windandwater

[windandwater]

No vacancy! A fear submitted by Frida to Deep Dark Fears - thanks! You can find original artwork and funny hats in my online shop! CLICK HERE!

[windandwater]

When I travel, it's usually to the country's capital but then sometimes I meet citizens of this country in different circumstances and they say they've never been there. I'm not judging because some capitals are far away and expensive but I'm wondering...

[windandwater]

every time I travel with my family it's re-inventing the fucking wheel. what layover do you suggest? should I get trip insurance? explain this baggage policy to me?

bitch y'all are full adults and you've both traveled internationally before why are you asking me

[windandwater]

NIMONA (2023) | BALLISTER + AMBROSIUS

Some of us don't get the happily ever after we were looking for. Maybe it's not that kind of kingdom. Or maybe it's not the end of the story.

[windandwater]

Nimona (2023)

[windandwater]

Ballister Boldheart and Ambrosius Goldenloin in NIMONA (2023)

[windandwater]

Jon Stewart bringing back the go fuck yourself choir for Stephen Colbert's cancellation is possibly the only thing that could have made me laugh about this situation, so thank goodness he rarely misses

[windandwater]

Ways to Improve Online (White-People) Recipes

If it asks for garlic, add that much ginger, and twice that much garlic.

If it asks for cinnamon, add 1 1/2 times as much cinnamon, and a small amount of nutmeg. If the MAIN flavour is cinnamon, also add a small amount of cloves and allspice.

If it asks for vanilla, also add a SMALL amount of almond extract. (Usually up to a few drops.)

If it asks for onions, also add some garlic, but add it 1 minute before you're either done cooking, or you add liquid

If the spices are pretty much only oregano or parsley, add both, as well as a small to medium amount of basil, thyme, summer savory, tarragon, and/or marjoram (the earlier two are great in beef, chicken and tomato dishes, while the others are good with pork, chicken, most vegetables, and pretty much anything else you can think of with a 'lighter' flavour)

if it asks for cheddar or mozzarella cheese, also add a bit of feta and parmesan

Don't be afraid of flavour!

[windandwater]

been putting off doing a deep clean of my apartment for months and months and now I have a deadline and guess what? way easier than I thought it would be. have actually been doing small things here and there that I hoped helped but thought weren't doing much and I was actually super wrong. it made it much easier for me now.

(small things like: 10 minutes to clean the stove or wipe down the counters, keeping the separate fixtures in the bathroom clean if not cleaning them all at once, putting big boxes away one at a time. little things that don't seem to add up but did.)

anyway I'm in one of the worst places mentally that I've ever been in my life so if I can do it, you can definitely do it too. ❤️

[windandwater]

Revised aroace flag after some conversation among community members! The old flag I made can be found here, but I decided to change it after some criticisms that I received. This was primarily made with the experiences of aroaces who don’t split their attraction in mind since that’s how I feel and why I made it in the first place (also why it’s not purple and green) but any aroace-spectrum person can use it and there’s no need to credit me as it’s meant to be a community symbol. If you want things with this flag on it, check my Redbubble!

Ap/hobes and Ex/clusionists don’t interact

Color meanings are under the cut!

Keep reading

[windandwater]

[windandwater]

We came from the other side,

Where the kids grow old and the stars don't shine,

We don't fear the darkness 'cause we've never seen the light.

--firekid, "Die for Alabama"

(x) (do not remove caption or source)

[windandwater]

Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too.

[windandwater]

nick nelson is the head of the lesbians protection squad.

[windandwater]

dreamed a whole novel...again. this one truly counts as a nightmare, though

was out & about with all the dream drama that comes with that when I ran into a bunch of old college friends who had all come to NYC for a wedding. started talking & catching up--I didn't know the bride or groom but I knew half the people in attendance. everyone was acting very standoffish and weird but that's kind of not the point, the point is that I started to make my way outside and through this building (it was kind of a mall at first, then a museum, then I wasn't sure where we were at all) with more college friends. we found an exit and looked out side and I remembered that New York was flooding--the water was up to the high balcony we were standing on.

one note is that NYC has actually been flooding recently irl, with more and more dramatic videos of how it's affecting the infrastructure. I tend not to go out if I can help it when we get flash flood warnings because the buses especially become a nightmare (ha ha literally this time) and if you get stranded somewhere, waiting for anything, bus or car or train, upgrades to hellish, standing there in the dark and pouring rain and miles away from home.

anyway.

we kept looking for exits until we found one that had a regular amount of rain, not a rushing sea of water (dream logic), and people started debating getting a cab or taking the train. problem here was that yes, the streets were underwater, but the subway has been just as unpredictable and I barely knew where I was, let alone which trains were less likely to flood.

it was 11 pm, but it was bright daylight outside (I've been way up north where that's normal in the summer, but it doesn't happen in reality at any time of year in this part of the world). I couldn't figure out how I'd stayed out that long when it had only been a couple hours.

they all split a cab and I guess I decided I might as well hop in and risk it, because there I was in the back of this huuuge limo type cab when things got very, very weird.

one of the guys was acting more and more strange, until suddenly he was basically like "you have no idea who I really am" and then shapeshifted into this huge, bizarre creature. his best friend, the guy next to me, said something like "he does this--but it's different every time. it's never the same creature. I have no idea what he really is."

the space was also warped around him, because it became as if we were in a huge dark room, and he started forcing other people into other forms and then controlling what they did. one girl flipped him off and he forced her to contort over and over including bowing to him.

he was zeroing in on different people but for whatever reason just never paid attention to me. I was looking out the window trying to figure out what streets we were passing so I could get a sense of where we even were (I live pretty far uptown and in the back of my head I knew it would be along way to go to get home). it was so dark and rainy that everything seemed blurry, hard to read. every second we got closer and closer to him noticing me and deciding what he wanted to do to me.

but he stayed distracted with the other people. we stopped at an intersection and I decided staying was too risky--while he was still not noticing me, I quietly opened the door and got out, and the car sped off.

for some reason I had left my shoes there. I looked up at the street sign and it very clearly said 35th St. I had no idea what Avenue I was on but I knew I had to walk uptown no matter what. shoes or no shoes.

because at this point I realized the street was filled with enormous, giant people, who looked like regular new yorkers but weren't. they were exactly like whatever that guy was, and they had already taken over the city.

they called themselves "memin" but I didn't know if they were some kind of folklore creature or aliens or what. I think they had a leader but I never found him. all I ever knew was that they were distorting and manipulating the space, and all the real people down on the ground were being tortured and mind controlled.

I couldn't tell what time of day it was and still couldn't read the street numbers. Periodically I had to walk through huge hotel lobbies or malls--those hotels exist downtown but they're not. on the street blocking your path. there's always a sidewalk. always when I went into one it was golden and glowing, like a caricature of a fancy hotel, or like someone's idea of the jazz age. and always when I was inside there was some kind of obstacle I had to pass to get out, and they were always chasing me.

I had to get past regular people who would try to detain me until the creatures got there; or I would see them frozen in time, with these horrible expressions on their faces like they were being forced to pretend it was a good time. it was like they were creating a caricature of what they thought new york should be, for them to play in.

at one point I started floating, up to be able to meet them eye to eye, so they always saw me and I couldn't just go unnoticed on the ground. I wondered if the guy I'd met before had done something to me after all. but they didn't seem to be able to hurt me more, they just noticed me more quickly.

I knew I was in Times Square because the lights were colorful and loud; it was as busy as it always was but it was fake. the people running around on the ground were terrified and the giants were just there, doing whatever they wanted.

there are famous spots in that area but I couldn't identify any of them. I had no shoes and my feet should have been killing me and no one should have let me inside any of these buildings but it didn't seem to matter. at one door the obstacle was that you had to remember certain numbers and then repeat them to open the door, and then there was a small hallway, and then you could go through the outside door (this is not uncommon in certain buildings here). there were two men trapped inside the small area and I tried to hold the door open for them but they couldn't get through. they had gotten the numbers wrong and they couldn't go back to open the first door and look at them. they were just trapped. and all I could do was tell them that I was so so sorry, and keep going.

as I was alternately floating or walking, going uptown as fast as I could, I realized they were talking about me to each other. they had learned my name and were reporting on where I was. but every time they got close I just...got away. at one point I started saying "no! no no no no no no" over and over and every time I said that to one of them they would back off. not get upset, not do anything, they were just stopped trying to get near me and fell back.

so I was trying my hardest to go uptown, saying "no no no no no" to myself over and over, occasionally having to scream it at the stronger ones. every time I noticed I was being followed I would turn around and scream, and at one point I guess I started pointing a red light from my phone (??) like a laser in their eyes, and they would always stop.

most of them looked like normal people but gigantic, but there were some odd creatures along the way. some kind of huge pig crossed with a lion running around on the streets and wrecking havoc; some kind of odd dark blue/purplish slime dripping out of an overhead pipe that if you touched it would have the same effects on you as the giants, but you had to pass under it to get to the exit; you had to time it right to get through, and there were a lot of people who didn't make it out without getting got.

the street signs stopped making sense. it would say 1085 (nyc goes up to 220, and after that you're in the Bronx, where the numbers do continue but only sort of for part of it. I don't think they go past 250). I was looking for any sign of where I was, whether I was further uptown. at one point I had passed 59th/Columbus Circle, which is a landmark, and a point where I could get on the right Avenue without having to cross an Avenue block, but after that it had stopped making any sense. one time it read 330, other times they were in the thousands. like they were trying to keep me specifically confused. like they were mocking me.

as I went uptown, the way they were distorting the city would change, becoming a caricature of that neighborhood's reputation. I knew I was in Washington Heights when became a horrible rendition of the musical, all these crowds of people standing in the street playing music and singing songs that just weren't right. they kept trying to force me to join in and I kept moving past them and trying to figure out where I was.

I guess they decided I was making too much progress because all of a sudden I was entirely in the wrong area, up in one of the parks. I got as oriented as I could and started going back, getting lost in this maze of overlapping parks and neighborhoods, and this was when the flooding came back. the Hudson had swollen so far that it was level with the Fort Tryon cliffs, and the paths were underwater. there were huge staircases where chunks of the stairs were missing and you had to scale walls to get up or down. and there were people wandering around with their dogs, as lost as I was.

but I figured out which way I had to go and I got out of the park and was back on the street.

I got to an area that I knew was my neighborhood, somehow, and I realized or figured out that if I focused hard enough, I was so familiar with the streets and landscape that I could make out what was really there under all the illusions and distortions. and I had to really concentrate as hard as I've ever concentrated in my life, because I also couldn't trust the street numbers or what it said on the doors. I made it up the hill to my house, not followed or anything, and got to the door, which said it was a men's sex shop, and it was next to another hotel. but it was the right area and the only thing wrong with the street was what that all the doors were businesses. I guess they picked one that they thought I would be too embarrassed to go into even if I knew it was wrong.

they were incorrect. I knew it was my building, so who cares? after all this way? and that wouldn't be embarrassing anyway, genuinely no one gives a shit what stores or buildings I go into. all that it indicated to me was that this wasn't over, not until I was in my apartment with the door locked.

I put the key in the lock and it worked, and I went in, where there was a security guard in the lobby checking if everyone that came in was human. they would let me past the second door (which was locked, but in real life is always unlocked) if I could prove it.

(note: my landlord absolutely would not pay for a security guard.)

I asked them if they knew the super (by name) and they had no idea who that was, they just kept saying they had been brought in by the landlord. if that was true they would have known the super's name. but I let them check my ID and ask me a bunch of questions to ostensibly verify my humanity. at one point the lone security guard was joined by someone else who was interrogating me, and that's when I realized that of course he was one of the memin giants and trying to get information on me.

I don't know how I got past him. maybe by yelling at him, maybe by forcing my way to the door, but I do know that I made it inside, finally out of my soaking clothes. my feet didn't hurt in the dream but I was very conscious that they should; that I wouldn't have been able to physically make it that far if I wasn't somehow floating. I was so exhausted; I had no idea if anyone who had stayed inside that day even knew what was happening; if I would have known if I hadn't been out.

I still didn't know what had been done to me, why I could float and why they had such a hard time controlling me or getting into my head. every time they'd tried I'd just shouted at them and refused to believe in the fake world they were trying to impose on me until it stopped. I don't know why it worked or if it worked for anyone else. I was terrified that the first guy had done something to me that would turn me into one of them.

I woke up before I ever got answers.

[windandwater]

We came from the other side,

Where the sidewalk ends and the luck runs dry.

We don't see our shadows 'cause the sun don't get that high.

--firekid, "Die for Alabama"

(x) (do not remove caption or source)