grubwizard:

if your female character doesn’t look like she has lived the life she leads and you can’t get a sense for her actual personality by looking at her because you’re too focused on making her pretty and perfect and palatable it’s bad character design and you should feel bad

gooseweasel:

Hey so friendly reminder about voting and elections that I haven’t seen going around yet but is SUPER IMPORTANT.

Watch what you wear and say while you’re waiting in line for the voting booth/at the polls. It is against federal law to do anything that might be considered campaigning once you’re there, and since we know that voter suppression is the name of the game this election, there will be people looking for ANY reason to remove you from the polling place. And they will nitpick. You have a shirt with a artistic picture of donkey on it? You’re visibly supporting the Democrats, you’re disqualified from voting. Want to wear a Black Lives Matter shirt? Not there you don’t. They’ll call it intimidation and kick you out. Pins, buttons, stickers, none of it. Wear the most bland, plain clothes you can imagine. 

And then keep your mouth shut. Even the slightest hint of discussion about which candidate you’re voting for can get used against you. Don’t assume the people around you are safe to discuss it with. You might be overheard. There WILL people watching for these things, hoping to get rid of anyone they can. Voter suppression isn’t just about making registration impossible. It happens at the polling stations too. Be smart, be bland, be quiet, and make sure your vote gets in. 

Also- and I have seen this mentioned but it bears repeating- DO NOT TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR BALLOT. EVER. It’ll also disqualify your vote. Take a selfie when you’re out of their with your fun little sticker. 

The Storm

“My feet hurt.” said Lo. Lo, or Little One, was officially named Zoe, but no one called her that outside of the most dire of emergencies. For months everyone had joked about how they’d need to change her birth certificate one day to match her “real name”; as if anyone was issued birth certificates anymore.

“I know, Little One. But we have to keep moving, the storm wall’s too close right now. Your turn to sit on the truck starts in ten minutes,” said Rory, wincing as a bump in the road- if you could call it that- caused em to dig eir thumb too hard into eir foot as ey tried to massage it.

“It’s not even moving right now!” Lo whined, giving Rory her best puppy eyes.

“It is and you know it. It’s always moving. If we were close enough to see it move without Katie’s binoculars, we’d be fucked.”

Aidyn, surely the only person left on earth who still cared about not swearing in front of children, shot Rory a glare. Ey promptly ignored it.

“But my feet really, really hurt!”

Sighing, Rory put eir shoes back on eir feet and jumped down onto the ground behind the truck, carefully lifting Lo into the spot where ey had been sitting. Once Lo was safely seated on the back of the truckbed, ey moved to eir usual walking spot near the left front corner of the small column of people that trailed behind the biggest passengers truck.

“You shouldn’t spoil her like that, you know.” said Phoenix, pushing her way up to walk next to Rory.

“What are you, her mother?”

Phoenix rolled her eyes but didn’t acknowledge the quip. “She’s getting to be too old to be babied like this. Are you going to let her sit all the time when she’s Mike’s age?” Mike was 14 and currently driving one of the supply trucks.

“If she picks up driving as fast as Mike did, she can sit all she wants, long as it’s in the driver’s seat.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you s-”

A loud voice cut her off. “Ruins ahead! Ruins ahead! Scouts, scouts, anyone? Anyone?”

Rory raised eir hand, grateful for an excuse to avoid another repeat of the You Can’t Baby Lo Forever, Rory argument. “I’ll go!”

A brief jog through the mud was all it took for Rory and the small handful of other volunteers to reach what had once been a small cluster of houses. Like every other sign of civilization, they had long since been devastated by the enormous storm that now covered at least a third of the planet. Thank the gods for the Eye, Rory thought, glancing at the eye wall in the distance. Rory was 25, old enough to remember before the runaway greenhouse effect, but Little One hadn’t been born until after humanity was reduced to caravans forever running to stay in the center of the eye. Even Mike’s earliest memories were of near-constant storms, although he did recall some things from before the superstorm had formed. If Rory could do anything to give either of them any semblance of a childhood, ey would. Wish it wasn’t hell on my feet, though.