The Atlanta Constitution, Georgia, April 13, 1932
Senator Checkthisbox Forafreeicecreamcone re-elected for seventeenth consecutive term
I’m not sure which characters I would want to fuse onto which ridiculous space opera setting but can you imagine Gideon and Breq meeting?
I’m still only thirteen chapters in, so I may be wrong, but… I think kidnap Harrow and Seivarden and then return them (complete with IF FOUND, RETURN TO shirts) to the wrong person. So now Breq is stuck with a snotty miserable (after all, she is on a spaceship, not a planet) aristocrat who is not her snotty aristocrat and is a tiny dangerous teenager calculated to awaken all of Breq’s “protect this child AND protect everyone else from her but I certainly don’t care about her” instincts…
…and Gideon is stuck with a soldier (yay) who turns out to be an awful old snob (boo) and she’s sooooo unbelievably ooooold she is a million years old and she makes Gideon want to go to into stasis for 1000 years to avoid getting called kiddo again (ugh) and meanwhile Harrow is fuck knows where and Gideon definitely doesn’t care and she might be DEAD without Gideon to dance on her body, or wounded without Gideon to laugh at her.
And she definitely doesn’t want Harrow back except that from Lieutenant Seiboring Venpatronising’s description Breq is probably going to do very bad things if she doesn’t get her lieutenant back (are they fucking or what?) in one piece, and also Lieutenant Oldfart is not doing so well outside her evolutionary niche, and might not be in one piece if Gideon doesn’t drag her back to her own ship. Which is a sapient spaceship, so that’s interesting too.
Harrow, please stop trying to do necromancy on the corpse soldier. Bad Harrow. Go to your room.
Having now read this book, I can say that this is great but I think I want to see the Gideon & Breq, Harrow & Seivarden matchups a little bit more. Breq has to deal with a non raised-by-Presger human who is zero amounts intimidated or contemptuous of her, which would be unsettling enough if she didn’t keep begging Breq to swordfight her; meanwhile Seivarden calls Harrow kiddo and they both appall each other by never having heard of each other’s houses
#actually i've been thinking about this more and i suppose it depends a little on when in the timeline we're talking about#but i think seivarden would just straight up die if she is located on the ninth in this scenario#not in a figurative or colloquial way and no one would kill her on purpose but she would die
every now and then i have to think of the roman family from two thousand years ago that buried their little daughter in a boy’s athletic-themed sarcophagus and i weep a little because that’s the softest declaration of love i can possibly imagine
i am once again emotional and sleep deprived so let me elaborate to make myself feel better.
octavia paulina was a six year old girl whose sarcophagus was found in her family’s tomb at via triumphalis in rome, dated roughly around the third century a.d. her parents mourned her mors immatura, her premature death, by having the wall behind her sarcophagus painted with the image of a giant meadow with children and a chariot pulled by doves accompanied by hermes leading an unconscious girl into afterlife. (to my knowledge, the doves and the fact that they were led by hermes was a symbol for hope.)
the sarcophagus itself shows athletic competitions between girls and boys alike, and in the most important one on the front, octavia paulina appears as the winner (a palm branch in her hand, which is meant to symbolize her strength and honor, her virtus). her opponent is sitting on the floor, upset. what really stands out is that octavia paulina’s parents ordered a common sarcophagus that was usually used to bury boys with athletic interests or futures but then proceeded to have it remodeled — smaller heads and genitalia cut off etc — to include girls in the relief.
i just get very soft when i think about parents ordering a sarcophagus for their little daughter who think it’s perfect for her and who remodel it to make it even more accurate for her. the thought of parents more than 1.700 years ago thinking their six year old daughter deserves a sarcophagus that fits her personality (rather than what was expected of her as a young girl of the time) despite none being available and then ordering for it to be altered makes me wanna scream because it’s such a human and caring thing to do. maybe octavia paulina even had a say in this because it took weeks to months to make a sarcophagus this detailed.
disclaimer: a lot of this messy little thing was transcribed from what my professor has told us in his sarcophagus class and this article; this is just a rambling post, it isn’t detailed or well put or structured properly, and not fit for scientific research.
In 2000 a Roman tomb from the first century DC was found in Grottaferrata, near Rome. Inside there were two sarcofagi in white marble identifying their occupants. Both people had died in summer, albeit years apart from each other, and had been preserved (an unusual detail that suggests they might have been followers of the cult of Isis). They were mother and son, other inscriptions tell us the tomb had been commissioned by the woman’s younger daughter (the half sister of the man) Antestia Balbina.
The young man, Carvilio Gemello, was around 18 when he died, likely as a consequence of a bone fracture in his leg. The woman, Aebutia, was around forty forty-five when she died and was buried wearing this ring (now housed in the Palestrina Archeological museum)
Behind the quartz window we can still see the face of Carvilio Gemello engraved in a golden miniature that his mother commissioned.
In a way, Aebutia and the parents of Octavia Paulina, succeeded in defying death with their acts of love. After thousands of years we can still see the face of Carvilio Gemello like his mother last saw him, know that Octavia Paulina was an athletic little girl beloved by her family. Life was unkind to both so those who loved them tried to make sure memory wouldn’t be.
Listen I don't care how bad it gets, you're not gonna be able to drag my ass off Twitter I'm sorry I can't leave this place
tisarwat is my favorite character, she'll be like "breq you should put me in charge of the government" and then breq'll be like "1. i don't have the authority to do that 2. no"
modern xena and gabby would be such an annoying couple like you’d be like hey xena what have you been up to lately and she’d just be like ‘oh not much, gabrielle and I had some free time this weekend so we backpacked across three states, climbed a mountain and jumped off a waterfall, and stopped an armed robbery in a small town on the way back.“
meanwhile gabby is standing behind her in a crop top, her abs are staring at you & you’re just left standing there like “sometimes i walk up and down the stairs to the basement to do my laundry and I went to the gym once two weeks ago.”
Xena volunteers for the local fire department when she isnt running a the local gym. Gabby does yoga and writes books on spirituality and xena.
Gabby once invited you to do wheatgrass shots and go on a juice cleanse with her. Xena snuck you a steak on the third day when your vision got spotty.
They dont have a car. They have a horse. Somehow, you know the horse doesn’t like you and thinks your fashion sense is awful.
Theoretically they’re the best people you’ve ever known, but gabby kind of talks like a cult leader and xena keep smirking at you like she’s just had better sex than you ever will. So they make you a little uncomfortable.
medic: “what’s wrong, fleet captain? is it that you were stranded alone in the vacuum of space and you very nearly died and you’ve just come out of surgery and-”
breq, who only processes emotions under extreme circumstances and while sufficiently distracted: “😢 I’ve been a bad girlfriend.”
breqq, crying: “ship wants to be its own captain because it haaaates meeee!”
ship, patiently: “no. I was telling you I’m captain-for-captain. this is a gay thing.”
It sucks that people are treating the Reddit blackout as a joke or assuming it's impotent rage over a minor decision bc it's Reddit when like. No, a tech company shutting down access to their API by forcing third-party devs to pay completely unreasonable fees ($12,000 per 50 million API requests, which to the largest third party clients would be tens of millions of dollars) and in the process destroying both accessibility apps and moderation tools is Bad Actually
Also, this is the death of forums part 2. Forums died in web 1 because it was more convenient to gather on larger social media platforms, like reddit. Reddit is used by a lot of people to find answers to obscure questions that are written by humans and not advertizers or bot. Now reddit is imploding, and a lot of the useful communities (like the 3d printing one) are moving to discord, which makes it impossible for non members to find the answers they need.
We need to bring forums back in a better way, where they are convenient to use and affordable to host, or we will lose the ability to find humans on the internet with answers
mercymorn of kalr
lieutenant tisarwat: *does a thing*
ship: that's impossible, she's only two years old!
breq: call me by my full name or don't name me at all
anaander: justice of toren...
breq: all of it, tyrant!
anaander: *sigh* fleet captain justice of toren one esk nineteen ultimately justice will prevail breq ghaiad mianaai the person the person the person with weapons you should be afraid of the person of weapons.
breq: they're dead words—a human chain reaching back three thousand years. how did they feel?
anaander: genuinely sad bordering on very funny
i actually think it was really irresponsible of pyrrha to drink bleach in eyesight of nona, who is famously impressionable and has a known habit of eating sand and erasers
the OTHER thing about polishing my tlt playlists is this ONE song that's perfect perfect perfect for john ($%*@!& john) but only in a superduper abstract/thematic way and i don't think i can in good conscience add it without an entire disclaimer and extended "... and this is about when he ignored everyone's advice, and this is about how he doomed everyone's souls to purgatory in the river, and this line about stars is literally about the stars (the sun) because of what he did to the sun. clever huh? i'm smart?"
As summer is approaching, I’d like to share this bird-friendly beach etiquette reminder. A lot of people let their dogs roam freely on the beach, but dogs that chase wildlife can have a detrimental effect on the animals that have no choice but to share the shoreline with us. Please enjoy the summer with your pets and make sure to give wild animals plenty of space!
Potentially controversial opinion here, but this goes for any other natural place too. Your dog shouldn't be running off-lead and disturbing wildlife outside of specific designated dog areas. The amount of damage free-roaming dogs cause to the rare ground-nesting birds on the heathland near me, despite constant appeals for people to keep them on-leash, is disgusting. And for the love of FUCK, stop letting your dogs run off-leash in fields with livestock. Especially pregnant ewes and young lambs.
"But my dog is a nice dog and my dog would never hurt any animal!"
- I don't believe you.
- The other animals don't know that. Stress is enough to make ewes miscarry. Having to panic and flee costs precious energy. Dogs trampling nests is enough to destroy eggs.
- Keep your fucking dog on a leash.
Important generally but also specifically for shorebirds. Many are endangered or threatened and nest in very specific places, and one loose dog among eggs or chicks can devastate a colony.
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you should be able take off or put on breasts or a penis any time you want like they're accessories
the whole credits being at the start of older movies instead of the end is kinda annoying but by all means they have the right idea. look at the fucking credits, bitch. you wanna watch this movie? appreciate all the people who made it first that's right read their names, asshole. bet you wouldn't have stuck around otherwise, ingrate
"what about post credit scenes" i hate post credit scenes mcu and disney as a whole has ruined post credit scenes. just put that shit in the movie or don't at all damn. and put the credits back up top too let's rearrange the whole thing again fuck it