#which is the way of everything

[quill-of-thoth]

Can't walk much so have a story: how I fell down a mountain and got my 'rescuers' stranded

(It's temporary) (The not walking and the stranding) Backstory: I periodically can't walk because my feet are, to use a technical term, flat ass bitches. I discovered this near the end of my second semester of college by getting a raging case of tendonitis that felt like someone was trying to drill a hole in my foot. Instead of taking another ice pack from the campus nurse, I promptly got a pair of too tall crutches and swung my way to finals with a 104 degree fever, scaring my philosophy professor badly enough that he threw out my final and just wrote in an A. Which is lucky, because. I sat down to analyze The Odyssey and woke up writing about The Tempest.

A doctor, physical therapy, a pair of custom insoles and three months later, I went back to college. With some amount of optimism because hey, I was 19. 19 year olds make full recoveries. Also the reason why I was a failure at gym and my feet hurt a lot had been figured out so I was probably going to get BETTER at, you know, being fully vertical for extended periods of time. Once I worked up to it.

And then for reasons known only to 19 year old me, a person who took a Spanish minor largely because I felt I should use 16 free credits somehow, I signed up for a month long trip to Guatemala during winter break.

Which is how I got to the mountain, but not how I fell down it.

The class was technically an econ course, but Profe. Ed was a closet anticapitalist and every year he dragged about 20 young people to Guatemala to

1) make business majors less insufferable by giving them a "cool" way to pad out econ credits while making them meet the realities of the world and how capitalism doesn't, you know, feed people well, 2) Distribute some American cash directly to the locals, via the purchasing power of said hungry young people who were willing to pay the equivalent of the price of a nice dinner for a single frozen chocolate banana because to us it was like 50 cents

and

3) let his advanced Spanish students do immersion by the sink or swim method. I was a member of group number three. I was in charge of speaking Spanish to guide my group of 4 around. I was also on uh. An amount of painkillers. Enough that it was not recommended that I do any drinking. Nobody warned me about doing any walking up a mountain though because they figured I was smart enough to know that already. Anyway we made it to the first stop and my group was charged with finding the new location of the weavers' collective, with whom our college's chapter of Amnesty International intended to deposit over a thousand quetzales. (So... maybe a hundred USD?) We did not find them on the first day. We were at over 5 thousand feet (and as midwesterners we were used to an elevation whose distance from sea level is a rounding error), we were jet lagged, we were working in a second language, and we didn't know how to find anything without, you know, an address. Also, we thought the directions we did get were to somewhere on the other side of town and my limp had become the fifth member of our party. We pulled out our instructions sheet, hopped back on the Lancha (a boat serving as a bus), took some dramamine because everyone working public transit in Guatemala drives like they're in mario cart, and I told the driver that we were returning via Las Lomas at Tzununa. I felt like I had gotten a second wind.

I remember being a little lightheaded but I thought it was heat exhaustion. Or possibly the moment of second language fluency that feels like either enlightenment or a stroke.

Anyway we were dropped off at Tzununa and pointed up. We walked. Increasingly slowly as I discovered that sometimes instead of being in increasing pain your nerves do an end run around your consciousness to make you EXTREMELY spacey. We saw a parking lot that said "Las Lomas" and went. Past it. Slowly. Until we found a cow and decided we should probably locate a human to ask for directions. At which point we were directed three or four miles up the private driveway we had skipped because we'd been told to follow the calle, a word I only knew as 'road'. The thing is that despite feeling like I was legitimately going to fall apart, and also barf, and probably also faint, I had to keep it together because I was the primary Spanish speaker, damn it. The token guy in our group for machismo safety was like, two classes behind me on a Spanish minor. Also if I didn't have something to do I was gonna hurl. So I cracked a lot of jokes that landed very poorly due to me looking kinda half dead and kept going until we finally reached Las Lomas, the place we were supposed to be over an hour ago. They told us, and I quote, "follow the path through the maize over the ridge and you'll come down right at the edge of town." Which was on our agenda. They also told us "you should be able to make it before dark" which was optimistic even if our group hadn't included me, current winner of the global misery award. They did not tell us that they had their own private dock with ten million stairs. Which was where we were supposed to dock.

I would not have been able to climb them. I was barely able to descend them. But. If we had known they existed we would have known three things: 1) We were now about two hours and five miles late for our original itinerary.

2) The alleged two mile mountain hike across the ridge had not yet begun

3) We could get back on the fucking Lancha from here. So when the hike turned out to be on an 8 inch wide dirt scuff through a field of maize that looked ALL the way down into the extremely sharp and rocky beach we might have thought of getting back on the boat instead of towing my - now violently shivering - top-heavy carcass in a conga line of suffering across the mountain. Hand in incompetent hand we crept like a concussed centipede around the point of the mountain only to see yet another ridge with a huge rock slide crossing the path between us and it. We tried to cross the gravely bit. I promptly slid fifteen feet, ripped the entire butt off my shorts, and kinda passed out for a second. At which point we decided to call Profe. Ed.

This was before international cell phone plans, or even good sim cards, or possibly the existence of cell service anywhere in Lago Atitlan that wasn't populated by American and European expatriates. "Profe Ed we're lost, the trail is washed out, Quill has like broken her ankle or something-"

"Tendonitis! It's actually not the bone -"

"-And the sun is going down and it's like. A million miles back to the lancha. Are there any wild jaguars around here? I hope there aren't jaguars."

"Pretty sure we need to worry more about freezing to death." (When in peril I become a font of extreme helpfulness.)

"GET BACK TO LAS LOMAS YOU HAVE 45 MINUTES TO CATCH THE LAST LANCHA AT 6 PM." The concussed centipede returned the maybe half a mile back up the mountain, at top dragging speed, with one fourth of its underwear on display. I only nearly fell twice. The time was 5:30.

It was decided that two of the team, Token Guy who spoke a bit of Spanish, and French club girl, who were cross country runners, would run and try and delay the lancha while Amnesty International treasurer girl would be my human crutch and keep me from going into shock or something with a water bottle and a bag of chips. The last I saw was of Token Guy literally jumping over a wheelbarrow as they sprinted... down the four mile driveway... to the town of Tzununa.

Whose last lancha was, unbeknownst to us, at 5:45 pm. Because we didn't know about the secret, private dock. And because not a single one of us could estimate distance well enough to realize that we had started by getting off at the wrong stop.

Someone at Las Lomas saw that I was an American in distress and offered their phone. And an English speaking front desk worker because my Spanish had been reduced to me duele las pies, which is less than grammatical, and my English had gotten kinda thin.

All I really remember is the phrase "we have a dock and you can flag the lancha from there" and then. Hundreds of millions of stairs. Uneven. winding. with handlebars added haphazardly to prevent me from just pitching off into the water. You can slide down a handrail on your armpits if you have to but not if it's broken up by a thousand turns. And then we were on the boat and Amnesty went up and down looking for Token Guy and French Club before realizing: they were not on board. We had the cell phone. The time was 6:15 pm and nothing we said could induce the lancha driver to turn around, though he did offer that we could get off in the middle of the lake if we wanted.

We crawled into our hotel at 7 and a new chunk of Profe. Ed's hair spontaneously went white while we tried to explain, in tears, what had happened. At least there (probably) weren't jaguars on the driveway from hell. "I'm going to make some calls" he said, in a voice that was reserved for crises, not the aftermath of dumbassery, and Amnesty dragged me, by way of a bottle of naproxen, to dinner where we sat in silent, guilty, treacherous misery, poking at the fish and wondering exactly how much shit we had just stranded our friends in. Everyone else, who had gotten in hours ago, was talking about the shaman, who was going to come and give us a lecture about how the world was not going to end this year.

No, it was just Amnesty and I who were going to end this year, because if the tendonitis didn't get me, leaving Token Guy and French Club on the side of a foreign mountain was going to do me and Amnesty in. Profe Ed was going to send us back to America, because we were dirty rotten traitors who split the party.

Meanwhile everybody sat playing with the candles until it was very dark. Amnesty and I had procured a blanket and sat under it like two hermit crabs trying to hide in the same guilty shell. Profe. Ed's dinner was attracting mosquitoes.

Until finally in a blaze of flashlights, the Shaman appeared, with French Club and Token Guy carrying like seven bags of his stuff between them.

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[montanabohemian]

if i see a single one of you pissed that your faves canceled an event or a con appearance because they're striking for fair wages then imma come for you in your sleep 🔪🔪🔪

(direct that fury where it belongs: AMPTP and the execs)

[hinamie]

spiraling

[yujateaandpi]

Thought Fiddlestan was a purely comedic ship for a while but now I get it, I see the light. It’s about a man who nurtures and cares for others to the point of heartbreak meeting a man who doesn’t remember what it’s like for anyone to care about him. It’s about them being warm together around the absence of someone they both love. It’s about Fiddleford’s innate domesticity comforting a man whose deepest desire was to come home. It’s about falling in love with the same face again but in a new context that heals your past trauma. It’s about Stan’s unbridled affection finally validating someone who desperately needed the recognition. It’s also about very funny old man yaoi.

[superbat-lmao]

Jason travels to an alternate universe where Bruce only cares about being Batman. He took in each of his kids to serve the mission, not be his children.

Now, faced with alternate versions of his family, Jason has to grapple with the fact that his Bruce does care, that he is his father. Because the man in front of him now, trying to send him home, isn’t even close.

[bisexualcroissant]

thinking about jeremy hitting rock bottom his freshman year, losing so much in one disastrous night, the repercussions of which would continue to haunt him for years. thinking about jeremy spiralling so bad cody said they “really thought we were going to lose him for a while there.” cat saying the right therapist can be “life changing”, using jeremy as an example. thinking about how bad jeremy’s crash out must have been, understandably; thinking about his family continuing to blame him for noah’s death—from the coldness of annalise, to the outright antagonism of bryson, to joshua ignoring him for years. the wilshires doing everything in their power to cover up what happened at the banquet rather than lending an ounce of support to a boy who had lost his brother in terrible circumstances, because jeremy was there, because it was so much easier to blame him for all of it. coldblooded, if you ask me. jeremy needed help, not damage control.

thinking about jeremy having probably the worst year of his life, having the opposite of emotional support from his family, and still somehow coming out of it a better person. thinking of all the work he put in to be better and succeeding—i’d rather die than ever be that person again. believe me. despite the hostility of his family system, despite being blamed for the fallout, despite the guilt and heartbreak that “nearly destroyed him”. still jeremy managed to build a new life for himself out of the wreckage, going so far as to be captain of the trojans, with a team who respect and admire him. still he managed to come out of it with such a capacity for kindness and goodness and lifting the people around him up.

thinking about jeremy continuing to be the human embodiment of sunshine despite living in such a cold home that was never forgiving or warm to him. jeremy knox, you will always be loved by me.

[stealingpotatoes]

heres a crappy venn (??) diagram explaining the dynamics in the tl4j time travel au bc it's easier than trying to write a full plot

[zlarirosa]

[ AU ] everything, everywhere, all at once.

[captivatedbyurhubris]

the fact that at "never once has he cheated on his wife" literally everyone turned to Zeus' actor & his reaction to it is sending me

[thriftdyke]

it really does bother me how no one can seem to answer the question “what even is romantic attraction, really.” like some people are like “it’s who you wanna kiss and cuddle <3” and I’m like ok well kisses and cuddles can be either sexual or platonic depending on context. “It’s who you feel passion/desire/arousal for” well that just sounds like sexual attraction which you can have without even knowing somebody so I fail to see how that’s romantic. “It’s who you want to go on dates with” I go on dates with friends all the time plus “date” is a social construct anyway there’s really no innate difference between a date and hanging out. “it’s who you have deep feelings for” great news for you that can be literally any type of relationship. my friend told me she defined it as “who you wanna give roses to” and I’m like do u hear urself??? like the more I talk to people the more I’m convinced romance and romantic attraction is an elaborate socially fabricated illusion that has no real defining characteristics. and like there’s nothing Wrong with it being a constuct but why people are so attached to defending the supremacy of it is something I cannot for the life of me figure out

[elodieunderglass]

And one amang, an Iyrysch man,

Uppone his hoby swyftly ran…

WAIT HANG ON - slamming the brakes on drawing this stupid picture - do you nerds even KNOW the etymology of the word “hobby”? The thing you do for pleasure? The thing you have too many of? The thing you spend too much money on and share with your friends? The thing tumblr probably is to you? Those hobbies?

It comes from a now-kind-of-extinct breed of Irish pony-horse. It was called the Irish Hobby. Supposedly the hobby got its name from the Gaelic word obann, or swift. They definitely were. They’d obann your pants clean off.

Fast tough little bastards, built for rough terrain and renowned for their speed and stamina, hobby horses belonged to the Celts, and their highly annoying style of mounted warfare. but their conquerors liked hobby horses a lot, kept them, used them for themselves, and found them useful enough, despite the fact that they also had famously useful things like mounted knights or horse archers. A lightweight Irish warrior, mounted on a hobby horse, was called a hobelar.

Reportedly and in depictions, hobelars rode without stirrups. Or saddles. Or bridles. Or - well - this is all sounding very improbable, because the hobelars COULDNT have just been charging around basically bare-assed on naked ponies, screaming, and somehow in the process undoing the composure of actual mounted armoured knights. Knights who, I remind you, had stirrups. Stirrups are useful! It’s quite likely the hobelars had some gear. And clothes. and weapons. And the ponies probably had some tack - I am picturing a bellyband that you could at least hang a saddlebag on, and a neck rope for catching the bloody thing, even if not a saddle. But the overall impression, somehow created by people on darling little ponies, was apparently quite striking and fearful.

I mean. God Forbid People Have Hobbies.

Anyway after a while, whatever people became the British had eventually conquered all of the rough terrain that hobbies were best at, and horse archers just got sexier, and mounted knights became aristos, and all the bog and forest people had been subdued, so it was time to sunset the hobelars. but WAIT! Hobby horses are still tremendously fun and appealing! They’re so fast! and you can ride them without a saddle! Sure, they’re not up to the weight of a mounted knight, or indeed a lot of guys… but surely we can still find a use for a hobby or two? In the back garden? Somewhere?

At which point an English king decided to keep hobby horses just for fun. No military application. No further development of the technology. Not for fun. Just as expensive, pleasurable, pets. Just for the joy of the thing.

And that is how hobby (activity done purely for pleasure) comes from hobby horse (small horse) possibly from obann (swift.) they’re very interesting and you should look all this up for yourself! because it sure sounds like Elodie doing a bit, doesn’t it?

Today, Irish Hobbies are functionally nonexistent. References for drawing include the Kerry Bog Pony, the Connemara, and (I personally think) Dartmoors and Exmoors. They’re said to have lent their speed to the Irish Hunter/Sport Horse and from there to the Thoroughbred, but every damn horse in the world claims relation to the Thoroughbred, and they can’t be THAT thoroughly bred.

At any rate - you can never have enough hobbies. Just be glad that yours aren’t expensive beasts with minds of their own, eating their heads off in the pasture! …Unless they are. In which case, you’re part of a proud tradition.

[r-aindr0p]

Pomefiore vocabulary lesson All of these words are pronounced "coo" !

Bonus 2nd and 3rd French option because of course there's an option with a silent 'p' and one with a silent 't', of course !

[arcanegifs]

Here are some Season 2 Arcane GIF comparisons before and after I color and sharpen them! | Season 1 Comparison GIFs

[tinyfantasminha]

Recently I saw an user say they feel weird about the brazilian Ruggie headcanon because “poverty, thievery, and misery are often associated with Brazilians.” I've also seen non-brazilians hesitate to embrace this headcanon out of fear that it might come off as xenophobic or racist. So I wanted to give my perspective on the topic as a brazilian and why the BR!Ruggie hc means so much to us 🫶

If we were to assume that Ruggie is a shallow character whose only traits are “grew up in poverty, lives in a slum, and steals to get by,” and then directly link that to a nationality? Yeah, obviously that would be xenophobic. But that’s not what this HC is about. It’s about how he navigates life and survives despite a difficult background. Reducing Ruggie to just a ''poor pickpocket” does a huge disservice to his character. He’s a hard worker, works in multiple jobs at once and is constantly adapting to survive. This is the reality for millions of brazilians (and many other latinos too) GROWING UP POOR IS NOT SHAMEFUL. No one chooses poverty. People from underprivileged backgrounds often have no choice but to do what they must to survive. In a capitalist society being clever and even deceptive is often a survival skill. It's the PERSEVERANCE to succeed and the resilience it takes to fight for a dignified life that makes them admirable, not the methods they use. If you live in any Latin American country, it’s nearly impossible not to know someone who lives a life similar to Ruggie’s (or to have lived it yourself) And again, it’s not just about being poor!! It's about having to be creative to make resources/food/items last as much as they can, about teaching yourself new skills (like learning a new language on your own without access to paid classes), about being quick-thinking and cunning so you don’t miss out on opportunities, about the shared warmth of community food, and about keeping your humor and playful spirit alive even when life is hard. So when we say “Ruggie feels brazilian,” it’s not because of stereotypes even though we don't really feel offended with stereotypes most of the time tbh it's because he embodies a spirit we know so intimately, the hustle, the laughter through hardship, the cleverness born from necessity, and the hope for something better. It’s representation of a kind of resilience that deserves to be seen with pride, not shame.