by his bed, watching his friend sleeping. He was relieved just to see Sirius there and breathing, never mind the state he was in.

Sirius's sleep turned fitful for a moment before he started awake. He sat up slightly and looked around the room, seemingly ensuring he was still safe, before settling his gaze on Remus.

"Hey, Moony," he whispered.

"Hiya, Pads. You okay?"

"Never better."

Sirius lay back down and rolled over to face Remus.

"Do me a favour, Moons?"

Remus smiled.

"Whatever you need."

"Tell me a story?"

Remus reached forward to squeeze Sirius's hand.

"What story do you want? I can go fetch a book from the library."

Sirius shook his head.

"No need," he responded. "You know this one by heart."

Sirius started whispering the parts he knew before Remus took over, reciting the poem as Sirius drifted off, still holding on to his hand.

Twas the night before Christmas..."

[makealarkofthemisery]

Peter: I think I should start collecting people's social security numbers. Not to use. It'd just be fun to like, have. James & Sirius: *furiously start writing things down* Peter: No! No! I was joking! I don't actually want your social security numbers! Remus: You already have mine, might as well go for the set. Sirius: wait-- Moony, why does Peter have your social security number? Remus: I'll never tell. Peter: Reasons.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[byfulcrums]

Fucking around w the HSR text thingy part 2

[jmscornerlibrary]

(alone in staff room, in a particularly not bad mood, both engaged in marking)

Snape: Minerva.

McGonagall: Yes.

Snape: Did you know that you are biodegradable?

McGonagall: ...Is that a threat or a piece of advice?

Snape: I am marking Fred Weasley's essay.

McGonagall: *snorts* I'll keep that in mind.

...

McGonagall: So are you, you know.

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[freddie-77-ao3]

In Sickness (More Than Health)

“You just sneezed, get back to bed.” 

“I didn’t sneeze, I was… making train sounds?….”

“…Train noises?” Connor says, with the tone of someone far too suspicious for a simple conversation.

“Yeah,” Malcolm says, looking very unsteady. “Train noises. You know, cho-cho?”

“Right…” Connor trails off. “Sure.”

“Oh, Connor.” Malcolm says, sounding really quite sickeningly sympathetic. “Have you never heard a train before?”

“I’ve heard trains, Malcolm. I’ve also heard bullshit, and I can tell you which one you sound like right now, and it isn’t a train.”

[littledemon55]

"I hate Vivziepop and her shows."

Hellaverse stans: "You're homophobic! You're stupid! You just don't understand deep art!!!!1!!!1!11

"I'm gay. I used to be a fan, but I did my research and now I hate everything that has to do with Vivziepop."

Hellaverse stans: "God forbid a woman does anything!"

"Like her drawing a Nazi Oc? Her being misogynist towards women? Her being transphobic? Her victim blaming? Her being a toxic boss? Her-"

Hellaverse stans: "You antis made that all up!"

"..."

(I feel like this is how most interactions go. They just won't listen...)

[no-carpets]

because the only good reason to go to london on vacation is to visit the filming locations of the best movie ever made and be absolutely insufferable about it

[bunnihearted]

being too weird and unlikable and off putting and always being shunned and turned into an outcast everywhere i go and not having felt the connection and healing friendship has on you for so many years has really done a number on me

[plusultraetc]

final(s) straw

Ironically, none of Nemuri's friends sleep like normal people.

At 12:47 am, Nemuri lets her head fall to the table.

“I hate finals week.”

Across from her, Yamada makes a sympathetic noise. “Why don’t they tell you when you assign a paper that you’re going to have to grade the papers after?”

“Exactly.” She points in his general direction without lifting her head. “I’m so glad someone finally knows my pain.”

It’s not even Friday, is the thing. If it was Friday-technically-Saturday, Nemuri could hike up her big girl pants and get this done, but it’s Thursday-technically-Friday and she has to proctor two exams tomorrow and so all she has to hike up are her most luxurious pink pajama bottoms and even they aren’t really making her feel any better.

She has patrol on Friday evenings. She is going to cry. 

“I’m going to sleep all weekend,” she says, half-affirmation, half-promise.

Yamada makes another note in the margin of the paper he’s grading. It joins a sea of its crimson brethren. “I’m not.”

“Oh, shit, nooo.” She reaches across the table and makes grabby hands until he surrenders one of his own. “Quit your job.”

“Which one?”

“Not this one. You can’t leave me here.”

“You brought me here.”

Nemuri hums with her cheek pressed to the top of tonight’s lowest-scoring final. “Like a mother bringing a child into this world of suffering.”

“Kayama, what?”

She pats his hand delicately and then digs her nails in with one final squeeze. Yamada yelps and jolts away. The dishes rattle warningly in her kitchen cabinets.

“I hope that woke you up, because it did jack shit for me,” she grumbles, pushing herself upright. Yamada shoots her a petulant look, shaking his abused hand loosely.

“If you’re really that tired, take a nap. I’ll wake you in a little bit.”

“Yamada, sweetie, if I take a nap right now there won’t be a force on earth that could wake me.”

“You could sleep on the floor.”

Nemuri blinks at him as he returns his attention to his paper. “Like, on a futon?”

“No. Like on the floor. That way, you can’t get too comfortable, and it’ll be easier to wake up.”

“What?”

He glances up at her. “What do you mean, ‘what?’ I did that all the time in high school.”

He did… what? Floor naps? He did floor naps in high school? Yamada was a year behind her at UA, but she has the vague recollection that he always had really good grades. Like, really good. Like pull an all-nighter, study until your eyes are burning, and then nap on the floor instead of going to bed so you can keep studying good.

“Yamada, what?”

“Why do you keep saying that!”

Nemuri flails. “Floor naps!?”

“They’re effective!”

“They’re ridiculous! That’s something a ridiculous person does!” She would know, and so would he, because their mutual ridiculous person does pretty much exactly that thing. Nemuri reaches across the table and Yamada, beautiful fool that he is, lets her grab his hand again. “If I had known you were taking floor naps in high school, I would have intervened much sooner. I would have made it my personal mission to tank your GPA in the name of sleep.” A horrible thought occurs to her. “Wait, do you still do that now? Do you just curl up on the floor at the station next to your recording equipment and sleep for half an hour?”

Yamada rolls his eyes. “Who do I look like, Aizawa? Of course not!” He pauses. “And half an hour is too long. No matter how uncomfortable you are, you will fall totally asleep after half an hour. Fifteen to twenty minutes is ideal.”

“Oh my god.”

“And you don’t take floor naps in public. You take them in the privacy of your own home where you can lose control of your life but no one is around to see it.”

“Oh my god. I’m getting you professional help.”

“For what? I don’t even do that anymore. I don’t have time to nap.” He waves a marked-up essay at her. “I have three jobs.”

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

if the animorphs fought with medieval-type weapons in their human forms, what would be everyone's weapon of choice?

I do not know a thing about Medieval weaponry. Any history buffs wanna weigh in on this one?

[ssa-atlas-alvez]

Reid: we need snacks in our go bags for break downs. I've got multivitamins that taste like raspberries, and then you're like ✨️health✨️ Hotch: *horrified* reid- Reid: the textures a bit off because they're vitamins but they taste fucking good

[envolvenuances]

This one gives a general summary of the importance of women in the fight for the idependence of Mozambique

And for a more present context

[icewindandboringhorror]

I got these shoes from someone recently but thought they were way too plain looking, so I set out on a quest to customize them with some sharpies and charms and miscellaneous ribbon I had in my craft drawers. Mostly sky themed (clouds, rainbows, rain, stars, etc.) because that's my favorite aesthetic, but I had to include some cat imagery as well, of course lol.