Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

You know what is the worst? Being a reader trying to catch up on fics WHILE bring a writer who is behind on writing their own fics.

Being a writer and wanting to read more of your own fic that you haven’t written yet

[ image description: text that reads TORCHWOOD in all caps, and then smaller, underneath, Big Finish Giveaway in a handwriting font. The background is plain red-brown with the Torchwood logo /End ID ] 

A few days ago, the wonderful @saxifactumterritum reached out to me in response to my vehement anti-pirating Big Finish posts with an idea to give people to opportunity to experience Big Finish in a legal way. A GIVEAWAY !! The response I had from those I opened up the option to donate to the prizes was beyond anything I could have expected. So many in the fandom want others to be able to listen to their favorite, bi disasters saving the world from aliens. And I think that’s beautiful. So! I’ve put everything together and here is what we’ve got:

Rules.

Prizes.

First Place - 1 Person

    or

    or

    or 

Second Place - 3 People

     or

     or

    or

Third Place - 5 People

Notes on Prizes: As this is mainly for the Torchwood fandom, all prizes must be chosen from Torchwood options. However, The Lives of Captain Jack are listed as Doctor Who but are available if you want to include it in an “equivalent” package. Pre-Orders are also available as a prize, if you would like.

A Special Thank You

There are no rules on following blogs, because that’s not what this is about. But, I wanted to take a quick second to thank everyone who donated alongside me to this fund and if you have a second, go check these blogs out and find some amazing people!

@thatlastdanceofchances
@yavemiel
@saxifactumterritum 
@gwendolyncooper
@searching-for-arcadia
@horselover107
@twelvsoswaId [ twitter ]

I know it’s 2020 but Merlin AU where Uther notices a bunch of problems that could only be solved by magic ~spontaneously~ getting solved around Arthur, and concludes that this must be a side effect of Arthur only existing due to magical intervention. An intense bigotry-versus-parental-love internal conflict commences, followed by some that’s-pretty-hypocritcal-of-you-isn’t-it-dad screaming external conflict, generally upending everything. Merlin is standing in the corner the entire time holding a serving jug of mead and sweating.

Morgana, dramatically slamming open the throne room doors with both arms: I’M ALSO UNWILLINGLY MAGIC. Arthur: What???? Morgana, raising one fist at him: Solidarity, motherFUCKER! Arthur: What????????

What’s Uther gonna do? What’s he gonna fucking do???? Execute his secret Scottish child, but not his nonsecret blond heir child??? They’re ganging up on him now. He’s fucking cornered.

#what a way for Arthur to get dumped into this drama#I’M PRETTY SURE I AM NOT MAGIC#“you keep killing things that can only be killed by magic tho’#…full disclosure i often don’t remember it#so sometimes you black out and accomplish magical feats?#NO!  ( @whetstonefires )

This is about the part where Merlin escalates to chugging the royal mead.

At some point someone mentions that an eyewitness would be great. And they all realize that Merlin is persent for all these things and start asking Merlin what it looks like when Arthur performs these magical feats. And he’s half way through the royal mead so fuck it. And he starts talking about how Arthur glows and shit. And usually Merlin has to knock him on the head to get him to stop glowing and whooshing and what not and the idea that Merlin could be saving the prince from his own magical distraction is so absurd they decide it’s just a drunk idiot telling tales.

Knfsdfs “Are you telling me that every time I blacked out you knocked me out!?” “…You know what? That’s actually accurate.”

i would die for this.

somebody please.

Merlin, really getting into this: It was to save you from your own magic, sire. I had no other choice. That’s… That’s what you do, you see a born sorcerer and you just wham, knock them out for their own good.

Morgana, thinking about her sleeping draughts: It’s true Arthur that’s what they do.

Arthur: I’m.

Morgana: But it’s fine look we just have to win Merlin over to the side of magic.

Merlin: …

Merlin: I don’t know guys, that’s going to be a tough sell.

Merlin: I just. I just don’t know if I could be persuaded.

Arthur: Merlin, you aren’t even from Camelot. Why would you have anti-magic biases.

Merlin: But you’re always so insistent magic is eeeevil.

Merlin: Maybe you should persuade me. Tell me what’s so great about sorcerers.

Morgana: Well–

Merlin: No, I want to hear him say it.

Even Uther gets involved cause Merlin was his “loyal ally in the fight against magic” but he’s seen how endlessly loyal and protective Merlin is to his son and wants to convince him to stay on even though Arthur has magic. He spends 3 days drafting proposals to get Merlin on board. Merlin says he’ll need a while to think it over.

Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, December 4, 1923

the older i get the more disgusted by diet culture i become.

there’s a reason it targets young girls. there’s a reason it hinges on making grown women look tiny and helpless and weak. there’s a reason that it is normalized to the extent that what is ostensibly not a healthy act is seen as being a “good” choice and something to be proud of. 

young people are just completely submerged in it. adults forget that kids pick up on fucking everything and they hear their parents and their teachers and everyone on this planet not eating red meat this week or on juice cleanses or denying denying denying themselves (”oh good for you! i’d never be able to be so well-behaved”). they learn really, really fast that “fat” is a funny, not-good, close-to-a-swear word - to the extent that my usually well-behaved five year olds will devolve into crazy giggles because i asked “pass me one of the fat markers please”. they don’t react like that to anything else, just “fat” which they know is bad/off-limits/terrible. 

and we pretend we’re so confused by obesity and by the skyrocketing eating disorder rate - a rate of diagnosed eating disorders, mind you, since disordered eating is now essential to many american eating traditions - and we blame millenials or GMOs or whatever won’t make us look a multi-billion dollar industry in the eye and realize. they literally teach us from a young age what is essentially a restriction/denial cycle that is very close to a binge cycle. they teach us “good” and “bad” and “safe” foods but don’t supply the money for us to obtain those foods (and god forbid you live in a food desert) while also selling us Magical Cures For Magical Transformations. 

and of course it works. you teach people to crash diet and lo and behold their metabolism becomes entirely dependent on your cycle of starvation/refeeding. the statistic that most people gain back the weight they lost isn’t because people are these terrible people have no self control (but they sell that idea to you, don’t they), it’s that their metabolism was trashed and the way they look at food cannot change in the span of a crash diet - if it takes someone with an eating disorder seven years to recover, we understand that, but if someone overweight gains back their lost weight it’s “a shame”. and the diet culture wins both sides, i want you to understand that. they make money of of you either way. they know that you’re gaining the weight back but fucking scrambling - they know you’ll try to buy their product because last time it worked to buy atkins or weight watchers, and they know that when you’re losing the weight, well, goddamn, you’re going to be an advertising board for them because we teach each other that this is coffee-break material, isn’t it. 

and we sell each other on it. we say, “oh this worked for me, you’ve gotta try it.” none of the people we speak to are nutritionists, but everyone on the internet has a degree in medicine, so don’t worry, if you step outside in a bikini and are not unhealthy levels of skinny (oh but it’s healthy if it’s the right kind of skinny), you will be reminded to lose weight. we keep our women running on such low levels of carbs/calories/fats that they’re permanently exhausted, weak, emotionally drained - and then we crow women are just crazy. meanwhile men get the opposite treatment that is unhealthy in a different way – the obsession with masculinity through food, of all things, that salad is “rabbit food” and that a real “man’s meal” is red meat and beer. 

and god forbid you say, “this shit is fucking predatory, it’s evil, it’s controlling people’s bodies” because you’ll get fifty-seven “okay, fatty” comments that miss the point completely, because the companies are really, really smart and they learned: if you call someone fat, you can ignore them completely. and anyone who isn’t “into dieting” is therefore fat and incapable of healthy eating. healthy eating, is of course, defined by the company - but hey! you can help that person realize they’re just a stupid/dumb/ignorant fatty. or if they’re somehow magically not fat, you can tell them, “well, one day you will be.”

and i just know. i know. this shit will continue. it always does.

It’s amazing to me how many people are in the notes of this post claiming to agree with it’s message while quoting word for word diet culture propoganda and claiming that if only we all bought into these truths, our country’s obesity epidemic would vanish because even when they understand how shitty and controlling diet culture is, it never occurs to them to question the most foundational accusation it makes which is that fatness is to be more feared and avoided than death it fucking self.

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” ― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

petal clouds

instagram

Personal space? Nope - never heard of it.

Is that…… them

The Cantalloc Aqueducts are a work of hydraulic engineering built in the middle of the desert by the ancient Nazca culture (200-700 AD). They are located 4 km. north of Nazca, Peru.

Of the 46 underground aqueducts found, 32 are still in operation today.

Rats are so easy to please. I shoved some sweet potato into cardboard toilet paper tubes, packed in with shredded paper towels. At first they were just excited about the paper towel shreds and started making a nest, then they found the sweet potato and lost their minds. Like they couldn’t believe what a good and gracious world they lived in that there could be sweet potato and paper towel at the same time.

Remember that before the Holocaust, there were 16 million Jews in the world. They killed more than a third of us.

Remember that pre-war Eastern Europe was a major center of world Jewry, and it had a thriving Jewish society with Yiddish theater, poetry, literature, art, and political activism. An entire society was destroyed.

Remember that before the war, a third of Warsaw’s population was Jewish. The vast majority of those Jewish residents were murdered.

Remember that Salonika (Thessaloniki) was a city in Greece that had a Jewish majority for hundreds of years. It used to be known as Sabatopolis – the Shabbat city – because before electric light, ships going by on Friday night would see a dark shoreline because the residents could not light lights. In the 16th century, it was known as the “mother of Israel” and was a center of Jewish life where Eastern European Jews would come to visit and study. Fewer than 1800 Jews from Salonika survived the Holocaust.

Remember that in Krakow, what used to be the Jewish quarter is now a tourist trap for the groups who come to look at what once was. The Jewish community owns several beautiful synagogues but only regularly uses one because there are so few Jews left. Without the tour groups who regularly pray with them, they would have trouble getting a quorum of ten men by the beginning of the Shabbat service. The other synagogues are museums now.

Remember what we lost.

its little floPPY EARS

“Vampires change humans, but humans change vampires,” said the vampire.

The human frowned. “Like - into humans?”

“No, no, it’s like - it’s like the sunlight thing. One day we’re fine with sunlight, and then the next day you go, ‘You know what, we’re changing the rules, now sunlight makes you burst into flames and die.’ Half of us were wiped out because we didn’t get the memo, and the other half had to go underground.”

“We never-”

“You did,” said the vampire. “Ever since Nosferatu came out, humans have known that sunlight kills vampires. It never did before, but it always has ever since.”

“Because of a movie?”

“Because of stories. That’s your part of the power. Humans tell stories to change the world around them. You don’t know you’re doing it most of the time, but whenever we get too big, you change the rules and make us start from scratch.”

“So you get super-strength, shapeshifting, flight, mind-control, and an unending bloodlust-”

“And you get to be the kid on the playground who says he has an ‘everything-proof-shield.’”

“I still think you have the better end of the deal here.”

“We really don’t. Now let me in.”

“No.”

Когда хозяин где-то шарахается, а ты дома один.Нечёсаный. Неглаженый. Нецелованный….

“When the master is gallivanting about somewhere, while you’re home alone. Unbrushed. Unpetted. Unkissed….”