Desiderata

i really think we the U.S. public need to be SUPER FUCKING LOUD about how admirable we think this kind of thing is.

Anyone with a name that starts with a “Z”, ends with an “i”, and isn’t some kind of Italian pasta, IS SERIOUS

(everything here has under 500 kudos, 5k hits, or both - give them some love!)

some of these are locked for ao3 accounts only!!!

gen highlights:

not as bad as what i do to myself by livelyvague (@crazygirleddie) 3,056 words, buckley-diaz family, buckley siblings, background buddie, implied/referenced self-harm, love confessions 339 kudos, 2,865 hits

chris brings up self-harm and buck has a totally normal reaction

Winter Soup by HeartOfTheMirror 2,030 words, buckley diaz family, minor buddie, emotional hurt/comfort, cooking 375 kudos, 2,500 hits

“I’m just really glad you’re home.” There. His tone was mostly even. “You know I didn’t leave because of you, right?” Chris said. He leaned against the counter with his hip, crossing his arms and bending his head to try to catch Buck’s eye. Like father, like son. “I know.” The words were wobbly and quiet. Enough to trigger the Diaz allergic response to discussing each other’s feelings? He wasn’t sure.

i'll be there for you by allwedontdo 10,945 words, buckley-diaz family, established background buddie, domestic fluff, sick character (so, so domestic -- one of my favorite portrayals of the buckley-diaz unit) 411 kudos, 3,044 hits

Eddie leaves for a weekend and Chris gets sick. Buck deals.

to chase away the nightmares by likeallfire (@likeallfire) 3,162 words, buckley diaz family, buckley siblings, pre buddie, fluff and angst 148 kudos, 966 hits

“You know, I used to have nightmares when I was a kid,” Buck tells Chris. “Really?" Chris asks. "What did you do for them?” “Well,” Buck says with a smile, “I didn’t do much of anything. Maddie had the best cure for them, though.”

my only sunshine by simplyylupin 3,146 words, buckley siblings, pre-relationship buddie, hurt/comfort, episode tag for Voices (what if buck had actually reacted to his sister being kidnapped by a serial killer) 573 kudos, 3,259 hits

Maddie had laughed, tickling his ribs. She’d known exactly what he’d meant; before he went to sleep every night, he’d always beg her to sing the song to him. “You want that to be our code word?” she’d asked. He’d nodded, and she’d sighed. “Alright. If you hear me singing you are my sunshine, then you have to stop hiding and find me. Promise?” He’d hooked his pinky finger around hers. “Promise.” Now, as he stands in her kitchen watching Chimney pace frantically, Buck hums the song under his breath, flexing and uncurling his hands.

Red-Letter Day by Fizzlespin 2,598 words, buck & bobby, buck & chris, episode tag Kids Today ( :( ) 161 kudos, 1,410 hits

How Bobby and Chris reacted to Buck in the night he coughed up blood and collapsed in Bobby's back garden.

what are you doing down there? by maiamaryse (@buckwheeler) 4,087 words, buckley siblings, buck & bobby, fem!buddie, dobbie (grief, but love prevails -- so, so good) 72 kudos, 526 hits

She finds herself on the floor again. There’s still barely any furniture in this new place. That’s not why she’s on the floor. She’s laying in-between the couch and the coffee table. Here’s what she has: couch, coffee table, armchair. Hen’s old rug. Bed-frame. She’s not even laying on the rug. She’s laying on the hardwood floor, in her underwear. She’s thinking about buying a kitchen table. She’s not as lonely as she’d thought she’d be. But Bobby was like her Dad, so. Her like Dad is like Dead. Her like Dad has been like Dead for like three months. Quarter of a year. Sometimes it’s getting more normal, and sometimes it’s getting worse. And she hasn’t even got any socks on. And Maddie calls.

I just want to keep this dream in me by flightless maddie 2,371 words, buck & bobby, buckley diaz family, buddie, dobby, HEAVY ANGST!!!, self harm (i cannot even begin to describe how badly buck reacts to bobby's death here. but genuinely the best fic to come out after lab rats) 280 kudos, 1,756 hits

“Bobby?” Eddie asked. Silence filled the other side of the phone and Eddie felt something cold and dark slide down his chest, settling in his gut. “Bobby?” he repeated. A sob left Maddie. “Maddie,” Eddie pleaded. “Is Bobby okay?”

as the needle went in and out by eeriemedusa 5,351 words, buck & bobby, background buddie, alobby, fix-it, post 08x15, emotional hurt/comfort 312 kudos, 2,142 hits

He barely hears what the doctor says after he answers. Everything after strong donor candidate and positive match gets drowned out by the ringing in his ears.

death march by punknbuck (@bucknpunk) 2,488 words, buck & bobby, background buddie, alobby, post 08x15, hurt/comfort 142 kudos, 770 hits

The most difficult aspect of being a parent has, thus far, been losing his children. Now he finds that in close second is leaving the other three behind. Because the thing is - he doesn’t want to leave. Buck needs him here. He still hasn’t learned how loved he is despite all these years of trying, and Bobby knows Buck will perceive his death as Bobby leaving him. It's a deep, dark hurt his boy has carried his whole life, and Bobby was supposed to be here to love him through it. He won’t be. He isn’t sure Buck will survive it, not without Eddie and Christopher here to see him through.

buddie main:

if it brings me to my knees by butchdiaz (@butchdiaz) 42,671 words, 6 chapters, fleabag au, priest eddie diaz (the only multi-chaptered work i'm allowing myself to put here because more people HAVE to read this) 294 kudos, 2,859 hits

“Really, Maddie. It’s just lipstick,” she turns to the man on Buck’s left. “It’s not like I’m going to go to Hell for using some lipstick, right, Father?” “No,” He chuckles awkwardly, “I’d think not.” Oh. He’s their priest then. Their young, hot priest.

swear to be overdramatic and true by bucksbeagle (@bucksbeagle) 3,907 words, fluff, established relationship, engaged buddie (sooo silly) 385 kudos, 2,387 hits

He shoved open the window and managed to push himself halfway through it by the time Eddie shook himself free of his shock and rushed over to help. With Eddie spotting him, Buck managed a clumsy front flip onto the chaise lounge below. He laughed loud, moreso laying on the chaise with his neck bent against the backrest than properly sitting on it. “So much for cursing our marriage, huh?” Eddie said. “Holy shit, Buck.”

something so precious about this by Aoidee (@damnit-buck) 2,536 words, dobby, grief/morning, pre-relationship, emotional hurt/comfort 177 kudos, 1,263 hits

“When did you last eat?” Buck looks up at him, then away again. “Buck.” Buck huffs, “Everytime I try make something, I make something Bobby taught me. And then I–” “ –Can’t eat it because it's something Bobby made you.” Eddie finishes for him. Buck nods. Eddie nods, looking down at the food. He’s already taken bites out of his but Buck hasn't eaten any of his at all. Hasn’t even picked up his fork. “Right.”

so much like that by playinginthunderstorms (@playinginthunderstorms) 1,189 words, drunken confessions, forehead kisses 309 kudos, 1,374 hits

“Okay, silly goose. I think it’s time for you to drink some water and get to bed.” “You need to make a wish, first,” Buck tells him, arguing. Eddie’s smile widens to show his teeth, and Buck grins. Victory. “It’s your birthday, not mine!”

buried beneath by mxrvxl 7,457 words, buried alive, major character injury, first kiss, angst with a happy ending (READ THIS!!!) 290 kudos, 2,435 hits

Buck and Eddie get buried alive.

in burning red by ShowMeAHero (@andillwriteyouatragedy) 15,386 words, major character injury, near death experience, angst with a happy ending, trans!buck, unplanned trans male pregnancy 476 kudos, 5,454 hits

“Eddie. Eddie, it’s okay.” “It’s not,” Eddie bites out. He spits at the ground, then shouts, “It is not okay, Buck!” The silence that follows is deafening. Even the roar of the fire seems quiet in comparison to the absence of the words Buck isn’t saying. “I love you,” Buck offers. Eddie wants to wake up. “Don’t,” he manages.

lord what fools these mortals be by buckslasagna, Crazed_Fuzzle (@spurfasaurus) 8,608 words, wishes, supernatural elements, getting together 177 kudos, 1,134 hits

At a low point, Buck makes a wish to find someone who can love him back - and gets what he wished for. Unfortunately, the wish seems to be effecting everyone except the one person he really wishes it would.

sniffing out the truth by tinypeckers (@tinypeckers) 2,561 words, crack treated seriously, minor may/ravi, background puppy play (not the focus but it feeds the joke; trust me it's really funny) 196 kudos, 2,229 hits

For all Eddie's teasing that Buck is just a big, dumb dog, they both know it's only really true in the privacy in their own bedroom. Yet it seems that there's more to the running joke that Buck is a literal golden retriever when, just like a dog, Buck notices that something is off with May.

He Turns Dog by OrYouCouldHaveMine 2,330 words, angst, hopeful ending, implied puppy play (gone wrong) 130 kudos, 1,300 hits

There’s blood on his maw, and this time it’s not his own. It’s not coughed up from his lungs or from his belly. There’s blood on his maw, and this time it’s not his own, though he remembers it. There’s blood on his maw, and this time he put it there himself; this time it wasn’t propelled by a bullet. There is no one to point the finger at but himself. He turns dog.

buddie smut:

Gag Reflex by shadowtvwrites 2,998 words, crack treated seriously, blow jobs, breast fucking 423 kudos, 4,045 hits

Buck sucks at sucking

blood in the highs and count the stars by seachanged 1,129 words, stargazing, anal sex, bottom!buck/top!eddie 435 kudos, 4,198 hits

“Go on,” Eddie says, nosing into the soft spot under Buck’s jaw. Buck laughs, a little hysterically. ”You’re not serious.” “Oh, you bet your ass I am.” Buck can hear the smirk in his voice. “Okay,” he says, licking his lips and looking up at the vast desert sky, velvet black and wild with stars. “The fifteenth star is Antares. It’s also called the Heart of the Scorpion, because it’s the brightest one in that constellation.”

losing dogs (one-sided; unrequited) by pickdotter 2,558 words, unrequited love, angst, face-fucking, anal sex, bottom!buck/top!eddie (pretty sad) 190 kudos, 2,456 hits

Buck confesses his love. Eddie rejects him. They fuck.

If you were here by Lance_Spears 3,852 words, phone sex 93 kudos, 1,119 hits

When Eddie's in Texas, a phone call turns into something more.

slow promise by effervescentwolf (@effervescentwolf) 1,564 words, oral sex, and i quote 'soft cock blowjob to be precise' 409 kudos, 3076 hits

Eddie laughs at him, but he wraps his hand around Buck's soft dick, relishing Buck's sharp inhale at it. "Sensitive?" Eddie asks quietly, squeezing a little to watch Buck squirm. "Yeah," Buck says, pupils blown wide, breathless and eager as ever. "More?" "Yeah," Eddie says, cheeks warm, and he ducks down to take Buck into his mouth.

baby, i can be the one drown tonight by Lacerta26 (@lacerta26) 2,556 words, dobby, angst, bottom!buck/top!eddie, ambiguous/open ending, episode tag for The Last Alarm 132 kudos, 2,378 hits

He's halfway down the hallway when Buck speaks, a broken, cracked thing, the first time he’s spoken since they got into the car to come back to South Bedford Street, an unnatural silence blanketing them for the whole drive. ‘Eddie.’ Eddie doesn’t even turn around. ‘I’m so tired, Buck. Can we talk later?’

water me by Anonymous 1,386 words, watersports, shower sex, hand jobs 232 kudos, 4,030 hits

"You can just... you know." "What?" "Let go. I don't mind." Buck gaped at him. Ok. Was that... weird? Boundaries crossed, boundaries definitely crossed... His hand had stilled low on Buck's stomach, catching some of the smooth foam - and Eddie wasn't sure he wasn't foaming at the mouth.

Xoxo

-Designer

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

*reluctant sigh*

*scrolls back up*

Everyone is like yeah yeah the dust bowl we've all heard of it, but the Dust Bowl was apocalyptic. The USA practically eliminated the bison—we are talking thousands of square miles of land littered with bones, enormous pyramids of skulls—and committed genocide against their caretakers, and then settlers ripped up the prairie grasses (which protected meters of top soil) with plows

And what happened was, half the country became in engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and reduced visibility to a few feet. Even indoor environments were full of deep drifts of dirt. When it rained, it rained mud instead of water. In ENGLAND the snow was RED because of DIRT. People died from pneumonia because they were breathing the dirt into their lungs.

Even before mom started reading this book, I was reading American books about the environment from the mid 20th century, and they are animated with the zeal and terror of people who have realized that human mismanagement could make the USA literally uninhabitable. I realized, "Oh. This is right after the Dust Bowl." cause of how they talk about erosion, and I realized just how formative the Dust Bowl was in terms of environmental policy.

Reading about various wildlife species, I realized also how utterly apocalyptic the conditions of the past were for animals. Deer were almost eliminated from my state. Deer.

Why do we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act? Because just about every large bird species almost went extinct from uncontrolled commercial hunting. We almost had no swans, no cranes, no egrets, no storks. We lost the passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets, but we could have lost Basically Everything.

So many of the ill-conceived decisions to introduce species to this continent are easily explained by how apocalyptic this period of time was. Why did we think it was a good idea to introduce Kudzu? Because in the 1950's, erosion sparked a visceral apprehension of CERTAIN DOOM, and logging had made the whole southeast start washing away! Why were so many exotic antelopes introduced to Texas? Because every native large animal was almost wiped out!

From my other readings on the subject (Changes in the Land by William Cronon is a good one) devastating environmental destruction started just about as soon as Europeans started controlling the land, and I am guessing that if you examined the timeline of environmental disaster alongside the migrations west, it would support the argument that settlers started pushing west more and more rapidly because of land degradation and environmental disaster.

I wish this was commoner knowledge, getting to where we are now has been a journey. Environmental history doesn't start in 1970's.

there was a storm blowing, so my great grandpa tied a string around his waist and tied it to the house so he could check on the cows without getting lost in the dust.

inside the house, my great grandma was making milk bump soup - a little milk from those cows, with flour and water balls cooked in. Poverty food for sure.

There was so much dust in the air that when she stirred the soup, it turned into mud.

They didn't have anything else, so no dinner for them or their 3 boys.

They slept with wet cloths over their faces to keep from suffocating.

One of those boys became a farmer, one of the first in the county to adopt conservation practices.

It sometimes feels like the end of the world, these days. It helps me to remember that the world has ended before - whole communities, lives buried under blowing dust, families uprooted, reliant on government handouts to keep from starving.

green silk rooms

cordelia's comment to mark about her interest in the artistic combination of hers and aral's genes

"in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it's time that's absolute" I love this bit so much I put it on a plate in my ceramics class in college

nobody voted for steady freddie (someone said this is a reagan reference?)

creme de meth

ivan giving head for barrayar

the kitten tree :((((((((

mark eavesdropping on cordelia and aral and thinking oh, these are what honorable people are like

the star crèche

that one meme that's like oh good gregor is here, oh no gregor is here 😱 panik

nikki calling the emperor

taura and alys in winterfair gifts

shopping

mark's name

First the cracker batter baker bakes a cracker batter batch then the cracker batter mixer door will open and unlatch so the batter mixer nozzle can descend onto the patch where the cracker batter spreads out for the nozzle to attach.

When the cracker mixer nozzle sprays the cracker batter spray and the cracker batch emulsion lies a-soaking in its haze then the cracker batter mixer starts to stir up all the glaze that the final cracker stacker needs to lubricate the way.