Friends: *can’t find me in a crowd*
Friends: *screaming* LAFAYETTE
Me: I’M TAKING THIS HORSE BY THE REIGNS MAKING REDCOATS REDDER WITH BLOODSTAINS.
Friends: found her
I still don’t know much about Miraculous Ladybug all I’ve gleaned is that maybe(?) Alya and Chloe get to become Miraculous…ers too, and frankly, I’m fucking terrified.
The Love Rectangle wasn’t confusing enough? You wanna toss two more we-all-don’t-know-each-others-identities kids into the mix? This isn’t even a Love Cube you’re threatening. This is a Love Hyper-cube. This is a Love Tesseract. We’ve run out of spatial dimensions to chart this confusion and are now relying on color-coded 3D projections as the only humanly interpretable means of graphing this ungodly supreme clusterfuck.
I give it four days after the season premiere before the phrase “The superior shipform of Marinette and Alya is Ladyfox but all four of Ladyfox/Marilya/Alyabug/Marifox are greatly superior to all four Adriloe/Beenoir/Beedrien/Chloenoir as well as all forms of Alychat/Foxnoir/Adrilya/Adrifox and of course all twelve of these lose out terribly to Adrinette/Marichat/Ladynoir/Ladrien” and frankly, I’m handing in my resignation letter now.
Like here, this. Love rectangle? Totally graph-able. Look at this nifty informative shape.
Love cube? Okay you’re getting weird now. But yes, doable. Can-do. Totally fair to graphically represent pairs in 3D space. Toss Alya onto the third axis and you’ve got a chart. Every ship name fits nice and cozy.
All you need are the planar projections of the cube living in this 3D space and you got a deal.
The hyper-cube??? You’re ordering 2D planar projections of the hyper-cube living in 4D space?
Fuck no. Fuck you. Fuck this. I quit. I don’t even go here I’m o u t.
So in my research for my thesis, I learned a thing, and it’s not useful for my thesis so I’m posting it here instead.
Okay, so, everyone knows that the words canon and cannon are not synonyms, and if you’re like me it kind of makes your teeth grind when people talk about firing the canons or historical cannon. BUT HERE’S THE THING. The word canon is a direct lift from Latin, and it means law or rule. And so when heavy metal guns were developed and needed to be called something other than ‘that big murder machine over there’, the word cannon developed directly out of canon in the sense of “to lay down the law,” the same way Samuel Colt’s gun got called the Peacemaker. Likewise, ordnance comes directly from the Latin ordinance, which also got transferred directly into English as another synonym for ‘rule.’
And that is your totally useless historical fun fact of the day.
*Aaron Burr
voice* Sure! So it took me a long-ass time to write this
because I saw PPP like once, like ten years ago, and I just now had the time to
google it and brush up. As payment for
the delay, it’s SEVEN PAGES. Also I
wrote this at two in the morning and I haven’t looked over it since, so… I wandered off from the movie plot. Sorry.
Prince
Gabriel Alexandrè Enjolras Apollinaire—he usually opts out of the lengthy full
name for just ‘Enjolras’, to the ongoing dismay of his entire staff—is
literally getting crowned as king of
the small country Rive Lune when Inquisiteur
Javert, the right-hand man of the neighboring Rive Astre, comes crashing
through the door. Turns out being
extremely determined to transform a hundred-year monarchy into a democracy
makes the local dictators edgy. Despite
his best efforts to the contrary, Enjolras is (quite literally) hauled away by Monsieur Valjean, a member of the Prince
Protection Program. His mother and the
queen of Rive Lune, Her Royal Majesty Juliette Ameliè Lamarque Apollinaire, is
not so lucky.
Enjolras
puts up a very legitimate fight against being ‘packed off like so much spare
luggage,’ as he puts it in his lengthy tirade.
The PPP has never had to handle such an…opinionated prince—normally,
they’re so shocky from an attempt on their life that they don’t question
much. Enjolras is something else. He spins such a compelling speech about personal responsibility and care of the people and my country that, honestly? They almost go for it. And then Valjean clears his throat and
politely reminds everyone of the situation, and Enjolras is packed off to
America without further ado (and over his continuting protests) because Valjean
has that effect on people.
shout out to the kids that are compulsive liars because that was the only way to stay safe at home
shout out to the kids that have trouble expressing themselves because they were punished every time they were upset
shout out to the kids that question everyone’s intentions with them because they associate everything with their past abuse
shout out to the kids that can’t get rid of all the Unhealthy and Bad™ coping mechanisms they picked up at home
shout out to the kids that still feel love and affection for their abuser(s)
shout out to the kids that will never be well-adjusted and are okay with that
shout out to those of us that don’t fit the Good Abuse Survivor model; our experiences are real and no one has the right to tell us how to react to abuse. i love you all a lot and know that you are never alone 💜
why does no one ever talk about how lewis and clark met why isn’t that taught in history classes it’s like some rom-com meet-funny trope and i’ve literally never heard it brought up. literally the start of one of the most famous friendships in america and no one talks about it.
Wasn’t Clark just Lewis’ commanding officer? I guess I don’t know this story either. Can you tell it?
yes!! oh my god!!
so at twenty-one years of age, stupid stubborn hotheaded ensign meriwether lewis decides to get hella drunk and crash the party of one of his superior officers, starting an argument over politics (namely, defending thomas jefferson, his neighbor and veritable father figure) and insulting his host and basically being an embarrassment. so, he’s arrested and leveled with a court martial!! because this ridiculous boy can’t mind his fucking manners when he’s tipsy apparently!!
but instead of having to explain to his poor mother why he got booted out of the continental army, he’s acquitted (”with honor” bc apparently i’m not the only one who plays favorites when it comes to meriwether lewis), but he has to be reassigned so he doesn’t piss off his commanding officer again (awk). and whose brand new sharp-shooting rifle unit does he get transferred to?? take a wild guess!!!! that’s right, william clark’s!!!! and over the next six months meri falls deepfuck in totally platonic bro-love with him until clark resigns his commission for family reasons. then, roughly eight years later, lewis writes him to ask if maybe he’d like to travel to the ends of the earth by his side and, well, the rest is history.
But how do you know it was platonic
i hope you guys understand that when i say “platonic” i say it in the patronizing sarcastic tone of voice i always use when i talk about meriwether lewis’s big ol’ crush on his bff. maybe i can’t prove totally that he was v gay and probably at least a little bit madly in love with clark, but damn i wanna believe love exists ok.
lewis’s obvious sexual repulsion of women, his inability to find a wife, his desire to live with clark after the expedition, that last letter he wrote to clark before his violent death that we don’t have because clark burned it – we can read a lot into all of this if we want to, but even besides all of that the point remains that meriwether lewis was intensely fond of clark, and that they cared deeply for one another, and that their personalities complemented and completed one another in a way that makes you think twice about soulmates.
actually, sacagawea was a sixteen-year-old kidnapped shoshone girl sold into sexual slavery to a french trader named toussaint charbonneau, who pissed power couple lewis and clark off to no end due to generally just being who he was as a person.
whereas lewis had no real interest in women from what we can tell from his writings, he actually wrote about how much he admired sacagawea’s extreme fortitude and numerous skills that helped them throughout their journey. lewis also actually delivered sacagawea’s child!! she had a very difficult birth (probably because she was a child), which sent lewis into multiple kinds of panic. clark, however, really doted on sacagawea and her son; he gave them both nicknames, looked out for their safety during the trip, and was very close to them even after the expedition and ended up adopting sacagawea’s son. he was also a notoriously bad speller and i don’t think he ever spelt charbonneau’s name correctly ever not even once (which makes me think of the blenderdick cucumberpatch meme tbh).
bless this new trend of saying ‘yikes’ honestly this is the word i’ve been looking for my whole life. the perfect combination of disinterested, detached, amused, and passive aggressive. five letters that say so much yet are vague enough that you won’t get involved in any drama
Marius:
Had you seen her today you might know how it feels to be struck to the bone in a moment of breathless delight! Had you been there today you might also have known how your world may be changed in just one burst of light! And what was right seems wrong and what was wrong seems right!
Honestly if you’re not watching this debate you might want to turn it on. Trump is talking so fast I’m starting to suspect he might be on something, he screamed at Anderson Cooper for not having brought up a topic he just brought up, he threatened to have Hillary Clinton arrested, and he’s refusing to apologize for his groping comments, he’s still pretending he was against the war in Iraq, and he just told a Muslim woman that his plan to protect Muslims from Islamophobia was to push Islam as the problem, it’s a trainwreck
while I was saying this he tried to dodge the question about whether or not he still wants to ban all Muslims from entering America and yelled at Martha Raddatz for asking him to answer the question
while I was typing THIS he yelled at Martha Raddatz again for trying to move on to the next question, claiming Hillary went over her time. Martha refused to allow him this lie, and he got even more pissed off
He just said “I know nothing about Russia” and then had to backpedal when he realized what he’d just said
I’ve lost count of the amount of times Anderson Cooper has had to say “Please allow her to respond, she didn’t interrupt you”
Martha had to stop Donald from attempting to respond to Hillary’s response (which was not something he gets according to the rules) to tell him it’s supposed to be about the audience
Just for the record, I know it looks like I’m JUST listing off Donald Trump’s fuckups in this debate, but I’m listing both candidates’ mistakes, it’s just that Hillary’s biggest political mistake thus far in the debate is mispronouncing the word “fast” and given that the other guy has said “bigly” during this debate I feel like it’s hard to make this seem fair
He just praised Assad and Russia
Martha has taken to just repeating the question louder when he’s refusing to answer the question
He just said America was stupid
Everything I’m typing is a primary source and the history students of the future can use it for their essays, just make sure to cite me, Daniel Sabato 2016
if you take a shot every time he interrupts, shouts down his opponent or the moderator, refuses to answer the voters’ questions, or uses the word “disaster,” you will be dead of alcohol poisoning TONIGHT
He’s trying to make it sound like the moderators are being unfair to him because they keep calling him on breaking rules but they don’t call out Clinton as much, but the fact is that Clinton is just… not breaking the rules as much….
somebody reblogged this post and tagged it “not homestuck” and I’m not 100% sure they’re right
in general, i suppose. i’m not very fond of little kids. i don’t want them. they give me headaches and i cannot deal with their antics.
HOWEVER
you know what i do when kids talk to me? i smile. i answer them. i tell them their scribbles look really good. i open their juice boxes for them and ask to hear more about their power rangers.
because although i may not be fond of children, i was one. i remember being a kid and how much sour adults impacted my life even today. so when a child who is screaming and crying with a runny nose walks past me, i put on my smiling face and ask them what’s wrong instead of rolling my eyes.
because that’s what you do. you tolerate children even if you tend to dislike them. because kids are so impressionable and remember everything. i cannot bring myself to enjoy being around children. but that doesn’t mean i let them know.
I never thought of it that way…
Woah.
I always get the ‘I thought you hated kids’ when people see me being nice and talking to littlies and all I respond is ‘sure, I’m not a fan of kids and I’m not really planning on having any, but I’m not a complete asshole’
Don’t be a dick to kids, it’s super uncool.
and if you see a baby smiling at you please for the love of fuck smile back. you smiling back allows babies to develop an awareness of their impact on other people and how their emotional expression impacts others - basically their social abilities. when you smile back, the baby’s brain registers ‘i expressed a positive emotion and this caused the other person to express that same positive emotion’.
Yall thinking Trump’s run for the presidency is over the same way yall thought Brexit wouldn’t happen. Yall gon stay yall lazy asses home on November 8th and wake up to a nightmare on the 9th.
No but seriously, waking up to Brexit was one of the most horrible moments of my life. You never think it’s going to happen until it does. Please, please don’t screw yourselves and the rest of the world over like the UK has, America.
But what about vampire history teachers. Vampires who read something from a text book then proceed to light the book on fire and throw it out the window because “No. that’s not even close to what really happened. Listen up nerds I’m about to teach you what really happened in France during the revolution”
I need this as a series
Vampires sharing the recipe for Greek fire.
Vampires speaking in dead languages.
Vampires being able to translate untranslatable scripts.
Vampires who react to straightwashing historical figures like “Are you kidding me everyone knew that man was queer!”
Vampires from cultures who were once antagonistic towards each other stubbornly maintaining a friendship that’s lasted longer than their civilizations.
Vampires who honour forgotten deities you won’t find in mythology books.
Also, vampires who secretly saved stuff from the Library of Alexandra.
A vampire show that does not revolve all around sex and eternal cursed love.
nerd vampire whose knowledge of current events is terrible but they can always remember everything that’s considered “history” so they have a super-detailed knowledge of everything up to about thirty years ago and then ?????
vampire who couldn’t tell you what caravaggio was known for but duelled with him at least three times and slept with him at least ten. “cara-who OH YOU MEAN MICHAEL yeah he was cool”
vampire who spent 100 years in a convent and is still so bitter that in all that time they never made her mother superior “GODDAMMIT I HAD SENIORITY! I HAD SENIORITY!” “okay so first off janet, that was six hundred years ago, but more importantly, maybe if you didn’t always start those complaints off with blasphemy…”
vampire professor who just sort of showed up at oxford when it was founded and is still there (and nobody’s noticed because he still never actually shows up to his lectures)
vampire politician who lifts all their campaign speeches wholesale from speeches given 200 years ago and just waits for someone to catch them out (nobody ever does they’re prime minister and their approval ratings are through the roof)
WAIT I HAVE MORE
queer vampire who constantly talks about the fashion for straightness and you need to be really careful because if you tell them straight is default they WILL scream at you for five days straight about what a modern concept heterosexuality is
vampire hoarder who has an entire town where they just kept having to buy new houses to keep their stuff in and some of it’s probably worth tens of millions by now but you’ll never find it in among the 1950s kitschy kitten sculptures and boxes of newspaper (the newspaper is a wonderful mix of yesterday’s guardian and daily courants from 1725)
vampire sailor from manderville’s time who just has so many stories and some of them might even be true
vampire bluestocking girl who took to the internet like a fish to water and spends her whole unlife engaging reddit antifeminists about women’s rights because that’s one fight she’s determined to see through. also with the advent of cheap dyes she literally wears blue socks every day and hopes one day someone gets the joke
vampire doctor who just gets SO CONFUSED about the literature because do you know how hard it is to keep up with medicine kevin? when i got my doctorate we thought leeches were good and then they were bad and now they’re good again? i was published in issue one of the lancet kevin that is 387 lancets kevin how the hell am i meant to remember which one’s current kevin why are they saying cannabis is good for pain like this is news??? (but also lives in a state of wonderment every day in hospital because wow look at all this stuff we can do now look at it kevin!)
entire coven of vampires constantly quibbling over manners because they’re all from different periods: “HATS OFF AT TABLE” “SCREW YOU LEONARD ONLY PEASANTS EAT BAREHEADED” “TABITHA THAT HASN’T BEEN GOOD MANNERS SINCE THE 1500S NOBODY HAS LICE ANY MORE” “IT ISN’T ABOUT LICE LEONARD IT’S ABOUT GOOD MANNERS YOU NEED TO HAVE GOOD MANNERS WHEN YOU HAVE PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER” “I SWEAR TO GOD TABITHA IF YOU MAKE THAT PUN ONE MORE TIME I WILL SHOVE YOUR STUPID HAT DOWN YOUR THROAT”
vampire musicians who might not have been child prodigies but goddammit 500 years of practicing an instrument is bound to get you somewhere (also knowing the composer and being the first person to start playing a song doesn’t hurt either)
my favorite will always be vampires who know fuck-all about the standard major historical events because they were always somewhere else whenever big shit was going down:
“yeah i heard about the hundred years war but i was in northern african at the time so…”
“the roman empire fell??? how did the fucking roman empire fall??? i spend a fucking handful of decades in india and i come back to this???”
“russia needs to stop having revolutions, i can’t keep them all straight…”
“when did france become a democracy?? and america’s now it’s own country??? i’ve spent the last century in a forest in wallachia scaring small children so––wHat dO yOU meAn we’re calling it romania now??? when the fuck did it become romania???”
“WE HAD A WORLD WAR??? WE HAD TWO WORLD WARS???? well obviously ‘world’ is an exaggeration because i heard nothing about it while i was lost in the amazon rainforest for the last fifty years…”
“listen i spent most of the fourteenth century as a pirate in the south china sea so someone’s gonna had to clue me in on all this ‘black plague’ nonsense.”
Ladies, I am holding out my hand. Do you trust me?
I need you to open Google Maps. Locate your nearest mall. Get in your car. Drive to Yankee Candle.
Past the seasonal pumpkin display, near the back of the store, you will find a trash pile Man Candle section. You will see candles called MMM, Bacon!. Riding Mower. Man Town. (I’m not kidding. Man Town.) Stay strong. Not in this section, but likely very near this section, you will find a candle called Mountain Lodge.
Hold this jar in your hands like a talisman. Close your eyes and picture a man.
I want to be clear: I’m not talking about a Hugh Dancy. Or an Andrew Garfield, a Ben Whishaw, even a Tom Hiddleston. This exercise requires someone in the Chris Evans weight class. The Richard Armitage department. Someone with smile lines around his eyes who could chop the cedar for your bower with his own hands, strangle an alpha wolf, carry you home when you sprain your ankle in the woods, bench press your entire body. Picture this man in your mountain home with a full beard, a slightly grimy white henley, a fond half smile he reserves only for you. Now open the lid and smell Mountain Lodge.
Steady yourself on the man candle display. Give yourself a second. No, you’re not wrong. Yes, the Yankee Candle Company has just eliminated the need for men. This medium tumbler Mountain Lodge candle jar is now your boyfriend. The Yankee Candle Company has effectively replaced the need for contact with the male half of our species with a compact and clean-burning candle in a jar.
“Do you like this one?” the cashier asked, ringing me up. “Every man should be required by law to smell like what this candle smells like,” I replied intensely. “That’ll be $12.01,” she said.
MOUNTAIN LODGE
it literally smells like waking up on a cold night to find a bearded richard armitage adding another quilt to the bed before he gets back in and pulls you snugly against his chest
I’m not fucking around I feel like I should be watching chris hemsworth in flannel and suspenders whittling a delicate masterpiece in front of a fireplace rn
All right, Tumblr, I saw this post a few months ago and immediately realized I had to smell this candle. I have never in my life experienced such a burning need (pun intended) to smell what the Yankee Candle website described as a warm aroma of cedarwood and sage, but what Tumblr described as my new boyfriend.
The trouble is that nearest Yankee Candle Company store was a bit of a trek, and my schedule tended to prohibit this olfactory adventure.
So for the last few weeks, as I’d scroll my Tumblr dash and look at images of attractive manly men, I’d sigh and wistfully think, if only I could engage another sense with this image. If only I could I could truly fathom the ideal fragrance of this man.
And then this happened.
And I knew.
I knew whatever was happening, I needed to get to a Yankee Candle Company. The scent of Mountain Lodge would transport me instantly to this scene. The aroma of this infamous candle could make me live out a self-insertion Avengers fanfic.
So I got in my car, made the drive, and located the Yankee Candle Company. The store was crowded with holiday shoppers. My nose was immediately assaulted by hundreds of warring scents.
I battled through the sea of humanity and the Angel Wings-Merry Marshmallow-Magical Frosted Forest assault, buoyed on by my need to understand what Steve Rogers ripping a log in half with his bare hands smelled like.
I waded toward the back of the store, only to discover the man candle section seems to have been discontinued. What was I going to steady myself on, once I found my scented gateway to hanging out with the Avengers on Hawkeye’s farm? I felt lost, adrift, unable to find my bearings amid Soft Blanket-Fluffy Towels-Home Sweet Home.
And then… rising from the “Fresh” display, there it was.
Mountain Lodge.
It was the moment of truth. What would it be like to smell this infamous candle?
I opened the lid. I took a deep breath.
And I giggled.
Ah yes. This was it. This gentle, pleasantly masculine fragrance, in fact, reduced me to what I’d probably do in the actual presence of Chris Evans: giggle like an idiot.
The smell makes me smile, makes me laugh, makes me gently swoon: all reactions that, indeed, can be elicited by an ideal man. I can barely handle the true power of Mountain Lodge.
Several months have passed since this discovery. I have regaled friends with the saga, and after hearing of it, they, too, felt the burning need to smell the candle. One by one, we have all become Mountain Lodge converts.
In times of need, this candle is our refuge. Our group has developed escapist superpowers, infused by the Yankee Candle Company.
THE CANDLE, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND.
MOUNTAIN LODGE.
This is how you do advertisement
we love everything about all of this. We will always be there for you, just light your Mountain Lodge candle and know that our love burns bright for you.
The official Yankee Candle™ tumblr account has recognized the Mountain Lodge mythos. My work on the material plane is finally complete. A being of pure light, I slowly ascend to the aether.
I still have the mini Mountain Lodge candle that @pandolfo-malatesta sent me, and omg it’s divine
I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is corrupt. I don’t care if she lies, if she cheats, if she eats bowls of newborn chipmunks for breakfast.
She is literally the only thing standing in the way of a fascist dictator becoming President of the United States with a Republican majority congress that guarantees he can do anything he wants and nothing will be able to stop him.
I was and still am a Bernie supporter, and I hate a lot of things about Clinton, but none of that matters anymore. If Trump is elected, people are going to die. Women are going to die when Roe v Wade is overturned and Planned Parenthood is defunded. LGBTQ people are going to die when conversion therapy is further legalized and more bathroom bills are passed. POC are going to die as Trump rounds up Mexican immigrants, gives more power to the police, and fuels the fires of Islamaphobia. Poor people are going to die as Obamacare gets overturned and further cuts are made to welfare programs. And that’s just in this country. That’s not even taking account the all-too-likely outcomes of Trump starting new wars in the Middle East and having control of nuclear bombs that he’s said he ‘would not rule out’ using.
This is no longer even about ‘the lesser of two evils’. This is not ‘scare tactics’. This is literally life and death. Don’t fuck around and tell me you’re voting third-party or not voting at all, because you don’t have that luxury.
I am delighted that this post has gotten as many notes as it has, but as Election Day grows closer I would like to flush it out with some additional information and facts, particularly for those people who are still considering voting third party and those who still consider Clinton “just as bad” as Trump.
The official Republican platform includes banning abortion, overturning marriage equality, no background checks for purchasing guns, declaring coal “clean energy”, religion used as a guide for legislation, a border wall, and pornography declared a “public menace”.
Me:
*sits down to read Augustine* Alright dude I tend to dislike theologians who worship you so I'm just gonna assume we're not going to get along. Behave yourself and this will be over for both of us quickly.
Augustine:
*argues that evil has no substance in its own right, but is simply the interruption of God-given good by human action, and that by virtue of being vulnerable to evil influence, creation must still be essentially good, nay, very good.*
Car companies should periodically produce replicas of iconic cars with EXACTLY the same exterior design specifications but modern internal engineering and instruments.
omg yes please! this is all i have wanted since i was a young teenager. please, god let them do this.
because, like, okay I can buy that maybe he can disguise himself well enough to hide the fact that he’s superman, but i doubt any amount of slouching and glasses wearing can truly disguise that he’s a very tall EXTREMELY muscular man with a jawline that can cut glass.
So basically this newspaper office has this guy who looks like a weightlifter/supermodel just hanging around but he wears glasses and acts like a huge nerd and everyone just goes with it???
Like “Oh yeah, that’s Clark. No no he works here. Oh no don’t bother being intimidated by him, talk to him for five minutes and he’ll devolve into a lecture on proper tractor maintenance. We like Clark.”
I wonder if the ladies in the office ever drag him with them to bars so they don’t have to worry about creeps trying to harass them like “back off creeps our friend here is 6′4″ and grew up chucking hay bales” And then it’s funny because (as far as they know) Clark is like, the meekest lil nerd around. (He don’t look it though!!!!)
It’s just incredible to me that Clark Kent can pull off being a quiet harmless dork while still looking like, well, superman.
Do you think he occasionally turns up to the office Halloween party wearing a really shitty Batman costume?
Remember how I have no impulse control? Yeah, I wandered into a Barnes and Noble and bought three books AND ONE OF THEM WAS THIS.
No lie, kiddos, Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff might legitimately be the best book I’ve read all year. Have I read the rest of the series? NO I HAVE NOT, because I blew through this thing over the course of like six hours today (I mean…I slept for two of those hours) and I have not shut up about it long enough to buy the next two in the trilogy. My parents are going to tape my mouth shut if I keep going, so I’m foisting all my need to rant onto you lot.
Okay, so, here’s my pitch. First off, yes it is just as badass as the cover suggests. But seriously
THE ‘VERSE: a futuristic steampunk universe based on feudal Japan (and it’s not that standard steampunk isn’t fun, but my God it was nice to get the fuck out of Victorian England), comprised of four clans (Dragon, Fox, Phoenix, and Tiger) on the islands of Shima, ruled by the Shogun, Tora Yoritomo. Shima runs on the blood lotus, which provides everything from the drug of choice to the chemical used to power their engines (called chi), and the blood lotus (and the chi) is controlled by the Lotus Guild, which is…hella sketchy. Their dependence on the lotus has turned their lands black, their skies red, their rains acidic, and their air so thick with exhaust that anyone too poor to afford a pricey respirator dies slowly of blacklung. The worldbuilding is goddamn beautiful, everyone, and the mythos is so gorgeous.
OUR HEROINE: Yukiko of the Kitsune (Fox) clan, the daughter of the Shogun’s Hunt Master, the Black Fox of Shima, who is yokai-kin, able to speak to animals with her mind. This talent, rare and powerful, makes her one of the Impure, according to the zealots in the Lotus Guild, who will burn her alive in the city square if it comes to light. She is fierce and grieving and the perfect combination of the open hand and the hidden knife–she cries and screams and loves and fights and I am in love. I would like to officially request ten thousand more kick-ass stubborn girls of color with messy morals and more determination than training as my novel heroes. Yukiko is everything to me, guys, she’s so much to me.
THE PLOT: Everyone on Shima knows that, once, arashitora, thunder tigers (half eagle, half tiger), flew in their skies, and sea dragons swam in their oceans. But the lotus that poisons their lands has choked out the great beasts of myth, too, and now it’s been generations since one was seen. When the Shogun dreams of himself riding an arashitora into battle like the stormdancers of old lore and summons his Hunt Master to make it a reality, no one expects them to succeed–not the Black Fox, not his two comrades at arms, not the crew of the sky-ship they hire, and not his daughter, Yukiko. So you can imagine their shock when they manage to capture an arashitora in the middle of a thunderstorm. The situation goes from baffling to life-threatening when creature’s struggles and the storm wreck the ship, stranding Yukiko alone on a mountainside with herself, the clothes on her back…and a crippled arashitora who wants her dead. And that’s just the first hundred pages.
TL;DR: this book has it all. Badass women of every flavor. Revolution. Magic. Demons. Found family feelings. Women getting to do vengeance quests. POC as far as the eye can see. The writing style–ugh. *claps hands to chest* Fucking slays me. Radically original take on the steampunk vibe, with worldbuilding that is just beautifully intricate. And the arashitora. I’m not telling you anything about him, but the arashitora is A MASTERPIECE of a character.
Read this and come talk to me about it because I am howling.
Reblog for the morning crowd, because!!! This book!!!!
a major coping mechanism for dealing w/ abuse, esp in the longterm, is erosion of self worth. seeing yourself as worthy of basic respect as a human being is incompatible w/ surviving a lot of relationships emotionally
part of healing is rebuilding (or sometimes building for the first time) a sense of your own value. something painful that comes along w/ that is realizing how wrong the shit that was done to you was. when you look at your abuse after internalizing that youre not undeserving of any kindness, its completely healthy to be angry. thats an appropriate response to fucked up inequity
experiencing justified anger doesnt make you scary or a bad person, by any means. you deserve to be safe, and people who consumed you to sustain themselves deserve to be the subject of your righteous indignation
Remember how I have no impulse control? Yeah, I wandered into a Barnes and Noble and bought three books AND ONE OF THEM WAS THIS.
No lie, kiddos, Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff might legitimately be the best book I’ve read all year. Have I read the rest of the series? NO I HAVE NOT, because I blew through this thing over the course of like six hours today (I mean…I slept for two of those hours) and I have not shut up about it long enough to buy the next two in the trilogy. My parents are going to tape my mouth shut if I keep going, so I’m foisting all my need to rant onto you lot.
Okay, so, here’s my pitch. First off, yes it is just as badass as the cover suggests. But seriously
THE ‘VERSE: a futuristic steampunk universe based on feudal Japan (and it’s not that standard steampunk isn’t fun, but my God it was nice to get the fuck out of Victorian England), comprised of four clans (Dragon, Fox, Phoenix, and Tiger) on the islands of Shima, ruled by the Shogun, Tora Yoritomo. Shima runs on the blood lotus, which provides everything from the drug of choice to the chemical used to power their engines (called chi), and the blood lotus (and the chi) is controlled by the Lotus Guild, which is…hella sketchy. Their dependence on the lotus has turned their lands black, their skies red, their rains acidic, and their air so thick with exhaust that anyone too poor to afford a pricey respirator dies slowly of blacklung. The worldbuilding is goddamn beautiful, everyone, and the mythos is so gorgeous.
OUR HEROINE: Yukiko of the Kitsune (Fox) clan, the daughter of the Shogun’s Hunt Master, the Black Fox of Shima, who is yokai-kin, able to speak to animals with her mind. This talent, rare and powerful, makes her one of the Impure, according to the zealots in the Lotus Guild, who will burn her alive in the city square if it comes to light. She is fierce and grieving and the perfect combination of the open hand and the hidden knife–she cries and screams and loves and fights and I am in love. I would like to officially request ten thousand more kick-ass stubborn girls of color with messy morals and more determination than training as my novel heroes. Yukiko is everything to me, guys, she’s so much to me.
THE PLOT: Everyone on Shima knows that, once, arashitora, thunder tigers (half eagle, half tiger), flew in their skies, and sea dragons swam in their oceans. But the lotus that poisons their lands has choked out the great beasts of myth, too, and now it’s been generations since one was seen. When the Shogun dreams of himself riding an arashitora into battle like the stormdancers of old lore and summons his Hunt Master to make it a reality, no one expects them to succeed–not the Black Fox, not his two comrades at arms, not the crew of the sky-ship they hire, and not his daughter, Yukiko. So you can imagine their shock when they manage to capture an arashitora in the middle of a thunderstorm. The situation goes from baffling to life-threatening when creature’s struggles and the storm wreck the ship, stranding Yukiko alone on a mountainside with herself, the clothes on her back…and a crippled arashitora who wants her dead. And that’s just the first hundred pages.
TL;DR: this book has it all. Badass women of every flavor. Revolution. Magic. Demons. Found family feelings. Women getting to do vengeance quests. POC as far as the eye can see. The writing style–ugh. *claps hands to chest* Fucking slays me. Radically original take on the steampunk vibe, with worldbuilding that is just beautifully intricate. And the arashitora. I’m not telling you anything about him, but the arashitora is A MASTERPIECE of a character.
Read this and come talk to me about it because I am howling.
“I believe it’s time for my usual disclaimer: now would be an excellent time for someone who doesn’t have 6 Charisma and no ranks in Diplomacy to interrupt me and take charge of the conversation.”
My friend got married yesterday and we missed the wedding because of work but we made it to the reception. Because its mid-September and the reception was in a nature center (awesome!) there was a little bit of a fall theme. Not overbearingly, but the tables all had these tiny pumpkins.
So they’re cleaning up at the end of it and we’re still hanging out because we haven’t seen these people in forever and we can talk until three in the morning when we get together. All of a sudden, the Maid of Honor hands us a tiny pumpkin.
“Take one.”
“Um… okay?”
“Take another.”
“….?”
“It is my duty as Maid of Honor to make sure that the guests leave with an uncomfortable number of tiny pumpkins.”
So it turns out that she’d gotten a bunch of them for a Halloween party last year and after the party was over her mom threw them into the compost heap thinking that would be the end of it. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that if you put pumpkins in a compost heap- it grows more pumpkins. It grows pumpkins exponentially. Serious mathematical anomaly pumpkins.
So this year she has even more tiny pumpkins and she figured it would be a good idea to have them as decor for the reception. BUT- she would still have to throw them out at the end of the day and no matter where you throw them you are doomed to have a ridiculous amount of tiny pumpkins growing SOMEWHERE at your fault.
So everyone left with at least two tiny pumpkins and that’s how we made friends with the Maid of Honor.
So I forgot about it and then the next morning I woke up and found these two tiny pumpkins in my purse and had a puzzling moment of ‘what?’
We were invited to the Maid of Honor’s house the other day so we could:
take some of the flowers off her hands
help with some post-wedding stuff
watch the presidential debate
play Clue for like three hours
drink a lot of booze.
And there are just… tiny pumpkins EVERYWHERE.
They were in the bathroom.
At the end of the night, I counted 26 tiny pumpkins, and that was just what I could see.
“Decorative” pumpkins are just pumpkins. They’re all gourds, like Summer Squash. They can be cooked really similarly…. Yes, there is a difference in the texture of different pumpkins - specifically bred ‘Pie’ pumpkins (sugar pumpkins) are sweeter and have denser, smoother flesh. Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins have stringier flesh and thinner shells, but….
My grocery store sells pumpkin at $1.70 per pound, but I can get 10lb pumpkin at the local patch for like, $8….
Just like Spaghetti Squash and Acorn Squash have wildly different textures and tastes, the varieties of pumpkins shouldn’t be abandoned to rot… Plus they’re way cheaper… and you can roast the seeds. ;A; I just get so sad at all the rotting edibles laying around in autumn… baby pumpkins deserve to be eaten, too!
YAY UPDATES!!!! I am so excited. I was wondering the other day if you were going to update soon and I can say I am not disappointed. I love it when R gets on Es nerves. A+ for you.❤❤❤
Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad I didn’t disappoint! Thank you so much for sticking with me through the TOTALLY EXCESSIVE delay. *hugs* You’re too nice to me!
Alllll the groveling, guys. All of it. Remember how I was talking about totally not having time to write long fics? I TOTALLY don’t. But I am. So here.
Anyone who guessed Enjolras’ in-universe identity before the big reveal gets a cookie. Also I am taking votes on whether I should include smut and up the rating of this thing, and yeah, I’m taking those votes now because it takes me a goddamn long time to write smut. I have to, like, prepare myself, if y’all want smut.
