we the great and small

A rest day isn't enough. I need one billion years alone in a crystal.

The official Star Wars account on Spotify replaced the Cassian Andor Rogue One playlist with an “Andor Official Playlist” that’s just the soundtrack…AS IF IT COULD COMPARE TO THAT EXPERTLY CRAFTED CHARACTER FANMIX…I WANTED THE OFFICIAL ANDOR SOUNDTRACK BUT NOT LIKE THIS!!!!!! PUT IT BACK!!!!

Anyway, here’s the tracklist in order I recovered from Wayback Machine for anyone else that adored that playlist and wants to remake it themselves in the event that they leave it officially replaced going forward:

And the cover image too!

@ whoever made this playlist, I’m so sorry they tried to erase your great fanmix and I won’t stand for it❤️❤️❤️❤️

HOLY SHIT THANK YOU FOR THIS I'VE BEEN MISSING IT FOR YEARS. I discovered some BANGERS through this playlist. Whoever looked at Cassian and went "you know what this guy's vibe is? Stomp'n'holler/new Roots" was both insane and a genius

i hope you write (i hope we both write)

hand in unedited hand

I've been toiling away at top speed to catch up on all the work I missed and all the pages I need to get done, but today's warmup ended up being revisiting this old piece done for @painted-bees ! I've always liked it too much to let it get so visibly old that I see nothing but flaws instead of the piece itself, so! Have a lovely werewolf and a lovely friend.

a very unsettling plate found in Cracow, Poland

necklace depicting three figures found in an amulet of protection against lilit from the sefer raziel.

I love these Keith Haring lookin little dudes, I would in fact feel very protected with them around

whenever i'm trying to talk myself out of buying something i don't need i always hear my old russian professor's voice echoing in my head: "WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?" and then i make an unwise financial decision

i'm so glad i happened to see these tags this is the best thing anyone has added to this post so far

huber0203

NO*Loza’s Lovely Sorpresa [Pedigree]

🐱 Norwegian Forest Cat

📸 Sofia Leonsen [NO*Loza’s]

🎨 Blue Tortoiseshell with White

@pangur-and-grim you NEED to see this thang

saddest kitten needs treats and pets

When considering that Mia emerged from Susannah's consciousness while he and Eddie and Jake were looking at the rose, Roland's internal monologue compares her to Punxsutawny Phil, which implies that goddamn Groundhog Day is observed in Mid-World or was before the world moved on, and what am I to do with that????

Actually it doesn't.

All it implies is that at some point along the infinity they spent in the woods between Kansas and the Calla one of the Tet (probably Eddie if I had to guess) mentioned Groundhog Day (if I had to guess as an offhanded comment about how time seems stuck, we know that's something Eddie thinks about a lot) and Roland, being insatiable for all stories as he is, asked after and got the story.

While this is much more likely (I can see the scene in my brain and may write it at some point if it keeps burning) I do kind of love the idea that after everything went to hell and the world moved on, an odd little tradition about a large ground rodents' ability to predict the weather survived.

And TBF that is just the sort of thing to survive the fall of empires, anthropologically speaking. We (as a species) love a weird detail.

I'm saying, yes, is it possible that the New Yorkers know the name Punxsutawney Phil and explained it to Roland, sure, although I have some questions about how widely that name was known in American pop culture before Groundhog Day came out in 1993. (It might've been widely known! I am a Millennial, I truly have no idea!)

But the idea that Gilead had a mythical groundhog named SPECIFICALLY Punxsutawney Phil that popped his head up at the end of Wide-Earth is so much funnier to me and therefore that is my headcanon now

Challah bread is so good. Thank you Jewish diaspora for challah bread.

Find a Google doc version of this poem here.

For a plain text version (no footnotes), see below the cut.

Full disclosure: I am a close friend of Elisa's and helped edit this poem!

When the first allegations against Neil Gaiman hit the Internet last summer, I felt my stomach drop. Did the whole five stages of grief. Though I don't have any tattoos based on his work (like at least two friends of mine do), some of his work is deeply inscribed in my brain and heart. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that The Devil and Sarah Blackwater wouldn't exist as it does without American Gods and the Sandman interpretation of Lucifer.

And for years, high school, when I needed a quick Halloween costume, I dressed as Death. I, like many others, found deep comfort in Gaiman's version of Death: a gently smiling presence who greeted you with love, who gave a feeling of camaraderie and grace to the act of dying.

Around the same time the Gaiman allegations hit, our dog got sick. Very sick. And it gutted me that I was going to have to mourn her without the comfort of Death. (There's no need to come in here and tell me about how Mike Dringenberg is responsible for her too and I can still take comfort in her despite Gaiman; we're talking about the emotional experience I was having in September 2024. Let it be what it was.)

Fast forward. I get through the five stages of grief about Gaiman and get started on them for our beloved dog when she passes in our arms. The Vulture article comes out. Elisa and I talk about it. Elisa starts working on this poem and I get to read it as it develops.

One of the things that wonderstrikes me in Elisa's work is her facility with allusion and recontextualization. (Ironically(?) one of the things I used to like about Gaiman's work, too.) Here, she wraps her hands around the archetypes of fairy tales and mythologies that Gaiman laid claim to and says "these aren't yours." She uses footnotes and I think of how Good Omens is not solely Gaiman's, but Pratchett's. And Death is here. The Death of the author is here. That death isn't clean or simple -- more of an uncomfortable Dave McKean experience than a Jill Thompson page.

But we do have agency, and recourse. The author we thought we knew is dead.

We are the ones who get to reckon his legacy.

Wait what's a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren't supposed to use the elevator to get down

You go down the stairwell/fire escape. Is that weird?

But what if you have a walker or a wheelchair??

in america at least, in this situation, there isnt one. either your loved ones or the firemen can get you out using the emergency fire escapes or stairs, or you die 

That's fucking horrific, thank you

“fun” little story:

last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off

a FIRE ALARM

everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face

“i can’t go down the stairs”

but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”

“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”

“i’ll carry that too”

and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors

basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted

thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.

it’s fucking ridiculous and ableist to the absolute max.

I use a cane. When I did a day-long fire safety training at my northeast American university (UMass Amherst), I asked that exact same question: “what am I supposed to do if the fire alarm goes off and I’m in my lab on the twelfth floor?” 

the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire. 

if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out. 

what happened to your friend was horrible, and i’m very glad you were there to help her out, but you can absolutely use the elevator to evacuate if it’s not shut down. those don’t-use-the-elevator rules are for abled people.  

This is GOOD TO KNOW. why do they not tell people this??

Okay, firefighter here. If you are not physically able to use the stairs, and the elevator is NOT compromised, use the elevator. But you MUST be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the elevator is NOT compromised before you get into it, because there is always the chance that once you get into it, you may not exit it. Power could go out. The elevator may actually BE compromised and you just couldn’t tell from where you were until you were in there, and it suddenly shuts down on you. Something else could happen. 

Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.

It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.

As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor... BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR... because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.

IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:

You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.

These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.

High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly. 

Also, just a little FYI... MOST fire alarms are false alarms. Not to make anyone complacent or anything, but, yeah. Most of them are either system malfunctions, someone accidentally hit a pull station, or someone burned popcorn in a break room. So don’t let a fire alarm freak you out until you need it to - by smelling or seeing smoke or flames. 

i have had multiple nightmares about this very thing because NOBODY BOTHERS TO ACTUALLY TELL WHEELCHAIR USERS THIS STUFF

I am loving these additions!

If you're disabled, this is worth the time and focusing energy to read through!!!