trial sized razorblades @chrysoula - Tumblr Blog

I threw a rock at the apocalypse and now he likes me...

I'm writing something again!

Excerpt from Chapter 1 on AO3:

“Endless hunger,” he said dreamily. Then he brought his head down again, a black band wrapped around his eyes. His tone totally different, he said, “Maybe this will help us avoid accidents. Heyyy, Karydia, what are you doing with my collection of fist-sized rocks?” She didn’t even look toward him. “Do you really need me to explain?” “Ammunition? Aw, no, I feel like we’ve taken a step backwards.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Hey, you aren’t imagining I’m thinking about eating you, are you?” “Well, I certainly am now!” she said brightly, tossing and catching one of the stones to get its heft. Then she reared back and flung the rock hard at the glowing crystal. The crystal rang, low and sonorous as the rock rebounded at an angle. “Ow!” Kazarin curled up, his hands over his ears. “That hurts!” Hah. She would be the judge of that. Marching up to the crystal, she peered at the flawless surface where her stone had struck. “You liar, you’re fine.”

#otome isekai #light novel #probably not so light actually #original work #fantasy #serial fiction

chrysoula

Color properties

Blue feels like a moist wind on a damp day in a high meadow. It’s the sound of brass bands, strong and clarion and sweet and sad. It’s the taste of a salt sea, the touch of ice, and the smell of antiseptic. Blue is simple with a hint of depth. Blue is where we start and end.

Yellow is the taste of butter, rolling rich against your tongue. Yellow is the smell of comfortable blankets in a bright attic as they rub against your skin. It’s sunshine on your face and warmth through the window. Yellow is the sound of laughter. Yellow is fur through your fingers. Yellow is soft metal and yellow is pride. Yellow knows itself.

Green is the smell of grass and livestock. Everywhere, green is the song of life. It’s the smoothness of glass, shading how you know the world. The tinkle of chimes, calling, calling. The taste of an unripe tomato: sour and yet so very eatable. Green is distinctive. Green would lie to you. Green bites your tongue and laughs.

Red is my lips to yours. Red is the searing pain of a slash. Red is unexpected and ubiquitous. Red is the smell of the blood that bathed you and the thrill that ran down my spine when I made you uncomfortable. Red is the crunch of fruit against teeth. Red is a four letter word. Red is bright and fast, always gone too quickly while lasting much too long.

Orange is the sharp burst of sour sweetness against your tongue. Orange is a plucked string, or three, or five. Orange smells delicious but makes you sneeze. Orange loves to make you laugh. Orange feels ticklish but oh so comforting. Orange is yellow with depth. Orange is that which illuminates instead of burns. Orange is toxic. Orange is how we hope.

Purple is the kiss of shade. Purple feels like flesh you can puncture. Purple fills your nose: perfect, cloying. Purple is your deepest grief. Purple is the wind from a fathomless canyon. Purple is the sound of thunder. Purple is dust of your dreams. Purple is grand, solemn, foolish and precious. Purple is faceted. Purple does not care what you think. Purple is also surprisingly sweet.

Black is wisdom on a mountaintop. Black is relief from heat. Black is the closeness of a friend in your arms. Black is the taste of your last bite of dessert. Black is loneliness. Black is when you cannot cry, and when you can’t stop. Black smells like goodbye. Black leaves pieces behind. Black is her footsteps resonating in your bones. Black is more than a little disturbing (but you feel bad about it.) Black knows better. Black has been inside you.

Brown is strength flowing through muscles. Brown is _very busy_. Brown fills in here and there. Brown is the mulch of the forest, giving underfoot. Brown tastes like everything. I mean _everything_. Brown is the scrape of the bow against the violin, and brown is the roar of the lion. Brown is what you want brown to be. Don’t worry, brown won’t leave you.

White is missing something. White is what is left behind. White can overwhelm you. White is solitude and silence. White is the boundaries, overrun. White is the burn of bleach. White does not forgive. White thinks it means sweetness. White is the dry scent of fog in October. White is waiting for forgiveness. White wants to win.

#prose poetry

canonical-transformation

The promotional post will now begin.

Introducing the

Genshin Prompt Meme 2026

This ${IDEAS SHARING} vehicle combines ${CREATIVE FANDOM} with advanced Information Supermoonlane technology to provide a community ${RECHARGING PORT} for fan creators.

Fan creators include: fanfic writers, fanart artists, fanmix mixers, fandub dubbers, fantheory theoryers, fantasy tasyers, fandom domers, loading, loading, loading,

Process timed out. Proceeding with demonstration.

Observe. Posting a ${PROMPT} or ${SUGGESTION} or ${IDEA} makes it visible to other ${GENSHIN FANS}, who can then use it to recharge their ideas.

The average prompt is filled within nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine Error: memory missing.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Now that's what I call true power. What a demonstration.

chrysoula

Go go gogo

thatlittleegyptologist

Since some of you don't seem to understand how this 'new notes' thing works, I'll break it down:

I'm the OP. I'm making this post. If you like, comment, reblog (without comment) on this post, then I'm the one who will see all those notes in my activity page.

However...

If you reblog (with comment), I will get a notification that you did that, but any likes/comments/reblogs (without comment) you get on that reblog will only be shown to you. As OP I won't see them.

If someone adds a reblog (with comment) to your reblog...as OP I won't see that. I won't see any of those notes in my activity page.

Basically, if someone with a large following makes a comment, then they will get all the notes and OP will see nothing. If OP has said something silly because they're, y'know, 21 and it happens, and then someone reblogs it onto the dash of someone with a large following who then dunks on them for fun? OP doesn't see it, doesn't get notes for it, but they're gonna get the harrassment for it in their inbox.

If I, someone with a 5 digit follower count, reblog something to correct misinformation on Ancient Egypt, then OP will never see it unless it was on the original post, but I will continue to get notes on that post even though it's not my post. If I reblog fanart, or just art in general, with a comment like 'Oh this is so lovely!' then OP will not see any of the notes from people reblogging it from me. They'll only see my reblog. So it's possible for an art post by someone else to have 200 notes for them, but 9000 for someone who reblogs it with a comment, and the OP artist will have no idea it's been seen by that many people.

It's killing blow to the community we've built here, by someone higher up who doesn't understand that being able to see all the comments and reblogs is what makes this site the place I keep coming back to.

That's what sucks.

I encourage people to go to tumblr's support page, select contact support, and then in the dropdown menu select 'Feedback' and leave polite and constructive feedback (for those of you who enjoy 'emails worded politely but are a strong 'are you an idiot?', try that way of wording it). They're more likely to listen to you if you're not an asshole about it. I've already gone and done this, and I hope others will too.

Annotations and Anecdotes on Pathfinder 2e Adventure Paths

I've been really interested in Pathfinder 2nd Edition (Remaster) lately. Really, really interested. I've been studying it. This is because I think it's really cool! Someday, I might be brave enough to GM something. But in the meantime, I've been taking advantage of Foundry VTT and my housemate's collection of PDFs to kind of run solo games for myself.

This works for me because while Pathfinder 2e is a really technical game with lots of tightly balanced elements, Foundry Virtual Tabletop has automation to handle most of those. (Also, all the rules for PF2e are freely available which is super convenient when doing a deep dive into an expansive RPG.) Combining the free rules and the Foundry automation with prewritten campaigns ("Adventure Paths") lets me play through content by using the campaign-explicit and monster-implicit algorithms to ease the burden of playing all roles in a ttrpg.

The crunchy parts appeal to me, although I am only of average capacity in that field. But I've also been enjoying this because I am a storyteller to the bone. I create 4 or 5 characters and run them through the pre-written challenges as I read the campaign, and little stories emerge. Actual personalities are born. Plots diverge.

It's all very self-indulgent. I'm loving it. And because I want to remember happy thoughts later, I take notes, some on mechanical bits but mostly on the characters that develop and their interactions and my meditations on them. I am also, well, reading the campaigns and judging them as I go. I've gone at least 75% through 4 now, so I'm starting to develop a basis of comparison. Recently, it occurred to me that there might be people out there who would enjoy reading me talk about the Adventure Paths, and be amused by my little character narratives. The world's a big place, after all! (Plus, I'm going to really enjoy writing the posts.)

Still here? Awesome. I'm hoping this will be the first post in an accessible series where I talk about the characters I created for specific campaigns, maybe express some bit scenes as fiction or at least anecdotes, talk a little about the plot, and maybe even comment on mechanics and structure. I can't say there won't be spoilers but I'll do my best to be vague within the bounds of context, and the Adventure Path inspiration for my posts will be noted at the top (and in tags). I'm also expecting to explain concepts from Pathfinder as they become relevant. You shouldn't need to know the system to follow the posts, as long as you understand wider cultural concepts like 'critical hits'.

My particular angle of approach: I was very familiar with D&D 3/3.5. I liked 4th but only played it once briefly. I have played 5th but found it oddly lacking. I have played (and run) other RPGs. Other than PF2e over the past few months, I haven't really engaged with an AD&D-derived tabletop game system for at least 6 years--and at that time I was trying to also help my children play (so I was a bit distracted). I am very story-focused as a player and I've (luckily) exclusively had clever narrative-focused player-friendly very crunchy GMs. I'm sure that influences many of my thoughts and reactions.

Here are the Adventure Paths I currently have notes for:

Rusthenge (complete?)

Seven Dooms for Sandpoint (~80% complete)

Prey For Death (~75% complete?)

Abomination Vaults (70% complete?)

Curtain Call (~75% complete)

Revenge of the Runelords (15% complete)

I've also closely read about half of Fists of the Ruby Phoenix but since I didn't really make or use characters for it, it's doesn't qualify yet. (I only really feel like I understand game things if I've played them. Reading the rules isn't enough for me.)

I'm probably going to go through Hellbreakers sometime soon. I'm avoiding Season of Ghosts in case I ever get a chance to play it with a friend. If I can get my hands on pdfs (or cheap foundry conversion keys) I expect I'll eventually work my way through everything labelled with 2nd Edition. (1e Adventures are, I know, part of the ongoing story of the Golarion setting, but I cannot handle the extra cogitive load of conversions. Yet.) * By the way, if you're wondering why I have a lot at ~75%, it's purely coincidence! Other than Curtain Call, which I don't think needs me to play through the ending (this is not shade), I expect to go back and do more of each of them. (Heck, I might even do that with Curtain Call.) Meanwhile, character creation is fun and curiosity perennial.

#ttrpg #pathfinder 2e #campaigns #my writing #pathfinder 2nd edition #my pathfinder stories #adventure paths

All this writing advice predicated on the idea that people will actually read what you write.

#writing techniques #smh

chrysoula

Why Do the Gods Exist?

(circa Little One and the Volcano)

This Genshin Impact Theory is an answer to the question: "Why do the gods exist anyhow?" This question has vaguely occurred to me before, when looking at the mystical cosmology: The Primordial One came, beat up the Sovereigns and stole their power, then terraformed the world and created or decanted humanity (like humanity was the point of the whole exercise.) In order to manage, guide and look after humanity, the Primordial One created the Seelie/angels. The Primordial One also created the Four Shades, who seem to outrank the Seelie; three of them oversaw Time, Life, and Death.

Where, then, do the gods come in? Eventually, they took over the 'guide and manage humanity' role from the Seelie, but that doesn't seem to have been the point of their existence. The Archon War was a battle royale, as far as I understand it. It killed off most of the existing gods, leaving only a very few to do a job they once had many for. (Why? Budget (resource) cuts, maybe, or maybe all the empire building.) I didn't question it much back when I believed that all or even some of the gods were ascended native elemental life. But I no longer think that's the case. Instead, I think the gods started out as terraforming and environmental management machines. They may not have even had sentience at first. Why would 'the thing that manages the leylines under Liyue' need to be conscious? And indeed, Azhdaha seems to have slept entirely at first. Why would the new heart of the Primordial Sea need a consciousness? And yet…

But that's Teyvat all over, when I think about it. It's a world where nonliving things eventually come to life and start buzzing around. So maybe these machines also achieved sentience, and started making decisions and doing things on their own and shaking off their chains and wandering around. And as long as they also kept basically doing the jobs they were created for, that was… all right. As long as they didn't, you know, cause trouble or rule kingdoms or start empires HEY WAIT A MINUTE WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE ANGELS UP TO WITH HUMANS?

Anyhow, after the angels were fired, there was a too-slow re-org, some hostile takeover attempts, rebellion in the ranks, etc, but finally, we get to the Archon War, which is only possible because they figured out a new way to accomplish what the gods had been doing previously. (It probably has something to do with Visions, or maybe better automation.) What's fun is that we do know that gods seem to have familiars (in various forms), and familiars can become gods in the process of becoming Archons (because apparently _anybody_ can become an Archon). Which, well... _we_ know a machine who briefly became a god, and I'm not sure he was ever supposed to be conscious either...

wintersoldierfell

you've heard of death of the author, now get ready for death of the audience: where instead of basing your reaction on a thousand uninformed opinions online, you actually read the text and engage with it

wintersoldierfell

girl help there's people on this post who can't actually read my text

wintersoldierfell

#the way that this is literally how death of the author works lmao

OKAY i'm fucking sick of people who can't read leaving these comments so here we go, we're gonna read Barthes together. hold my hand

Barthes' 1967 essay The Death of the Author (La mort de l'auteur) loosely takes the form of a literary history: he relates the changing attitudes of criticism towards the text and of literature towards criticism down to his day. He is interested in what writing is, and thus, what a book is: "a tissue of signs," which the critic claims to be able to interpret. But Barthes argues that once the necessity of connecting the author to the book is removed, the critic has no work to do: "Once the Author is gone, the claim to 'decipher' a text becomes quite useless." This is a rejection of both the supremacy of the critic and the intentions of the author.

When Barthes says "critic," he doesn't mean "anyone who has encountered the text," however. He differentiates the critic from the "reader":

the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination.

For Barthes, the reader's understanding of the text is supreme because it weaves together the "tissue of signs" into a coherent whole, producing a singular interpretation. He concludes by advocating for the overthrow of the critical establishment in favor of individual interpretation: "to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author." In other words, in order for us to allow readers their own experiences, we must stop prioritizing the critic -- not the reader, but the critic -- and instead allow the reader to engage the text.

We're gonna un-Barthes Barthes now, okay? Stay with me. Here's the context:

Barthes was responding to a stifling and rigid environment in which criticism was the sole province of the academic expert. As part of the deconstructionist wave, he wanted to upend the traditional hierarchy that dictated how a text should be understood and what it was for, instead prioritizing language and reaction.

He got his wish. We live in a world of reaction.

Gone is the tyranny of the formal critic; gone even is the formal literary education of the reader. Our "tissue of signs" is no longer the text, but an infinite mirrored hall of reactions to reactions to reactions in which the text diminishes into a vanishing point, as the Author once did on Barthes' literary stage.

We do not need to resist the tyranny of the academy. The academy has been destroyed. Adjunctification, the widespread corporatization of universities, the resulting devaluation of college degrees, the devastation of humanities departments in widespread shutdowns, and now the revocation of billions of dollars of government funding have left the academy on its knees. Public trust in academic expertise has declined so sharply that people on this very hellsite will tell you that if someone has an advanced degree in a specific field, that actually makes them less trustworthy.

And in Ozymandias' place, we have the reader.

The reader consumes a variety of "content" and regurgitates its reactions in a variety of "posts." It transmutes text into more text which further readers wriggle eagerly through, refining what might have had meaning into a rarefied fertilizer of emotion and echo. What it leaves behind becomes the literary history for new strata of reactions, nostalgia, and imitation.

This is the audience: an ouroboros of interpretation, a rat king of readership. It has no end but itself. Ultimately, it needs no text to function. In this world, the truly radical act is to disentangle yourself from the other worms and rebuild the edifice of meaning. This may require you to do such tasks as "read the actual book," but because we no longer have the support -- however oppressive -- of literary criticism to inform our reading, we must also learn how to read, explore the historical context on our own, and recover both the facts and the symbols from which the text is woven.

That is what death of the audience means: not a rejection of the critic in favor of language, but a rejection of endless language and infinite readers in favor of fact, history, and skill.

It's a pun, by the way: "La mort de l'auteur," spoken aloud, recalls Le Morte d'Arthur, a 15th-century collection of Arthurian legend which marked the turn away from the Middle Ages and into a nostalgic Early Modern period which valorized them. The Author becomes the mythic King; as myth, he can be severed from fact and dismissed.

Fact has now itself become the myth.

Fucking read.

burglarsonarceny

if fighting fatphobia is not part of your politics i don't trust you.

burglarsonarceny

we just can't fucking win. any positive video about us will be filled with these comments. you can watch a video of a fat athlete doing exercise that most people in these comments are not even physically capable of doing and yet all of them have the gall to say that this athlete will die in five years. we do not have the privilege of wrecking our bodies. people will say the most vile shit to us for daring to exist in their space. and no matter how much we yell, no one is listening. we're fucking tired. do something about it.

burglarsonarceny

i don't think people really get how in the trenches fat activism is. you'll see on youtube tons of videos along the lines of "this activist died from being ob*se that means fat activism bad" actually. you are literally falling for the same shit the cdc said when it wanted to make ob*sity an epidemic. when skinny people die, we know what caused it. when fat people die, it's because they were fat. and that is why fat people shouldn't be respected. even though it has been proven time and time again that we die because doctors don't respect us enough to find a solution to our illnesses that doesn't involve weight loss. they want us to shrink and that is it. but no one cares. in fact, they want us dead. that's just how it is. they want us to die. and they want us to die from being fat. they don't care. they want us dead.

kazooie

A huge chunk of people who supposedly "died from obesity" are people who died of a heart attack from the severe malnutrition caused by extreme diets, drugs like ozempic, and weight loss surgery(gastric bypass or band especially) that change how your stomach empties.

When you lose weight, the first thing to go is your muscles, not your fat, and guess what very important organ is a muscle? The heart. Ozempic, fasting, all that crap will eat at your muscles long before it burns any fat, and no, exercise* won't help, because you're still not getting the nutrients you need to keep your muscles going.

I'm not only speaking of scientific research, I'm also speaking from experience. I was on ozempic for several months back when I was diagnosed with insulin resistance, and I lost so much weight, so much that I felt I could ignore the fact that I was weaker than ever, the fact that my oral medications wouldn't work(some of which I need to Not Die), the fact that some days I could barely even keep water down. Eventually I couldn't keep going I was just too weak, so I stopped it, and I gained twice as much, I went from 100kg, to 80kg on ozempic, and now I'm 120kg. All of this could have been avoided if they'd not seen a far chick and decided losing weight was the only option, they never even put me on Metformin, I had to ask for that this year, 5 years after being diagnosed with insulin resistance.

I never got that muscle back because my rheumatoid arthritis has a lovely symptom known as exercise intolerance, where any exercise will basically leave me bedridden in agony or at the very least super fatigued.

That's another thing, they didn't catch my rheumatoid arthritis for years, they said to lose weight so your back doesn't hurt, and yeah, it helped my back, but that's because I have literal bone from my damaged sacrum rubbing up against flesh in a way it shouldn't, damage that could have been avoided if again they didn't see me as just a fat woman.

I need to lose weight, but I only intend to go back down to 100kg, just enough for my back to feel better, and not too heavy for lightweight mobility scooters, and it's gonna be so hard because of my IR to lose that weight that I wouldn't have needed to lose if I'd stayed at 100kg originally and been properly diagnosed with Pointy Bone Disease.

burglarsonarceny

thank you for all your responses thus far. i'm glad to have read all your stories and experiences. but i want to highlight these tags in particular. (from @mouseratz )

i didn't really get into it the first time around but this is so important. you cannot fight fatphobia without feminism. women routinely have their health complaints downplayed. being a fat woman makes it worse. you cannot fight fatphobia unless you are anti-racist. for fat people of colour, the rate of medical neglect is much higher, compounded by racism in the medical field. (also, bmi is racist in its very conception.) you cannot fight fatphobia unless you are for disability activism. just like fat people, disabled people unfortunately have to be their own advocates, and it should not be this way. you cannot fight fatphobia unless you recognise classism. poor people do not have the privilege of affording doctors and specialists who may be out-of-network and so their options for finding good doctors are limited.

fatphobia is a class issue, it affects women, it affects people of colour, and it is in fact a disability issue. you cannot fight for one and neglect the others. all these ideals are connected.

emmebearpaw

I think today is a wonderful day to let everyone know that there is a name for the social force out there that puts people perceived as men into boxes, forcing them to strive towards often impossible ideals of “manhood”, and if they can’t, punishing them. It’s called misogyny. We don’t need to invent extra words to think about how misogyny affects people who associate more closely with manhood. Everyone is trapped by misogyny. From the moment a doctor looked between our legs, they push certain expectations for what you will do and who you will be because of it. This is a system that does hurt everyone to an extent. The reason people say men benefit from misogyny is that the roles women are pushed into often place them in subservience to and reliance on men. Men can be afforded positions of power due to misogyny. This does not mean all men will. The ways in which power is stripped from women and men that don’t meet the standards of Patriarchy, that is misogyny.

wizardarchetypes

when i was curating the marine science museum i was up in the archives looking for something and when i walked out i had to go through the main museum hall and i heard some kids speculating something about a whale skeleton so i walked up and started talking to them about it. they started asking me follow up questions and then another and another and another and then their parents came over and immediately zeroed in on my "curator" nametag and told their kids i was probably very busy and i said no not at all keep asking me questions. soon their parents asked some questions too (after a few more apologies, because somewhere along the line they learned shame that i want to undo) and in the end i talked to them for like 30 minutes as a few more people joined.

a few months later one of the parents wrote me a letter that i still keep with me and in the letter they asked the kids what they learned at the museum and one of the kids said, "i learned i'm special."

choked up just typing that now LMAO. they didn't mention the whales or the squids or the seals or the tides or the seaweed i told them all about. they learned that their questions matter so much that even the person in charge should stop and answer them. they learned they don't need to apologize for not knowing and for asking questions. they learned that they're special!!!!!!!! what could possibly matter more???

threedollarsdotcom

you dont have to deal with any of that if you delete feelings.exe

chrysoula

Right, right, that's what my otome isekai male lead forgot to do while he was locked up in the crystal.

animentality

ckret2

How to cook with ADHD

The recipe:

A simple crock pot dump dinner with no prep and no extra dishes dirtied! Five minute prep time.

The instructions:

Grease crock pot

Brown sausage or ground beef (or substitute sausage links)*

Mince 4 garlic cloves*

Dump frozen tortellini, canned tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth, sausage links, garlic, basil, condensed milk, shredded cheese, and chicken broth into crock pot

Stir**

Cook on low heat 4-6 hours

*Note: these two steps weren't included in the recipe, because if you don't have ADHD you can manifest already-browned ground beef and already-minced garlic cloves from the aether using your executive function telekinesis.

**Note: "Stir" was listed as part of the same step as "dump" in the recipe, because if you don't have ADHD your executive function telekinesis can stir the ingredients in mid-air as you're dumping them in.

The reality:

Haul out the crock pot; congratulate yourself on remembering where you stuffed it

Lube up crock pot with olive oil; discover something burned crusted inside one corner. You have too much ADHD to typically try crock pot recipes so this is from the roommate that recently moved out, but ex-roommate also has ADHD so this is still an expected stage of the "cooking with ADHD" process.

Try to scrub out the burned flakes without removing the greasing up you've already applied to the rest of the pot

Lube up the formerly burned corner.

Wash off greasy hands

Tear open frozen tortellini bag; dump it in. Congratulate yourself on how smoothly this is going.

Pick up the canned tomatoes

Grab the can opener Search for the can opener in the kitchen tools drawer

Search the utensils drawer

Search the pens & matches & leftover expired sunglasses from the solar eclipse drawer

Search the pot holders drawer

Search the shelf with the canned sauces left behind when your roommate left because sometimes you stick kitchen tools next to the food item that needs the tool, for ADHD reasons

Try to remember whether, when roommate moved out and you split up the kitchen supplies, a can opener was included amongst the supplies bequeathed to you

Realize with the weariness born of long experience that you're about to have An Adventure

Comfort yourself with the knowledge that this will at least make a funny tumblr post

Make mental note to include friendly shout-out to ex-roomie so when they read this they know you don't resent them for taking the can opener(s), something you should have thought to ask about yourself, and also something you would have discovered sooner if not for the fact that you have too much ADHD to typically try recipes that involve opening a can

Inspect the rim keeping the lid on the tomato can

Squeeze the sides near the top hoping perhaps you can just pop it off like Popeye; slightly dent can

Optimistically try to pry the lid off with your fingernails, knowing in your heart that cans were designed the way they were specifically to prevent the lid being removed by such flimsy tools but remembering some kind of youtube video about the the way the rims of cans are rolled over each other.

Google "open can without can opener" while aiming the evil eye at the search results to ward off useless AI sites that spend 1000 words droning about situations when someone might want a can opener before poorly paraphrasing other people's advice

Click on Wikihow with relief

Realize the sink's been running since before step 1 because you're trying to wash off a really gross spoon that was in the fridge with cheese on it for about a week; observe the spoon, nudge it back under the stream, and decide it could use a little more rinsing so you don't have to touch it.

Scroll past "rub a spoon's edge over the weak metal until it wears through," looks too time-consuming

Scroll past "stab lid with knife," looks like too much effort

Scroll past "rub lid on concrete to wear off the metal," you already know that one and you're not THAT desperate

stop at "stab lid with the back corner of a chopping knife," shrug in defeat. You're gonna need to dirty a chopping knife to slice up the sausage anyway.

Stab lid with the back corner of a chopping knife Attempt to stab lid with back corner of a chopping knife; conclude it's too much effort and you're more likely to slip and lose a finger

Attempt to rub spoon through lid; conclude it's even less likely to get through

Suddenly remember with glee that your swiss army knife has a can opener

Grab it from the Specific Spot it lives on the kitchen counter so you Never Ever Lose It Discover your army knife isn't in its Specific Spot

Vaguely search the shelf in the living room where tools sometimes congregate

Remember seeing the army knife on the bedside stand organizer you got to ensure you Never Ever Lose your glasses and ADHD meds

Walk to the farthest room at the very other end of the house

Find your army knife exactly where you thought it was, congratulate yourself; realize it's the LITTLE army knife

Check it for a can opener anyway

Realize you must have removed it from the counter a month or two ago (you don't remember how long due to The ADHD) when The Ants found a way into the kitchen from behind the dishwasher and you scrubbed down the entire counter with ant-repelling flower essential oils to curb the invasion.

Return to the kitchen; realize the sink is still running; decide the spoon could stand to rinse a little more.

Search the table that you meant to remove from the kitchen when you got a new table but that instead has become a Gathering Spot Of Stuff With No Home

Remember that the utensils used to be in the pantry for ADHD reasons

Search the pantry for a can opener; find nothing

Go to the other end of the house again and vaguely search the shelf by your computer desk where tools sometimes congregate

Five minute prep time.

Return to the kitchen and remember that you moved all the stuff from the counter to the other ant-free counter, three feet away from where you started.

Triumphantly locate swiss army knife

Flip open can opener attachment; realize blade is blunt; hopefully tell yourself that must be the bottle top opener.

Flip open the other can opener attachment; realize its blade is blunt as well

Nevertheless, watch a youtube video (from inside the DuckDuckGo search results instead of on youtube itself, because you have youtube blocked on your phone for 6 hours a day with an app you paid real money for to actually lock you OUT of distracting apps rather than merely pop up an easily-dismissible "teehee you shouldn't be on this app right now!" screen, because you have ADHD) on how to open a can with a swiss army knife can opener

Attempt to open can with blunt can opener.

Try the spoon again.

Resort to the "rub can's lid on concrete" technique; grab one of the bricks you got for free a few months ago for some kind of half-baked backyard project you haven't started yet and that's been sitting in the kitchen nook ever since.

Discover that the can is sanding down the brick faster than the brick is sanding down the can; also discover that the lid's acquired a tomato juice-dripping puncture half the size of a vampire bite, but that was probably thanks to the can opener

Wash off the can so that when you finally get it open, you don't get brick and metal shavings in the tomato juice

Five minute prep time.

Move the sausage from the counter into the fridge. You might be here a while.

Decide that you've tried this WikiHow's way; now you're trying it YOUR way. Go to the craft room where all your crafts have been packed in boxes since the last time you moved two years ago and haphazardly opened and strewn about whenever you need something specific.

Locate your toolbox exactly where you knew it was: sitting right in the middle of the floor. Convenient, easily visible.

Take your pliers from your toolbox Discover your pliers aren't in your toolbox.

Vaguely search the shelf next to your computer desk where tools congregate Spot the pliers on your desk on your way to the shelf; have no recollection of what you were doing with your pliers at your desk.

Return to kitchen with wrath in your heart

Start attempting to bend and wiggle the rim of the lid of the can a little at a time in hopes of it snapping off or something. You still vaguely recall that youtube video watched long ago about how cans are constructed.

Discover you've punched a hole through the side of the can when tomato juice starts dripping down your fingers

Try to pour juice into crock pot; get about eight drops

Begin to wonder if it would have just taken less time to drive 20 minutes to Target to buy a can opener

Resume going around the edge trying to pry off the lid. Experience only extremely moderate success

Attempt to pour more juice from the widening wound into the crock pot; get about four drops.

In frustration, jam the pliers into the hole you've already made and attempt to wrench it open wide enough to pour the tomatoes out

Peel off the wet wrapper around the hole

Repeat process 4-5 times until hole is big enough to free all tomatoes

Set the can aside in triumph

With the weariness of a World War I soldier preparing to march back into the trenches, set your eyes on the can of condensed milk

Go to rinse off your pliers so the milk isn't cross-contaminated with tomato juice; realize it doesn't matter because it's all going into the same crock pot

Experience 5 seconds of lost time and come back to reality to discover you're washing your pliers anyway even though you just decided not to. You have no recollection of this.

Continue to let the sink run, for the spoon. It could use it.

Start plying the rim of the condensed milk can; console yourself with the knowledge that at least this can be a much smaller hole since you're not trying to pour tomatoes out.

Punch a tiny hole in the side that drips all over you.

Try to pour can into crock pot; it's dripping out at a rate of 1 drop every 2 seconds.

Remind yourself yet again that at least this will make for a funny tumblr post

Attempt to widen hole. Really maul that one bit of the rim. Get more milk on your counter.

Attempt to pour again; suspect that it's dripping even slower now

Consider driving to Target again

Wonder how you've ended up with ten times as much milk on the counter than poured into the crock pot

Peel the wet wrapper from around the hole

In frustration, take out the screwdriver on your swiss army knife and jam it into the hole on the lid to wiggle it around and expand it

Pour the world's slowest stream of milk into the crock pot. Decide it's not worth it to try to expand the hole. Just wait for it to do its thing.

Realize that holding the can this high doesn't make the stream any faster but DOES make tiny drops splash outside the crock pot. Lower the can.

Shake it a bit.

Realize the sink's still running; decide to let it keep going, the spoon could use it.

Pour in the spaghetti sauce which came in a sensible glass jar with a twist lid

Pour in the chicken broth with sensible twist lids. Ruminate on the wisdom and convenience of twist lids

Add a tablespoon of dried basil

Try to remember the rough conversion rate of garlic cloves to pre-minced garlic, because you have ADHD and you're not about to mince your own garlic. You think it was one clove to one teaspoon. You would check, but the conversion you found was on reddit (after scrolling past a dozen AI sites) and you can't check it again because your app blocker keeps you out of reddit so you don't get distracted.

Add four teaspoons of pre-minced garlic

Dump in the shredded cheese; realize you didn't put it in the fridge with the sausage; decide it's fine, it's cheese, it hasn't been that long.

Five minute prep time.

Take sausage from fridge

Grab a plate to chop the sausage on

Slice open the package, dump out the sausage

Attempt to imitate the super fast chopping you see in cooking videos but when you do that the knife doesn't go all the way through the skin; reluctantly slow down

Once again, resentfully think about how many "one pot" "no prep" "dump dinner" crock pot recipes you've found that assume browning meat is a freebie action that magically takes zero time; wonder where people without ADHD magically find the spare time to complete tasks they've allotted 0 seconds for in their prep schedule

Muse that you probably could've browned half a cow's worth of ground beef in the time opening that tomato can took; remind yourself that if you actually had tried to brown your own beef, it would have probably turned into An Adventure as well.

Think to yourself that tumblr had damn well better enjoy your suffering because SOMEBODY here needs to

Dump sausage in crock pot

Nicely wipe the tomato juice and condensed milk splatters off the rim because a few weeks ago while looking for ADHD cleaning hacks you found the quote "you can wipe it now or you can scrub it later" and you're trying to incorporate that into your life.

Put the lid on at last

Plug it in scoot aside the detritus of the ingredients until you've made room to scoot the crock pot next to the power outlet

Plug it in

Set it to low heat and 6 hours

Check the clock; realize that it will finish cooking at the exact same time that you're supposed to be leaving for two and a half hours to pick up some free tiles you found on craigslist for the half-baked backyard project you haven't started yet; decide this is a logistics problem for future you

Throw away all the empty stuff that doesn't need to be rinsed.

Put the basil in the cutlery drawer, which is naturally where all the spices live because you always need to grab the forks, salt, and pepper at the same time

Realize the sink is still running; decide it wouldn't hurt to let it go a little longer

Put the minced garlic jar in the fridge; remove the last half-empty minced garlic jar that you THOUGHT you'd had, but you don't know when it was opened so you'd decided to get a new one anyway

Double-check to make sure there aren't any other leftover ingredients that need refrigerating because you don't want to have another Mayonnaise Incident (bought a big jar of lime mayo, used it once, accidentally left it on the counter in the spot where it had been sitting when it was unopened rather than refrigerate it, had to throw away the whole thing)

Tiredly tell yourself that you can wash the tomato juice and condensed milk off the counter later THE ANTS THE ANTS THE ANTS. Resolve to wash everything now so that you won't get another invasion.

Reluctantly pick up that spoon that's been soaking and scrub the rest of the cheese off with your thumb. It takes like twenty seconds. You could have cleaned it in twenty seconds at the start of all this.

Stick it in the dishwasher

Rinse out the glass tomato sauce jar and put it in the half of the sink dedicated to letting recyclables dry out.

As long as you're here, remove the actual dishes that are sitting in the half of the sink dedicated to recyclables that you put there when you made room to rinse the cheese spoon; put them in the dishwasher because you want to be able to give yourself an "emptied the sink" point in the gameified habit-tracking app you got for your ADHD (not to be confused with the life skills coaching habit-tracking app you got for your ADHD)

Bemoan the fact that you can't award yourself points this week for getting groceries on Monday because it's Friday. You were willing to let it go as far as Thursday and still award yourself credit but Friday's just too far.

Artfully arrange the cans and their "can openers" so you can take a picture of the carnage, because dammit you're getting SOMETHING out of this

Rinse out the tomato can and put it in the drying recyclables half of the sink

Direct a stream of water into the little hole on the condensed milk can; only realize your extremely predictable mistake when you try to drain it and the world's slowest stream of water pours out

Shake out the rest of the water and chuck the condensed milk can in the trash

Wash off the pliers

Wash the swiss army knife and all three extensions you tried to use even though only one was useful; tiredly recall that you didn't wash them off BEFORE opening the cans and decide you'll just live with that risk

Put your army knife in its Specific Spot where you'll Never Ever Lose It

Forget whether you've washed the pliers

Look at the pliers Accidentally look at your phone on the counter instead; your mind immediately ejects all thoughts like a bomber plane dumping its bombs and you stare blankly at the glowing screen, which isn't even displaying anything interesting, for at least ten seconds, trying to remember what you were looking at it for

Notice that there's condensed milk splashes on your phone; remember the pliers; check the pliers; remember you did wash them already

Wipe off your phone screen

Glance in the kitchen tools drawer while grabbing a paper towel, thinking about what a fool you would have just made of yourself if there is a can opener after all; be relieved to find no can opener

Wash off the counter; congratulate yourself on doing such a good job keeping the counter clean and the kitchen ant-free, except for that one time a week ago when one drop of orange chicken sauce fell on the counter without you noticing and you crushed four ant scouts before you managed to find what they were looking for. But other than that you're doing so good

Realize you didn't plan what you'll eat for lunch.

Casualties: 2 cans

Times I interrupted myself while writing this: 32

Verdict: remarkably low number of interruptions

The most deeply nested distraction-within-a-distraction Matryosha doll experienced while writing this: 4 (plus five separate 3-layer Matryosha distractions)

This includes remembering THE ANTS THE ANTS THE ANTS and going downstairs to toss the trash bag with the half-rinsed condensed milk can outside

This also includes two separate daily alarms I have set to deliberately disrupt my focus in case I've accidentally started hyperfocusing on a task I'm not supposed to be doing and one time tumblr got locked by my distracting-app-locking app

More important tasks I'm ignoring to write this post: 11

Casualties: 2 cans

Amount of time it took me to realize I mentioned the casualties twice and edit this post: 21 minutes

Not including writing this post, total prep time for the five-minute-prep-time dump dinner: one hour and twenty minutes.

ckret2

You know what? I accept it. Let my suffering be worth something. Tell my tale. The people need to know. The 5 minute prep recipe bloggers can't keep getting away with this

orphiclovers-deactivated2026032

If I was in a fanfiction and started coughing up flowers while working at a flower shop (because this is a flower shop au) I would NOT connect my crush on the tattoo artist next door to the flower cough situation. I would freak the fuck out and think the pollen at work was doing some Last of Us shit to me, quit my job and move FAR away. inadvertently my flame for the tattoo artist would fade with distance, solving my hanahaki situation and proving my 'the flowers were trying to turn me into a plant zombie' theory

going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi

getting lost in boston is fun because I turned around on a street corner three times and some guy yelled "hey stupid! the bus is that way!" very helpful interaction and accurate insult, 10/10 no notes

going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi

one time I walked around a building a couple times looking for a bathroom and this guy went "this bitch thinks she's on a merrygoround, where the fuck are you tryna go? bathroom? one floor down to the right behind the door that says bathroom."

mentohol-blog

My very first time in Boston. I was absolutely miserable, trying to drag my giant suitcase up a lengthy set of stairs in the pouring rain. This guy who had already reached the top looked back at me with the most pure expression of disgust I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes, marched back down the stairs, grabbed my suitcase, carried it to the top, left it there for me, and walked away without ever saying a word. I think about him often.

just7frogsinapeoplesuit

For the people in the notes going "why is Boston like this": a) the insults are a way to show you have no ulterior motives when helping someone (and don't need to be thanked or repaid), and b) Boston was settled by the Irish

direhydroid

also the Italians. mixing Irish and Italian sociocultural attitudes had the effect of multiplying the Sass Levels by the power of infinity, in the sense that you get all of the clever dry wit of the Irish and all of the bitchy gossipy condensation of the Italians rolled into one very stereotypically overly-friendly American package.

also worth noting that who you are to them doesn’t matter. they’ll talk to strangers like that and will also talk to their best friends like that. they’re just Like That.

just7frogsinapeoplesuit

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