allmyfansquees

[allmyfansquees]

that example of the scorches in the table viscerally reminded me of a really charming moment in a biography of Charles Darwin (and his work) that I read years ago. I actually dug it out and copied out the section. His wife, Emma Darwin, is being quoted here:

"'When we were young, Charles and I talked over together what we should do. The house was newly and expensively furnished. Should we make the furniture a bugbear to the children, or shall we let them use it in their plays?' They agreed that they would not worry about things getting shabby. 'So chairs and other furniture used to get piled up for railways and coaches, just as the fancy took them… I believe we have all been much the happier in consequence.'"

This was in 1842, and a young married couple were making the same decision OP mentions above:

you can also decide to just not care about your stuff displaying the ordinary signs of wear and tear from being lived with, instead of trying to make a home a furniture showplace.

(it's also kind of comical that various relatives and friends absolutely did find the children's rowdiness a pita - one woman described a visit as including "a violent luncheon" which made me laugh)

(the book is "Annie's Box" by Randal Keynes, and it's absolutely worth a read if you can find a copy - it was published in 2001 so i don't think there's an ebook, sadly.)

so i complain a lot about low build quality of modern durable goods, but i do think there's a lot of freedom in having durable goods that (while they meet or exceed a minimum level of functionality) you aren't tempted to Keep Nice.

i don't care if my cat sharpens her claws on the couch because it's an ikea couch i got for free off a friend who was moving away. i don't care if my car gets scratched because it's already dinged up and it doesn't make it any less drivable. i don't care if my desk chair upholstery gets stained; it was cheap and who gives a shit if my chair is grungy. in many cases i actively disprefer the Nice version of the thing (like, say, a fancy expensive car) because it's emotionally a lot harder to blow off incidental damage.

this is also a thing that's really nice about DIYing/thrift flipping furniture and shit: i don't care that much if i scratch up the finish on my desk because -- well, it's a desk. who cares if a desk is scratched?? but also, i built the damn thing, so i can just sand it and refinish it with the exact same varnish. i could reupholster the various cat-scratched furniture, if for some reason i wanted to do that. i CAN, in fact, Fix Him.

i grew up in a house with a bunch of Nice Furniture, including (most frustratingly) antiques where you absolutely could not leave anything wet on them ever. a couple times, in the course of lighting birthday candles, the kitchen table accidentally got match-scorched, and my mom STILL tisks over those burn marks every time she remembers they exist. and i have to say, constantly Being Careful of the Furniture did and still does drive me up the wall. it's exhausting. like -- you don't have to spend mental energy on that!! you can refinish the dang table! you can, idk, lasercut some clear acrylic sheets to put on top of the antique dresser set! you can also decide to just not care about your stuff displaying the ordinary signs of wear and tear from being lived with, instead of trying to make a home a furniture showplace. every time i look at the scorch marks on my parents' kitchen table, i remember eating birthday cake.

#seriously it's SUCH a charming book #all the science aside - which is well-written and explained - it's a record of the most deeply loving family #in an era where our general view today is that it was very stiff and cold #this very much gives the lie to that #and also OP's point is important #you LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE #why does how your furniture look matter more than that? #there's a freedom in buying/having cheap shit #as someone who's moved across continents a bunch #you do NOT want to be shipping expensive antiques or family treasures

[allmyfansquees]

I'm probably gonna get yelled at for saying this but sometimes something isn't a real problem in fandom, you just learned a Japanese word describing a general fandom practice and got scared and decided it meant "The Bad Ones" of that practice

#deep sigh #YUP #racism

[allmyfansquees]

“Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. When you look up the stage directions, it says, ‘Exit Ariel.’”

— Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

#fuck this is why i LOVE theatre #live performances #the things that don't exist in the script #all those tiny all-important moments that make every performance unique #it's why i hated TV the few times i did it #performance is a conversation and if you take away my partner what am i supposed to do? #nothing about that sequence is especially interesting if it's happening on a screen #at a totally different time of day #and is identical every time you watch it

[allmyfansquees]

#as someone who lives alone #but whose sibling is married with 2 little kids (not drinking out of breakable mugs/drinking hot drinks) #and has just... HORDES of mugs #mugs coming out of every nook and cranny #i am fascinated by the gap between 'I have' and 'so many people' #because a family of 2 adults is in no way 'so many people' #and YET #otoh maybe it's also a sociability thing? if u regularly have (or used to have pre-covid) folks over for a cuppa then u do need #a slightly astonishing number of mugs #i did also ditch a few when i moved in summer 22 #the ones with cracks and chips or the 'oh. how kind of u to think of me...' mugs

[allmyfansquees]

So I was talking to my auntie last winter while she was finishing knitting a cardigan and I was crocheting various hats and gloves (and swearing at my occasional attempts to learn knitting). as part of that conversation she mentioned something that kind of blew my mind.

the (excellent) point @amymon-arachne made in passing above:

"Also, worn out woven fabric can be cut down and repurposed into other useful items, while knitting and crochet would come apart if you tried to cut it."

just threw it back into my brain.

So she's the 2nd of 5 kids, growing up in the late 40s/50s in Japan (ie during the US occupation, a lot of poverty plus the general post-war economic shambles - not that that's unique to Japan, but, y'know, context). Specifically she grew up in Aomori, one of the snowiest cities in the world, in a working-class family. Naturally they wore a LOT of knitted garments (underwear too, apparently, which I'd never even thought about) - she and her sisters were taught very young so they could help.

and we were talking about hand-me-downs and saving the 'good' clothes so the next sibling could wear it etc, how hard it must have been back then to get decent wool and she said - oh but for woollens, you just reknitted the jumpers. (me: ???) she looked faintly puzzled at my reaction and said that it was normal/expected to cut the binding row of your knitted clothes, unravel the WHOLE THING, wash the wool (possibly dye it depending on wear and stains), then knit a new garment from it. (eventually of course the volume you had to work with kept shrinking bit by bit so an adult sweater ended up as a couple of baby shawls or whatever.)

and it was the strangest paradigm shift for me. i knew about resizing clothes, or reusing the fabric even if i've never done it but the idea that instead of cutting, saving, or abandoning knitted items you just... reknitted them? broke my brain.

(i do wonder if that slow inevitable decline as your stash of usable fibres shrank also contributes in some way to how few items we've found, historically? but that is absolutely not my wheelhouse!)

The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

#fibre arts #well textiles generally i guess #and HISTORY! :D #and prehistory

[allmyfansquees]

so just to add to this linguistic mess, in Japan cider is ... fizzy soda. I want to say lemonade but there isn't the faintest trace of lemon, it's just. Fizz. Idk. I'm told this came from various miscommunications with US troops during the postwar occupation but who tf knows. It's weirdly good despite the lack of flavour, to be clear, but as a kid raised in the UK with a faint inkling cider was maybe alcoholic (it wasn't super popular when I was younger), the cognitive dissonance of cider being a common kiddie option that didn't even taste of apples was overwhelming ^^;

I only learned recently that people from Not America don’t specify hard cider and instead it’s just cider.

I know this is a small difference but it is surprisingly one I do sometimes have to lie down on the floor about.

#drinks #linguistics #and having fun with the intersection

[allmyfansquees]

#kurama?! on my dash in 2024?!! #i have been blasted back 25+ years to high school #and watching yu yu hakusho with my cousins on a crt tv in the sticky summer heat of tokyo #holy crap i am genuinely emotional about this #and with HIS MUM #bless u OP #fanart

[allmyfansquees]

[alt text: tweet from ItsDanSheehan

No more "smart" appliances. If an object from my kitchen greets me I will hit it with a bat]

#apologies if alt text was added by OP but it's not showing up for me! #and my god yes i thoroughly subscribe to this sentiment #frankly an object anywhere in my house is going out the window #(i live on the top floor #this is not an idle threat)

[allmyfansquees]

there's a public consultation on sunak's stupid ''no more sick leave work yourselves to death'' idea which closes 8th July 2024.

uk people you know the drill: polite but firm about how this is economically and socially a stupid fucking idea

non uk people please share for visibility

#Oh here we fucking go #Again

[allmyfansquees]

i had the enormous pleasure of playing Hermia in an open-air production of Midsummer Night's Dream on Naoshima nearly 20 years ago and while the whole experience was magical it's the quality of the light i remember the most clearly (the modern art EVERYWHERE was pretty high up too but i remember the light maybe because it's not usually something i notice)

the teshima study captures that feel. so lovely!

tokyo / teshima

photostudies from pics i took in japan last year!!

#next time i'm back i should try and go back to the seto islands #and actually make it to shikoku this time ^^;; #the whole cast kept trying and failing #it was the weirdest two weeks of weather

[allmyfansquees]

Summary: With his country fallen to the unstoppable tide of the Dread Warlord, a terrified king sends a peace offering of his own flesh and blood in the hopes of buying leniency. When Prince Damian of Miska is accepted as the symbol of his country's surrender and immediately wedded to the Warlord, he expects his fate to be both painful and humiliating, and his death inevitable. To his confusion, the Warlord and his terrible Warlock seem to have no interest in abusing that which they have claimed as their own. As Damian finds his feet and gains friends in a new land, he begins to question everything he once thought was true. But some jewels were never meant to be sold, and the consequences of Damian's sacrifice are more far-reaching than anyone expected.

Author: @formlessvoidbeast

#folks if u haven't read this? #go read it #it's AMAZING #fic rec

[allmyfansquees]

🐱⛸🏒🐶

(yes, i am still brainrotting but what else is new)

(ice rink au)

#oh dear god #this is amazing #karlach #shadowheart #modern au #fanart #SUPER CUTE fanart

[allmyfansquees]

BALDUR'S GATE 3 2023, dev. Larian Studios

#gods wyll is such a cutie #amplified for me by the fact that he is canonically a BABY #24 ffs! (not that the others are much different) #daddy halsin has to be feeling more like grandpa halsin sometimes #jaheira can feel her bones turning to dust #wyll ravengard #gifs

[allmyfansquees]

Shawn and Gus are drift compatible but under no circumstances should they ever be allowed to pilot a jaeger

#i am the most casual fan of both these franchises #i've seen a double handful of episodes (and a lot of gifs) #and watched the first movie with enormous pleasure but only the once #but i feel the truth of this in my BONES #dear god no

[allmyfansquees]

Years ago, over a century, Jaheira was part of a group that saved Baldur’s Gate from Sarevok. A Bhaalspawn trying to plunge the city into war. My mum used to tell us stories about them; the legends who protected the city from evil. She said Jaheira was a powerful druid. Adamant. Tough. I’ve told myself those stories a thousand times since. I never thought I’d meet Jaheira. She’s a hero, and I was always…some Outer City kid. Can’t believe she wants to talk to us about working together. What a day!

#look it's not like i wasn't already completely gone on karlach by this point in the game #but her overwhelmed giggle?! #my HEART #she's just such a sweetheart and i love her

[allmyfansquees]

People have lost track of an essential aspect for MILFs: they are supposed to be old enough to be YOUR mom. Not old enough to be a mom, but to be your mom. If you’re calling a 30yo a MILF you gotta understand you’re implying you’re twelve years old. Which is fine but you probably should know that’s what your saying.

I am 46, and so if you’re in your 20s, I’d be a MILF to you. If you’re 35, I’m not a MILF I’m A Little Bit Older Than You.

#oh god yes #this bugs me more than it probably should ^^; #milf: a definition

[allmyfansquees]

by alisandor_ on twitter ❤️‍🔥 karlach, modern au

#oh #oh this is GORGEOUS #bg3 #the girl gang #looking FABulous