Small Town Grocery Store Stories: LGBTQ+ Friendly Edition

TIL astronaut Jack Schmidt discovered he was allergic to moon dust, which is a thing millions of other people have probably gone their whole lives never knowing.

can we take a moment to just think about how incredibly scary magical healing is in-context?

You get your insides ripped open but your friend waves his hands and your flesh just pulls back together, agony and evisceration pulling back to a ‘kinda hurts’ level of pain and you’re physically whole, with the 100% expectation that you’ll get back up and keep fighting whatever it was that struck you down the first time.

You break your arm after falling somewhere and after you’re healed instead of looking for ‘another way around’ everybody just looks at you and goes “okay try again”.

You’ve been fighting for hours, you’re hungry, thirsty, bleeding, crying from exhaustion, and a hand-wave happens and only two of those things go away. you’re still hungry, you’re still weak from thirst, but the handwave means you have ‘no excuse’ to stop.

You act out aggressively maybe punch a wall or gnash your teeth or hit your head on something and it’s hand-waved because it’s ‘such a small injury you probably can’t even feel it anymore’ but the point was that you felt it at all?

Your pain literally means nothing because as long as you’re not bleeding you’re not injured, right? Here drink this potion and who cares about the emotional exhaustion of that butchered village, why are you so reserved in camp don’t you think it’s fun retelling that time you fell through a burning building and with a hand-wave you got back up again and ran out with those two kids and their dog? 

Older warriors who get a shiver around magic-users not because of the whole ‘fireball’ thing but the ‘I don’t know what a normal pain tolerance is anymore’ effect of too much healing. Permanent paralysis and loss of sensation in limbs is pretty much a given in the later years of any fighter’s life. Did I have a stroke or did the mage just heal too hard and now this side of my face doesn’t work? No i’m not dead from the dragon’s claws but I can’t even bend my torso anymore because of how the scar tissue grew out of me like a vine.

Magical healing is great and keeps casualties down.

But man.

That stuff is scary.

18th Century Manners

I love Regency Romance, don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my all-time favourite genres, but I really feel like there are not enough people who appreciate the non-romance shenanigans that the rigid code of politeness in force in Approximate-Regency-Period England allows. Where are the stories about:

1. Someone accidentally wanders into the wrong social group without realizing it, Certain Things are never openly discussed, ergo two discreetly gay dudes have been effectively members of a smuggling operation for like 4 years without anyone noticing the misunderstanding. A Discreet Communication Carried For A Friend is a  Discreet Communication Carried For A Friend, after all. 

2. Elderly matriarch of large and successful family is discovered on her death to be the widow of the wrong Sir Henry, at no point did anyone notice because It’s Rude To Pry, entire family has been slavishly obeying the whims of a completely unrelated stranger for 30 years purely because she turned up and announced that she was Eccentric Uncle Henry’s widow. 

3. Trans dude makes his first foray out in male attire, meets a bunch of Lively Young Gentlemen while out drinking, they’re friends now, his entire made-up-on-the-spot backstory is accepted without question, nobody questions him for the next 50 years because he’s Lord So-and-so’s Dear Chum and therefore is just presumed to have been vetted at some point. Once or twice a Fellow Chum finds out, is mildly shocked, and then Never Speaks Of It Again Because One Does Not. 

4. Being a werewolf is HELL when it takes 2-3 hours to get dressed to socially acceptable standards and all the best parties are on full moon nights so people can see to drive home. 

5. Angry ex shows up to be poisonously sweet at a party, it is Literally Unthinkable to be so rude as to tell them to leave. 

6. All your friends are 100% down to help each other cover up a scandal. So far your friends-group has concealed 1 lesbian affair, 2 het affairs, smuggling, extortion, and 2 murders. 

7. Being an obnoxious old lady is super fun when everyone else is too polite to Sass You Back. You eventually find a stroppy young woman who drops even sicker burns than you do and adopt her as your heir. 

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth.

hey, @bunjywunjy - this might be your jam (and any other dinosaur enthusiasts, it’s a heck of a read)

pining is 100000% the most important aspect of pre-relationship fic for me. good-natured whole-hearted pining filled with lovelorn gazing and chest aching and fluttering touches, that’s my top priority. i was put on this earth to watch characters suffer over the profundity of their love for another person. unrequited love is why god made me. characters finding out that their feelings are reciprocated after long months/years of suffering is why the universe was assembled from nothingness. amen.

Phoenix necklace by Lorenz Baumer

Tips That Can Save Your Kid’s Life.

twitter operates on a kind of inverse of bidoof's law where you'll see some batshit hot take and check the profile but instead of porn you find out that they're like a state senator or a ceo or something

i hope you heal from the things no one ever apologized for