Tulips and Teapots

Fireball Jill is the first time I'm planning to break my unofficial rule that my protagonists aren't allowed to be innately empowered by metaphysical forces, but only because the fuzzy handwaving "magic" in her particular setting burns up anyone or anything channeling it to the point where trying to find a way to let it safely expend without total devastation is just a kind of background constant of the world.

Completely willing to give my girl access to something which will cause unknown amounts of physical and emotional trauma. Also a dog, she gets to have a dog. The dog is a living and sentient tear along the burning energies that pour constantly into the world, ready to overwhelm it and burn it to a cinder but it acts like a dog.

Some lackey standing in the road with his goons like "You are nothing to us. We have the divine mandate to reveal the fire to the world. You do not know the forces you are interfering with!" And then she goes, "You're right," and obliterates his head with a shotgun blast. Tears fist first into three goons like, "Whoa, look out! Don't stop me now, I'm interfering up a great big mess!"

I mean... The Disreputable Dog is also Kibbeth, the fourth bright shiner, who alongside her fellows bound the eighth, broke the ninth, and wove the charter from which all old kingdom magic flows... But mostly she's a dog.

Which is to say that having a enormous force of destruction bound up into the shape and temperament of a dog seems perfectly natural and right for a story.

not to oversimplify an extremely complex discipline but if i had to pick one tip to give people on how to have more productive interactions with children, especially in an instructive sense, its that teaching a kid well is a lot more like improv than it is like error correction and you should always work on minimizing the amount of ‘no, wrong’ and maximizing the amount of ‘yes, and?’ for example: we have a species of fish at the aquarium that looks a lot like a tiny pufferfish. children are constantly either asking us if that’s what they are, or confidently telling us that’s what they are. if you rush to correct them, you risk completely severing their interest in the situation, because 1. kids don’t like to engage with adults who make them feel bad and 2. they were excited because pufferfish are interesting, and you have not given them any reason to be invested in non-pufferfish. Instead, if you say something like “It looks a LOT like a tiny pufferfish, you’re right. But these guys are even funnier. Wanna know what they’re called?” you have primed them perfectly for the delightful truth of the Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker

“trans people with object names” and “trans people with average names” is missing an untapped market of “trans people with seemingly average shorthand names for absolutely insane full names” for example. max short for Maxwell House Brand Coffee Filters

girls you can have so much fun with this one… liz? ard. cass? erole. sandy? wich.

Homer Simpson changed his name to Max Power coz he got it off a hair dryer and I think he was on the right path

Combining this with "incorrect" name expansion, call me Toad, short for Toadicca from now on 😂

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have been in the queer movement for 20+ years, to have studied queer theory, to have contributed to you potentially enjoying the rights you have today because I was part of a groundswell of lobbying and direct action in the 1990s….

…to have a 15 year old who’s spent maybe 8 months being political and has never inquired about queer history anonymously message me, “EXCUSE ME QU**R IS A SLUR LMAO OMG EMBARRASSSING AN aCTUAL ADULT WHO THINKS IT’S OKAY TO USE QU**R!~!!!!”

Dude, we are a slur. Queer folks are a slur to conservative straight people. Everything we are will be used as a slur by everyone who hates us. Gay is a slur. Lesbian is a slur. People will try to use all of our words against us. Don’t fucking let them get into your head to the point at which you’re telling actual queer people not to use the words we’ve used to unite ourselves and empower ourselves for decades. 

“My lord, I know you are the demon lord and I am but a lowly advisor, but please listen to me. I suggest that instead of sending the hero slightly stronger demons to kill each time, we just send the strongest one right away”

“Do you know why the heroes fight us, advisor?”

“Because…. because we threaten their homeland, my lord?”

“And why do we threaten their homeland?”

“Because Kushiel rules it and she exiled you?”

“Close. Because Kushiel rules it and she must be stopped. But we cannot stop her.”

“I’m… not sure I follow, my liege.”

“I am not surprised. This war started long before you were born, did it not?”

“Yes, my lord, at least a dozen centuries before.”

“And I was at least a dozen centuries old when this war began. We sent our strongest soldiers, our mightiest armies. And Kushiel sent children.”

“Children…? Then… how did we not win?”

“Would you like to fight an army of children? See the light that should have burned a century be snuffed out after barely a decade?”

“Well… not particularly, no.”

“Nor did we, and Kushiel knew this. She gives them no training for she knows the worse off they are the worse it will be for us to face them. This went on for several centuries. She fills her people’s heads with stories, false prophecies about how a child will someday defeat the tyrannical ruler who threatens them. And so, we are helping that prophecy become true.”

“Wait, what?”

“We cannot hope to defeat Kushiel. We do not know her with any intimacy. We cannot predict her movements. All we know is she will keep sending children. So we train them. We send out weakest soldiers, those willing to die knowing their sacrifice will eventually be her undoing. Someday, a hero will come who is able to defeat us. A hero who will slaughter our weakest, then our next weakest, and will continue to do so until even I lay dead at their feet. And then the hero will come here and sit in my throne and peer from my grand window. Sit. Tell me what they will see.”

“It…. It’s a graveyard, sir.”

“Those are the graves of all the children Kushiel has sent to die at our hands. Some became adults before they finally fell, but they were always children when they started. We bury them here. And someday a hero will come who will free us from this grievous task. They will take my throne, sit upon it, and see what Kushiel deemed a worthy price for this mere chair. And then the hero will realize who they must fight next. And thanks to us, they will have gained the strength and training necessary to make sure the prophecy is fulfilled and the tyrant will finally die.”

@makingshortstorieslong

-but  I  gotta  speak  my  truth.

Izuku, I’m  sorry  for  everything.

I love this angry fucker and watching him grow up has been soooo satisfying.

The best thing about neural implants is that you can “block” people, effectively rendering you non-existent to one another. But you’re being blocked by more and more people every day, and everyone you ask about it blocks you.

This is just being a middle schooler but with extra steps.

I'm imagining them falling into the roles of Lois as the serious one and Harley as the ridiculous one, until Lois does something wildly dangerous for a story she's writing and Harley is like "oh my god.. am I going to have to be the serious one today?? How did this happen?"

Harley: BABE NO I CAN’T BE THE RESPONSIBLE ONE

I MEAN I PHYSICALLY CAN’T IT IS NOT IN MY NATURE

Lois: THAT’S FINE THEN JUST HAND ME THE DETONATOR SO WE CAN FINISH THIS AND GET OUT

Someone draw their shenanigans pls :D

Imagine if it was Silver Age Lois? 😶

Oh my god

OH MY GOD WHAT IF THAT’S WHY SHE WAS THE WAY SHE WAS

Lois: I just know Superman and Clark are the same guy

Harley: I mean ya could just jump out a window or bring a chunk of murder rock into your place of work and see what happens

Lois: ..........

.............................

....................................

holy shit Y E S

Silver Age Lois would definitely be the kind to marry Harley in some weird plan to expose superman/make him jealous/random superdickery of the week.

Harley on the other hand, while probably feeling a bit used, would almost certainly be up for it to dick around in the Silver Age and make terrible sitcom jokes

Silver Age Lois meanwhile realises that actually she doesn’t need a super husband

Just the genuine and wholesome love of a woman who is as effing deranged as she is and who will happily support her when she decides to do the most nonsensical shit you can imagine

I need a Thank u Mr Terry tag

#thank you mr terry#thinking something isn't doing it and doing is all people see#and deep down it means that when the ugly thought reared its head to be realized#you stood up in front of that ugly hurtful thought and said 'sit down'

Pardon me, but I needed to read your tags tonight.

i miss being able to take the battery of my phone out and just hold it

is it too much to ask? to be able to hold my phone’s heart in my hand again?

I miss being able to battery pull an unsilenced phone rather than needing to figure out how this model wired their silence shortcuts.

Sometimes just to make myself nuts I consider the sequence of events necessary for “Chuck Tingle, ally for social justice to exist.”

Like, before anything else at all, someone who is at least a fair hand at writing has to have made the decision to write gay dinosaur fucking erotica. This is not as unlikely as you’d expect, but it’s still pretty unlikely.

Next, you have to be one of the people lucky enough to go viral online, but without having it blow up in your face. The improbably well written, unlikely subgenre of gay dinosaur fucking now has the further improbable chance to gain widespread online recognition but, for whatever reason, mostly positive attention.

I start to get a little bit frazzled when the Hugo Awards come up. I couldn’t even summarize the backstory here but the fact that Chuck Tingle got nominated for a Hugo Award and that has backstory is patently absurd. Which happened because someone wrote an very niche form of erotica which by sheer chance also went viral online.

But hold on, we have to go all the way back to the start because before ANY of this happened, somewhere in the past has to exist someone who has a kind heart, a good sense of humor, and a desire to help others. And he has to also be a decent writer of dinosaur erotica that goes viral and gets nominated for a Hugo Award.

Now complexities aside, basically what happened was a bunch of incel MRA type people decided to try to troll the Hugo Awards because they were mad about wins by people who were not cis straight white guys. That is a story.

But what they did was, instead of going for someone who would roll with their agenda, they more or less picked the now slightly less known and less viral dinosaur fucking erotic novels guy from a bit ago. And they tried to push him to a Hugo Award win out of petulant spite.

At this point a kind person with a desire to improve the world who happens to also write some decent dinosaur erotic fiction that is recognized because it went viral has been nominated for a Hugo Award because dickheads picked him at random to make a petty little point. Okay?

And because of that MASSIVE SERIES of absurd coincidences landed on what by SHEER FUCKING LUCK was a really good person, what happened was Chuck Tingle used the sudden attention to drag the SHIT out of the incels, landing a double extra viral special along with becoming the darling of thousands of nerds who were and are frankly sick of the entitlement of the fuckboys who to their everlasting embarrassment picked out Chuck to try and fail to make a point.

Furthermore, because by further complete damned CHANCE Chuck also was a pretty solid writer, he ends up gaining permanent, real unironic fans. Chuck is no longer viral, he is a legitimate celebrity writer specifically with regard to stories about getting pounded in the ass.

AND THEN, I say hands holding my head to keep it from exploding, AND THEN HE KEEPS FUCKING AT IT. Not just erotica, but working for social equality, promoting causes for disenfranchised people, bringing attention to social issues. Being an endless FUCKING ray of sunshine. While also still writing both regular AND political pounded in the ass fiction which, again, is pretty good by all reports.

And I sometimes go over all and all of this over again, and my head spins out because this series of chances is about the most fucking ever chances. And the outcome was a super kind person now has a chance to be kind to even more people.

Which all began with a nice person writing dinosaur erotica. Yeah.

I need everyone to understand I think about this at least once a month. How almost all of these coincidences are in some quantitative way measurable. Wondering what the end probability is. And I have to follow this entire train of thought, start to finish MULTIPLE TIMES any time it occurs to me.

The Hugo Award thing happened TWICE

He’s a potential nominee this year for best NOVEL, for Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus. (In the past, it was for Best Short Story and Best Fan Writer.)

Nominations are done, but results have not yet been released.

I can’t with this… can someone with math please tell me how likely this confluence is?

How do u become more intelligent in literature, like analysis and stuff

think up a hot take about the thing you're reading and then pretend someone is arguing with you that your take is wrong, and you are ready to defend your take's honor like a knight who has sworn fealty. look for examples in the text that support your argument. compare it to something else you read. it helps me if the author is long long dead so i have less feelings and doubt about asserting myself. anyway this advice is a bit general for but it works for me: a certified liberal arts major

Omg thank you for this! I don't think I would have thought of this myself. I suppose really the first main thing is to read more 🤔 but I'm so slow and if it's fiction I usually don't know how to look for things (after leaving school and entering work force really sucked the intelligence out of me...) (not that workers can't also keep learning but due to my own inability to focus I haven't been able to retain anything learned from uni)

If you want to learn how to recognize the patterns of literature, there's tons of ways to do it that aren't "read enormous volumes of fiction," although that certainly helps! You can also:

shakespeare’s character descriptions/stage directions/contexts are so vague it makes me so happy. wanna make Laertes hamlet’s ex boyfriend? doesn’t say HE’S NOT. wanna make juliet a trans girl? WHERE IN THE SCIRPT DOES IT SAY SHE ISN’T??? fucking put King Lear in SPACE set that shit on the enterprise THERE ARE NO RULES IN SHAKESPEARE 

The best part is that pretty much all of the fights are “they fight” with no mention of whether it’s with swords or throwing knives or kung-fu or if they just do the slappy-hands thing at each other.

the only rule in shakespeare is that a bear must show up in the winter’s tale. could be a grizzly. polar. panda. hell, antigonus could’ve wandered into a gay club.

See? This is why Bradford is my favorite villain. Is he evil? Definitely. Is his ways of getting shit done absolutely wackadoodle? Absolutely.

….Is he right about Scrooge McDuck?

Unfortunately. 

Heartbreaking. Worst guy you know has a point.

vampire that corrects all the historical inaccuracies on wikipedia

vampire that’s responsible for all the historical inaccuracies on wikipedia

What a meet-cute

fake relationship but its a king and his concubine that was once an amazing soldier but he couldn’t go up the ranks for whatever reason so the king was like listen. hear me out. you can be my strategy dude. u just gotta be okay w walking around shirtless a lot. and soldier dude is like man that’s an UPSIDE and yknow they end up falling in love

some idiot advisor: I can’t believe his majesty lets his boytoy attend these council meetings, it’s an insult to the noble institutions that uphold our nation, it’s an outrage—

a somewhat smarter advisor: you’re just mad bc he pointed out how dumb your naval attack strategy and no one laughed when you made a mean joke about him

Boytoy has gone from a top fighter who was well respected but in constant danger to wearing silks and eating grapes on daises. That fucked up rotator cuff was the best thing to ever happen to him

Bonus points: at least half the other concubines are experts in assorted fields, the monarch brings them to relevant meetings to both play up a reputation for frivolity, and make sure at least one person there doesn’t have an outside agenda.

my harem? 

did you mean: my chief strategic advisors

The kingdom is an absolute monarchy but the harem has become a secret meritocracy. The nobles and official advisors kind of side-eye His Majesty because wow some of these consorts must have like…really good personalities. Kings of the past have had their own specific tastes of course; size, shape, age, color, et cetera. More than one ruler has interviewed consorts feet first and Ardwin the Adventurous’s obsession - God rest him - with snuffling armpits like a sow rooting for mushrooms is well known despite never being alluded to in polite company.

The worst part of it is that the new king takes at least part of his harem with him everywhere and it’s so embarrassing. The Counselors of War have never once met with His Divine Majesty without that hulking battle-scarred consort interrupting with muttered growls or scornful snorts. And the Ministers of Finance all flinch at the sight of that fox-faced one, rumored to have been rescued from the gallows because His Augustness took a fancy to his eyes or some such nonsense. General petition days are even worse, with practically the entire harem drifting in and out of the Grand Hall in turns, insouciant and smug like granary cats who know they’ve been given full run of the courtyards and barns.

It’s absolutely infuriating that the kingdom has never before known such a period of peace and prosperity under this ridiculous monarch.

Tag to this - the biggest secret is the Queen who runs the Kingdom’s spy network. It’s the envy of all the other Kingdoms around, and not a few nobles! Not ALL of the Kingdom’s Diplomats are spies. But many of their servants are. The Queen grew up as a neglected child, and she learned how servants are ignored, but who always know everything that goes on. Many of the spies are like the Queen - beautiful and seemingly vacuous. The sp[ies tend to have great fun, and also work closely with the Concubines

#everyone is furious when the king picks his bride #a minor princess! of a minor ally! she’s not even that pretty or smart or anything! #but at least when the king marries her he’ll have to get rid of his harem #or at the VERY LEAST stop FLAUNTING them everywhere #if nothing else her family will object to this insult to her honor

#BUT THEN

#somehow she’s befrIENDED THE CONCUBINES

#sometimes they follow HER around!! in public!! 

#the king and queen are  s h a r i n g  t h e  h a r e m

#never has the court been so furious and scandalized all at once #it’s a genuine shock to all of them when ten years later no one has even once tried to overthrow the royal family #(they’re wrong there have been no less than thirty attempted coups twelve of which nearly succeeded) #(but the harem and the spy network are VERY good at their jobs)

This just keeps getting better and better

roommates of tumblr, stop using metal utensils on your roommates nonstick pans and stop soaking their cast iron pans in soap thank you and god bless

roommates of the world: it doesn’t actually matter if you use metal on nonstick every once in a while

their pans:

for those wondering, those scratches are where the non-stick coating has been scraped off (usually by metal utensils or cleaning utilities like steel wool), which means that food will stick more in those spots. plus, there runs the risk of more bits of that coating coming off into your food as you cook.

Non-stick pans and skillets are best for medium heat as they don't conduct heat as well, and for wetter foods like eggs and fish and pancakes.

On the other hand, cast iron pans and skillets don't have a built in protective coating. The metal will absorb grease and fats as they cook, building up an equally efficient non-stick coating of its own. And without the chemical coating that non-stick pans come with, there's no risk of any of it flaking off or melting into your food. They can handle higher temperatures without damage, and they get hot faster on the burner. Beef, pork, and chicken are best cooked on cast iron.

You don't want to let them soak in soap because it will remove that grease coating that makes the cast iron pan's non-stickiness, plus absorb soap that might melt back off into your food. A soap and sponge rub down is all it needs.

@marraphy

proper cleaning of your cast iron:

Scrape off food remnants with a cast iron scraper

Scrub any remaining bits off with a stiff brush and hot water

Put the wet pan on the stove and turn the burner on to heat up the pan and evaporate the water

Pour a small amount (about a teaspoon, depending on pan size) of high-temp oil (i prefer avocado oil for this) into the pan and coat the inside of the pan by rubbing it in with a paper towel

The pan should be a bit shiny but have no obvious pooling oil

Heat the pan until just a little bit of smoke is rising off it

Turn off the stove and let your pan cool there

(I store my frequent use cast iron on the stove because it's basically all I cook with so i don't have to worry about putting it away but if you put yours away make sure that the pan is completely cooled before you put it in a cabinet)

What happens when you soap and soak cast iron vs. proper cleaning and seasoning.

Bonus: cooking in cast iron WILL add small amounts of iron to your diet, especially when preparing moist or acidic foods. Most people could frankly use a bit more iron, and scrambled eggs or stew or steak is a MUCH pleasanter way to get it than pills.

If you don't want to season your cast iron on the stove, you can do it in the oven and rub the entire thing, inside and out, with oil. That'll also help protect the outside from rust.

A rusty cast iron skillet is NOT ruined btw, it just takes some work to restore it. Mostly, disposing of the body of whomever let it get to that rusty state.

Additionally, if you are like me and handwash the fucker anyway (and reseason, I have never ruined a cast iron) do not EVER put a hot cast iron skillet under cold water. My dad did that and THUNK!! It broke. He was not a smart man.

If you have the strength to handle cast iron, they are some of the absolute best things out there. They WILL last over a hundred years if cared for.

Can confirm! Some of the most commonly used cookware in my kitchen is heirloom cast iron that I rescued and (with help from some wonderful friends) restored after they'd been shoved into a storage unit for years after a relative's death.

I've also found that salt + a little water is an incredible cleaning method for cast iron. Scrub it around with a paper towel (be mindful of tearing of yoy scrub too hard) and it will basically lift all but the most stubborn remnant bits that you were going to have trouble with anyway. Then rinse the salt out, and dry and reseason the pan as above!

I was taught to use coarse salt + oil to make a pumice, use that to scrub out the cast iron, and then it’s already oiled and you rinse the salt out with hot water and then dry on the stove or in the oven.

Otherwise ++good.

If you really want non-cast-iron nonstick, the ceramic coatings these days are pretty durable.

I want to make cooking simple meals easier. So many factors demotivate me. Pans are dirty thanks to city water leaving flakes and spots. Glass Stove top was dirtied and can't clean it properly. So much crap on the counter I have no organization. Everything just interferes with my desire just cook a damn meal. I just wanna cook eggs again :(

Is Cast Iron good for cooking eggs? I just wanna cook some good eggs

Yes!!! Cast iron is great for eggs.

Just make sure the pan is seasoned properly and it shouldn't give you any trouble. If you have some doubts about if it is seasoned or not, add a bit of oil to the pan.

cruella deville origin story wednesday adams miniseries dark winx club reboot nurse wratched feminist retelling cw powerpuff girls live action disney movies sequel prequel reboot cinematic universe retelling netflix ori

This, very much this, i’m am dreading the tim burton wednesday and all of it. no more gritty reboots. no more self sacrifices by people who’ve just found their worth, no synder/MCU libertarian superheroes, no more sex and the city, no deep dives into AIDS or Jim Crow suffering, no riverdaling anything ever again. Make something shiny and FUN. Escapism sparkles colour hijinks cameraderie, identities without having to delve into the trauma just let them have some FUN. I want to tune in and drop out to scooby doo meets the original star trek: a gang of wierdo friends with two braincells going on wacky adventures and no moral grey just evil capitalists, wannabe villains and misunderstood monsters/aliens/robots under the mask (who get added to the group).

Done with grimdark forever, bye <3

:*

Roller coaster date with Barret remains my favorite non-chocobo part of Final Fantasy VII