das Mordschloß

Sensual trash baronet. Everything you never wanted. (Check out the "about" link for details, if interested.)

[manzanas-amargas]

i read book 2 of the mirror visitor over the summer and i honestly remember very little of it plot-wise but just this art is making me Feel Emotions

[crocordile]

variations on a theme… tome 2

[antonomase]

"Ophélie se fit violence pour ne pas imaginer Thorn en petite robe grise."

Madame Dabos, comment voulez-vous que moi je résiste à l'envie si vous nous écrivez cela ?

[sortilegerie]

Très déçue de n’avoir trouvé aucun fanart de ça jusqu’à présent

[antonomase]

Je pense que tu rendrais beaucoup de gens heureux en te dévouant pour la communauté.

[inziladun]

they had to go to one of archi’s parties...

[titleleaf]

A Short And Shitty Guide To  Generic European Historical Smut Oil

MASSIVE disclaimer: This is not a how-to guide for actual, real-life sex. It really, really isn’t and you shouldn’t use it as one. Lots of stuff in this post is used as lube without issue by lots of people, but fuck with that shit on your own time. I’m just dicking around with potential identities of Generic Medieval Fantasy/Georgian Era/Pre-1800 Fuck-Oil that the generic historical top carries on their person in a handy bottle/phial at all times. Info on skin-safeness/membrane-safeness in this post is approximately correct but please sweet baby jesus don’t take my word on this before you put anything on your ARM for a swatch test, let alone on your goodie bits. 

historically-attested lubes that don’t sound… terrible for your butt/vag

“sallet oil”*– that is, olive oil

“oil of lillies”*– that is, olive oil compounded with the non-yellow parts of lily flowers, i guess this means floral scented oils like the dreaded LAVENDER SCENTED VIAL OF OIL are plausible at a certain point but also like, this isn’t Edens Garden in here, it’s a butt, don’t start talking about undiluted essential oils or anyone with a cursory familiarity with sensitization will flip their shit

“oil of sweet almonds”* – that is… yep, sweet almond oil

* : These three lubes are attested in a 1672 letter from Arthur Stanhope to his nephew, describing them as aids to PIV intercourse. [Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present, p. 144.]   Unfortunately this is documented from the penetrator’s perspective, as a means of facilitating penetration, period, and not as a means of making sex more pleasurable for the individual being penetrated. It’s gross. It’s bad. It’s not great. 

On that note…

menstrual blood (if your character menstruates, dandy!)

definitely around pre-1850, might not murder your butt

pomade, c. 18th century and after – these generally incorporated animal fat (beef, mutton, or pork tallow; spermaceti) and I suspect they’re the ancestor of Generic Romance Novel Hero “Cream” 

tallow or other animal fats (see: pomade)

whale oil (…idk. Since it’s edible, maybe? Moby-Dick fandom, get back to me on that.)

butter (you know what, cool)

clarified butter (people on the internet swear by this one but uhhhh I don’t love it, is your otp really into pretending to be a sensual griddle)

grapeseed oil (skin-safe, edible)

apricot seed oil (skin-safe, edible if amygdalin removed)

rosehip oil (skin-safe, but the oil causes diarrhea and vomiting if eaten so yikes)

borage seed oil (skin-safe but like rosehip oil, likely poisonous by mouth so yikes yikes)

neat’s foot oil (the actual made-from-animals kind) 

and I mean… spit (have your historical top really go to town)

Oil-based or fatty lubricants aren’t latex-safe in a big big way but feel free to combine them with your hero’s linen or animal-skin condoms as your pornographic heart pleases. 

extant lubes, not attested, not advised

 linseed oil (this shit is pungent and self-igniting, so not fun for the boudoir; the Material Safety Data Sheet on a modern version mentions that it’s a mucous membrane irritant and that exposure may cause skin drying/cracking, which is not desirable for the butt region)

castor oil (buddy no, what the fuck)

 egg whites (I’ve encountered a few modern users vouching for this one, but it seems like it’d dry out in a jiffy and… yk… meringue)

There used to be a LJ/DW post like this for uhhh Prince Caspian fandom, iirc -- Google wasn’t letting me find it until now but it’s still in my bookmarks, thank fuck! ineptshieldmaid’s “Appropriate Narnian Lubes, redux” circa 2008! I owe that post a debt of gratitude for my ongoing obsession with this topic. 

[manzanas-amargas]

fdtd (the series) describing the gecko brothers: ...late twenties...

me when it came out, in my early 20s: hmm, i guess they started doing crime really young, but okay

me now, several years later, in my late 20s: i’m sorry, they’re HOW the fuck old?

[matchagirl]

every time i go outside in the summer i feel like david from schitt’s creek when he’s squatting in the field

[matchagirl]

vibes

[dashiellqvverty]

how about “stanning” your local library

[sadhoc]

bastard’s degree

[sadhoc]

bastard of sciences

[tvillingarnaa-deactivated201711]

message me a made up title of a mixtape/playlist and i have to pick 5 to 10 songs i think would go on it

say “playlist: title” in ur ask so i know what its for

[ao3commentoftheday]

Regarding comments and author responses - how do people feel about writers that answer some comments but ignore others? When I'm reading, and I see this, I more or less decide to not leave a comment. It's one thing if a bunch of comments at the end are unanswered because that happens for reasons ranging from the author having a backlog or having not logged in or anything, really. But it's different when you see, from the first page onwards, some comments answered while others are not.(1/2)

Sometimes, the author answers people they know or are friends with, sometimes, they only answer long comments or comments with questions in them. Sometimes, it’s just utterly random. I’ll usually comment on fics where authors make it clear that they don’t have time to answer, but this kind of erratic answering kinda guarantees I won’t. How do other people handle this? (2/2)

-

I tend to go into a fic with the intentions of leaving some kind of comment at the end, so an author’s habits don’t affect me all that much on the first chapter. If I notice that they never reply, I do figure they probably don’t really want comments. If they reply selectively, I used to start to question what “system” they have for who gets a response. 

After running this blog for a while and reading all of these questions from readers and writers alike who tie themselves into knots about whether to comment or whether to reply and how to be “good enough” - I just figure if they’re doing that it’s because they have some sort of stress surrounding comments that I will never understand. I just shrug and move on. It’s not about me, it’s about them. I can either let that affect what I want to do or I can decide that it doesn’t.

[mordinette]

I think the issue with selective replying to comments is that, for some readers, it can feel like the author doesn’t think they are worthy of a reply. It could bring up feelings of being excluded, of not being the part of a group, of not being good enough.

Yes, writers are people. They can have real life issues of their own, they might not have enough time to reply to every comment, they might have anxiety, you name it. But readers are people, too, and they might be struggling with the same stuff as well. Some readers don’t care if they get a reply or not; some might feel discouraged from commenting again if they feel they are being ignored, or might worry that what they said was stupid, and won’t want to risk the same thing again.

Sure, if the comment has nothing to do with the chapter itself (”Update soon!” after you’ve just posted thousands of words you worked hard on for weeks  comes to mind), a reply might not be warranted. But if someone left some praise on a fic, wouldn’t it be the kind, polite thing to do to say, “Thank you”?

I just wish we all tried to be a little nicer to each other. We’re all human, with feelings and hangups and desires. Writers are not machines; we all need encouragement and validation. But readers are not machines either. Their feelings can get hurt, too. Just my 2 cents.

[lauramkaye]

For me, personally:

If you want to comment on my stuff and wonder if you should… go ahead! I have a regular commenter that just leaves a little heart, and I appreciate it every time.

I try to reply to comments on my stories, but I have ADHD and also A Lot Going On, so this is what it looks like:

Right after the story goes up, I’m jumping on replies at least once a day because I’m refreshing the page to see if people liked the story.

As the story gets older, I’ll try to go do batches of replies when I see that there have been several comments.

After that, I periodically go over a story and try to go through and catch any that are new or I missed the first time.

The only comments that I deliberately don’t answer are ones that I can’t think what to say. This is usually comments that are complaining about update speed or something; I can only say “look I’m writing as fast as I can” so many ways, and those comments stress me out so I try to avoid them. The vast majority of comments I miss are just because I missed them somehow. Sometimes, for instance, a comment will be the last one on a page and I think that I’ve done that page already. I’ve seen comments that I missed in between blocks of answered ones and it was just pure accident.

I will say that if you want a longer response, it helps if you ask a question or talk about a certain part of the story specifically because that will give me something to respond to, but I do try to give everyone at least a thank you or a smiley face or something.

[ardatli]

There are a few times I’ve done this and only realized after the fact, when it feels too late to do anything about it. 

For instance – a reader recently posted a pile of comments on a story I wrote four+ years ago. Replying to those comments showed me that there had been a handful of comments that I’d missed two years ago, when I was in the middle of a massive grad school crunch and a major depressive period when everything internet was anathema and I was barely speaking to my own family, never mind replying to comments. 

So now I look at that and think ‘do I reply now? b/c I missed them when they came in, but it’s been two fucking years and all it will do is remind them that I was a jackass who didn’t reply the first time. But I replied to the ones which came in last week, so now I look like a jackass who likes some readers more than others.’ 

And then I get analysis paralysis, log off, and die inside. 

[alessandriana]

If I’ve missed a comment for that long I would totally still respond; just apologize that it took you a while and then respond like normal! Doing this has even gotten me a few new comments from them because they’ve forgotten what fic it was, click on the link to see, and then end up reading it again.

[glorious-spoon]

Honestly, I had to give myself comment amnesty, because I do really try to respond to every comment I get, but I also have ADHD and social anxiety and like, a limited amount of free time, and I feel weird about responding to every comment with ‘thanks for reading!! :D’ but I also very rarely have the social energy to actually write out thoughtful responses to every comment I get. And especially on WIP’s, I generally assume that people would rather I spend that time writing the fic.

(As a reader, I don’t usually notice whether or not authors respond to my comments unless it’s someone I talk to regularly otherwise, and even then I don’t particularly care. My comment is there to thank them for writing something I enjoyed; I don’t think they’re at all obligated to respond to it, although it’s nice when they do and I have had some lovely conversations in comments sections. So it’s a bit surprising to find out that a lot of people seem to REALLY care. So I will maybe devote some time tomorrow to clearing out my backlog and thanking people for reading).

[pluckyredhead]

I try to respond to every comment I get, because I appreciate them so much and I want people to know that. I have a huge backlog right now and I feel terrible whenever I go in and reply to a comment that’s eight months old, but I do it because even eight months later, it makes me feel good that you commented.

But wow, the calculus some of y’all have laid out where you read a whole-ass piece of fiction someone wrote and posted, FOR FREE, and then scrutinize their replying habits to determine whether they reply the way you think they should and thus deserve your comment? That’s like going to a (FREE!!!) play and telling the actors, “Listen, I’m only going to clap if you make the facial expression I demand in response.”

If you like the fic and you want to tell the writer, comment! Don’t turn it into some weird purity test.

[titleleaf]

I have nearly 400 fics up on AO3, with 10 years of comment backlog to contend with. It really doesn’t signify that much whether I reply to a comment or not. Most of the time when a comment comes in, I’m not at my computer to reply, and it either slips my mind to reply, or I don’t know what to say, or I’m not sure how (or when) to respond without being weird, or inappropriate, or awkward. It has nothing to do with subtly carving out some implicit in-group or snubbing anybody. It’s just not that deep, for heaven’s sake. 

[manzanas-amargas]

i’m never logged in on AO3 except when i’m posting a fic, which isn’t very often these days, given my schedule and obligations. by the time i do log in, most of the comments my fic has gotten in the interim are old as hell and i feel weird responding to them (unless they’re asking for permission to translate, in which case i do always respond, though often extremely late). if you see replies from me on older comments, it’s more likely a matter of them being from a time when i was more prolific than it is a matter of not appreciating the ones i’ve failed to reply to. not everybody is equally Online.

also, the cultural shift here to put the onus for readers’ appreciation back into the authors themselves is uhhh pretty weird.

[titleleaf]

a black mirror: bandersnatch fan game by skazka

I finally uploaded the Twine version of my CYOA Bandersnatch fic “this is the hand”. The gameplay is a pain in the ass because I couldn’t figure out how to have text progress with simply hitting the spacebar/enter key, but I have conquered Twine and bent it to my will. 

[thepoisonroom]

when you’re trying to be homoerotic but you’re just homoneurotic

[redlipstickresurrected]

Snail Scott (American, b. Edwardsville, IL, USA) - Ghost Construct from the Armature series, 2012  Sculptures: Wood, Ceramics

[locusimperium]

[swan-archive]

locusimperium:

A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic. 

Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day. 

Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.

Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy.  Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour. 

Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick.  Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.

[brawltogethernow]

So I tried this recipe.

And it is GREAT.

It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.

[davetheshady]

Life hack: add white chocolate chips and sea salt

[mxxnlit-witch]

I made these today for the equinox with sea salt caramel chips and they are simply amazing. Let’s see how long they last with six people in the house!

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

oh………..

it’s a kitty hurricane. 

[jakegyllenhaal]

[sartorialadventure]

Renaissance hair styles by the Bayerische Theaterakademie