#we're just getting started

[martanis]

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Cast Recap Season 1

[akirateku]

The way you drew Harvey has done something irreversible to me, I fear- Holy SHIT. I would die to see more of him in your style... You went crazy on that piece.

Ohoh there is plenty more where that came from dear anon 😂👌🏽✨

[embraceweird]

CR announced the Fjord and Jester wedding live show and I immediately marked "wedding" in my calendar for that day

[lawabidingcinnamon]

Please someone edit together a video or gifset of every time Marisha says "we're just getting started" because i need the energy of all of them in my life

[jaws-and-canines]

Enemy To You : 1-0

I do stupid things, but with calculated risks. I live and I will die on probability. That’s how life works on the Frontier. That’s how life worked in the corps-espatiers, that’s how life works in my day-job, and that’s how life works in ice climbing. I reached up to check the sturdiness of the screw above my head with a gloved hand, pulling on the metal. I unclipped one of my carabiners and move it onto the screw, and then the next. 

You’re going to die doing this, David. That’s what my mother always said- about everything I do. Still does when she can get in contact with me, which I try to avoid. We’re not compatible anymore. I know why she does it, but I don’t want to be treated like a china doll. I’ve killed people and I’ve saved people. People have shot at me. I’ve had a burst air line in space. A railgun hit the ship I was on. I’m not made of eggshells and I left Earth to feel like I wasn’t.

Yaettää - named by the Finnish astroneers who discovered it, but inhabited by Americans- the “planet that was left behind”. A warm day is -40F,a wintry day drops right down to -112. A storm will bring it right down to -130F.  

Yaettää has no seas on the surface. Maybe it did once, but they’re frozen solid. Drill deep down and you get geothermal springs, and that’s where humanity huddles up.

I was half a mile up Razorpeak. It’s called that because of the long, languishing peak of the mountain, overlooking both sides of the valley. I stopped for a moment, both hands on the rope, leaning back against my harness. The glittering of the engines breaking the thin atmosphere half above, the moisture dripping from my hood and my sweat freezing between layers of thermal nanoweave clothing.

My respirator filled up with condensation about halfway up the first cliff face. I have almost died from a faulty moisture valve, but that was out in the black- up in space, hard vacuum. I only made that mistake once. Like everyone else, you either die or you never forget to check again. Yaettää has decent atmospheric pressure, it’s just primarily carbon-dioxide. I poured out the condensation at the top of the first ascent. It froze a spiderweb on the ice. 

I reach the peak with a swing of the ice-axe that knocks loose a powdery rain of snow. I let the axe drop, swinging on its strap beside me, and dig my forearms in to pull myself up to the very top. I cry out, victorious over the mountain. It feels fucking great. Look probability in the face. Fuck you. I beat the odds. I’d done Razorpeak four times before. If something went wrong after the third, it was on me. It hadn’t. I was still the master of the fucking mountain. A stupid grin on my face, I shuffled up the incline, digging the spikes of my boots in until I found a little flat piece of rock cleared of snow- presumably by a previous climber, judging by the footprints. The white plains spiralled down below, patches of black rock over warmer pieces of ground, the intrusions of man on the landscape like wounds on skin- splinters, or oozing gashes. The wind died down- and as it always did, Yaettää fell to utter silence. If it wasn’t for my respirator, the gentle hissing of the air coming in and venting out, there would be no noise whatsoever in the thin atmosphere.

I unzipped the bit of my outer coat covering my PDA screen, and through thick gloves, navigated to the filesystem, and pulled up the class photo. It’s a tradition at this point. I try not to look at it too often, but I can’t bear to part with it. I made a deal with myself- only at the top of mountains, or out in the black. Only at the very edges of the world as I know it, and I leave the feelings out here. I don’t bring them back with me. 

---

2098. I was 26. Twelve years ago. Still waxing my beard and slicking my hair back like a greaser because I thought it looked cool. Red leather jacket- not the same one I wear now. That one was gone. Buried under concrete. There are six of us in the photograph. I remember it all from memory. I went to all five funerals. We are all standing on the steps of the Washington Building, bunched together, whilst a passerby takes the photo.

Roman and Reginald, the twins. I played Dungeons and Dragons with Roman, and got my ass kicked in judo by Reginald. You’d look at them and think it was the other way around. Sarah, the smart one out of all of us. Destined for great things, studying international law, dreams of bringing justice to people who thought they were above it. She had an internship lined up with the ICC, too. Wasted potential. Everything was, and it was hard not to see myself as that too.

Kesi. Braided hair, blue beads threaded in there. She has her arm around me, and she laughs. I don’t remember what she was laughing about, and I wish I did. I liked her, and I never told her. Later, I found out it was mutual. It was too late then.

Stephen was the last to die. He did pretty well for himself. His lungs gave out in the end. I missed it- the bastard asked me if I could go out and grab him another pillow, and then died when I wasn’t in the room. He would have found that hilarious. In the photo he has that shit-eating grin, green baseball cap, leaning on the railings of the steps. He was funny, and he knew it.

I looked different then, before. I only noticed that a few years ago. It’s bothered me slightly every time I look in the mirror since. I didn’t have tattoos, the law on the knuckles of one hand, and order on the other, nor my unit insignia on my forearm. I didn’t have the little scar under my left eye where someone tried to stab me. I don’t have hearing aids; I don’t have grey hairs. It's not any of that which bothers me, but something about my eyes—something nearly impossible to quantify. The fact I can’t put my finger on it is what upsets me. 

And with that sense of dread, it’s my cue to stop looking at the photo.

---

I turned my PDA off with the switch on the side and cover it back up, zipping up the sleeve of my outer coat again. The descent was a short abseil and a walk through hard-packed snow. It wasn’t strenuous. I tried not to think until the grey metal buildings came to light. I tapped my PDA against the ID reader on the outside of the airlock. It took a few tries, but the bolts disengaged and I walked back into the relative warmth of the colony.

I shed off layer after layer the moment I got through the inner door. The airlocks were directly next to changing rooms, men, women and unisex. My legs and arms were burning. It felt good to breathe air that wasn’t warm and wet and stale in a tank. I stripped down to my under-layer, wiped the moisture off my face, changed out of my shoes and dropped my used air tank in the ‘empty’ chute. Leaving a half-used tank around was quite a regular cause of gross negligence manslaughter charges. 

You don’t need your work brain, David; I reminded myself, getting my thermal climbing shawl from the locker I’d rented earlier, and headed back to my cabin. Up a few flights of stairs, getting goosebumps. I wrapped my shawl tightly around my shoulders, unlocked my rented cabin and turned up the heating. I’d set out dry clothes on the bed in the morning. The room smelled of dust; the bathroom smelled of bleach. I didn’t care. I was still riding the high.

I turned the shower on, cool at first, and warmed my fingertips under it. They burned as the blood warmed again. I use a three-in-one soap, conditioner and shampoo block. My mother would probably disapprove, but why carry three things when you can carry one? Why carry bottles when a bar won’t explode in your bag after a pressure change.

I got half-dressed, leaving my shirt on the bed and dried my hair, scrubbing at it with a dry towel. The door rang. “Bugger.” I grabbed my hearing aid from the bedside table and put it against the magnets in my skull. It snapped into place and beeped twice as it turned on. I tucked my bolt-caster into the back of my joggers as I unlocked the door and opened it a crack, leaving it on the chain. Three men. One armed with some sort of pulse-gun under his coat. He’s the one who seems to be taking charge.

“Can I help?” I wondered if he knows I know he’s armed. I wondered if he knew I was armed too. 

“Mr Davies?” 

I ignored his question. “And who are you?”

“Please, are you Mr David Davies?”

“I said, who the fuck-”

The door exploded into little splinters. The chain did nothing, flying off into little shards of metal as the compressed sonic blast punched through the hinges of the door. My hearing aid squealed a moment of noise through my skull before cutting out. If I hadn’t already been deaf, I would have been then. I screamed, clutching my skull, and rolled onto my side. I felt as if something had scrunched every organ into tiny pieces and then stretched them paper-thin. I saw the man lumbering towards me, grabbed for my bolt-caster, pulled back the priming lever, and was almost to the trigger.

He fired his weapon first. That same incredible wall of sound. I pulled the trigger of my ‘caster- less through action and more from clenching every muscle I had as it hit me. This time it took me out like a punch to the face. Tasting blood. Spark of white- spark out.

[simonbrain]

sitting at the bar with your bestie and jokingly saying, "i wish that was me," when she spews about how her man made her come so many times the other night they almost hit double digits. you doubt anyone is paying attention to the two of you gossiping and giggling like fools, and you share that you haven't been laid in a while.

"it's been eight months, actually." you pout, slapping her arm when she gawks and splutters something about finding you someone to shag in the back alley right away.

if only you noticed the guy with the fuckass mohawk sitting on the other side of you, intently eavesdropping on your personal conversation. he likes your friend's idea; surely you'll let him pull a few orgasms out of you outside before he fingerbangs you in the car on the way home and finally finishes you in his bed.

ten's a big number to aim for, but johnny's nothing if not utterly determined to ruin the pretty girl who's had him rock hard since she walked in.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Polin + Parallels, Callbacks, & Foreshadowing (Seasons 1-3)

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[humbuns]

ray of light 🍀

[captainjonnitkessler]

Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?

You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?

[xxplastic-cubexx]

oh boy 2AM !!!!!!

[othersidelonging]

This has been living rent free in my head since I read it

From @keferon 's mecha au and @spector-author 's writing (this post! or on AO3)

(I think I'm supposed to tag you both? If not let me know and I'll remove it 👍)

[claraoswalds]

This is a brand new science for me, and I love it. The language of luck. 'Cause what is a coincidence but a form of accident? Two things bumping together unexpectedly. Like you and me.

[baddecisionsgoooo0]

Transformers X Haso

I need more transformers x Humans are space orcs.

I need these smol, delicate humans the autobots have to protect to pull out Molotov cocktails and destroy decipticon joints.

I need a teacher to mix up a swimming pool size batch of oobleck and trap a cybertronian in it to protect his students.

I need humans using acid, or throwing rocks in joints, or otherwise inconveniencing decepticons while the autobots get more and more concerned.

I need Optimus or Ratchet to morosely bring up something that happened in the war, and a human to be like, "Oh that. Yeah, we made that illegal, it wasn't considered sporting." or "Wait, you guys have been fighting for how long, and that's the most extreme thing you did?"

I need a bot or a con to get curious and open a history book, and the next morning be traumatized by the shit humanity has done.

I need Humans that get tired of the whole, "Humanity is smol and fragile" shtick, and decide to go kill decipticons so they stop attacking the autobots.

I need Optimus to slowly realize we are not cute, fluffy little creatures, but agents of chaos and destruction. Beings who will destroy anyone and anything that threatens our family, and we consider the bots family.