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Highkey Harkstiel since 2011

@jazzforthecaptain / jazzforthecaptain.tumblr.com

Jazz | Cuda/Scylla on Ao3 | Late 30s | She/her. Mostly Castiel art, harkstiel fic, sastiel fic, writer encouragement and the odd unicorn. You deserve good boundaries, and trust me - you're doing enough. I'm proud of you. You're doing great, you funky little human.
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Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong so let’s fix it

If you weren’t here for part one, lemme sum it up real fast:

Okay, all up to speed? We’re being served 80s throwback stuff with the serial numbers scratched off, re-labeled as yo totally 90s. What we’ve got now isn’t completely wrong, but I’m telling you, there’s so much gold left unmined.

As we saw in part one with Memphis Milano, these things get messy. Trends don’t start and end neatly every ten years. The first wave of 90s throwback attempts focused on the early part of the decade, and nobody since really pushed to represent the other seven years. Well, if you really wanna do something, I guess you gotta do it yourself.

I have suggestions. Get your flannel ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Allow me to assure you, as a librarian, that if you as a concerned citizen present us with a list of Books that are Bad and should Not Be In Our Collection and which you Require us to Remove At Once, we will scan it for titles that we don’t have yet to add to our purchase list.

Ah, the “limiting access to information is okay if they’re takes I object to” squad has begun to appear.

This is your helpful reminder that:

a) There are legitimate information access needs even to bad information (one cannot, for example, study and deconstruct erroneous information about climate change if you don’t know what people are saying) and it is actually part of my vocation to provide ACCESS to even books I vehemently disagree with. Sometimes I even get to bond with the person checking it out over how appalling it is! Sometimes the reason they’re checking it out is because they need to read it but don’t want to buy it.

b) The presence of a text in a library collection does not imply agreement with or endorsement by the library as an entity; it just means for one reason or another it fits in our collection management policy. Often it’s based on patron requests from community members.

c) The absolute last thing you EVER want is your librarian to be empowered to decide whether your information need is Good Enough to be “allowed” access to the text. You, personally, even you reading this who knows you share the same values as me, do not want your access to be subject to my judgement as to whether or not your information need is “valid”; to be subject to my assessment whether you can be trusted to have access to a text.

I’m not your mom. I’m not even your teacher. I’m your librarian; it’s my job to help you access information YOU need, and YOU decide what that need is. If you ask for my help then sure it’s also my job to help you assess it based on my training and experience, but it is not my job to ARBITRATE your access to information based on my decisions about the legitimacy of your reason to seek it out.

So yes even when that list of books has books on it I think are full of lies I’m probably checking to see if it’s something someone in my community might need access to without having to buy it or expose themselves to the malware risks of pirating.

Because while I kinda hate him Jordan Peterson’s bullshit is RELEVANT to understanding a lot of shit going on today. And you do NOT want to live in a world where it’s my job to test and see if you have a good and pure enough reason for wanting to check his book out.

I’m ages late but:

Excuse me a coworker caught me making a warding sign at fuckin’ Ted Cruz’s piece of shit book the other day, I feel very called out right now.

i learned a while ago that the whole "most of the stars we see in the sky are actually already dead because they're so far away that we're seeing them as they were thousands of years ago" thing is a myth because stars live so long that it's unlikely many, if any, of them have burned out yet, but i'm still glad that myth exists because there's just something about the thought of the sky as a graveyard of stars that gets to me

It’s interesting because one day that will be true for some people in some planet out there, but we are so young, the universe is so young, that we live in a time when we get to see more stars born than we ever will see die. There’s poetry in looking up and seeing a star graveyard, but I think there’s also poetry in looking up and seeing a star nursery.

Like, momento mori but also momento vivere

Don’t get attached to unpopular ships because you will run out of fic and die

Alternatively: create the content and become adored by like 3 people forever

Or a secret third thing: passionately create content for your unhinged pool noodle of a ship until those three people can’t help but also create something and then live forever on your happy raft of cringey little friends.

having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.

taking my stupid walks for my stupid mental health with my stupid hypervigilant brain horse

thoroughly enjoying the notes on this post because it's equal parts people with anxiety going "yeah that's what it's like" and people with arabians going "yeah that's what they're like"

I just learned Jansport is making adaptable bags for mobility devices and thought I should share

They even have audio descriptions

[ID: a screenshot of the mobile Jansport website. There is a banner that says 'free standard shipping.' Under the banner is a link that says 'for audio description video click here.' Under the link is an illustration of 4 different types of mobility devices, each with its own adaptable Jansport bag. End ID.]

Jansport is a little pricey but it isn't like the adaptable bags are any more expensive than their other stuff, which is nice to see too!

Oh this is sick

Jansport is pricey because it's the last bag you'll ever have to buy. Seriously, buy two Jansport bags, when one breaks you send it back to Jansport and they fix it and send it back to you. In the meantime you use the second bag.

Today was my last day at the job I loved. Coincidentally, it's also the university's last day of being a university. I'm having a lot of feelings about that AND the hellwaste that is the current job market, but I'm making potato salad about it. It's not okay, and I'm not okay, but I'm making potato salad about it in my grandmother's bowl, which isn't exactly comforting but is somewhere within a reasonable walking distance of it.

Do any of you talk to loved ones who've passed away? I didn't expect to, but the older I get the more I talk to Grandma. I think it's a relief to have a family member I know I haven't disappointed; she loved me and wanted me around for exactly who I was, up until her dying day. She was always glad to see me, and she always found time for me. She doesn't ever answer in a way I can perceive, but I think I'm incapable of not hoping she hears me, at least a little bit.

this image by j.c. leyendecker is the absolute epitome of wlw/mlm solidarity

look at the two of them. dressed to the nines. silks from france and cotton from egypt. chanel on them both. they’re at a party neither of them was invited to, but so damn good looking that no one in their right mind would turn them away at the door. the woman - titties free under that dress, scoping out women in salacious flapper dresses in gloves created from 100,000 insects’ life work. the man - smoking a cigarette he took out from the mouth of one of the millionaires at the party, saying nothing but giving him a slow smile and a wink. the flower in his lapel is fake. dying plants in your clothing is such a hideous fashion. the both of them haven’t spoken to anyone there, though everyone has tried. they stand on the stairs staring at the heterosexual proles gathered below them together, and the two of them wonder if those fools realize that they’re outclassed, that in every way, they’ve been outdone. they leave early with a bottle of champagne in each fist, and no one stops them.

I’ve had this silly little shrine in the works on Neocities for over a year and a half. Now that I finally have a working means of making my own graphics at home again, I was able to replace the way-too-professional rotating headers with something a little more... bespoke lol.

By the way, Neocities is a fun way to polish up your CSS and HTML skills and commit design crimes. A+++ highly recommend.

For my harkstiel folks - give "TRUSTFALL" by P!nk a listen. I admit, my preferences for Captain Jack and Castiel run more towards songs that have a really strong marching/running beat. This isn't a quiet, reflective song. It's loud and full of big feelings. It was suggested by my fiancee, and when she suggests a song it means it cleared her Jack filter, and I trust her instincts there.

Harkstiel for me is always a negotiation of trust. It's two damaged hearts with authority issues, who've bucked unreliable leaders and still followed their own hubris into catastrophe. They don't believe in themselves anymore, and they love humanity for being the broken, violent, creative, affectionate, messy, untrustworthy megalomaniacs we are. They make moral compasses out of other people anyway, which is a mistake and they know it. And now they're here with each other, two terribly broken compasses. Equal parts fascination and irritation, threat and opportunity, pushing and pulling and inspiring and arguing each other into something that could be love, balanced like a feather on the finest wire of hell-forged trust.

They don't do relationships the easy way. They sweat and fight out the foundations one heavy stone at a time. It's hard to be a team when there's always someone being insubordinate, and they swap leads and fail and try and fail, until the failures start to look like something different, and that difference is theirs. But at some point, someone has to turn the key. Someone has to see if this craft made out of intimacy and broken glass is skyworthy. That moment is in this song, like all of my favorite harkstiel songs. It's the breathless moment of first contact, when all the shattered parts shudder into place. The hard work of becoming friends in spite of the labyrinth walls shifts and tumbles into a stunning freefall, and all the potential is visible, laid out like a sprawling sea of stars.

"I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we’ve returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I’m with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small."

– Callista Buchen