Costumes and Cocoa

Rollator version (You are here!)

Cane version 

Wheelchair version

Power Chair version 

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

Sea Grunks Intro

Reblogging to humble brag

I put a lot of work into this and I’m so glad this has gotten as big as it has.

Thank you, Alex!

He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 which was the first time an openly gay person appeared on the cover of a U.S. magazine and had their name printed in that magazine

He was an advocate for AIDs/HIV patients from the start of the outbreak in the 70s. He contracted the virus in 1986 and died 2 years later

here’s the King himself

Here is me in my complete-ish garb. (I want to sew a new first layer cyrtel in green linen). It’s the outfit of a 7th century Anglo-Saxon noblewoman.

The trim is tablet woven linen, and linen embroidery based on illumination in the lindesfarne gospels. The belt is tablet woven wool. I hand wove/sewed everything except the shoes which are slippers a friend bought in Morocco.

The necklace is a replica of St. Cuthberts cross, and the other jewelry is also inspired by various archeological finds and was bought over the years from various Etsy shops.

general fantasy violence, suicide, abuse, mentions of incest and rape later in the series around the 45th episode i think (which is part of the things that a horrible villain is ok with so neither of these things are excused or shown in a positive light theyre both shown as things the protagonists are rightfully horrified by)

and there is lots of blood in the first episode

show starts in violence and loudness then a suicide then a circle of blood and another suicide. (of a sort)

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money. 

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

I have seen this sentiment popping up way too much, in too many fandoms. And while, on the surface, I can kinda see where people are coming from—it sounds good in theory, that is till you really think about it—I personally think this way of thinking is harmful to queer actors and the queer community overall.

1. Stating that gay roles should be played by gay actors infers that straight roles should be played by straight actors.

2. It also demands that actors publicly come out about their sexuality/sexual preferences, when they may not want to, in order to “earn” the right to play a certain role.

3. It ignores the fluidity of sexuality. Not everyone realizes they are queer in their teens. It’s not a black and white, you are or you’re not type situation. For some of us (and speaking from my own experience as a bisexual woman I think this is particularly true for bi/pan sexual people) it can take us awhile to realize we’re not as straight as we first thought... it’s complicated, damn it.

No one should be pigeonholed into only playing characters that match their sexuality and you’re absolutely right no one should be forced to come out because of a role. Any actor should be able to play any part and if actors were being routinely and non-discriminatorily being cast regardless of their sexuality or that of the characters, it would not be a problem at all. 

However, Hollywood does have a huge problem with typecasting gay people as villains and coding villains as gay, or tragic and pitiable. It has a problem with creating caricatures and stereotypical characters for queer actors and then casting straight or cis actors to play LGBTQUIA characters if the role is meaty/meaningful. We are just starting to move past this. But when a cis straight actor is heralded as some kind of superstar or hero for playing gay or trans characters while trans and gay actors are passed over, this is a HUGE problem for me. It isn’t any more “brave” for a straight actor to play a gay character than the reverse, but you never hear a gay actor being heralded as being so brave for their portrayal of straight characters. 

It is also a huge problem when trans characters are played by cisgender actors precisely because there are trans actors who are being cast primarily as the butt of jokes or sex workers, (frequently both). When cis male actors are cast as trans women, however beautifully the succeed at acting,  it unfortunately also reinforces the idea that trans women are just men playing at being female rather than  just women. Likewise trans actresses should be able to play women and trans actors should be able to play men. If every part was open to every actor and equitably cast it would not be an issue any more.

However, once the church is destroyed by the bomb, he is no longer acting as if its painful. This would mean that a destroyed church is no longer consecrated ground.