1967 Chevrolet Impala - Baby

"Oh I'll take this down to the charity shop" said my mother, missing hte part where no sane person is going to wear a clown suit.

"Nah" said I, "Have them dress him in it when they cremate him."

There was a pause and my throw-away joke started to slowly solidify into 'Yeah let's do that'.

A discussion was had with the mortician who had a bit of a worry that the costume would involve giant clown shoes which would prevent the coffin closing.

Luckily it wasn't that sort of outfit.

I told this to my dear friend who immediately envisaged someone trying to close a coffin onto a dead clown, only to have the big red nose go *Sad honk* every time there was an attempt to close the lid.

The dating itself was probably the weird part, in the grand scheme of things. It started right after Derek’s 33rd birthday, with some mistletoe and a drunk kiss—which escalated into drunk sex. Eventually there was some sober discussion and sober sex, and they agreed that they were old enough and things were settled enough to try a real relationship.

It didn’t last that long. Derek probably should’ve seen that coming, given how…human Stiles is.

So they’re back to being friends, have been for almost a year now. To be fair, the only things that have really changed since they broke up are that they don’t have sex anymore, and Derek makes Stiles pay for his own share of food when they order in. Other than that, they’re still just as close; Derek lives upstairs from him and they see each other almost every day, eat dinner together almost every night, play video games together, even work together sometimes. They’re good, and it’s not weird to them.

But Stiles is a little bit weird. So their interactions can be…confusing at times.

This particular Friday evening, Derek is planning on knocking on Stiles’ door to see if he wants to get a pizza. When the door swings open, he’s surprised to see a pink-faced Stiles, looking at him with wide eyes.

“Derek!” he says in a too-loud voice. “Thanks for dropping by, babe, but Dad and I are gonna have a father-son night, so I’ll text you later, okay?”

Derek’s mouth is already forming around the word babe when Stiles darts forward and kisses him on the mouth. It’s chaste, only a peck, but it’s so surprising that Derek’s lips fall open and—well, he kisses back a bit.

If Stiles notices, he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he pats Derek’s chest and says, “Don’t wait up!”

“Don’t be rude, Stiles,” John Stilinski says as he comes around the doorframe. “Nice to see you, Derek—how long’s it been?”

“Uh, since Stiles’ birthday probably. Nice to see you too, John.”

“You wanna come to dinner with us?”

“He can’t!” Stiles interjects. “He has plans with Kira, don’t you? He was just dropping by to say hello.” Stiles pats his arm, squeezes pointedly. “Such a nice guy, my Derek.”

“Stiles—”

“One sec, Dad—Der and I are just gonna—one sec!” He drags Derek out into the hallway, closing his apartment door behind himself. “C’mere,” he hisses, pulling Derek toward the stairwell by his jacket.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Shut the fuck up for a minute, would you?” Once safely tucked away in the stairwell, Stiles drops his grip. “Don’t freak out on me, I didn’t think he would run into you while he’s here—we’re just grabbing dinner before he and Mel go down to Oxnard for the week.”

“Sure,” Derek says, “that explains everything.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Look, a couple weeks ago, my dad was—he was having a time, okay? He was lecturing me about my dating life and how he wants to have grandkids before he dies, and he got all emotional about my mom and—I’m not good at handling that, okay?”

“So you what? Told him we got back together?”

He shrugs, avoiding Derek’s gaze. “He loves you, okay? When we broke up, he was so pissed at me, and I just—I wanted to make him happy. Why not let him believe a little white lie for a while, right?”

...

read the rest here on AO3 :)

Just look at it. It is the most perfect visual representation of Newton’s 2nd law of physics I’ve ever seen. The ball, which was shot out of a CANNON, drops straight down. Two equal and opposite velocities completely canceling each other out, leaving the soccer ball to drop to the earth with a net velocity of 0. Sir issac newton would be proud to tears of this gif.

And yet this “myth” is nothing more than basic physics at work. A 10 year old with an interest in science could have told us this is possible. 60mph in one direction minus 60mph the exact opposite direction is 0. Basic.

But what makes this so frieken cool is the fact that they went through all the trouble to actually demonstrate the invisible laws that govern the way our universe works. To get this shot both the soccer ball and the truck had to be moving at the exact same speed. Real world variables make that extremely difficult to pull off. It took them hundreds of attempts to get it right. They went through all that trouble to “prove” something we have known as fact for hundreds of years. And we get this amazing gif to watch as a result.

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go

(and if you don't know me, hi I'm reyah and I'm a disabled queer in florida and I make art over on ⤿patreon⤾ when the spoons allow)

For June, I still have $400 in bills to clear before I'm pushing the rock back up the same hill in August. More than half of that is for medical care -- prescriptions are coming back around to need renewal, and I need to see my doctor for updates on medication changes.

Urgently, however, I need to come up with $40 to renew my car's registration which is now officially expired.

direct donations are incredibly appreciated, but only if you can, only if you’re willing <3

The registration has been renewed, thanks to y'all, and that is a relief cuz that was stressing me tf out. *phew*

June's remaining need: $295

July's remaining need: $290

Comany name? [redacted] "the company" and you know that all lowercase is spite

MB repeatedly complains that it's the cheapest flimsiest made unit, the Temu bot. But it's rental was probably really expensive and it and every other SecUnit we see is extremely high performing

1 line about how Ratthi is extremely popular and everyone seems happy. There's just an ever rotating cast of hookups and flings in the background that Murderbot is desperately trying to not notice.

For that matter polyamory seems to be the societal norm and you know there's polyvule drama happening that MB is erasing it's memory about.

In the second novella Perihelion is a complete mystery to MB, it's mostly just intimidated and like "ok this is my life now". Where as in Network Effect and "Rapport" we see that Peri is utterly enamored with Muderbot, it think MB is the best thing to ever happen.

MB has 0 self awareness and doesn't really know much about SecUnits or contructs in general it just contantly projects it's own feelings and opinions onto everyone else. Every other contruct is the series acts counter to what MB says.

For that matter it projects onto humans too. Murderbot has the emotional intellengence of a rock. It hates and fears itself and so projects that into believing everyone else fears it. And most humans don't. I'm not even talking about the hippie commune Preservation people, some of the rando Corporate Rim tertiary characters and Mihira and Tidelands people aren't particularly afraid of MB.

Unprocessed 2.0 emotions

[redacted]

There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.

The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.

You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.

another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)

i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?

So far, I'm very much enjoying the read -- can't unsee/unhear Ryan Gosling, but that's not a complaint -- and I did have the reaction of like, oh it's so optimistic to think world leaders would unite under one chosen woman to get shit done before we all died. That's so nice to think.