themistoklis |
Kris, 20s, wandering in and out of fandom. Romantic asexual, taken. Student hoping to work soon. |
A shadow without anything to cast it OR can’t find the dog/cat OR someone’s playing ding-dong ditch OR windows won’t stop leaking in rain(I originally dismissed the first prompt because it sounded a little too similar to a story idea I’d already thought of, of a reflection without anything to cause it. But then it crept in and oozed through a crack to propose the following scenario…)
——-
He never would have noticed if the meeting hadn’t been so boring.
He had been the one to type up the information earlier, so he didn’t need to pay attention to it being droned out loud. So scribbling on his notepad had eaten up a few minutes while his thoughts wandered away from the mind-numbing facts being repeated again and again. Then Jane-from-down-the-hall had elbowed him in time for him to flip to a clean sheet before their boss passed by and noticed his inattention.
Then he had noticed that the shadow he thought was from Teddy-with-the-annoying-laugh actually belonged to Steve-from-next-to-the-good-printer, when Steve leaned forward attentively and it moved with him. The sun was shining through the window at an odd angle, apparently. So he killed a few minutes amusing himself trying to match shadows to their casters.
Jodie-with-the-hair was easy enough to spot. As was Fidgety Joe, for obvious reasons. He already had Steve’s spotted, and he picked out Teddy’s actual shadow when the man reached up to scratch his cheek. Then Stephanie-call-me-Steph coughed and that ended the game.
Except…who was that?
It was only that side of the table that was showing up on the far wall, and it couldn’t be Joe because it was too still, but it also couldn’t be Steve because it was in profile and he was looking down at his notes. Obviously not Jodie, and he remembered Teddy’s was at the opposite end of the table.
He furrowed his brow as he went back over each shadow he’d matched someone to. Finally he thought to count. Steve, Jodie, Joe, Teddy, Steph. One, two, three, four, five…six?
That…wasn’t right, and he felt goosebumps pricking his arms as he realized it.
Then he went cold as everyone turned to face forward at the crude bar graph drawn on the white board, and the shadow that had been in profile turned…to face…him.
Yaaay! I’m glad I checked my tags today because I must have missed this while scrolling on my phone. I like it, the slow realization and the moment at the end is very spooky. Thank you!
A minute of silence for all the good books with bad movie adaptions.
A minute of silence for all the bad books that are getting movie adaptations.
A minute of silence for books with the movie adaptation on the front cover
A minute of silence for The Last Airbender
ten minutes of silence for The Last Airbender
Two hours of stunned horrified silence for The Last Airbender.
(Source: theboysofwinterfell, via yahighway)
Knight-telepath Cade is struggling to adjust to her prosthetic arm, a necessity after a brutal battle with a dragon. Then news from her home kingdom sweeps the hospital: Princess Avi and her palace have been taken by rebel forces. A spell has set the capitol city to sleep, and filled the streets with defenses to keep rescue forces out.
Cade is determined to go back, even when the only person she can find to come with her is an ex-squire who seems to spare no loyalty to his old kingdom and the princess Cade loves and fears she will lose.
The closer the two get to their destination, though, the stronger Cade’s telepathic glimpses of the sleeping city are. Everyone is dreaming.
And no one is fighting harder than Avi to wake up.
Tweenbots by Kacie Kinzer:
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me, was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it’s destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.
AwwWWWWWWAHHHHHHHHHHHH.
*weeps all over the place* I have robot feelings, okay?
Always reblog bot feels.
(via rampaigehalseyface)
I’m unbelievably sick of my upstairs neighbors smoking pot every night and filling the apartment with the stench.
can we just talk about the biggest plot twist in doctor who history
Can we talk about how I’m still not over this plot twist.
you can see the realization in the doctor and martha’s eyes as they’re smiling and it dawns on them that Jack is going to become a giant face
Just one line and I lost my shit.
(Source: marauding-eponine, via iwillbesoufflegirl)
this will never not be hilarious to me
This show was great
its the notion of boycotts
you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?
because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go
they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces racist policies so don’t take it and FUCK if you can’t get to work on time or where you need to be!”
they said “hey you’re paying to get on the bus and not even being given a seat let alone being ejected if a white passenger needs your seat. here’s a potentially better alternative where you pay to sit down and get to where you need to go”
all this “boycott Target, Walmart, Monsanto owned companies” comes from a notion of boycott located in the politic of privileged white people
and that’s why they are largely unsuccessful
its why Obama just gave Monsanto the green light to commit even more fuckery to your food
its the reason why cooperation are considered people
its the reason why Walmart is allowed to usurp safety and labor regulations in their factories, and underpay their American workers
because you say “don’t spend your money there” and that’s the end of the story
you expect people to locate their survival in a politic of “abstaining from unethical choices”
and then from there those unethical choices are somehow supposed to magically disappear. when really only a small percentage of people are able to boycott so many things
there wouldn’t be a movement located around the “99%” if 99% of people could really afford to stop shopping at the unethical places and stop buying the unethical brands
good luck with your hocus pocus activist logic
hocus pocus lol. but this shit is hella real.
This x 1000. I love patronizing independent stores when I can but I can’t afford to do even 15% of my shopping like that!
(via wretchedoftheearth)
i’m having two fit tantrums (two fit fits?) right now ! wahhh.
1) i got the two dresses from asos curve that i ordered friday- extremely fast, free shipping ! asos curve’s largest size is listed as a US 22. i’m a US 28, and i’ve gotten stretchy dresses from there that fit before (and one that…
Fashion inches absolutely do not correspond to real inches, and it is a huge pain in the butt. I ordered clothes from Torrid ONCE, and ended up writing them a furious e-mail because the clothes were falling off of me. They gave me free return shipping but only from FedEx, and I couldn’t get to the store, so I had to pay to return it :/
Since then, when looking for clothes online, I have resorted to getting my measurements from the size charts of stores I already own clothes from. Stores don’t use the same fashion inches, of course, but it can help narrow things down.
My “fashion waist” is 8-10 inches smaller than my actual waist.
Really? *excited*
Maybe this means my fat ass isn’t too big for a lot of stores by a few inches?
I would DEFINITELY recommend trying out some clothes in that case — try stores with free shipping first if you can. If I go by real inches, I should’ve been a size 20 in pants at Torrid when I was more like a size 12 or 14. (Not even kidding.)
i’m having two fit tantrums (two fit fits?) right now ! wahhh.
1) i got the two dresses from asos curve that i ordered friday- extremely fast, free shipping ! asos curve’s largest size is listed as a US 22. i’m a US 28, and i’ve gotten stretchy dresses from there that fit before (and one that…
Fashion inches absolutely do not correspond to real inches, and it is a huge pain in the butt. I ordered clothes from Torrid ONCE, and ended up writing them a furious e-mail because the clothes were falling off of me. They gave me free return shipping but only from FedEx, and I couldn’t get to the store, so I had to pay to return it :/
Since then, when looking for clothes online, I have resorted to getting my measurements from the size charts of stores I already own clothes from. Stores don’t use the same fashion inches, of course, but it can help narrow things down.
My “fashion waist” is 8-10 inches smaller than my actual waist.
(Source: mrazs, via iwillbesoufflegirl)
There’s a lot to discuss here
OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON HERE
I CAN’T
*dies*
“It’s like I was saying, kids: don’t take shit off of anyone.”
This photo….
….this photo 0_o
(Source: nickholmes, via hanuueshe)
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