Mijy's little world

Quiet humans are not defective. Loud humans are not defective. Unless there is a significant change, assume your human is operating at normal levels.

Human words do not mean the same thing all the time. Look up the study of human tone if you want to always know what your human means.

Human females will smell of blood each month. If this changes, ask your human in private if something happened.

Human males often do not know how loud they are. Asking them to lower their voice is not offensive.

Human cultures vary greatly and various cultures have conflicting beliefs. Most humans will not be offended if you cannot keep up with this.

Humans do not share a hive mind but do have several musical triggers that activate a human chorus. These triggers transcend most cultural and language barriers.

All Stabby units come with a human locator setting. Use liberally.

Ask for a detailed explanation before agreeing to join a human on any non work activity.

Be aware of human hobbies and skills. Humans enjoy company and will likely teach you whatever they know. It is also beneficial to know what your human may do should they get bored.

Do not be too concerned over what humans ingest, so long as they do so willingly and with the full knowledge of what they are ingesting.

Unless you hear a human say something along the lines of ‘I hope this works’ or ‘here goes nothing’, assume they have a working knowledge at the attempted task.

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.

Part 7!

of the "guys, I promise it wouldn't be angst"

I'm here to unbad your bad timeline. At least a little bit :)

Beginning | Previous | Next

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

Sorry for the delay, I was stuck pretending to be helpful for a family building project. By the time we were done, there was no possible way to get them all done in time, so here you go!

The next chapter will be available next week! Hope you enjoyed this chapter, cause I sure did!

Previous: (1) Pages 13-18

To the woman that inspired countless girls and people of color, we will never forget you.

You will always be in our hearts.

Thank you for going where no woman had gone before.

He notices obviously but it’s not like his parents are around to take him to get checked out, and then he just thinks that there’s so much else going on that it’s not the most important thing to bring up. They have bigger issues.

By season 3 he’s completely deaf in one ear and HoH in the other, (i also head canon him as having chronic migraines)

now lip reading is a hard art form to master (it’s mostly just guesswork) but he figures it out by talking to himself in a mirror and memorizing how certain sounds look, he gets books on body language to help with the guesswork and gets really good at reading people’s emotions because that’s all he has to go off of. He learns sign language from a book but never really uses it since no one else seems to know the language but it comforts him to have that in the back of his head.

he doesn’t really try to keep it a secret, it’s just that he’s always been known as an “airhead” so when he seems to not know what’s going on people just assume it’s that. Steve doesn’t really realize that no one knows, like it never crosses his mind that he’s never said anything. And Robin only really started hanging Out with him after he lost the majority of his hearing (he loses the rest of it from the Russian beating/mixing that with side affects from the unregulated drugs they’re slipped ) so she has nothing to compare it with, so despite her and Steve being platonic soulmates, she just doesn’t clock it. Anything she does notice she just assumes is part of his migraines, which are much harder to hide so she knows about that.

It ends up being Argyle who figures it out (because he may be high out of his mind but that guy is SMART,) because Argyle notices that Steve only responds verbally to conversation when he’s facing the person talking, and he tilts his head so that his left ear (that can still pick up on things like tone) is towards the presumed sound. (He also notices that Steve seems WAY TO FOCUSED on eddie’s lips compared to everyone else’s but he’s really good at keeping secrets and Steve is a Bro, Argyle won’t tattle)

He reveals it to the group in a very casual way. Argyle doesn’t make a big deal of things and he does also just assume that since he knows, it must be common knowledge. The group wants to have a movie night and argyle being the sweet sweet loving man that he is offers to get movies with captions because

“one of the guys I give weed to lost his hearing to a sickness and he’s super smart so he found a way to make them” (idk if that’s actually possible in the 80’s so let’s pretend it can)

and Dustin or something just sits there like “why would we need captions” and argyle just smiles and goes

“well it’s not gonna be fun for your babysitter if he can’t understand half the sh*t that’s happening, man”

And Dustin just looks around like “why would Steve not be able to understand the tv?” So argyle shrugs and goes

“the man can’t hear anything dude, I just assumed he’d get tired of it. Do you usually just get him a copy of the script somehow? Oh your girlfriend probably gets them, doesn’t she? Yeah that explains it, man”

And now everyone is paying attention like “wait he cant hear??” And argyle obviously doesn’t know that he’s revealed some Top Secret Information, and now everyone’s talking about it like “did you know??” “No- did you know??” And before Steve can enter the room, they start planning how to figure this out without asking Steve because Maybe He’s Embarrassed and that’s why he hasn’t said anything.

Cue Dustin getting Susie to add captions to a movie and paying super close attention to steve, and watching as steve seems to actually pay attention to a movie for the first time since Dustin’s known him- and he’s just sitting there all angry at himself for not realizing- obviously steve wouldn’t get his references even though he’s watched all the movies- steve Cant HEAR what’s going on in said movies, and then Dustin’s all upset because he’s been doing stuff like this with steve for YEARS why was he just sitting there even though he has no clue what’s going on?? (Steve just really loves Dustin and wants him to be happy, wants to hang out with him, so if that means staring at a silent screen for a few hours, he’ll take it. He enjoys the drive home, when he can see that Dustin is smiling and ranting about what happened in the film, even if he only catches a few words)

And Robin starts having really outlandish conversations with Steve during work when he has his back turned. It starts with stuff like “hey I’m thinking of learning Russian” and “me and Vickie got together finally and hey, I’m pregnant” and it evolves into the weirdest sh*t she can think of on the spot, like once she confesses her undying love for him, and when he doesn’t notice anything weird until he turns around and sees her kneeling on the floor, that pretty much confirms it. She also does start to notice that he never really says anything to someone until he’s facing them. She always just thought he didn’t care about the conversation or was being annoying.

Nancy gets really upset because she was DATING THIS MAN for a while and never once thought that hey maybe there’s a reason he was failing in school and didn’t know when he had an assignment half the time, (it’s because sometimes teachers don’t write important things in the board!!) and now it makes so much sense, how he would sometimes write essays on things that didn’t have anything to do with the topic presented- he misread the teacher’s lips and context clues

And Eddie, who previously thought steve hated Eddie’s music, realizes that Steve likes the music he already knew before going deaf because he could time when the words were being sung and use the vibrations to sing along,

And when they hang out Eddie starts playing his music (which he always played but more quietly, because of Steve’s migraines) but just Louder this time and Steve actually reacts to it, which he’s never done. Before, Eddie would ask Steve what he thought of the music and Steve would just go “eh, could be better” when in reality steve didn’t even know music was playing and got nervous. He didn’t want Eddie to get mad at him, because Steve CAN concentrate on the music and pick up small parts of it if he tries really hard so he thinks Eddie is gonna call him lazy if Steve admits he didn’t pay enough attention to ‘hear’ it, but once Eddie starts playing it louder, so it makes the walls shake, Steve starts enjoying it much more,

And eventually the group figures they have to have an intervention, like- he’s their friend, why did he never tell them this ?? And when they do, Steve just goes “you didn’t know???”

If I were a better writer, I would make it super comedic but I’m terrible at that. Feel free to take the idea and run with it.

Edit: you have permission to use this idea in a fic!! A few people have asked!! I cant write so I’d love to read anything yall create!!

I don’t support terfs or exclusionists.