In Another Universe, Maybe My Mom Would Be living Rather Than Simply Surviving. In Another Universe,

btw archive dot org is SUCH a treasury when it comes to out-of-print poetry anthologies… i am having the time of my life, truly ❣️

you are not as damned as you think you are

submit me webweaving posts :)

@chloeinletters @pratikdherange

POSTS FOR YOU

Some links to posts with valuable content you want in one place. Suggestions and Recommendations are appreciated and accepted.

Mental Health

Do you need a Hug?

Maybe you’re having a stressful day. Maybe you just need a deep breath. Maybe you just didn’t realize how stressed you are. You can get your comfort here.

Anti-Anxiety Tools

Some tools to help you before, during or after an anxiety attack

100 Reasons NOT To Kill Yourself

READ IT. SHARE IT. REBLOG IT. Save a Life.

HOBBIES MASTERPOST!!!!!!!!

A really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. Find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.

Health

Treatment for HIV

VERY IMPORTANT. Please Read and Share.

What does the Color of your Period mean?

A must read for individuals who get periods.

How to differentiate between Period Cramps and Appendicitis

A MUST READ

Writers

How to make a Masterlist

Simple but efficient instructions to make a masterlist

List of AUs

Fro when you run out of ideas

Legal sites to get some much needed Info

If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

Resources for Describing Characters

For writing about physical appearances, character traits, talents,and skills and other related stuff of your characters, here is a comprehensive list.

Resources for Describing Emotions

Having trouble writing jealousy, happiness, motivation. Here you go!!

Some Resources for your Writing

Body Language

Reverse Dictionary

Character Traits

Words to Use when Writing Smut/Romance

This is for smut/romance writers. Kinda like a thesaurus.

Tips to write Pain

How are you supposed to write about pain you’ve never experienced before?

Things to Remember when writing a Highly Emotional Scene

Just small things that could make a great difference

How to write with Multiple POVs

Tips on how to write multiple POVs with diverse characters

Ways to un-stick a Stuck Story

Have a writer’s block or you don’t know how to continue your story anymore. Well here are some tips to help you.

Synonyms and Antonyms

The person who made this list is a blessing to writers. Just saying.

Words to Use instead of ‘Said’

Every single situation is listed. Check it out.

Readers

Legal Sites to Download Literature

From children’s books to rare books, from philosophy and religion to nonfiction. I guess you can find anything here.

Wet Book Rescue : Steps to save a Wet Book

Valuable information if some of your prized books were affected by recent flooding. The video even shows you what to do if you can’t dry the book out right away.

Cheatsheet to Navigate AO3

Makes your time on AO3 a little more easier and interesting

Students

Basic ASL (American Sign Language) Movements

ASL Hand Movements for beginners.

Resources to Learn New Languages

Ten fairly useful general language resources

Miscellaneous

How to Walk with Purpose?

Some tips on how to hold yourself in public and why.

How to Gird up your Loins?

A lesson in how to gird your loins.

How to Disappear Online

Please read and spread for the sake of abuse victims or stalker victims.

What to do during a Nuclear Attack

I hope you never have to use it but here are some guidelines to follow in the event of a nuclear attack

How to pull an All-Nighter.

A to-do list

Write a Thank You letter after your Interview

It leaves a good impression on your interviewer and increase your chances of passing the interview.

Laundry Tags: Meanings

A life hack that you’ll definitely need at some point.

How to get a Refund?

Get your stuff or a refund.

HOW TO DO EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH

This starts at the most absolute basics of gardening and planting, provides definitions, and hopefully is easily understandable. This is a MUST-READ. (Farming)

Safety

If someone you know is in an abusive relationship

AN ABBREVIATED GUIDE TO ‘Holy shit!!! My friend is in an abusive relationship what do I do’ and what not to do.

If a Man gets Physical

If Someone insists on getting your Number

How to check if a mirror is one way or two-way

The Modern History of FC Barcelona: Masterpost

Barca is a club of extremes. The good moments are like nothing else - playing football of the gods, sweeping up every possible trophy, ticker-tape raining down from the sky and a million people partying on the streets. The bad moments are mindbogglingly moronic and self-destructive. Players will tell you it’s like nowhere else on earth.

Through my posts on the recent history of the club I have attempted to put its present into some sort of context. History tells us why things happen the way they do. But really, these ups and downs also make for some bloody amazing stories, and I wanted to share them.

The current installments are as follows:

Part 1 - The Dream Team and the Bad Break-up (1988-2001)

Part 2 - The Little Genius and His Brazilian Bros (2001-2008)

Part 3 - We Wanted to Eat the World and We Did (2008-2012)

Appendix A: A Presidential Break-up that Defined a Decade

Appendix B: The Betrayal of Eric Abidal 

Leo Messi: the story so far (written on his 21st birthday)

An Eulogy for Tito Vilanova

Winter Has Arrived (a post on the January 2015 crisis)

On reaping what we sow (the February 2020 crisis)

Defining Matches

FC Barcelona 3 Gothenburg 0 (3-3 agg, 5-4 (pens)), European Cup semi-final [1986]

FC Barcelona 1 Sampdoria 0, European Cup final [1992]

AC Milan 4 FC Barcelona 0, European Cup final [1994]

[to be continued]

Here are a few other primer posts for topics I haven’t covered in depth:

a general primer, covering among other things the Baby Dream Team/Class of 87 and the BroT3 (Cesc Fabregas, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol) [also has fic recs at the bottom if you like that sort of thing];

Xavi and Iniesta, footballing soulmates;

the brief but amazing reign of the Messi/Villa partnership;

a discursus on the epic, pure and true love of Victor Valdes and Andres Iniesta;

the brothers Alcantara;

Bojan, Ibra, David Villa and Victor Valdes;

my own Pep Guardiola picspam/primer, covering his playing days, pre-season 2008 and some of 2008/09.

Much of the above list is the work of the wonderful meretricula.  If you know of other relevant primers, please drop me a message with a link.

Read on for footnotes and such.

Keep reading

it's been a while since i did a book review post but i'm not sure if i can be normal about this one boys

cloud cuckoo land by anthony doerr is a novel about the preservation of a (fictional) diogenes play of the same name. but it's actually a book about five of God's most autistic soldiers and the ways in which this play shapes their lives. but it's actually a book about how books and stories give our lives meaning in the face of unthinkable horrors. but it's actually about the hope that his niece will feel better.

this book says it's all worth it. even the shit parts. maybe especially the shit parts. it says if you can make it to the end of the story maybe something beautiful will be waiting for you there.

All the light we cannot see

Some of my fav passages ♡

At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country. The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is blindness? Where there should be a wall, her hands find nothing. Where there should be nothing, a table leg gouges her shin. Cars growl in the streets; leaves whisper in the sky; blood rustles through her inner ears. In the stairwell, in the kitchen, even beside her bed, grown-up voices speak of despair.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Marie-Laure listens to honeybees mine the flowers and tries to imagine their journeys as Etienne described them: each worker following a rivulet of odor, looking for ultraviolet patterns in the flowers, filling baskets on her hind legs with pollen grains, then navigating, drunk and heavy, all the way home.

How do they know what parts to play, those little bees _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

She holds out a hand, and sparrows land one by one on her arms, and she tucks each one into her coat. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the rue de la Crosse, the Hotel of Bees becomes almost weightless for a moment, lifted in a spiral of flame, before it begins to rain in pieces back to the earth.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high above the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. She hears Americans scurry across farm fields, directing their huge cannons at the smoke of Saint-Malo; she hears families sniffling around hurricane lamps in cellars, crows hopping from pile to pile, flies landing on corpses in ditches; she hears the tamarinds shiver and the jays shriek and the dune grass burn; she feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth’s crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the ocean teething at it from all four sides, and the outer islands holding steady against the swirling tides; she hears cows drink from stone troughs and dolphins rise through the green water of the Channel; she hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.

We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I am only alive because I have not yet died.” 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

#free Palestine #Gaza

we cannot let the people saying "legal child-killing" rejoin society without repercussions. this is depraved. i don't want to share a society with you people. the idea of it repulses me. you people deserve nothing less than ostracization and the end of your platforms and careers.

“I was reading a book in which contemporary society was compared to a multi-tenant building. The tenants are not bound together by common ideals. While they share a desire to protect the building from fire, the inner sufferings of other tenants mean nothing to them. Nor do they care about equality or human rights. Basic principles the state once held in esteem have broken down, so that even if a neighbor is covered in urine or feces, as long as one’s home doesn’t smell, one doesn’t interfere.”

— Yōko Tawada, Scattered All Over the Earth

The Iliad: Funny Moments

The year was 850-750 BCE. No phones or underwear in sight. Pants were for the uncivilized only. Unibrows were attractive. And then, one day, Homer decides to write the first Greek Mythology Fanfiction ever, called "Troy Story".

Here is a list of moments from the Iliad which I personally consider to be quite hilarious:

1. Early on in Book 2, before the enormous list of Greek fighters and ships:

Agamemnon tries to motivate/test the army by claiming that he's given up and they're going home. This backfires, as a stampede for the ships ensues.

In response, Athena comes down and gives Odysseus a pep talk. He promptly and unceremoniously takes Agamemnon's scepter out of his hands and runs around brow-beating and occasionally actually beating men who were turning from the fight. It all comes to a head when he takes the scepter and beats the crap out of the Argives' resident disfigured hunchback who was doing nothing but making jokes at the Argive leaders' expense. In fact, the narrative itself stops and mentions that the scene was so hilarious, the soldiers in-story were laughing raucously.

Within Agamemnon's speech, his roundabout method of explaining how badly the Greeks outnumber the Trojans: let's say they have a truce, and each side takes a census, and each group of ten Greek soldiers gets one (male) resident of Troy to pour their wine. "There would be many tens of men lacking a pourer of wine."

2. At one point early in the story Paris steps out among the Trojan soldiers, described as looking like a god, and dares any Greek soldier to come up and face him in battle. Menelaus steps forward to answer the call—and Paris promptly flees back behind his soldiers.

3.Menelaus beating Paris up with his bare hands, while the latter still has his sword. The dramatic way in which it's written makes it a tad more serious, until you remember that Menelaus is choking Paris with the strap of his own hat.

4. Throughout the book, the Greeks continuously throw spears at Hector, but Apollo just deflects them into his charioteer instead, before Hector just picks up another random guy off the battlefield. This happens numerous times throughout the book that it's almost a running gag.

5. The Greeks send an embassy to beg Achilles to come join the fighting again. At first he receives them in friendship, but when he's heard them out, he has Patroclus start passive-aggressively preparing a bed for the only member of the embassy he's invited to spend the night, to signal to the others it's time for them to leave. Thus proving that "it was so nice to see you, but wow, look at the time, we should be getting to bed!" is a tactic Older Than Dirt.

6. When Hera seduces Zeus to distract him, he describes how attractive she is by comparing her with some of the other women he's slept with. It takes about 20 lines in the original Greek.

7. During the battle between the men and gods, Artemis squares up with Hera after her brother decides against fighting Poseidon. You'd think Artemis, the epic huntress and receiver of human sacrifice she is, armed with a powerful bow and fitting the Action Girl trope to a tee would utterly wreck the seemingly frilly, stuck up, less capable Hera. Hera instead chastises Artemis for being a brat biting off way more than she can chew, gives her a verbal tongue lashing before snatching Artemis's bow away before she can get a shot off to give her a lashing with that. Artemis gets wailed on so badly she literally is sent running away crying home to her daddy Zeus.

8. One tangent mentions Hades making a grand entrance at Pylos, only to be immediately shot with one of Heracles' arrows, forcing him to abandon the fight and flee to Olympus to heal. Later, Poseidon makes an earthquake so strong Hades jumps out of his chair in fear that the Underworld will be exposed due to the quake.

9. Early on in the epic, King Priam calls to Helen to explain to him who is leading the Greek army - Agamemnon, Odysseus, Menelaus, etc - because Priam doesn't know who they are. The Greeks have been at war with his kingdom for nine years before this point. One would imagine who had such a role would be at the forefront of his thoughts or that he would at least bother to remember their names, especially since a Pre-Iliad episode had Odysseus and Menelaus before him arguing that Helen be returned.

10. After a long discussion of their ancestries, Glaucus and Diomedes shake hands and exchange armor as a pledge of Sacred Hospitality. The narrator notes that Glaucus got ripped off, because his armor was worth over ten times as much.

11. A wounded Sarpedon thinks he's about to die and begins giving Hector a Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie speech. Hector, who he'd been arguing with several verses back, runs right past him without answering.

12. The standard heroic epithets being used at incongruous times. Godlike Paris hiding from Menelaus, godlike and enduring Odysseus running away while Diomedes yells at him to come back, Menelaus being called "beloved of Ares" while Ares is trying to get him killed, glorious Ajax the Lesser taking a spill face-first into ox dung...

13. Menelaus is shot and wounded. Agamemnon immediately begins mourning his brother and gets through a whole speech before Menelaus can get a word in edgewise to explain that he's still alive.

its been 2 months since i read cloud cuckoo land by anthony doerr and i havent really talked about it cause its not "fandomizable" or whatever but i started thinking about it again out of nowhere today so i gonna get my thoughts out here.

as you may know for the past several months ive been really into finding obscure music to listen to. not because i want to feel elite or superior or win the obscure music competition, but because its such an intimate experience to me. its like the artist is reaching across time and space to deliver me the song personally and entrusting it to me and I have to take care of it and share it with the people in my life so it can be loved and grow up big and strong. its especially true for songs that are 15 or 20 or 30 or more years old cause it makes me wonder where the artist is now and how theyre doing. their musical career may not have taken off, but it made its way to me all these years later. its touching, you know?

now imagine instead of a song from a decade or two ago that you can stream on spotify, it's a manuscript that's thousands of years old. five times over, across millenia, somebody discovered a story that was doomed to be lost forever and singlehandedly worked to rescue and preserve and share it so that it could keep on living, because it was important to them. whether the story is "good" or not, hell whether its even complete or legible, is not what matters. what matters is that for their own reasons, some part of it resonated with each of them, and they felt a responsibility to pass it on so it would not die with them.

to put it more crassly, cloud cuckoo land is basically a story about lost media. the need to preserve and record and recover information no matter how trivial it may seem is such a human thing to do and i love that