Pipebomb and Coldhart. A place to keep a collection of things that I think are cool (heavily Flash related, some writing notes), and occasionally ramble. (She/her.) My fanfic (here and on AO3). Icon cropped from a @gorogues scan.
Think that fanartist draws your favorite character all wrong?
Wish you’d never hear about your least favorite pairing ever again?
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What happened to your Society6 store? It seems like there's a lot less designs available than there used to be. I was hoping to get some tapestries but everything is gone...
Wow! This ask made me go check out my Society6 shop — and you’re right, it’s pretty much all gone! So, here’s the story on that for anyone who hasn’t heard:
Society6 decided that their outsized profit from artists wasn’t cutting it — they now require artists to pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of Society6 profiting off of them, while foisting additional shipping fees onto the artist and reducing their payments on top of that. I had heard some months back that they were planning to switch to a subscription model, and it looks like since I didn’t pay up, they permanently deleted everything except 10 random pieces of art from my shop. They did this without notifying me at all (classy!) after years of making tens of thousands of dollars off of my work — but weirdly, this is kind of a relief for me?
My cut of Society6 sales were already a laugh even before the proposed changes (I make more money from someone dropping like $20 at my personal print shop than I do from someone buying $100 of my stuff from Society6) but the tapestries and blankets were so cool and I loved how much people enjoyed them, so I kept my art available there. They've deleted nearly all of my work now, so I'll go finish the job and close out my account for good.
Anyway, it’s disappointing, but Society6 has chosen to suck profoundly at this point in time. Totally scummy treatment of the artists whose work is the foundation of their entire business model. I’m lucky enough to have a supportive audience and never relied on Society6, but I feel badly for artists whose livelihoods have been impacted by this. (If you’re one of those artists, know this: you deserve better compensation for your hard work than what S6 is giving you!)
OK, with all that said — I’m bringin’ tapestries back, baby! They can’t keep this cowboy off the range! Right now I’ve ordered samples from some different places to compare quality, and once I’ve settled on a manufacturer I‘ll be making them available at my print shop. I’ll post on my socials when I’ve sorted it out!
Here. Have kudos on that fanfic you wrote in your head while you were in the shower and never typed it out. When I recover from the brilliance of it, I’ll come back to leave a review.
*Spidey and the Sinister Six having their usual fight*
Doc Ock, landing a hit: You’re getting slow Spider-Man! Age finally catching up to you?
Spider-Man: You wish! I haven’t even hit my 30s! From those costumes I can already tell I failed to save you guys from those midlife crises! Sorry by the way.
Vulture: Watch it wallcr- wait… Did you just say your not in your thirties yet?
Spider-Man: Surprised that this spiders so young and spry? Well-
Electro: Dude I’ve been fighting you for at least 5 fucking years! How old even are you?
Shocker, joking cause he’s the only one who picked up no grown adult acts likes Spidey: Don’t swear in-front of the boy you don’t want him to pick it up.
Rhino: Christ! You’re tellin me I almost crushed some 12-year-olds skull all those years ago?
Spider-Man, regretting his quipping: I was not that young! Like just starting freshman year but-
Sandman, horrified as he’s the only one with a kid and dad instincts(as of my iteration): I could’ve killed a kid…
Shocker, genuinely curious: Are you even old enough to drink? Cruel to kill a man who ain’t had his first drink yet.
Electro: Please tell us you’re at least over 25 as of this fight. Hell, I’ll take over 21!
Spider-Man:….
Sandman, realizing just how young he really is: Oh my god.
Spider-Man: My birthday’s coming up soon so I guess it counts?
Doc Ock, exacerbated: It. Does. Not!
Vulture: What would your mother think if she knew her son was out here risking his life telling poorly constructed jokes?
Spider-Man, offended cause it quips slap: 1. My jokes are great 2. She and my dad are dead so-
Sandman, hysterical cause holy shit he almost killed a kid orphan: OH MY GOD!
Still obsessed with Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter to Bram Stoker gushing about how wonderful a book Dracula is, but particularly how it makes such a good template for leaving fic comments, so I’m gonna to a BREAKDOWN:
Just say you loved reading it - “I am sure that you will not think it an impertinence if I write to tell you how very much I have enjoyed reading Dracula.”
Comment on a detail of the craft or structure that impressed you - “It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax.“
Comment on how it emotionally affected you - “It holds you from the very start and grows more and more engrossing until it is quite painfully vivid.”
SHARE YOUR BLORBO FEELINGS - “The old Professor is most excellent and so are the two girls.”
Show appreciation for them as an author - “I congratulate you with all my heart for having written so fine a book.”
Next time you don’t know what to say on a fic you enjoyed, just use the ACD method~
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.