queerbycrs

[queerbycrs]

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.

[queerbycrs]

*eats incense like pocky sticks*

[queerbycrs]

Can I ask about one of your AUs? The one where they all move somewhere together? Can you talk more about it? Found family sounds really good right now, you know?

oh anon absolutely when isn’t found family the best thing in the world

so the central premise of this au is that jon and the assistants and daisy move away and adopt a bunch of dogs so like lets just get right into it

jon discovers that it’s one of leitner or gertrude‘s safe houses

its a combination of hiding from the eye but also hiding from all of the other powers

i mentioned southern gothic because they move to a tiny town (maybe not in england maybe still in england who knows) where everyone knows everyone and They’re the weirdos. Theirs is the obviously haunted house

(it’s not it’s just a fixer uper)

daisy is really only there for basira at first but shes also there because jon begged her to keep them safe and he’s enough of a mess that she caved

its a big property so martin suggests dogs and no one is going to argue

there are now several dogs on the property at any given time (which defo helps with the rumors that they’re all serial killers for Sure)

there is a beach it’s just down the cliff side (becuase their house is on a cliff because of course it is)

it is a big house and even if its not haunted (melanie triple checked) it’s old and creepy so hey martin offers to sleep in the same bed as someone and it just spirals out of there.

they all have their own bedrooms but do they use them (No)

(only daisy and basira do Sometimes)  

its a lot of things like planting a garden and painting the house and swimming in the ocean 

and also slow realizing that they don’t mind living alone, Together.

at some point, i imagine one of the other powers shows up and pure for the visual im going to say jude sets half of the forest on fire and stands at the treeline and it’s a whole Thing

daisy kills her Eventually but not before she and jon get to sit and anguish about the monsters they’ve become

melanie stress bakes

tim takes up paddleboarding 

martin works in the garden and worries about the dogs

its just a lot of abandoning harmful habits for the sake of your friends.

georgie gets the statements for jon through a series of very elaborate drop off locations so he doesn’t do the withdrawal thing. 

they all just love each other and like sleep on a balcony together after watching the stars all night.

jon gets a cat at some point

they all get weirdly touchy with each other and anytime someone that isn’t them shows up they get passive aggresive

tim paints melanie’s nails

daisy teaches jon how to shoot things with out dislocating his shoulder

martin and basira are the only people allowed in town

its good its a good time

[queerbycrs]

U need to talk more about the coffee shop from hell

OKAY SO IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO FIND THE POST BECAUSE TUMBLR HATES IT MANwHAT A BANGER OF A WEBSITE ITS  GREAT LOVE IT

COFFEE SHOP FROM HELL IS THIS POST

okay im going to stop yelling

jon  tries to name the worms and needless to say he fails

you know that one law case where the woman sued mcdonalds for making coffee so hot that when she spilled it on herself it literally fused her skin together? thats the temperature jude takes her coffee at

 martin is the archivist replacing jon because thats my favorite trope in the world. he goes to the coffee shop to destress. it is, needless to say, hard to destress when there is a jar of worms in jon’s hands at all times 

the jar of worms has its own shelf

georgie decorates both the shelf and the jar for every major holiday

they’re the mascot they’re the store mascot thats it i dont make the rules sorry

theres a sephora not far away or a mac or whatever sells makeup in england ( nyx and huda google tells me) so nikola always comes in with massive shopping bags

jon: you dont drink coffeenikola: baby i dont drink Anything jon: then why are you herenikola: ambiance

tim, in an effort to quit the archives, gets a part time job there

they fucking hate each other

it’s not like they hate each other because jon knows where they live, its just tim has these things called taste and common sense and jon has obvi never heard of either

tim tries to change the music which at the moment is probably some rando shit like the sound the sun makes or whale calls and the jar of worms Vibrates

(they’re very protective of the music)

tim is not allowed to work there for long but while he was there he fixed all the broken amenities so like the door doesn’t creak anymore and also the tables are even now what a legend

when daisy and basira come there for their coffee dates they not only bring their own coffee but they bring jon food too because they’re nice

 one time a rando came in and was visibile upset about the jar of living weird worms so jon refused to serve them 

he only has like three friends guys

helen likes the jar of worms but jon doesn’t let her touch it because she warps the glass

helen: sojon: it upsets themhelen: you know they can’t like think or anythingjon: >: O

this au is real dumb but i just want him to have a ride or die friend and what is a truer friend then a jar of murder worms 

is the hiatus getting to anyone else? no just me? okay

[queerbycrs]

have you guys seen this site where you can craft your own emojis out of other emoji bits (within reason)

[queerbycrs]

stolen from r/beekeeping

[queerbycrs]

❝it takes and it takes and it takes, and we keep living anyway…❞

[queerbycrs]

A prequel series that slowly but steadily stops making any sense. At first there are minor continuity errors, but only to the degree that could be put down to imprecise language or misleading statements in the original, then gets worse and worse until by the final episode the main character of the original series has never been born, the antagonist is already dead, and the worldstate is totally different from how it was at the start of the original

[queerbycrs]

Fanlore

This is your reminder that Fanlore exists. It’s a wiki of fandom history run by OTW, which is the parent organization of AO3.

Here are some examples of important tumblr posts that have pages to chronicle the discussion:

The Three Generations of Fanfic

History of Slash (2018 essay)

I don’t understand how anyone can take AO3 for granted

I searched my name at Fanlore this week

That last one is too meta not to link to! :D

Anyway, these wiki entries can give you an idea of what documentation of a tumblr post and its responses might look like. We’ll never document every single little thing, and we wouldn’t want to, but we can make a record of major conversations and schools of thought so that fans who come after us know how people were feeling on tumblr back in the day.

Fanlore uses the same wiki markup as Wikipedia et al.

Fanlore has a “Plural Point of View” policy: treat it like oral history where you want to document all sides of a controversy rather than Wikipedia’s attempt at ‘One Universal Truth’. (But feel free to correct factual errors.)

Fanlore is about any fandom history, so minute details of canon don’t belong on there, but minute details of meta, fanworks exchanges, any zine ever, any significant online fic, tropes in fanworks, etc. do.

Since tumblr is getting harder and harder to search, even aside from deletions, now is a great time to document important tumblr posts on Fanlore or add information from tumblr posts to existing articles.

Right now, Fanlore is an amazing resource on pre-internet “Media Fandom”, old print zines, the LJ era, and a lot of slash fandom history.

But it’s only as good and varied as its editors.

In my experience, it could use a lot of help in the realm of anime/manga fandom, including BL fandom, fandom not in English and/or outside of the English-speaking world, fandom on places like Quizilla or Wattpad, femslash fandom, etc. If your area of fandom is not represented, it’s only because the current editors don’t know enough!

You are welcome! We need you!

If you know how wikis work, you’re all set to edit Fanlore. If you’ve never used a wiki, we can help you figure it out.

[queerbycrs]

marina and the diamonds // starring role

[queerbycrs]

god okay here is a story

last week I had my students do close reading exercises and one group was struggling with that moment at the end of book ix of paradise lost where adam makes the decision to eat the apple because he can’t bear to be apart from eve:

“Should God create another Eve, and I  Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel  The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,  Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State  Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.” (IX.896-916)

and what i could not say was that it always reminds me of that one devastating letter from that epistolary steve/bucky fic (Bone of my bones. Were you taken from my rib? You must have been, or maybe I was made from yours. And God damn, I want it. I want back inside you. [src but jk, they’re all devastating])

anyway i could NOT tell them about that, and so instead i was attempting to communicate the fact that in a poem that makes it pretty easy to hate adam and even easier to hate the adam-and-eve dynamic, this is one moment! that has always gotten to me. and i already have a Bad Reputation for bizarre (but effective!!!!!! she said defensively) metaphors, so rather than explaining anything like a normal human being i was like, it’s like…. it’s like you’re at a REALLY GOOD house party that gets busted by the cops…. and you manage to find a really good hiding place…. like nobody is EVER gonna find you under that couch…… and then you peek out and you realize your partner is getting arrested….. and u got a moment where you’re like… i could just stay under this couch…………………………………… and this is adam being a good bro! this is adam voluntarily getting arrested and probably kicked off the university lacrosse team and ruining his whole future just to make sure he goes down with his girl!!!

i am frankly dreading my evals from this quarter because not being the primary teacher for this course has made me extra chill and my evals are gonna be like “one day she just made us take humoral complexion personality quizzes” and then im never gonna get a job anywhere

[queerbycrs]

PRETTY FLY FOR A WHITE GUY: a mix for icarus, history’s greatest downfall

“guy’s i’m gonna get so hella tanned” — icarus, probably

breaking free high school musical 

i believe i can fly r kelly 

defying gravity wicked 

wind beneath my wings bette midler 

here comes the sun the beatles 

timber pitbull feat. ke$ha 

drop it like it’s hot snoop dogg feat. pharrell williams 

it’s raining men the weather girls

{ listen }

[queerbycrs]

I felt now was a good time for the memes-of-the-year recap:

[queerbycrs]

Free worldbuilding idea:

Wizards have the same trust in magic that software designers have in software, which is to say, almost none at all.

“Are you fucking kidding me I worked in a reagrent shop for a few years I don’t trust any of that stuff. Who the hell knows what other components are in the ashes.”

“Yeah I was in the circle that made Alston’s Divine Circle of Teleportation. There’s some pretty nasty corner cases you can get into but the headmaster published it without us. I just take ships. It’s way safer.”

“I call bullshit on that Necromancer channeling spirits of loved ones. What did he say he was using? ‘Medium Conduit Ruinic Circles’? That’s just a bunch of buzzwords slapped together, and they don’t even interact with each other.”

“I’ve been looking at this scroll all morning and I’m 90% sure that the scribe didn’t even look at the standard for pyromancies.”

[queerbycrs]

Yami Gautam for Khush Wedding Magazine Photography: Abhay Singh

[queerbycrs]

john mulaney’s dad looks about like how i imagined

‘you have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair’ 

[queerbycrs]

New character art + blurbs on the YJ: Outsiders page on DC Universe!