Inky's Great Online Plushie Shelf @brightblueinky - Tumblr Blog

Aro

It's June, motherfuckers, and you know what that means! Apart from firing a few rent-lowering shots to filter out the chuds from my following, it's probably also a good time to post a reminder that there are many strange ways to be queer, and this is one of them.

video transcript below the cut, may be slightly inaccurate, I tend to ad-lib when reading my scripts into voiceover

miraculouspaon

GBBO: “A s’more is basically just an Italian merengue sandwiched between two ganache-covered digestives”

Americans:

flange5

in case anyone in wondering, this is Paul Hollywood's idea of a s'more

theequeerstrian

You know what, their absolute inability to grasp Mexican foods makes more sense every day

ennairea

starlightshadowsworld

Nodding my head in support of the Americans despite having no clue what a s’more is.

mankillercalledbunny

Okay, American immigrant to the UK here to explain all the mistakes from Paul Hollywood happening here: there is one fundamentally American ingredient required to make a s'more correctly but which is basically not available anywhere at all in the UK, and that is graham crackers. A plain digestive biscuit close-ish, but still a very different beast.

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

Important note: this is a kids treat. It is a traditional summer camping trip dessert. It should be something any ten year old with adult supervision and access to the ingredients can make (and make a mess of). They're called s'mores because kids always "want s'more". If you are using a blowtorch, chocolate biscuits, and merengue, you are so far beyond the bounds of s'more-hood that you have thoroughly lost the plot. If you offered Paul Hollywood's concoction to an American child and called it a s'more, they'd tell you flat out that not only is it not a s'more, it looks dumb and you didn't do it right because it's not gooey.

roach-works

the point is the mess. the point is getting to make a food, at age seven, whose two basic food groups are 'sugar' and 'fire'. the other point is that this food item is so crumbly, chaotic, sticky, on fire, and prone to being dropped (outside, in the dark, while you are surrounded by other children who are also sticky and on fire) that your supervisors cannot accurately monitor how many smores you personally have consumed. the point is also that you may get away with a smore that is five blocks of chocolate and two marshmallows if you move fast and let nothing stop you.

if you haven't accidentally yet unrepentantly eaten a chunk of twigs or dirt or a bug that got enmeshed in the creative process around smore number 3st, you are too old to have any legitimate input into what makes a smore.

kedreeva

There's 2 other points that I think are important.

The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)

And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.

and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.

When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:

figmentera

The description of the marshmallows as being either brown on the outside but still firm on the inside or fully melted but burned on the outside is missing the true art: fully molten in the middle, without the black burns. Not to say OP is wrong for preferring the burn! But there is a technique for perfection and it goes like this:

You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:

Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.

Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.

You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.

You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.

That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.

You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.

"We don't want a gooey mess" pfft even the artistry studied at the feet of my father is inherently a gooey mess. That's the whole point!

jssangel

Every word of every addition to this post is both 100% true and Pulitzer Prize winning writing.

musashi

Hey can you guys reblog Cheeseburger so he can take a sunbeam nap on lots of blogs. No other reason I just want you guys to see him.

musashi

So, Cheeseburger died on November 21st after an unfairly short battle with an unfairly rare cancer that is rarely seen in cats. I only got to spend a month with him after his diagnosis, and losing him has been the greatest heartbreak of my entire life so far. He was my best friend and my soul cat, and he was there for me when I was completely alone, for twelve long years.

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

dandeliont3aandsageleaves

"Brennan is the best game changer contestant" this "Brennan is so competitive" that

Okay well I've never watched in fear as Brennan hit a bong full of whisky for a game changer now have I

#game changer #ally beardsley

firenbreniel

Wyll and Gale always reminded me of Disney princes. So I tried to mimic that style of old Disney cartoons. Now that's Wyll's turn!

Gale in this style here

I also liked someones reply about Astarion as a Disney villian.......... WHO KNOWS maybe I'll do him too

theunfortunate-author

my daily affirmation as an author

blacktabbygames

Slay the Princess is under $10 on Steam right now.

dragon-in-a-fez

I'm a sucker for a good "you think you're in one horror subgenre but it's actually a different horror subgenre". character struggling to accept that maybe demons are tormenting them suddenly finds out it's actually aliens. trope of all time tbh

brightblueinky

#chrono crusade #I promise this is very funny to the 5 people remaining on Tumblr that have read the manga

a-blog-for-polls

starbucks?

yumm

mehh

nahh

Voting ended onMay 16

brightblueinky

Starbucks employees are STILL in strike and Starbucks is STILL union busting so... Yeah, fuck Starbucks.

toast-the-unknowing

the bad news: I now hate my current wip and strongly believe there isn't a single joke in it that lands

the good news: I know my process enough to recognize this as the slump that I hit in everything I write when it's like three-quarters-ish done

the bad news: the only way out is through

the good news: I do know the way out!

the bad news: yeah but it's through

toast-the-unknowing

making a cross stitch that says "I am funny and he would fucking say that" to hang directly above my monitor

toast-the-unknowing

"hey toast you stayed up past midnight because you were working on the fic and not because you were procrastinating by making a hideous pattern for a joke cross stitch" have you never met a writer before

toast-the-unknowing

gonna tell my kids this was live laugh love

brucebocchi

whydidisavethistomyphone

Tactical reloading of things that don’t need tactical reloads

taraljc

I lost it at the toaster and couldn't make it past the smoke detector before reblogging

h0ped3lusion

This is so satisfying to watch—

liquidstar

"only 90s kids remember-" wrong, if you're poor and/or rural enough, old tech and fashion doesn't just disappear when it stops being trendy. We had dial-up until 2012

brightblueinky

My husband's family still had dialup when I met him in the mid 2000s. Using the wifi at our college was a huge deal to him lol. (Although he was a 90s kid, but yeah, he has siblings 10 years younger than him that grew up with it, too.) They only lived like 30 minutes from the suburbs but it was rural enough that they never got cable internet. They just went straight to satellite.

zannolin

oh blorbo from my shows? haha yeah man i love that guy. i hope something terrible happens to him in front of his loved ones that he barely survives and i get to watch.