#ethical flooring

[carrionhearted]

I showed someone a photo of my room, and their response was “I thought this was a photo of a haunted house attraction at first”

I think. This is a success.

(This was the photo)

[denaliwrites]

what’s this bitch cooking up anyway

[jbweld]

i think it's really hard not to see the beauty of humanity walking down the street. someone designed that car. someone made that manhole cover. someone wired that walk signal. someone painted that house. someone made that corner store sign. someone poured that asphalt. someone put this train car together. nothing has been made for us without the effort of someone's hands mind and diligence. a machine made this? who made the machine?

[pikslasrce]

boy i sure do know how to pick my double features

[athousandmorningss]

Oh, I'm having such a good time being alive ☺️

[scobbe]

Personally offended that September arrived and instead of crispy clear sunny days harbingers of autumn we’ve got a week of sweltering heat and humidity.

[aetherology]

I'd apologize for dog posting but im riding such a high from this visit that tumblr gets my pictures, too

[sh5]

[gooopy]

Ohhhhhhhh life is kind of fallong apart all of a sudden thats awesome. Thats awesome. Thats so cool. God. God. Why does my dad have such a big heart why am i so cruel why did my parents have three kids why cant i be normal why cant i get off my ass and work why did my dad bring a cat home without telling me till after

[nando161mando]

No more water bottles on the floor without a doctors note? Is that legal ???

[thorntopieces]

If you want to make a service worker very unhappy please go into their store ten minutes before their shift ends and be really pretentious under the guise of being polite and insult the worker and then be upset that they're not providing a service they don't usually provide

[unrad-radishes]

I’m sad because I’ve been WAAAAAY too fucking busy to entertain my side love interests. I don’t even have time for friends right now 💀

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Man distracting a dog from the thing theyre barking at works so much better than yelling at them for barking

Who woulda fuckin guessed /s

[tossawary]

One of my personal nitpicks for historical fantasy is a lack of servants, staff, subordinates, and... idk... subjects? Like, their absence is not... a total dealbreaker for me, depending on the situations the characters are in and whether or not I can just assume that other people are there in the background... but so many of the protagonists in historical fantasy stuff are higher-ranking (very often royalty), and/or have busy jobs, and/or have enormous houses that would necessitate having at least part-time staff.

Like, girl, you should have a maid! WHERE is your chaperone?! WHO is driving this carriage?! Where are your footmen? Are you trying to imply that a WEALTHY DUCHESS is taking a CAB?! You know that you probably have tenants, right? Where is your steward?! Where is your lawyer? Your accountant?! (Like, yeah, you're not going to have your lawyer living in your house, but you HAVE one, right???)

Or, man, you're supposed to be a military commander and you don't even have a single secretary?! Where is your SQUIRE?! (In the spirit of historical fiction, I am jumping wildly across time periods with every sentence here.) Man, I know you aren't looking after your own boots. Where are your GUARDS?! Who set up this tent for you?! Who is looking after your horse?! Who is making and carrying the incredibly valuable maps people are recklessly stabbing daggers into?!

SOMEONE has to be scrubbing these floors and delivering the mail and cooking the meals and doing laundry, and they're probably all DIFFERENT people! My dentist has at least three different receptionists and we can't even get ONE for our court wizard here? A sorcerer's apprentice to take notes? Someone like Sherlock Holmes could get away with just having a housekeeper and taking taxis, sure, but your character is supposed to be a KING?! Why is he answering his own front door? He's going to get assassinated. His SERVANTS should have SERVANTS.

Like, yes, I understand that a lot of servants in certain places at certain times were supposed to make their labor invisible, but there have always been servants who still had to interact directly with the masters of the house?! Yeah, there are potentially really messy ethics here, class divisions are bullshit, but I don't think that completely ignoring the reality that humans have ALWAYS been doing work for other humans is better than just including some well-paid and well-treated servants and employees? Because a complete absence of them, especially where logically for the worldbuilding there MUST be servants (and probably exploited servants, or worse, for some particular worldbuilds to work), often makes me think that your main characters just don't care enough to notice the "lower class" people or know their names.

Also, even Frodo Baggins had a gardener and Samwise Gamgee might be the best damn character in the story?! Sam saved the world?! Servants are PEOPLE. Servants are often the funniest and most interesting characters, tbh, with the most to say about a society and its workings (yes, Discworld is a very good book series, highly recommend), and also the joke of some romantic scene being carefully orchestrated by a stage crew of servants frantically diving into bushes to stay out of sight never gets old to me. Teamwork makes the dream work!

I don't want to gatekeep historical fiction, especially not historical fantasy, because the worlds don't necessarily have to conform to our own and may have magic and characters are often in very unique circumstances, but... sometimes I pick up a story and it's like... "Author, please tell me that you know there is a difference between a butler and a valet?!"

[this-canadian-girl]

Jason: this is giving Arkham vibes

Dick: hm?

Jason, gesturing out the sliding back door of the Brownstone: he’s been wondering around the yard, talking to himself for three hours

Dick, peaking his head out the door: it’s an enclosed yard, he should be okay till he bonks out

Steph, who just arrived: what are we looking at?

Jason: a man walking the tight rope of sanity

Damian, mostly minding his business, eating coco puffs at the table: sanity?! I watched him have a full conversation with the oak tree regarding the ethics of the prison-industrial complex. We’re far past debating his sanity

Steph: oh god, it’s worse than we thought

Bruce, from the second floor balcony: TIMOTHY JACKSON DRAKE get the fuck to bed or god so help me, I will inject you with a sedative

Tim, turning from the oak tree to squint up at Bruce: Bruce, I don’t see how the electric chair is all bad

Damian, sighing dramatically: If I must, I will do the honours of stabbing the zombie with a sedative