Kendal Mint Cake is a sort of highly dense lump of sugar flavoured with peppermint oil. It does not spoil, and somehow contains 2x more sugar and glucose than sugar or glucose. It is a purposeful product intended as an emergency ration to give a boost of energy when mountaineering. It is associated with hikers and mountaineers in the UK and is sold in camping/outdoor stores. Typically you keep a packet permanently in your camping bag or car or emergency kit, and just never move or remove it. If the time comes, it’s there.
I gestured a hand across an explanation of a Scottish field geologist character named Ken(dal Mint Cake) stating that he always has a packet of Kendal mint cake somewhere and received a message from a friend saying “I didn’t know you also knew (guy that Ken could conceivably be based on)”. I didn’t. This is just a portrait of too many extant guys.
There are several species of this man crashing cheerfully around the UK receiving deep spiritual pleasure from crouching in a puddle in a howling gale up a mountain nibbling pieces of violent mint sugar and apparently metabolising sufficient joy from this to polish off Kendal Mint Cake in marketable quantities for over 100 years.
Unless they made too much of it originally and are still selling it.
It isn’t sugar cube. It’s sugar to the fourth power. Nobody sounds reasonable talking about it.
If only it had been founded 35 years earlier, the Franklin expedition would have found the NW Passage while carrying their boats like a pack of very determined sugar fuelled ants.
At first I was like; why are you guys being so weird about this, but now I'm wondering; am I the weird one?
I have eaten whole bars in one go, they were delicious. I have eaten them while hiking, I have also eaten them as an everyday snack. I have given them to other people and seen them do the same.
It's just mint flavoured dense icing. You can also get them coated in chocolate.
I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was
Fic prompt: SY is the chosen cleric of LBH, the world's most possessive divine emperor, accent on the divine. He did not sign up for this. (Meanwhile, LBH is trying to figure out how he can fit a divine empress into this pantheon)
i actually got very into this AU once i thought about it for 0.5 seconds, so here's a lil drabble that i hope to expand on and put on ao3 in the future ;>
---
Shen Yuan wouldn’t consider himself to be particularly religious. He believed in the gods, of course - the proof of their existence is written on every street corner and under every roof. The lights of the city that have no discernible power source outside of the goddess of invention herself, the unemptiable food basket that had been gifted to Shen Yuan’s father by the god of plenty, the buzz of raw energy in the air each weekend when the city gathers to say its prayers.
Undoubtedly, Shen Yuan had grown up in a city blessed by the gods, so naturally he believes in them. He just doesn’t much care for them.
A city blessed by the gods is also a city kept by them, after all. No inventions that could possibly be construed as a weapon would ever be approved by the ministry of creation. No civil courts existed when the gods could directly send down divine punishment to sinners.
No life in the city would ever survive if the gods found it unworthy.
Shen Yuan knew, objectively, why the rules of the gods were so strict. Divine Emperor Luo wrote them himself, and each one had been crafted specifically to prevent the sort of strife and abuse that he had witnessed when he was a mere mortal. Every schoolchild learns the story of the pitiful Luo Binghe who struggled to reach the heavens, faced every day with proof of humanity’s dishonor and ugliness.
When that pathetic Luo Binghe had awakened his blood as the Divine Emperor, he’d immediately sought to rewrite the rules of the heavens to fix the issues he’d seen as a mortal. It made sense. It even worked, to some objective degree of measurement: starvation and war between human lands was barely heard of, these days.
Shen Yuan casts his eyes up to the ceiling of the chapel. A mural of Divine Emperor Luo is painted in bright splashes of color, his eyes piercing down at the viewer as he holds a drink in one hand and a woman in the other. An image of wealth and wellness; a warning to stay in line if you wish for a similar happy ending.
Shen Yuan thinks that the Divine Emperor must truly have had a hard life, to rule as such an immature god. A child that never got the chance to grow up freely, now imposing their black-and-white outlook of life on an entire land of people who are mature enough to understand that life isn’t so simple.
Shen Yuan looks back down, peering through barely open eyes at his feet. He isn’t supposed to have his eyes open at all, during prayer. It’s just - despite the issues he has with the gods’ reign, and despite the apathy he feels in place of admiration or piety, he really can’t help but think -
How pitiful, to have ascended without first understanding the joy of being human. How sad, to have your ‘happy ending’ worshiped by the masses without understanding it yourself, believing it to be good only because it follows your own strict rules.
Shen Yuan sighs, a quiet release of air in the quiet of the chapel.
His next breath in feels electric.
The vaulted ceilings of the chapel suddenly feel claustrophobic. The quiet hum of hands rubbing against hands in silent prayer rises to a crescendo of skin and movement and life. What low light the candles lining the pews had provided now burns as brightly as the light of a hundred divine lanterns, but there isn’t anywhere Shen Yuan can cast his eyes towards that is less shocking to look at.
And there, at the front of the chapel, is a god.
Shen Yuan’s breath catches. He can’t look away. The god is beautiful; more divine than any blessing that Shen Yuan has ever witnessed.
He is also looking directly at Shen Yuan, meeting his gaze through half lidded eyes and with the laziness of an apex predator.
Around Shen Yuan, the other church-goers have begun to break from their prayers, startled and choking on the divine presence around them. Many of them dare to sneak peeks at the descended god, but none of them seem able to look directly at him, their eyes sliding off of him before they quickly duck their heads and take up the pose of prayer once more.
Shen Yuan still can’t look away.
Slowly, the god steps down from the pulpit and begins to approach. He doesn’t bother to look at Shen Yuan as he moves forward, casually glancing around the chapel as if assessing it. His eyes catch on the mural on the ceiling - his own face looking down at him, though paling in comparison to the beauty and power of the real thing.
And then he pulls his eyes back to Shen Yuan, and Shen Yuan realizes with a start that he’s stopped walking, standing directly in front of the pew Shen Yuan is sitting in.
Shen Yuan wets his lips. His pulse beats jack-rabbit fast in his throat.
“Divine Emperor Luo,” he greets. “How - how can I serve you?”
The weight of the Divine Emperor’s attention is no lighter than if Shen Yuan had held the entire ocean on his shoulders. He looks at Shen Yuan as if he might eat him, and expects Shen Yuan to thank him for the honor of filling a divine stomach.
“Do you think you can?” He asks, and Shen Yuan shudders at the sound of his voice. An infinitely powerful being, and he’s speaking to Shen Yuan as if Shen Yuan were a peculiarity, something fit to either be played with or disposed of once the god has finished assessing him.
“Can I - um, my apologies, Divine Emperor, can I…?”
“Serve me,” The gods says. “Or did you offer such a thing unthinkingly?”
Shen Yuan stares at him. Divine Emperor Luo stares back, his gaze sharp as he takes Shen Yuan in.
“Can you,” Divine Emperor Luo says, voice low and dangerous, “serve a god that you see as pitiful?”
Shen Yuan jerks back as if slapped. How useless would it be to say that he hadn’t meant it? If a god can hear any thought about them, not only directed prayers - for certainly, Shen Yuan’s private ruminations about the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s story had been nothing like a prayer, and yet they had clearly been heard - then there is no point in lying. If Shen Yuan were to claim one thing with his mouth and another with his mind, he’d only be branded one of the many sinners to be smited by the Divine Emperor’s just hand. Deceit was hardly looked favorably upon; to lie to a god that could hear the truth from your own mind would be suicide.
Shen Yuan hesitates. At his back, he knows his family must be terrified, and yet he also knows that they dare not look at the Divine Emperor, and that their heads must be bowed in prayer like everyone else in the chapel.
A room with a hundred people, and it may as well just be Shen Yuan and his god.
The Divine Emperor’s lips quirk up. It isn’t a friendly expression.
“Your god, little Shen Yuan?” He asks cruelly. “You can pity me, and you can know in your heart that you are incapable of serving me, and yet you claim to be devout to me in the same breath?”
“Aren’t I yours, Divine Emperor?” Shen Yuan asks. His voice does not waver, but it is a near thing. “If I didn’t belong to you, could I dare to live in this city? Every living thing here must live by your rule; naturally, we must all belong to you.”
“What pretty words,” Divine Emperor Luo says. His eyes glint red from beneath his lashes, and Shen Yuan thinks -
Ah, so red is truly the color of the divine.
Divine Emperor Luo’s eyes are very suddenly the same deep brown that his murals all portray him with. Shen Yuan lowers his gaze deferentially, and wonders idly if all the other too-sharp pieces of the Divine Emperor would smooth out if Shen Yuan’s thoughts lingered on them.
“If Divine Emperor Luo finds my words pretty, then I will dare to keep speaking,” Shen Yuan says, keeping his eyes turned down.
“Go on, then. Speak.”
Shen Yuan takes a shuddering breath in. His family is still cowering behind him. The old lady who lives down the street is shaking in her pew across the aisle.
And Shen Yuan has never considered himself especially religious, because believing in the gods is very different from placing your faith in them.
“To spy is the manifestation of distrust,” Shen Yuan recites, the words long since memorized after a lifetime of growing up under the gods’ many rules about morality and punishment. “A lack of trust in others implies something impure within yourself. Spying should be punished with ten lashes.”
Shen Yuan’s mother lets out a quiet sound of alarm, stifled so quickly it sounds like a whimper. Shen Yuan does not bother to send her any sort of mental apology; it would not reach her, and would instead be intercepted by an outsider.
Besides, Shen Yuan had known well what he was doing, quoting the rules that the Divine Emperor had written right back at him, implying that a god should be punished. It would be foolish to apologize for something he had done so purposefully.
“Spying,” Divine Emperor Luo says, after the silence in the chapel has stretched long. “What a funny way to describe listening to the prayers of my followers. Is it spying for you to hear a call made to you from within your own house?”
“If all of the prayers that the Divine Emperor receives sound like what he heard from me,” Shen Yuan says, glancing back up to meet the god’s eyes defiantly. “Then I wonder why he hasn’t bothered to descend before today to scold us all.”
“Does little Shen Yuan think I will scold him?” Divine Emperor Luo asks, voice soft.
“I think,” Shen Yuan says, “that a god normally so busy with punishing us would not bother to descend unless it was to fulfill those duties.”
“The world is good, from the work that I do,” Divine Emperor Luo says sharply.
“Is it?” Shen Yuan asks, and he finds that his fear has been pushed down, his chest tight with a lifetime of reading about the gods and wondering why, if Luo Binghe’s life was so miserable, would he be unable to recognize misery in his own subjects, living every day in fear of him?
Luo Binghe had been pitiful, and he’d never been allowed to grow up peacefully, and Shen Yuan truly thinks it sad that a divine being could live in such a tragic way.
But that doesn’t make him blind to the way that Luo Binghe’s immaturity has scorched the mortal plane, nor does his pity completely dissolve his anger over such a thing.
Shen Yuan’s fate had been sealed from the moment they the Divine Emperor had descended. If he’s going to be punished regardless, then it will be for having said his piece.
Dying from bitching this pathetic god out is a far better story than dying from having only thought it.
And yet, before Shen Yuan can open his mouth again -
The Divine Emperor turns suddenly, facing the cleric at the front of the chapel. The old man is clutching at his prayer book with shaking hands, and he ducks his head instantly when the god looks his way.
“Take him in as a disciple,” Divine Emperor Luo commands, gesturing lazily in Shen Yuan’s direction. “I want him trained and moved to the main church by the end of the year.”
Shen Yuan looks at the cleric, and then back at the god in front of him. He - what?
The Divine Emperor glances back at Shen Yuan, his lips quirked up and his eyes once more a blazing red.
“There’s another reason for a god to descend than to administer punishment,” he says. “We must also appoint clerics.”
And then Divine Emperor Luo is gone, the space where he once stood crackling with divine energy.
In disbelief, Shen Yuan - the first cleric to be personally appointed by the Divine Emperor in nearly a century - falls to his knees. Fuck, he thinks, and he hopes that the god is still listening to hear it.
I know the holidays can be stressful, so this Threshold Day try to keep in mind what really matters. It's not about the gifts or the shopping, it's about breaking the warp barrier. Threshold Day is meant to be a time of transformation (into a lizard), love (for your captain/lizard wife), and spending time with your family (of lizard babies) before you abandon them on a planet forever and never think about them again.
Happy Threshold Day everyone, and don't forget to leave milk and cookies out for Tom Paris as he travels at warp 10 and exists simultaneously at every point in the universe!
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
⁂
Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
anyway sound off. at what stage do ppl think Han figured out the Force was real. the boring answer is after seeing Obi-wan vanish but i think he could rationalise that away as his eyes playing tricks on him. what do we think.
that's so funny. that means he accepted Vader deflecting a blaster bolt with his hand as just something freaky government cyborgs can do, and stuck by Luke for multiple years as he tried to figure this Force stuff out, and just treated it like your friend getting really really into neopaganism to cope with a loss.
like yeah kid good job with the witching. i'm certain it will be more useful against your enemies than your sharpshooting. no i do not think your witchcraft is supplementing your aim but i'm not gonna argue about it.
yeah Luke was like 'I heard Ben Kenobi's voice in my head telling me how to blow up the Death Star :)' and Han was like 'kind of an unusual coping mechanism but I'm not gonna argue with him'
thanks to carbonite han not only misses learning about luke's training montage on dagobah, he's also half-blind during their whole escape on tatooine. luke's out there force-kicking henchmen with his gucci boots and doing flips and shit and han can't see a goddamn thing. now on endor luke's yeeting threepio with the power of his mind and han's just like 'the last time we hung out i had to stuff him in a tauntaun sleeping bag'.
One of my favourite SVSSS moments was Shang Qinghua essentially thinking to himself "Luo Binghe needs advice from normal humans. Instead he has us. A bunch of weird demons and one weird human. You are going to get such shit advice son."
I also like the implications that the high ranking demons Luo Binghe hangs out with are a bunch of weirdos in demon society. Which makes sense because all the rich kids in human society are considered pretty weird
And not in the hot sexy way that I'm weird
To put it another way Luo Binghe's only option to source relationship advice was a bunch of rich weirdos and one weirdo who is kinda a poor weirdo (definitely used to be poor, then was wealthy for a bit, now his financial status is ambiguous but might be "rich guys pet")
Poor Binghe needs better friends
Except he's also weird which makes sense because he was raised by The rich weirdo
