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#and as unlikely as that IS willing to happen
a-d-nox · 2 days
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can you please make more synastry observations and asteroid ones too pleaseee? i miss you they were soo entertaining to read
working well together in synastry and composite
i'm going to work off of what i already have posted (no asteroids discussed after this post will be included or added after the fact). finally, i would like to state that NO TWO CHARTS ARE THE SAME. what i am about to list out does not mean you will for sure need these exact things (or all of these things) to be shy, nervous, and/or anxious around one another. if you don't understand my thought process, feel free to dm me with questions!
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libra (7°, 19°) or aquarius (11°, 23°) venus/mars and/or 7h libra (7°, 19°) or aquarius (11°, 23°)
these two can be partners in crime and great colleagues; very little gets in the way of them accomplishing a task. they have a sort of dance they do when working together - they don't need to communicate to get the work done.
7h venus
this is great if you guys work together long term - it is like having a co-ownership at a business or partnership at the same firm. venus person loves 7h person and 7h person looks at venus person as if they are their true equal.
11h libra (7°, 19°) or aquarius (11°, 23°)
this is just very easy alliance and partnership. these two cooperate well with one another.
11h venus
these are allies - it is a ride-or-die connection that these two have it is very rare that either person will turn against each other. venus person will treat 11h person as their only friend, while 11h person will be extremely loyal and wishes to help the venus person to be the best version of themselves possible.
11h neptune
this is one of those unlikely alliances that just end up working well together. neptune person sees 11h person's vision and wants to help them come true, while 11h person sees the beauty in idealist and optimistic neptune person.
11h uranus
these people are unstoppable; they will do whatever it takes to make it happen. 11h person see eye to eye with innovative uranus person. uranus person likes that 11h person is great at having the connections it takes to move their projects forward.
armstrong (asteroid 6469) positively aspecting aldrin (asteroid 6470)
these two can go where no one has before - they are willing to do what people have never attempted before. armstrong person relies on aldrin person to be the brains of the operation, while aldrin person relies on the armstrong person to do the heavily lifting. together they are comfortable trying new and improbable things.
donar (2176) / thora (299) positively aspecting loke (4862)
these two will attempt to fool the world around them. donor/thora person is often talked into something silly/foolish by loke person. loke person is the mastermind of the project, while donor/thora person is the muscle power to make it happen.
prometheus (1809) positively aspecting athene (881) / pallas (2)
together these two can create something amazing. prometheus person creates the bare bones of their project, while athene/pallas person breaths life into it and gives it character.
vergilius (asteroid 2798) positively aspecting dante (asteroid 2999)
vergilius person will protect dante person at all costs. vergilius person is a sort of guide, confidant, and sage for dante person. dante person looks up to and greatly appreciates vergilius person. together they can traverse even the most difficult terrains.
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part 2:
Nico pondered this as he watched Will stroll around the infirmary, his incredibly serious clipboard in hand. It didn’t bother Nico, it’s not like he would even admit it if it did, that the healer would share grins and jokes, and those stupid winks of his. It was truly unfortunate, in Nico’s eyes, that Will had been right. On some level, he did in fact have an undeniable charm to him. You have to be blind not to notice it.
“Has anyone told you that you have a staring problem?” Will had turned back towards Nico, one hand on his hip the other dangling at his side with the clipboard.
Nico flushed, playing it off with his trademark eyeroll, “You may have mentioned this.”
“It’s rather ironic, considering that you have trouble with eye contact,” Nico could nearly hear the playful smirk on Will’s lips, he didn’t need to look up from the speck on the floor to know it was there. “Maybe it’s just that overwhelming amount of charm I have.”
“I do not. And it’s not. You’re not-” Nico huffed, the words not settling right in his throat even after they were spoken. This was just downright unfair. The son of Apollo had this unsettling habit of constantly looking at the people he was speaking to, like directly at them. It made Nico flustered very often, another thing he would never admit, the idea that Will Solace was directly perceiving him as they spoke was enough to cause his sentences to trip and fall on the way out. It wasn’t as if he was pointedly trying to avoid eye contact either, the idea of staring someone directly in the eyes, especially if they happened to be Wills eyes, while trying to converse? Downright distracting in every way.
“Oh yeah, you’re totally cooked, too far gone.” Will shifted his weight, stepping closer to Nico and oh-so-casually leaning up against whatever piece of furniture was nearest. He said a silent thank you to the gods that it wasn’t a rolling cart this time.
“What does that even mean?” Nico peeled his gaze up and pointed it directly at the other boy's eyes, fighting against the uneasy feeling in his stomach.
“You’re obviously succumbing to my dangerous levels of charisma,” Will said, his words flourished with an ever dramatic and overly poetic tone.
“You are so incredibly pathetic.” Nico did his best to lace his own words with anguish and mild amounts of disinterest, he would have liked to think he had picked up pretty good acting skills over the past few years of deception. He, in reality, was not as destined for the stage as he hoped.
“Dudes love a distressed and pitiful man, y’know”
Nico’s face flushed bright red. Did Will know? How could he have known? Nico hadn’t told him about his not-so-secret secret. I mean it was exactly a secret at this point, a lot of people knew he was gay. A lot as in, maybe five people? Still, Nico wasn’t exactly parading that information around freely to anyone who held a conversation with him. Nicos mind shifted, Will had been talking about himself, perhaps the medic was speaking out of his own interest. It wouldn’t be unlikely, I mean if Nico had it correct Kayla had two dads. Maybe it ran in the family? Nico still wasn’t entirely sure how all of it worked. Piper had tried to explain it to him after a conversation he’d had with Jason, who proved to be very supportive but truly not much help, but her own knowledge was limited and Nico had gotten too embarrassed and left. Regardless, the thought swarmed around his head at a million miles an hour, he began to wonder if he had inhaled a swarm of flying insects at some point that had just now decided to wake from hibernation. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about the possibility that Will took interest in other guys before, (out of pure, harmless curiosity, naturally.) but for some reason that statement had made it feel significantly more tangible.
“Hate to interrupt your very productive inventorying,” Kayla appeared from the back of the infirmary, Nico had almost forgotten that she had been there, “But I am incredibly bored and leaving you for archery practice.”
Will, looking to be very slightly embarrassed, glanced at the watch around his wrist and then around the room, appearing to make his mind up on if the infirmary would fall to pieces if she left. Nico didn’t think Will had a choice even if he did speak up, he had learned in the past few weeks that there really is no changing Kayla’s mind once it is set.
“Very well, I will simply have to suffer through your absence.”
“Ugh you’re so dramatic Will,”
Finally, Nico thought, someone sensible around here.
“I am just living my truth,” Will sighed, placing a hand over his heart and setting his face with feigned hardship.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kayla was mostly out the door, she turned back and shot a mischievous glance at her brother, “Try and get some actual work done will ya? And leave the poor boy alone, he’s suffered enough, he doesn’t need your ridiculous excuse of flirting to further it.”
When Nico looked over at Will he was surprised to see that they were roughly equal shades of red. That didn’t help Nico quiet the blush spreading across his face at rapid rates. Was Will actually flirting with him? There could be no way. He must act this way with everyone, there was no chance Nico could be that special.
Will cleared his throat, “Well, let’s get to work then.”
Nico gladly hopped down from his perch on the desk, grateful for any form of distraction. The infirmary was rather quiet, by some miracle. Only two beds were occupied. The summer air was warm and drifted through the room via the open windows that Will claimed would “help the healing”. It had grown to be a rather comfortable, consistent place for Nico, assuming it was overfilled and unstaffed (which was unfortunately often).
Will set him to work almost instantly, handing him a consistent stream of bandages to sort by size and file away into cabinets. They chatted as they worked, casual friendly banter that flowed naturally between them. Luckily Kayla’s comment seemed to knock a little bit of Wills obsession with being charming out of him for the moment being, Nico totally wasn’t even upset it in the slightest.
As their chore wore down slowly and the afternoon hot and late, Will plopped down onto and empty cot, laying back and letting his eyes shut. “Thank you again for the help, Neeks.”
“Yeah, anytime.” Nico replied, following Wills lead and falling on the cot beside him.
The two sat, a moment of shared silence between them. Will scootched closer to Nico, their legs brushing together as they hung off the edge of the mattress. Nico could feel Wills gaze burning into his cheek and reluctantly turned to meet his eyes.
“Hi,” Will said, his voice no more than a whisper.
“Hi,” Nico replied, “Why are you whispering?”
“Because.”
“That’s very specific and helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” Will eyes seemed to be tracing every detail of Nico’s face, his lips tugging into the softest most relaxed smile Nico had ever seen. Will readjusted his head, shifting it closer to Nico’s, their faces just inches apart, Nico could almost feel his breath if he focused hard enough.
Despite every instinct in his body screaming at him to look away, Nico held his gaze on the boy next to him. He found it more and more difficult to get a sufficient amount of air into his lungs or feel anything other than the electricity coursing through his veins and the overwhelming thumping of his heart in every major arteries.
“We’re really close,” Nico blurted out, still uselessly whispering.
“Yeah,” Will held for a beat, looking intently at Nico, “I got lonely,”
“You’re laying next to me,”
“And I still feel too far away.”
Nico’s stomach tensed, his throat tightened, palms sweat, breathing more uneven and shallow than before. This couldn’t be happening right now, every muscle in his body felt as if it was set on fire by the sun itself. In this case, the son of the sun.
Nico could not muster another response, just kept his eyes locked with Wills.
“Is it working?” Will asked finally, in a breathy whisper that made Nico want to make decisions that could ruin his entire life.
Nico blinked, “What?”
“My charm. Is it working yet?”
Nico shot up, groaning, “Shut up, Solace, actually fuck you,”
“Is that an offer?”
“~NO!”
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legislacerator · 2 months
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ok i can’t stop thinking about this so i have to say something: beyond everything that has already been said about the tastelessness of it all, the thing about ofmd fandom fundraising that gets me the most is that nothing they’re doing is guaranteed to yield any tangible results. there’s no concrete proof that doing these things will get their show renewed even if getting ofmd renewed WAS vitally important to the Queer Community (it isn’t). and this is even more questionable to outsiders because the approaches they’re taking are EXPENSIVE — how many billboards are they willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on with the knowledge that there’s no actual proof that these billboards will work? how much money are they going to throw at this “problem” before they finally give up? at what point will they finally realize what a goddamn waste of money and effort this is?
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ganondoodle · 11 months
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been able to keep both my fear and hype about totk in check by watching nothing but elden ring videos for weeks but now i read something on accident and my anxiety is going through the roof again
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queerbauten · 2 months
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There's this single-issue anti-abortion party in my province that's been putting up billboards recently about their website, which does feature images of "aborted" fetuses, and the worst part, to me, is knowing that at least some of those "abortions"—you know, the 20+ weeks ones—were probably stillbirths (or even live preemies) that the parent(s) didn't want to lose, and that these people are just... lying. They're lying about this horrible, horrible thing in order to advance their cause. It makes me sick.
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mcybree · 1 month
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considering my brand is bitching about FH all day, sometimes I feel bad at convincing myself wcsmp didn’t end well for scott and milo. Like damn girl leave him with SOMETHING…
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blorbinho · 1 month
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#“god” and “jesus christ” are just intensifiers 2 me im not religious but they are integral parts of my vocabulary#also um. i know saying a terror happened to me is kidn of funny as the tv show i wanted to watch is. you know. the terror#but i use “horror” to mean like a systematic and constant/chronic awful thing#and this thing is a terror not a horror#like. the horrors caused this terror (“acute trauma” to use the clinical term)#well. it's not exactly just 1 Event In Time. something seriously and permanently bad Could still happen but it's part of this specific thin#all i know about the guy in the meme is hes collins? don't know what his character is like though. sure hope he didnt do anything bad#anyway this terror isn't the gothic horror representation of my own evils (because i dont do evils. because im cool and swag like that.)#but im not sure if that's better or worse tbh. i dont even deserve this by any measure 😔😔#october terror was scarier (this one has the potential to be worse but i am ok so far! haha)#i am going to get a mediocre-at-best grade on the assignment and i still have two more to go ugh. but thats a different conversation#anyway like. im the steadiest guy to ever rosebride so no matter what. i won't die. and i'll be okay for real someday. buuuut.#that is a bar i would like to raise someday at the end of this lol#jemposting#we'll see how it goes... if end of the world type shit does happen (unlikely... <- i hope...) you'll probably know#lol remember how i said i'll watch the terror god be willing. i rarely say things in absolutes to account for shit like this. and guess wha#god was NOT willing (see first tag of this post but you know what i mean)
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How many asked are you rounding up that consist of Pep consoling rn
(As of right now, about 9!
How many are being cheeky buggers? 2, but they both hurt my heart and bring out the devil in me
How many are unrelated and about the werepeps? Too many, I have cursed myself with this, and I cannot be mad about it (silly))
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I think there’s a point when watching Always Sunny for the first time where all of a sudden, what they’re doing with the show and trying to do with the show just clicks, you know, the satire becomes clear but so does the psychological complexity of the characters, and it’s like crossing this threshold in your brain after the first shock of it subsides because it very much is shocking, but it’s also like walking on a bed of hot coals and if you’re one of the ones who doesn’t immediately run away at the first bite of the flame and you choose to endure/survive the shock of those metaphorical hot coals and think about everything just a minute or so longer, you get to experience enlightenment.
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planet4546b · 4 months
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settling more concretely on plot events and order in signoise and now it’s looking like the first act is just em and mel chilling and then the weirdest woman in the world shows up and fucks it all up. which is so fun to me
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tabaquis-creatures · 8 months
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going to come out to my mom when I see her this Saturday so we're gonna see how that goes
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queenlucythevaliant · 10 months
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A Liturgy of Surviving
Scarlett always wanted to be like her mother, and maybe in another world she could have been. If the war never happened, she could have grown softer instead of sharper. She could have curbed her temper, married well, and been received in respectable homes all her days. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the war, Scarlett O’Hara could have lived out her days in genteel artifice, just like Ellen before her.
Maybe. Maybe not. If you asked her, Scarlett would say that the question was irrelevant. “God’s nightgown!” she would exclaim. “Don’t ask me what could have been. The war happened and that’s that.”
          I won’t think about that now.  
The day after Scarlett’s world ended, she swore an oath that she would never be hungry again. 
She woke in pain. Her muscles ached and her joints creaked. She was nineteen, but she felt like she had a hundred years weighing her body down. Morning light slanted through the window and her head ached with the moonshine liquor that she’d downed the night before. From another room, she heard an infant crying. 
She passed through the dining room without eating, pausing only briefly beside her grief-ravaged father. She found Pork on the porch shelling nuts. The sun was up. Scarlett O'Hara drew herself tall and began to marshal her troops. 
Melly and her sisters were still infirm, so they were useless for now. Mammy could tend them, and Pork and Prissy were to round up the livestock. Dilcey to Macintosh, herself to Twelve Oaks; perhaps they’d find food. Yes, I know. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now get going. 
Those days as the war staggered to its end were some of the longest of her life. In between them, Scarlett would collapse into bed and rub the welts on her feet with clumsy fingers. Sometimes she’d picture Ellen and all her gentle admonitions to kindness and refinement, and she’d say aloud to the walls, “What happened to me? What am I doing?”
She didn’t dwell on the question, but somehow, she always knew the answer. “I’m doing what I must,” she would answer herself. “I’m surviving.”
People didn’t talk back to Scarlett anymore. They were all afraid of her sharp tongue, of the new person who walked in her body. This Scarlett bullied and cajoled until everyone obeyed her, and inevitably her orders were to work. She was all edges; any softness that she’d once possessed had been sanded away splitting rails and picking cotton. Good, she thought. Let them fear me, if it keeps us all standing. 
          I’ll think about it tomorrow. 
Scarlett was sixteen when the war began: sixteen in green muslin, fearless and unencumbered. She had her mother’s slim waist and her father’s square jaw, but her clear green eyes were her own.
She was sixteen when she married Charles Hamilton and lost him, seventeen when she bore his child and draped herself in black crepe. She got Melly and Wade in the bargain, but she didn’t want either of them. She wanted Ashley. She wanted to dance! She wanted, she wanted. She wanted Scarlett O’Hara back. 
At nineteen years old, Scarlett survived the destruction of her whole world. She could have cried for the loss of her girlhood, for her old self long gone with the soft hands and dancing slippers, but what good would it have done? Curled up in her childhood bed at Tara, Scarlett didn’t cry. Instead, she folded in on herself, knees tucked up to her chest, and tried not to feel her muscles aching. She would have to get up again tomorrow, no matter how badly her shoulders still hurt.
She had strong shoulders, Scarlett O’Hara. That was maybe the most important thing about her. At any time, at any age, her shoulders could bear whatever they were given. “I’m surviving,” she would say each morning when she rose. A stranger’s freckled face greeted her in the mirror, but Scarlett only squared her small thin shoulders, breathed in, took one step and then another.
          Tomorrow, when I can stand it.
Calluses form like this: repeated pressure or friction is applied to the skin, most often of the hand or the foot. The outer layer, which is made of dead cells, begins to be retained rather than flaking off normally. The dead cells accumulate, forming hard layers sometimes hundreds of cells thick. 
They form like this: you use your skin. The shell of hardness around it slowly thickens. 
          I can stand anything now. 
The day after Rhett left, Scarlett packed up Wade and Ella and she once again drove the long road home to Tara. She pushed her way past Suellen at the threshold, exchanged brief pleasantries with Will, and then fell into her old bed as she’d done so many times before.
The next morning found Scarlett basking in the slanting yellow light that struck the porch from the east. Her eyes were fixed on the fields beyond and there was a devilish look on her face. 
When Rhett came back—and he would come back, he had promised he would—he would find her here at Tara, where she was strongest. “He liked when I was strong,” Scarlett said to herself. That was something she’d always known, for all that she’d been blind to the true dimensions of it.
Day after day, Scarlett rose and moved through Tara’s halls. She ate her breakfasts in the place where she’d faced down the Yankee army, sorted through figures where she’d once debated with Melanie over whether they ought to risk sending Pork out on the horse to look for food. Twenty times a day, she walked past the place at the base of the stairs where she’d shot her deserter dead. Here, in these halls, she had made her greatest stands.
She’d stood more rigidly then, threadbare and starving and uncertain. She’d come to the end of herself, only to find that she had wells of strength hidden deeper than she knew. Her hands were calloused and dirty. What else could she do?
          I’ll never be hungry again.
It’s easy to view Scarlett as hard and amoral. Even those closest to her would not have contested that characterization. Perhaps Melly would have argued, but then, Melly always saw the good in everyone. Scarlett killed and she stole and she schemed and she cheated, and she did it all in cold blood. What a selfish, conniving bitch, you might say.
It’s easy to forget Scarlett’s compassion. When she beat that poor horse to keep it trudging the long road home to Tara, she regretted hurting a tired animal. Her concern for Melanie, her friendship for Will Benteen, her joy when Rhett made her laugh: these were all true and genuine.
Didn’t Scarlett love her father and mother? Didn’t she grieve to see her friends and neighbors ruined by war? Scarlett O’Hara risked her life to save Charlie’s sword for Wade to inherit, and she built her mills for him and Ella both.
None of this negates the ruthless things she did in the name of survival, but it does begin to explain them. Scarlett made herself hard when hard was what she needed to be. She determined to live without reservation, without softness and with little kindness. Rhett called her cruel, and maybe he was right. But Melly also called her sacrificial and devoted, and maybe she was right too. 
          No, nor any of my kin.
On that road home to Tara, Scarlett once said, “If the horse is dead, I will curse God and die too.” Someone in the Bible had done just that—cursed God and died. Scarlett remembered feeling like that person, a despair of Biblical magnitude.
But the horse was alive, and so Scarlett did not die. Later, she thanked God that her knees still had the strength to support her, that her neck was still strong enough to hold her head high. Scarlett was not Job’s wife, nor even Job himself. She was Rahab, who escaped the destruction of Jericho, who saved her whole household and survived.
“What a fast trick,” said the Old Guard when she stole Frank Kennedy away from Suellen. No, Scarlett could never be Job. She was Jacob, the trickster and supplanter.
          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load.
Scarlett was easily provoked into courage; that was one of the first things that Rhett learned about her. A few insults, a pointed comment, and Scarlett lifted her chin and flounced off to prove just how brave she could be. She shed her crepe years early, and to Halifax with anyone who objected.
Rhett did that same thing to her on the awful day that Atlanta burned. He insulted her and laughed at her, and when Scarlett spat, “I’m not afraid,” it was true. Her hands, which had moments ago been shaking too badly to hold anything, were steady now, and anger had crowded all the fear out of her voice.
Rhett kept needling her all the way out of the city, until they reached the Rough and Ready where he left her. The banter kept her sharp. As long as her eyes were flashing in indignation, she hardly noticed the fire.
Even after Rhett left, his jabs stayed with her. “What would Rhett say if he knew I couldn’t do this?” spurred her back into action more times than she would ever admit. It was a petty kind of courage, and it felt smaller than the great, soaring motivation that came with thoughts of Tara, of the O’Hara name and Irish pride and red earth, but sometimes petty courage was enough to bridge the gap between strength and exhaustion.
He gave her something to hold onto, something to ground her, and even Rhett only halfway understood what that meant. I want you at your best, he never told her, but he pulled her into it by taffeta ribbons and witticisms. As the years rolled by, she rose to meet him. They swapped sharp words and insults, him always claiming to know her and her shouting, “You don’t know half!”
One day on the jostling ride out to her mills, Scarlett told Rhett about the fire that the Yankees set in Tara’s kitchen. “I’m not afraid of fire anymore,” she declared with something like pride, and Rhett remembered goading her past the flames the night Atlanta burned. “I beat it out with my skirts, and then Melly had to beat me out when my back caught,” she went on. “Now I’m not afraid of anything but hunger.”
I don’t want you to fear anything in all the world, Rhett didn’t say. Once they were married, he laughed at her appetite and teased her, “Don’t scrape the plate, Scarlett. I’m sure there’s more in the kitchen.”
           No matter, ‘twill never be light.  
After the war, Rhett had his millions. Ashley had his honor. Melly had the Association for the Beatification of the Graves of Our Glorious Dead. Scarlett held a ball of red clay in her fist and whispered, “I have this.”
Her father built Tara from nothing and he loved those acres like they could love him back. He had come to Georgia a poor immigrant boy and he had won that red earth. Whatever Gerald could do, his daughter could do too: of this she was certain. This land, this firm red clay on which she stood, was both her battlefield and her prize; her birthright and her hallowed ground. She gripped it tight with all the passion of a lover. She longed for its rolling fields on cold nights in Atlanta, sleeping beside Frank Kennedy.
“Yes, I have this,” and she let the dirt run between her fingers and lodge beneath her nails. Melly had Ashley and Ashley his senseless honor. Scarlett had Tara.
          I’ve still got this.
When she rode out in her buggy with her lap robe pulled up to her bosom, Scarlett heard how people whispered. She felt indignant about it the first time, and the second time she worried what Ellen would have thought. The third time, she decided not to care.
She still complained to Rhett about the whispering as he was holding the reins one afternoon. He didn’t laugh at her, just looked sideways from the road with his dark eyes and nodded like he understood. “Be different and be damned!” Rhett said, and his tone was like a soldier who’d heard the bugle. It was so strange, how Scarlett could tell him all the worst things about her and he would always answer back like they were medals instead of secret shames. 
Most of the city was in mourning, but Scarlett wore colors. She pilfered the store’s inventory in search of bright green, washed and mended her curtain dress as many times as it would stand, and when the money came she wore gowns of emerald, blush, indigo, and scarlet. Let them stare, she thought. See if I care.
At twenty-two, Scarlett rode up to Pittypat’s in the evenings, long after Frank had come home from the store, and she felt condemned. To the well-bred folks of Atlanta, she was as bad as a Scallawag. But sometimes, when she was alone, Scarlett ran her hands beneath the lap robe and hoped that Rhett was wrong about children and grandchildren, that the child she was carrying would understand one day. I hope you’re nothing like Frank, she thought. I hope you have shoulders like mine.
           I’ll never be hungry again.
“It’s no use, Scarlett. You can’t scrub out the past,” said Rhett when at last he came to Tara. “You can’t take back the last ten years, no matter how you’ve come — to appreciate my charms.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Scarlett snapped. “There’s never any going back. Not ever. But Rhett—” she reached for his hand. “I love you, and at last we understand each other. We can build something out of that.”
They argued about it until Rhett left again, fuming and bitter, his Panama hat pulled low over his face. Scarlett made an unannounced visit to Charleston the next month. “I was thinking,” she suggested, “That we might sell the Peachtree Street house.”
Scarlett knew all the words for making men love her, so long as she understood what it was that they wanted. The Tarleton twins had wanted merry excitement; Charles had wanted to feel important and Frank had wanted to feel like a strong, successful man. Ashley had wanted someone braver and better than he was, and he’d found it in Melanie without having to risk himself on Scarlett. Scarlett had never understood what it was Rhett wanted, but she did now. Why, it’s always been my love he wants! So Scarlett spoke the right words, and this time she meant them.
“You were right when you said that we’re alike. Only—you’ve always known about me, whereas I’m just starting to know you. Will you tell me about that knife fight in California again? About the sail boat you won at cards?”
“You know those stories,” clipped Rhett. “You don’t need to hear them again.” So Scarlett went downstairs and pried the stories out of his mother instead.
The house on Peachtree Street sold within the month, snatched up by some Carpetbagger who wanted it for a hotel. Rhett traveled to Mexico, and returned to find Scarlett back at Tara preparing for spring planting.
“What do the women wear in Mexico?” she asked him, leaning on the porch railing in the slanting light. “What is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled?”
Rhett indulged her in brief, but then abruptly he chuckled and shook his head. “I know what you’re doing, you little minx.”
“Yes,” said Scarlett. “Of course you do.”
           Tomorrow, oh tomorrow!
The clay soil of Georgia is red from iron oxides. It’s red the way rust is red, the way blood is red. If a blister splits open and your blood falls on the ground, that iron-red soil will just swallow it up. You can bleed and bleed, and the stuff in your blood will always be one with the stuff of the soil.
When cotton and vegetables sprout from the ground, it’s easy to believe they grew from your very own blood, and that your own sweat and tears watered them.
           Never look back.  
“We women were soldiers too,” Melanie said once. Scarlett didn’t respect her yet—at least, not consistently—but this might have been one of the moments where she first looked at Melly and thought not that her heart was soft and timid, but that it was a sword.
“We never expected to be – or at least I didn’t.” She looked around the circle of ladies, at India and Fanny, until her eyes came to rest on Scarlett at last. “We were children then. We all imagined the world far simpler than it was.”
Melly, India, Fanny, Scarlett. These women had all been girls together. They knew one another at seven, twelve, fifteen, swaddled in silks and trying to seem more grown-up than their playmates. They’d competed for beaus and Scarlett had mostly won, except where Ashley Wilkes was concerned. They had lived through the war together. Now, Scarlett sat among them on Melly’s front porch and tried to remember if she’d ever in her life felt like one of them.
For Christmas, Melanie gave Scarlett a small book of poetry. Scarlett never read it, except for the one verse which Melly had marked with a green ribbon. She bit back the urge to sigh when she undid the wrapping, but Melly pointed out the bookmark and said, “This one made me think of you, dear.”
Scarlett didn’t like to think of it now, but once she’d been sixteen in green muslin, confident that dimples and a clear complexion were the only weapons she’d ever need. She had been a child, but that child had not died when Atlanta burned. The belle of Clayton County was not in the grave with all the boys who’d never come riding home from war. Scarlett was alive. She was right here.
“What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost/ Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation/Like dream words most? / Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women. / I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair/ And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders/ And a leaf on your hair—"
Scarlett came home from her mills in the gray evening and she made her way back to the Wilkes’s ramshackle front porch. She left her buggy feeling condemned and she sat with the other ladies feeling alienated, but all the same she couldn’t bring herself not to go. The war was over, and these were the survivors. They were through fighting, hung up on glory, but Scarlett still hadn’t holstered her guns. 
“We were soldiers,” said Melanie, and in her heart Scarlett added, “Some of us still are.”
           I won’t let them lick me.
Supposing that Ashley had married her. Perhaps the sight of her in green makes him brave enough to shed his veneer of honor and say, “Yes, you’re right, I can’t live without you.” It’s a minor scandal when he casts Melanie off in her favor, but not for long. The war is beginning and besides, good men have made themselves fools for Scarlett O’Hara before. By the time the soldiers march away, the scandal is all but forgotten in favor of the fine figure they cut as they embrace at the depot: Ashley so brave in his uniform, his young wife radiant as she clutches him.
Ashley sends her long, meandering letters full of philosophical musings. Scarlett reads them uncomprehending and sends back missives full of I love yous. She kisses them when she mails them, sometimes with a Hail Mary for her husband’s safety.
Rhett doesn’t notice this Scarlett at Twelve Oaks, and so he’s caught off guard when he hears the young Mrs. Wilkes say something blunt and scathing at the Bazaar. He chuckles to himself in delight and later he asks her to dance, and of course Scarlett simpers and agrees, and it’s a merry night. But Rhett doesn’t come back to Atlanta for the rest of the war.
This Scarlett leaves for Macon with the rest of the women when the Yankees come to Atlanta; after all, she has no Melly to keep her in the city during the siege. She takes Ashley’s child with her, and it’s in Macon that he finds her after the war. He waxes poetic about the Old Days, the Horrors of War and Götterdämmerungs and the like. He looks at her with sad, tired eyes and Scarlett says yes, I heard you the first time. But what are we going to do?
Twelve Oaks is razed. They go to Tara. Ashley tries his hand at farming, but it’s Scarlett who manages to pick and plant and organize while Ashley’s fumbling attempts at working with his hands yield scant success. His heart isn’t in it, which infuriates Scarlett. C’mon, get up and fight! She looks into the tired face of the man she loved so ruinously at sixteen and wonders what she ever thought was so noble about him.
When taxes come due there’s no way to pay. What’s more, Ashley doesn’t even try. It’s here that Scarlett breaks with her husband. Between Ashley and Tara, it’s Tara every time.
So Scarlett bullies her husband into calling old debts in from a few impoverished friends and when that isn’t enough, she goes to see the tax assessor dressed in green velvet and makes some very personal insinuations about Mr. Jonas Wilkerson. From there, Scarlett bullies her one-time-beloved and does as she pleases, and Ashley has to live with the fact that it’s his wife who provides for the family. In every world, it is Scarlett O’Hara who keeps Ashley Wilkes alive after the war.
His pride lays down in the dirt and dies. Scarlett Wilkes shakes her head bitterly and plants more seed in her red, red earth.   
Supposing Scarlett could have imagined all this. What do you think she would say? Perhaps in her youth she would have cherished the idea, but the hard-eyed Scarlett who emerged after the war would have only leveled her small shoulders and said, “What does it matter what would have happened? I’ll think about it later.”
           There but for a lot of gumption am I.
The day after Bonnie died, Scarlett called for the buggy and went to her store. Rhett took this as proof that Scarlett had never really loved the little girl, that she was devoid of maternal affection as he’d always suspected, but Scarlett was grieving in her own way. She threw out two uncut bolts of blue velvet: expensive fabric over which she’d have upbraided a clerk to hell and back if he’d wasted even a few inches. 
It was true that Scarlett had never wanted any of her children when she’d carried them. She had not felt joy or love or any of the feelings that other women described when first she saw them. What she did feel, in the moments after Dr. Meade placed each child in her arms, was a fierce surge of protectiveness. She was certain that she would work and sacrifice and even die for her children, if need be. They were her blood, her flesh, her kin.
Scarlett had hated pregnancy each time it happened to her. She hated feeling large and lumbering, hated the way that her tiny waist bloated and grew until even her modified dresses didn’t fit right. She hated the inconvenience of morning sickness, the limitations on what she could do, the necessity of seclusion as delivery drew near. It was nine months of hardship and frustration capped off with many long minutes of excruciating pain. 
Bonnie had died in an instant. She’d been flying towards the hurdle and then, half a breath later, she’d been gone. Standing in the back of the store with two bolts of blue velvet before her, Scarlett swallowed back tears that Rhett would never see. It wasn’t right that a child who’d taken her so much time and effort to bring into the world could be gone from it so quickly. 
When she returned to the house a few hours later, Rhett had locked himself in the bedroom with Bonnie’s tiny body. Scarlett paused for a moment outside the door, but then she squared her shoulders and kept walking. 
          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. 
Scarlett had a habit of humming “My Old Kentucky Home” while she worked. Splitting wood, planting and picking cotton, driving between her mills, keeping the books—even sewing. The song was a thoughtless thing, an instinctual thing. She hummed it the same way a person might worry lips between teeth or tear at nails. 
She repeated the words again and again until her heart pulsed to their rhythm. Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. I’ll think about it tomorrow, when I can stand it. Tomorrow, tomorrow. No matter, ‘twill never be light. I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my kin. I’ll never be hungry again. They were a mantra: something to hold onto when the whole breadth of her world had narrowed to a single point. A refrain. A liturgy of surviving.
          Just a few more steps
Rhett loved Scarlett and it was terrifying. He feared that she would treat him like one of her country beaus: a lovely toy to play with and to tear to ribbons when she was done. He was afraid, so he hid his heart behind his impressive poker face and said “I want you” instead of “I love you.” He called her “pet” instead of “sweetheart.”
Scarlett loved Rhett and it was slow. He brought her bonnets and bonbons and Scarlett thought, “Why, it’s almost like I was in love with him!” He came to help her the day Atlanta burned, and Scarlett thought that she’d like to stay in his arms forever. When he chauffeured her to the mills, she thought that he was the only person in the world to whom she could tell the truth.
"You never told me you loved me, you know," Scarlett said the next time she visited Charleston. "I never knew. That's not to say you were wrong about me - about what I would have done if you had said something. But you should have been brave enough to risk it all the same."
Rhett closed his eyes for a moment and his mask slipped away. It was doing that more and more these days.
"But I did tell you — once."
"I think I would have remembered that," said Scarlett, pursing her lips.
"Ah. ‘It is far off; and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.’ I suppose my humble confession was the least of your worries that day."
Scarlett wrinkled her nose. "What?"
"The day Atlanta burned, my dear."
After a long moment, Scarlett gave a little gasp which turned into a sigh as it ended. "Oh. That's right, you did then, didn't you?" She shook her head. "Rhett, I do believe you have the worst timing of any person I know."
          As God is my witness
The day she married Charles, she wore Ellen’s cream-colored silk gown, aired out in a hurry from the chest where it had been sitting since the O’Haras married back in 1846. She couldn’t breathe for how tight her laces were —sixteen inches, like Ellen’s waist was when the dress was purchased— and perhaps that was a good thing. Scarlett was light-headed throughout the ceremony and she scarcely remembered it afterwards. 
The day she decided to have Frank, it was raining hard. Scarlett left the jail in sodden velvet and was grateful for the drops falling on her cheeks to disguise the tears. It was sunny the day of the wedding, but she scarcely noticed that. Afterwards, when she thought of marrying Frank, Scarlett would always remember the rain. 
There was a fine mist over everything the day she got Rhett back for good. Scarlett was wearing her work clothes when he came riding up to Tara; she’d been walking the cotton fields that day, overseeing the progress of the crop. They were both a little damp when he kissed her.
           I’ll never be hungry again.
O’Haras and Robillards had always known how to dig their nails in, and by God, Scarlett was both. Her namesakes had long ago fought for their own plots of Irish earth; had survived and died and been hanged fighting to hold onto it. All Scarlett’s forebears, her folk, had left crescent-moon imprints on all that was theirs when it was finally pried from her hands. Scarlett gripped her little ball of clay and felt her nails dig into the heels of her hands.
She was her father’s hot-tempered daughter, but she had her mother’s steel-hewn spine. All the years of her life, she never saw Ellen Robillard O’Hara rest her back against a chair.  When Scarlett’s own time came, she held herself every bit as straight as her mother: she didn’t rest or lean, just stood and stood.
Maybe this is what she was always made for. Her green eyes weren’t for charming young men, they were for seeing dresses in curtains. Her hands were never supposed to be soft; they were meant for digging in the red dirt. Even her lips—Rhett was wrong, they weren’t meant for kissing. Scarlett’s lips were as sharp as the words that she spoke when she wasn’t afraid what anyone thought. They were meant to draw blood.
She had been sharp all her life, even when her edges were carefully concealed in layers of satin. Scarlett was not made to be soft; her core held no gentleness. She could not pretend otherwise. All she could do was stand straight, and hold up her tired old shoulders like they were the strongest thing in the world.
           I’ll think about it tomorrow. 
One day, at the Butler home in Charleston, Rhett taught Scarlett how to play poker, and subsequently how to cheat. They were still playing hours later, counting cards and hiding them in sleeves and making all kinds of ridiculous bets on losing hands. Just as she was taking off her right earbob to call, the thought rose to Scarlett’s mind unbidden: “What on earth are we doing here?” And just as quickly, there was the answer. “We’re living.”
At the end of this most recent road home, weary and damp from running through the fog, Scarlett found her way back into Rhett’s arms. In the evenings she listened to his stories and witticisms, and late at night she listened to the sound of his breathing. I will not speak of undying glory, she thought. Rhett was still here, and so was she. They were both still here.
Scarlett took off her left earbob too, for good measure. “I’ll raise you,” she said. “I have a good feeling about this hand.” There was still an ace hidden up her sleeve, but if Rhett noticed it he didn’t say anything. 
They survived together. They built something new. There is always profit to be made in building things, and these two were nothing if not industrious.
           After all, tomorrow is another day.
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chirpchirpmuahaha · 1 year
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thinking about how in 1x03 will tells alana jack respects her far too much to yell at her, how in 1x01 jack yells @ will in a bathroom
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The first episode of the Chibnall era had an overnight audience of 8.2m (10.9m with catch up). The latest episode, the last episode before he bows out with the centennial special, had an overnight audience of 2.2m, a drop of 6m. The ratings are now at the level they were when it was first cancelled in 1989. If RTD wasn't coming back I really do think that the show would've been cancelled after Chibnall and Whittaker left.
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supercantaloupe · 2 years
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fun fact on the internet people will call you an "unbelievably cruel individual" and equate your opinion to literal murder and tell you to choke on your own spit because you said two different people groups live in the same place
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sophiamcdougall · 3 months
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You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"
Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.
Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.
Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?
Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.
Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?
No.
Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?
Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.
"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.
Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?
Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.
Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!
Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?
Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?
Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?
No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.
Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?
Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.
Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?
Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.
Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.
There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.
Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?
This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.
Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?
Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.
Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.
No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.
Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.
No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.  
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