Lady Solveig

i spent two years working in barns to give you this information. use it wisely

view all 16 parts under the cut!

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

“Oh, I know.”

“You… know?”

“Neither of them would ever lie to me.” 

“So… *gears frantically spinning* this is like some kind of threesome thing?” 

“Oh! No, no, no, absolutely not. *Lois pauses and grins the most lascivious grin she can produce* I just… watch.” 

The Wall

*goes through chancellor’s desk drawers and finds this*

It can't possibly be that blat-

My adaptation of the God of Arepo short story, which was originally up at ShortBox Comics Fair for charity. You can get a copy of the DRM-free ebook here for free - and I'd encourage you to donate to Mighty Writers or The Ministry of Stories in exchange.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

if you are in a public building and you see a fire start, leave. that's it.

do not wait to see if someone puts it out with an extinguisher. do not spend time gathering your things.

the very second you see flames, move quickly and calmly to the nearest exit. you don't have time to do anything else.

i see comments on articles about mass casualty/fatality fires, and people are confused about how so many people died despite having available exits and the fire starting small. many people don't understand what a 'flashover' is. when objects burn in a room, they emit toxic gases, which can themselves ignite.

at a point (even within minutes of the fire starting), the entire room reaches such a high temperature that everything (and everyone) simultaneously and spontaneously ignites. even things that are not near to/directly in contact with the flames.

this is an extremely unlikely scenario to survive. even before/without a flashover, the heat and toxic smoke are already lethal (this is what killed my father. the room he was in never even caught fire. he suffered no burns). it is not like in movies where there's fire in door frames and on ceilings that you can maneuver around on-foot.

You can watch demonstrations of flash over events to truly understand the urgency of evacuating when you see an indoor fire.

This is a fire when it starts in a small waste bin in the corner of the room:

this is Three Minutes later:

How long is three minutes, really? How long will it take you to get to the exit? You don't have time to grab your things, to take a video.

You don't have time to look around and wait to see what everyone else is going to do. Exit. Quickly. Calmly. If you see someone near you who may need assistance that you can offer, bring them with you. Move.

If the fire is brought under control, you can easily go back inside once the situation is safe. You're not overreacting. People do and have died because they underestimate small indoor fires. They wait to see what will happen, whether it can be put out, what other people will do. Then it's too late.

When you go somewhere new, take a moment to locate the nearest exits. (in older buildings, if the emergency exit doors aren't alarmed, I sometimes even check to make sure they actually open, if I have the chance. sometimes they're locked.) If you or someone with you is disabled in a way which requires extra time moving and exiting (I sometime use a wheelchair), consider this in your exit route as best as you can.

Above all: Know your way out. Have a plan. Both help you stay calm and escape.