princetofbone

[princetofbone]

The urge to learn every language and play every instrument and travel the world and live through every historical time period and be a writer and a poet and an actor and

[princetofbone]

ItGirl Reminder 🎀

　𓂅　 ˚ 　　　 ⋆ ⟡　　 　　𓂅 ˚ 　　　 ⋆ ⟡　　 　　𓂅 ˚ 　

don’t go back and forth with anyone online. if someone is mean, rude or bothering you in any way just block them and go on with your day. they want that rise out of you so don’t give it to them. arguing with someone + getting upset = lowering your vibrations & taking away your peace of mind. you shouldn’t allow anyone to get under your skin and ruin your vibe. let miserable people be miserable by themselves! you are a beautiful person with a beautiful soul and beautiful energy to match, don’t let anyone in this world ever take that away from you.

　𓂅　 ˚ 　　　 ⋆ ⟡　　 　　𓂅 ˚ 　　　 ⋆ ⟡　　 　　𓂅 ˚ 　

stay nice, pretty & unbothered .. muah 💋

[princetofbone]

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

[princetofbone]

So the US is cracking down on AI companies regarding copyright. 😊

AI bros are crying 😊

Suck to suck dirty thief's hope your shit companies can't effort to conform with the law.

On this block we only support ai that's helping in the field they are applied to, like counting cancer cells.

[princetofbone]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[princetofbone]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means”. Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind’s generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace”.

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity’s greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity’s eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity’s empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the trillion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it’s warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassadors were taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara’s lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara’s world burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.

[princetofbone]

Text: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I see an extra door in the hallway, black and imposing. 

[princetofbone]

You are a long forgotten god. A small girl leaves a piece of candy at your shrine, and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priestess, the girl, and her entire kindergarten class, your worshipers.

[princetofbone]

In fairy tales and fantasy, two types of people go in towers:  princesses and wizards.

Princesses are placed there against their will or with the intention of ‘keeping them safe.’ This is very different from wizards, who seek out towers to hone their sorcery in solitude.

I would like a story where a princess is placed in an abandoned tower that used to belong to a wizard, and so she spends long years learning the craft of wizardry from the scraps left behind and becomes the most powerful magic wielder the world has seen in centuries, busts out of the tower and wreaks glorious, bloody vengeance on the fools that imprisoned her. 

That would be my kind of story.

[princetofbone]

Here’s a story about changelings: 

Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. 

She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.

Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. 

“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. 

Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.

“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”

“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”

“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”

Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.

“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”

“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”

Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.

“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”

Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.

She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.

“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.

Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”

Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.  

They all live happily ever after.

*

Here’s another story: 

Keep reading

[princetofbone]

You’re a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kids’ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.

[princetofbone]

my arch nemesis cynthia is, of course, at the bank, because we both were sent like clockwork to pick up the checks of our husbands. she is wearing a lovely long green gown, which i know was on behalf of me, because, as my husband will tell you, our house abhors green and glamour. already the tellers look at each other under their little hats, for they love our tirades, i’m sure, although not more than i hate them. 

“oh, is that your knitting?” my arch nemesis cynthia peers her eyes at my hands. “is it some kind of… sock?” everyone knows she and i used to be close before we were married and our husbands, smartly so, have introduced us to the idea of true vengeance.

“it is a scarf,” i say. i want to tell her that when the time comes and the world gets cold it will go over my mouth and i will breathe warm air and it will fill my lungs and i will be able to run around with my love even in the dark night. “it is not,” i say, “over surprising that you should be caught unawares of a scarf,” i say, “as i’m sure enjoying winter festivities are too beneath the handsome qualities your husband prefers.” pompous ass.

the tellers pass each other eyes for now it has started and they are delighted.

my arch nemesis cynthia thrusts out her hand. a white bottle. “rat poison,” she says. “i would expect the whole town knows about your little problem.” stage whisper. “such a shame, my dear.” then she rustles her long green skirts - which i know she wore on behalf of me - and she shimmies herself out of the room like royalty. oh, she floats everywhere she goes, beautiful black hair behind her. the bottle in my palm is cold. i will devise how to get her back starting first thing tomorrow.

the week, as always, is a long week, for there is much to make and do and knit and be. my husband comes home and i love him for who he is; for he never comes home without checking the state of the house up and down. he is the kind who loves his home so completely and sets each room like a stage for a great band to come playing. i am too ashamed to tell him why so many of the rats go missing, only make him a stew the next morning to celebrate. his favorite, although not mine, i’m afraid. plenty left over.

my arch nemesis today - of course - in a green the color of rotting. a bruise is uncarefully covered on her cheekbone, so striking against all of her dainty. her husband would say it was for her ungraceful nature, and i know mine would agree. i strike first, already delighted by my master plan, shoving over our best picnic basket tied with a bow. “i made you and yours a stew,” i say, “for beneath all that you carry” all that horrible wealth of your husband  “it seems you’re getting rather skinny.” i can’t resist one last comment. “i am worried you’re about to waste to nothing.”

She plucks it out of my hand. “yes, if it weren’t for you and your husband’s dwindling wealth,” her sarcasm is biting, “i’m sure i will be nothing in, oh, 5 weeks time.” she arches a brow. “so long from now.”

“i am counting the days,” i tell her. her lips purse. the tellers behind me make a choked titter. perhaps, by their estimation, i have won this round quite completely. i go home to my husband smiling. he asks where i have been and i tell him i’ve been at the bank, but he checks anyway because i like to get up to tricks and he doesn’t like to fall for it. it is a good game we play. at night, when he is asleep, i am so in love that i must convince myself to pull the covers over my nose and practice breathing. how silly to wake him up for a young girl’s feelings. 

the first week of five: she gives me a solid, ugly ring that requires three knuckles to hold. “i feel so badly for your status, and i must remember to practice charity,” she says. “it such a small thing, but do be careful amongst all that thin pine furnishing of your house, which dents so easily.” my husband appears at the bank’s front door. just checking. so lovely to be picked up by him. at night, in a rage, i try it - beneath the table bends easily. i scuff out the scratch with walnut before my husband can see. i pull the covers over my face in bed and breathe.

the second week: i wear her ugly ring and give her more stew, this time hearty with meat. her dress is a meadow. my heart each time it sees her collapses on itself. she hands me clothes for my husband, since his wealth continues to go missing, and the charity of her heart is so loving. i am so ashamed i bury them far by the old tree, where all my shames go hiding. again, the covers. it, by now, helps me sleep. i have gotten so good at it that i can simply shimmy my shoulders to be perfectly toasty and buried.

the third week: she asks how comes my knitting. i tell her it’s nearly complete. she asks how comes my husband, whom she must know has been ill recently, and who is doing quite badly. i go home to him, shaking. even sick he is a good housekeeper, who comes home examining for dust and dinge so i do not fall behind on my chores. who checks to be sure i spoke to only him and no one more, for fear a man might snatch me. tell me, who else has a man so involved, in this day and age?

the fourth week she is envy green. i shove a whole heaping of stew at her, for now her husband has gotten it. i say it will return him to spirits, she laughs, a sudden, beautiful sound, even in the quiet of a bank. everyone stares. maybe it is the stress that is making her quite improper. i feel the same way. so much is happening and it always seems she knows. she says she heard he has left me nothing in the will, which everyone already knows. she says she doubts either of us can dig upwards from the hole we’re both in. i look at the bruise on her nose. i tell her to mind her own husband, and be careful where she goes.

the fifth week: so final. her, garishly lime green. and i in black, to pick up a check that hardly seems the effort. it will be enough to cover my husband’s funeral. she smiles at me and hands me a silver bottle. she says quietly: now that i am destitute, there is one thing for it all, and everyone would understand quite completely. it would be quiet, and quick, and complete.

it is the night of the new moon, so dark no man can see in it. i receive notice her husband has died, and i am sorry to say i find a terrible joy in it. the air has changed cold. i have left a note asking to be buried in my scarf, the last thing i have made on this earth. i go through each perfect room, but there is nothing else to take with me, for the house has always been his and his alone, and now aches to be gone of him. i would not serve as a good tender for it. having spent so many nights watched carefully, the silly girlish freedom i’d gain would surely set the house ablaze.

i follow her instructions. quick, quiet, complete.

the horrible rustling is what does it. like a million green skirts. and then it is dark, and i am in my own coffin, eerie with pine. my head hurts but i must be quick and quiet. they have listened and buried me with my scarf. i shimmy my shoulders just-so and get it over my face. bring my arms up, ugly ring heavy, and begin to hit as hard as i can, over and over, the thin wood of my husband’s favorite furniture, the cretin. it would be pine, of course - he left me no money to be buried in any nicer recourse.

the wood splits so horribly, and then it is very hard to breathe, harder than under the covers, and i have to remind myself to be patient and continue to dig upwards, while my throat closes and my heart beats so loudly and the whole thing is so heavy it is a universe. the shifting of gravedirt is loud, and loud, and i feel i will be turned into a worm, and i fear everyone has forgotten about me, or i have gotten the timing wrong, or i will really die down here in the dirt and the cold

but then her hand, and my hand, and we are both digging towards each other, and she lifts me so easily from the ground like a plucked turnip and holds me against her, us both panting and muddied. we can only stay like this for so long, here in my pauper grave, and then we are both running to the old tree where we met, and unburying a second thing; my lovely box of shame, and men’s clothes, and all of my husband’s dwindling fortune i have slowly been squirrelling away.

my love and angel cynthia, who has black hair like a curtain and a mind so fast i sometimes am in frank awe at it, who is, even now and dirty and raw: even now the only sun in my life.

like this, i a man in an almost-dawn, and us cleaned by the river, and her smiling so widely, and only a faint bruise on her, and our pasts behind us in ugly garish colors. and her delicate hand and beautiful nose and when i finally get to kiss her it feels like green feels; my favorite color, all warm and nature and sunny grace and grass and lying awake so filled with love it makes you shake.

i hold her, and she holds me, and our future is a love like a dream unburied.

[princetofbone]

Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.

[princetofbone]

if you send me. a letter with a wax seal on it. i will follow the address. i will walk as far as i must. i will come into your home. hold out the letter and ask who wrote this. you will step forward. and i will kiss you on the lips, get down on one knee, and propose to you with the blue ringpop i bought along the way.

and the only answer is yes, you fool.

so dont send me a letter with a wax seal unless youre ready for marriage. (and divorce.)

[princetofbone]

It has been a MINUTE but I made my prom dress and I feel a deep need to beg for attention on the internet so here it isssss (plus the underwear)

#historical costuming #18th century #Gregorian #prom #dress #prom dress #sewing #hand sewing

[princetofbone]

i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year

[princetofbone]

I think if I do nothing else on this earth than make people feel a little more loved in a time where they felt alone then ive served my purpose well