My favourite song currently: I do have times where a certain song captures my imagination and I listen to it a lot. Past examples include Nothing’s Impossible by Depeche Mode, the acoustic version of Gold Guns Girls by Metric, Clear Skies by Keane. However, nothing’s currently occupying that particular niche so I’ll go for a long-standing favourite, The Lightning Strike by Snow Patrol.
Best gift I ever received and why: I got a slide when I was six. That was great. Because it was my very own slide (except I had to share it with my brother) and I was six.
#marvel at my taste in music #any suggestions as to new artists to try gratefully received
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(sorry about the late reply, I was sick when you first posted this and by the time I’d recovered enough it’d gotten buried in my open tabs)
*listens to The Lightning Strike*
Huh, so *that’s* where “Be the lightning in me/that strikes relentless” comes from. My faction on Flight Rising is lightning-themed, and people use that quote in their forum signatures sometimes.
My favourite song currently: I do have times where a certain song captures my imagination and I listen to it a lot. Past examples include Nothing’s Impossible by Depeche Mode, the acoustic version of Gold Guns Girls by Metric, Clear Skies by Keane. However, nothing’s currently occupying that particular niche so I’ll go for a long-standing favourite, The Lightning Strike by Snow Patrol.
Best gift I ever received and why: I got a slide when I was six. That was great. Because it was my very own slide (except I had to share it with my brother) and I was six.
Thought about “Humans are space orcs/space fae”. There was a line talking about how theres a human working on a ship but no-ones entirely sure if they’re meant to be there, but they didn’t want to like offend the terrifying space orc.
What if the “drifter” archetype continues into space? Like maybe we negotiated for free travel with one of our allies, but because humans come from a death world and are terrfiying, and because humans can be oblivious, we just assume we can board on any ship going anywhere, nbd?
like not as stowaways. we’re not hiding. Like those wolves and wild dogs in russia that use the railways. Are YOU going to tell a wolf they shouldn’t be riding the train?!? Thought not.
Captain Diii did not become aware of the… problem until her ship was a full half-cycle out from the resupply station. She was halfway through a standard sweep of the ship, to be sure it was all in good order, when she came across a sort of cocoon constructed of light, sturdy fabric strung up in the end of service corridor alpha. It was not blocking access to anything of even minor importance, it simply was not meant to be there. It had no use she could discern, but it had no place aboard Captain Diii’s ship.
“What is the purpose of this?” Captain Diii asked the young technician assigned to the sector.
Their mood-spots cycled to anxiety-orange as their feet shuffled in discomfort. “The human called it her ‘hammock’ and said it would be out of the way there?”
A human. On Captain Diii’s ship. Her spots flashed from fear to anger to consternation and settled on worry. This had never before happened to her. She’d only been captain for two annuals, and she operated so far from any of the major travel hubs she had hoped she would not have to deal with this.
The problem had started after the war. The terrifying human ‘marines’ had been key to repelling the Kkoin invaders, with their wild recklessness and near-indestructibility. They had put an end to the war very quickly, and the terms of alliance in exchange for this service had been seen as extremely generous. They asked for transportation, mainly, since human FTL drives still lagged behind galactic standard. It had been assumed that by this they meant transporting goods and perhaps colonists by arrangement, but the wording had been ambiguous in translation.
That did happen, but in addition humans would simply… step onto ships going where they wanted to go. And stay. Who would dare contradict a human? Any one of them could turn deadly at a moment’s notice. Their hardiness and ferocity was legend. As of yet, no way of repelling them had been 100% effective. Their comfort range was massive, so keeping a ship hot or cold did not help. Scents designed to be maximally unpleasant to the human sensory array dissuaded some, but others would simply laugh and joke about them as they boarded anyway. It seemed they could acclimate to even the most noxious of scents within a few cycles.
Some humans would uproot their entire families and head for another planet, seemingly on a whim. Other humans would then go visit these families, and go back home, or not. Some humans traveled from planet to planet and station to station to satisfy their near-endless curiosity. Some traveled because to travel and see new things gave them pleasure, and then returned to their homes seemingly refreshed.
Such a strange species.
Captain Diii had been certain she had assigned someone to guard the ship and tell any hopeful humans that there was no space for them if they tried to board. Captain Diii did not have any facilities for humans aboard her ship. She hurried to the nearest communication pod and signaled for her second in command, Taa, to join her.
Taa already had anxiety flashing on her mood spots when she arrived.
“Taa, were you not assigned to inform humans that there was no space?” Captain Diii asked.
“I did, Captain!” Taa protested. “But she answered that she did not need much and walked right past me! What could I do?”
“And where is she now?” Diii asked.
“The kitchens. She… she said she wanted to be added to the duty roster, and that she enjoyed food preparation?”
That was another thing about the humans. They almost all wanted to work on the ships they boarded. Often they threw duty schedules into disarray by simply volunteering themselves to do tasks. At least this one seemed to know to ask the officer in charge of duties.
Diii found the human in the kitchens, as expected. She was very tall and thin for her type, of the morph ‘all bones’, if Diii was remembering the mandatory human-culture lessons that had been recently been added to ships-captain certification classes. She seemed to lack the jiggling bits that were so disconcerting on some humans. She did not reek of artificial fragrances as some humans did, instead scented pleasantly of human natural musk. Her head-covering stands, ‘hair’, was a friendly violet. Diii was certain this was not a natural coloration for the species. Her loose cloth coverings were earthy browns and creams, reminiscent of a child’s camouflage.
The human turned to look at Captain Diii, and showed her white-bone teeth in the body language ‘smile’, a gesture of friendliness and pleasure. Now that she was turned, Diii could see that half of the human’s head was shaved, and an array of electronics were installed directly in her skull. It was testament to their extraordinary healing powers that augmenting themselves with inorganic parts was commonplace in human culture. The humans had the technology to make their implants invisible, but some chose to make them visible because it looked ‘bad posterior’, which was somehow a good thing and aesthetically pleasing to them?
The human’s implants lit up, showing the exact blue of happiness, as she straightened up to give the human ‘salute’–a greeting to a superior. “Captain Diii? It’s good to meet you. I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Zizi.”
Captain Diii could not help but be somewhat charmed. She must have the latest language-translation chip, Zizi’s speech was near perfect, and that she had something that functioned nearly like mood-spots was comforting. Her chosen name, as well, was easy to pronounce and nonthreateningly low-status.
“A greeting, Zizi,” Captain Diii answered carefully. “May I inquire your purpose aboard my ship?”
“Oh, I’m just a drifter,” Zizi said. “I just love traveling, you know? I heard the moons of Sigma7 were gorgeous, so I’m working my way that-a-ways.” Zizi’s pseudo-mood spot lights switched to anticipation before cycling back to happiness. “I’ll be off your ship at the next supply depot, if I can find someone heading more that direction.”
Ah, the ‘drifter’ type. Captain Diii had heard of them. ‘ship-hoppers’. An entire sub-class of humans who wandered the galaxy simply because they did not want to do anything else. They were famously the most difficult to dissuade from boarding a ship, and most likely to board from strange ports and going strange directions. Clearly it was not Taa’s fault she had been unable to keep Zizi out, and Diii signaled brief apology toward her.
“I won’t be any trouble,” Zizi continued. “I can set my hammock up anywhere to sleep, if it’s in your way?”
“The location you have chosen is… acceptable,” Captain Diii allowed. Zizi’s hair’s constant show of friendly had her own spots heading toward that color in automatic prosocial response. It was somewhat disconcerting. “I will leave you to your work,” Captain Diii said, retreating, and Zizi smiled and threw another quick salute before turning back to the food on the stove. Her implants showed concentration and curiosity, and then Captain Diii was outside the room with her again.
She turned toward Taa, who was still concerned. “I have heard that ships with a human listed on their crew roster have a 30% lower chance of being targeted by pirates?” Taa volunteered.
“Yes, yes,” Captain Diii mused. The risk was very low to begin with, especially for a ship like hers that did not haul valuable cargo, but anything that lowered it further could not be all bad. “It is not your fault in any case, Taa. Nothing could have prevented this human from boarding.”
Taa relaxed some, and Captain Diii returned to her inspection of the ship. Then she went to the helm and transmitted her updated crew roster to the main control base, encrypted only very lightly.
It certainly would not be bad to be known to have a human aboard.
Anybody in the mood for another Zizi story?
.
Crew satisfaction with meals increased by ~12% when the human drifter Zizi was working in the kitchens. She had the same base ingredients to work with that were aboard any ship, but her inventiveness with seasonings leant an artificial sense of variety to the meals.
Who would have thought to add sourleaf to a puddingfruit custard, or sweet red spice to a savory stew? And yet the combinations were delicious. When questioned, Zizi claimed to cook ‘by feel’ rather than following recipes. Most curious. Captain Diii’s favorite invention of Zizi’s was a thing she called ‘chai’, a rich spicy infusion in sweetened hot water. She said it was for relaxation, and Diii was not the only one who found themself sipping on a warm cup in the lounge at the end of shift.
Zizi was often in the lounge when she was off duty. She integrated with the crew very easily, making friendly overtures and playing games. She was already a master at Snap and Shuffle, the most popular games among the younger crew, and she also had a ‘pack of cards’, worn rectangles of stiff paper with drawings on them, and taught a few of the crew the human games ‘go fish’ and ‘texas hold ‘em’.
Zizi was even willing to help in duties that were not her own, if requested. When a hard-to-reach relay fuse burnt out, the engineers enlisted the reach of her long arms to replace it without having to take the wall apart. When Lucu, the youngest of the cleaning staff, injured their graspers and was barred from duty for five cycles, Zizi was one of the volunteers to perform their duties, and did so will skill and efficiency. When the algal vats in the air purification and reoxygenation plant needed turning, Zizi joined in, uncomplaining despite the heavy work.
All in all, having a human aboard was not as bad as Captain Diii had feared. It was, in fact, entirely pleasant–though that had more to do with this individual human than humans in general.
“You have many skills, human Zizi,” Captain Diii praised. Both she and Zizi were off their duty shift, and enjoying a cup of ‘chai’ together. Her mood spots were showing a mild violet to match the human’s hair, both of them happy to be sharing friendly companionship.
Zizi rubbed at the back of her neck, ducking a bit and her pseudo-mood-spots showing faint embarrassment. “Well, I’m a jack-of-all-trades, and you know what they say about those. Master of none.”
Ah, yes, Captain Diii had heart of the jack-of-all-trades subtype of human, able to achieve proficiency in a great number of skills. No wonder Zizi was so versatile and creative! This only confirmed to Diii that what she had discussed with Taa was the correct course of action, and her mood spots headed toward both excitement and worry.
“In another three cycles we will reach the supply depot,” Captain Diii began. “You have proven yourself a valuable member of the crew, and all would be sad to see you leave. We as a ship extend to you an offer: will you contract as a paid crew member for a full annual?”
The human Zizi blinked her eyes at Captain Diii several times, which body language she did not know how to interpret. “You’re offering to hire me?”
“Yes. I can offer standard wages and a private space in the crew quarters.” Captain Diii said. Taa had recently pair-bonded with two of the engineers, moving them into her rooms, so there was an available berth. It was not much, but it was all Captain Diii could offer.
“Wow, that would be perfect!” Zizi stated, before Diii could become too worried about her response. She bared her teeth in a wide smile, mood implants lighting up with joy. “I love this ship, and I was about out of money too, haha! Thank you so much Captain, I accept!”
Captain Diii’s mood spots flickered to joy as well, answering Zizi’s happiness with her own. She was absolutely certain she had made the correct decision. Zizi was certainly good for the ship and crew.
And maybe, if they were lucky, having such a high-quality human aboard would keep lower-quality humans from taking up residence.
.
The time has come. The time for more Zizi and Diii.
.
Hiring Zizi as a crewmember was an absolute success. Their very own ‘jack-of-all-trades’, able to fill nearly any role with little teaching, and at the standard wages for a single crewmember! Diii was proud to be able to claim her ship’s human as a valuable asset when other captains attempted to commiserate about humans boarding their ships. There was no shortage of jealous captains, but Diii had hired Zizi first.
Should Zizi follow her drifter inclinations to leave Diii’s crew once her contracted annual was over, she would be able to hire on to any number of other ships. Still, Diii was glad to have her while she could.
Zizi was far more aggressive than Taa would dare to be, dissuading other humans from choosing to board the ship. It was convenient to be able to assign her the task, and know that she could keep her species-mates away. Zizi also had a talent for haggling with Yikar merchants, common in some of the supply depots Diii’s ship frequented. With Zizi along, essentials could be purchased at an average of 14% lower price–not a difference to be underestimated!
Not to say that there were not occasional problems. Such was inevitable. Once, Zizi got into a screaming argument with another human who wished to board the ship, which became a physical altercation, which the supply depot’s security bots broke up. How utterly mortifying to have to explain to the security monitors that Zizi had been following orders, and that Diii wished her returned so that they might make an on-schedule departure. Diii’s spots were tinged with anxiety-orange for three full cycles afterward!
Another time, through either malice or inattention, a Yikar merchant sold Zizi an assortment of spices that included deadly poisons! Of course, they would not harm Zizi–some of them came from the human’s own eggworld. It was only luck that one of the senior cooks had been in the kitchen when Zizi happily brought in the spices to experiment with them, and recognized them for the poisons they were. Otherwise, the entire crew might have been lost! Everyone loved Zizi’s cooking. Thankfully, the ‘garlics’ were caught and properly disposed of before they were even opened, and Zizi did not make the same mistake again.
Most distressing was the time when, rather than keeping other humans out, Zizi brought an entire group of them into the ship. The ship had stopped at one of the most major travel hubs they frequented, and Zizi was greeted by a group of humans of assorted morphs, whom she clung to tight with her long arms, and pressed her mouth to in the human ‘kisses’. Her mood implants burned with joy.
They were a very loud group, and Zizi briefly introduced them as ‘my people’ before bringing them into the ship and entirely taking over the crew lounge. Their harsh barks, the human ‘laughter’, echoed through the entire ship at irregular intervals. They had some terrible sound technology, rhythmic beats and discordant screeching, which those few who were able to get close enough to the lounge to observe them reported that they moved their bodies to.
The sound assault never stopped, but it did become quieter as the cycle ended. Diii braved herself to peer into the lounge, to see that they had wires connected to the electronic implants in their skulls, and were manipulating them to effects they seemed to find humorous or pleasurable. It was barbaric, horrifying, and Diii retreated again before they saw her.
Diii had of course heard of the common human practice of altering their mental chemistry, through means both safe and deadly, for the sake of entertainment. She had thought their human was different. Not, it seemed, when she was among her own kind!
There was massive consternation throughout the crew. Of course there was. Humans were known for their pack-bonding, and as much as Zizi had seemed to bond to the crew, she was still human. What if she had chosen to bring all of ‘her people’ into the ship permanently? There might be enough room for them all in Zizi’s crew quarters, should they all have cocoons like her ‘hammock’ for sleeping in.
Thankfully, the group left after a cycle and a half–just before the ship was due to leave port. Zizi moved slowly and wore dark coverings over her eyes for another half cycle after that, claiming to suffer from ‘an overhang of cyberjacking’. She recovered after a single sleep cycle, and all in the ship returned to normal.
Still, as stressful as these few incidents were, Zizi was overall a very useful crew member. She worked hard, and was cheerful, and her good cheer transferred to all the crew. They all loved their Zizi, especially the younger crew, even though she was human.
Her good cheer was so ubiquitous, it became immediately obvious when it left her. This was five and six supply depot stops after the stressful invasion of ‘Zizi’s people’, a little over halfway through Zizi’s annual contract. Zizi requested time away from the ship at the fourth stop, and returned with frustration tinting her pseudo mood spots. She began to show anxiety before the fifth, again requested time away from the ship, and returned with her pseudo-mood-spots glowing with orange anxiety and bleeding into fear. Her anxiety increased before the sixth, and Captain Diii of course granted her the time she needed away from the ship.
None of her careful research could tell her why a previously happy human might become stressed, when nothing in the ship had changed. Truly, there was not much known of them other than their battle prowess and propensity toward boarding ships going the direction they wished to go.
Zizi was furious when she returned. Her long angular limbs moved sharply, pseudo-mood-spots flashing warning, and all the crew scattered away from her in terror. Zizi kicked the wall three times as soon as she was within the ship, her heavy boots leaving dents. She slammed her fists against the wall and screamed, a high and horrible sound. Taa, heavy now with gestating zygotes and so having the strongest protective instincts, fell to the floor, limbs curled in tight as she went catatonic in self-preservation, and she was only the first. Many of the younger crew followed her example. Captain Diii felt the instinct herself, but she straightened her limbs and respirated carefully, drawing on her captain’s training to resist it.
Then Zizi crumpled to the floor, as though mortally wounded. She barked, shoulders heaving. It was only when Diii gathered the presence of mind to realize that her mood implants were showing utter misery that she realized what Zizi was doing was the human ‘crying’, and not ‘laughing’. It was a thing that humans did when very distressed.
Captain Diii approached cautiously. “Crew Zizi? What is the reason for this distress?” she quarried. She reached out, carefully, to pat Zizi’s warm shoulder with one grasper.
Zizi turned to face her, flopping over to sit on the floor rather than kneel. Her eyes were overflowing with water, and she made a loud wet noise with her nose before wiping them with her sleeve. Then she seemed to notice the catatonic crew, and dropped her head down between her knees. Her mood implants looked more miserable than Diii had ever seen, and it only sharpened her own distress.
“Reproduction and excrement, captain. I’m sorry,” Zizi apologized. “I didn’t mean to… I’m ‘distressed’ because I can’t get my girl pills out here. Nowhere’s got them, and my stock’s running out.”
Captain Diii patted Zizi’s shoulder again, more lingeringly this time. It did not feel wrong, to take such a liberty, and it did seem to ease the sharpness of Zizi’s misery. And when Zizi reached up, covering Diii’s grasper with her own to hold it close, that did not feel wrong either.
“You require a ‘pills’?” Diii asked. “May I ask a clarification?”
“Yeah, it’s… reproduction, how would you understand it?” Zizi made the loud wet sound with her nose again, a sharp inhale. “They help me keep the right morph? I’d grow into a different one otherwise.”
“To be honest, human Zizi, it is very difficult to tell your official morphs apart.” The way the humans classified themselves defied all logic.
“Yeah, I know.” Zizi looked up at Diii, her mouth turning up on the edges just a bit, though her eyes were reddened and wet. “That’s part of why I love traveling with you guys. You take me at my word, what morph I am. But… it matters to me that my body doesn’t grow wrong?”
“Then it is a matter of crew wellness,” Captain Diii decided, firmly. She gave Zizi’s shoulder a squeeze. “You must tell me exactly what these ‘pills’ are, and we will send an urgent message ahead to our next depot requisitioning them. It must be paid for from the health and safety budget, of course. You are an important member of the crew.”
Zizi’s mouth fell open, her teeth showing behind her lax lips. She blinked at Captain Diii, mood implants showing shock and then a burst of joy as her eyes began to overflow again.
“I really need to hug you,” she said, and wrapped her long arms around Diii’s middle. She rested her head against Diii’s central bulk, like a hatchling seeking safety, and it felt very natural to Diii to wrap several graspers around her to hold her close.
“You’re the best, Captain. Just the best,” Zizi said. Best based on what rubric, she did not clarify, but human speech was well known to be full of hyperbole.
“You are most satisfactory as a crew member,” Captain Diii assured Zizi. “Now, will you help to revive the catatonic crew? I believe some of your ‘chai’ would go well, after such excitement.”
“Yes, Captain.” Zizi released Diii from the ‘hug’ and levered herself to her feet, then bent down to press one of her human ‘kiss’ to the top of Diii’s head. She wiped her eyes one last time, gave a salute, and headed for the kitchen.
There. The crisis was ended, as quickly as it had begun. Diii had no doubt that Zizi would prove as adept at soothing and reviving catatonic crew as she was everything else she set her hand to.
Though difficulties like this were bound to arise any time different species shared a space, Zizi’s inclusion in the crew could only be calculated to an overall benefit.
Captain Diii was more than lucky to have hired her before some other crew snapped her up.
.
FIN
I hope you enjoyed. I don’t think I have any more Zizi and Diii stories to share.
Love my writing? My first novel has some very fun humans and aliens cohabitating (and loving each other), if that’s your jam. You can preorder it [here]!
The last time I saw this post going around, there were a whole bunch of comments expressing shock that not all borders are heavily restricted. And while it did sadden me to see so many people unaware that not all borders are like…whichever borders it was they were thinking of†, it also saddened me to see them walking away with the idea that the intra-EU method is necessarily what it means to have a non-heavily-restricted border.
So, I’m repurposing this post I made in 2015.
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Shown above is the border between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario. (Note that my description of what border crossings are *typically* like will be describing Niagara Falls, but Sarnia is the picture I had lying around, and the one time I went through Sarnia the experience was about the same.)
The border crossing itself took maybe two minutes, and mostly because the border guard chatted about the good things he’s heard about our town. One minute for the crossing itself is more typical, plus another minute for each car ahead of you in line (but we usually cross on weekday afternoons, when the lines tend to be short).
Usually they’ll ask you where you’re going (or where you went), why, and for how long. (*Occasionally* they won’t even do that, if you show the passport of the country you’re entering, but for the most part they still do it if you’re a citizen.) Most answers I have had cause to give (“shopping for a few hours”, “visiting relatives for a week”, “Disney World!”), they just nod and wave you through, and possibly make a note so they can check if you tell the same story on your way back. If you show a U.S. passport and tell them you’re going to Canada because you live there, they will sometimes ask why you moved, but they don’t press further if you just say you like it there.
While they reserve the right to search your stuff if you give inconsistent answers to their questions or have clearly-visible contraband or maybe show a passport from a country they’re on shaky terms with or something, they do not search you by default. If you went shopping, they ask you how much you bought (and sometimes to see your receipts as well), and if your answers indicate that you’re over the duty-free limit on anything they send you over to a nearby building to pay your import taxes, which takes a few extra minutes.
—
I just wanted people to know that border security isn’t binary, that there exist places where there *are* guards and you *do* have to show a passport but it’s *not* a big ordeal.
I don’t have any strong opinions about what borders should be like in general: I don’t feel that I’m well enough informed on that, and TBH I’m mostly just trying to survive right now and don’t really have the energy to get well informed. (though I’d certainly be annoyed if they started making it an ordeal to go grocery shopping in New York)
But if you’re looking to develop an opinion on border security, please remember that “more borders should be like US/Canada” is a possible stance. There’s more than one way to guard a border, and you can think some ways are going too far without wanting to go full EU (and conversely, you can want to not go full EU but still think some ways are going too far).
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†If you’re someone who was shocked, let me know which borders you think of when thinking of country borders. I’m curious to see where exactly our experiences differ.
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#oh look an original post #(close enough) #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #the more you know
Buckle in, because this is going to be a LONG post. And I’m going to talk about BOG MUMMIES.
For reference, the hair in question:
This updo was actually what convinced me to grow my hair long in the first place (back in ye old 2008), and it has been strongly influential in my personal aesthetic ever since.
The story starts in 1938. Actually, it starts even earlier than that. In ~280 B.C., a woman died, and her body was placed in a bog, where it stayed until it was discovered in 1938, so well-preserved that the hair was still there.
This bog mummy is referred to as the Elling Woman. Here’s a bit about her.
The article talks a bit about her hair, but it’s kind of an unsatisfactory description. I found out about it when the article reached the Long Hair Community Forum in 2008, resulting in a 40-page (and counting!) thread wherein a bunch of long-haired women figured out how to recreate the hairstyle.
The ladies of LHC looked at the images of the hair, and were like: “Yep, that’s a rope braid.” “Here’s how you could do a 7-strand braid with 2-3-2 sections.” Etc. And basically, they tested out different versions, and came up with something that was cool-looking, comfortable, and practical.
Here’s the ~official~ reconstruction on the Tollund Man website:
And here’s a (very confusing) diagram of how the style is supposedly constructed:
There are several different recreations of the style floating around the LHC and youtube and the wider internet. The style also looks and works differently with different types of hair. I had to grow mine out until I could make a waist-length braid before I could really successfully do it with my hair, but my hair is medium-thick and fairly fine, so YMMV. Some people on the LHC did it with much shorter and thicker hair.
The LHC thread about it is a fun read, but it’s a bit long and meandering, and there are several conflicting sets of instructions there, so I’ll just talk about the method that I use. If you want a video aid, what I do is basically this, except I do rope braids for the bottom 2/3s instead of English braids, and I finish it by wrapping the thick braid around the middle braid, like this (I’ve never actually tried that particular method for forming the big braid, but finishing up the bun is the same).
Here’s a written description:
Take the top 1/3 of your hair and braid it in a basic 3-strand braid (a.k.a. an English braid) down to a little past your neck. Tie it off so that it stays braided while you braid the rest of your hair.
Separate your remaining hair into two sections (each about 1/3 of your total hair), one on the left side, and one on the right.
Braid each section into a rope braid (a two-strand braid that’s made by twisting both sections in the same direction, then twisting them together in the opposite direction). Tie them off so that they stay braided. Also, I’ve found that it’s better to make the rope braids so that they’re coiled in opposite directions.
Take the two rope braids, and braid them with the top/middle section of your hair that you’d braided into an English braid. You’re basically making one big English braid. After I’ve started braiding it, I slip off the elastic tie that I’d used to hold the middle braid together temporarily.
Braid it as a 3-strand (that’s made up of two 2-strand rope braids, and one one-strand section that started as a 3-strand braid, so it’s sort of a 7-strand braid!) English braid all the way to the end of your hair. Take out the elastic ties around the two rope braids when you get to them.
Tie the whole thing off with a single elastic tie at the end.
To make the bun, you lift up the simple English braid (the one you made in step one), and you wrap the thick, complicated braid around it in a spiral.
Tuck the end in as best as you can, and then secure it with whatever you want. I’ve used everything from a hair stick, a hair comb, a few bobby pins, and even a single barrette before.
You’re done!
There wasn’t any evidence of any hair pins or anything like that to secure the hair found with the Elling Woman’s body. If your hair is very oiled and/or very unwashed, it might be able to hold itself in place without needing to be tied or secured. As it is, this style does work better if your hair has been oiled, or hasn’t been washed for several days.
This hairstyle is really cool for a lot of reasons, but it’s also extremely comfortable! The middle braid essentially holds the whole thing up, so you don’t experience any of the pulling you feel with some buns.
Basically, if I had to wear the same hairstyle for thousands of years, I’d definitely pick this one. It’s beautiful, versatile, comfortable, and has a really cool backstory.
Tags:
#hair #the more you know #neat #history #I am probably physically capable of doing this #but I don’t think I enjoy decorating myself enough for it to be worth the effort #(this was in fact my first thought upon seeing the picture) #(and reading the instructions did not change my mind) #that being said I’m glad this exists for people who are into that sort of thing
(sorry about the tininess of the picture: Tumblr is not very good at images significantly wider than they are tall. you may need to click on it to see it clearly.)
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#notice how the number on the right is bigger than the number on the left #what a lovely novelty #(fun fact: removing any one person’s effect on the income would be enough to drop it below expenses) #(this is very much a group effort) #(while Brother is by far the highest earner we are *all* of vital importance) #((ftr ”outstanding” deposits here mean paycheques sitting in people’s wallets at June 30th)) #((if we were living paycheque-to-paycheque or otherwise needed that money available ASAP we *could* easily)) #((have gotten it into the bank by the end of the quarter)) #((and I’m not going to make our income appear artificially low just because we hadn’t gotten around to visiting the bank that fortnight)) #(((don’t worry I remembered to remove the outstanding deposits from *last* quarter from the calculations so as not to double-count them))) #adventures in human capitalism #oh look an update #tag rambles #oh look an original post #\o/
conditions under which i encountered this message: i answered an ask on mobile, then reblogged it on mobile and added two images (from my phone gallery) to the body of the reblog. went back on desktop because i wanted to add it to my #pop tag, which is where popular posts go. link to post (screwed up on my desktop theme sorry)
alright so PSA apparently now if you make a post on the tumblr app you can only edit it from the tumblr app.
basically, stop using the tumblr app if you ever want to edit your posts, ever! do you like to edit things? update them? want to correct facts you posted at a later time? want to correct a typo without deleting the post? does typing on a tiny screen hurt, so you would rather edit on desktop later? add tags? delete tags? all of these and more are now not possible on desktop if you make the initial post on the tumblr app for who knows why.
this extremely sucks as someone who is not always able to sit in front of a computer for health reasons, as most of my posts are initially made on mobile and then edited later on desktop. cool thanks! great
I just learned the hard way that even if you ONLY use the Browser version of Tumblr- if you reblog / reply to a post created by the app, and then try to edit your reply you’ll get the same error message.
I live in a deadzone, no smartphone service. I literally CANNOT use the app version to edit my reply / reblog. Since so many people use the app this has essentially crippled me against editing my replies to literally anything. I have to delete the reblog and write it over to make the slight edit. This is ridiculous.
My best guess?They’re doing this in order to get the people to use the app most of the time, instead of the desktop client. Why would they do that? Well, for one, the app contains ads that are much more difficult to block than those on desktop (you need at least a rooted phone and a specialized program like AdAway to be able to block in-app ads on Android, for example). Secondly, maintaining two codebases, one for the desktop site, one for the app, is likely something they want to do away with, particularly if they ever start implementing cost-cutting measures. Which, again, would mean them finding ways to shunt as much of the user-base to the app as possible, by making use of the desktop page more and more onerous.
Looking at the comments, it seems that someone else has made a similar point:
This is, yet again, another reason why groups such as fannish communities would be best served by finding alternative havens, preferably ones that respect desktop users and don’t knee-cap us just because ‘app development is where it’s now at.’
Yup, I got this earlier. I often save stuff to my drafts on mobile to tag and reblog later on desktop, and it looks like I can no longer do that.
I emailed Support to ask about it and got a wishy-washy message back about how they were “testing new ways to display Tumblr” and that I may see “these options go back to their original design”.
While this is obviously a functionality thing and not a display thing, hopefully this indicates that it’s not permanent yet? It definitely couldn’t hurt for other folks who are having trouble to message Support too.
Tags:
#The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #(I never use the app) #(on those rare occasions that I access Tumblr through my smartphone it’s with a browser) #((I don’t actually understand what lack of cell service has to do with anything)) #((it’s not like smartphones are incapable of using Wi-Fi)) #((hell you could probably get wired Internet to work if you relayed it through a PC or something)) #((but I do hear that Tumblr is not an easy app to run and a fair number of phones cannot handle it)) #((so the gist of thenightling’s point remains))
Brinens and Things 