That One Kid In The Back

scantily is basically the most classic way to be clad

This is iron clad erasure

I need to live long enough for the opportunity to say "the iron in which your argument is clad is scanty"

sorry about the weird half page the first sheet of free paper on my desk was the sheet of tracing/transfer paper I was using for a commission

anyways i'm back into the commission mines, enjoy!

I will never be over this game I fear

Daughter of fantasy villains decides to rebel against her parents by actually going through with her arranged marriage to a local golden retriever of a prince instead of running off with some local villain-to-be or conquering said golden retriever’s kingdom and ruling it solo like her parents expect her to. Plus, sue her, she’s into the clean-cut earnest look.

At the same time, local prince charming discovers that he’s actually very into the gothic fiance his parents have landed him with in order to try and establish peace with the local evil lair down the lane, he would never have guessed a spiderweb pattern could look so fetching on a ball gown…?

Meanwhile, two pairs of parents in a tizzy because they both expected their offspring to whole-heartedly reject this union and give them an excuse to conquer their goody-two-shoes/evil neighbours, they’re not supposed to actually like each other-!

respective friend groups undergoing culture clash like all of prince charming’s knights are like what vile spell has been used to ensorcel our prince.  we must be on our guard for surely this is but a ruse for an assassination attempt

meanwhile the villain bride’s friends are all like clearly he loves you not, why do you persist in a manner that will ensure your own heart break, i mean if he was taking this seriously there would be at least three assassination attempts by now.  it’s like he doesn’t even notice that you have massive amounts of dark power to covet for his own

smashcut to

fully armored knight, clanging through the hallways in attempts at stealth, blades drawn: i’m just saying, i took an oath of protection.  this feels wrong.

prince charming: it’s not wrong, it’s celebrating cross cultural traditions for my beloved bride

knight: it’s attempted murder

prince charming: it’s a loving attempted murder

@chucktaylorupset  Meanwhile the bride has a bouquet of roses, cornflowers, and wheat sheaves on her desk in her room, and she’s not coming out until she’s written a beautiful and moving poem about how they favourably compare to her groom. It’s been three days. She’s gone through an entire raven’s worth of quills (unethically sourced). The ‘toads who used to be my friends’ list has gone up by one. But she’s bent dark forces and eldritch spirits to her will and, by the powers obscene, this will not be the thing that breaks her.

Sorceress friend: Please, just get him an amulet that will double his power at the cost of his soul, no one’s worth this.

Rebellious villainess: (nearly in tears) No, he brought his best knights to the castle and tried to kill me last week, at midnight, I can’t ignore something like that! He even kicked Cathulhu!

Sorceress friend: He nudged it with his foot. And then he apologized to it. In tears.

Rebellious villainess: (actually in tears now, for reasons of feels instead of poetic torment) He’s trying so hard!!!

Villainess: Beloathed, I need a goat.

Prince: Of course, darling - may I inquire as to what for?

Villainess: Blood sacrifice to the dark gods, you know how it is.

Prince: …

Prince: …darling, you know I support your lifestyle choices, but I must say this before it potentially happens.

Prince: I’m not all right with human sacrifice. That’s one of my boundaries. I don’t know if you do that or not, but it seemed a topical time to bring it up.

Villainess: (carefree laugh) Oh beloathed, don’t worry yourself about such things, I would never!

Villainess: (leading him off to the goat market) Only incompetents use actual humans. Skilled practitioners of the dark arts know that a goat is not only a sufficient sacrifice, but the superior one.

Prince: You don’t say? Fascinating!

@sapphire-monkey One of the nobles against the marriage in the prince’s kingdom invites the villainess to a local village’s blessing ritual, secure in the knowledge that it’s not only custom to wear the absolute palest white or undyed linen/woolen clothing one owns, it’s a requirement of the ritual and sacrilegious to do otherwise. Let’s see you deal with that miss all-black-wardrobe.

She arrives in diaphanous white silk edged with lace that gives the impression of beautifully tattered hems, all of it drifting gently around her on the spring breeze to give the feeling of a wraith from a haunted castle or something of the such. While not her personal cup of tea, she finds the ritual very moving, and absolutely understands why its one of her beloathed’s favorites.

One of the nobles from her kingdom, meanwhile, decides, fuck it, and just turns the prince into a frog. It takes her two minutes to find and fix him.

Villain noble: How.

Villainess: True love’s kiss, bitch.

Villain noble: (seethes)

The prince, meanwhile, pissed off the entire villainous court for the recent engagement ball that was held by knowing and responding accordingly to all the proper threats and insults. He studied before doing this, and he’s not going to shame darling in front of her peers! Bastard even managed to subdue his chivalry long enough to flirt with one of her friends right in front of her, how dare he be so considerate and sensitive to her needs like that-!?

First time the Prince finds out Villainess can transform into a gigantic fire-breathing dragon is a very O_OU moment for him.

Villainess: Are you surprised I can? It’s a common ability.

Prince: I didn’t want to assume.

Villainess: …

Prince: (sweats)

Villainess: …you’re picturing me turning into a dragon and riding on my back into battle, aren’t you?

Prince: N-no, no, of course not-!

Villainess: (drapes in his lap) It’s okay, we’d look fantastic. (sly expression) And probably scary enough to get the enemy forces to surrender without any needless bloodshed.

Prince: (sweating) Darling, are you trying to tempt me into putting you into a position where you could be injured in battle?

Villainess: A little. :3 (more seriously) But it is also on the table if we ever need to defend our throne. It’s the sort of thing that form’s for, really.

Prince: If you’re comfortable with it, then very well, it shall be added to the list of acceptable strategies.

(comfortable cuddling for a moment)

Prince: I imagine you make a very majestic dragon.

Villainess: (preening) I really do.

Prince: Perhaps we should have a tapestry done of it, then? It could hang opposite the one of my family’s crest in the throne room when we someday ascend the thrones ourselves.

Villainess: 8O! Beloathed, I would adore a tapestry of that! (cuddles further against him) Oh, and across from your family crest! That would be such a slap in the face to my parents, having a tapestry of me there instead of their own crest.

Prince: (hadn’t thought of it that way, but is happy that she’s happy)

Villainess comes in one night thoroughly out of sorts because her stupid cousin’s decided to make a move on her rights to the souls of their ancestors, and the jerk’s competent enough to actually have a potential chance at getting them, too, like he’d even wear the necklace of jewels they’re trapped in-!!!

The Prince listens patiently to her frustration until she’s finished, then considers for a few minutes.

“Darling, about that banquet your family’s having next fortnight - will your cousin be in attendance?”

“Yes, he’ll be using it to lay the groundwork of his plans. Why?”

“Would it be all right if I popped in for a bit? And was rather more… myself than I usually am around your parents?”

“…I suppose it’d be all right.”

“Wonderful!” (kisses her hand) “Perhaps wear those full-arm gloves your friend got you for the event - the ones that allow you to handle blessed objects without them interfering with your dark powers?”

“Well now I’m just curious. I shall do as you request, beloathed.”

The night of he shows up to the banquet positively radiating charm, good will, and benevolence, decked out in full armor that’s glowing slightly. Oh this? It’s the ancestral trappings of one of his relatives who was a champion of the stellar deities, those who guide ones who have become lost in darkness? He’s not a holy champion himself, but he is a fully-realized warrior of light and family, so he’s permitted to wear it at times. Oh yes, he completed his warrior of light trials when he was eighteen, when on a quest and everything! That’s where he earned his sword - it’s actually a shard of sunlight, you know, not metal. That’s why he’s called Prince of the Sun and Stars sometimes - bit of a grandiose title, really, but the artists and poets enjoy playing with the imagery, and who is he to deny them, especially when Darling is so fond of the stars herself! There’s a lass in one of the kingdom’s villages doing a portrait of the two of them together playing with that motif, actually, and it looks like it’s going to to be absolutely lovely when it’s done-

And he continues to be cheerful, charming, and just the nicest, most polite guy for the time he’s there while also reminding everyone in no uncertain terms that, for as long as the forces of evil have been trying to quash the forces of good, his side has been working at the opposite. And his side tends to win more often. And maybe it would be wise not to pick a fight with Darling because he’d hate to have to do battle with a potential in-law in the path of supporting her family’s traditions regarding people who cross them…

Jerk cousin is thoroughly cowed out of making an attempt at the family-filled jewels, and Villainess’s friends are standing with her off to the side going, “Okay, beginning to see what you see in him now.” Villainess herself is walking around with on safely-gloved hand on his arm as he intimidates the hell out of everyone she knows in order to help her protect what’s hers, swooning a little bit inside the whole time.

(Hers might be more diversely applicable, but Villainess isn’t the only one bringing something to the table in terms of power. Prince is generally more useful for things like getting birds to sing in chorus or making friends with bunnies, but his family does specialize in slaying evil. She may be skilled at facing enemies of all sorts, but he’s prepared specifically for anyone in her home court who might try to backstab her.)

Oh my gods, yes, absolutely!

Congratulations, you are officially the smartest person on the entire thread, holy flip-?!?

Villainess is chilling in Prince’s court one day and a lady of the court storms up to her in tears, make-up running, and is just, “One of your friends turned my fiance into a newt, a newt, and he fell in the moat before I could catch him and I don’t know how to find him, or how to change him back if I do find him, and the library only has information on frog and bear transformations, and no one knows what to to do and you’re the only person who might know what to do, please help me-!” (bursts into inconsolable tears)

This throws Villainess through a loop, people don’t tend to whole-heartedly throw their trust in others like this at her place, this is super unsettling, so she just responds in the way she usually would, “Oh? And what price are you willing to pay?”

“Anything.”

…ooooooooh that is so, so tempting, why are people in this court so earnest, don’t they realize that the reason the higher nobles are worried about her marriage to their prince is the very real potential that she could use this opportunity to cast their country and its people into a thousand years of ruin and despair, bare minimum…?! But it would make Darling unhappy if she’s too mean about this, so, “How about your dignity, then? First off, we’ll have to get you out of that dress…” (seductive smirk and cock of the hips)

Court lady: (still in tears but hands immediately go to her bodice laces to start undoing)

Villainess: (grabbing her hands) OKAY, WHOA, HOLD UP, WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF COURT, HAVE SOME STANDARDS!!! Just- just go put on something you don’t mind getting all messed up, we’re going to have to get in the moat a bit for this, and even the edges are all muddy.

Court lady: Oh. (sniffles) Okay. Thank-you.

They spend the next three hours dredging around the moat to find the right newt and then perform the right ceremony to turn him human again. He appears naked and covered in mud and court lady unabashedly flings herself into his arms, sobbing in relief this time, and it’s disgustingly wholesome and romantic.

Newt Lordling: (once he’s finished doing a bit of sobbing of his own into his fiance’s hair) Wait, aren’t you Neskatina’s friend? Could you tell her that my sister likes daffodils? Girls, and daffodils? I tried to tell her myself, but the newt thing happened before I could get past asking her to stop with the threatening letters. We- we really don’t send those around here unless we mean it, she’s been finding it a bit upsetting. Daffodils would be much better received.

Villainess: …noted.

I thought about them more and… there’s no way Court Lady isn’t going to decide to be friends with Villainess after all this, is there? She helped her save her fiance when she thought him lost to her forever and had nowhere else to turn, they did what amounts to a mini quest together, they’re friends now. Villainess has no idea how to handle it when the next court function comes along and Court Lady scampers over (tear-free this time) and proceeds to spend a decent amount of the evening with her just being… so unabashedly friendly. It’s unnerving.

Prince: She’s grateful to you and wants to be friends.

Villainess: (glowering suspiciously) Sounds fake.

Prince: She thinks you’re nice.

Villainess: Disgusting.

She still goes when Court Lady invites her on a trip to the meadows with some of the other ladies to pick greens, all of them surprised by the discovery that going out to gather flowers and useful herbs and such is something ladies from both courts do from time to time (though for very different reasons). It’s common sense to wear an older outfit that’s all right to get a bit grass- or mud-stained (ladies from the Prince’s court call them their ‘daisy dresses,’ Villainess and her friends call them ‘gathering gowns’), and Villainess is kind of shocked that the pretty nobles from her beloathed’s court do this sort of thing.

The ladies all titter, then it’s story time, because you can bet most of them have a heroic/clever/wise relative somewhere in the family tree who was born a peasant and married or gained nobility for some feat or other, and it’s fun to have someone new in the group who hasn’t heard all the stories before. Villainess is surprised again, because she does actually know some of these stories, but from the relatives of the villain involved (usually told in a ‘you’ll never guess what so-and-so’s idiot relative got thwarted over’ sort of tone). Going on outings like this helps you stay connected to your roots!

Also, Court Lady turns out to be the daughter of the royal apothecary and has a deep knowledge of the properties of various mushrooms. She even knows about poisons because they’re used in medicine sometimes. Villainess might be starting to like her as a person.

Another lady finds a patch of old teasels and braids them into a crown for Villainess, because “They’re all dark and spiky, and about the same colour as your daisy dr- ah, your gathering gown! We tend to make each other flower crowns when we go out, but I thought you might like these better.”

Villainess: …won’t they get deceptively yet horribly tangled in my hair, making the crown stay on well but an absolute nightmare to take off?

Lady: (terrified that she’s judged wrong) Yes…?

Villainess: (trying so hard not to be horribly touched, she’s just allergic to all these non-lethal flowers, that’s why she’s suddenly feeling sniffly) That’s really thoughtful of you.

To get a touch spicy - both are shocked to discover that their fiance is under the belief that the alignment they’re not a part of invented bondage.

Prince: It had to have been a villain that invented it, your side’s the one that gets all clever with ropes and knots and everything!

Villainess: No no no, it must have been your side, because safe words and after care!

They are both very perplexed, but also in absolute agreement that they will not be asking their parents about this.

(Because why go with the trope ‘good folks are vanilla in bed and evil folks are spicy’ when you could go with ‘actually one’s moral alignment has no effect on what they’re into in bed and actually it’s a pretty even division of spiciness levels all around’ and have both groups get tripped up by the discovery?)

@moviegirlsincedisney​   #amazing #I need comics and books and a tv show #also I imagine after neskatina has sent a bouquet of daffodils with a black ribbon binding them together #she receives a letter threatening her for turning the lordling into a newt from the sister #It’s filled with scathing comments the likes of which neskatina has never heard from the lips of the Good Folk #at the end of the letter written in tiny print is a post script saying ‘did I do it right? you’re cute’ #Neskatina is disturbed when instead of ruining the effect of the whole letter she is instead only further endeared

^Yes, all of this, good, canon!!!

This has gotten infinitely better since the last time I saw it.

It’s the fantasy equivalent of Ensign Stabby.

You just- just came for me like that, right from the hip, didn’t even blink, I’m never going to recover and I’m so flattered, thank-you!

[Image ID:] A short comic of someone with pointy ears wearing a hat reading something from their laptop, which results in them pulling their hat over their head and screaming. [End ID]

There’s that semi-common trope in a lot of stuff where the King’s advisor turns out to be super evil, right? I imagine that could play back into this, where the Prince’s father’s advisor is like. Visibly evil and malicious and conniving, complete with backhanded comments and an unsettling name. And Villainess finally meets him and realizes this immediately. She personally finds him to be one of the most tolerable people in the castle, but she is a bit concerned that the Prince doesn’t know and that this man could cause some out of place stress to her Beloathed. Eventually she decides to tell him, and so later that night she asks about it.

Villainess: Beloathed, what do you think of your father’s advisor?

Prince: Him? Oh, he’s been with the family since my father was a boy. He practically raised Father when my grandfather fell ill. We are lucky to have him with us.

Villainess: …are you aware that he’s evil?

Prince: Hm? Oh, yes.

Villainess, now a bit confused: And you haven’t removed him from the job? I would have assumed that your people would not tolerate this kind of darkness, especially so close to power.

Prince, shrugging: It’s kind of a tradition, to be honest. The King’s advisors have all been evil for… well, centuries now. It’s something that mostly goes unspoken. The position tends to corrupt people. Eventually he will reveal a daring plot, and I will defeat him to protect the light and discover something new about the side of good.

Villainess: Hmm. I suppose that makes sense.

And later on the Villainess begins to foil the advisor’s plans, mostly because all of them are mediocre and her beloathed deserves a much more challenging trial than that. The Prince is touched that the Villainess is putting this much attention into such a small, unspoken tradition. The advisor is very confused and upset because “what do you mean that was a bad plan, I even included poison!”

it’s been long enough i’m making an executive decision that we all need to go reread the tgi fridays infinite mozzarella sticks article

still just as good as i remember it

The link is broken nooooo

burning of the fucking library of alexandria right here. anyway everyone say thank you wayback machine

Happy ten years of Caity weavers infinite mozzarella sticks article

Read the whole thing but my favorite bits:

This is so wholesome

Update: he finally got the cat to the vet to see if she had a microchip

I was already on board with his sweet wholesome open-to-love-and-nurturing heart but I was fully unprepared for getting to that last tweet and seeing how off the hook HOT dude is

https://twitter.com/pariszarcilla?lang=en heres his twitter is here there is also additonal cat photos of his children. 

CAT DAD IS BACK

aww, the kids grow up so fast. ;-;

HHHHHHHH I LOVE CAT DAD!

This is, by far, the single most adorable fucking thing I have ever seen. 

update:

I love that he kept …. All of them.

I’ve reblogged the earlier part of this thread before, and the new stuff makes it even better.

This is the Tumblr equivalent of a warm hug on a cold day.

You’re welcome.

I remember this thread, but I never saw the grown-up pics ❤

@every-n-anything

All hail Catdad

I saw Catdad for the first time today, and my day instantly became exponentially better.

I’M CRYING!?

CATDAD HAS REVIVED MY WILL TO LIVE

I live for cat dad-

Cat dad has saved us all

CAT DAD!!

I had not seen the updates. I am so happy that the Cat Gods smiled upon this person and their new family :)

He’s got more recent pictures (and is also an INCREDIBLE artist), but this is the fam circa May 2020 :>

It’s been over a year? Where is cat dad? Where is he?

Fear not, CatDad is still happily with us:

Cat Dad 2022 pic.

It’s been far too long since I saw these guys. “Heartwarming” doesn’t begin to touch it. :)

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.

(ID in alt)

Approximately one THOUSAND felonies

Vine… you will be missed

I haven’t seen a lot of these ones before hahaha

“nice, ron…” “oh am i not allowed to sneeze?”

I just want y’all to know that one time during lockdown I played a lot of Minecraft because I had nothing better to do and then later I was going to go into my room after a shower so I could go back to being a hermit but it was dark so I just thought “oop, can’t go in there, there’ll be skeletons spawning there and they’ll shoot at me”

And for LIKE FIVE WHOLE SECONDS I didn’t question it and I just turned on the lights and walked out into the living room to wait it out, just thankful I had my pajamas on already so I didn’t have to fight off the shooty skeletons in my dark closet where there might be some creepers too

And then all of a sudden I was like “Wait what the frig skeletons aren’t real” and then just went back into my room

And I think about that a lot. So if ANY OF YOU dare to think that I have any more than three and a half braincells on a really good day, just please remember this and know that you are sorely mistaken

I hate to break it to you but skeletons are, in fact, real. There's one incredibly close to you at this very second

this is like that one summer I played too much chess, and then I was standing in line at the grocery store at a slightly diagonal angle to the person in front of me and I had this light go off in my brain like “weak pawn structure this is your chance” before I realized that it was real life actually.

Thank fucking God you hadn't also been playing like 2 straight weeks of assassins creed.

Hands up who here has tried to Ctrl+Z with a pen

I was once writing very quickly and intensely in a paper notebook, and realized that my left hand was doing "CTRL+S" every couple of lines.

Sometimes you see a post and just realize there’s some Wild Shit going on in a community you never knew existed

Finally, I understand

THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT. THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL POST.

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

Fun Story: My director kept telling me and my tenor sax buddy to play softer. No matter what we did, it wasn’t soft enough for him. So getting frustrated, I told my buddy “Dont play this time. Just fake it” 

Our Band Director then informed us we sounded perfect. 

To my readers: “p” means quiet, “pp” means really quiet. I’ve never seen “pppp” before haha.

On the contrast, “f” means loud, and “ffff” probably means so loud you go unconscious.

I had ffff in a piece once and my conductor told me to play as loudly as physically possible without falling off my chair…

Me and my trombone buddies had “ffff” and he sat next to me and played so hard that he fell out of his chair.

The lengths we go for music.

Okay yeah so I play the bass clarinet and the amount of air you have to move and the stiffness of the reed means it only has two settings and that is loud and louder, with an optional LOUDEST that includes a 50% probability of HORRIBLE CROAKING NOISE which is the bass equivalent of the ubiquitous clarinet shriek.

One day, when I was in concert band in high school, we got a new piece handed out for the first time, and there was a strange little commotion back in the tuba section — whispering, and pointing at something in the music, and swatting at each other’s hands all shhh don’t call attention to it. And although they did attract the attention of basically everyone else in the band, they managed to avoid being noticed by the band director, who gave us a few minutes to look over our parts and then said, “All right, let’s run through it up to section A.”

And here we are, cheerfully playing along, sounding reasonably competent — but everyone, when they have the attention to spare, is keeping an eye on the tuba players. They don’t come in for the first eight measures or so, and then when they do come in, what we see is:

[stifled giggling]

[reeeeeeally deep breath]

[COLOSSAL FOGHORN NOISE]

The entire band stops dead, in the cacophonous kind of way that a band stops when it hasn’t actually been cued to stop. The band director doesn’t even say anything, just looks straight back at the tubas and makes a helpless sort of why gesture.

In unison, the tuba players defend themselves: “THERE WERE FOUR F’S.”

FFFF is not really a rational dynamic marking for any instrument, but for the love of all that is holy why would you put it in a tuba part.

This is the best band post 

Everyone else go home

Oh man, so I play trombone, and we got this piece called Florentiner Marsch by Julius Fucik, and we saw this

which is 8 fortes. We were shocked until,

that is 24 fortes who the fuck does that

Who does that?

This guy. Take a good look - that is the moustache of a man with nothing to lose.

Julius IdontgivaFucik

More like Julius Fuckit

Pyrozod’s tags for this were too hilarious not to share

This is a water-seal stoneware crock. The design is ancient.

It is, essentially, a large ceramic vessel that you put vegetables and sometimes brine into. To prevent spoilage, you place those ceramic weights on top of whatever food is in the crock, and that keeps them weighted down, below the level of the water. Because fermentation creates gases, most crocks have a "water groove" in them. The lid sits in the groove, which allows air to escape but not come in. Because fermentation creates gas, the interior of the crock is positive-pressure, and because the gas created is almost entirely carbon dioxide, it's a low-oxygen environment that additionally helps prevent spoilage.

And all this would be pointless without lactobacillus, the bacteria that chomp down on the vegetables you put into the crock. They're anaerobic, which means totally fine without oxygen, and they produce an environment that's inhospitable to most other organisms. The main things they produce are CO2, which means no oxygen for other bacteria, and lactic acid, which makes the fermented thing sour and also decreases the pH low enough that many other bacteria cannot survive. They tolerate high levels of salt, which kill yet more competitor bacteria. It ends up being a really really good way to keep food from going off.

Our ancestors figured this out thousands of years ago without knowing what bacteria were. This general ceramic design has been in use around the world in virtually every place that had ceramics, salt, and too much cabbage or cucumbers that was going to rot if they didn't do something about it. It's thousands of years old, so old that it gets hard to interpret the evidence of the ceramics.

And I have crocks like this in my kitchen, where I make my own ferments, and I always think about how beautiful and elegant it all is, and how this was probably invented hundreds of times as people converged on something that Just Works.

(I do have pH testing strips though.)

I enjoy the Two Cakes Philosophy and I believe it deserves its place enshrined in fandom culture.

Forgive me for the extended metaphor but I also want to simultaneously celebrate what I’m calling Bakery Display Case Philosophy. You know when you walk into a bakery and the display case is full of beautiful treats? And there’s a variety of different colors, textures, and flavors to discover? And that’s so deeply exciting?

You might say to yourself, “No one is going to want to read this pairing. No one is going to want to want a character study of that character. No one wants genfic in this fandom, only shipfic.”

And you might use that to discourage yourself from writing a certain fic.

Fandoms, like bakeries, need cakes and cookies and éclairs and cream puffs and shortbread and brownies and pies and tarts and petit fours and turnovers and cinnamon rolls and madeleines and meringues—and so many other things—to survive.

Write your dark chocolate pistachio croissant fic. Your fandom needs it actually.

To add—you might specialize in One Type Of Dessert.

Maybe you only make, and only want to make, sugar cookies. Bakeries have lots of bakers! They might even get specialty items from OTHER bakeries! You can just keep making those sugar cookies, maybe in one bakery maybe for several. It’s okay to only want to make one type of sweet (aka, yes you CAN just make the exact same coffee shop au, maybe even the same damn couple, and people will still want it). And if you want to try another type of cookie, or make a sugar cookie cake, or a, what are they called? A Brookie? Go ahead and experiment! You might surprise yourself with what you can make, and how those sugar cookie skills translate to other recipes.

I just found the earliest email I ever sent from my email address, and it’s the funniest goddamn thing I can possibly imagine a fourth grader sending her teacher:

(Context - my fourth grade teacher was on maternity leave, and the state of the classroom fish tank was dire under the substitute teacher’s tyrannical rule. The class convened at recess, and decided to inform our (24yo, new mother) former teacher of the situation. I was selected as the duly appointed representative for this solemn communication.)

Further context: I am now a practicing attorney.

Actively hate the discourse against 24/7 places like I get where you're coming from but in my ideal world a lot of shit would be 24/7 just with more shifts and better pay because plenty of people prefer to work nights or have to be out at weird hours to get basic necessities for one reason or another and acting like necessary services keeping to almost a 9-5 operating hours and having multiple days closed ignores people sometimes do need things immediately and it's not all some lazy selfish desire and isn't inherently harmful to the employees

I spent 13 hours in the ER yesterday with a myasthenia gravis flare, and was famished when I finally got to go home at 2 AM. The 24 hour McDonald’s across the street from the hospital was an absolute godsend. Blessings and mercy and a pay raise for all the shift workers both in and outside the hospital.

As a person with delayed sleep phase disorder the idea of an 8-5 world is pure hell to me.  Not only do I have to work those shitty hours, I have to do my personal business too?

Shift work doesn’t have to be hell.  Let everything be 24/7 just let people who prefer to work nights be the ones to do it.

Legit, everything 24/7, shifts limited to six hours, pay raise to liveable wage, bonuses for those working nights, fully staffed. This includes clinics and hospitals because they're overworked and a lot of people cannot make it to a daytime appointment because they work nights and can't fuck up that sleep schedule.

starting an evil thrift store called badwill. all money goes to evil causes like cancer research (researching how to give more people cancer), feeding the hungry (to wild dogs) and supporting veterans