#travel blog post

[katey-bulner]

Life of Film | Vol 7

Life of Film | Vol 7

By lens and by line, this is life on film. Airport reunions, existential conversations along the Wild Atlantic Way, forgotten backpacks on Irish islands, future in-laws introduced, pints of Guinness, a sandy, jubilant dog on the beach. This is life on film – volume 7. “This time tomorrow, they’ll be here,” I whisper to David. It’s the middle of the night in our Bromma apartment, with the only…

[buglaur]

🔖 pictures from the family photo album

[andi-o-geyser]

comedy gold at its finest

[cuties-in-codices]

queer sex and more!

in an illustrated medieval travelogue (a german translation of "mandeville's travels"), bavaria/swabia, ca. 1476

source: Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 2838, fol. 102v

[svdaily]

I can't WAIT to be Her 🌴

@svdaily

[allthingseurope]

Effimia, Kefelonia, Greece (by Murray Harding)

[sahpience]

heyhegia

[adventureswithteddy]

The water poured over the edge, creating sheets as it tumbled to the deep pool below. The cooling mist refreshing and providing the sustenance to allow ferns to cling onto the sheer cliffs surrounding the pool. Teddy sat basking in the cool air and gentle breeze created by the falling waters. A near perfect oasis in the hot Australian bush. Belmore Falls was just what the Doctor ordered and Teddy was grateful for the opportunity to explore such a peaceful space. 

[loulouditoudromou]

Κι αν σ'αγαπώ κι εγώ σίγουρα δεν θα φύγω...

[herigo]

[comradekatara]

i think about their relationship so often.

the chiastic parallels between kanna risking her life to travel to the other side of the world during a war, only for katara to make the same perilous yet inverse journey north two generations later. how the shot with kanna looking on with tears in her eyes as hama is taken by the fire nation, the ship's hull closing as she looks out at her decimated tribe, her best friend with tears in her eyes, is a beat for beat exact callback to katara looking on at aang, the only difference being that aang attempts to smile hopefully for katara before his face, too, ultimately clouds over with despair. the fact that kanna is constantly nagging katara to do her chores, to stop messing around, to follow the rules, to stay put, to listen to her brother. she knows katara, knows her intimately, because she once was her. that brave, daring, hopeful, adventurous girl who wanted nothing more than to escape the confines of her of her monotonous existence, who wanted to travel and find freedom and hope elsewhere.

but katara is now her responsibility, and she knows all too well that a girl like that can be trouble, can be a danger to herself and others. especially if she's a waterbender. kanna saw her people massacred, her best friend taken by the fire nation, her daughter killed sacrificing herself for katara, the girl who carries the hope of her entire people on her shoulders. and she loves katara, she loves her so much, sees so much of herself in her, but it is also her job to rein her in, to keep her indoors, doing domestic busywork like sewing and laundry so she doesn't try to run off, try to run all the way to the other side of the world, so her antics, through her bending mishaps or otherwise, don't cause her to accidentally alert the fire nation and have their entire fragile existence come crumbling down after she and sokka have done so much to maintain it, to protect katara, even when katara feels like she is being smothered and overdisciplined and robbed of a childhood.

katara wants the opportunity to train with a master. of course she does. she considers her waterbending the most important part of her identity, the part of her that brought hope to her tribe and killed her mother in equal measure. she's the only person left who holds the key to their cultural artform, this crucial piece of their heritage. and of course kanna would love it if katara could hone her craft, but her first priority is always keeping katara alive, and if that means she can't become a bending master, then so be it.

raising a teenager is hard, really hard. they don't like being told that ordering them around and telling them to stay in the borders you've drawn for them is "for their own good." the only reason kanna doesn't have the same problem with sokka is because he doesn't actually consider himself a teenager (although he very much is), and he not only follows her rules but enforces them. they are on the same page; safety is the priority, katara is the priority. but katara hates how restrictive their rules are, hates how sullen and strict and serious they are. how hopeless they are, how resigned they are to leading lives of misery in the fraught safety they've created for themselves. she wants to see the world, to have fun, to have friends, to help others instead of being the one constantly being protected and sheltered.

of course, kanna and sokka are not hopeless and depressed and numb by nature; they have been hollowed out into shells of themselves by the war, by the promises they've made to keep katara safe. sokka grows so much by traveling the world, absorbs so much new knowledge so quickly, makes new friends and lovers, gains new perspectives, reaches his full, incredible potential by being dragged out of the comfort zone he clings to in the pilot. and kanna has already undergone her bildungsroman, lifetimes ago. she knows what it is like, what it means to experience the adventure katara desires. but she never told her. she never once mentioned to katara that the south pole is not all she knows, that she too once longed to leave the place that was stifling her, suppressing her freedom. she is afraid to tempt katara, to be anything other than the strict authority from which she once left everything she ever knew behind to escape.

until the avatar returns. until the legend she used to tell katara before their world became too hopeless, of the old days when the avatar kept balance and the world was not at war, is made real again. when katara, who found aang, who believed in him from the beginning, brings the avatar back, through her desperation and her rage and her indomitable hope for a life that can be bigger and better than kanna and sokka's dour little pocket of resignation and grief.

kanna has always believed in katara, has always known that there would come a time when katara was to bring back hope to their tribe. so now, trusting sokka, katara's sworn protector, to stay by her side and do right by her, she ushers them on their journey. katara, her little waterbender, hero of the southern water tribe, and spitting image of kanna.

[katey-bulner]

Life on Film | Australia

Nothing quite makes me long for Australia than having to leave it. And return. Then leave it again. After two years of living in Stockholm, I finally flew to Brisbane for three glorious weeks of feeling like a tourist in my own home. Bringing David, a Southern Hemisphere rookie and Australian virgin, helped me gain a new found love and deep appreciation for my country – what I can only imagine…

[whilereadingandwalking]

Swam in a creek in the middle of a rainforest ✔️

Ate ice cream in flavors I’d never encountered before ✔️

Saw scary spiders but more importantly gorgeous butterflies and the happiest frog ✔️

Thanks, Daintree Rainforest!!

[theminecraftbee]

an explosive repetition

this is a gift for @caracuuw for @mcytblrholidayexchange! please enjoy some time travel fwhimmy! this is crossposted to the ao3 collection here. i had fun writing it; happy holidays, and enjoy!

===

The embers of the campfire burn low during the yearly meeting of Emperors. People cheer to the newest of their number; the Codfather had been late, but he’d arrived, panting and covered in leaves and apologizing. They’d talked in quiet tones about things only people who were the emperors of their own nations could discuss, about the year to come, about the power afforded to them, and, while not about politics—the campfire meeting had never truly been for politics—they discussed what to expect from each other on an interpersonal level. Something changes in a person, when the life of a nation is tied to them. That’s what being an emperor means, even if these days only about half of them go by ‘emperor’ and only just about as many inherited their positions; even now, Fwhip remembers the day he was given the leadership title over his sister, and the way the sudden weight of the entire nation settled over his shoulders, and he knew what being an emperor was. 

He feels a bit like that now, actually, except also significantly more on fire.

Not literally. He is no longer literally on fire. But, like, it’s sort of hard to forget the feeling of being on fire, even briefly. It lingers under his skin. That hadn’t happened when he’d gone from Fwhip to Count Fwhip. If that had involved being set on fire he probably would have tried harder to refuse at the time instead of being all like ‘oh hey I am no longer the unwanted second son but a vital part of this nation’, because being on fire sucks, and he doesn’t recommend it to anyone.

Pretending he is not on fire also sucks. If it weren’t for the fact he looked across the campfire, saw Jimmy appear, and saw him shaking in a very particular way too, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hide how on-fire he was. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to navigate the conversations that are normally held at a campfire meeting. He’s pretty sure he barely navigated them as it was. He had been too busy giving Jimmy baffled looks at every free moment, trying to figure out why he was technically no longer literally on fire, and freaking out about how these were all the conversations he’d had last year, actually, and he sort of remembered them, and hey maybe he only has to pay half attention anyway because if they’re the same conversations as last year, there won’t be anything important for him to know, because he already knows it, and oh man what had he gotten himself into now, and—

The point is that during their secretive magic meeting and all that, Fwhip had mostly been on fire. Is he thinking straight? He’s not thinking straight.

He waits until basically everyone has left (Pixlriffs hasn’t yet, but the Copper King has a tendency to stick around at these things and Fwhip doesn’t think he’ll get rid of him) before rounding on Jimmy.

“You,” he says.

“Me? What do you mean me? This is your fault!” Jimmy says back.

“If you hadn’t had your stupid idea of making peace or whatever…”

“Oh, well excuse me, but it was your machine that blew up. I’m still on fire!” Jimmy pauses. “Metaphorically! I’m metaphorically on fire!”

“I mean, it’s not a metaphor when it feels a lot like actual fire, that’s not what a metaphor is I think?” Fwhip says.

“Are you sure?” Jimmy asks.

“I mean, I think so?” Fwhip says.

They both pause for a moment to contemplate this. Jimmy shrugs. “That’s not important!” he decides at last. “The point is. You set us on fire! You blew us up! You blew us up so hard we time traveled!”

“And would that have happened if I’d just been using salmon power? No! No, it has to be your stupid cod that did it!” Fwhip says.

“Well I think it was your stupid face!” Jimmy says. Fwhip gasps.

“You take that back,” he says.

“Make me!” Fwhip says.

“Um,” Pixlriffs says, staring wide-eyed at the two of them. “You know, I’m just going to leave now. And leave you to… your time travel? No wonder I’ve had a headache for the past week.”

Fwhip and Jimmy stare at him.

“I’m very good at pretending I don’t know the future, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” Pixlriffs says, and before Fwhip can interrogate him on that, he darts into the woods. It’s a little awkward, with none of the mysterious grace a statement like that should have, and all the gangly arms and legs the Copper King has had for ages. For a man with so much mystery around him, he’s always been a little too silly, a little too awkward, and a little too approachable. Fwhip’s always wondered if it’s a trap. Fwhip wonders if he’s actually going to not tell anyone. Fwhip… 

Fwhip turns back to Jimmy and discovers Jimmy staring after the Copper King, a wistful, fond, and exhausted expression on his face. It’s so out of place with the yelling, and the time travel, and with Fwhip’s knowledge that Jimmy’s the pettiest emperor on the entire continent. It makes Fwhip’s stomach hurt.

It’s quiet.

“Sorry,” Jimmy says. “Sorry. I haven’t seen him in a long time. He was never really the same after—I haven’t seen him in a while. I should go have tea with him. There’s a fancy word for that where he’s from but I never remember it. He’s always been nice about that.”

“Oh,” Fwhip says.

“He looks less tired,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah, well you look kind of like shit,” Fwhip says.

Jimmy smiles, low and sad. “Yeah, well, you look even more—more bad. When did you last sleep?”

Fwhip doesn’t answer.

Jimmy shakes his head. “Anyway, enough of that. I’m supposed to be yelling at you about the time travel. Did you really blow us up so badly we went back in time?”

“Do you have a better answer?”

“I mean, I don’t know! I don’t want to be dead! I’m already on fire.”

Fwhip thinks of rumors about the Copper King and omens. He swallows. “Yeah, you know what, I’ll buy it’s time travel. Time travel! Back to the beginning of all of this! Just when things were finally starting to really work out for everyone!”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “Just when.”

They both sit down in front of the embers of the fire, almost at the same moment. It’s surprisingly cold now that the fire has mostly died. It shouldn’t be cold at the same time as being on fire, but maybe it’s the absence of any new fire to warm them with. Maybe it’s the fact that he’d been sitting, trying to have a conversation, getting used to the fire. He wouldn’t know. It seems distinctly like the kind of thing that Gem would know, except Gem has only just ascended to officially being Head Wizard, and she hadn’t had a war with a demon yet to really dig into the archives. She might not know. She might not tell him. He understands if she doesn’t. She’d always been the more responsible sibling in most ways that matter, and…

“Fuck,” Fwhip says. “Fuck, I blew us up and we’re back in time.”

“Stop swearing,” Jimmy says. “Besides, it was my fault, wasn’t it? Council told me not to do it and everything. I’m a failure like that.”

“Only one of us has got failure in the name, buddy.”

“Hah. Yeah, true, your parents suck.”

“It’s supposed to be for good luck. Shows what the Grimlands know.”

He shudders. He’s still on fire. He doesn’t know how to stop being on fire. He thinks maybe it’s all in his head, except for the fact Jimmy’s on fire too. It just—it had happened so fast. One moment, he and Jimmy had been shaking hands, and announcing they were burying the hatchet, and unveiling the salmon-cod reactor. It had been a good moment. Sure, there had been no way he and Jimmy would have stopped disagreeing, but they were committing to no more wars. To attempting to talk. To attempting peace. Fwhip hadn’t really wanted to hurt Jimmy for months anyway, and they’d both known it. Too many other things had happened, and even if the salmon and cod had stood between them before, the salmon-cod reactor would prove that with their powers together, they could be something more.

He’d turned to shake Jimmy’s hand one more time, the papers sign.

Then, the world had exploded.

It had hurt. He’s still on fire now, but it doesn’t hurt like that momentary flash of light, the twinned look of horror in Jimmy’s eyes, the realization something had gone horribly wrong, and then the world exploding around him. Someone had screamed; Fwhip still isn’t certain if that had been him. Fwhip had reached, a moment late, for the emergency stop. He’s not sure why, in hindsight. Some ingrained instinct to try to hit that button whenever something went wrong, maybe.

He’d been on fire. The world had been on fire. The earth had shaken. Jimmy had said something.

Then, the world exploded again, proving that instinct to hit the emergency stop a moment too late had been right after all, and Fwhip had woken up just outside of the campfire meeting. He went through it on autopilot.

“So, uh,” Jimmy starts. “We time traveled, huh?”

“We sure did,” agrees Fwhip.

“What do we do now? Because like, if we change stuff, do we vanish and die? I don’t want to vanish and die because I changed the time stream, man,” Jimmy says, wringing his hands nervously. His gills flare in and out on his neck.

“Pixlriffs literally already knows we time traveled.”

“And that was your fault, wasn’t it?”

“Mine? How was it my fault? You were arguing with me!”

“No, you were arguing with me!”

“Well, he’s your friend, so it’s your fault. I barely know the guy in this time.” Fwhip pauses. “I mean, I knew him later, when we were all sort of on the same side. He’s fun! Had some great ideas about how to handle corruption, liked explosions well enough, the whole works. But right now, he’s your friend, not mine.”

Jimmy pauses and frowns. “Oh, right. Hey, wait, that doesn’t make it my fault!”

“I think it does.”

“Look, I don’t know what to do with time travel either. Maybe Pixlriffs won’t say anything? I mean, he’ll tease us about it, but he doesn’t normally say anything about his whole… you know, right? It’s fine. It’s fine!”

“Yeah, maybe. Maybe that won’t change much,” Fwhip concedes.

Finally, the burning is starting to fade as the sun sets. Fwhip realizes he doesn’t know what that means. Maybe, he thinks grimly, he’d been burning because he’d set the Grimlands ablaze, too, but there isn’t enough Grimlands left to burn. Maybe it’s just time, though. Maybe it’s nothing quite so terrible. Besides, it’s good, the not being on fire. Very good, that. He doesn’t want to be on fire. Being on fire is… bad.

Lots of things are bad, actually. Maybe he doesn’t feel like he’s burning because he’s no longer at risk of erasing himself from existence? Or, worse—because he already is being erased from existence.

“Gods, Jimmy, I might actually kill you for this one,” Fwhip says. “I’m at least going to do something you hate.”

“So, good news, you’re supposed to steal my music disc about now,” Jimmy says. 

“…really?”

“Did—did you not even remember that’s why this started?” Jimmy asks incredulously.

“I don’t know man, I don’t care about a stupid shitty music disc right now!”

“I can’t believe you. I can’t believe I was making peace with you. I can’t believe I was going to kiss you and everything. The nerve!”

“Listen, I thought it was a religious conflict! The cod and salmon thing! You know, inherent irreconcilable differences and all that!” Fwhip says defensively. He pauses. He goes back. “What was that last bit?”

“What, your nerve?”

“No, the part about—you were going to kiss me?”

Jimmy goes very, very still. “Ignore that,” Jimmy says. “Ignore it. Ignore it! It doesn’t matter right now. Besides, we’re enemies again now, right?”

“Right,” Fwhip says, feeling strangely disappointed. “I mean, I would have kissed you back. Even when we were enemies.”

“…really?” Jimmy says.

“I mean, yeah, I like people who might stab me,” Fwhip says.

“I don’t know how to take that,” Jimmy says. 

“Yeah, it’s a problem.”

“I can imagine.”

It’s awkward now. Now that Fwhip isn’t on fire, it’s—it’s awkward between them. Fwhip doesn’t know where he stands. He should probably mock Jimmy about having a crush, but it’s a little late to do that, on account of having admitted to having a crush himself. It feels like the kind of thing they should ignore at the moment, really, given that…

“Anyway, I guess I’m stealing a music disk and maybe your codfather hat?” Fwhip says.

“I’m going to have to act like killing the dragon is a good idea,” Jimmy says, vaguely sick-sounding.

“Relax, it’ll be fun for me to get to yell at you.”

“Sure.”

They stare at each other for a while. The thing is, really, that Fwhip doesn’t want to die.

“I mean, it can’t be that much harder to do the same way a second time, right?” Jimmy says, trying to hype himself up. “I’ve already done it once! It’s like, I already know how to do all of this for sure! Yeah! It can’t—it can’t be that bad. Can I kiss you though? Since you know anyway. It won’t be changing anything, promise, I’ve just—since I was going to do it. To seal the alliance. Our secret alliance. Can we at least have one of those? So when—when it’s all my fault that a demon’s here and all—”

“That really wasn’t your fault,” Fwhip says. 

“Please?” Jimmy says.

Fwhip considers it. Fwhip shrugs. “Yeah. Secret alliance, until we get the real one in the end. Secret alliance to preserve the future.”

Jimmy sniffles. “Yeah, that.”

They both awkwardly lean in. Fwhip has never kissed Jimmy before; he’d always imagined it would taste kind of slimy. It doesn’t, although it does taste a little like fish, which makes Fwhip sort of want to laugh hysterically. Instead, he just pulls in deeper. Suddenly, they’re both kissing with the desperation of the two only people in the whole world; they might as well be. They’re the only ones who know. They’re the only ones who are here. They’re the only ones who are about to have to do—to do everything. A second time. Then, they’re kissing with tongue, and Fwhip nearly pushes Jimmy to the ground trying to press his entire body into Jimmy’s. One of them might be crying; it might even be Fwhip. He’s on fire again, he thinks. He’s not sure what to do. It’s all gone. It’s all gone. They’re starting over, hurtling towards a happy ending interrupted by the worst mistake imaginable, teetering on an edge with only each other, and they’d only just learned to stand next to each other without threats like a week ago. Fwhip doesn’t know what to do. Fwhip doesn’t know what to do. So he just keeps going, the two of them practically clawing at each other trying to dig into the skin of someone who at least is trapped with them, and—

Jimmy, suddenly, as though spooked, pushes Fwhip away. They stand there panting for a moment. Fwhip tries to bring his head back down to reality.

“Why do you have gunpowder on your mouth?” Jimmy asks, almost like he’s saying something else.

Fwhip really does get hysterical, then. “Oh, wow, okay, secret alliance. Okay, we’re doing this. Okay. Okay! You taste like fish.”

“I am a fish.”

“Not anymore!” Fwhip says, and he cackles. “You aren’t—you aren’t anymore, remember? You and Lizzie were all—cursed? Anti-cursed? Shit, do you even know you're siblings yet?”

“Oh, seas,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah. Yeah!” 

“I don’t—Fwhip, I don’t know if I can do this,” Jimmy says.

“Tough shit,” Fwhip says. “Because I can’t do it either.”

They stand there staring at each other for a while.

“But what happens if we screw it up?” Jimmy asks. “What happens if—even if changing it’s okay, until we blew ourselves up, it was—”

“It was good,” whispers Fwhip. “It was good. We were happy. It was okay. It was good.”

“What happens if we never get that back?”

Neither Fwhip nor Jimmy can answer it. They just keep standing there by the campfire, waiting for an answer that won’t come. Instead, the minutes keep slipping away, and the weight of everything that’s just been undone gets heavier, and heavier, and heavier, until Fwhip would prefer the fire.

“Okay,” Jimmy says. “Okay. I have—I still have a nation to run.”

“Yeah, so do—so do I. Here. A personal—this is a personal number. Only Gem has it. If you call using it—”

“Okay. Yeah. Secret alliance,” agrees Jimmy. “We kissed on it and everything, that makes it unbreakable, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t kissed many people. Does this make us—the only real couple I know is Joel and Lizzie, really, and I’m not sure we should model this off of Joel, as much as I love him.”

“Jimmy, if we make it to the end of this without going insane, I will propose to you, and we’ll have a wedding to make it official. We can upstage Joel and Lizzie and everything. I don’t care what’s actually a good idea,” Fwhip says.

“You wouldn’t,” Jimmy says.

“You’re one to talk,” Fwhip says.

“Thank you,” Jimmy says, and it’s the single most desperate thing Fwhip has ever heard the other emperor say. He never wants to hear it again.

“It’s—we’re in it together, man. I’m not that selfish,” Fwhip says. 

Jimmy rubs his eyes. “Good to know we’re both learning that about ourselves.”

“Can we stay here a little longer?” Fwhip says. “Just until the embers run out.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says.

They do. They sit next to each other. At some point, Fwhip grabs Jimmy’s hand. He stares as the fire burns down. Neither of them say much else. He doesn’t know if that’s for the better or not. Maybe they should talk more. Maybe they should try to work out what they should do, or what a secret alliance even looks like. Maybe they should argue again, because that’s fun, but—

Fwhip doesn’t know. This works, at least.

They can figure it out tomorrow. Yeah. That seems like a decision that won’t have consequences at all.

“Hey, Jimmy—” he says, and then stops. “Never mind.”

“You’re weird,” Jimmy says. “I can’t believe I time traveled with you.”

“Ditto, man.”

They can figure it out tomorrow.

[wildtrail]

Southern Appalachians. Appreciation post.

📍Blue Ridge Mountains, view from VA

📍Great Smoky Mountains, view from NC

📍Appalachian Trail, TN

Remember, we have our questions open for any idea or requirement for a post.

If you want to enjoy something in particular, ask for it!

wildtrail

[sahpience]

lovisabarkman