#hold fiction

[avernine]

What to do when It has gotten through your defences: please find our info-brochure on Our Website for helpful hints on Keeping It Out the best way to prevent it from Getting Through, is to Fortify your Defences

Would you like to be redirected to the virtual Fortification Helpline?

You have said "nauUAGFHG"

is that right?

you have said "no"

Would you like to be redirected to an evacuation specialist for low-risk areas?

you have said "PLEASE GOD IT'S HERE IT GOT HER SHE'S GONE PLEASE SOMEONE ANYONE"

I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that

You have said "

-

no"

You are being redirected to one of our emergency advisors Please note, the line is very busy

the average wait time for out emergency advisors yesterday was 20 minutes

your call is very important to us

On average, when you have reached our emergency team, your Process takes up to twelve hours

more than 50% of call which reach our emergency team aren't actually emergencies - the bio sign scanners on the client side of the phone detect 0% vitality in 60% of cases

we ask you not to leave your phone while on hold, our emergency team is very busy trying to help you and other survivors

~Mr Brightside by The Killers starts playing-

Thank you for waiting

Just so you know, there is a lot of information on our website about Keeping it Out

Please continue to Hold

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[stormy-sky-art]

Harry and Draco, inked skin and butterflies.

Drawn for the Drarry discord server March drawble challenge Prompt: butterflies

Read it here.

[moxanji-real]

Daily reminder to my lovely selfshipping mutuals: every time I see your f/o, I can’t help but think of your amazing selfship! Whether it’s spotting merch of your f/o in a store or seeing your f/o pop up in an ad, you’re always the first person who comes to mind.

[screwpinecaprice]

Just a silly guy, with silly silly thoughts.

@glowweek Day 2

Casual | Surprise

A casual surprise?😬😬😬

[ladysiryna]

Decaying.

[sodaneko]

you're laughing. they turned sakusa kiyoomi into an emote and you're laughing

[obsob]

happy and proud!!

✷(print shop)✷

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I really want you to get started on Jurassic Park now after reading your tags.

All right, you asked for it! This post is going to be long because I've been rereading Jurassic Park since I was about 10 years old. But. My thoughts:

Jurassic Park is the oldest story in the world: one about hubris, and the price men pay for their ignorance of nature. From the first moment the protagonists step foot on the island, they can see it. There are poisonous plants next to the pool because they "look pretty." The harbor has no retaining wall because tropical storms aren't considered important. And there's a steep price for that hubris. Wu doesn't bother to learn the dinosaurs' names before breeding them, Nedry ignores them as unprogrammable, Malcolm mansplains them to their own creators, Regis laughs at the idea of them escaping, Hammond relentlessly monetizes them, Arnold insists he can control them... And they all get eaten by dinosaurs. It's the characters with the good sense to be overawed and scared (Muldoon, Gennaro, the paleontologists, the kids) who make it out alive. Almost paradigm.

More specifically, it's a book about the most fundamental principle of engineering: be scared, be confused, and then do something anyway. Then do something else, then something else, until something works. Timmy isn't a master hacker in the book; he's just (unlike Grant) willing to push buttons on the computer until he finds the power grid. Gennaro's still a scaredy cat in the book, but he clenches his teeth and goes into the velociraptor nest anyway. The heroic characters are the ones who conclude someone has to do something, despite not knowing what that something is. The villainous ones are the ones who refuse responsibility.

Speaking of which, can we talk about Ian Malcolm? I'm a sucker for a good Cassandra character, especially one that manages to get even the genre-savvy reader rolling their eyes and going "will you shut up?" And Malcolm is one of the best, every off-putting academic habit rolled into one: He thinks he's better than other people for not liking sports. He brags about not caring about appearances and then comments on Sattler's legs. He assumes Hammond has read his monograph and — when Hammond reveals he hasn't — pulls out a copy that he keeps on his person at all times to have Hammond read on the plane. He smugly explains that other characters should've foreseen they'd be killed by dinosaurs, only to be killed by dinosaurs. He calls his theory the Malcolm Effect. I do love Jeff Goldblum's gentler, more charming take on the character ("See, here, now I'm sitting by myself, talking to myself, that's chaos theory" I say literally every time I ask a question of someone who just left the room). But I prefer the way original Malcolm gets away with being right about everything because we so so badly want him to be wrong.

Speaking of that comment about the legs: by the low low bar of 80s/90s thriller writers, Crichton is surprisingly progressive. Jurassic Park invites us to laugh with (and roll our eyes with) Sattler, every time someone expresses shock the world's top paleobotanist is a woman. The Lost World perfectly captures the "women in STEM have to be twice as competent to get half the respect" dynamic, and it's a story about the male characters over-estimating their own competence as the female ones go about saving the day. Race isn't handled perfectly, but it is discussed in both books. Malcolm's chauvinism is designed to make everything else he says a bitter pill, to poison us against him. Crichton's no feminist. But Sattler's hardiness — later Harding's and Kelly's as well — are shown as hard-won in a world that batters nerdy girls so hard that only the toughest survive.

And Malcolm is just one of the many ways Jurassic Park masterfully lampoons scientific bullshit. After little Tina is bitten by a "strange lizard" and nearly dies from the swelling, Dr. Cruz assures her parents that lizards bite zookeepers all the time, that some people are allergic to lizard venom, and that the lizard Tina drew resembles a basilisk — and then we cut to him talking to his fellow MD. Where we find out that lizards don't attack humans in the wild, no human they know of has ever been hospitalized for a lizard bite, basilisks aren't venomous, and Tina's condition doesn't resemble an allergic reaction. They have no idea what this "lizard" (a Procompsognathus) could be or how it poisoned this kid, but they've been taught to obfuscate rather than admit that. Scientists are arrogant, and ignorant of their ignorance.

But the book is every bit as positive about empiricism as it is negative about individual scientists. The seamless way Crichton blends science fiction with science fact gets me every time. His preface connects Watson & Crick to Swanson & Boyer to Malcolm & Levine, explaining each step of the research process as he goes. He goes on to explain how Genetech developed its ideas from IBM, and that IBM and Genetech both contributed to InGen, which in turn influenced Biosyn, funded by Hamaguri... and only two of those names are fictional, but don't worry about which. Crichton does his homework, and then he presents his homework in the most compelling way of any writer I've ever encountered.

You need no further proof than the technologies — satellite phones, electric cars, touchscreens, gene editing — that were sci fi in 1990, commonplace today. Crichton did the reading. And he rolls that science out ever-so-slowly: dribbling first the mystery of the worker with a 3-foot gash in his torso who claims a bird of prey did it, then the mystery of the resort that needs the world's most powerful data storage, then the mystery of the billionaire who calls in the middle of the night with "urgent" questions about what baby dinosaurs eat... Until even 10-year-old me could look at that picture of a fractal and go "ohhh, I see how the unstable phase shifts of chaos theory explain the fact that a thunderstorm caused that guy to get eaten by a T. rex." Almost paradigm.

And all Jurassic Park's banging on about chaos theory belies a deep understanding of how interconnected ecosystems are. Animals, like plants, like subatomic particles, must be understood holistically. Pretending that the best way to learn the truth of any system is through breaking it down "is like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It's nothing of the sort. It's uniquely Western training." Crichton clearly loves biology: "a single fertilized egg has a 100,000 genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell... A house is simple in comparison. But even so, workmen build the stairs wrong, they put the sink in backward, the tile man doesn't show up when he's supposed to. All kinds of things go wrong. And yet the fly that lands on the workman's lunch is perfect." And he clearly hates what capitalism has done to biotechnology.

Hammond the venture capitalist is a perfectly despicable villain: No dinosaurs have escaped, because I said so. If there are problems, no there aren't. Put on a good show for investors, no matter how many contractors die in the process. Talk about all the "good" the park will do by making tons of money. The kids are stranded and the tech expert's dead? No they're not, because I said so, now pass the ice cream. It's truly a delight watching him get eaten by dinosaurs.

For that matter, Jurassic Park is bursting with details of style over substance. There are cutesy Apatosaurus cutouts in the hotel rooms and bars on the widows, a half-finished restaurant covered in Pterosaur poop, and a celebrity-narrated tour track that can't synchronize with the dinosaurs. It's trying to be Disney World, and it's actually a roadside zoo. The signage — "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth," the hand-lettered "Welcome to Jurassic Park", the room (and department) called "Control" — isn't subtle in its irony. But it is fun.

Which is yet another great sci fi trick. "Our funding is infinite but our peer review sucks" perfectly sets up the blend of the accurate with the plot-fueling (likely why Crichton reuses it several times). Why are there Pterosaurs in a dinosaur park? Our funding is infinite but our peer review sucks. Why are so many Cretaceous dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? Our funding is infinite but our peer review sucks. You didn't know Dilophosaurus is venomous? Our funding is infinite... It's perfect, because it's the opposite of how the scientific process usually works. Again: Crichton knows his shit, and he knows how to communicate it.

Like, even when I'm reading Sphere or Terminal Man — books where I'm perfectly aware I know more than Crichton on the subject, not in the least because their science inevitably became outdated — I still find myself believing, at least for the length of the story. You don't have to suspend disbelief when reading Crichton's work; he hoists it into the stratosphere for you. Half the time he won't give it back even after you're done. Almost paradigm.

But despite all that nerdery, Jurassic Park is still a rocking adventure story that builds momentum until it smashes to its conclusion at 70 miles an hour, ending the millisecond it can do so with not a word of denouement. You can practically hear that last deep piano note on the final words. It's cinematic as hell. This is Crichton post-Westworld, pre-Twister, the ultimate adventure writer. He reads, clearly, avoiding the errors of sci fi amateurs who watch too many movies (the T. rex has a distinctive smell, the island is relentlessly humid, so on) but he knows how to make a tight fast-moving story that you can consume in under three hours. His imagery is powerful, his pacing is on point, and his plot sucks you in and shoots you out like a water slide.

Jurassic Park is fun. It's informative. It makes you laugh, and gasp, and sigh, and think. It has its flaws (Harding Sr. fades out in the 3rd act, Grant's Maiasaura expertise never pays off) but those are minor in a book that stands up so well to rerereading. Almost paradigm.

[deathdetermineslife]

(if u saw me post this the first time with the wrong poll length no you didn't)

[sigh-tofm]

cw forced smoking

sleezy boyfriend simon who sits up against the headboard after he’s come in you (you probably didn’t come, he knows how to get you there but he rarely puts the effort in), one arm slung around your shoulders as he comes down from his high. you would rather go take a shower, or at the very least wipe yourself off with the t-shirt he discarded on the floor, but his arm locks around you as he lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. he’s stopped blowing the smoke in your face but it’s not because he’s suddenly grown a conscience - it’s because he’s taken to making you smoke it with him instead. he places his big hand, still holding the cig, across your entire jaw and pinches your nose shut with his thumb and forefinger long enough for you to open your mouth, long enough for him to push the end of the cig in. makes you take a long, deep drag before he lets up.

“told ya you’d like it eventually,” he laughs deep and hoarse as you cough and sputter, his free hand pulling the sheet down to tweak your nipple. you squeak and he laughs louder, taking another drag for himself before bringing the cig back to your mouth again.

[cemeterydove]

ᯓ✮٠ ࣪⭑CG! Sevika from Arcane!!!

Recently started watching Arcane for the art style and the animation cuz i though it look so cool and I wanted to study it ofc! But then I saw her and I was like "DAYMMMMMM I WANT HER NOW!!!!!" But this isn't the place for me to simp over her.... unfortunately....

She doesn't really have that many agere headcanons sooooo I thought i could write sm! Too me she's so mama/papa coded! Not only is she my f/o but she's my cg!!!

‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐

🚬: she tries not to drink, smoke, or anything like that around you.

🦾: mama bear mode at full max whenever she's around you! No one can ever hurt her littles!!!

🐻: always has you around her. Doesn't matter the situation, she needs to keep an eye on you 24/7. The under city is a very dangerous place to be at but with her by your side, it's a much safer place.

💢: doesn't really trust anyone to take care of you or babysit you. Not even Jinx... and if anyone suggests to babysit you she'd say no with the most meanest look.

🥃: she's okay with you calling her "mama", "mama bear", "mommy", "papa", "daddy", "big boss"/"boss" or "sir"

🍒: "please sit still, mama bear needs to fix you up okay my little fighter. Can you do that?" She says as she cleans off and patches up your busted knees.

🤎: is more relaxed and calm around you! Like you can just put her at ease! Like, she softens up to you more. Her kiddo is the only one who has seen her be like this.

💥: SPECIAL TREATMENT!!!! ALL!!! THE!!! TIME!!! what? She can never say no that that little face! Even if she's too stubborn.

🍻: loves to listen to you babel. "Oh yeah? Tell me about it sweetheart. Wow, you sure have a lot to say don't you!" She says enthusiastically.

🧸: big cuddler! You're just always in her arms and in her lap non stop!

♠️: occasionally she'll allow you to put stickers on her mechanical arm if no one's around.... if anyone questioned why she got stickers on her mechanical arm she'd make sure that would be the last day that they'd questioned that.

🎰: if you have long hair she'd brush it and put it into different styles. Braids, buns, pony tails, pig tails, hair clips, hair glitter, anything really! If you have a certain type of hair texture she'd learn now to style it... but the downside is that she'd do it like once in a while cuz she's so busy.

💜: would call you "pumpkin", "sweetheart", "darling", "little fighter", "sweet cheeks", "little cub", "kid", and "kiddo"

💫: even though she hates this but, she lets you hold her hand but not around Silco tho... she hates that even more...

🃏: is good with all types of littles! Even the fussy ones but she will show her frustration. She doesn't mean it tho...

🔧: if you so happen to have a nightmare or any she'd lay besides you and tell you about old stories about her and read you bedtime stories. Just don't get too creeped out!

‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐

WJDIWKWN I TRIED THINKING ABOUT STUFF THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE!!! ALSO!!! Sadly i have no art or anything but I do have in mind writing a agere fic of sevika with a little reader cuz there's literally nothing... like don't get me wrong, there's a lot of $mut of her and that's fine but I wanna read something where she's all sweet and soft to the reader!!!! >:(

[bbuzz28]

Memories

Old man Fiddlestan, my beloved-and what's this? It could be semi-canon compliant :O ?!?! Woof- this is one of the saddest things I have ever written. I know some of you gremlins (affectionate) love that sort of thing, but I don't. I like really really don't. This is my comfort ship, so I don't even know where this came from other than trying to figure out how they *could* work in canon. Truthfully though, I prefer my Fiddlestan heavy on the comfort when it comes to the "hurt/comfort" genre. This is my only “angsty” (i.e. no immediate happy ending) Notes-app fics, so don't get used to this level of sad from me lol.

“Stan?” an oddly familiar voice called. Mr. Mystery, Stan Pines, glanced up from the flyers he was organizing and found that Old Man McGucket stood in the doorway of his front door. The last tour of the day had just left, it was dinnertime, and he was exhausted. Stan rolled his eyes as he unfurled his tie, wishing Soos was still there to escort the crazy old man off his property. No matter what he did, the old hillbilly always managed to find his way back to the Shack. “Sweet Moses McSuckit, what are you doing in here? Shoo, scat, or whateva will get rid of ya.” Hearing no movement, he looked at the man again and found he was standing erect. His blue eyes were the clearest he had seen them in no less than a decade.

          Wait, what did he call- oh. Oh no.

“Stan…ley? Did I…did I do somethin’ wrong?” the other man asked, his hands twisted in knots in front of him. Memories flashed through Stan’s mind; Ford falling through the portal, Fiddleford finding him passed out in the lab, working together to bring Ford home again…being together. Being happy. They had been happy, if just for a little while, hadn’t they?

Then there was the cult, and his discovery of the damn memory gun that had finally ruined everything they ever built. He took a hesitant step forward, a thousand thoughts roaring in his mind at once. “Fidds? Wha-what do you remember?” A bandaged hand snaked up and rubbed over the faded scar on the side of his head “I…don’t rightly know. Did we…I think we had a fight? I just woke up in the…in the dump. N’ I don’t have any shoes. Do ya know why my arm is in a cast?” Fiddleford looked so lost.

Stan knew in his heart that all of this was fleeting- “clarity” would hit Fiddleford every few years after he had finally wiped his mind of himself. Almost like his brain was trying to jumpstart itself back together. The first time they thought it was a miracle but…it didn’t last. It just started a trend that would follow them both for the next almost thirty years. Fiddleford would seemingly “wake up” and be lucid for a few weeks in the beginning, then eventually only a matter of days. It had been so long since the last time that Stan would wager, they only had maybe a few hours together if he was lucky.

The last time Fiddleford was himself…they had fought. Stanley thought he had figured the only way Fiddleford could stay; he needed to remember. Remember everything he had ever forgotten. At the time, Fiddleford had been unwilling to try. He didn’t think he could handle it; he knew he had forgotten what he had for a reason.

Stanley had gotten as close to begging as he ever had in his life since surviving Tijuanna, and when it had no effect…Stanley had told Fiddleford to leave and never come back. He had left that night, and by the next day he had faded away again. After a while, Stan thought his last words had been the final nail in the coffin that was Fiddleford’s mind. He carried that weight along with every other mistake he had ever made. But here he was. Fiddleford. His Fiddleford.

He took a deep breath before he opened his arms up. “Hey, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. I’m right here.” Fiddleford rushed through the doorway, melting into Stanley’s open arms. “I went away again, didn’t I?” Stan could feel Fiddleford’s tears soaking into his chest, his own whispering at the edges of his eyes. Yes, and you will leave again. You will leave me and I will be alone all over again, you fucking asshole. “Hey cowboy, didn’t I just say not t’ worry about any a’ that? You’re here now, n' that’s what matters. You’re…you’re home.” A haggard laugh vibrated through the smaller man’s chest into Stanley’s own. “I know I keep tellin’ ya, tellin’ me not t’ worry is like” “…tellin’ a fish t’ stop swimmin’; I know Fidds, I know.” Fuck was really the only conscious thought that went through his head as he held his one-time lover. He couldn’t believe he was doing this, again.

Fiddleford looked up, eyes wide and searching Stan’s face. “How long do ya think we have?” Stan shook his head, unwilling to lie even if it eventually wouldn’t matter because he wouldn’t remember. You’ve always been the only person I couldn’t lie to. “I dunno, it’s been…a while. Probably not very long.” Fiddleford closed his eyes before he said “I need ya t’ know somethin’, Stanley.” Stan started to shake his head. “Fidds, you don’t have t-” The look on the other man’s face shut Stan right up-he had always had that ability. Stan wished he didn’t miss it as much as he did. “I need ya to know that even when I’m not here…I miss you. The part of me that’s somewhere in here-” A weathered hand tapped the side of his head to emphasize his point “ misses you. I’m just so sorry, Stanley. Sorry that I’m a coward. I’m sorry that I’m not strong enough to be here all the time…but I’ll never stop tryin’. I’ll always try n’ come home to ya.”

Stan thought of the thousands of times he had chased Old Man McGucket, the neat little character that Stan had to compartmentalize his Fiddleford into when he wasn’t himself, out of the Shack. How many times he had found him curled up like a cat on the back porch. How every time they “met”, McGucket would say how nice Stan was or how good he felt to be around him “for some reason.” How many odds and ends McGucket would gift Stan from the dump for exhibits at the Mystery Shack with a large smile and nothing substantial behind his eyes.

It would be so much easier if he would stop trying to come back. Maybe the hole in Stan’s heart the size of the sweet, certifiably insane man would scab over. How many times had Stanley mourned him? How many times was he willing to hurt himself? They were now nearing their sixties, how long was he really willing to do this song and dance?

What’s one more time? he softly thought, his hand coming up to tenderly cup the grizzled face of Fiddleford Hadron McGucket. Mad scientist, friend, and unfortunately for them both…the love of his life.

“I miss you too, Fidds.”

[queerliblib]

when new books drop at QLL…

check out our just added titles! 📚

[twispswatch]

sirius “i turned myself into a worm to test remus’ love for me” black and remus “oh my god this worm is so cute and curious, why is it in the dorm? let me take it outside so he can get food while i end up telling the worm my life story and wishing it was a real person while wondering where is sirius?? cus he would love this worm too” lupin

[kimiko24-art]

Tag which one is you and which one is ur f/o