older something fannish person

Step 1: think of excellent fanfic idea

Step 2: scour the internet (ao3) for a fic that features said idea

Step 3: cry when you fail to find it 😢

Step 4: give up

Step 5: the brain worm persists

Step 6: jot down further expansions of said idea in notes app/tumblr drafts to attempt to appease the worm

Step 7: make tumblr post of idea in final hopes that someone more capable will write your dream fanfic

14 Love Letters, a Hallmark Channel film. 💌 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏻 💖

Fam, be careful with your time online. I highly recommend sinking some time and energy into offline pursuits.

Try: knitting or crochet; gentle movement, stretching, walking if you can; playing a musical instrument, whether it's piano or penny whistle; and especially reading.

I do not mean performative BookTok reading that we do for likes because our neurotransmitters have been nerfed by modern life.

I mean actual reading that we do for ourselves alone.

If reading is hard, if attention or energy or memory are operating at a deficit, I get it. Nevertheless, please try. If you notice you're skipping across big chunks of text like a river stone, if you can't finish a paragraph, slow down, pronounce the words out loud. Stop sometimes and ask yourself what you just read. Explain the story or article or poem to your blorbo or your cat or a stuffed animal.

If your head feels scrambled up, no judgment. We may have incredibly intractable neurochemical reasons that this is hard. Just tell the blorbo, "That's hilarious, I don't remember any of what I just read. Let's read it again, together."

(Please don't ask A.I. to do this for you. Please. It's your right to read and think about it your own way. A.I. doesn't actually understand anything. Please don't assume it will guide you safely through this next weird phase of our human culture.)

If reading longform, offline, makes you feel bored or anxious, be gentle and patient with yourself. Start with stories you remember well, reliable sources of well-being. But please know you will need to put some backbone into it in the long run.

I think we are going to need to rebuild our ability to think, to process experience. This will be an unsupported activity. In fact, most of the really powerful cultural forces are making it very hard for us to notice, feel, perceive, or think clearly.

Not sure what, but something's happened quite recently that is making this situation much worse, some kind of tipping point.

Please read something every day.

And they'll never land at all!

About a year ago @elodieunderglass wrote a series of posts about an extinct type of horse, the Irish Hobelar. She ended it with a comic, and beautiful words: he threw his heart over and she follows it still; and they’ll never land!

It made me think about the kinds of stories we tell, and why, and what the best, most heart-wrenching ones have in common. All of them mean something. The journeys those characters take, that we take with them, they all meant something — it’s why we tell these stories again and again, even if they’re sad. We’re all reaching out to tell each other that everything we do matters, even if the ending is sad or tragic or you never finished what you set out to do — it all matters. 

So I told this story again. And I linked it to stories I love, stories it reminded me of, quotes I’ve heard that have stuck with me and made me look at life differently. Because it’s not the ending. It’s how they got there. It’s what we’ll remember. And this story deserves remembering. Your stories deserve remembering. I hope we all keep writing them.

Credits, links, and the full image without text below.

A piece by Supriya Ganesh on being Indian in the entertainment industry, how that affects their gender identity, sexuality, and femininity.

These are just outtakes of a very important piece. I urge you to read the whole thing.

Follow for recipes

A woman harvests vanda orchids from Hilo nursery fields in Hawaii, March 1975.

First, what is a Hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses that is spread by rodents that cause severe respiratory disease or kidney disease. They can spread to people through urine, saliva, or droppings from an infected rat. Spread from person to person is not super common and usually involves prolonged close contact.

What is the situation?

A cruise ship left the port in Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1, 2026. The vessel carried a total of 147 individuals, including 88 passengers and 59 crew members. On April 6, a passenger reported fever, headache, and mild diarrhea. By April 11, the passenger developed severe respiratory problems and died the same day on board. On April 24, the body was transported to Saint Helena (a British overseas territory).

On April 24, another passenger, who was in close contact with the first case, went ashore at Saint Helena on with gastrointestinal symptoms. She subsequently deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 25. This passenger later died upon arrival at the emergency department on April 26. On May 4, the case was subsequently confirmed by PCR with hantavirus infection.

Another passenger presented to the ship's doctor on 24 April 2026 with febrile illness, shortness of breath and signs of pneumonia. On 26 April, their condition worsened. He was medically evacuated from Ascension to South Africa on 27 April, where they are currently hospitalised in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Laboratory testing on an extensive respiratory pathogen panel was negative; however, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing confirmed hantavirus infection on 2 May 2026.

So far there have been three deaths and seven cases (two confirmed, five suspected) have been reported.

Is this going to be the next pandemic?

Most likely, no. Even with this specific variant spreading from person to person, this disease is not well suited to cause a pandemic level outbreak due to the low level of transmission. This is a terrible outbreak, and people in affected areas should listen to their local health authorities for specific instructions to stay safe, but there is a very low chance of this going global.