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I like the expression new-fangled. I don't know what it means for something to be fangled, but I sure as hell know it was recent
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Honestly, a not-insignificant contributing factor to my mid-20s gender crisis is that I used to think I was viscerally repulsed by playing as male characters in video games, but eventually I realised it was literally just playing as smarmy brown-haired thirtysomething dudes with an emotional range running the gamut from dull surprise to generic rage that put me off, and basically every other sort of male player character was fine. It's just that this happened to be when the Uncharted series was really taking off, so a solid 50% of all male video game protagonist fit that mould! Nathan Drake sucks so much that he made me question my gender, is what I mean to say.
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While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a slapping,
As of some one gently flapping, flapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some fairy,” I muttered, “slapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”
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am I making any sense
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“you dropped your dead bear": a love story
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Chosen for What?
A short tale about chosen ones.
"There it is."
Johann's voice was barely a whisper but in the unnatural silence of the forest it might as well have been a shout. The knight took a step forward, oblivious to the crunch of his footsteps on the dry leaves or the sharp, almost metallic smell of the coming snow.
His focus was entirely upon the spear. It's shaft was made of white wood, polished so smooth he had mistaken it for marble, and the bronze spearhead was shaped like a elegantly stylized shark.
It was presently stuck within the ribcage of an obscenely oversized humanlike skeleton, which was itself entangled in the gnarled roots of a tree the size of a watchtower. The giant's bones were twice the size of a man's. More remarkably, they were made of pitted, rust-flecked iron.
Johann reached forward.
"HOLD!"
Johann froze. Even though the salvation of his people was mere inches away from his outstreched hand, he dared not ignore the voice behind him. He felt the wizard's hand grip him by the shoulder.
"You know it is not meant for you." Aldara said. She squeezed hard enough for Johann to feel it through his mail shirt. He remembered her saying that wizards aged only on the outside. He had no reason to doubt her on that point.
"And who is it for?" Johann hissed under his breath. "That scum?"
The scum in question was already walking toward the spear. Galen VonZent, the cutpurse and murder. Galen VonZent, the spoiled, cruel son of a merchant house who killed his own father and nearly bought his way to freedom. Galen VonZent, who Alex 'sacrificed himself to save.'
"Galan, take the spear. You're ready." Aldara said, her voice heavy with the import of the moment. When Galan moved to obey, she slowly pulled Johann back away from the spear, step-by-step.
The tall, golden-haired man grabbed the spear with both hands, and began slowly pulling it free of the iron skeleton. To Johann's shock and disgust, the shark-shaped spearhead bent this way and that in a swaying motion, aiding in its release.
"The gods must be insane, or cruel beyond reasoning. If that beast is their chosen one."
"You aren't incorrect." The old woman chuckled. "But why say that now? Why not when we found him?"
"I had faith the gods had chosen well, that he'd grow into the role. But since we saved him from the gallows he has done nothing but confirm that he was right to be there. He has been cruel, selfish, cowardly, and petty at every turn." Johann's voice was a barely subdued growl. "And even if you do not believe me, he murdered Alex."
"I told you to give him a chance." Aldara said. Johann braced to be lectured about some hidden goodness or potential for redemption. "I'm glad you took my advice."
"What? You agree with me?" Johann gritted his teeth. "You should have let me at least try to pull the spear free. If he can do it, I certainly can!"
"Why is a prophecy like a worm on a line?"
"Again with your riddles! I don't know!" Johann barely managed to suppress a shout. "Is that why I am unworthy? A riddle?"
Aldara sighed. She smiled in that way that made Johann think of his grandmother, and his anger faltered. She spoke, clear and gentle. "Do you think the Gods would leave something this important up to chance?"
"Obviously not, that's why the prophecy-"
She squeezed again.
"Tell me, how do you ensure that a chosen hero isn't killed before they can save the world?"
Johann glanced back at Galan. The brute had managed to free the spear halfway, and was taking a self-congratulatory break. "Whisk him away as a child to be raised in safety? Assign a wizard to watch over him? Place other heroes along the path to help him?"
"So many moving parts." The wizard laughed. "The gods can try and play us like puppets, but free will is a wildcat in a burlap sack-"
"-you can take it wherever you want until the sack tears." Johann continued the adage. "And you're get cut along the way regardless."
"The task gets no easier by adding more cats."
"Then how?" Johann asked, somewhere between sullen and frustrated.
"If you need to make sure only someone who is worthy can take the spear, you make the spear ensure that anyone who takes it-"
The wizard paused, a wide satisfied smile on her face. It was not the smile she had worn when they were joyously feasting with the elf-folk five days into the quest. It was the smile she had worn when she made Vorn the Destroyer's blood turn to water in his veins.
Johann's gaze was thusly occupied when the sound of Galan's sharp, anguished scream ripped through the air.
"-is worthy."
Johann turned slowly. As a knight he had heard enough death rattles and screams to know that he didn't want to witness the cause Galan's banshee-like shriek.
When he finally did turn fully, his gaze did not meet a horrifying eldritch mutilation as he expected. Instead, there stood Galan, holding the spear reverently with both hands.
Though nothing outward had changed, every aspect that Johann had found lacking was now plainly there in the lines of his face and posture of his body: compassion, thoughtfulness, maturity, competence, sincerity... even hope. Everything was there behind those eyes.
Everything except Galan VonZent.
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I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.
I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.
Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.
Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.
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Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
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From "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix" ("Les Douze travaux d'Astérix", 1976)
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Cheff JJ on ig
Copy-pasted directly from his reel:
ingredients: - 2 cups of flour - 4 cups of water + 1 cup ( for the pasta) - 4 small red onions - 1 cup of brown whole lentils - 1/2 tsp cumin powder - 1/2 tsp coriander powder salt and pepper - 4-5 tbsp olive oil - half a lemon - sumac - fresh coriander
start by mixing 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of water.
knead the dough very well and let it rest while preparing the rest of the meal.
finely dice 3 onions and fry in olive oil, add a cup of washed brown lentils.
season with cumin powder, coriander powder, salt and pepper add 4 cups of water and let it simmer on low for about 10-15 minutes.
flour the counter top and roll the dough as thin as you prefer your pasta to be.
roll the dough on itself and cut it into thin strips. flour the pasta and add it to the pan. cook it for about 5 minutes
slice an onion and fry it in olive oil till it starts to brown and char, you want the char flavor.
reserve some for garnish and add the oil and onion to the pan and mix. serve in a plate, garnish with the onions, lemon, fresh coriander sumac and enjoy
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I made a meme to explain The Pain to my D&D group and then I thought, you know what? Tumblr will get me
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A man?
the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck
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This is shameful. I can never understand why so many people in the rest of Spain show so little interest any of the regional languages (with the exception of whining about them, because whining is a renewable resource which could power the entire country). Everyone and their mother is signed up for English classes, the Official Language School offers English, French, Italian, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, schools teach two mandatory foreign languages... but god forbid we teach the children even one month of Català or Euskera or Asturianu or fucking sign language. Can you imagine? They might get ideas.
What knocks me sideways is treating your own ignorance like a moral victory. Don't have the time, money, motivation, resources? Fine. Fully understandable, if you don't live where a language is spoken. But imagine people saying "actually, I don't understand how television works" with the same pride as they say "actually, I don't speak Catalan".
(to the non-Spanish here: all the peninsular languages except Euskera are Romance languages and thus very mutually intelligible, with enough patience on both sides. But if you're on holiday in Barcelona and the waiter offers pa amb tomàquet instead of pan con tomate it's a mortal insult apparently)
(there is also a very specific kind of Castilian/Central Spain entitlement where Castilian Accent speakers go somewhere else and complain that the locals "hablan mal" which translates to "speak incorrectly", or, "they speak in An Accent. I do not have an Accent, because I speak The Best Spanish i.e. mine". It is spectacularly parochial)
I am Castilian and very angry. So. Any fun non-Duolingo online resources on which to properly exercise one's spite?
A day in the life of someone who posts on the internet in Catalan *cue dozens of Spanish people asking "what's wrong with your mouth", ordering him to speak in Spanish or "in Christian", saying he's rude for speaking in Catalan, calling him "polaco" (derogatory Spanish word to mean a Catalan person), calling the Catalan language a dialect, saying he is possessed because he's speaking Catalan, etc*
This is a video by Sergi Mas showing some of the comments he gets on YouTube. He makes videos about mountain biking that he posts on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. And the first comment he got on his first YouTube video was already someone telling him he should do it in Spanish.
Some days ago, another creator who posts his videos in Catalan (Joan Sendra, find him on Instagram and TikTok) answered to a Spanish person who was complaining that it's rude to speak Catalan/Valencian on the internet instead of Spanish because then there's people who don't understand you (as if everyone in the world spoke Spanish lmao). Joan, who is tired of getting this kind of comments so often, answered: there are already endless videos and things to watch on the internet in Spanish. In fact, if you look for [the topic he was talking about in the video that this guy commented] all the videos are in Spanish except for mine. And yet you had to come to me, the one in Valencian, and tell me that I can't make a video in my language and that I can only make it in yours. If you don't like it, it's so easy to find another one!
However, it's not a matter of actually being interested in what's being said in a language they don't speak. It's about the imposition of the language they consider superior (Spanish) and telling speakers of the languages whose land Spain had occupied that they are useless and should be ashamed of existing in public. Well, we aren't. Like Sergi's video, don't let the comments disturb your macarrons.
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I was talking with my dad recently & we got on the topic of People Thinking They Can't Do Things, and like, he is at his core a well-intentioned person who genuinely wants the best for others, but he has definitely internalized some harmful ideas a la "anyone can do anything, the only thing stopping them is their own attitude". so I was like. I see where you're coming from, but let me tell you a story.
last year, I worked with 10 year olds- many of whom had never really spent time outdoors- in an outdoor education program where they came to spend a whole week doing shit outside in nature. the top two scariest experiences for these kids were 1) very tall metal tower, and 2) walking outside at night in the dark with no flashlights.
I tried a lot of different things to persuade them all to join me for each experience: I presented it with enthusiasm and passion, I did physical demonstrations and scientific explanations to help them understands how safe it was, I voiced my absolute commitment to their safety, I invited them to brainstorm ways to help each other and themselves feel safe, etc.
generally I always had at least 2-3 kids out of about 10 who opted out, or if they did join me, would spend the entire experience crying and freaking out. when it was over, they would conclude that even though they did not die- or even get hurt- it was so scary that it wasn't worth it and they never wanted to do it again.
then I changed the question I asked. instead of asking them to tell me whether they could do it or couldn't do it, I asked them to raise their hand for one of three options:
You can definitely do this.
It will be hard or scary or uncomfortable, but you can try to do this.
It will definitely be too hard, scary, or uncomfortable, and you cannot or should not try to do this.
suddenly, almost nobody was opting out of these experiences.
they would try, even if they were scared, because they know that being scared didn't necessarily mean that they couldn't do it at all. and more importantly, they knew that if they needed to stop, that was an option; they weren't trapped in their decision to try.
and the real takeaway here, for me, is in the nuance: people need to be able to challenge themselves and to be uncomfortable in order to grow, and people need to be able to opt out in order for opting in to be a safe option.
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The Time Monster really is an iconic Classic Who serial -
Lots of people have to say "TOMTIT" repeatedly with straight faces
The Master announces himself by saying "I'm sorry about your coccyx too, Miss Grant"
The Doctor does backwards Twin Peaks Red Room speak
Mike gets charged by a guy with a lance, shot at with a canon and blown up by a V2 all in the space of five minutes
Sgt Benton (who is supposed to be on leave) I) manages to grasp a complex space time concept nobody else understands II) does not quite manage to eat a marmalade sandwich III) manages to get the jump on the Master twice IV) gets turned into a baby
There are some scientists of the week bickering about women's lib for no real reason
The Master cucks the King of Atlantis
The Brig gets so worried about Captain Yates he calls him Mike
The Doctor tells Jo about the time he was existentially depressed as a child and it's really sweet
Jo attempts to blow herself, the Master, and the Doctor up to save the universe because the Doctor can't bring himself to
When she wakes up she assumes she's I) dead II) 'in heaven or somewhere' and is fine with it - "groovy isn't it"
The Doctor insists on taking personal responsibility for The Master again over him facing external consequences and of course he escapes *sigh*
Kronos says gender is meaningless "But you're a girl" "Shapes mean nothing"
There's a minotaur
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Tumblr is doing some stupid AI shit so go to blog settings > Visibility > Prevent third-party sharing.
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