#it from google lol

[lovand4vamp]

Learners (2007, Francesca Joseph)

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[baker-chan-senpai]

[amygdalae]

[meerphanim]

The Ferryman's Scorpion

{ Click/Tap for better quality. }

My entry for @catmask 's and @frogcroaks ' contest, Monster Mayhem!

I chose the theme Wisteria Will-O-Wisp for flower symbolism and will-o'-the-wisp folklore. Also because of the color purple ← My favourite color 💜

Thank you for hosting this contest where I can try out monster designing and good luck to the other participants. Peace and love on planet Earth!

[tiredeg]

People everywhere sense imminent danger all around. They sense that whatever just happened is the beginning of the savagery, not the end. People abandon their vehicles and begin to flee on foot. They exit buildings, run down stairs and out doors. People in subway trains and on busses, in halted elevator cars, work to pry open emergency exits and doors. They crawl, walk, and run for their lives. The most basic human instinct is to survive.—Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario

They’re going to die, probably.  

“It was stupid of us to take the elevator,” Oscar says. 

Carlos manages an eye roll back at him. Oscar’s surprised the motion of his eyeballs doesn’t unbalance him, perched as he is on the railing around the edge of the elevator car, calves straining, reaching his phone up towards the emergency lighting strips. As high as possible, as if he can will the texts out of his phone, force the words out of the frozen elevator, up the shaft and out into the sky, send them floating through the air towards the recipients, soaring past the bombs coming the opposite way. 

Oscar’s no expert but he knows enough Spanish to be able to decipher the glimpses he’s managed of the screen. I will be ok. I love you all. Incongruous against the previous message in the thread, a picture of a scrappy white dog asleep on a couch. Oscar had watched Carlos add a heart react to it not two hours ago when they got back to the hotel after FP2. 

God, two hours ago. One hour and fifty minutes before someone told them to check their phones, before the awful silence as they watched the video. A farmer somewhere in California had put it on Facebook, a mushroom cloud blooming over a power plant. It was shared everywhere, Oscar had watched it with Kim, hunched over Twitter, or X, or whatever. The farmer is probably dead now. Facebook certainly is, anyway.

The bomb hit hundreds of miles away from their hotels in Vegas. Not far enough.

Finally, Carlos hops down, collapsing beside Oscar on the floor of the cab. The wall opposite them is a mirror, floor to ceiling, so Oscar doesn’t have to turn his head. It’s easier this way. 

“I think they have gone through,” Carlos blurts out, like he’d wanted to keep quiet but the words forced their way up his throat. “It has the two grey ticks. I think that means it's gone from my phone but I will not get blue ticks without signal.” 

It takes Oscar a second to catch his drift. There’s no way the messages went through. The signal’s been gone for a few minutes, Oscar reckons, about the same time the elevator stopped. Carlos isn’t an idiot, he must know. Oscar knows. 

“I think that’s right,” Oscar says. “They’ll have signal in Spain still, so they’ll have got it.” 

He feels Carlos sag a little at his words. They’re touching from shoulder to knee, something they wouldn’t have risked this morning. Doesn’t matter now. Probably shouldn’t have mattered at the time. 

“How would you go, if you could choose?” Carlos asks.  

Oscar shrugs. “Dunno, never really thought about it.” 

“Don’t be boring, think about it now.” Carlos shoves into him, puts his body weight behind it, but Oscar’s expecting it, can see him decide in the mirror. He braces himself, doesn’t move. Now they’re tangled. Now he can think. 

“I guess I read this book in school. It was nuclear stuff but not bombs, just radiation, so it was really slow. This one girl took her boyfriend’s good car out for one last drive, then floored it off a cliff in the end. I think I’d like that.” 

Carlos doesn’t say anything, just leans his head onto Oscar’s shoulder proper. If they stay like this too long Oscar won’t be able to feel his arm. Maybe that’s how he’d like to go, let Carlos lean on him limb by limb until he can’t feel anything anymore.  

“He was with her? The boyfriend?” Carlos mumbles. 

“Huh?” 

“In the nice car. Was she with her boyfriend?” 

“Oh, well not exactly, he was in a submarine I think, I don’t remember it all. They might not have been boyfriend and girlfriend actually, or maybe they were, I don’t know. They definitely loved each other.” 

“Oh,” Carlos says, “that’s nice.” 

“Yeah. What about you, what way would you go?” 

Oscar watches in the mirror as Carlos looks up at him.  

“I had a different answer but I like yours better, I think.” 

“Copycat. I suppose you can come along.” Oscar shifts, rearranging Carlos’s arms around him. 

“Who would drive?” Carlos asks. 

Oscar wants to be the one who wants to drive. He could take that role, let Carlos hold on as their imaginary car gets closer to the point of no return, make the decision to keep the car pointing forward, his foot to the floor. He could take the wheel, if he had to. 

In the mirror he can see Carlos is still looking at him. He meets his own eyes in the reflection, then lets his head turn, lets himself look for real. 

“I don’t want to drive,” Oscar whispers.

“Okay,” Carlos shrugs, easy. “I’ll do it.” 

The emergency strips go dark. Oscar doesn’t know what that means, why they worked when the power went out or why they’ve stopped now. He’s annoyed at how he expects his eyes to adjust, blinking hard when they don’t as if he can force the nonexistent light into his pupils.  

He can still feel. He’s shaking, he thinks. Carlos’s arms tighten around him, unsteady too. Oscar revises his previous answer, overwhelmingly glad of the elevator; they can’t get lost in here, it’s too small. He doesn’t really know the timeline on these things, maybe it’ll take a day, maybe a few seconds. They’re here for now. 

[lazycranberrydoodles]

xie lian texts like a grandpa … i imagine pre confession their texts would be a graveyard of hua cheng’s failed attempts at flirting

xie lian's profile picture is from the manhua by starember / follow for more of hua cheng Ls

[tboom10]

It's-a Spooky Month!

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[cake-emu]

Coronation Street | Lisa Swain

Bonus:

the real cherry on top is this example coming up on Google for the definition of 'frankness':

and ICYMI: Carla and her big gob gifset

[eldest-of-katts]

joelbrina carpenter

[virtues-end]

Just a quick announcement--I've uploaded the revised version of Virtue's End to the original demo link, thereby replacing it, and have moved the original demo that was there to a new folder for safekeeping (for those of you who would still like to read/replay it).

I'm not sure if the move will cause any errors so I've kept the revised link up for now but if all goes well, I will be updating the game using the original link from now on.

[ylangelegy]

KAEEEE congratulations on 1k omg i can't believe i'm just finding out about this now??? i literally thought u had like 10k ndjdnjd your writing is novel worthy i cant believe you aren't running tumblr already 😔

📱 i would pretty pretty please love to hear more about actor jun if u have any thoughts to spare :3 and congrats again!! here's to many more hehe 🎉🫶🏻💓

high praise coming from one of the best writers on caratblr 😳 and i will always give jun to the world's biggest huihui <3 mwaaa!

📱 boyfriend actor!jun x reader (part one, part two). part of my follower milestone celebration. word count: 676.

Jun has started doing his own stunts.

A part of you knows that your fear is misplaced. He’s training with the legendary Jackie Chan, of all people. Your boyfriend is in capable hands.

Still, you can’t help but worry.

It had always been this way even before he dipped his toes into the action genre. Texts of have you eaten? during long shoots. Encouraging Post-It’s snuck into his coat pocket pre-flight. You worry, and you worry, and you worry, and Jun loves you for it. 

He’ll smile at the texts and force himself to eat something small. He’ll keep the notes in his wallet and reread them when he misses the sound of your voice. He lets you fret over him because you give as much as you get, and he would never say ���no’ to you.

Even if it can be a bit— overbearing, at times. Jun keeps his eye rolls and scoffs to a minimum as you lather his body in efficascent oils, as you slap pain relief patches on his aching joints. 

“Bit of an overkill, no?” he mumbles. His supposed distaste is betrayed by the way he practically preens when you begin to knead at the knots in his shoulders.

You can only sigh at his attempt to be nonchalant. “My boyfriend is an action star,” you say, your teasing tone edged with admiration. It makes Jun want to swoon. “The least I can do is make sure he’s being taken care of.” 

“You can take care of me other ways.” 

“Shut up.” 

“How about you shut me up by—” 

There’s bickering, and teasing, and your fingers dancing along his sides to get him to laugh, to stop flirting. Jun is bone tired and every part of his body hurts, but he’s never tired of you. Nothing ever hurts when it comes to you. 

Jun can be a hypocrite, though. 

You realize this on an unassuming Saturday evening, a rare weekend where the two of you can just stay in. You’re reading a book by the couch while Jun is absentmindedly scrolling through SNS. When you let out a low, unbidden hiss, he’s immediately snapping to attention. 

“Babe?” he calls, his attention leaving the TikTok on his screen. 

“‘S nothing,” you huff. 

Your boyfriend sets aside his phone and leans forward from the other side of the couch, crowding into your space. “Liar,” he says. “What is it?” 

You extend your hand in response. In the low light of your living room, it’s almost invisible, but Jun doesn’t miss it. The raised, reddish skin on your index finger, put there by the corner of your page. 

“It’s just a paper cut,” you’re saying, but Jun isn’t about to have any of that. 

He’s on his feet before you can complain. “Come back here,” you whine. 

His response of “no!” is muffled as he makes a beeline for the bathroom. He emerges moments later with your First Aid kit, his eyebrows furrowed with genuine concern and determination. 

“Junhui,” you say exasperatedly. 

He doesn’t listen. When has he ever? He kneels at your side and begins to rummage through the kit, mumbling about antiseptics and cotton balls. 

You two could have been done much faster if you didn’t resist him here and there. By the end of it, though, you compromise to a Sanrio adhesive bandage despite the absence of any blood at all. 

“Be more careful next time,” Jun says as he snaps the kit close. He poses the words as a joke, but you can hear the hint of worry in his tone. (He gives as much as he gets.) 

You close the distance to kiss him, and his expression smooths out at the familiar affection. “Overkill,” you tease, murmuring the words against his mouth.

Jun worries. You love him for it. 

At your peck, his lips curl up into a smile that you can almost taste. He doesn’t answer— just grabs your arms and pulls you down on top of him. You go down squealing, and then you’re both laughing until your sides hurt.

It’s the good kind of hurt, though. 

[castingrunes]

since Red Dwarf is leaving BBC iplayer today here's some links to the episodes I've been able to find on Internet Archive

I-VIII https://archive.org/details/bbc-red-dwarf

BTE-XII https://archive.org/details/RedDwarf1988

No TPL unfortunately, there did used to be a playlist that included all of the episodes but it's been copyright claimed and taken down

There's also a pretty comprehensive compilation of extras that I've been having a lot of fun looking through

https://archive.org/details/red-dwarf-extras

[sainz100]

Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen | 2016 Malaysian GP

[unpretty]

man. i couldn't stand to look at any of these pictures for years because of how bad i hated my face. 18! an infant.