one fifths Tea four fifths coffee

[quiet-valley-blog-deactivated20]

https://aduchess.tumblr.com

[cttrajan1206]

@a-little-chai

[a-little-chai]

OH MY GOD

[kandyarts]

[cttrajan1206]

@a-little-chai

[a-little-chai]

CROP TOP TEREZI?????

[pommeoo8oo8]

[officialspec]

cool vampire lady i drew a while ago

[melgillman]

Here’s the new 24 hour comic I drew this year!  This one is called THE KING’S FOREST.  cw: blood, violence

[antique-scarecrow]

[xicamatl-deactivated20201127]

I have to tell you about the Abuela on my street.

She is nearly 70 years old, with wonderfully brown gnarled, wrinkled hands and eyes that are creased from smiling. She hand-makes all of her own clothes and sews dolls for my little sister. Abuela is very lonely… her husband already passed and her kids live far away. She misses her grandkids. Abuela comes around our place for the company almost every other day.

So this morning, my little sister and I went to visit the Abuela to return the kindness of her vegetables with some homemade soup.

It’s a funny joke we have, that if you can make a perfect posole you are wife material. I was joking around with my friend beforehand to see if I was worthy of marriage, and my little sister thinks me failing is the best thing in life, so of course she wants to ask Abuela when we arrive.

We’re wearing masks and gloves and can’t give her the big hug like we want to, but Abuela is always happy to see us. We bring the pot of soup to her table. My little sis, the little shit that she is, immediately asks, “Abuela, is Reina ready to be a wife yet?”

And Abuela immediately shifts her entire mood. Her face literally becomes this:

Abuela’s look pierces through my heart.

“Who are you trying to impress? A man or a woman?” she asks, deadly serious. We have broached the topic of marriage. It is her domain now.

And I, Rei, gay as the fourth of July, cannot believe that either Abuela clocked me instantly or that she could possibly have a fascinating past of her own. 

I thought about lying, but my little sister was there and I don’t like to lie in front of her. So I was honest and said I was trying to impress a woman.

Without a response, Abuela carefully tries the posole. The room is silent.

“For a man, it’s good,” she says after a moment. “But, you’ll need to work harder to impress a woman.”

All I can do is politely nod. I have so many questions.

Now Abuela is tired. She wants to eat and relax in peace, so she waves us away. We make sure she’s settled, and then my sister and I go home.

I can’t believe my 70 year old Abuela said BI RIGHTS

[spookybuttons-deactivated202101]

this is the funniest fucking thing ever

not only did the grandma say bi rights but like

she had two separate scales of food judgement for men and women AT THE READY and there’s something inherently hilarious in “FOR MEN IT’S FINE, FOR WOMEN DO BETTER” 

[crunchcasual]

something weird that i love about my neurodivergent friends is that they always express being flustered or excited or overwhelmed by just kajshdkasjhd keysmashing like yes, i understand that emotion!! i like ur funny words magic man!! no words could ever convey that universal feeling

[poikas]

pumpkin gfs because its october why not 🎃

[rosespell]

I hate when people tell me I need to ‘get out of my comfort zone’ I don’t even have a comfort zone. I am literally always uncomfortable

[abooksbestfriend-deactivated202]

Screw Hogwarts' witches and wizards I want to be an ancient Egyptian magician like Sadie Kane.

[ryegarden]

my sun, my moon, and all of my stars

(don’t repost to other sites!)

[stopitjon]

I guess it’s just screaming into the void day for me, but one other thing I really wish people would get through their skulls is that critical thinking and literary criticism are not “critical” in the way that your mom is “critical” of your outfit. Critical analysis of media is a lot more involved than thinking up half-baked ideas for why said media is shit, actually.

Thinking critically about a text requires that long before you think in terms of good and bad, you consider intents and outcomes, you understand both the immediate and wider context of what you’re looking at, and you acknowledge that fiction is subjective. It’s about thoughtful examination of all aspects of the work.

What function does this element serve in the work? Why might the author have included it? How was it incorporated, and how does it interact with other elements? Setting aside possible intents, but looking closely at context and execution, what impact does this element have on the work as a whole? On different possible audiences? How does all of this play into or deviate from greater patterns across media?

And for the love of god please stop forgetting:

What lens or framework am I using to examine this text? What are the limitations or problems with that framework? What are my biases? (<-Americans do this challenge) If I choose to examine this through a different lens, how does that change what I see?

…That’s barely a start, but the point is, if your idea of “thinking critically about the media you consume” starts and ends with picking any number of random things you heard are bad and seeing if they show up or not in said media, you’ve done the critical thinking equivalent of tripping at the starting line and really have no place telling other people to follow your lead whilst you are, quite obviously, face-down in the dirt.

[192nausikaa]

[septemberequinox]

that is some next level knot magic.

[elodieunderglass]

 it isn’t though!!! it’s because most relationships aren’t worth the effort. The “sweater curse” is actually most commonly called the “BOYFRIEND sweater curse.” Which=heteronormative, but the curse most often falls on a woman knitting a sweater for a boyfriend. Before she finishes the sweater, they break up - pop culture would have you believe it’s because the boyfriend freaks out do to the weirdness/clinginess of having a sweater made for you, but I think knitters are wiser than that.

It’s because after spending serious £££ on materials, and then HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF LABOR on the creation of the item, with every stitch a prayer of totally focused intent, creating a large display of technical skill - it is then gifted to a non-knitter who does NOT APPRECIATE the work/effort/skill/cost/TIME it took to make it, and in fact thinks you’re a bit weird and making a big deal out of a piece of clothing, and after they go “oh thanks” and shove your creation in the cupboard next to a sweater they got for £15 at an M&S sale, then they never wear your sweater because it’s too tight because when you asked them how their favorite sweaters usually fit they said “I ‘unno” and when you measured them for the fifth time and asked, rather tersely, if they had enough room in the chest, they said “I guess,” and then if pressed they say they don’t really like the sweater design, but then you point out that they were supposed to participate in helping you design it and they say they don’t really care about how things look, and when you say that you tried to match it to their other clothes so how can they hate it, then they say that honestly their mother still buys all their clothes because they hate going shopping, and that they hate all their other clothes too, well. That’s when a sensible knitter goes “Fuck this shit. And you know what? Fuck this man.”

This is what happens when someone posts in a knitting forum “Attack of the sweater curse!” - this is the usual story. It has a rigid plot. It is as old as myth.

That’s when you look at the time you spent and realize, “I could LITERALLY have written the first draft of a novel instead of doing this.” That’s when you go “I could have taken that £200 and bought myself a new wardrobe.” That’s when you go “I could have taken all that intent, all that willpower, all that creative force, and laid down some fucking witchcraft, all right?” That’s when you go “I basically spent 100 hours straight thinking about this bastard while making something amazing for him, and I have no evidence that he ever spent 10 hours of his life thinking about me.”

And “I could spend this time and energy and money in making myself an enormous, intricate heirloom silk shawl with just a touch of cashmere, in elvish twists and leafy lace in all the colors of the night, shot through with subtly glittering stars, warm in winter and cool and summer and light as a lover’s kiss on the shoulders, suitable for draping over my arms at weddings or wrapping myself in to watch the sea, a lace-knotted promise to myself that I will keep for my entire life and gift to my favorite granddaughter when I die, and she will wear it to keep alive my memory - but instead I have this sweater, and this fuckboy.”

The sweater curse is a lesson that the universe gives to a knitter at an important point in their life. It is a gift.

Knitting a sweater for a husband or wife generally doesn’t call down the curse, because the relationship is meant to be stronger than 4-ply.

(Although I say this, but I’ve taken over 5 years to finish a pair of mittens for my husband, because he casually asked me to do something customized with the cables, and I still can’t get the math to work on the right hand.)

[destinydiamante-deactivated2022]

this post is so much better with that commentary

[doctornerdington]

Fuck yes.

[jivin-jello]

Hey @elodieunderglass! How’re the mittens coming along?

[elodieunderglass]

It is 2020, we recently marked 9 years of marriage and no progress has been made

[worldwithinworld]

When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene. 

If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.

[roane72]

Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.

[futureevilscientist]

In addition to that:

If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.

[cimness]

Furthermore, 

if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.

In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”. 

Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation - it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.

[undertailsoulsex]

This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit.  (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.)  I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.

A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).

[adhd-vibes]

ADHD is just a constant cycle of suddenly remembering you’re in the middle of something

[butch-chastity]

i hate this post because immediately as i saw it i was reminded I’m supposed to be in the middle of revising an essay right now. 

[sobabobah]

it’s 2019 so what

[ink-splotch]

When I say you were too young to go

I mean the stars had not yet fallen.

I mean there were rivers 

that had not yet carved themselves canyons.

I mean I can count the years you were here. 

When I say you were too young 

I mean there were still stories I never got to tell you.

I mean there were joints in my body then that had not yet ached.

I mean the orchid on my desk has been nothing

but a green stick for weeks but just today it bloomed.

You would care about that but you are not here to tell.

When I say you were too young I mean I was.

I mean I did not want to know that kind of quiet, 

not yet, not sitting there in my fuzzy socks, reading 

a string of texts and truths I did not want to believe in.

I dreamed last week it was a lie. We went out to lunch.

You were skinny and sun brown and sat sideways in your chair. 

I got coffee and you had salad with figs, and then I woke up.

When I say you were too young to go I mean I miss you.

I mean you were a light on this earth. I mean starlight 

comes across millions of light years of vacuum and silence.

I mean when things get big you measure distance in terms of time spent.

I mean the older I get the farther I get from you.

-ejl.