as a cumulus cloud containing warm air convects upwards and condenses, a thin layer of humid air containing water vapour is thrust above the cloud, cooling from the lower pressure into droplets, which, when small enough and uniform in size, diffract light from the sun when it’s at least fifty eight degrees above the horizon.
history is fucked up and it sucks because all the people in it who had great viable werewolf names weren’t werewolves. like what the shit. if you knew nothing about history or literature i guess or whatever you’d see names like “virginia woolf” and “oscar wilde” and be like. ah yes. these are definitely some prime secret werewolf poorly masquerading as human intellectual situations? but neither of those people were real live werewolves, factually speaking? they did not take advantage of that opportunity. and i think we are all worse off for it actually
I have a degree in history and I can say with some degree of scholarly confidence that you cannot definitively prove either of these people were not secret werewolves
when I was a kid, I told my mom that I wanted to be an actress when I grew up. You know what she told me?
She said, “sure, but you’re going to have to do it in China. America won’t hire you if you’re Asian.”
And that was it for that dream.
Of course, that was just a phase – one of many, one I would’ve gotten over anyway. But what she said stuck to me. You’re going to have to act in China, because America doesn’t hire Asians.
And if there’s anything I learned over these years, it’s that she was right. Asian-Americans don’t get to see ourselves on screen. We don’t get to read about our deeds. And we get pissed. We complain, we shout, and people dismiss us because, oh, “the Japanese are okay with Ghost in the Shell”, and “I’ve heard that mainland Chinese are perfectly fine with Iron Fist.” Well, great for them. This isn’t about them.
This is about us. Asian-Americans. Asian-Canadians. Asian-Australians. Asian hyphen something. And the Asians in Asia don’t understand – because they can’t. They’re surrounded by media portrayals of them. They never have to fight for representation because it’s always there. They have no idea what it’s like to live in a country that sees you as other, and then to have to go back to your home country, to have your parents tell you “this is you, this is your culture, your heritage” and you look upon the faces of your family and you see nothing of yourself in them.
Asian-Americans are not the same as Asians who live in Asia. We live in a different culture. Our values, our beliefs, the experiences that shape our lives are separate.
We want to see ourselves in western media because it’s what we grew up with. It’s what surrounds us. Sure, we can watch K-dramas and anime and Chinese/Taiwanese/Japanese/whatever dramas, and a lot of us do, but it’s still not us.
We shouldn’t have to go watch Asian dramas just to see a part of us represented. We shouldn’t have to move to Asia just to be hired.
We deserve to represent, and be represented, as ourselves.
a Not Happy thought: the “you look so much like your father"s die off as harry gets older. by the time he’s thirty, he begins to miss it.
Implying both that people who remember James Potter are dead and that James Potter did not get to be old.
Harry Potter ran a hand through his hair, staring at his reflection in the lift doors. Was it him or was it beginning to thin?
Ginny used to tease him about it, when he nervously ran his hands over it out of old habits, saying he’d rub himself bald. She didn’t tease him about it now, though, which might mean it was actually happening.
He sighed; how old his reflection had gotten. The years passed and he knew that well enough, but each reflective surface still came at a bit of a shock.
He remembered the first time he looked in a regular mirror and saw his father staring out. Not approximations of his father, not the oft-comment of “you look just like James” from some adult, but actually looked in the mirror and saw the same man he knew from photographs.
And he remembered when he looked in the mirror and his father was gone and he was back to approximations. Looking like James Potter never had a chance to.
It was a morbid way of counting birthdays. This year I’m older than my father got to be. This year older than Remus and Snape. This year older than Sirius. In a few years he would be older than Alastor Moody.
No one ever said he looked like his father anymore.
The doors opened onto the floor for The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. The Department had two settings: chaos when some magical mishap had to be brought in to be dealt with, and silence when everyone was off tackling the mishap in person. Today was the latter but that was fine. It was James’ turn on desk duty, which was the reason he’d come down, brown bags in hand. It was the only time he could ever seem to wrangle his oldest son for lunch.
Only when he got to the desk, a young witch – a child who hardly looked old enough to be at Hogwarts much less to have graduated from it – smiled up at him.
“Mr. Potter! I have a message for you from your son. They had a catastrophe that really needed his expertise so he had to go.”
Harry gave a small smile. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Just started last month.”
“Ah. First thing you should know is to never believe James Potter, especially when it comes to desk duty. He’ll do anything to get out of desk duty.”
She gave a smile you would give to an elderly relative doling out advice. “I will remember that next time.”
Oh well, if he was playing the role already, might as well commit. “And don’t let him push you around or beg off. He’ll always have a good reason but you’ve earned your field time like anyone else. And since I brought it down, you can have his lunch.”
That got a laugh as she took the bag. “Thank you. You’re welcome to join me…?”
He waved her off. “No, no, I have paperwork to deal with anyway. But thank you.”
He was about to turn back when she spoke.
“Y’know, it’s remarkable. I would’ve known who you were from a mile off.”
Harry raised an indulgent eyebrow. Four decades had dimmed people’s immediate recognition of him as The-Boy-Who-Lived, especially among the younger crowd, but it was hardly an uncommon occurrence. Still, he acted as if he didn’t know what she meant. “Oh?”
“Oh yes. You look so much like James.”
Time seemed to stop after her words. He didn’t breathe or blink, everything paused in a moment of both newness and familiarity.
Then it was done but the weight of his shoulders had eased a little bit and he gave a brief but genuine smile. Then he laughed. “Don’t say that to him; he’d be mortified.”
“I’ll remember that if he tries to put me on desk duty again then,” she teased.
Harry chuckled and waved and got back on the lift. When the doors closed and he saw himself again, he decided it didn’t really matter much if his hair was thinning. He could do with less of it anyway.
this is lovely
That went somewhere far happier than I expected it to go, whew!
The Trump administration has nixed plans to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 Census, a request made by congressional Democrats and LGBTQ advocates last year in an attempt to construct a better picture of the country’s increasingly complex family and sexual dynamics and to better craft laws tailored to improve the situations […]
a SWAMP is a wetland whose vegetation consists of trees or other woody plants
a MARSH is a wetland with other forms of vegetation
ALL wetland is highly desirable property and holy ground
Take a fucking sip babes, of this tea; not the wetlands.
slurp
Tumblr: actual factual if obscure information presented in an oddly aggressive way as if the reader should already know this, and then the thread dissolves into dadaist nonsense.
a BAYOU is marshy outlet of a lake or river, specifically in the southern united states
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 