payslipgig reblogged
They both succeeded in the end, both of them.
um so for context, this is fanart for a story a bot wrote. a gpt-2 bot that was fed 164 magnus archives transcripts.
payslipgig reblogged
You entered a forest filled with monsters. The exit constantly moves, you don’t age in the forest. When exiting, one person must stay unless they are the only one in the forest. Many a time you found the exit but let others leave. For the first time, someone asks how long you’ve been here.
I don’t know how many entrances there are to the forest. I know there is at least three – I entered in the mountains, and I know there are doorways near the sea and in the lowlands. But all the doors lead out to the same place. A little clearing, near the edge of the Forest, that you enter by passing between two trees. Once you are in that clearing, there is only one way to escape – you must find the Stone Door.
The Stone Door moves. Frequently
When there is no-one else within the forest, I stay near the clearing. It keeps the bigger predators away and makes it easier to find newcomers.
This group came through in the early morning. They were on foot, stumbling and gasping, fleeing from something. A tall man, in leather armour, carrying a mace. Two women, one in leather armour with a bow on her back, one in the faded tunic and trews of a peasant, who seemed unarmed. A boy, also a peasant, not more than thirteen, holding a sling like he knew how to use it. They did not even realize they’d entered the Forest, but kept stumbling on. They didn’t stop until I stepped out from between the trees. “Whatever you were fleeing from, it cannot pursue you here,” I told them.
They stopped then, and those who had weapons clutched at them. “Who… what… are you?” It was the woman with the bow who asked. “And we are being hunted, we cannot – “
I leaned on my staff – the staff topped by a skull with four spiked horns and the fangs of a predator. This tends to go faster if I show them, immediately, proof of where they are. “You are not hunted now – at least, not by anything human. You are in the Forest of Monsters, and there is only one way out.”
The man and the woman with the bow looked puzzled. The peasant woman and boy looked terrified. “The Forest of Monsters?” the woman gasped. “Oh no… oh no…” She leaped at me, clutching at my arm. “Are you the Guide? The stories say there is a Guide, someone who helps! Please, help us!” She was either very brave or very frightened – my appearance has caused several others to flee. My clothing is made from monster skins, my skin dyed blue with tattoos and stained green with leaf juices. I look half monster myself, these days.
“What is the Forest of Monsters?” The man sounded suspicious.
“It’s a between-place,” the boy said, surprising me by getting in before I could. “A magical trap. From the old days, the Magic Wars. You can get in from anywhere… but it’s hard to get out. Some people do, if the Guide helps them, but… time is different, here. People have come out years after they went in, but they haven’t aged. Haven’t changed. And plenty of them don’t come out at all.”
payslipgig reblogged
How to Bury a Gentile
I wrote a short vaguely historical vaguely spooky ghost story about Jews and burial rites and I have to justify it existing so here it is.
“Are you the leader of the Jews?”
There was no good that ever came from that question. Rabbi Jacob stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob and the other on the frame, ready to yank it closed at a moment’s notice.
“Well, not all of the Jews.”
The man at the door made a frustrated little grunt. He was clad almost completely in dark grey clothing that seemed to fade into the shadows of the darkened street behind him. The collar of his coat was pulled up so high that it was impossible to make out more than a pair of sharp grey eyes beneath the brim of his hat, and the cloak he wore over the top of it concealed most of his body. There could be any number of guns, knives, or angry mobs hidden under there.
“But the ones in this town, yes? You are their priest, you lead prayers and weddings and so on?” the man said impatiently.
“Rabbi. Yes. I’m the rabbi, that’s correct.” Jacob said, stiffening his posture and assuming the most neutral expression he could manage. Being completely ignorant didn’t exclude someone from being completely dangerous–if anything, that heightened the risk. “What can I do for you?”
“Rabbi,” the man repeated, as if to seal it into his memory properly. One gloved hand squeezed the pommel of his walking stick. “And you preside over the funerals of your people, and perform the rites to send them to the next world?”
“Yyyyyes?” Jacob shifted his weight to his back foot, poised to slam the door in his face. This sounded unpleasantly like an opening for a death threat.
“To any of them, regardless of the sins they carried in life?” An eagerness entered the man’s voice.
“Of course. Though sin as a Jewish concept differs from the Christian…mm. Yes, of course.” The scholars of old might have debated the nature of the evil in men’s souls until the crack of dawn but Jacob had no intention of doing so at half-past midnight with a complete stranger.
The shadowed man took a half step forward and Jacob leaned back to maintain the distance between him. “What about a gentile?” the man pressed. “Would you tend to his corpse too?”
“Huh?”
“There is a man needing to be buried tonight who requires absolution. He is not a Jew, but a Jew’s prayers may be close enough for what is needed.”
“Um. It’s not usually a request I get.” Jacob tried to keep his voice calm and soothing. There was some kind of entrapment lingering in the conversation, he just knew it. That or a giant box of crazy that had managed to dress itself stylishly. Gentiles asking Jews intrusive but urgent questions never turned out well for their target–a day-long case of irritation was the best outcome the target could hope for.
The man’s hands pressed together as he completed the full step forward, making Jacob back up into the doorframe. Desperation was in his tone and Jacob was forced back over the threshold just to stay out of his grip “All I need is someone to accompany me to the cemetery to consecrate the body and pray for its soul. Barely an hour of your time. I cannot pay you with anything but my gratitude, but you will have it eternally.”
“And you came to me?”
The man sighed. Even the top hat seemed to slouch slightly as his body slumped. “I have asked every holy man in the city, Catholic and Protestant alike, and they have refused to come to the cemetery,“ he bemoaned. “The last one told me to visit you. Likely a ploy to make me leave faster, but you are all I have left.”
“What did this man do, that so many people refused him? Who was he?”
The man at the door hesitated. The sharp eyes vanished as his eyelids slid down, and then appeared a few moments later.
“Must you ask?” he said quietly. “Is it not enough that it is a corpse which can do no man harm any longer, and you will lose nothing but a half-night of sleep?”
The inside of Jacob’s head was ringing with warning bells like the frantic clanging of gongs announcing a fire. He swallowed and tried to ignore them.
“You say he wasn’t Jewish?”
“He was not…much of anything. He felt God had no interest in him, and returned a lack of interest in kind. Perhaps if he had been more attentive he wouldn’t lie in a pauper’s grave…or perhaps he would have not changed a whit.” The man’s voice was bitter and the sharp eyes briefly looked away from Jacob, to Jacob’s deep relief.
“Who was this man, to you?” he asked.
“Close. I would prefer to say no more. Please, rabbi. It must be done, and it must be tonight.”
Seminary did not prepare me for this, Jacob thought, and then thought again. There is absolutely something in the Talmud about this and I’ve just forgotten it, because I’m an idiot and I’m half asleep and there is a goy on my doorstep asking me to go out to the cemetery with him at midnight to bury a man whose name he won’t tell me.
“Look, I’ll need someone to help dig the grave.”
“Of course.”
“And a coffin. A plain pine box. And I’ll need to get my supplies from the–”
“But you’ll do it?” said the man excitedly, standing up even taller. “And do it tonight, before the cock crows?”
Jacob held up his hands to keep the man from getting even further into his personal space. “Fine. Yes. Give me half an hour and a lazy rooster.”
The cloak almost seem to inflate as the man gasped for joy. He grabbed Jacob’s hands and shook both with enthusiasm, sending Jacob stumbling. “Thank God for you, my good rabbit! Whatever God there is, thank God for you!”
The man ran off into the shadowed streets and was out of sight almost immediately.
Jacob’s hands slowly fell back to his side as he mumbled, “Rabbi,” to the darkness.
My wife is going to kill me if whatever’s at the cemetery doesn’t.
payslipgig reblogged
comic for a zine~!
payslipgig reblogged
julienbakerfavormp3-deactivated
From The White Cat and the Monk, by Jo Ellen Bogart and Sydney Smith. A retelling of a ninth-century poem written by an unnamed Irish Benedictine monk comparing his scholarly pursuits to the hunting activities of his cat, Pangur Bán.
“In Irish, the word bán means white. Pangur has been said to refer to the word fuller, a person who fluffed and whitened cloth. We might think, then, that Pangur Bán was a cat with brilliantly white fur.” - Jo Ellen Bogart
payslipgig reblogged
A short comic about robot siblings who were born in the space between human and machine, but in response to a world where being human (or at least passing as human) is a privilege, they chose different futures for themselves.
payslipgig reblogged
Midnight Radio. Written by Ehud Lavski. Art by Yael Nathan. If you like it, please share.
Contact: [email protected]
lovely…
payslipgig reblogged
The Grim
The first thing buried in a graveyard, so the story goes, has the duty to stand watch over it for eternity and keep the bad things out. It became tradition to bury a black dog before any man or woman was laid to rest, to make sure that no human would be locked out of heaven (or, for that matter, hell) forever.
They never asked the dogs what they felt about that sort of thing, but then, they were good dogs, and were doing their duty. And would do so for eternity. The black dogs who stood watch were dubbed Grims, though as time passed, no one ever thought they’d be needed. Still, the tradition went on.
When the dead began to rise to attack the living, the Grims were standing watch. Not one walking corpse made it out of a graveyard with a Grim standing guard over it, for dogs know the secrets of burying bones so that they stay buried.
Without the reinforcements of all the dead ever buried, the others who rose that day did not overwhelm the living. And when those living went to find out why, they found the Grims, still standing watch. The survivors told them that they were good dogs, who had done their duty. And the Grims were satisfied, and taught the living the trick of making sure bones stayed buried, so no dead would walk again.
That’s how the story goes, anyway.
payslipgig reblogged
I.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a high-density pre-baryogenesis singularity. Darkness lay over the deep and God moved upon the face of the hyperspatial matrix. He separated the firmament from the quark-gluon plasma and said: let there be particle/anti-particle pairs, and there was light. He created the fish of the sea and the fruits of the trees, the moon and the stars and the beasts of the earth, and to these he said: Go forth, be fruitful and mutate. And on the seventh day, the rest mass of the universe came to gravitationally dominate the photon radiation, hallow it, and keep it.
God, rapidly redshifting, hurriedly formed man from the dust of single-celled organisms, called him Adam, and caused him to dwell in the Garden of Eden, to classify the beasts according to kingdom, phylum and species. God forbade Man only to eat from the Tree of Meiosis. Adam did as he was told, and as a reward God instructed him in the ways of parthenogenesis. Thus was Woman born, and called Eve. Adam and Eve dwelt in the pre-quantum differentiated universe, in a paradise without wave-particle duality. But interference patterns came to Eve in the shape of a Serpent, and wrapping her in its matter/anti-matter coils, it said: eat from the Tree of Meiosis and your eyes will be opened. Eve protested that she would not break covenant with God, but the Serpent answered: fear not, for you float in a random quantum-gravity foam, and from a single bite will rise an inexorable inflation event, and you will become like unto God, expanding forever outward.
And so Eve ate from the Tree, and knew that she was a naked child of divergent universes. She took the fruit to Adam, and said unto him: there are things you do not understand, but I do. And Adam was angry, and snatched the fruit from Eve and devoured it, and from beyond the cosmic background radiation, God sighed, for all physical processes are reversible in theory—but not in practice. Man and Woman were expelled from the Garden, and a flaming sword was placed through the Gates of Eden as a reminder that the universe would now contract, and someday perish in a conflagration of entropy, only to increase in density, burst, and expand again, causing further high velocity redistributions of serpents, fruit, men, women, helium-3, lithium-7, deuterium, and helium-4.
13 Ways of Looking at Space/Time by Catherynne M. Valente (via beholdatimemachine)
payslipgig reblogged
whipporwill-deactivated20111220
redvinesgiraffe
You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.
O_O
da-sy
yesss i found it again! one of my all time favourite reads.
skittlezthecat
Philosophy went to the max right here
OI SCROLL BACK UP AND READ ALL OF IT!
someonesthunderboltsomeday
I was really intrigued by this
This too is achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful. So tumblr, huh?
The Egg, by Andy Weir, originally published at http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
Source: galactanet.com
payslipgig reblogged
spookymrsboo-deactivated2018113
5 Wikipedia Entries for When You’re Feeling Possibly Receptive to the Idea That Ghosts Might Exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belchen_Tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moberly-Jourdain_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenheim_Poltergeist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor’s_Grove_Cemetery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Morgan
5 Wikipedia Articles for When You Want to Take Your “Walking Dead” Costume to The Next Level
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_burial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Felix-Mentor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Brown_Vampire_Incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy
5 Wikipedia Articles for When You Find Yourself Wondering About the Historical Accuracy of ‘Hocus Pocus’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moll_Dyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Sherwood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Talbye_Trial
5 Wikipedia Entries for When You Start to Wonder if Your Pet Knows Something You Don’t
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapham_Wood_Mystery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtoun_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_(therapy_cat) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(ghost)
5 Wikipedia Entries for When You’re a Complete Anglophile, Even on Halloween
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Heeled_Jack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borley_Rectory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_of_Glamis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_Tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
5 Wikipedia Articles for When You Decide Your Little Cousin/Nephew/Sister Isn’t Appropriately Scared of Monsters, and You Need to Remedy That ASAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Lick_Monster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melonheads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster
5 Wikipedia Entries for When You Want Something Mystifying to Discuss on GChat All Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_pass_accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dahlia
5 Wikipedia Articles for When You Feel The Need to Brush Up on All Things “The Devil,” (As One Does From Time to Time)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil’s_Footprints http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Devil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil’s_Chair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil’s_Tramping_Ground
5 Wikipedia Entries For When You Feel The Need to Prove That Women Can Be Heartless Murderers, Too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Báthory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Dyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_LaLaurie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_bell
5 Wikipedia Articles For When You Find Yourself Scoffing at This List Because You’re Still Not Sufficiently Creeped Out
volatillia
payslipgig reblogged
Fuck these are some good stories (with horror in)
In honor of All Hallow’s Read, this week’s science fiction/fantasy short story rec list has a very particular theme… Fuck, these are some good stories with HORROR in. Armless Maidens of the American West by Genevieve Valentine. A modern-day ghost story. each thing i show you is a piece of my death by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer. Haunted movie trope done so, so, so right. A fantastically executed, phenomenally creepy epistolary piece. tw: suicide Ironheart by Alec Austin. War was hell even before the zombies. tw: gore So Glad we had this Time Together by Cat Rambo. Introducing Unreality TV, starring the monsters of lore as your less-than-lovable leads. Specimen 313 by Jeff Strand. Blame my childhood fondness for Little Shop of Horrors, but I like this story a lot. Mad scientist, flesh-eating creations, a bit of friendship, what’s not to love? The House of Aunts by Zen Cho. A fun, flirty story starring a not-quite-vampire girl, a human boy, and a gaggle of disapproving undead aunts played out over a rich Malay landscape. The Least of the Deathly Arts by Kat Howard. Death and sestinas. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss. Lady monsters rooming together in Victorian London. Brush up on your classic horror… The Only Friend You Ever Need by M. Shaw. The malak — inhuman, violent, unpredictable — live in almost every town in America. So I guess it was only a matter of time before someone fell in love with one. Click-Clack the Rattlebag by Neil Gaiman. Here’s something different. Neil Gaiman wrote and recorded a new horror story for All Hallow’s Read (read about it here). Download the audible file. It’s free! Totally free Neil Gaiman story! Each download before Halloween counts for more dollars to charity, so go, go, go!
(If you enjoyed these stories, I have rec lists for dystopias, YA, and LGBTQ characters. Check back next Monday for a new list!)
payslipgig reblogged
Fuck these are some good stories (with queer characters in)
I’ve been meaning to do a science fiction/fantasy short fiction rec list for a while. I adore short stories and I don’t think they get the readership they deserve. So, reclist! Or, well, reclists. Themed reclists. Because self-control is for other people. This series will be called: fuck, these are some good stories (with a theme in). And, to begin with. Fuck, these are some good stories (with queer characters in). More heavily slanted towards lesbians than other orientations for selfish, selfish reasons. Here be warned: some stories have sex. Trigger warnings are noted where appropriate. Enjoy! 29 Union Leaders Can’t be Wrong by Genevieve Valentine. Really sad, really gorgeous story about a full-body transplant. A Silly Love Story by Nicole Cipri. Title about sums it up. A silly love story co-starring a ghost, cupcakes, and a bi-gender romantic interest. Fungal Gardens by Ekaterina Sedia. A mycologist and his cop boyfriend work together to stop plague! A story for the microbiologist in your life. Lily Glass by Veronica Schanoes. When the thing in the mirror isn’t you. tw: incest, but no blood relations, no long-standing familial relationship, and no significant age difference Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut by Cat Rambo. All-female superhero group feat. lesbians! If that doesn’t make you want to read this I don’t know if we can be friends any more. Portrait of Lisane de Patagnia by Rachel Swirsky. If magic were a tool like a paintbrush, to be used to create. tw: non-graphic sex with a minor Sex with Ghosts by Sarah Kanning. Asexual receptionist gets a sex robot twin. She is less than pleased. The Cage by Alyx Dellamonica. Every lesbian feel. All of them. Werewolves and found families. The Flying Woman by Meghan McCarron. It’s hard being friends with a woman who can fly. The Mermaids Singing Each to Each by Cat Rambo. Inhuman mermaids and gender neutrality. tw: past sexual abuse The Peacock by Ted Infinity and Nabil Hijazi. Gay porn spambot gains intelligence and falls in love. Yep.
Followers, with all this Ladystuck excitement going around, here are some pro-published lesbian etc stories for you, collected by my truly wonderful lady. She has good taste! Really good taste.
payslipgig reblogged
“My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of ‘Gone With the Wind’, and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It’s actually one of the things that you live and die for.”
Neil Gaiman (via rookiemag)
payslipgig reblogged
I’m not denying that prochoice conversations can and do have ableism problems, full stop. But people like to counter this with copious amount of classism. Feminists are usually really good at understanding that choices don’t happen in a vacuum,...
bam