Miss Cellaneous

the cop who smells like bear claw donuts and watering hose plastic slaps his hands flat on the table, toying with the corner of something papery; maybe a folder, or a photo. the cop whose uniform swishes like lycra when he walks–and, though this is just a guess, is probably wearing knock-off ray ban pilot sunglasses that he hasn’t taken off once in his life–leans against the two-way mirror so hard that the buttons on the shoulder of his uniform click against the glass.

“kid, i admire your desire to keep your friends out of trouble,” Donut Mouth says. “but a real house really burned down. people could have died.”

“look at it from our point of view,” Ray Ban suggests. “because from our point of view, it looks like a prank war got out of control and ended in arson. you don’t want arson on your record.”

homer, who has been in this police station since three-thirty in the goddamn morning and is more hungover than he has ever been in his entire fucking life, leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest.

“oh, you want me to look at it from your point of view,” he drawls. “nice. real fucking nice.”

the embarrassed pause is enough for homer to gather his wits a little: if he pushes past the pounding in his head he can kind of remember how he got here. he knows that the cops were right; there was definitely a fire, and it was almost definitely the greek alpha sig’s fault, although if you really go all the way back it’s not like they were unprovoked.

he sips at the coffee they’d given him a little while ago. it’s almost cold, but it helps quiet the pounding in his brain. pancakes would have helped more, but he doesn’t think the police station have those on the menu, and even if they do, it isn’t like they’re going to be any good if the quality of their coffee is any indication.

he tries to figure out how long he’s been here, in realtime not drunk time. probably an hour at least. so–that’s one down, and they can only keep him for twenty-four, right?

yeah. he’s pretty sure. so all he has to do is make it twenty-four hours without telling them who actually started the fire but also without being, like, a hostile witness, or whatever. he doesn’t actually know that much about the law, but he remembers that one brooklyn nine nine episode where jake arrested someone too early and they had to find something to charge him with in one day

homer is fairly confident that he can’t get charged with anything he’s done lately, but he does definitely smell like weed, so.

love, justice, and homer all are blind, but none of them are stupid, so he rubs at his eyes and says, “okay. fine. i’ll tell you what i know, but like, most of this is just what i heard. it’s not gonna hold up in court. i mean, i didn’t see anything.”

“obviously,” says Ray Ban.

“what do you mean, ‘obviously’? that’s fucking ableist, man.”

“that’s not what i–”

“roy,” Donut Mouth interrupts, tone a warning. “go on, son.”

“okay,” homer says. he takes a deep breath. “so like–okay, what you have to understand is we’re deep in this war, right? i mean, this has been going on since like, the first toga party of the year, when this transfer kid, paris, hooked up with helen during rush.”

“helen …”

“spartowski.”

“and she is?”

“manny atreus’ girlfriend. or–ex-girlfriend, i guess. she’s alpha delta chi.”

“so manny atreus burned down the trojan house because … his girlfriend cheated on him in paris?”

“what? no. i never said he burned it down, i said the prank war started because his girlfriend cheated on him, and not in paris, with paris.”

“someone’s parents named them paris?”

“i don’t fucking know, man, i didn’t name him. that’s just what he’s called. maybe it’s a family name.”

“sure.”

“my dude, i’m called homer. you think i’m judging people on the weird shit their parents named them?”

Donut Mouth coughs into his hand. “fair point.”

“okay. so: manny said we had to go to war, for like, honor or something, and honestly at first it sounded kind of fun, so we just kind of went with it. but …”

he trails off. august seems like such a long time ago. a whole lifetime. maybe more than one.

“but what?”

homer’s head hurts. he’s so hungover he thinks he can smell beer in his sweat. he can definitely smell weed. it’s going to be a long, long, long day.

“i dunno,” he admits. “i guess things just got–a little out of hand.”

she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased

voldemort had actual doubts about snape

narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them. 

look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy. 

say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things. 

marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight. 

masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement. 

narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.  

#voldy was shocked when he found out his mom was the witch #he assumed his father would be magical

Because it makes perfect sense.  Of course Narcissa would turn on Voldemort without a second thought to protect her son. Not only because she’s his mother, but because that’s how Voldemort was defeated the first time around, and Voldemort cannot change or learn. 1980′s Voldemort was defeated because of a mother’s love, Lily’s sacrifice for Harry. Lily was not considered important to Voldemort, only James and Harry were. Voldemort was even willing to spare her for Snape, if she didn’t put up a fight (which of course she did). To him, Lily was irrelevant, because she was a woman and Muggle-born. Voldemort underestimated her, and it cost him. So naturally he would do the same thing again in the 90′s, focusing on Harry and the prophecy, never considering the thing that defeated him before might do so again. He was wary of Lucius and Draco, but underestimated Narcissa and it lead directly to his defeat. And she KNEW he did, and used it to her advantage.

This short-sightedness is even reflected in his most ardent supporter Bellatrix, who was also killed by a furious mother protecting her child.

Voldemort has a history of putting the people his followers love in danger and expecting their unswerving obedience anyway. He lost Snape when he went after Lily. He lost Narcissa Malfoy when he let her husband rot in prison and set her son up to die. 

His followers know, up close and personal, what the Dark Lord is capable of, and they will do whatever they have to do to save their loved ones from his wand. 

Exactly! Voldemort doesn’t understand it, and because of that, it never ever even once occurred him it might backfire on himself. He overlooks love and those who he thinks less of. He looks at the world through this own glasses and in doing so, he utterly, completely fails understanding other people’s ways of thinking. And it’s not like he’s even trying to understand, because he thinks so little of it, he doesn’t think it’s worth even trying to understand it.  And that is his greatest weakness.

slightly bigger brain: fairy tales are sexist as fuck #WhatPrincessesTaughtMe

slightly slightly bigger brain: actually fairy tales are empowering for example cinderella is about a woman escaping her abusive home situation and beauty and the beast is about love between social outcasts

large brain: most of these stories are old as shit and reflect the gender roles of the time of their conception but whether or not they are intolerably sexist depends very much on the execution and interpretation of the critical plot points by the adaptation and you can’t paint every adaptation with the same brush

Here’s to everyone fighting their own battles.

Here’s to every brave warrior.

Here’s to you.

There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson. 

One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?”

The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs and act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”

“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

First of all, stop defacing stock in someone’s store. You’re not clever or saving the planet or anything. You’re making it hard for customers to shop and see the info they need on the label (yardage, weight, dye lot)… You’re making employees spend hours peeling the damn things off, and in some cases, you’re causing damage to the label and or yarn itself. That means loss to the company, which affects employees who probably make minimum wage, you shit bags. You want to make change happen? Contact corporate, you fuckhead. That’s where decisions are made.

Second of all, wool is not murder. Are you fucking stupid? (Obviously the answer is yes). It’s a fucking haircut for a sheep. They’ve been domesticated so long that if we don’t sheer them, it’s bad. Yes, some sheep don’t live in ideal conditions. Got a problem with that? Going to a yarn store and putting stickers on things isn’t going to change it or the minds of customers. For fuck’s sake, you absolute cockwomble, go to the yarn companies. Make them use wool providers that use humane conditions for their yarn, like A LOT OF YARN COMPANIES DO.

And third of all.

You. You precious, empty-headed little shitnugget. You complete and total sawdust-for-brains.

You put your fucking stickers all over acrylic yarn.

There’s no fucking wool in there. It’s all synthetic fiber. Basically, it’s plastic.

First of all, Google Merino Sheep, see the hair, fur and overall fleece. If it shrinks so much when washing, congratulations, I hope you paid much Franklin Dollars for a shirt you aren't going to wear that much.

Secondly, the price of yarn. Is an indirect way of telling how costly sheep wool is, the better farms have more costs than usual. The farms running in ideal humane conditions, providers for the population around the world, like seriously why would yarn companies switch suppliers if they already had a constant contract going on. The ISO- *insert random numerals here* surely wouldn't raise a voice about that!

Thus, thirdly, 100% wool is near impossible, that is if you're not knitting fabrics for haute couture.

Fourth, hence the Wool /Acrylic yarn. For those who don't understand, two ways to know: one, wool is expensive, two, Acrylic 's properties are functioning better than wool itself. Wool shrinks, Acrylic doesn't.

Fifth...., Acrylic is another type of Polyester filament. It's not entirely 100% plastic, read the labels and buy more made from Rayon. Not all synthetic filaments are bad..., like the underwear you wear, comfortable to the touch right?

If you want to debunk or expose on how this is "damaging" our environment, please come up with a better alternative to please the market demands from consumers.

Call me up, once anyone of you shitting on the OP has managed to topple the yarn/textile industries. I'll be waiting.

Like don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s not capable. Although we all know that Hermione went through the Legolas Effect in the movies and I think Jo might have been influenced by that a bit. Still, I have no doubt that if Hermione really wanted to be the Minister, her ambitiousness could get her there. She could pull it off. If she really wanted to. But in what book series does Hermione ever express any interest in ruling over the entire British wizarding world? Nah. One of Hermione’s biggest character growths in the series (that very few people talk about) is her going from completely and blindly trusting all authority figures to cynically realizing that there are very few, if any, out there who will be able to protect her, causing her to take matters into her own hands. She wouldn’t become the person in the position she hated. Nah. She would become the person who argued against the person in the position she hated.

Picture this (and then proceed to never look at the epilogue the same way again): Hermione Jean Granger, Supreme Lawyer for the Wizengamot.

It’s perfect. Even back in the first book, Hermione was argumentative, stubborn, bossy, and obsessed with research and facts. These traits never really went away as she got older. Instead, other traits were added on. She spent an entire year trying to help Hagrid prepare his case so that Buckbeak wasn’t wrongfully executed. (Honestly this alone should have been enough for Jo.) She gets involved in S.P.E.W. She frequently voices her concerns over Umbridge skiving the law. She recites certain laws throughout the book, such as Gamp’s law. She’s quick to take down the Minister of Magic when he lets it slip that they didn’t follow Dumbledore’s will. 

I mean the Minister of Magic even looks at her and says that she should follow a career in Magical Law! (Granted Hermione turns him down but she just did that to get in a jab at how the Wizengamot and the related offices were useless at the time.)

Just imagine it though. Hermione Jean Granger arguing in front of the Wizengamot on behalf of the rights of Muggleborns, House-Elves, Muggles, etc. etc. etc. Hermione getting a public trial to posthumously clear Sirius’ name. Hermione ending the corruption and calling out the bullshit legally.

Hermione either prosecuting or defending previous Death Eaters and when it’s time for Lucius’ trial, Draco gapes at her and sneers, “Granger? You became an Attorney for the Wizengamot?” and she just stares back and asks:

For the fanfic authors who don’t get art of their fics

For the fanfic authors who can’t get to 1000/500/100 hits

For the fanfic authors who don’t get comments/reviews

For the fanfic authors who write for small fandoms

For the fanfic authors who write rarepairs or gen fics

For the fanfic authors who get hate for the ships/characters/fandoms they write

For the fanfic authors who write in English despite it not being their first language

For the fanfic authors who don’t write in English

For the fanfic authors who don’t think anyone reads or likes their work

For the fanfic authors who aren’t big name fans

For the fanfic authors who don’t get requests in their inboxes

For the fanfic authors who can’t write stories that are more than a thousand words

For the fanfic authors who only write one ship

For the fanfic authors who are just starting

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For the fanfic authors who use fanfic to practice writing

For the fanfic authors who write self-insert fics

For the fanfic authors who write about their OCs

For the fanfic authors who write to vent or cope

For the fanfic authors who are just waiting for their big break

Inspired by a collect of T.S. Eliot poems, bad cats, good cats and magical cats included.

32. Madame Butterfly