“When I learned to fight, I was dying from slow poison,” said Jem. “… And I was, yes, still faster than you.”
Kit laughed. His eyes were Herondale eyes, but his laugh was all his own, mischievous and cynical and a little innocent, despite that.
“Train with me,” said Kit.
Jem smiled.
“What?” Kit asked anxiously. “Do you … not want to?”
“I said that to somebody once,” said Jem. “A long time ago. He did train with me. And now I’ll train you.”
“I love you Ty, I love you!”
The scene that broke all our hearts 💔
Ty and Kit from The Dark Artifices series by @cassandraclare
Kit and Ty, Queen of Air and Darkness! Oh, my heart!
The day has come!! I have finished my painting of Emma!!! And I made her eyes glow yellow cause ya know, magic, heavenly fire and all that! Um, and Cortana actually has the inscription on it but it is very very tiny!
Anyway, I think I’ll go sleep for a week now haha
Emma belongs to @cassandraclare
badass Emma the True Nephilim!
Auntie Hella checking on the Papillon puppies… she never had a litter of her own so she always cared for all the pups born here at #tantezampekennel
imagine having such a beautiful fairy godmother
SMOL ST BERNARD FLOOFS
episode one from the #banditotour series starts at rehearsals earlier this month.
someone who works at our local opshop/thrift shop just put goldblums in every single photo frame in the store
coffee: always frantic, has a crammed schedule, never stops consuming caffeine, will agree to go to a party even if they have a six a.m. shift the next day
bujo: organized, likes to makes lists and keep track of things, plans outfit the night before, stresses when they get a grade less than a B
oops: stopped caring in the third grade, somehow manages to get okay grades, never studies, kind of lazy, would eat Waffle House at 3 in the morning
sweatshirt: is trying as hard as they possibly can, has to study and work hard for their grades, constantly stressing, has social anxiety, tries to do every extra curricular under the sun
aesthetique: probably vegetarian or vegan, has a “mom jean” 80′s aesthetic, glorifies local cafes, wants to live in Europe, always wants to cut their hair
gothique: black clothes only, still stans my chemical romance, uses sarcasm as a defense mechanism, desperately wants some tattoos, likes the black lipstick look but too shy to do it
Sweatshirt and gothique
you can still radiate light if you’re sad. you can still be kind and soft-hearted if you’re a bit cynical. you don’t need to be the happiest person to make someone else’s day better.
havisha1212 said: Hi, I just want to say that i’ve been seeing a lot of discourse online. A lot of shtv show stans are really mad that the show is cancelled and are trying to boycott RSOM because apparently they know that your intentions with the book are to get money, even though you were offered more money to write Clace. I just want to say that you have thousands, if not in the millions of people who understand that you write what you want to write. WE LOVE YOU and we appreciate you.
I really wasn’t sure what to say about this. Red Scrolls of Magic doesn’t have anything to do with the television show, and I don’t have anything to do with the television show having been cancelled.
I appreciate the love, truly. Of course I’m also distressed to hear about a boycott of The Eldest Curses, since it will be a book with a main interracial gay couple and a secondary interracial lesbian love story. A vendetta specifically targeting a book like that won’t be seen by the outside world of publishing as an act of support for a television show. It would be seen as exactly what they expect — a lackluster interest in books about LGBT+ characters.
I guess there are a few things to talk about here: one is the realistic situation of LGBT+ kids’ publishing and one is about women’s writing. In terms of the first, it’s very strange to suggest I wrote these books for money when I did, as you say, take a pay cut to write them. I was paid a third of what I was paid for the Dark Artifices to write them though they are the same number of books. I was paid less than what I was paid for my adult Sword Catcher series which features a world and characters no one has any familiarity with at all — a completely unknown brand. Many of my international publishers still won’t publish TEC. One bought it and has as of now cancelled the deal, though they have bought different books from me since. There are a thousand things I could have written or done that would have made me more money. That’s the stark reality of the “cash cow” the boycotters are discussing.
Someone in Hollywood once described Alec’s being gay to me as “a strike against the character’s likeability.” So far in publishing I have experienced publishing TEC as “a strike against its marketability.” As you all know, it was pushed back: that was because my publisher wanted Queen of Air and Darkness to come out first and set a record of strong sales — they are afraid nobody will buy Red Scrolls, because of its LGBT+ content.
I’m in a lucky position; I’m a bestselling author and if these books don’t sell at all, my career can take the hit. That’s partly why I’m writing them now, when I finally can: I think it’s important to make sure books like this are placed front and center in bookstores as expected bestsellers, but if these books blow up on me, I’ll survive it. Other writers who are writing books with LGBT+ content wouldn’t be so lucky, and the message of boycotting a “big” book with a gay main couple isn’t “We don’t like this author” (because my other books are doing just fine) — it’s “We don’t like this subject matter.” (It is also a strange punishment for Wes Chu, my cowriter, often forgotten in these debates — a man of color writing about another man of color.)
I am of course not saying anyone who doesn’t want to read these books should buy them. We should consume the entertainment we think should entertain us; that’s what it’s for. But the idea of punishing female writers for their moral failings is an old and unfortunate one. It’s always been acceptable for men to write for money, or for attention; “she wanted attention” is one of the worst things you can say about a woman, but an inoffensive thing to say about a man. Similarly I’ve often been told online that I don’t deserve to be paid for what I write, or that my creative work should be taken away from me and given to men. It has always been expected since the Victorian era that writing about complex people and complex stories is a man’s job, and women should write simple moralistic tales in which the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. When a good character in a man’s book does something wrong, he is congratulated for his complexity; I get told at great length how morally terrible I am personally, since female writers are not generally assumed to have the emotional distance from their characters that with men, is a given.
The roots of taking away women’s ability to profit from their work goes back centuries into the idea that it’s evil for women to own intellectual property at all. One of my favorite writers, Colette, died in poverty because her husband owned the copyright to her bestselling books. There is a deep discomfort with the idea of a woman being paid what she’s worth at all. Writers are entertainers and they don’t work for free any more than singers or actors or TV showrunners. I am the sole breadwinner of my family and I support my parents and others with the income I derive from working on the intellectual property I create. A man would be congratulated on his success. I am called a money-grubbing bitch.
One of the reasons we self-published Ghosts of the Shadow Market was because I wanted to write a novella about a genderqueer lesbian and I wanted it to get the same attention as the other stories in small invisible ways sometimes readers don’t even notice — the same time spent on the cover, the same hiring of a great audio reader, the same time being edited, the same advertising. When EET came out we all sat around wringing our hands and hoping it would at least sell half as much as the others: it sold just as well, and we were thrilled. We can hang onto those numbers. We can prove important points in future to the publishing world about the viability of non-binary LGBT+ characters. Sales do matter. The Red Scrolls of Magic is a book, and sales expectations are higher for books than short stories, so I know I will be in the same state of fear and hope when it comes out.
But the fact Every Exquisite Thing did well means something else, too: I believed there was an audience for it, and every person who bought it proved me right. The outpouring of love during the contest for an early Red Scrolls of Magic copy was amazing, and I scrolled through the #malec and #malecparty tags (thank you so much you guys! Winners will be notified!) with tears in my eyes, overwhelmed by readers’ stories of coming out and having their eyes opened to new ideas, and most of all by their love. Before I ever had attention or money, I had the joy of creation. One of the most amazing feelings when writing is to make up people, and to have real people invest in your inventions. I created Magnus and Alec, building them into characters I could love block by block, and yesterday I got to see other people love them too. I have been awed by and grateful for the support of every reader who has embraced the diverse world I have tried to create, and the increasing diversity I try for as I keep on writing and am allowed to have more freedom in what I write than when I first began and was turned down by publishers because I wouldn’t remove Alec from my books. I am hoping to help change attitudes and create, along with many writers and readers who believe that diverse media makes a difference, a world in which a book with a main LGBTQ pairing will be judged purely on its literary merits. We’re not there yet! I wish we were. But the increasing call for and support for diverse literature makes me hope we are getting there. I trust in my readers. I have to believe that anybody calling for a boycott of The Red Scrolls of Magic is in a small hateful minority who has lost sight of how their actions would be perceived by the world, and the effect their actions would have on the world. I have to believe that there are far more people who are open to loving and supporting diverse stories.
Money and attention are great. But in the end, I write because I do believe words have the power to change people, and change the world. Ultimately, I have to do what I think is the right thing, and trust that other people will too. My readers haven’t let me down yet.
Thor is pretty.
my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini
i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with
Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.
My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones. He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.
There was a long pause between them.
My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK. You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”
Henry sighed in relief.
“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”
There was another long silence. “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry. “But I accept. I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”
My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”
a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:
the melon was a special bonus.
MY DREAM
A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.
At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”
Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify. I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”
I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”
I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.
I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them
“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”
It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever
This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.
When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.
The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.
Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.
At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)
We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.
Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.
Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.
We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But man those were the days for thems of us what loved squash.
So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.
Oh wow.
The last story is well worth the read. It might be long but I found it absolutely delightful! Thank you for sharing your childhood Squish gardening adventures!
Meanwhile, people are starving to death.
Ands What do you expect poor rural farmers who just have excess zucchini to do about that exactly? Mail them to Africa?
I was just talking to a friend today about gardening and she said “I’ll plant zucchini for this project.”
“Oh dear… what’s your damage control plan?”
“Oh,” she said, intuiting what I meant. “Eating the blossoms. Love stuffed blossoms. Pumpkin, squash, zucchini. It keeps the crop down, and you get lots of mileage out of them. You keep a mixed crop that way, too. Plus, people don’t always welcome gifts of zucchini, but they find gifts of blossoms exciting.”
This struck me as absolutely game-changing.
Oh squashfam you slay me
Okay so it seems like people will call any mallet percussion instrument a xylophone and I’m here to teach you shit.
This is a xylophone. The wood part is thick and it’s high pitched.
This is a marimba. It’s huge and expensive. No like a small one costs over $4,000 (3186.20 euros). The key things are really long and thin.
Now do you see this beautiful instrument? This is called the vibraphone motherfuckers. Or just the vibes. Anyways it sounds amazing. I could marry the sound. Basically, it;s made of metal and you have a pedal to stop it from ringing too long.
This is the glockenphejksdfjkl. I have no idea how to spell it, so lets just call it the orchestral bells. If you hit this shit too loud it can burst your eardrums.
These are a joke.
I live how angry op is
Sure are a lot of xylophones on this post.
