probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
Please elaborate on your twst Pokémon headcannons I’m very interested
I had planned on drawing everyone for this (I made a LIST!) but it. hasn't been going well. 💀 soooo here's what I have so far!
Riddle - Roserade (I was going with 'no legendaries', otherwise I would've given him a Shaymin) (and I don't think Togedemaru is actually a hedgehog or I would've given him one of those too) (...they kind of do fit though. hmm.)
Ace - Impidimp (I feel like there's probably a better one for him, but I can't think of it)
Deuce - Scraggy (meanwhile I KNOW deep in my heart that this is true)
Leona - Pyroar (but like. a nasty Pyroar. just a grizzly old Pyroar with the shittiest attitude imaginable. they pretend to hate each other but secretly they are a bonded pair, do not separate)
Can we talk about the parallel between Guillermo's turning and un-turning.
His turning went so wrong, it wasn't what he wanted at all. We know our crazy, dramatic baby. He wanted a ceremony, he wanted it to be romantic and soft, he wanted vows and sacred words. He wanted to slowly expose his neck, he wanted whispered words, he wanted to feel safe and cherished. He wanted to be asked and be held and be seen and be accepted.
What he got instead was a badly lit horrifying ordeal. He had to take charge. Derek had no idea what he was doing. It happened in a backroom of a store, they kept getting interrupted by Derek's boss asking him to clean out toilets. Derek fucked up his bite. He almost died. "Have you done this before". Derek fainting. Blood everywhere. Anticlimactic, disappointing, not at all the culmination of his life long dream, of decades of service and love.
His un-turning on the other hand.
Oh Nandor knows him. He made up a ritual for him with a suitably dramatic name: "The Ceremony of Vampiric Transmogrification". He dressed him in robes which he put on him so softly and spoke to him so kindly beforehand. He got all the other vampires ready for him. He hung banners and lit candles. He wrote and spoke vows and sacred words to him. He gave him a choice and asked him a question. And when he got his answer he took charge and made sure everything went exactly as it should. He made Guillermo feel seen and loved and accepted, even if it broke his heart.
I’ve realized that the main reason I don’t give a fuck about Red Hood’s actual canon crimes is not that I think they’re justified, or reasonable, or even just funny. He has been shown doing very fucked up shit that at times has very little, if anything, to do with any reasonable moral code. But the reason I don’t care is that I’ve steadily become very critical of villain framing. It’s so very common to have a villain say something very reasonable like “poor people shouldn’t die” and then complement it with “and I will kill babies about it.” If the first statement is reasonable, and the narrative does not provide a reason that justifies the balls-to-the-wall batshit “solution” the character came up with, then I assume the author is either deliberately or subconsciously villainizing a specific group of people for no reason, and I don’t vibe with that. At that time I no longer care about what the author/narrative actually has to say and my reaction becomes “the narrator is actually a biased witness and anything they say about this person’s actions should be taken as exaggeration”. Oh, so Jason is an indiscriminate killer who thinks every petty criminal deserves to die? Wrong. They’re exaggerating and taking the facts out of context. So he killed a hundred people in prison with barely any provocation? It probably wasn’t that many and the ones he did were trying to kill him to begin with, with no intervention from the guards, so it was self defense. He attempted to kill a child? Wrong, that was a two-sided fight between two teenagers, he just won so the other one’s bitter. Like, I don’t care how much made up context I need to stuff in there to make it make sense, I will do it because the narrative decided to frame the homeless kid from a poor neighborhood as the villain against the nice and kindhearted humanitarian billionaire so its logic is fucked from the get-go
toby fox needs to add like a bit of narration in deltarune abt kris like "they themmed they/themily down the stheirs" cus i cant go on seeing them constantly get he/himmed in yt comment sections
hey btw if you're in the USA at 2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4, they're testing the emergency broadcast system. your phone is probably going to make a really loud noise, even if it's on silent. there's a backup date on the 11th if they need to postpone it.
if you're not in a safe situation and have an extra phone, you should turn that phone completely off beforehand.
additionally, if you're like me, and are easily startled; i recommend treating it like a party. have a countdown or something. be surrounded by your loved ones. take the actions you personally need to take to make yourself safe.
i have already seen mockery towards any person who feels nervous about this. for the record, it completely, completely valid to have "emergency broadcast sounds" be an anxiety trigger. do not let other people make fun of you for that. emergency sounds are legitimately engineered to make us take action; those of us with high levels of anxiety and/or neurodivergence are already pre-disposed to have a Bad Time. sometimes it is best to acknowledge that the situation will be triggering for some, and to prepare for that; rather than just saying "well that's stupid, it's just a test."
"loud scary sound time" isn't like, my favorite thing, but we can at least try to prevent some additional anxiety by preparing for it. maybe get yourself a cake? noise cancelling headphones? the new hozier album? whatever helps. love u, hope you're okay. we are gonna ride it out together.
It's like I blinked and "Haha I'm going to kill myself" became a funny joke to make again, or an alright thing to say ironically. You guys stop that. You'll feel better for not saying it, I promise.
per anon’s request, i present to you THE best version of beatrice’s monologue in much ado about nothing. i thought about cropping this but decided this scene must be watched in its full glory