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[raphmike]

I HAVE WAITED ALL YEAR TO POST THIS

[jesvisfarovche]

Happy Halloween y'all don't forget to pull your lover down from their white horse and then hold them tight and fear them not as The Queen of Fairies turns them into all manner of beasts

[cuteautumn]

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

[tomatoreddsworld-deactivated201]

WHAT THE FUCK IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE WHY DID SOMEONE REBLOG THIS

[derranger-deactivated20220102]

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

[imokube-deactivated20240203]

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

[mr-freezo-42069-inactive]

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

[hallowed-be-thy-ween]

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN

[quigonjesus]

BECAUSE TODAY IS THE 46TH ANNIVERSARY OF STAR TREK AND I HAVE NOT SEEN THIS ON MY DASH ONCE

I am severely disappointed in you Tumblr.

[disasterscenario]

Happy anniversary this is the best thing I’ve ever seen.

[trekheritageposts]

star trek heritage post (September 8th, 2012)

[jennabookish]

Tragic

[aqueerkettleofish]

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[covington-shenanigans]

Proposal for a Watsonian explanation:

In a blind taste test, nobody, but nobody, can tell the actual difference between replicated food and “real” food. (Think back to our youth and the New Coke vs. Pepsi taste tests, only worse.) BUT, humans being What We Are, the human Starfleet members insist that “real” food is better than replicated food for reasons including, but certainly not limited to:

1. Hipsters have survived even into the 24th century. “No, you just can’t make good curry from a replicator! You gotta toast the spices yourself right before you cook it or it’s not the same, maaaaaan”

2. All military and para-military members everywhere always grouse and bitch about the food and sigh over What We Get Back Home. It could literally be the same replicator recipe you use at home when someone has to work late or just doesn’t feel like making the effort to cook, but people are people everywhere so they’re going to complain about it.

3. Humans tend to think we’re smarter than we actually are and we can totally tell when something is going on; as a result, human crew members insist they can “taste the difference” because their minds are making shit up, as our brains do.

4. One could presume that, generally speaking, a replicator recipe programmed into a starship or base replicator database would come out the same every time. This is perhaps the 24th century equivalent of mass catering. (I won’t try to account for the nuances of replicator tech that might allow for variances, and leave aside for the moment the fact that some people probably tinker with the standard “recipes” to suit their own taste.) The single thing that would be different in this case about “real” food is the variation, since of course the “real” dish will have slight variances every time due to the whims of the cook, the oven temperature fluctuation, freshness of ingredients, etc.. And since we are an easily bored species who really, really hates boredom, I bet people would jump all over that to lament the lack of “real” food when they’re out exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations and whatnot. (This is the only reason I can think of that might hold up to scrutiny.)

The Vulcans in Starfleet (and Data), of course, remain baffled by this human insistence that “replicator food isn’t as good as ‘real’ food”, as it defies all known forms of logic.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Hmm.  This is a fair point.  It occurs to me that I once met a Texan who commented that the chili in a restaurant I worked at was not as good as what they made in Texas, and when I pointed out that the cook was a Texan and the chili was his personal recipe, for which he had won awards in Texas, just said “Doesn’t matter.  Wasn’t made in Texas.”

I gotta be honest, Replicator technology is one of the things I am SUPREMELY jealous of, and I’m… okay, I’m not a great cook, but I can cook and there are several dishes I do very well.  I think if I had access to the technology I would cook a lot less, though, and I would for sure use replicated ingredients. 

[math-is-magic]

1. It is not just hipsters that act like this about food. All the grandmothers I know feel this way too, and I don’t see that ever changing.

[mermaidelephant]

The missing ingredient is love, obviously. You can’t get that from a replicator.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Right, for that you need the holodeck.

[lemonsharks]

Okay so, we’ve missed a few things that I think are relevant here: 

The replicator or replicator + holodeck combo can’t recreate the experience of cooking, nor can it recreate the experience of being cooked for. And that experience makes food taste better. 

Cooking is what makes us human. No other species on this wet rock cooks its food–only us. 

First: if you’re making lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat, you spend hours puttering around the house doing chores in a cozy sweater, periodically petting the cats and playing with the kids, waiting an anticipating the hour in which you get to eat the soup. All the while: your house smells like lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat. 

You get a tamale from the replicator: it’s pretty good. You wish it came with a green olive with the pit still in like the kind your abuela puts in her tamales. 

You get a tamale from the tamale lady on the way to work on a clear, crisp fall morning. It’s so hot from her steamer that it nearly burns your fingerprints off and it smells divine; you use all of your Spanish to tell her how good it is and how grateful you are that you pass her every day. On a whim, you buy 30 more tamales to share with the office; they’re still warm at lunch and they taste like friendship. 

You get a tamale from your abuela. It’s Christmas Eve, your entire family has spent the last seven hours making them, your tio Juan just busted out his tuba and it is definitely too hot outside for the fake snow  your baby cousins have started throwing at each other in between begging to open just one present and if you don’t hurry up you’re all going to be late for mass. 

The tamale tastes like home. 

You get a tamale from the replicator. Its neural network reviewed your order against every known tamale recipe and variety and decided that your addition of “green olive, pickled, pit in” was a mistake, and omitted it. 

Your tamale tastes like homesickness. You ball-up the corn husk and 

Second: The replicator is probably not accounting for regional variations in ingredients for its base foods. 

The ingredient library may have jalapeno, red; jalapeno, green, jalapeno, (color slider), (heat slider). It probably does not have: jalapeno, Hatch new mexico, USA, earth, sol system; or jalapeno north face Olympus Mons Mars, sol system. Replicator Parmesan is very likely a scan of a Parmesan and doesn’t duplicate regional variations between, say, a Parmesan from Mantua vs a Parmesan from Parma. 

Did your grandmother use san marzano tomatoes that were actually grown in san marzano in her red sauce (, canned, peeled, whole in juice)? Sucks to be you, the replicator scanned a hydroponically grown plum-type tomato which environment was carefully controlled for optimal nutritional value and “pretty good” taste. 

Is the replicator cilantro a kind bred or genetically engineered for maximum palatability across the broadest spectrum of individuals? Is it missing the gene that makes some people taste soap when they eat it? Is that gene the one that makes it taste good to you, so that the replicator chimichurri is always missing something, some particular specific type of freshness, a unique vegetal taste that you can’t put your finger on, and it’s not important enough to track down when you just like the chimichurri you make at home, from cilantro your grew yourself, much better? 

Third: The recipe database is probably sourced from hundreds of thousands of recipes written over centuries’ time – and then averaged using a combination of median and modal averaging to come up with something that’s Pretty OK to most people, but which is going to leave others wanting–no matter how much they tweak it. 

And then you have many, many people in a state of, “yes but I like my/mom’s/spouse’s/grandparent’s/aunt’s/uncle’s/best friends better”. And that’s OK.

I mean, really. Think about this for a minute.

Fourth:

You go to get a cup of tea from the replicator, because everything is terrible. You know in the darkest depths of your soul that everything will still be terrible with a good cuppa in your hands, but it will be terrible and you’ll have tea, which is a marked improvement. 

The replicator gives you a glass of brewed, iced sweet tea. 

It takes you three more tries to get a cup of hot earl grey. You decide you’ve finished pressing your luck with this positively infernal machine today and don’t even bother asking for a lemon wedge. 

If that doesn’t indicate that the replicators were programmed by an American, I don’t know what does. 

[taraljc]

holy shit boo this is fucking AMAZEBALLS and I miss the tamale ladies at Stone on the way to the Target so much right now but also you *hugs you tight*

[subbyp]

Also, regional recipes are calibrated to work with the local tap water. That’s why pizza from New York and sourdough from San Francisco taste better–the micro-organisms in the water enhance the flavor. The chili that wasn’t made in Texas probably did taste subtly different than it would’ve back home.

[united-federation-of-trek]

There are lots of things that would change with replicators because they take out the human factor.

Maybe you really wanted that one meal from that one restaurant except the restaurant doesn’t release their recipe so it’s slightly off and always will be.

You programmed the replicator with your mum’s favourite mac and cheese recipe, but you didn’t know that your mum always added a little more salt and a little less mustard than the recipe called for, so it’s just not the same and it’s not as good.

[alarajrogers]

Pretty much this. Also I think we cannot overstate the degree to which “the food always comes out exactly the same” would end up bothering people over time.

[jagatcurious]

Important point is that these are “military grade” food replicators and military food is never really great. Hence the difficulty with the tea. Food replicators in private homes and restaurants are more controllable and may have programming for varieties of chilies or tomatoes or even carrots. There are 4 basic kinds of carrots but only one is available commercially, the others need to be grown at home. With a programmable home replicator one can have chantenay carrots… all the infinite varieties of foodstuff ingredients will be available with the right programming and therefore civilians in the 24th century in star trek will have perfectly customisable food. My mind is boggled now…

[kraznyoktyabr]

For a real-world example, but in the other direction:

When I was a child, my mother used to make chili using “Carroll Shelby’s Texas Chili Mix.” It made… okay chili.

When I was in college I found a book called “Chili Madness” at a local used bookstore, that had the winning recipes from the National Chili Cookoff for the last 30 years. It included Carroll Shelby’s actual recipe. So I made it. (Had to get one of my apartment mates to source beer for me, as I was not of age to purchase it yet.)

Wow. What a difference. Adding the spices at different times rather than as a blob of “spice mix”. Beer instead of water. No masa. So good!

So the bagged mix would be the replicator mix in this scenario.

[kaldurcalm-deactivated20240513]

@subbyp you said what about the tap water?

[subbyp]

It has microscopic crustaceans in it.

[kyraneko]

The microorganisms are different, if not missing.

The process of creating it is removed, along with all that entails: this spice left to simmer for the entire cooking time, that fresh leafy thing added in just at the end, a tiny bit heat-wilted.

The quality, not in terms of “is it good” but “what characteristics does it have,” the difference between grass-fed beef and corn-fed, mast-raised pork and commercial feed, how much sunshine did the animal get, what breed is it, how much exercise did it get.

What soil microbes mingled with the roots of that plant and what was planted next to it and how many rainy days did it get and how much sun? You have wine connoisseurs talking about how this or that year was “a good year” because of how the patterns of temperature and sun and rain hit the vines, and everybody has a memory of getting a really good batch of blueberries from the store ONCE and wishing they could all be like that.

When I was a kid we picked strawberries at you-pick fields that don’t seem to be around anymore, and they tasted so much better than anything I’ve ever gotten from a store.

One of the things that screws up my suspension of disbelief in Star Trek is how weirdly specific and intuitive the computers both are and aren’t, at the same time. Picard always has to say “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” at the replicator so there’s obviously no means of personalization where the replicator knows if it’s Picard asking for tea, he wants it Earl Grey and you can just jump to that unless he specifies otherwise, but also that one time he was able to pull up the musical recording of HMS Pinafore on the working screen of a shuttle by pressing just two buttons, and there weren’t a whole lot of buttons on either screens, so what the fuck?

Anyway there’s probably a shitload of data storage in a Federation starship, but are they really going to fill it up with enough molecular data to store

every extant cultivar

of every food plant

at every stage of edible ripeness

prepared every way it’s commonly prepared

in combination with every other ingredient whose presence or absence affects its taste?

Plus every cut of every food animal

with all the variables of how it might have been raised, and then

with every variable of preparation?

If you bake bread it will taste differently based on how you let it rise, at what temperature, if you put it in the fridge overnight and then let it rise, if you use a starter or a pre-ferment, as well as what yeast you use and how you knead it and what flour and what water and the temperature and shape of the oven and the atmospheric pressure and humidity of the day and the altitude you’re doing your baking at and

that’s

ONE

type

of

food

and you can’t just reduce all that into “bread, artisan, sliced” or whatever

don’t get me started on the butter

or the absolute multitude of things that you could mean when you say you want “chili”

and even if you go into the Settings menu the first time you take a Starfleet posting and spend hours on end going into detail about what varieties of peppers should go into each of your favorite Mexican dishes and how much crispiness is The Correct Amount Of Crispiness in your bacon (and how thick it should be and how it should be smoked and seasoned) and how big and numerous you want the holes in your sandwich bread to be

you’re still gonna find yourself missing the taco truck and the tamale lady and that one bakery and the sort of fried rice you get when you throw six days’ worth of leftovers in plus whatever spices feel right at the time.

[feifiefofum]

i always figured they’d have a gourmet chef produce a dish, scan the pattern, store the pattern in a database, and there you go. same dish every time, until the end of time. just have a masterclass chef who had this one dish they’re passionate about and have them make it.

but then you’ll run into the problem of ‘it’s a great dish but it ain’t what pappy used to make’. and that’s that.

look, you can get a gourmet chef to make you some artisanal mac n’ cheese, and it’d be great mac n’ cheese, stellar even. and the computer will even reproduce it indistinguishable from the masterclass chef’s creation- but sometimes the palette of the common folk don’t want the 12 layers of flavor in a masterclass chef’s fancy mac n’ cheese, you just want mac n’ cheese.

sometimes we do be wanting that uncultured stuff.

look, with all the minecraft builders of today, i highly doubt there isn’t some dedicated ensign or other, mucking around in the ship’s library, trying to reproduce a taste of home.

and they’ll probably frankenstein a pretty good approximation that they’ll be so proud of, they’ll have it served at their funeral.

forget that one time i saved a planet’s civilization from radiation poisoning, i finally got the mac n’ cheese right. and it’s just the generic box store mac n’ cheese with butter and cheddar.

fuck the gourmet chef’s 12 layers of flavor, some butter and cheddar? that’s where it’s at.

[elodieunderglass]

I don’t know shit about Star Trek but I can tell you:

As a child I loved the hard, crumbly, springy, salty feta cheese that was sold at the deli in Market Basket. (Tell me you’re from NE without telling me-) The deli clerk would pick up these great blocks of feta and put them in a plastic container full of brine. In the UK i was startled to learn that this is not Greek feta cheese, and that feta cheese is actually soft and sweet and sour and smeary, and I don’t like it at all. The closest thing to the experience, “my” “feta” cheese, is Apetina (sold as salad cheese - it isn’t legally feta) when cubed and sold in brine. And it isn’t it. I read pages trying to understand what Apetina is, and it isn’t Feta because it comes from Denmark, not a specific area of Greece, but that doesn’t explain why Market Basket feta and Apetina are both tasty and brittle and dry and briny, and Actual Real Feta is like failed chèvre. “The terrain on which the animals graze (in Greece) is very different from that of Denmark,” one website offered hopelessly. I don’t think a work cafeteria is prepared to deal with this, I really don’t.

Annie’s macaroni with white cheddar, in the purple box with the bunny on it. Smartfood popcorn. Smartfood popcorn! I crossed an ocean not realising I wouldn’t eat it again. People have, with the best of intentions, have heard my grief about this tried to tell me how to make Mac and cheese from scratch as if I don’t fucking know. This is not a bechamel, sir, this is not a roux-based sauce, this is white cheddar powder and if you don’t know then you don’t know. Operating under wild cravings, I bought a packet of UK-produced cheddar powder from apparently the only company in Europe that makes it - apparently as a protein supplement - and cannot explain what is wrong with it to my own family, let alone a computer. Let alone a catering company. Let alone a work canteen run by a catering company’s computer. “White cheddar popcorn,” you say, and it gives you popcorn covered in cold grated cheese. We can’t even reconcile this between friends on a planet let alone the vastness of all spacetime.

Those Maruchan creamy chicken ramen noodle packets - did you know they stopped existing? They never will again. Do you remember them enough to teach a computer?

When my husband moved to the US he just could not get sausage. He was astonished by American sausage: sweet breakfast sausage, fennel sausage, hot sausage - but could not get back bacon (“Canadian bacon?” “No, back bacon”) or sausages for a fry up. He found an English butcher in the USA that would ship the right kind on ice, and had a fry up and was happy. Now I think suddenly of hot sausage, Market Basket again with those twelve-packs of weirdly red sausage. If we can’t argue these distinctions with people then what can we do?

Did you know that Old El Paso spice mixes, those cheap “Mexican” ones, have the same names and packaging but the ingredients vary by country? Just like Coca-Cola, thought to be the universal American import, actually being made from the cheapest sugar source in the country of manufacture.

I don’t know anything about Star Trek. I am absolutely starving.

[marzipanandminutiae]

going through Google Books looking for pocket-related sources and I found something interesting in an 1875 issue of the magazine “The Spirit of ‘seventy-six”

it’s a letter to the editor, written by someone who signs herself “A Revolutionary Young Person” but later makes it clear that she’s a woman. and she is incensed about These Disgraceful Pockets Nowadays

she went through a man’s everyday outfit, based on general observations, and counted up a total of 25 pockets between all the different articles of clothing. this, to her, seems a gross unfairness compared to “these little shallow things, with the opening level with [one’s] bottom or a little lower, of which they sometimes allow us one in a dress…” she’s also transported with delight at the earlier, separate pockets she’s seen on display at American centennial fairs

based on my own study of extant garments, the “modern” pockets she’s talking about are often around 9 inches by 11 inches

so there might be a bit of an answer to the question of “why was there an association between women’s rights and women’s pockets in a time period when, by our standards, they were quite lavishly pocketed indeed?”

some of them  were comparing their pockets to a truly excessive number in men’s outfits, and to the size of 18th-century examples. getting just as frustrated as we are today at our pocketless pants, fake pockets, and tiny pockets barely big enough for half a hand

“As to living another hundred years in this way, it isn’t to be thought of.” oh honey. I have some good news and some bad news…

[hedge-rambles]

1875 men’s fashion apparently

[marzipanandminutiae]

I have to quote this because the young lady was so Unhinged about pockets that I wish to go back in time and propose Boston Marriage

Look at a man. He’s just a mass of pockets. See his Ulster overcoat. Two pockets in the breast, to put his dear hands in when they are cold. Two pockets in the skirt [long hanging portion of the coat] to put his hands when he doesn’t know what to do with them, and what man ever does? One pocket just under the belt. Small change for [street]car-fare, is what he says that is for. One side pocket higher up on the breast, for his pocket handkerchief. Well, we don’t object to that. One pocket in the cuff. Heaven knows what that is for. All this on the outside.

Now just unbutton his coat and there, as I’m a living woman, three more pockets inside. Probably under his Ulster he has another light overcoat, many of these tender creatures do, but in that you will not find more than five pockets, so let that go. Then there is his [suit jacket]. Skirts, two pockets; breast, two pockets; another small pocket for change.  Oh! if they only had money in any proportion to the pockets they have to keep it in, wouldn’t they be better worth having than most of them are now? Which? No matter which, the men or the pockets, which ever you please, or both together, for we have to take them that way if at all.

Then at least four more pockets in the vest. Then as to [trousers], I found a pair the other day without a man in them, and just counted the pockets myself. Let me see; there were two, where they always put their hands when they have no overcoats on. There was one, said to be a watch pocket, but this is on historical or traditional evidence entirely. No man has carried a watch there since- well, I’m sure I don’t know when- certainly not since the war with Mexico [1846-48]. Then, last of all, a pocket on the hip slanting backward. A girl who has brothers says they call this a pistol pocket…

Now, let me see. There is the Ulster, seven. The overcoat, five. The [suit jacket], five. The vest, four. The trousers, four- total, twenty-five pockets, to say nothing  of others which I don’t know about and don’t care to.

Why do women carry things in their hands? humph! Why do women lose their purses? Why do women stuff things in their muffs? These are the questions which men with their twenty-five pockets are forever asking. Why don’t you keep a cash account [written log of money spent]? Why don’t you have a diary [planner]? What do you always want to borrow a knife for? Where’s that pencil I lent you?…What do you want a bag for? Think of their impudence, with all their twenty-five pockets, to ask such questions as these.

is her count correct, or typical of the period? I have no idea. is her energy IMMACULATE? Y E S

[unpretty]

i am seeing some comments in reblogs that lead me to believe that not all of my followers are aware that dracula daily is free, and you can catch up and subscribe here

here are some answers from the faq:

Q. When does it start? A. The first entry is on May 3. That’s when you’ll get the first email!

Q. When does it end? A. The last entry is November 7.

Q. You’re going to email the whole book? A. Yes, in small bits at a time! Some days there’s a lot of activity, some days just a few sentences, and many days nothing at all. You’ll only get an email when there’s action taking place in the book.

Q. It’s free? A. It’s free.

Q. What if I join after May 3? A. That’s OK! You’ll still get the daily posts as they happen, and you can check out the archive to catch up. Or grab a copy from your library or local book store to catch up!

[gallusrostromegalus]

The 1969 Easter Mass Incident

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

*

The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them.  But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s.  He couldn’t NOT have communion.

“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts.  Jesus will understand.”

Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.

A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible.  It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

They were a SPECTACULAR hit.  Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them.  Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of?  So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.

This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.

*

“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.

*

At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.”  Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.”  Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.

“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas.  Why not on easter?  Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone.  Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”

“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.

“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right?  Doesn’t look like much of anything, really.  Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.

What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”

He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.

“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off.  Just descend into his corpse like vultures.  I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.”  he nodded thoughtfully.  “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”

“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.

And so, the plan was hatched.  Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.

This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus.  Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?*  She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile.  He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.

“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?

“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man.  With all that entails.”  She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel.  “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”

Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action.  The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.

*

Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.

Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade.  Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.

Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses,  down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.

Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman.  Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.

However, two things happen that were not planned on

1. Dad misses.  In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship.  He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat.  Nobody notices this, however because

2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.  

Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab.  There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

There was  a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that. 

Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:

“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”

…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness.  The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.

*

“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked.  I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.

“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”

“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.

*

As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”

“No.”  Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.

It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.

“No.  That’s crazy.”  She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.

“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.

“And you-  you didn’t…  Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?”  the archbishop demanded of my father.

“Do I look like I can jump that high?”  Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.

Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?

Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.

*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.

If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal, as telling stories on the internet is my only source of income right now.  Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed it!

[thatlittleegyptologist]

So in the Egyptology group chat this morning, we were having a discussion on Amenhotep II’s ‘mesh underwear’ that he’s depicted wearing under a sheer top cloth. They’re made of Gazelle leather, and each hole is hand cut with a modesty panel for butthole and structure. This led to some back and forth about examples, like this one:

Soldiers are depicted wearing them too:

And then we came across one with much larger holes cut in the leather:

Which led to a discussion about Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep II being balls out in flexible leather fishnet style underwear….

[rudjedet]

Sweaty balls? In this pre-capitalist market economy?

[23-tiny-wishes]

pin-up was of course immediately suggested

[rudjedet]

The clap of his ass cheeks keeps alerting the Hittites…

[halibellecter]

That’s amazing. How did they do that?? And how did it stay intact for so long that we have actual examples to work from??

[thatlittleegyptologist]

a) Egypt’s climate is very good at keeping these things intact because it’s so dry. Organics simply do not rot away as fast or as much.

b) We had a discussion on this, and it’s making lots of cuts, alternating from each other, and then just cutting out the bits in the middle. Like this:

Still very complicated, and since these are single pieces of leather, they can’t make a mistake either.

[rudjedet]

You wouldn’t even need to cut away parts from the middle tbf, if you make these cuts close enough to each other and then stretch the leather to the side, it should afaik make the diamond pattern. I do have a large piece of leather here to potentially try it, but not the right tools so I owe you guys that bit of experimental archaeology.

You can see it in the closeup of one of the loin cloths Lottie posted, just to the right underneath the accession number:

Those are alternating cuts set very close together.

Also as we were chatting about it, we figured it may be entirely possible for the Egyptians to have had some sort of die cutter or mold to make this process easier. But as none of us have been aware of this leather loin cloth type before this morning, we’ve not been able to do the research to say for certain if we’ve found a tool like that yet!

[nimbus-tatze]

made me think of this thing that i have at home

did they use tools like that or was it all made by hand? I know nothing about ancient egypt. I just wonder if it wouldn’t be too tedious to do smth like that by hand ‘just for some underwear’ but then again i am a total layman in this, never even had any interest in ancient egypt so i’ve got no clue about the value of these items at the time, nor do i have any other info on ancient egyptian leatherwork or clothes in general. But i can imagine a tool like this being just really neat.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

They most likely made all the incisions by hand using a sharp implement like a knife made from copper or bone. There’s another example from the Hierokonpolis C-Group tombs of Nubians who arrived in Egypt during the First Intermediate Period (the part between the Old and Middle Kingdoms):

This one is done by small rectangles all 4mm apart, which were slashed in probably by a small knife. The loincloth above is a very early extant example of this type of leatherwork that didn’t really take off until the New Kingdom, but we know they imported this sort of leatherwork technique from both the Nubians and the Asiatic civilisations they came into contact with. This one in particular belonged to a Nubian woman who was a dancer in her younger days, so would wear this….and basically nothing else….to dance in. Here’s a New Kingdom example of a dancer wearing a similar mesh loincloth:

If you want to read more about Leatherwork in Ancient Egypt, you can read this 2008 article by André J. Veldmeijer on the subject, and if you want to know more about the Nubian Dancer/her loincloth/her tattoos, you can read this article on Hierokonpolis Online, which is run by the team who excavates the site.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

Please reblog this version if you’re looking for ‘how was this done?’ because tumblr hid it in the notes due to the fact I provided external linked sources to more info.

[hasufin]

I’d like to add, with the caveat that I’m not a professional, that having worked leather the given explanation for how these garments are made seems completely plausible to me. I’m tempted to try a bit of experimental archaeology but frankly I don’t have the time to re-create all the relevant elements.

Let me go into a bit more detail and some speculation as to How I Would Do It.

Now, I have never dealt with oil-cured gazelle skin. Oil-curing is virtually unknown in modern times, as it is inferior to modern tanning in pretty much every way - though I bet it’s very kind to the skin, which is would be desirable for such a garment. And gazelle skin is… well, it wouldn’t be impossible to get, but it’s not something a North American leatherworker handles very often. I’d like to mention here that oil-cured gazelle skin is - as the linked paper above mentions, technically not leather, but I will be referring to it as such hereafter for simplicity and as the closest modern analogue.

My immediate guess was that the leather used would be something like deerskin - soft, stretchy, not very strong. But on a bit more thought I think that’s not the case at all. To get a garment as depicted, I think the material would be rather more like goatskin: thin, strong, moderately soft, not very stretchy. Gloving leather, in modern terms. That’s what I’d try first, at any rate.

Now, it’s obscure to me as to why they chose this kind of leather for their undergarments when they clearly had access to cotton and linen, materials that other cultures preferred for such uses. I can guess that it might have been due to economy - leather could have been cheaper than woven cloth; it may have been a perceived or real matter of hygiene, or durability. It could have simply been a cultural preference: bear in mind that the pre-Pharonic people of the region were once referred to as Penistaschen Leute (penis-sheath people) based on the Eastern Desert petroglyphs from that period, and they may have retained a cultural preference to protect their genitals with animal skins even after woven cloth became available.

Whatever the reason, at some point they transitioned from the pre-Pahronic loincloths to a more structured, closer-fitting garment and doubtless ran into the inherent flaws with using leather: that it does not breath, and it does not stretch enough for such a high movement part of the body. Potentially we can see transitional artifacts or depictions which would shed light on how this garment evolved.

Now, from a leathering perspective both issues can be solved in the same way: with cutouts. My personal suspicion is that the cutouts were initially for ventilation as larger cutouts (or, potentially, starting with a loose loincloth and adding ties to keep it from moving so freely). Over time they adopted much smaller but more numerous cutouts which enabled a closer-fitting garment which nonetheless was comfortable and did not restrict freedom of movement. Again, speculatively transitional artifacts or depictions might exist - but it’s entirely possible that the leap from “loincloth” to “leather fishnet” was accomplished by a single artisan and then rapidly popularized.

As to the construction of the garment, I wholly agree that there was no need for a specialized tool. Ancient Egyptian smiths were entirely capable of making a full set of leathering tools, most of which would be familiar today. I am sure I’ve seen copper head knives much as are still in use (granted modern examples are steel). This versatile tool would serve quite well for making exactly the kind of cuts we see in these garments. An Ancient Egyptian leatherer, then, likely just reached for their most familiar tool.

Now if I were to make one of these garments, there are two other tools I’d need: a straight-edge and a cutting board. A more skilled leatherer might be able to make the cuts freehand, but a skilled leather would also recognize the merits of not doing things the hard way for no reason. If my speculative method is correct, I suspect we would find a straight tool, likely with a number of evenly-spaced marks, as a guide for making the holes. As for the cutting board, this should be reasonably obvious, that making even cuts requires a solid surface but one soft enough to not ruin the cutting blade. If a cutting board had been used for this purpose, I’d expect to find lines of nicks in the board. However, cutting boards are necessarily consumable resources - they will be disposed of after they are no longer usable. Also, given the relative scarcity of wood in Ancient Egypt they may have used other, more degradable materials for their cutting boards.

I think specialized tools are unlikely. Such tools might make sense for a larger scale mass production operation: we can envision a factory which made nothing but undergarments. However, to my knowledge in Ancient Egypt most finished goods of this nature were made locally and custom-ordered. There was not an Ancient Egyptian “Fruit of the Loom”; one simply went to the local leatherer and paid them to make a garment. On that scale, specialized tools would actually slow down the process for a number of reasons, and I doubt any leatherworker would feel the need to get a custom tool for something they could easily do by hand.

Now, at this point I feel I should emphasize again that I am not a professional Egyptologist, and much of what I have said is speculative. While I have made a few predictions which would either prove or disprove my speculation, I have not checked to see if that evidence exists. Should a professional feel that this post is misinforming regarding Ancient Egypt I will delete it.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

No, this is a really good response! The only thing I can add, from an Egyptological perspective, is that they did have linen loincloths it’s just that linen, depending on quality, was expensive and time consuming to make. This meant that leatherwork was quicker and easier, especially on a mass production scale needed for something like the Egyptian army. Linen was also seen as ‘sunday best’ so was reserved for special occasions, though this probably didn’t extend to underwear. Kha and Merrit’s tomb has numerous linen loin cloths, and so does the tomb of Tutankhamun. I think these leatherwork loincloths were used in conjunction with the linen ones, so the linen would be underneath the leather, but I’ve no idea what the reason for this is really. Amenhotep II was drawn in just the fishnet loincloth for a bit of fun, but you can see the images of the soldiers above seem to have white underneath the leather. However, this could equally be because the paint for the leather and skin colour is essentially the same, so they left it white for a sharper contrast (something they do a lot).

[fuckyeahstsebastian]

(video tweet: https://twitter.com/Etherelle/status/1484410925490708481?s=20)

the work of etherelle: https://t.co/dPhLw3xuRx (carrd)

happy belated st sebastian day. no idea how to tag this.

[elizabethplaid]

The eyes here really seal the deal, though the toothpick-arrow is also a nice touch.

Also reminds me of the story that was circulating around awhile ago, where the narrator had made some sort of jam-filled bread effigy of Jesus for Easter or somesuch.

[joasakura]

@gallusrostromegalus !!!

[gallusrostromegalus]

T'was me with the Bread Jesus Story and the Bread Jesus Attempt One and Bread Jesus Attempt Two and I am SO GLAD THAT SOME OTHER PERSON IS MAKING TERRIBLE CARBY CATHOLIC EFFIGIES.

[memewhore]

[myfaveisnormal]

[Video description: A compilation of clips from Star Trek: The Next Generation showing the instances in which Picard pulled his shirt. It is edited so that every time he pulls his shirt, his badge flies off of his uniform with a 'pop' sound. End description]

[mossdftba]

[claygoblin]

The Silver Swan, built by John Joseph Merlin and James Cox, 1773.

Source: Mechanical Marvels, Clockwork Dreams (BBC)

[soundssimpleright]

oh wow, the “water” is an illusion created by spinning glass rods.

wooooooooooah

[elodieunderglass]

Always reblog the clockwork swan

[abigaillarson-deactivated202501]

Some of my recent pieces from my gothic “Beauty and the Beast” retelling 🥀 

[prokopetz]

Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank - e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.

It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.

So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.

(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)

The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other - and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.

You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!

[prokopetz]

Okay, I’ve received a whole lot of asks about this post, so I’m going to cover all of the responses in one go:

1. The system described above is, admittedly, merely one of the most common. Other historically popular alternatives include:

The consort’s courtesy title is of the same rank as their spouse’s, with “-consort” appended to it: prince and prince-consort, queen and queen-consort, etc. This is how, e.g., present-day Monaco does it.

The consort is simply styled Lord or Lady So-and-so, and receives no specific title. I can’t think of any country that still does it this way, off the top of my head, but historically it was a thing.

(Naturally, your setting needn’t adhere to any of these, but it would be highly irregular for it to lack some mechanism for clarifying the chain of command.)

2. The reason why the consort of a prince is historically a princess even though those titles are the same rank is basically sexism. This can go a couple of ways:

In many realms, there was no such thing as being a princess by right; the daughter of a monarch would be styled Lady So-and-so and receive no specific title, so the only way to be a princess was to marry a prince.

In realms where women could hold titles by right, typically a masculine title was informally presumed to outrank its feminine counterpart. So, e.g., kings outrank queens, princes outrank princesses, etc.

In either case, no ambiguity exists.

(Interestingly, this suggests that in a more egalitarian setting where masculine titles are not presumed to outrank their feminine counterparts, or vice versa, you’d need to explicitly disambiguate rankings even outside the context of same-sex marriages. Food for thought!)

3. It would also be possible to have two kings or two queens in the same marriage without multiple realms being involved in the case of a true co-monarchy. However, true co-monarchies are highly irregular and, from a political standpoint, immensely complicated affairs. If you’re planning on writing one of those, be prepared to do your research!

4. The next rank down from “countess” is either “viscountess” or “baroness”, depending on which peerage system you’re using.

(Yes, that last one actually came up multiple times. Apparently there are a lot of stories about gay countesses out there!)

[prokopetz]

I’d like to argue with this, but I can’t.

[combatbootsfemme]

countess karnstein

just sayin’

[salsastronk]

When the author deletes your favorite fanfic:

[mizunocaitlin]

Gather around, children. I’m about to tell you a story of ye olde fandom. (Real life fandom friends, I’m sorry. You’ve heard this story a thousand times, I know.)

Long before Disney bought Star Wars, long before the new trilogy, before even the prequels, and themselves predating the “remastered” versions of the original trilogy, Star Wars experienced it’s second renaissance in novel form. And comic book form. Skim the pages of the dozens upon dozens of Expanded Universe (”EU”) novels and you’ll find lots of foundations for the things you see on screen these days. Ben Solo, for sure, has his origins there. 

But it was also a different era for the fandom. The 90′s saw the transition from fanzine culture to online fan fiction archives. The programming ability and computing power you needed to make a fan fiction archive that the authors could edit themselves did not yet exist in an accessible way. Series based archives popped up, mostly hand curated by webmasters posting .txt files of chapters and stories that they’d received from authors via email. Or usenet. Or mailinglists. I spent many of my teen years on Gossamer, the X-Files archive, and Fanfix.com, my favorite Star Wars archive. I remember haunting a Babylon 5 archive at the time, too, but it’s lost to history. 

I read everything. Everything. But, by far my favorite fan fiction of all time was, and I will always remember this, “As Simple and as Complicated as All That” by Xia Sang Li. It was epic. Four novels. NOVELS. Dozens of chapters. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. It follows Luke Skywalker’s decision to finally throw caution to the wind and fall into bed, and in love, with Mara Jade. Written in the sweet spot after her character was introduced and explored, but before permission was given to the licensed authors to marry Luke off, it was an amazing indulgence. And, it was epic in scale and scope. The great plot twist in book one was that, spoiler alert, when Gaeriel Captison died, leaving Luke to look after her orphaned daughter, she didn’t tell the whole story. You see, Luke and Mara had indulged each other before, had a secret love child, and this brief period of time was erased or minimized in their memories. Slowly, the two come to realize, through their haze of lust and passion, that something is conspiring to keep them apart, and that this little girl isn’t who she seemed. Themes of family, and duty, and passion, and trauma. Force visions, original characters, and sex sex sex. It was amazing. 

Epic right??? Right?? Wanna read it?? 

It’s impossible. The Fanfix.com archive zipped the textfiles, so the Wayback Machine hasn’t archived them. The Geocities page went down before the Geocities archive was published after its closure. And, the original author’s blog, not updated in a decade, features only a few chapters of a rewrite, an AU of her original epic. 

But it’s not dead.

Starting in 1998, my teenage self printed the whole fucking epic. I did one chapter at a time. It took more than a year. I had it all saved, too, on a 3 ½ inch floppy that got destroyed. Beyond the author’s own hard drive somewhere on this green earth, I think this might be the only copy. 

Every few years, when nostalgia overtakes me, I reread it, from front to back. The gender politics are very different. The interpretation of Luke, too, vastly different from modern fandom’s take. Sometimes I wish I could find the author, buy her dinner, and tell her how important her work was to me. But, that’s probably impossible. Sometimes I think about re-digitizing it and, like a different kind of pirate, putting it back into circulation. But, that’s just a wish. A whimsical dream. The notebook is at least 3 inches thick, with front to back printed pages of text. It would take… years. Certainly it took years to write. But, it was part of the floating world of fandom. And, it faded away. Stuff like this should never fade away. 

Fan fic authors… I implore you. Never delete your work. 

You can’t know the impact you make. You might think it not good, embarrassing, or irrelevant. It’s not. Not to someone. Not to me. 

[bk4ever]

Seriously. You have no idea how many fanfics I had wanted to print and bind just so that I can keep it in my personal library to read. Some fics are so damn GOOD that they deserve to exist binded as a physical copy. Save them please!!! All fics matter to someone

[fantasymind231]

PUT THAT BOOK IN A SAFE BOX OR A MUSEUM (is there a fandom museum? we should make one)

[transformativeworks]

It’s not quite a museum, but there is the Fan Culture Preservation Project, which is a join venture between the OTW and the Special Collections department at the University of Iowa Libraries. It’s a place to preserve hard copies of fanworks and fandom memorabilia. 

(Though it seems likely that @mizunocaitlin would like to keep a beloved fanfic.)

[ltleflrt]

This is why I allow people to buy print copies of some of my fanfics.  Someone wants to hold a physical copy, and I get that.  There’s so many fics I want on my shelves too.  

I get why authors delete, but man it makes me sad too.

If it’s deleted because it was turned into a published work, I’ma buy it.  The names don’t matter so much as the stories.

[hawkelf]

This is why my Binding Fandom project is a thing. I have archived .docs and .txts and print-outs and floppies of fic that otherwise risks falling off the internet, because teenage me had to take them off the internet to read them fast enough. I don’t trust any site that’s falling out of favor to last forever. If I bind something into a hardcover book, it’s going to be harder to get rid of.

[jauntylittlefrillyboy]

One of the many (many many many) reasons I love AO3 is because it has the option to orphan your works. The work will still exist, it can still be found on the site, it’s just no longer attached to your name. I got…balls deep in a fandom a couple years back, wrote a bunch of self indulgent fic, and then when I got out of the fandom, I just orphaned everything. I wasn’t a part of that fandom anymore, I didn’t want to be associated with it any more, I didn’t want to be contacted about it anymore. But I wanted the fics to still exist, and on AO3 they still can. 

The point is, I understand why someone would want to delete their work. I’m just making sure everyone knows that if you don’t like/don’t want your fic out there in the world anymore, that there are options. Someone out there might desperately like that thing you wrote, so don’t destroy it. 

[acaseofthewiggins]

Please everybody post to AO3 so your stuff doesn’t just fall off the face of the world if your tumber/livejournal/dreamwidth/favorite fan-site goes down! You never know how important your fic may be to someone out there.

[deanplease]

This is why when SGaDM is finally finished, I will make print versions available at cost for people who want one…provided I can actually get the behemoth printed as one book. It might have to be split into three.

[captainlordauditor]

Dr James Barry, the first doctor to perform a successful C section wherein both mother and child survived, was a huge champion of handwashing at a time when most doctors didn’t wash their hands. For this reason, many of the chilldbirths he delivered resulted in healthier babies and mothers. He was also a gay trans man, who specifically wrote that upon his death he wished for his body to be taken in its nightshirt, wrapped in his sheets as a shroud, and placed into the coffin so that nobody would see his body. His wishes were not respected, and as a result he was outed at his death.

[captainlordauditor]

i’ve also been informed he had a poodle. He named his poodle Psyche. I’d just like to congratulate him on being an excellent human being, who not only pioneered modern medicine but also had good taste in dogs. that is all.

[captainlordauditor]

types of responses to this post

i thought this was fake but it’s not

here’s the sawbones episode about him

cis people

[asymbina]

He was also reportedly quite the ladies’ man, and he’d apparently carried a child to term and gave birth.

[nunchler]

he’s one of my favorite historical figures and ive read a lot on him including the biography Scanty Particulars by Rachel Holmes. a lot of the details of his life are difficult to figure out, partly cause he was very private and partly cause he had so many rumors surrounding him. here are some of my fave facts about him:

-he was very concerned with protecting poor people, women and people of color, aka all the people most of upper class british society at the time cared the least about. he worked to reform prisons and hospitals in south africa at risk to his own career, and also improved the conditions under which poor enlisted british soldiers and their families lived

-he was kind of a known hothead. he was rumored to have fought at least one duel (probably not true though). florence nightingale hated him even though they had similar ideas about medicine because they had such a clash of personalities in the brief time they worked together

-he was a vegetarian and took a goat with him on sea voyages so he could always have fresh milk

-even though he had an abrasive personality and made a lot of enemies, his patients, especially the women, really loved him because they felt like he knew what he was doing and actually cared about their health

-he died poor because the british army ripped him off >:/

edit i almost forgot the best thing. he didn’t just have one poodle named psyche. he had a bunch. when one died he would get a new poodle and name that one psyche too

[the-real-seebs]

“i thought your poodle died?”

“psyche!” [poodle comes trotting in]

[captainlordauditor]

this is the best response

[gehayi]

Photo of Dr. James Barry in the late 1840s:

You can read more about Dr. Barry here.

[lanque-hates-terfs]

MY MAN

[tofu-pofu]