L-space, what L-space?

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

by @jellyfishfire

“he’s only doing it to get a rise out of you.”

a rise, here meaning a reaction, here meaning, don’t make a scene, it lets him win, here meaning make no retaliation, let him keep playing, sit there and force every howl you feel building in yourself down into a whimper, wipe your nose and limp back home

at sixteen i was already familiar with this concept of sinking, of submission by point of silence, of un-rising where i would weigh in one hand my safety and in the other hand, burning, the sheer rage i chewed on every time a boy whispered things that belonged only inside a bedroom

“he’s only doing this to get a rise out of you,” here meaning, a boy can’t be a bully, here meaning flirting looks like abuse, here meaning - let him run his wild hands all over you,  do not cower, it will only lead him on, do not fight back, that’s  slutty too

at twenty i was a raging feminist asshole, couldn’t just make friends, couldn’t just slink in and out of parties, would start fights with frat boys about shit they should know but turn their cheeks from, would be kicked out and snapchatted and called crazy because  i asked them to their faces if you knew what he did  why didn’t you say anything and while i watched these same people cross stages at graduation flip me off and then keep going i was reminded to be the feminine emotional mess aka no emotions at any point, ever showing, for fear  they might be conceived of as inappropriate

“he’s just doing this to get a rise out of you”  because he knows you won’t cry without being told you’re overemotional and you won’t yell because ladies aren’t loud and you  won’t speak out because then you lose in both ways, don’t you; he won when he hurt you and you, stupid girl, you lost when you actually felt it

at twenty five i am exhausted, can’t see the light, am sipping  on the drink i don’t want at a house party that’s too pretentious  listening to white boys debate things they’ll never be a part of  and the trial comes up because it’s gotta - and you know how it goes because you’ve been here before, the sliding in of a devil’s advocate, that sleek smile, that bitter on their lips, that victorious well i think he’s innocent, boy as heroic, like we asked for it, like we  deserve this, like he’s blessing us with a wisdom we had somehow missed, like we should be thanking him, like - oh, everybody, move over and let this man say things we’ve all heard before;

later, my panic attack is subsiding. i think it was his comment,  “if she was drunk, she should have seen it coming,” but i can’t  pinpoint it. things like this happen to me now. sometimes it is like dew, sometimes it is flood. i am shaking on the floor of a bathroom. my friend is petting my hair. we are gently talking around a subject.  one of his friends peeks into the room. passes me a warm cider. assures me, “he’s just doing it to get a rise out of you.”

i am twenty and he puts his hands on me. i am sixteen and he puts his hands on me. i am six and he puts his hands on me. my knee is torn open. 

—

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I may be the actual only human being on Tumblr with a post this popular that I not only don’t regret making, but am actually HAPPY whenever I notice a surge in its circulation. 

I never intended this to gain any traction at all (you’ll notice there’s no sources or anything–this was a personal ramble, prompted in good humor by a friend after I jokingly said that I wished someone would give me an excuse to cry about Carpathia on Tumblr so I could get it out of my system.) I literally expected to get, like, maybe 20 likes and a reblog, from friends, indulging me in my nonsense.

It just….means a lot to me that it’s touched so many people. I see a lot of tags to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS AND MAKE ME CRY ABOUT A BOAT” that are often really funny, but overwhelmingly the tags on this post are from people saving it for a rainy day, or remarking in a sort of quiet awe that they never even really thought about her role in the story–and God knows I never did, I learned it by complete accident much as most of the people who’ve found this post. 

And so many of you guys are taking strength and reassurance from the reminder not only that people are capable of amazing things together, but simply that kindness matters and that a simple, tiny act of compassion is never wasted. I’m just really glad to have been able to do that for some folks.

If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.

A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of…despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic. 

They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.

If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried. 

Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off–it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.

You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.

❤️Attempting the Impossible

by Ariaste

T, 36k, jiang cheng & wei wuxian, wangxian, background zhuiling

Summary:  Jiang Cheng gathers up his determination in both hands and goes to the Cloud Recesses to embark on one of the most difficult endeavors he can imagine: Repairing his relationship with his brother.

To his surprise, he discovers he’s become an uncle again… several times over.

Wei Wuxian, what the fuck?!

My comments:  In which Jiang Cheng, motivating himself to reconnect with his only family… discovers that he’s got FAR more family than he’d thought.  (Witness Jiang Cheng’s bumbling attempts to communicate with adults, fabulous avuncular powers, and shamelessly petty blackmailing of his oldest nephew.)  This is a family romp, and it’s utterly adorable.  Each of the kids has a very strong personality.

Now enjoy far too many excerpts, because this story was chock full of laugh-out-loud gems.

Excerpt 1:  Lan Chun blows carefully on her tea to cool it, sips a little, makes a little squirm of happiness, and says again, “You’re from Yunmeng!”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says. “I am the Sect Leader.”

“Wow!” She beams at him. “I’ve met three sect leaders, you’re the fourth! Do you know Zewu-jun? He comes to see us every month–he’s the leader of the Gusu Lan sect,” she adds helpfully, as if he doesn’t fucking know that, even though he is a grownup sitting in the middle of the Cloud Recesses guest house , drinking their tea. But kids just talk like that sometimes when they want to show you that they know that information, so he says nothing. “And I’ve met Sect Leader Jin of Lanling, who is ten whole years older than me, I did the math all by myself, I’m very good at math–”

“A-Chun, arrogance is forbidden,” Lan Hao whispers to her.

“It’s not arrogant to say I’m good at math! I’m better than you are, er-ge! And I’ve met Sect Leader Ouyang, because he’s Ouyang-gege’s dad, and Ouyang-gege comes to visit da-ge sometimes. And now I’ve met you. What’s Yunmeng like? Did you bring lotus seeds? Do you like them? I like them. Can I see your sword? Can you fly on your sword? Did you bring your whip? Can I see that? Have you ever used your whip to decapitate somebody ? I think you should try decapitating somebody with your whip, because that would be cool .”

Shit. He hasn’t ever used the whip to decapitate somebody, but that would be cool. Fuck. He sips his tea sternly. “Ask one question at a time.”

Excerpt 2:  “Wei Wuxian!” he snaps. “How dare you? Are you disowning me?”

“Eh?” Wei Wuxian has half pulled out of Jiang Cheng’s grip, but at this he pauses, alarmed.

“I’m your brother!” Jiang Cheng shouts at him. “Are you a moron? You can’t impose? What impose? I’m family, there’s no such thing as imposing on family!”

Wei Wuxian gives him a stricken look and goes red in the face. “Listen, you don’t–”

“I come all this way, I discover out of the blue that I’ve got seven nieces and nephews that you didn’t tell me about, I find out that there’s a giant demon boar that can knock over trees wandering around near your house, and you’re declining my help just to be fucking polite? What’s the matter with you!”

“We can handle it ourselves!” Wei Wuxian objects. “It’s only one giant demon boar! Between me and Sizhui, it’ll be fine! We can take care of it!”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to,” Jiang Cheng snarls. “I’m not leaving. Go tell Hanguang-jun. Ask him if he wants me to stay here or go fetch the components for you.”

And with that he sits back down facing the path, crosses his arms, and glares into the woods as if that could make the giant demon boar menacing his family turn around and wander somewhere else.

Excerpt 3:  She pouts, looking eerily like Wei Wuxian even though it’s both physically and temporally impossible for her to be his blood daughter. She recovers just as swiftly. “So how’d you make her sleep, huh?”

“I recited tongue twisters.“

“Aren’t your arms already getting sore?”

He shifts Her Ladyship a little, very carefully so as not to wake her up, and shakes his head. “I’m strong. It’s from decapitating so many people with my whip.”

Wei Wuxian snorts, covering his mouth with his hand, but A-Chun’s big eyes go even wider. “Wow! Really?”

“Absolutely,” he says gravely.

Excerpt 4:  “He has a boyfriend,” Jiang Cheng says, aggrieved. The stern uncle aesthetic is not going to be much fun if no one’s going to take him seriously. … “It’s Jin Ling.”

This makes Wei Wuxian open his eyes and turn on his back, frowning at the ceiling. Finally! Success!

“Hm,” says Wei Wuxian. “On one hand, what good taste, going after shijie’s son. On the other hand, what poor taste, going after Jin Zixuan’s son.” He shrugs and curls back around the cushions. “Can’t be helped. Lans all have wretched taste. If it’s not noisy and embarrassing and, preferably, a murderer, they don’t want it.” Without opening his eyes, he raises one finger philosophically and says, “That’s what happens when you’re a repressed bunch of virgins. But well done, Sizhui, picking a boy who’s only fifty percent a total disaster. Lan Zhan did such a good job raising him. Gonna kiss him about that when he gets back.”

****

I made a list of the kids, so I could keep them sorted: Lan Yuan (Sizhui, M, 19) • Lan Shu (Siyuan, F, 11) • Lan Hao (Sixia, M, 9) • Lan Chun (Sihan, F, 7) • Lan Ding (Siyue, F, 5) • Lan Que (Siyong, M, 2) • Lan Ying (Siqing, F, baby)

post canon, humor, reconciliation, brotherly feels, accidental baby acquisition, adoption, adopted children, lan wangji is a good dad, wei wuxian is a good dad, jiang cheng’s avuncular powers, jiang cheng POV, family feels, fluff, kid fic, family drama, light angst, adorable juniors, not the usual group, jiang cheng needs a hug, REALLY BADLY, self worth issues, this is a not-at-all-disguised Family Romp, giant demon boar, lan sizhui is the best boy, and also a schemer, feel good fic, comfort fic, favorite, @ariaste

me: *never becomes less tired*