Musings of a Shadow Spoken

Kitchen enchantress, literary badass, editor, author, librarian, witch

[shadowspoken]

Bringing a can of green beans is totally acceptable to bring for lunch when you only have 30 minutes. Especially when you eat it one of two ways...

Adding bacon bits and french fried onions to it.

Draining french style green beans, adding a little Italian salad dressing, shredded parmesan cheese, french fried onions, and dried red pepper bits.

[shadowspoken]

When you're looped into a vendor email with our rep over databases, and you know the rep is a real person... but that email response felt like a total AI response with no human input..... One fancy ass out of office automated response is what it feels like.

[lokilysolbitch]

me a witch, who does tarot, has prophetic dreams, etc when something that i think will happen does in fact happen: oh my god

[contemptible-scoundrel]

fuuuck I could use a mysterious benefactor right now

[catboybiologist]

VENT POST

[shadowspoken]

Getting asked to be on a hiring team and seeing the level of resumes coming in for an entry level tech job is just wild.... It makes the job market look so abysmal.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[monstermonger]

Hi there!! So sorry to bug you, but I saw you were going to lilac city comic con and I was thrilled so I ran to the exhibitors page lol. I couldn't find you on there though, do you know where in the artists alley you'll be?? :O

No problem at all! Yeah I'll be at table M3! :D

If anyone is in the Washington/Spokane area, would love to see ya 🥹

[colubrina]

[nevereverbird]

[reverendrowdy]

Use your PTO

[bramblefilm]

I think a sword and a walk in the forest would fix me

[sarthathrace]

me to the accursed whispering amulet: hey can you speak up please i have an audio processing disorder

[queer-here-and-in-fear]

(via @cuunos)

[inmyskin2002-deactivated2025082]

being mutuals isn’t enough we need to eat breakfast in the garden together

[shadowspoken]

I both:

hate waking up at 6am because my insomnia has been super horrible for months and it makes the drive home at 4pm (during regular semester) or 5pm (during summer hours) sketchy with having to fight hard to not fall asleep on the 40 minutes

want to get up 5am every day and try to find the motivation to cook a 30-minute meal so partner can eat when they get home, mom can have food when she gets home from night shift, and I can take something for lunch

Coworker said that even though I have no problems doing this schedule last summer, this year the schedule change was sprung on me months ahead of time and literally a week after I came back from oma being in hospice/death so body is still physically holding onto the grief making sleep and recovery awful. Which I knew was going on but it's reassuring to hear it from another source.

I mean... I could make everything ahead of time the night before I go to bed but that also feels rough trying to cook for tomorrow at 10pm. Ugh.

[kosmogrl]

[jourrecomenda]

“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.”

— Aunt Frances, Practical Magic

[junglewave]