#send me soup

[essiemclaren]

u good?

I KNEW IT you'd miss me 😩 im currently in bed, trying to get better because im sick 😞💔 this is how i look rn

[kels-gvf]

I can’t sleep can’t stop throwing up and I miss greta

[drvcifers]

sorry if you don’t hear from me for a bit, everything is slower because I’m spending the first days of actual fall weather sick in bed 🥲

[koithebastard]

so, I'm sick.

and no one is around to get me soup.

this is a travesty.

[twistedlovelines]

“Say ‘ah,’” Trey coos.

You sniffle and bury your face deeper into the pillow, congestion only heightening your misery.

“It tastes gross,” you mumble, fully aware of the petulance in your voice. Trey huffs a laugh, gently setting the spoon down into a bowl with a faint clink. A comforting pressure settles upon your shoulder as he works his fingers into the tired flesh, a ragged sigh easing from your body.

“I know, but you’re not gonna get any better any faster by not taking it,” he murmurs, the bed dipping under his weight as he settles down next to you. The covers you had protectively drawn up to your face ease ever so slightly, revealing your ashen face. Lips faintly parted, you only have the strength to nuzzle into the hand Trey offers you, sighing at the warmth.

[rockatanskette]

Semi-related to my post on how human conservation practices, but I have a cold today, and it's got me thinking about biological altruism—the biological imperative to put other creatures ahead of yourself, to benefit the group.

When talking about possible interactions with other species, we talk a lot about humans being crazy and thrill-seeking and impossible to kill. Never use a warning shot as an incentive to keep humans out of a fight; it'll just make them angry. And that's true. But a valid criticism I've seen in the "Earth is a death world" community is that according to our understanding of evolution, every planet must be some form of death world. Competition fosters evolution—the wolf with sharper claws survives when its litter mates die. You can't reach space travel without some casualties along the way.

But the dog survives because it makes friends with the strange ape carrying a sharp stick. And the strange ape survives because it befriends the wolf. Underneath the death world is an inextricable and undeniable layer of the bond world; the love world; the world, together.

I imagine some worlds are not death worlds. They're peaceful and tranquil. I suspect there are worlds far more deadly than Earth, where the skies rain diamonds, harder than any substance we know with the species to match. And I imagine that they are united in their confusion at the duality of humankind.

Today is a great example: I have a cold, and I want someone to take care of me, but the people who would are immunocompromised, also sick, or live 8 hours away, respectfully. I also want no one within the walls of my apartment or I will eat them. I feel gross, I feel tired, and I don't want a single human being anywhere near me, even if they did bring soup.

In my constant scrolling through my phone today, I decided to look up why the hell I feel so bad—why everyone feels so bad when they're ill. And the answer surprised me. I always thought it was because your immune system is active, so it's using a lot of your energy. That is part of it. Another part is that your brain and body are communicating across the blood-brain barrier to fight the infection, which is rare and energetically expensive.

But that doesn't explain everything, and according to more current research, it could also be what's called the Eyam Hypothesis: that we feel so gross, so we instinctively isolate from other people. We're too tired to deal with others, and so we don't infect them. Misanthropy for the good of the species. Of course, it can also backfire: one of the criticisms of the Eyam Hypothesis is that humans also instinctively care for each other. If my brother has a headache, I drive to the store for Advil.

Personally, I think it's a little bit of both: biological altruism. Either way, the majority live on. The first thought I had this morning when I woke up wasn't "I feel gross" it was "there's no way I'm going to work today." And while that might not be everyone's first thought, you don't even have to be a particularly altruistic person to not want to leave your home or your bed when you're sick. It's inborn.

And so when the human named Ismail comes down with a case of the interstellar common cold, his alien friend Dyos grows very concerned. Ismail is usually intensely social, almost off-puttingly so. Some crew members joke about how his quarters are for sleeping and prayer only; if he's home alone? You should be worried. But when Dyos demands an answer to the severity of Ismail's malady, the other humans just nod knowingly.

"Nah, he's okay, the medics already cleared him. It's not a severe infection."

"But there are so many...fluids. And his body has changed color."

There is a moment of confusion there until they remember that Dyos's species can see in the infrared color spectrum.

"Nah, that's just a low-grade fever. It should break in the next couple days."

"But he doesn’t want to play chess today," Dyos insists.

"Ohhhh," says human Claudia, finally understanding. "No, that's normal. Humans don't like being around other people when they're sick, it's supposed to be one of the major evolutionary advantages. Protect your community from your illness and the genes live on."

"So we're just going to leave him alone?" Dyos is troubled by this. He can go for weeks without speaking to another life form, but he has seen Ismail grow despondent when unable to participate in social gathering.

"Oh, no," human Claudia says, laughing. "We're going to employ one of the other most longstanding human evolutionary advantages."

There are many to choose from and Dyos settles on, "middle age?"

"Sort of," human Claudia opens up a small shipping container and holds up a brown paper bag tied with a colorful ribbon. It glows brightly in Dyos's vision, almost as brightly as human Claudia's smile. "His nanni's hot soup, express delivery."

[bonefall]

i saw one design where they gave her what this person described as "a hapsburg jaw, because incest lol" and the way i physically recoiled

I am keeping a personal folder of fucked up shit people have been saying about Moonpaw (with the names of posters removed). Some of the things I've seen and screenshotted include;

A person hoping that Moonpaw "dies of inbreeding complications to make the Erins face the consequences of their actions." As if she's a real person the writing team has no control over?? The ink on the page is going to die of incest???

Open calls and wishes for a "mass extinction event" in ThunderClan because "we need to kill them off" for being too genetically unhealthy

Delight and revelry in the fact that Moonpaw's chimerism probably comes from inbreeding, often paired with conflating chimerism with mosaicism

LOTS of jokes about "ugly, misshapen, deformed" Moonpaw, some saying she would be mentally impaired, even comparing her to unethically bred animals because her parents are "practically siblings."

So forgive me for having a hunch that these people don't actually give a shit about the victims of incestuous abuse. I've got a feeling they just want an acceptable target to make ableist comments about. Something tells me they might not think eugenics isn't all too bad if it's done against populations they think are "actually" undesirable.

These jokes and comments are not fucking funny and the fact that some of these are the very top of the Moonpaw tag makes me sick. I NEVER want to hear these ghouls complain about the tangled family tree ever again if your reason for it being bad isn't because of intense social control or authorial carelessness, but because it might produce ugly and/or disabled people. Wither and rot.

[hollowedskin]

Things that never stop being funny:

Telling your international friends to post you things that should not go in the mail.

Put your cat in an envelope I will take him

[sionisjaune]

happy birthday jenson button!

[peskyfirefly]

dedicated to @feitanporter 🖤 happy birthday bestie!

bonus:

[ image added in mica's honor ]

[queddadraw]

A load out I saw in game and loved

[soupforsoup]

Tag Game: do this picrew and share the last song you listened to!

Thank you to @miyagi-hokarate for tagging me!! 🌸🏵🌻

I SWEAR I DON'T NORMALLY LISTEN TO IMAGINE DRAGONS ON THE REG I SWEAR I'M COOL PLEASE DON'T KICK ME OFF OF TUMBLR DOT COM FUCKK

I'm inviting: @brainless-tin-box @abracazabka @skysister @fivenyssateganadric and anybody at all else who wants to do this!! ✨💚✨🌸✨

[waywardmillennial]

I took most of the day to rest and cry, and still don't feel like I'm standing on completely solid ground. I will still need to process some of this in the coming days.

It's funny (in a sad way) that what I hoped for from the beginning was for Watcher TV to be their new, enhanced Patreon replacement. But now that it's sort of what we'll have but in the most painful way possible - FUCK, I TAKE IT BACK.

Because, while I know that the world at large can be a scary, hateful, and ignorant place at times, I didn't expect all that to invade my fandom safe space at the scale or intensity it did these past few days.

I've felt more angry, disappointed, and sad than I can remember in recent memory -- but none of it was because of Watcher founders or staff. It was because of so called "fans" response. There's a lot of broken trust there, and I'm going to continue to wade through the tags and block as many people as I need to in the coming weeks.

The fucking mental gymnastics that some people had to do to convince themselves of the greed behind this decision made me dizzy, and honestly baffled at their lack of reading comprehension.

Watcher is not the 1%.

If you think that trying to destroy an independent media production company is what they mean by "Eat the Rich", then my brother in socialism we are all going to starve to death.

Part of me wishes they hadn't walked it back, because I feel like it sets a bad example of what throwing a tantrum can get you. It also would bring me nothing but joy if Steven and Andrew gatekeep Travel Season behind that paywall. The boys are being generous to continue the live shows after the crap some of y'all have pulled. A lot of people have proven that don't deserve to have nice things.

I'm going to say this last part loudly: The targeted hate that Steven received is most disappointing of all. If you agree that he's greedy, evil, or not fit to be CEO, then please let me know /gen

That way I can block you from seeing the spoilers I'm going to post from Watcher TV. Because I'm not cancelling my subscription (and I'm not rich either, I just like supporting the creators I care about).

*If you were just confused by the initial announcement and waiting for a response, maybe even felt hurt because of finances or living in another country that wasn't supported yet, but you didn't resort to attacking the founders or their spouses, then this isn't about you.

And to my beautiful moots, and new friends, who posted their opinions and defenses of Watcher, and kept trying to set the record straight since Friday, I appreciate all of you. 💜

[eldritchmochi]

Hey Mochi! I'm writing my first smut fic (my dnd party has a romance going on and its consumed my thoughts so drastic actions are being taken). Do you have any tips or tricks? You're writing in coping skills specifically is just so so good in sex scenes and I'm curious if theres anything you've noted helps when writing that sort of thing

MANY TIPS except maybe not actually ive been doing this for so long that a lot of it is second nature and also a LOT of it is just... normal ass writing advice lol

but for ur consideration:

🔥 HOT TIP #1: dont be afraid to use ur characters names. similarly dont be afraid to use the same word for other nouns, like body parts, tools, etc. it is a lot easier to keep things clear and flowing when you, as the writer, arent trying to use a synonym for everything, so that your readers don't have to do math lady meme faces trying to figure out what limb is whose

🔥 HOT TIP #2: this is hard for a lot of people i know that i am a weirdo who basically transcribes video when writing, but the better you can visualize whats going on in ur scene, the more effective your description of movement and interaction will be, ESPECIALLY with stuff in close contact like smut (or fight scenes, or dancing, and so on).

🔥 HOT TIP #2a: if you are in a situation where you can comfortably just.... watch porn, i highly recommend this, not only to help visualize how bodies act and move during sex, but to broaden ur scope of sex acts. i spend an absolutely wild amount of time watching teaser clips of all sorts from indie models on twitter and my ph algo is absolutely *fucked* lmao. same as visual artists should use reference as needed for their art, so should writers, and ur not gonna be able to write *everything* from personal experience

u can also absolutely use other smutty mediums for reference, like comics or illustrations, photographs, or yeah writing, but if you are not a particularly visual thinker, having some sort of specifically visual reference to base stuff off can be very helpful, from what some of my writing bros have shared

🔥 HOT TIP #3: vocab is really *really* important in smut. i have Opinions on words for junk and jizz and all that, but when it comes to writing, the words you use *gotta* match your characters voice. its super subjective, especially in fanfic, and can definitely be fluid depending on the situation, but it has to be consistent with your characterization across the board, with strong internal logic

equally important are the words you *don't* use--if your pov character is stuck up and nervous and a little prudish like the way i tend to write essek, using euphemisms or otherwise talking around the gross specifics can really emphasize that characterization and lead to really vulgar turns of phrase hitting super hard (ie esseks internal monologue going "caleb could spit in esseks mouth and essek would thank him for it" or whatever it was is incredibly striking because so much of esseks desire is not explicitly voiced)

you can legitimately use any kind of dick+ vocab and make it land when its paired with the right character and situation, though the weirder you go the harder it is to make it work

🔥 HOT TIP #4: write what you find hot. if u write shit u specifically are horny for, it will shine thru and people will go nuts for it. follow ur weird lil heart, have fun with it, yes-and with ur dick in hand and ur smut will be fabulous

[slashingdisneypasta]

Imagine that you're completely sick as a dog. You're sweaty and hot to the touch but at the same time feel cold as ice, the only orifice of yours that isn't leaking some kind of muck is your ears, and you're just plain miserable.

Which of your F/O's stays with you and takes care of you? Which ones stay away and call periodically to check up? If they do show up- do you let them in to see you???

[hdusa]

soup time

what. the heck.

can you do this to spoke and squiddo too

I’d be like hahahahahhaa spoke and squiddo stew