hydriotaphia
a buried urn on the internet
hydriotaphia on AO3 || DW
12283 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
nirwere-blog
Nirwere Rappeur tchadien
fe-li-ci-ty
You'll always be my girl, Felicity..
jeffau
Untitled
ourcasino
Our Casino
ghoulgirlwrites
Writing by Hayley
Text
Poetry? More like CROWETRY!
Read Crow Time // Read Namesake // Patreon // Store
Crow Time Plush is now up for sale!
9K notes
·
View notes
Text
All of y'all need to put down what you're doing and go watch Farscape
Fascinated by stories of the - I guess you'd call it the "stolen identity" genre, like, of the Anastasia Romanov variety. But - from both sides.
Your husband has been at war for thirty years. You married when you were teenagers. The man who returns bearing his name looks... plausible, you don't remember his eyes being quite so blue, but it's been thirty years and it's not like you could ever afford to have a portrait painted. He knows your name and the names of your children and your parents, but there are curious gaps in what he remembers. But war does things to the mind. And if he's kinder than you remember? Kind enough that, maybe, you let yourself believe...
No one has ever looked twice at you, since you're just the maid, until the day a revolutionary bomb goes off, blowing a crater in the summer palace. The famously reclusive duchess and the rest of her household lie dead in the rubble. You know that you and she were the same dress size. You know where her jewels are kept. Most importantly, you know the location of the secret tunnel that leads down to the docks, and to a life overseas that would be torturously hard going for a poor maid, especially one suspected as a thief, but a lot more comfortable for a royal in exile...
The old king's most faithful retainer swears this is the heir to the throne, raised in secret and trained to one day step into his father's shoes. As the usurper as dragged off the throne, she screams that the old king's children are all dead, she made sure of it; no one pays her any heed. (Maybe they should have...)
The man in the tavern is buying drinks for the whole bar before he sets sail tomorrow for the far side of the world. He's got it all figured out - a ship of his own, retirement to a tropical paradise when he gets sick of the pirating life. His lip curls as he talks about the stultifying boredom of the aristocratic world he's already left behind. You find out that his parents recently died, and the estate is in the care of his younger sister, who was only six when her brother first left home two decades since. Between the lines, they sound like a good family; they sound like they love him, the way your family never did. Your heart aches. He shows you portraits, letters, before shoving them carelessly back in his coat pocket. They would be so easy to lift...
It's a surprisingly common concept and I just love it. It's The Return of Martin Guerre; it's multiple 90s romcoms; Agatha Christie pulls it half a dozen times. Sooner or later, it crops up in fanfic for just about any fandom with a royal or aristocratic main character.
And I can see why, because there's so much richness to it. From the outside, it can be anything from a horror story to an unlikely love story; from the perspective of the person pulling off the con, a heist movie or a tragedy or a heartwarming tale of found family. And then there are the longer-term implications: What happens if you wear a mask so long that it becomes who you are? What happens if you come to love the "replacement" to the point where you don't want to find out the truth? What is it like to uncover such a deception a century down the line, to find out that your great-grandfather... wasn't?
Just. Identity stories, man. <3
10K notes
·
View notes
Text
every morning i wake up and make the worst possible time management decisions anyone has ever made
201K notes
·
View notes
Text
This war has to stop. Israel is stopping aid from getting into Gaza and people are starving.
7K notes
·
View notes
Text
they used to make smackable technology. you used to be able to hit your tv when it didn't work good.
88K notes
·
View notes
Text
I was at a courthouse once, and saw an indigenous australian woman in a dressing gown very carefully and gingerly making her way down the steps outside the courthouse, surrounded by family who were helping her down the stairs. We asked if she was OK, because she looked awful. She looked like she should have been wrapped up in bed with blankets and hot soup, not on the steps of a courthouse.
One of her family told us that she had given birth yesterday evening, but that Child Protection services had taken her baby away with no warning, claiming that she wasnt prepared to look after him. What had happened, is that she'd literally only just given birth -- hadn't even passed the afterbirth yet, is holding her blood-coated, crying, newborn baby to her chest -- and a nurse asked what her feeding plan was. She was tired from the birth and distracted by the brand new baby in her arms and thrown off by the timing of the question, but still, she managed to answer, and said she planned to breastfeed him whenever he was hungry.
Well apparently that wasn't enough of a plan for the hospital staff, who reported her and claimed that she was unprepared to look after the child, and claimed that had no social supports, and that the baby was at risk if left with her. All because a brand new mother, 30 seconds after giving birth, didn't have a PowerPoint presentation ready to go that cited the timing cycle she would feed her kid on, and instead simply said that she would feed him when he was hungry.
Child Protection services showed up, took her kid, and she was told to show up to court the next day to contest custody if she wanted her baby back.
So a woman who had given birth less than 24 hours prior was forced to rally her family and show up to court to prove that she a) had a feeding plan for the child, and b) had enough social supports to justify reclaiming her baby.
It was one of the most appalling things I'd ever seen. I don't even know if she won her case. They didn't know at the time we saw them, and after that brief interaction on the stairs, i never saw them again. I sincerely hope she got her newborn baby back.
That was about 5 years ago. And the exact same kind of thing is still happening today.
News broke today from a South Australian whistle-blower of the appalling treatment new mothers frequently receive, including hospital staff taking the baby away from the mother "for medical tests," only for the mother to then be told, with absolutely no prior warning, that the baby was not going to be returned to her.
Here's the article, and here are some excerpts:
20K notes
·
View notes
Text
You're passing through Wonka's factory and through a doorway you see what is distinctly the body of Christ being fed into a big wacky machine
59K notes
·
View notes
Text
The new, updated version of my Dream Library print is available here with 3 background colour options!
Which would you most want? I would personally love to read the potentially award winning book that I occasionally have vague ideas about writing..
Instagram / Shop
27K notes
·
View notes
Text
its so fucking funny how the normal workday is 9-5 so like
if you need anyone to do work at your house e.g. a plumber
oops the time they want to come in is also the time you're at work
there are a bunch of minor ways that society is designed around the assumption there will be someone at your house to answer the door at all times of the day
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
just so you know how these campuses deal with actual antisemitism
5K notes
·
View notes
Text
me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home
me when I get home:
46K notes
·
View notes