honestly my favorite thing about hardison is that he has no real tragic backstory, he’s just like “i am very smart and therefore i should be allowed to do crime” and he’s entirely correct
i love everyone reblogging this going “yeah! soft boy!” in the tags bc that’s my other favorite thing about hardison (i have many) and that’s that he’s never particularly treated as morally grey bc he is constantly so kind and loving and good and also he enjoys some crime
parker: i have severe psychological trauma and i steal things to cope bc i don’t know how to relate to people
eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun
hardison: if money is fake, why not for me and my grandma who i love? :)
This is one of my favorite photos in my collection and I’ve always meant to frame it. It’s so dark and otherworldly, like a little fairy-cat captured at dusk. Ca. 1960s.
It is almost five centuries ago, and the girl who will one day be a swordswoman is lying in the red-tinged mud. She can’t get up—broken bone? severed tendon? She can’t tell. She’s yet to cultivate her palate for pain. Her enemy towers over her, a cataphract mailed in screaming steel and poisoned light. His warhammer falls, and it is death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable.
“No,” says a part of her. She is not even seventeen years old. Her body is mangled and broken, wound piled upon wound piled upon wound. A dull kitchen knife is her only weapon, though she lost that in the mud the second her grip faltered. Her enemy is no thing of this earth. And yet—
“No. It is not death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable. It is only a hammer, falling. It is only ‘an attack.’”
And the girl understood.
~~~
It is the better part of three centuries ago, as best the swordswoman can reckon, and she is beset on all sides by foes. They are not monsters—just mountain bandits, or highland rebels, as one cares to see it. But they outnumber her by dozens, and even an exceptional swordswoman might struggle against but two opponents of lesser skill.
From in front of her, beside her, behind her they advance, striking from every angle with spears and blades and axes. Others fill the air with arrows, sling stones, firepots. It would be effortless, to parry any single blow. It would be impossible, physically impossible, to defend against them all.
“No,” says a part of her.
“You are not outnumbered. You do not face 'multiple’ foes. It would be impossible to defend against every attack — but there is no 'every’ attack. Only one.”
“Oh,” the swordswoman said. And it was, in fact, effortless.
~~~
It is eighty years ago, or thereabouts. A coiling spire of stony flesh and verdigrised copper throbs like a tumor on the horizon, coaxed from the earth by spell and sacrifice. It is the tower of a sorcerer-prince, and a birthing place of abominations.
Seven locks of rune-etched metal are opened with her single key. Wretched shapeling beasts, grown by sorcery in vitreous nodules, flee wailing from her, absconding before she even draws her blade. Demons sworn to thousand-year pacts of service find the binding provisions of their agreements unexpectedly severed.
These things dissatisfy the sorcerer-prince. He waxes wroth. He makes signs of power and chants incantations. With a flask of godling’s blood, he draws the binding sigil inscribed upon the moon’s dark face. With cold fire burning in his eyes, he speaks the secret name of Death. It is a king among curses, all-corrupting, all-consuming, and it falls from his lips upon the swordswoman.
“No,” she says, and she turns it aside with her blade.
The sorcerer-prince’s brow furrows. How did she even do that?
“Parried it.”
But—
“With my sword.”
No—
“See, like this.”
Stop—
“Well,” the swordswoman finally says, “I figured that if I just…looked at it right, and thought about it, and construed your curse as a kind of attack…then I could block it.”
That’s not how it works at all!
“If you insist,” says the swordswoman, shrugging, and decapitates him.
~~~
It is now. It is the end. Death couldn’t take the swordswoman, not when she’d spent all her life cutting it up. At times, Death might sidle up to one of her friends, or peer down into a grandchild’s crib, and she’d just give it a look. That’s all it took, by then.
Heartache couldn’t take her, either. Bad things happened to her, and they hurt, and she lived in that hurt, but if it was ever more than she could take…she’d just, move her sword in a way that’s difficult to describe. And she’d keep going.
Kingdoms fell, and she kept going. Continents crumbled and sank into the sea. Her planet’s star faded and froze. She started carrying a lantern. Universes were torn apart and scattered, until all that had been matter was redistributed in thermodynamic equilibrium. With one exception.
But now it is the end. There is no time left; time is already dead. The swordswoman has outlived reality, but there is simply no further she can go. This is not a thing that can be blocked. This is the absence of anything further to block.
“No,” says the girl who will one day be a swordswoman. “This isn’t the ending.And even if it was, it’s not the ending that matters.”
The swordswoman looks back at who she was, at the countless selves she’s been between them. She looks forward, at the rapidly contracting point that remains of the future. She grasps the all of linear time in her mind, and sees that it is shaped like a spear.
aka how to support libraries and get books and audiobooks for free without pirating them.
disclaimer: this is so easy. it is also really fun.
one: download the libby app. you’ll open it and it’ll ask you to add a library.
two: get a library card. don’t have one? good news, it’s really easy and i am saying this as the laziest person on earth. it varies what you need to have to get a card library to library but almost all libraries will let you get one online. i have a card for my home town and for the town i moved to. sometimes you only need an email address, sometimes you need an area code. to get mine it took me about 5 minutes of lying on the couch aimlessly tapping on my phone. follow your heart. you can get cards for places you don’t currently live. i will leave the ethics of that up to you but it’s probably better than pirating and either way you’re creating traffic for libraries which is what they need to exist.
three: add your card. you can add multiple cards for multiple libraries. you need the number. i have never had libby fail to recognize a valid account.
four: search for your book! some will be ready to borrow right away. others have an estimated delivery time. libby will always pick the one that’s the fastest from the options available at all the libraries you have cards at. you can borrow audiobooks and ebooks. libby will send you a notification when you’re book is ready to borrow. in my experience it’s a lot faster than the estimate. if you aren’t ready to read it, you can ask to be skipped over in line so you keep your place at the front but let someone else read it first.
five: read it!!! kindle is the most common way to do this. you can go to your loan and click read with kindle. it’ll download it to all your devices where you have kindle. as long as you have the loan, it’ll act like your book. when the loan ends, if the device is connected to the internet, it’ll automatically be returned. it will save all your notes and highlights. (if you disconnect your device from the internet, it won’t return the book. weewoo.)
anyway in case anyone else has been wondering about it, i really love it. is a nice surprise to see what i’m going to get and it’s cut my reading costs down big time! it’s also neat because i get to synch my books between devices unlike downloading books through cough cough other means. good luck!
Reblogging again to say that you do not need Kindle, the app or the device, to read ebooks on Libby!! You can read any book you borrow WITHIN the Libby app, and you can change the font and dark/light mode for accessibility too.
please be aware the libby app does NOT let you read or listen offline so the app itself is unusable for me for actual reading unfortunately! you guys who have access to the internet steadily can use it but be aware. you can’t use it on a plane, for example, but if you download to kindle you can.
You should actually be able to use libby app offline (for those allergic to kindle like I am lmao). You just have to change your download permissions in settings. The web browser version of libby is online only though.
Go to Settings > Change Download Rules > toggle to “Everything” (and recommended to “Download only on Wi-fi” if you are worried about your data)
Then Settings > Read Books With… > Libby, so that it downloads to the correct app. You should be able to change your preferences on the main page by clicking the cloud icon to see where you’ve downloaded it too.
Libby also has a feature called Notify Me–if you search for a book and Libby can find it in their database but it’s not available to borrow from your library, hit Notify Me. Not only will you be notified if the book becomes available, but your library will be notified that there is A Reader who is looking for this book, so that they can buy it if that’s possible for them–without you having to make a direct request!
You can also change your preferences so you only see results in the medium you want so you only see audiobooks if that is what you use Libby for (like me) or to exclude audio if you only want eBooks
audiobooks are SO expensive, and i listen to them almost every night. libby has saved me thousands of dollars by now, no joke. support your local library. if you’re not american, you can still try to apply for a library card at the brooklyn library!
okokay so like. I normally do NOT do requests that jump the queue and are sent in as a submission, since submissions are specifically for YOUR ART and pet pics and neat things to show me
but I NEEDED to get this done while that ocean fuckup was still relevant so here we go
There’s a Board meeting scheduled for July 2 at 20:00 UTC, and as part of our second call to action, we’re asking fans to attend and ask questions about what the Board is doing to fulfill the promises it’s made to combat racist harassment on its platforms and make the organization and its projects more welcoming to fans of color.
When asking questions, please be courteous. During the meeting, the Board takes relevant questions about the business at hand and then there’s an open question period at the end. Because meetings are only scheduled for an hour, the time for questions is often limited, but if you get yours in before the end of the hour, it should be answered.
There’s no size limit to the questions you can ask, but keep in mind that if you ask a multi-part question, you may only get an answer to the easiest part of it, so you might want to keep additional questions in reserve and only ask them once the first one’s been answered. If you’re afraid of sounding pushy, team up with a buddy and have them ask the follow-up!
Below are some questions that we’d like the Board to answer. Some are topical and some are long-standing issues, but all of them are focused on racism within the OTW and the projects it manages. Feel free to take one to the next meeting copy & paste style, or simply use them as a starting point for your own questions.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Why doesn’t the OTW have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee? Are there plans to create one?
When was the last time you met with the diversity consultant research officer? What did you discuss and what kind of obstacles have they encountered?
What goals do you have for a diversity consultant? What do you hope the diversity consultant will be able to provide?
At the last meeting you said the diversity consultant research officer will be speaking to people within the OTW “so she can get a clearer picture of what OTW leadership and volunteers expect from a consultant, what concerns they have, and what they see as priorities for this work.” Are there any plans for the DCRO to speak with fans of color who use the org’s platforms, to hear their concerns and get a sense of their priorities for this work?
How has the OTW reached out to fans of color to determine their priorities in making OTW’s platforms more welcoming places?
Given the long delay in hiring a diversity consultant, why has the OTW taken little other action on policy changes that don’t require a consultant to implement?
How have internal conflicts hampered the OTW’s ability to meet the goals set out in the 2022-2025 Vision Statement to prioritize diversity and increase inclusion within the organization?
Why did it take the OTW almost a month to acknowledge the #EndOTWRacism protest?
What can fans outside the org do to help speed along the work of making the OTW a more anti-racist space?
Chinese-speaking Fandom
Why did the OTW shut down the AO3 Weibo account? How was this decision made? Are there plans to reinstate it?
There are allegations that the OTW put mainland Chinese volunteers at risk by deciding to include politically sensitive languages on the Archive, and that a sitting Board member was dismissive of that risk and made inappropriate comments about Chinese-speaking volunteers and fans. What happened and what has the Board done to make this right?
After the sinophobia and racism faced by one of the candidates for the OTW Board in the last election, what does the OTW intend to do to protect future candidates and prevent the spread of racist misinformation about candidates?
Policy & Abuse
How does the Board plan to empower the Policy & Abuse Committee to handle cases of racial harassment?
The May 2023 newsletter reports that the review of AO3’s Terms of Service for revisions that would allow Policy & Abuse to address different types of harassment not covered under the current TOS is still in progress, but also that “Policy & Abuse and Legal teams have agreed on some changes about harassment in general, and about works created with the clear intent of making AO3 unwelcoming.” What are these changes? When can we expect them to be put into effect?
These are really just a few of the many questions we have for the Board. If you have your own questions, please show up and ask them! But if you can’t make the meeting, or don’t feel comfortable attending, you can always write to the OTW Board (third option on the drop-down menu) and pose your questions – or any of these! – in a letter.
And if you’d like to be informed of future Board meetings and any actions we plan around them, you can join our mailing list! Just check the “OTW Board Meeting” box.
ALT
