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Lovers Reunited

@risssaar / risssaar.tumblr.com

I ship Logan and Veronica. Hard. Oliver and Felicity too. Apparently.
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acessy0420
#Logan Echolls#The Lean
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mylordshesacactus
01010101010101010111-deactivate asked:

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

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mylordshesacactus answered:

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 think the least we can do is remember them for it.

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mylordshesacactus

I can’t begin to describe how happy and flattered and a little teary I am that this just broke 100k.

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.

It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far.

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writersblock51

Always reblogging this when it comes around

#TheCarpathia

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theavidindoorswoman

On fandom and Veronica Mars

In the aftermath of the nonsense that is Veronica Mars Season 4, I’ve been thinking a lot about Fandom, my role in it, & how it became a part of my life. Veronica Mars is how I first discovered fandom. so it’s something that is really important to me and how I understand it. This will probably be unnecessarily long but bear with me, I have a lot of feelings.

I’ve always loved television, and watch much more television than a normal person should. I could wax poetic all day about why it’s the best medium for visual storytelling. Anyway, this is about Veronica Mars. Somewhere around 2009/2010, I was going through a really rough period post-college, in the midst of what professionals apparently call a major depressive episode.  My most used and least destructive coping mechanism? Making Netflix my BFF. I found myself doing A LOT of bingewatching. Veronica Mars was one of those shows that I always saw people recommending but never really thought would be a good fit for me; I was really over crime shows at that point and had no interest in watching a show about a private investigator, much less a teenaged one. Eventually, I gave in and found it on Netflix. I don’t even remember why really. But 64 episodes and 3 weeks later, I was ruined. 

I loved Veronica, I loved Wallace, I loved Keith, and eventually, I even loved Logan. To this day, Veronica & Wallace are still my favorite TV friendship, and Veronica & Keith are my favorite parent/child relationship. I also loved LoVe. This is the part where I shamefully admit that I initially shipped Veronica w/Duncan, yeah I know (I have a tendency to ship characters with the person that they think they are meant to be with). But from the moment that Veronica & Logan kissed in Weapons of Class Destruction, I was done for. As soon as I got over the shock, I was all in. Even though I’ve always rooted for various couples over the years, Whitley & Duane on A Different World, Will & Lisa on Fresh Prince, Buffy & Angel, Josh & Donna, etc. I never understood myself to be a shipper. I never even knew that shipping was a thing, which as someone who grew up spending the summer holidays watching soaps with my mom, is kind of absurd. Shout out to Days of Our Lives, Passions, and Y&R (Stefano DiMera is still the best soap villain of all time). 

But it wasn’t just about shipping. I knew that the show had been canceled, but when I got to that last episode, I was distraught. There had to be more, I thought. There’s no way that it just ended like that? Did Logan & Veronica ever get back together? What was the deal with Jake Kane? Would Piz’s death please become the next mystery? How was I just supposed to move on without the answers to these questions? How was I supposed to accept a world in which Veronica & Piz were still out there somewhere dating?

I’ve had many a beloved show canceled, in fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m a television jinx, but somehow this was different. I was genuinely distraught. I had been a longtime lurker and infrequent commenter on Television Without Pity (RIP), but hadn’t visited the site in ages. One of the first things I did was go on there and dig up the Veronica Mars sub-forum. I read old threads, saw people’s reactions to THAT KISS, read discussions and theories about potential future seasons.  I was DEEP into the rabbit hole. From TWOP it was on to youtube fan vids, and then on to the magical world of tumblr GIF compilations, and finally, it led to Fan Fiction and this entire world of incredibly talented writers who created wonderful stories just because they love this thing so much (thanks for fixing that season 3 ending a dozen times over).

I had never read a single piece of fan fiction in my life and I had no idea what this tumblr thing was, but suddenly I’d discovered this whole new part of the internet, a treasure trove of content that allowed me to keep visiting this universe that I loved, and keep hanging out with these characters that I loved. I realized that I wasn’t the only one who still mourned the loss of this show, that once I got past the freshness of my disappointment there were all these people out there who cared about the same things that I did. If Veronica & Co. could live on in this world, so could other beloved things.

Not too long after I “joined” this fandom news came about the movie Kickstarter. I didn’t think twice about donating, I drove almost 2 hours to the nearest theatre because I really wanted to see the movie on the big screen, I proudly wear kickstarter my t-shirt, I read the books, and like everyone else I wished and waited for more. And then finally, out of nowhere season 4 became a reality. I planned my study schedule around the release date, & freaked out when it got released early, shuffling things around, because finally, we were returning to Neptune. Anyway, we all know how that story ends.

Like many people, I was enraged. New waves of rage wash over me each time Rob or Kristen says something dismissive in an interview. The charaters feel like they’ve been replaced by bizzaro versions of themselves that look familiar but are at the same time unrecognizable, the relationships that made the show special have been cast by the wayside in favor of what exactly I’m not sure. It feels like a betrayal on so many levels. But I think that the hardest part for me is that I find myself ready to give up something that meant so much to me. Beyond the stories, beyond the characters, beyond LoVe, this show in many ways meant a lot more to me than so many of the others that I have loved. It introduced me to so many things that have since become a part of my life; it introduced me to fandom, and because of that, it changed the way that I watch television. It also came to me at a time when life felt really shit and gave me something that made me happy when not much else did. 

So even though it has become a thing which now holds a lot of pain, I’m hopeful that eventually, I’ll be able to find someplace for it in my life, where I can look back on it fondly and appreciate it for what it was, and what it gave me. Who knows when I’ll find that place, and if I’ll still be able to enjoy the other things that have now become crucial to my experience of the show, but I really hope so.

Also, Fuck Rob Thomas. Forever. Literally.

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scandalpantsstuff

People reread stories. Fics too.

I knew that intellectually but it never truly clicked until I opened an old favorite last night to get lost in for the thousandth time. But if you’re a fanfiction author, someone out there is reading and rereading your stories. Someone out there is loving your world and words not just once but over and over and over again.

That’s amazing.

So here’s a shoutout to the readers and rereaders. The commenters and kudosers and lurkers and everyone and anyone who has ever picked a fic up and loved it.

And here’s a shoutout to the writers, in case you need a pick me up or a slight bit of love. Somewhere, out there on a screen under a sky you’ve never seen, your story is coming to life.

Not just once. But again and again and again.

#comfort reads
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lerayon
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juliastiles

harry’s smile here just screams he’s going home to burn 4 privet drive to the ground and get the revenge he deserves 

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gxldensnitched

this is the funniest shit I’ve ever seen I can’t stop laughing

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