There was one of those hyperspecific polls that had an option like “your grandfather told you war stories that he never told anyone else” and now I feel like I have to tell the story about how a spider saved my grandpa’s life in WWII and how my family doesn’t kill spiders because we owe our existence to that One Single Spider
So to set the scene, it’s the height of WWII in France and my grandpa—a 6'3" 20 year old upper Michigan farm boy—has been separated from his company after their temporary camp was shelled. My grandpa (who, I have to add, was nicknamed ‘the Suicide Kid’ at this point because he worked in demolitions and bomb interception and kept taking the jobs no one wanted with the expectation that he was never going home anyway) is scared out of his wits, wandering around the French countryside alone. He has to move at night and sleep in barns and sheds during the day to hide from people who most definitely want him dead.
On one of these days, he finds a farmhouse of a very jittery couple who agree to let him sleep in the barn, with the conditions that he sleeps in the barn loft and if he’s found, they disavow all knowledge that he was there. He agrees, because he’s exhausted and will sleep in a hay pile if he has to. My grandpa manages to fit all six foot three inches of himself into a feed trough stored upstairs and tries to get some sleep.
However, right when he’s half-snoozing, he hears motors outside and sure enough, here are some very angry officers of mixed Nazi and Vichy make confronting the couple saying someone up the road spotted an American soldier walking this way. They wouldn’t know anything about that, would they? No, of course not.
All the while, my grandpa—now trying to figure out how to either escape the barn unseen or how to fight off six? seven? eight? people at once—freezes up and waits for the inevitable. While he does, a HUGE spider crawls next to his head and onto the loft railing. For one second, he thinks about swatting it away, but that would risk him being seen and killed.
So, instead, he lays there and waits to either fight to the death or get executed in a feed trough. And while he lays there, the spider starts making a huge web on the railing. My grandpa’s transfixed by this thing. He watches her go around and around, building a solid web before plopping herself off to one side and waiting for breakfast. At the same time, the officers finally go into the barn.
My grandpa can hear them searching around, turning over crates and checking animal pens. Then, he hears one say to check the loft.
And then another say, “Don’t bother. Look at the spiderwebs up there. No one’s been there in a while.”
And they leave.
Because my grandpa didn’t swat the spider away and let her build her web, the officers thought no one was there and left him alone. They drive off and my grandpa immediately thanks the farmer couple and hauls ass out of there as soon as he can.
After this, my grandpa refused to kill any spider, and his kids did the same. Because if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have lived and would never have had kids or grandkids. So we owe her one.
Just saw a TikTok complaining about ‘kitten’ as a pet name in fanfiction and while I do agree with their discomfort on that one the comments were FULL of people mentioning all the other common pet names ?? Like honey babe baby sweetheart etc ?? Is your partner just supposed to call you by your name the whole time ????????
God SORRY to drag this out bc I’m not doing this to like screenshot and expose people for having opinions I don’t like BUT I rounded up the wildest ones I found and blurred the names so no one can be mean to them for it I hope that’s okay 😭
Yeah a very common and go-to pet name is actually just one big joke. Everyone was tricking you the whole time!! Pranked <3
I can’t imagine the horrors that this would entail… I don’t wanna hear my name unless you’re reading off a legal document
“TW: British People”
Lettuce gives me such a big ick in salad I swear 😭
WHAT DO U WANT TO BE CALLED 😭 PLEASE YOU HAVE TO GIVE US SOME OPTIONS 😭
the kids are not alright, petnames are fucking normal you little freaks
This is the greatest map I have ever seen. I want an interactive version where you can click on any city in the world and get a pop-up list of all the climate-equivalent cities.
so it turns out this exists and it makes a fine rabbit hole for passing the time during a conference call
OK, this is super neat and also a great tool for writers’
“can’t you just enjoy things?” i enjoy critically engaging with media I love… it’s not the same as being hater. but I also enjoy being a hater so fuck you
I found out what lesbian means today, Ella told me at recess. It’s unfair because girls are so much prettier than guys. It’s like comparing a flower to an old shoe. But I’m not a lesbian, almost 99% of my friends are guys.
Shakespeare could only aspire to this level of dramatic irony.
truly my LEAST favorite form of advertisement these days is the faux-tiktoker/influencer who is here to Sell Me Something. the “omg unbox my Pureology ™ skincare haul!!!” “doing the #NespressoChallenge!!!” “you guys will not BELIEVE what i got from shein-“ like its scary. its WEIRD. not only do i have no idea who these perfectly manicured, babytalking people are they feel less like real people than even an actual advertiser does. stop trying to make me believe you are my friend. you are something inhuman to me. you are a changeling. you are a brand wearing ill fitting human skin and i see its skeletal shape shift beneath the surface.
it’s so fucked up when you see something you KNOW is a portal to somewhere but you can’t figure out how to activate it. this is the most frustrating feeling that plagues modern man.
I’ve seen this post easily 12 times now and EVERY TIME it’s just a different cat looking at a different door.
I have a lot to say about the connections between the Kaveh info that released today and Alhaitham (and what we know about their relationship with each other). I’m not looking at this in a romantic way necessarily, but just in how tightly knotted their characters are with one another.
First, Kaveh’s title and description:
“Empyrean Reflection”, or more simply, ‘Heavenly Reflection’. This ties to his constellation, “Paeadisaea”, which is the genus for the birds of paradise. 'Paradise’ is a more general term for Heaven, but neither of these are particularly divine in nature in a deity sense. Personally, I think they might be denoting a reference to the Golden Ratio, AKA: Divine Proportion. It’s a mathematic concept often used in artistry, which matches well with Kaveh’s archectural design profession and his education from the Ksharewar Darshan, which is the Sumeru school of technology.
So that’s what it means for Kaveh’s own characterisation/lore imo, but it also links to Alhaitham. Firstly, Alhaitham’s constellation is also a bird (Vultur Volans, or essentially 'vulture’ even though his name means hawk), which is a nice match to Kaveh’s birds of paradise. But more interestingly, this is what Alhaitham’s Character Story 4 has to say about why he lets Kaveh live with him:
He views Kaveh as a “mirror”. What is Kaveh’s title again? “Empyrean Reflection”.
And the mirroring is all over the place. Here’s a section from Alhaitham’s drip marketing from December:
He is
Largely unknown
Only puts in the minimum effort required to do his job
People don’t pay attention to him
In contrast, here is a corresponding section that came out with Kaveh’s drip today:
He is
Extremely well known
Incredibly hardworking
People pay attention to him even when he isn’t asking for it, as a by-product of his career
Basically exact opposites; complete mirrors. Here’s something else, first from the end of Alhaitham’s description and then second from the end of Kaveh’s:
Alhaitham’s life is super comfortable, ideal in every way he desires. Meanwhile Kaveh is practically crippled by anxiety, made uncomfortable by his life circumstances. The wording itself is mirrored!
Ofc, Kaveh and Alhaitham provide one another’s corresponding quotes in the drip marketing. Here is what Kaveh has to say about Alhaitham:
This is an amusing quote, basically a backhanded compliment of “oh he’s very smart but he’s too self-centred so his talents are made worthless since he never uses them to help others”. Alhaitham’s quote about Kaveh goes like this:
Alhaitham is a little more wordy so I’ll simplify -
Talented people have a lot of outside pressure on them, which can be a burden
However, letting other people get you down is a character flaw, not an inherent part of being talented
Kaveh disagrees
Once again talking about an individual’s talents and how worthwhile they are in the context of a society. Where Kaveh complains that Alhaitham can never accomplish anything worthwhile with his skills because he doesn’t take other people into account, Alhaitham argues that Kaveh gets nothing done as a consequence of listening too much to other people’s expectations. It’s not surprising, then, that Kaveh is bankrupt but successful and Alhaitham is comfortable but unknown.
It’s like - can these two stop talking about each other for five minutes? Anyway, this post turned out to be more of a collection of Kavetham quotes, but I think it’s hard not to draw comparisons. I’m looking forward to seeing Kaveh’s actual voicelines if there’s this much material just from one marketing post lol
