Visual musings of a bibliophile

I'm a book addicted girl, who is also obsessed with Bones, Throne of Glass, science, random things, and whatever currently has my attention or emotions in distress

[agnesmontague]

ive invented (note: dubious claim) something i call the bear diet which is mostly fruits and vegetables with fish as the main protein source and something like once a month you eat a few hyperprocessed foods of your liking because that is when you, the bear, raid a dumpster in the suburbs

[stellarskyes]

after the hyperprocessed foods, do you take tranquilizers to simulate getting captured by animal control and returned to the wild?

[agnesmontague]

i would settle for melatonin gummies but well. knock yourself out

[dragon-in-a-fez]

does the body ALWAYS have to keep the score? maybe we could just have a friendly game this time. maybe we can just have fun without putting numbers on it

[escuerzoresucitado]

[distantwave]

[victusinveritas]

Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!

[foone]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk through the body of a God?

[carmelia-rose]

@derinthescarletpescatarian

[venndaai]

have you guys heard about the greenland shark. some crazy shit happening there.

[venndaai]

they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you

[fluorescentbrains]

this post prompted me to refresh my memory on Greenland Shark Facts and this detail about how they feed goes so hard

just vacuuming up their unsuspecting prey. whole !

[muffinlance]

Good news good news good news! Recent research suggests the eye parasites do NOT blind them!

Eye-opening research: Greenland sharks maintain vision for centuries through DNA repair mechanism

Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk sits in her office, eyes fixed on the computer monitor in front of her. "You see it move its eye," says the UC Ir

I <3 you a normal amount Greenland sharks

[jalapenyochips]

a guy and his ghorse

[roll4gay]

This gif has LEGS im gonna use it for everything lol

Me when I have tea to spill:

Me when a new fic hits:

Me defending my favs:

Me analyzing my fav media:

[wildehacked]

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

[headspace-hotel]

read through the notes on this one trust me

[kiragecko]

Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

ANIMALS:

catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear

piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave

pluto-lichen: horses

misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like

pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially

SEX:

dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.

dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”

SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:

thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad

shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze

sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon

alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices

dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.

the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes

typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy

draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices

11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note

fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is

emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣

NON-FOOD STUFF:

red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.

bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket

nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English

sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp

danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author

meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does

vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'

leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake

fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?

dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic

msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate

shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September

baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird

twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)

waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up

violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours

purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.

[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

[themaidenofwords]

Brennan plays the game to win and be funny doing it.

Ally plays the game like a jester who is trying to see how strong the protections against being executed are.

[aropride]

if your animal is lying on the floor, furniture etc, it’s important to take a picture of them. then, if they move or shift in any way, it’s important to take another picture. with this technique, you can take many pictures of your animal

[shutyourmoustache]

When my mother forgets a word, she is the queen of coming up with new words. Words that would take a third National Treasure movie to fully decipher. I was talking to her yesterday, and she said this: “You know the time for los jibbities is coming up. You must be so excited!” Oh, is it time for los jibbities already? I must have missed it on my calendar. Are we celebrating something? “Of course! We should all be celebrating, shouldn’t we?” OK, so los jibbities is a happy thing. It’s not like something is giving you the heebie-jeebies, which would have been my one and only guess. “Los heebie-jeebies? Now you’re making things up...and this is my show.” You’re right. The time for los jibbities is coming up. Is this a season? “Yes, the season for love. The season for pride.” OK, los jibbities. “Yeah, sound it out.” Los…jibbities. LGBTs! “Sí, mira cuz you’re gay!” “You couldn’t just say pride season? You couldn’t just… *laughs*

[party-gilmore]

HAPPY LOS JIBBITIES EVERYBODY!!!

[greatmountainfloofsquatch]

The time for Los Jibbities has arrived!

[we-are-knight]

You know, I don't think I'll ever get over how that one post I made about women as knights in history, made it all the way to Reddit only for a bunch of redditors to argue that women couldn't actually be knights because:

- "the term is gendered" (it's not, and feminine equivalents were sometimes created specifically for the purpose)

- "they didn't actually do things as knights" (who didn't? The Hatchet women fought the Moors. A few other Orders had women as masters of arms. Both martial and formal examples)

...and a few other reasons that come down to "I don't like imagining my manly men in steel had women in their ranks, girls have cooties".

And the reason I say this is because recently, Wikipedia updated their page on "Knight", specifically adding a section about women with the title of knighthood, and what function they performed. And I know: "Wikipedia is not an academic source"--but every academic institution will accept the sources and articles used to back up wikipages, which confirm what has been said.

Knights were sometimes women. 🤷

[we-are-knight]

I saw this and needed to answer.

The gendered versions of 'knight' come from Romance languages, and literally just change the word to fit the gender of the subject (within a binary). So it isn't like English, where a female knight has always been a 'Dame', but, using Spain as an example, the word for Knight in Spanish is 'Cabellero'. This is the default masculine.

The feminine word for Knight? 'Cabellera'.

Similarly in French: "Chevalier" becomes "Chevaliére".

In Italian, "Cavaliere" becomes "Cavaliera".

Outside of Romance languages, "knight" is just a title for a social rank, so even the English Dame is by default a knight by rank, but may not have the title (although not impossible).

So it's not a silly infantilisation, than using a word for the knightly class and gendering it in a binary, which means we can actually tell that, yes, women as knights existed, enough that the feminine form of the word pops up now and then, so we know it existed.

[jv]

ooh, where one could read that original post??

Just a note about translations and ... well, patriarchal bullshit.

When you say "Hatchet women fought the Moors" I was like "hey, that seems to be part of my local history, how have I never heard about it?", and when I googled it ... I actually have heard about it, it's the Orden del Hacha from Catalonia (Orde de l'Atxa in the original Catalan). But ... there's something odd going on. Why the fuck in English they have translated like "Order or the hatchet"? You know, in Spanish and Catalan there's no really a difference between "Axe" and "Hatchet": There's a single word for them, "Hacha/Atxa". But in English, there's a difference. A Hatchet is a hand axe, pretty much the smallest one you can think of:

So It's pretty remarkable that whoever translated the name of the order to english first decided to use "Hatchet" and not "Axe". I'm pretty sure if this was a order of men warriors the name would have been pretty different. Specially when THIS was their coat of arms:

So dear academic-who-translated-this-first: Does that look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?

[we-are-knight]

Important inclusion I was not aware of, thank you very much friend. :)

[heroineimages]

I’m going to be chuckling over ‘Does this look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?” for the rest of the day.

[greatmolassesflood]

i can't be the only one who's just straight-up ... bored with women hating themselves. my mom keeps lamenting to me how upset she is about her gray hair. my friend stares at her laugh lines every day in agony. my sister loses sleep over the horrible unbearable thought of looking fat. and every time these women i love open up to me, i can't help but think ... then stop staring at yourself? stop drowning yourself, narcissus, and just fucking live your life instead of sitting in front of a mirror obeying cosmetic corporations' lies. just stop it. this is getting ridiculous. you're too smart to be falling for this bullshit. "oh no but these men who hate women told me that if i'm ugly i'm worthless!" girl if you actually believe that then good luck. but i am getting worse at being supportive of people whose nonsense worldviews keep them trapped in pain. stop looking at yourself start fucking living i am pleading you deserve to be happy and it is stupid that you disagree

[vanityschild-deactivated2026031]

Someone in the comments said "you really said just stop being insecure" and yes :) make an effort to stop spiralling about your looks, challenge insecure thoughts and stop doing things that lead to you feeling insecure.

[whisperingthings]

I always come back to this: Do your insecurities match your morals?

Do you truly believe that having belly fat makes people disgusting? That the media should have final say on how you feel about yourself? If you don't believe it and there is a mismatch between your moral beliefs and your gut reaction to your appearance...

Then yeah. Stop being insecure. It's work but it's worth it.

[freshgratednutmeg]

Promoting @sarkywoman 's tags as that's a perfectly distilled mantra:

I am not the exception to my beliefs

[finnglas]

I’m not lying when I say “I am not the exception to my beliefs” has rewired my brain.

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges

[wintercorrybriea2]

juvenile springtail

[byjove]

Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is...evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

The spiritual successor to Miette

[manicgoblinnightmarewoman]

Might I also add

[shydestinybread]

May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit

[unyanizedcatboys]

Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children

[explorerrowan]

I am so incredibly glad we finally moved on from "i can has". Cats are clearly smart enough for advanced sentence structure and dumb enough to draw entirely incorrect conclusions about what they're talking about.

[dualclock]

My cat, banging the cabnet door over and over and over: bang bang bang

Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.

My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang

Me: ksst!

My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!

Me: ok

My cat, after waiting about 3 minutes: bang bang bang

[notcaycepollard]

[callmebliss]

Can haz snackytreat

[ladyshinga]

(source)

[dogsrulepeopledrool]

Source

[cryoverkiltmilk]

#the ancient texts

... My reblog was only six years ago!

[mosslingg]

My liege im sorry to break it to you but your advisor that's actually evil and wants you dead turned out to be straight. I know you really wanted to have an enemies to lovers situation with him. Yeah I'm afraid the poisoning didn't hold any romantic intent behind it. The king of the enemy kingdom is bisexual though, I could send him a letter? Yes, I'll make sure to include multiple threats of homoerotic nature. You will have your toxic yaoi, my liege