@animatedamerican / animatedamerican.tumblr.com
someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!
me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???
generally not super into shapeshifter characters being revealed to have like a singular True Form. isnt it much more interesting to imagine a creature so fluid and ever-changing that even they cant identify any one body as the "true" self, or simply dont see the need to?
is this you? yes. this one too? yes. but then which one is the real you? define "real" define "you" theyre all me. even the ones that are someone else? especially those.
tip: everything you pretend to becomes a part of what you are and even the facade you wear for the sake of deception reveals a crucial truth.
also: the self is a multi-faceted, ever-shifting thing
I’m not a shapeshifter but if you pointed to a photo of me ten years ago, five years ago, two months ago, and insisted that was my “true form,” I would tell you to fuck off.
One of my D&D characters is a changeling, and they tried to explain it to the rest of the party once, and it was like --
-- okay, you wear different clothes, right? And most of the time you'll wear an outfit, but sometimes you might wear a costume, that's meant to make you look like something you're not. And sometimes you might wear a disguise, that's meant to make you look like a specific someone who isn't you. But it's not like there's just one set of clothes that's your True Outfit and everything else is a costume or a disguise, right? Or are you only the Real You if you're naked?
This is me. This is also me. This one is me too, yeah. This one? Not really me, but I can carry it off, don't you think?
Today I’m thinking about hobbits.
For all the criticism that can be levied against Tolkien’s work and the LOTR movies based on it, there’s something that occurred to me just recently that I find strangely refreshing.
The hobbits eat. They are a culture that revolves to a large degree around food—bountiful food, frequent food. They are not, by and large, a skinny folk, but tend to carry weight with them. Hobbits are stout.
And the narrative does not say they’re bad for this.
They get hungry more often than humans, and eat many more meals in a day.
The narrative shows that this clashes with a questing life, but it does not say they’re bad for this. When Merry and Pippin moan about second breakfast, the joke isn’t “ha ha hobbits are gluttons” so much as it’s “ha ha culture shock/these yokels are out of their depth because they’ve lived a relatively very easy life, entirely unlike Strider”.
They eat large amounts at a time. Their larders are the size of living rooms and their everyday meals are feasts.
And the narrative does not say they’re bad for this.
So just this once, we have an entire culture of some-degree-of-fat people who eat big and eat often and have something of a fixation on food, and while the narrative does show that these ingrained habits are the result of a life of comfort and security that they must, with difficulty and understandable complaint, leave behind when they go on their journeys beyond their own borders for entirely practical reasons, it does not judge them as lazy, fat gluttons who were Wrong About It and must become human-grade health nuts in order to be worthy of heroism, or use them as a well of fat jokes.
Bilbo tricked a dragon while sporting a paunch.
It’s not every day you get a story like that.
Also, if you were a guest of a hobbit, they would make sure you had more than enough food—they would pile so much food on your plate and fuss over you if you were thin by their standards, because clearly this meant that you weren’t getting enough food, and as your host, it’s their responsibility and delight to make sure that you’re happy and cared for, and have the best rooms with the windows that have the nice views, and they’d give you the best food they have, and they would pamper you, and if you were going to be in town for a while, soon enough everyone would be inviting you over for meals or for afternoon tea or something because word got around the grapevine that you need a little extra food, and they would treat you better than family, because that’s how hobbits are. And if you were what hobbits considered a healthy weight, they would still do all of the above! Only a little differently, because of different reasons, because they’re a community and hobbit manners are Important, and if you’ve been accepted in the community, then they’re building you a social calendar because they’re very sociable and know that you might not know everyone yet, and everyone is just going to love you—though you will find occasional family rivalries, as they are prone to happen, and they will mostly manifest in bake-offs and Who Can Host The Best Party
If you want to insult a Hobbit, you don’t insult their family, you insult their hospitality (and if you’re really wanting to commit social suicide, criticising their larder is guaranteed to start a fight that will last generations)
Also, consider the pride a Hobbit would take in showing a visitor their garden. Not just the lawns, which will be practically sized and tended to within an inch of their lives, but the vegetable plots where their carrots and onions and taters grow and, if they have the resources, the cold frames and greenhouses and where they grow the fancier things to augment their meals, their own specialities.
The Baggin’s might be seen as a little grand and eccentric because they HIRED a gardener rather than doing it all themselves like most Hobbits, but they hired a Gamgee to do it, and they listen to his recommendations, which show’s they’re grand, but not stupid, so that’s all right.
All of this, but also:
One of the ways the narrative shows Gollum is not the same as Sméagol is that while he was once either a hobbit or something like one, he is now painfully skinny. Even when he leaves Moria and becomes able to scavenge in the outside world, he never puts on a single ounce.
Gollum is skinny and doesn't like good food. He's been living on raw unseasoned fish and small animals for so long that the very concept of cooked meat and herbs and vegetables is upsetting to him, and the taste of lembas makes him choke. He says of himself: "He doesn’t eat grasses or roots, no precious, not till he’s starving or very sick, poor Sméagol."
This isn't an indication that he's evil, either; it's a symptom of how badly he's been damaged by the time he spent carrying the Ring. Both Frodo and Sam, each in his own way, express some hope that Gollum might someday get better -- and that enjoying some good food might either help him, or be a sign that he's improved.
Hobbits are fat and love to eat and the narrative supports them in both, and I think that's beautiful.
swordtember #2 - candle
havdalah sword? havdalah sword....
HAVDALAH SWORD
Hi Toon! I hope you've been well <3 🌟 for forgive us the days forgotten to fear or Letters?
(from here!)
Hello! I'm good, thanks. <3
Oh man, tough choice. I think I gotta go with Letters because forgive us the days forgotten to fear is just so, so long.
Letters is the second of two short fics I wrote with a stealth Jewish headcanon for Caleb Widogast. I say 'stealth' because nothing is explicitly named as Jewish, and I did it that way for two reasons. Firstly to sidestep around the question of how any real-world ethnoreligion could exist in the secondary world of Exandria; secondly, and more importantly, to underscore the fact that the Dwendalian Empire is currently a place where unapproved religions must be practiced in secret, deniably.
Just about everything I put in that story involving Caleb's upbringing with regard to the Proper Treatment of Books is based on the Jewish traditions I was raised with involving specifically holy books, such as printed copies of the Tanakh or prayer books or anything bearing God's name. If you drop one by accident you kiss it when you pick it up; one must not stack other objects on top of them, or leave them lying open; copies too worn to read must be buried rather than discarded. Without a specific religious tradition to tie to those practices, it made sense to me to generalize them to all books, and that worked fairly well as a Blumenthal tradition of quasi-reverence to the written word itself. (I've also found in myself, and in others I've known who were raised with similar traditions, that we often do unconsciously extend some measure of that reverence to all books.)
All that is to highlight one line in the very last section, where shortly after Caleb has first disintegrated and then burned the ancient writings on time travel in Aeor, and immediately after drawing a direct connection between the burying of books and the burying of bodies, the story says:
I don't recall whether or not I was consciously thinking of a certain Ray Bradbury quote when I wrote that, but I may as well have been.
love the word "methinks". like lol. yeah. me sure is thinksing.
Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines.
Or, send in a ⭐star⭐ to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!
Brownie points if you ask a question about that fic, section etc rather than just let me ramble!
Please do! My fic's all at batyatoon over on AO3.
Love / being there
Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours // @iamnotlanuk @animatedamerican @brinnanza // Alice Oseman, Heartstopper // Marieke Nijkamp, Before I Let Go // Tillie Walden, On A Sunbeam
oh what lovely company I find myself in!
No no, a moray is when you swim in the sea and an eel bites your knee.
Meanwhile, when two patterns entwine in a way serpentine, that's a moiré.
And it’s time for the annual Pesach recipe roundup!
Enjoy! Go forth and make delicious foods for the holiday!
No new Pesach recipes this year, but it's time to reblog in case anyone's in need of inspiration -- it might be too late for changing Seder plans, but there's still the rest of the holiday to cook for!
Random fantasy/worldbuilding thing:
Everyone from a different culture seems strangely poetic and profoundly deep in their observations, but only because they speak whatever the common tongue is as a second language, and whatever they are saying is actually mostly just clumsily translated common sayings/figures of speech that flow much better in their own tongue, and make perfect sense to the people who understand the cultural context.
Someone who comes from a place where geodes are common will describe another person: "He is like a stone that seems to hold a treasure inside of it - you learn to know such stones by their shape and their weight - but once you split it open, there is no quartz, no amethyst, no sparkling and brilliant crystal you expected. Just solid rock, through and through. He is like one of those rocks." Which vaguely makes sense, but they're clearly frustrated about not being quite able to express what they're trying to say.
The thing is, in their own first language, there's a specific word for this kind of rock - one that outwardly seems to be a geode but it isn't one after all. This word is also commonly used as an insult, to describe a person who is charismatic, convincing and outwardly seems brilliantly smart, but is actually dumb as shit.
human, speaking dwarvish to an dwarf: "this quest you're on, it's like... when the rains come, and the sun shines through the water in the air, and the raindrops form a prism through which sunlight casts a shimmering illusion of rings of colour across the sky, it's as if the ribbons of light are indicating some great treasure that you can never find, because the coloured lights are an illusion. and pursuing the lights will just lead you on and on forever."
dwarf: :o "that's so beautiful..."
...
human, speaking humanish to a human: "his quest is like he's looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
other human: "ah yeah I getcha."
I once had a sequence in a roleplaying game in which another player's character, who'd been missing a limb for some time, talked about the phantom pains he'd been experiencing.
And my character, who was (a) a bard and (b) unfamiliar with the term, was so struck by the poetry of that description. "Pain's ghost, dead but lingering."
Still kinda proud of that one. :)
A cat meows at another, voice carrying through the cracked-open window and crossing the street to the other cat's ears. They are distantly companionable; they may never smell one another's scent, but they recognize each other's presence. They meow back and forth, some days, and are entertained, and that is enough.
These cats have humans to reside with. Sometimes one of the humans will go online and post bad jokes, and three houses over another human sees it on their brightly glowing phone screen and reblogs it. These humans work at different times, they spend their leisure hours apart, and they have social circles that never quite overlap enough for them to actually be introduced.
The joke is shared at a family gathering. Later, is passed along by a younger cousin, and briefly appreciated by a fraction of Ms. Vue's fifth grade class. Where it goes from there is hard to say. But it was enjoyed at the time, which was enough.
Neither the cats nor the original two humans have lost anything, in this world where each pair remains merely a part of the background in the other pair's lives. They enrich one another in the small and mundane moments that gradually accrue into a lifetime. Eventually there will be other humans in those dwellings, and other cats. The bad jokes will still be shared, but not always by the same people, and not forever.
For now, though, one cat is calling to the other, and the response comes back on the wind. I'm here I'm here A human replies to a post that crosses their dash; : I'm here I'm here.
And their lives are better for it.
And that will have to be enough. And it is.
the uquiz is done and it makes no sense <3 i'll post it in a sec
okay so 15 answers possible, each a little off the rails. reblog and tell me: *ੈ✩‧₊˚ what is your duality? *ੈ✩‧₊˚
This was so cool
you may have been called an old soul as a kid, and now you're doing everything you can to benjamin button that back. in your head of heads you can hear yourself giving advice, but the heart of hearts says no, i will not miss out on myself ever again. i can do this. and it really is about finding that balance before you end up buying too many goddamned hatsune miku figurines trying to endorse that inner child. but please do buy at least two. i know you deserve it.
for some you shine just right, and for others you are too much or too little. people either hate seeing you rise over the horizon or pray and send blessing to you like a favorite god. you are timeless and there are not many like you, you who can embody both a burning star and a cratered rock. what i'm trying to say is that your duality compliments itself very well, but not everyone will understand why they can't get what they want from you. it doesn't matter. burn strong when you feel the need, and be gentle in the nights it's called for."
the robot is dead? the robot is living. or a zombie, a botanical garden, an ecosystem, or a ghost of one. children watch you and wait for you to blink, mesmerized by how human you could look if you did. you are a shell, no lungs or organs to speak of, but the plants have found you and thought: we want to entwine in your wires like veins and give you oxygen. we want to turn your face to the sun with our leaves and help you feel the warmth of the sun. we want to water your rusted plates and bring you to the god of Pan as our greatest offering. you want to get up, feel the gears whir and turn, and blink. but you are at peace, and you are understood, and so you rest. the time will come for your aching body to move, and you will know when that time is, but right now: you are not a machine. you metal and copper was made of the earth. so listen to the moss--and slumber
it's you. you're the most important because you are here and alive on this planet, that, in the scope of it all, isn't even the most of anything. the silliness of how vast our home is and how many of us there are only makes each of us that much more incredible. every time you kiss the cheek of a loved one you are telling the Earth that she is important in all the little ways, and thanking her for making others to hold. and likewise, when you hurt one of hers, she festers, and when she is hurt by yours she reciprocates--bellowing, and bleeding. she is important because you make her big and you are important because she made you small. and so...take care of each other.
(I ... wow. I really love this answer.)
Hello!
7. Also you are a goddamn delight.
I absolutely love the language of my mother’s people
I believe linguistically the term is called Comparative Reduplication! And while a lot of languages have it, including many Indigenous American ones, Yoruba culture holds a lot of influence over how Black Diaspora and AAVE have been shaped. It’s a good video.
This is SO COOL thank you for sharing this!
What’s really interesting is how this form of reduplication contrasts with “shm-reduplication” which is a feature that originated in Yiddish that uses reduplication “to indicate irony, sarcasm, derision, skepticism, or lack of interest with respect to comments about the discussed object.” (Wikipedia)
“So your boyfriend’s got a good job? Job-shmob, what I care about is if he’s treating you right.”
Interestingly, in Yiddish-inflected English you might say "fancy-schmancy" to mean something like ... not just fancy but extremely fancy, but in a way that indicates some degree of derision along with the admiration. Maybe a lot of derision ("Oh, look at Mister Big Shot here with his fancy-schmancy new car") or maybe only a little ("yeah, they took us out to this fancy-shmancy restaurant, it was amazing").
I've also heard regular reduplication used to clarify that you don't mean a specialized kind of the thing but the plainest and most direct meaning of it. "No, not soy milk or almond milk or any of those, milk milk." "Did they bring potato salad or pasta salad, or salad salad?" Which strikes me as related to the kind of reduplication this video is talking about, but not quite the same thing.
I mean, I'm 44 and just learned that you can pick up an egg yolk. Seems like cursed knowledge to me.
I don't like knowing this.
Garlic makes your fingertips a little sticky, and specifically has mercaptans in it which bond well to the egg yolk, which is why this works.
Mercaptans are sulfurous hydrocarbons that should not be confused with mercaptains, who are ranked just below mermajors in the mermilitary.
I've been using slightly damp bare fingers to separate egg yolks from egg whites for well over a decade, and I never knew about using garlic to make it easier. Unfortunately, most of the time when I'm separating out egg yolks from egg whites, it's for a dessert of some kind and I do not think I want garlic involved.
Nevertheless this is pretty cool you guys
Guess where my horse slept last night
reverse Uffington Hill
Frankly, I think the kitten is way calmer in this transaction than the dog is. Toward the end of it, the dog's body language starts suggesting that it's begun wondering if the kitten's possibly the more dominant of the two of them. Whereas the kitten is very much in "yeah, what...?" mode. Its ears only once go back a little, and then right back into normal listening mode.
The kitten, in brief, looks like it's checking out its new pet. :)
