Thirty-something, chronically ill, autistic, bisexual, geeky, feminist, Green, opinionated lefty scum. Aussie with white Brit & Romanichal heritage. Pronouns are she/her/hers. This blog is a mixed bag of social justice, politics, cool stuff, pretty pictures, and fandoms.
At 18, everyone receive a superpower. Your childhood friend got a power-absorption, your best friends got time control, and they quickly rise into top 100 most powerful superheroes. You got a mediocre superpower, but somehow got into the top 10. Today they visit you asking how you did it.
“Power absorption?” you ask him over your pasta, which you are currently absorbing powerfully. in the background, a tv is reading out what the Phoenix extremeist group has done recently. bodies, stacking.
tim nods, pushing his salad around. “it’s kind of annoying.” he’s gone vegan ever since he could talk to animals. his cheeks are sallow. “yesterday i absorbed static and i can’t stop shocking myself.”
“you don’t know what from,” shay is detangling her hair at the table, even though it’s not polite. about a second ago, her hair was perfect, which implies she’s been somewhere in the inbetween. “try millions of multiverses that your powers conflict with.”
“did we die in the last one?” you grin and she grins and tim grins but nobody answers the question.
now she has a cut over her left eye and her hair is shorter. she looks tired and tim looks tired and you look down at your 18-year-old hands, which are nothing.
they ship out tomorrow. they go out to the frontlines or wherever it is that superheroes go to fight supervillains; the cream of the crop. the starlight banner kids.
“you both are trying too hard,” you tell them, “couldn’t you have been, like, really good at surfing?”
“god,” shay groans, “what i’d give to only be in the olympics.”
xxx
in the night, tim is asleep. on the way home, he absorbed telekinesis, and hates it too.
shay looks at you. “i’m scared,” she says.
you must not have died recently, because she looks the same she did at dinner, cut healing slowly over her eye the way it’s supposed to, not the hyper-quickness of a timejump. just shay, living in the moment when the moment is something everyone lives in. her eyes are wide and dark the way brown eyes can be, that swelling fullness that feels so familiar and warm, that piercing darkness that feels like a stone at the back of your tongue.
“you should be,” you say.
her nose wrinkles, she opens her mouth, but you plow on.
“they’re going to take one look at you and be like, ‘gross, shay? no thanks. you’re too pretty. it’s bringing down like, morale, and things’. then they’ll kick you out and i’ll live with you in a box and we’ll sell stolen cans of ravioli.”
she’s grinning. “like chef boyardee or like store brand?”
“store brand but we print out chef boyardee labels and tape them over the can so we can mark up the price.”
“where do we get the tape?”
“we, uh,” you look into those endless dark eyes, so much like the night, so much like a good hot chocolate, so much like every sleepover you’ve had with the two of your best friends, and you say, “it’s actually just your hair. i tie your hair around the cans to keep the label on.”
she throws a pillow at you.
you both spend a night planning what you’ll do in the morning when shay is kicked out of Squadron 8, Division 1; top rankers that are all young. you’ll both run away to the beach and tim will be your intel and you’ll burn down the whole thing. you’re both going to open a bakery where you will do the baking and she’ll use her time abilities to just, like, speed things up so you don’t have to wake up at dawn. you’re both going to become wedding planners that only do really extreme weddings.
she falls asleep on your shoulder. you do not sleep at all.
in the morning, they are gone.
xxx
squadron 434678, Division 23467 is basically “civilian status.” you still have to know what to expect and all that stuff. you’re glad that you’re taking extra classes at college; you’re kind of bored re-learning the stuff you were already taught in high school. there are a lot of people who need help, and you’re good at that, so you help them.
tim and shay check in from time to time, but they’re busy saving the world, so you don’t fault them for it. in the meantime, you put your head down and work, and when your work is done, you help the people who can’t finish their work. and it kind of feels good. kind of.
xxx
at twenty, squadron 340067, division 2346 feels like a good fit. tim and you go out for ice cream in a new place that rebuilt after the Phoenix group burned it down. you’ve chosen nurse-practitioner as your civilian job, because it seems to fit, but you’re not released for full status as civilian until you’re thirty, so it’s been a lot of office work.
tim’s been on the fritz a lot lately, overloading. you’re worried they’ll try to force him out on the field. he’s so young to be like this.
“i feel,” he says, “like it all comes down to this puzzle. like i’m never my own. i steal from other people’s boxes.”
you wrap your hand around his. “sometimes,” you say, “we love a river because it is a reflection.”
he’s quiet a long time after that. a spurt of flame licks from under his eyes.
“i wish,” he says, “i could believe that.”
xxx
twenty three has you in squad 4637, division 18. really you’ve just gotten here because you’re good at making connections. you know someone who knows someone who knows you as a good kid. you helped a woman onto a bus and she told her neighbor who told his friend. you’re mostly in the filing department, but you like watching the real superheroes come in, get to know some of them. at this level, people have good powers but not dangerous ones. you learn how to help an 18 year old who is a loaded weapon by shifting him into a non-violent front. you get those with pstd home where they belong. you put your head down and work, which is what you’re good at.
long nights and long days and no vacations is fine until everyone is out of the office for candlenights eve. you’re the only one who didn’t mind staying, just in case someone showed up needing something.
the door blows open. when you look up, he’s bleeding. you jump to your feet.
“oh,” you say, because you recognize the burning bird insignia on his chest, “I think you have the wrong office.”
“i just need,” he spits onto the ground, sways, collapses.
well, okay. so, that’s, not, like. great. “uh,” you say, and you miss shay desperately, “okay.”
you find the source of the bleeding, stabilize him for when the shock sets in, get him set up on a desk, sew him shut. two hours later, you’ve gotten him a candlenights present and stabilized his vitals. you’ve also filed him into a separate folder (it’s good to be organized) and found him a home, far from the warfront.
when he wakes up, you give him hot chocolate (god, how you miss shay), and he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t smile at the gift you’ve gotten him (a better bulletproof vest, one without the Phoenix on it), or the stitches. that’s okay. you tell him to take the right medications, hand them over to him, suggest a doctor’s input. and then you hand over his folder with a new identity in it and a new house and civilian status. you take a deep breath.
he opens it and bursts into tears. he doesn’t say anything. he just leaves and you have to clean up the blood, which isn’t very nice of him. but it’s candlenights. so whatever. hopefully he’ll learn to like his gift.
xxx
squadron 3046, division 2356 is incredibly high for a person like you to fit. but still, you fit, because you’re good at organization and at hard work, and at knowing how to hold on when other people don’t see a handhold.
shay is home. you’re still close, the two of you, even though she feels like she exists on another planet. the more security you’re privy to, the more she can tell you.
you brush her hair as she speaks about the endless man who never dies, and how they had to split him up and hide him throughout the planet. she cries when she talks about how much pain he must be in.
“can you imagine?” she whispers, “i mean, i know he’s phoenix, but can you imagine?”
“one time i had to work retail on black friday,” you say.
she sniffles.
“one time my boss put his butt directly on my hand by accident and i couldn’t say anything so i spent a whole meeting with my hand directly up his ass,” you say.
her eyes are so brown, and filling, and there are scars on her you’ve never noticed that might be new or very, very, very old; and neither of you know exactly how much time she’s actually been alive for.
“i mean,” you say, “yeah that might hurt but one time i said goodbye to someone but they were walking in the same direction. i mean can you imagine.”
she laughs, finally, even though it’s weakly, and says, “one time even though i can manipulate time i slept in and forgot to go to work even though i was leading a presentation and i had to look them in the face later to tell them that.”
“you’re a compete animal,” you tell her, and look into those eyes, so sad and full of timelines you’ll never witness, “you should be kicked out completely.”
she wipes her face. “find me in a box,” she croaks, “selling discount ravioli.”
xxx
you don’t know how it happens. but you guess the word gets around. you don’t think you like being known to them as someone they can go to, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of options. many of them just want to be out of it, so you get them out, you guess.
you explain to them multiple times you haven’t done a residency yet and you really only know what an emt would, but they still swing by. every time they show up at your office, you feel your heart in your chest: this is it, this is how you die, this is how it ends.
“so, like, this group” you say, trying to work the system’s loopholes to find her a way out of it, “from ashes come all things, or whatever?”
she shrugs. you can tell by looking at her that she’s dangerous. “it’s corny,” she says. another shrug. “i didn’t mean to wind up a criminal.”
you don’t tell her that you sort of don’t know how one accidentally becomes a criminal, since you kind-of-sort-of help criminals out, accidentally.
“i don’t believe any of that stuff,” she tells you, “none of that whole… burn it down to start it over.” she swallows. “stuff just happens. and happens. and you wake up and it’s still happening, even though you wish it wasn’t.”
you think about shay, and how she’s covered in scars, and her crying late at night because of things nobody else ever saw.
“yeah,” you say, and print out a form, “i get that.”
and you find a dangerous woman a normal home.
xxx
“you’re squadron 905?”
“division 34754,” you tell him. watch him look down at your ID and certification and read your superpower on the card and then look back up to you and then back down to the card and then back up at you, and so on. he licks his chapped lips and stands in the cold.
this happens a lot. but you smile. the gatekeeper is frowning, but then hanson walks by. “oh shit,” he says, “it’s you! come right on in!” he gives you a hug through your rolled-down window.
the gatekeeper is in a stiff salute now. gulping in terror. hanson is one of the strongest people in this sector, and he just hugged you.
the gate opens. hanson swaggers through. you shrug to the gatekeeper. “i helped him out one time.”
inside they’re debriefing. someone has shifted sides, someone powerful, someone wild. it’s not something you’re allowed to know about, but you know it’s bad. so you put your head down, and you work, because that’s what you’re good at, after all. you find out the gatekeeper’s name and send him a thank-you card and also handmade chapstick and some good earmuffs.
shay messages you that night. i have to go somewhere, she says, i can’t explain it, but there’s a mission and i might be gone a long time.
you stare at the screen for a long time. your fingers type out three words. youq erase them. you instead write where could possibly better than stealing chef boyardee with me?
she doesn’t read it. you close the tab.
and you put your head down. and work.
xxx
it’s in a chili’s. like, you don’t even like chili’s? chili’s sucks, but the boss ordered it so you’re here to pick it up, wondering if he gave you enough money to cover. things have been bad recently. thousands dying. whoever switched sides is too powerful to stop. they destroy anyone and anything, no matter the cost.
the phoenix fire smells like pistachios, you realize. you feel at once part of yourself and very far. it happens so quickly, but you feel it slowly. you wonder if shay is involved, but know she is not.
the doors burst in. there’s screaming. those in the area try their powers to defend themselves, but everyone is civilian division. the smell of pistachios is cloying.
then they see you. and you see them. and you put your hands on your hips.
“excuse me, tris,” you say, “what are you doing?”
there’s tears in her eyes. “i need the money,” she croaks.
“From a chili’s?” you want to know, “who in their right mind robs a chili’s? what are you going to do, steal their mozzarella sticks?”
“it’s connected to a bank on the east wall,” she explains, “but i thought it was stupid too.”
you shake your head. you pull out your personal checkbook. you ask her how much she needs, and you see her crying. you promise her the rest when you get your paycheck.
someone bursts into the room. shouts things. demands they start killing.
but you’re standing in the way, and none of them will kill you or hurt you, because they all know you, and you helped them at some point or another, or helped their friend, or helped their children.
tris takes the money, everyone leaves. by the time the heroes show up, you’ve gotten everyone out of the building.
the next time you see tris, she’s marrying a beautiful woman, and living happily, having sent her cancer running. you’re a bridesmaid at the wedding.
xxx
“you just,” the director wants to know now, “sent them running?”
hanson stands between her and you, although you don’t need the protection.
“no,” you say again, for the millionth time, “i just gave her the money she needed and told her to stop it.”
“the phoenix group,” the director of squadron 300 has a vein showing, “does not just stop it.”
you don’t mention the social issues which confound to make criminal activity a necessity for some people, or how certain stereotypes forced people into negative roles to begin with, or how an uneven balance of power punished those with any neurodivergence. instead you say, “yeah, they do.”
“i’m telling you,” hanson says, “we brought her out a few times. it happens every time. they won’t hurt her. we need her on our team.”
your spine is stiff. “i don’t do well as a weapon,” you say, voice low, knowing these two people could obliterate you if they wished. but you won’t use people’s trust against them, not for anything. besides, it’s not like trust is your superpower. you’re just a normal person.
hanson snorts. “no,” he says, “but i like that when you show up, the fighting just… stops. that’s pretty nice, kid.”
“do you know… what we are dealing with…. since agent 25… shifted….?” the director’s voice is thin.
“yeah,” hanson says, “that’s why i think she’d be useful, you know? add some peace to things.”
the director sits down. sighs. waves her hand. “whatever,” she croaks, “do what you want. reassign her.”
hanson leads you out. over your shoulder, you see her put her head in her hands. later, you get her a homemade spa kit, and make sure to help her out by making her a real dinner from time to time, something she’s too busy for, mostly.
at night, you write shay messages you don’t send. telling her things you cannot manage.
one morning you wake up to a terrible message: shay is gone. never to be seen again.
xxx
you’re eating ice cream when you find him.
behind you, the city is burning. hundreds dead, if not thousands.
he’s staring at the river. maybe half-crying. it’s hard to tell, his body is shifting, seemingly caught between all things and being nothing.
“ooh buddy,” you say, passing him a cone-in-a-cup, the way he likes it, “talk about a night on the town.”
the bench is burning beside him, so you put your jacket down and snuff it out. it’s hard sitting next to him. he emits so much.
“hey tim?” you say.
“yeah?” his voice is a million voices, a million powers, a terrible curse.
“can i help?” you ask.
he eats a spoonful of ice cream.
“yeah,” he says eventually. “i think i give up.”
xxx
later, when they praise you for defeating him, you won’t smile. they try to put you in the media; an all-time hero. you decline every interview and press conference. you attend his funeral with a veil over your head.
the box goes into the ground. you can’t stop crying.
you’re the only one left at the site. it’s dark now, the subtle night.
you feel her at your side and something in your heart stops hurting. a healing you didn’t know you needed. her hands find yours.
“they wanted me to kill him,” she says, “they thought i’d be the only one who could.” her hands are warm. you aren’t breathing.
“beat you to it,” you say.
“i see that,” she tells you.
you both stand there. crickets nestle the silence.
“you know,” she says eventually, “i have no idea which side is the good one.”
“i think that’s the point of a good metaphor about power and control,” you say, “it reflects the human spirit. no tool or talent is good or bad.”
“just useful,” she whispers. after a long time, she wonders, “so what does that make us?”
xxx
it’s a long trek up into the mountains. shay seems better every day. more solid. less like she’s on another plane.
“heard you’re a top ten,” she tells me, her breath coming out in a fog. you’ve reclassed her to civilian. it took calling in a few favors, but you’ve got a lot.
“yeah,” you say, “invulnerable.”
“oh, is that your superpower?” she laughs. she knows it’s not.
“that’s what they’re calling it,” you tell her, out of breath the way she is not, “it’s how they explain a person like me at the top.”
“if that means ‘nobody wants to kill me’, i think i’m the opposite.” but she’s laughing, in a light way, a way that’s been missing from her.
the cabin is around the corner. the lights are already on.
“somebody’s home,” i grin.
tim, just tim, tim who isn’t forced into war and a million reflections, opens the door. “come on in.”
xxx
squadron one, division three. a picture of shay in a wedding dress is on my desk. she looks radiant, even though she’s marrying little old me.
what do i do? just what i’m best at. what’s not a superpower. what anyone is capable of: just plain old helping.
The fuck is up with this person trying to make an actual project to represent the characters from series of unfortunate events as Jewish? I’ve read over 5 of books from the series and I’m pretty fucking sure there is no character that is actually a Jew within the entire fucking story. How delusional do you have to be to slap a specific group of people to a story that isn’t even yours or about them for the sake of satisfying your representational needs? If you want a story with Jews so bad go make a fucking story about them and stop trying to push your delusional agenda to other people
You apparently need to work on your critical reading skills. There are mentions of B’nai Mitzvas and Rabbi and Jewish themes throughout the series. And if that’s not enough, the Baudelaires are a Jewish family as stated by Snicket himself. Most of his characters are Jewish which is not surprising considering the man himself is Jewish.
You should instead ask yourself how delusional you have to be to slap a specific group of people to a story that isn’t even yours or about you? Why is it that you feel so threatened by having a Jewish story by a Jewish man continue to remain Jewish in it’s television interpretations?
And to cut you off at the pass, here’s an interview where Snicket talks about how the Baudelaires are Jewish and how the entire story plays from Jewish themes.
Remember when Terry played the Joker like a fiddle cause I sure do
Joker status: [ ] Told [ ] Told like a bitch [X] Batman: The Brave And The Told
Terry is literally what bruce would’ve been if his parents didn’t die. Well either that or terry got his sense of humor from his mom.
I love Batman Beyond because it’s basically Spider-Man as Batman with a healthy dosage of cyberpunk.
The best part is this isn’t just Terry fucking with Joker, Terry realized after bats told him “Joker likes to talk” that he likes to talk too. So he decided to answer joker back with something Joker was never expecting. Joker could easily deal with the typical hero “you won’t get away with this” talk or someone being absolutely quiet. But mockery? taking the piss? Telling joker straight up “you ain’t shit?”
my family used to have this sort of abstract watercolour painting up in our dining room, it was there as early as i can remember, and i always hated it. one day when i was like ten my mom came up to me, and i guess handed me something but i dont remember what, and she was like “can you put this on the shelf, by the bird painting?”
and i was like “..the what?”
and she was like “the painting of the bird on the branch. can you put it there” and she pointed to the abstract painting
and i was like “how is that a bird”
and she said “well what do you think it is?”
and was like “it’s a beached whale with a giant eye, blowing blood out of its blow hole onto the legs of a guy who’s running away”
..and i guess my mom thought that was like funny or weird or something so she told my dad about it, and he immediately said “oh, you mean the reindeer painting?”
movies about apocalypses: it’s every man for himself!! you can’t trust anyone, it’s a wasteland of solo travelers and sad families, we’re alone out here
humans irl: *pack bond with strangers*
*pack bond with large carnivores*
*pack bond with robots in space thousands of miles away*
Apocalypse preppers who fantasise about all our artificial rules and governments falling away in times of chaos seem to forget that we invented those rules and governments. Over and over. When you put humans near each other, they group up and make a society; that’s why those governments exist. Do they think we magically stop doing that in dangerous situations? Because… we don’t.
hopepunk doesn’t have time for your racist doomsday hard-on, carl.
“Do TERFs remember when people were trying to keep lesbians out of bathrooms to keep them from hitting on straight women” Yes. Yes they remember. TERFs are perfectly aware that 10 years ago they were under the bus and they actively and consciously turned on trans women. That’s how bigots and, by association, exclusionists work. Their goal isn’t to get rid of the bus. It’s to make sure that someone else is under it.
Biphobic gays/lesbians in the 80s blamed the AIDs crisis on bisexuals so that it wouldn’t be blamed on them.*
Aphobic bisexuals turned on aces because the only thing that stopped biphobia was aphobia taking its place.*
Transphobic/enbyphobic trans people turn on enbies because if cis people are attacking enbies, they aren’t currently attacking trans people.
Obviously TERFs are more violent and more pervasive and more dangerous than all of these movements, but these movements are dangerous and are violent. These people don’t want to get rid of the bus. They want change the bus’s direction.
*obviously you fucking lug nut not every single gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans person is a bigot. That was never implied. That is not the takeaway from this post that you should take. Certain individuals that identify as these identities are bad bigoted people. Not every single person. I cannot say this enough. THIS POST DOES NOT AND NEVER DID REFER TO EVER SINGLE GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANS PERSON WHO EXISTS, ONLY SOME OF THEM
Education about the needs of small and exotic pets is dreadful. It’s genuinely abysmal. For pets like hamsters, it’s very difficult to find a commercially made cage in the US that is even halfway decent. For fish it’s at least possible to buy acceptable enclosures at a pet store. But it’s also widely accepted to put them in bowls with no heating or filtration.
For cats and dogs, it’s a bit better. But education about and availability of products that suit their needs is still pretty bad. It’s very common to let your cats run around outside unsupervised all the time, which is known to be dangerous both for your cat and for the native wildlife in their environment. Food is also a serious problem-while there are good foods available, many of the common ones are poorly made or have bad enough quality control that they often need to be recalled for being toxic.
Basically what I’m getting at is that as a society, we just do not care about our pets. Sensible people who make good decisions will straight up ignore what science and collective study by pet owning communities has shown that pets need. It’s fucking depressing to know that many people you know and are friends with treat their pets horribly because they don’t know any better, and if you try to correct them they’ll think you’re just an asshole.
Remember when Donald Trump was making a speech about FDA regulations and expressed with incredulity that they put regulations on dog food. Because feeding dogs whatever toxic garbage is fine, right? Hell, the pet food industry is already woefully unregulated to the point where you can barely trust that the ingredients list says what’s actually in there.
When I was a kid, I had a hamster. I did so much research on owning hamsters, as much as I could get my hands on at the school and local libraries. And yet, looking back, the knowledge I gained from that research was basically the bare minimum of hamster care. I kept him in a glass tank instead of a cage and it still probably wasn’t big enough, and he certainly didn’t have anywhere to burrow. I took care of him to the extent that I knew how but there’s so much I could have done for him to make him less stressed.
Story concept: an orphanage/group home for chosen ones whose families were killed by ~destiny~
It’s run by a chosen heroine whose adventure was 2 decades ago and the sweet team-mom healer from her team, who she has since married.
It’s mostly trope comedy with moments of real emotion, here are some ideas for kids:
—two teenaged boys who WERE barreling towards a tragic rivalry that ends in one of them falling to darkness… until one of them confessed that he was just trying to show off because he has a crush on the other one. They’re now dating and the comedy comes from the universe CONSTANTLY trying to get them to fight and failing.
—an eight year old who keeps tattling on the demons who are whispering to her and then getting into sibling fights with them
—a brooding, edgy fire-wielding boy and a brooding, edgy fire-wielding girl who can’t figure out which mystical signs belong to who
—like six kids named Hope who go by names like “Pink Hope”, “Hope the second” and “I’ve been told I’m not allowed to shorten my name to ‘Ho’ so I will now be going by Dick just to spite them”
IDK if I’m going to write this but it’s fun to worldbuild so here’s some more!
The two fire kids have a big age gap, with the girl being 10 and the boy being 17. They spend so much time together trying to untangle their destinies that they wind up developing a brother-sister relationship. The girl is one of the Hopes and the boy’s name is Fox, which results in the following exchange being commonplace.
A: so then Hope—
B: which Hope?
A: oh, baby fox.
Oh, character consolidation idea: Fox is also one of the boys who dodged a fatal rivalry, obviously being the ‘tempted to the dark side’ half of the equation. His full name is Foxglove, and his boyfriend’s name is Raven. Raven is the one to confess and Fox was so shocked he needed to sit down for like 5 minutes to re-evaluate his entire perspective on reality.
Fox is the EPITOME of “oh shit, I didn’t hate him, I was just gay.”
Fox two years ago: Whenever he laughs I get all sweaty and agitated, and that stupid ‘oh look at me I’m so handsome’ grin is so obnoxious it bothers me for hours after I have talk to the guy! God, Raven’s the worst.
Fox now: yeah, turns out the only thing I hated about Raven is that he wasn’t kissing me right that second
The owner’s wife is a subversion on the “cute, sweet, gentle healer love interest who dies in act 2” trope, and her name is Maribelle. She’s just under five feet tall and built like somebody replaced all her bones with toothpicks— she’s TINY.
She is also, as the villain discovered in spectacularly violent fashion when he kidnapped her, the most dangerous member of the party by far.
Because she ISN’T a cleric and she wasn’t using light magic at all. She uses raw magic, which is a rare talent for humans because it’s hard to control and tends to destroy the weirder before their enemies. Maribelle’s love for her friends was LITERALLY the source of her healing magic, because she uses her emotions to shape her spells.
On the other side of that, the emotions associated with trapping her and threatening to kill her girlfriend? She WRECKED him and took the whole hideout down in the process.
OKAY I named the woman who runs the place, her name is Summer!
A lot of people just know her as “the farner’s daughter” because her particular journey of heroics started with a prophecy that said a farmer’s eldest daughter would bring about the death of the tyrannical king. Which, uh, she did, except that it was Maribelle who killed the guy in Summer’s defense.
A prophet rolls in on wheely shoes with a starbucks Frappuccino: IT TECHNICALLY WASN’T WRONG!
This entire thing isn’t gonna hurt Aaliyah’s legacy. It’s just gonna show how every single adult in her life failed her
I don’t think it will hurt her legacy because
1. Aaliyah proved to be successful even without him. AFTER all that scandal transpired with R. Kelly, she found Missy Elliott & Timbaland and soared musically.
2. She was a victim. None of this was her fault. And it doesn’t take away from what she did for R&B music.
But this docuseries definitely did prove how all the adults around her were TRASH and enabling. That includes her parents. Smh
Total number of confirmed kills: 775. Photo taken in Germany, May 4, 1945.
And this hasn’t been made into a movie or mini series?
The cool thing is, there’s still one person missing: Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
She was one of the deadliest snipers of World War II, and is regarded as one of the deadliest snipers of all time. Over the course of one year (June 1941-June 1942) she racked up a count of 309 kills, 36 of which were enemy snipers. Her prescence in the picture alone would have brought the total number of kills from 755 to 1064.
I literally only have one rule in my writing and it is this:
No matter what I put my characters through, they make it. They get to make it to the end of the story and have everything work out and be ok.
Because that’s the story I need. So it’s the kind I write.
If you want a piece of writing advice: write a story that is what you needed to hear at whatever age your target demographic is. I can guarantee you there’ll be someone out there who needs to hear it as much as you did. And maybe you’ll help them the same way someone else’s story did for you.
For some reason, this hit home and I never realized it that I did this for my stories too
bionic-jedi asked: Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
wow okay i’m crying now
“And even as he watched the rescue unfolding that morning, he would have understood that for the living, everything which could have been done had been done: not a single survivor was lost or injured being brought aboard the Carpathia. For those who had gone down with the Titanic, save for reverencing their memory at the service later that day, there was nothing more that he or anyone could do. Rostron’s duty now was as he always saw it: to the living.”
I looked up a bit about this because the post is so movingly written that when I read it aloud to my husband and mother they both wept like babies, and something else really struck me about this story.
So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.
So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.
And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.
All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind.
I dunno. That’s just really stuck with me.
Cottam also ended up staying awake for something like 48 hours straight trying to send survivors messages and a list of survivors home, but due to Carpathia’s limited radio frequency range and with no other ships to act as a relay, this was rather patchy. However, he tried his damn best to make sure the survivor’s messages got home, and was also bombarded with incoming messages of bribes to spill the details of the disaster to the press.
Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.
He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.
In the face of extreme adversity, both men refused to do anything but their duty (and exceeding their duty) not just because Rostrum had ordered it, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have profited considerably from the disaster and they refused for the dignity of the survivors.
This is hopepunk. This is what we can be, what we are, when instinct takes over. This is what we are when we choose to care about each other. We’re not profit machines or units of production or lone fierce wolves in a bitter wilderness. We are people, and we care about people.
