The Dugong's tale

I came for the cats, but I'll stay for the party.

[dct239394cvvd098dffgggp]

ill spend my twenties investigating the healing properties of salt i dont know about you guys

[protectspock]

[dct239394cvvd098dffgggp]

excuse me

[protectspock]

Sorry op. That's my friend the Salt Vampire from the Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" which first aired in 1966. Blessings be upon you.

[dct239394cvvd098dffgggp]

its just i dont feel blessed by its presence is all. sending love your way

[parkchanwoohoo]

I beg my kidnappers for a phone, swearing not to make any calls or texts, and they stare over my shoulder, holding a gun to my head as I use my newly-freed hand to post, "So do like, dudes just buy ropes and baklavas from the same store or what lmfao like a specialty Crime Store"

One of the kidnappers says "balaclavas" but it's muffled under the fabric. I ask them to repeat and they do, their voice raspy from disuse. "You wrote baklava, that's a pastry." The other kidnapper goes "stfu" and then after a pause goes "Why would you buy from a crime store"

[godisafujoshi]

Then they spit roast me

[parkchanwoohoo]

I didn't wanna say this but now that someone's left this kind of comment I have to be honest: Everyone else's tags are funny but this is the only person who understood my vision for this scenario

[secretlystephaniebrown]

The lack of muppet show in our society is so upsetting I want to see Chappell Roan backed up by chickens in sparkly outfits

[secretlystephaniebrown]

okay I've still been thinking about this months later. Here's the pitch.

We open with Chappell and Kermit having a discussion in his office. He asks her who she would like to open for her. She says, well, usually she has drag performers open for her. Kermit worries, says the Muppets don't have anyone who does Drag. Chappell asks "then who did she pass outside?" Kermit opens the door. Half the cast is in drag, waiting in line to audition to be Chappell's opener.

Miss Piggy is very upset because she thinks Chappell is moving in on Kermit/her general persona. Similar to her Ethel Merman dynamic.

Sam the Eagle is very upset because he thinks Chappell is going to be a controversial appearance on the show. Kermit asks him why. Sam admits he's not sure, but he knows people are upset about the drag thing. Kermit calls a friend of his (ideally a Black Drag queen, who is Chappell's actual opener), who tells Sam that drag is an important art form. Sam then gets excited that the Muppets are promoting "real art" as opposed to their normal "low-brow trash" and immediately recants all of his worries about this performance.

Gogolala Jubilee Jugband backing up Chappell performing "The Giver"

Fozzie comes out to perform his set in a dress. Statler and Waldorf boo him, telling him that he's not automatically funnier just because he's in drag. Fozzie is confused, says that it's laundry day and this is what was less in his closet.

Aforementioned Camilla and the Chickens backing up Chappell on "Good Luck Babe."

Just before Chappell and Kermit are supposed to do a sketch, Chappell calls Miss Piggy to her dressing room to ask Piggy to cover for her because something urgent came up. Piggy is delighted. At the end of the song, Chappell shows up with Janice, who is covered in lipstick marks. If allowed, there is a joke about the passenger seat.

Beaker and Honeydew are confirmed to be married.

Gonzo's stunt segment includes him declaring himself a drag king. It is unclear if he knows what that means, or if he's making a statement.

Finale is Chappell doing Pink Pony Club with near-full Muppet cast support, all in drag, similar to Elton John's Crocodile Rock featuring the Muppets.

[elierlick]

"Trans people were invented by doctors in the 1950s"

[oodles-of-boodle]

@thatlittleegyptologist Something about this "hot take" seems sus to me, but I don't know enough to say what

[thatlittleegyptologist]

okay, so I'm gonna tread lightly here because, well, this site doesn't take well to discussions of nuance, especially on topics such as this. I'm of the very firm belief that trans people have existed for all of history, but the way we approach things like this has to be considerate of the entire context.

So, the individual we're dealing with here is a Roman period mummy that was CT scanned in 2014 as part of the Ancient Lives and the skeleton was determined to be a male, but was originally brough to the British Museum in a coffin that was named and styled as female. The mummy is accession number EA 6704 and the coffin is EA 6703. (Concurrent accession numbers mean they were brought in together and EA stands for 'Egyptian Antiquities' and please be aware that the link for EA 6704 contains images of the mummy for those of you wish to avoid more images of the deceased)

Now a lot of people, in both the comments, the OP, and the book this is taken from are...assuming a lot of things. First of all the tweet and the book it's taken from (no idea which one) say 1960s, and the tumblr comment says 1950s. If we check the museum catalogue entry in the 'Bibliographic References' section it says 'Dawson and Grey, 1968' and is their survey and research of mummies in the collection. It was then further CT scanned in 2014 which confirmed the 1968 analysis. The skeleton, at least, is male.

So why is the above a hot take, and, unfortunately, deeply incorrect?

This mummy, and the coffin it was in, were bought by Henry Salt in the 1820s from an Egyptian seller, which he later sold to the museum in 1835. Given the nature of its arrival, and the complete lack of x-ray ability or Egyptological knowledge (the field of study really only got going in the 1820s when we deciphered hieroglyphs) it was assumed that the coffin, belonging to a woman named Mutemmenu, and the mummy were the same burial.

That's not accurate.

The coffin, styled female and lists her occupation as 'Chantress of Amun' dates to the New Kingdom (c.1200 BCE) and the mummy found within it dates to the Roman Period (anywhere from 30 BCE to 646 CE). This makes the mummy *at least* 1200 years younger than the coffin they were brought in with and therefore doesn't not belong to the mummy. Occurrences like this are relatively common. This is mostly because when these coffins were excavated antiquities dealers just shoved random mummies into random decent looking coffins so they could be sold as one lot. The other option is for the Romans to have reused (again not uncommon) a coffin from an older period and since Hieroglyphs had fallen out of use...no one could read it to say 'hey that coffin belongs to a woman.'

So that's the coffin issue sorted.

Lets move onto the 'breasts', tattoos, and jewellery. I fully understand why people think they're breasts. They look like them, I won't lie to you. Unfortunately, that's not what they are. The 2014 CT scans showed that this individual had a lot of excess skin that before mummification would have meant that the individual was fat. They also had significant tooth decay on one side of their face. Where do you think the embamlers packed out the mummy with extra padding to make them seem more like they did while they were alive? The face, the stomach, and the chest. They're not 'breasts' they're fat rolls. In Ancient Egypt, being fat was a sign of wealth and good fortune. It meant that you had an abundance of food, so officials would often depict themselves with fat rolls and the men with what look like breasts to indicate to people that they were well off. It does not indicate an individual's gender. As the book says, this practice stems right from the Old Kingdom through to the Roman period. It's more common in the Roman period, but I would also state that this is likely a bias in the record as we have more Roman mummies survive than most other periods. It cannot be taken as absolute fact because we're missing data.

Tattoos and jewellery? Well, those, it appears, were taken by the 1830s museum staff, the 1960s scan, and apparently most people in the notes of this post as being exclusively female. Even the OP of the tweet this is taken from seems to take this as a given. Which is deeply strange, because in what world are you guys expecting gender progressiveness from academics in the 1960s? Seriously. You're not even praticing it yourselves because you've defaulted 'male sexed body with jewellery and flower tattoos cannot be male because those things are for girls.' Can you hear yourselves? You rag on archeologists and museums for 'omg they were roommates' and here you are defaulting to 'jewellery and flowers are for girls.' Please.

The 1830s academics did the same thing. They saw the jewellery, 'breasts', 'tattoos' and female coffin and presumed (not being able to read the coffin which said 'Chantress') that the person inside was a woman, and a dancer. In the 1960s, when they x-rayed the body and determined the skeleton was sexed male, they didn't really update any other information so the 'dancer' part was left in. Truth is, we simply don't know who this person was or their occupation. The strapping has been found on some dancers, but it's not exclusive to dancers since it's found on other mummies too. Dancer has simply been assigned to this person based on that and the 'tattoos'. This individual is also covered in gold leaf, marking them out as a high status individual. Dancers were not high status individuals and were certainly not buried with their skin covered in gold leaf. It is important to understand that while the strapping may appear to match dancers from earlier periods, we're talking about 1200 years between those depictions and this mummy. That's like saying someone today wearing something similar to someone from 825 CE have the same occupation despite the fact that there is a huge amount of cultural and societal change between the two. It's not enough to identify anything other than 'might be the fashion of this period', and certainly not enough to pinpoint someone's gender identity. They may have been a dancer, but we cannot prove this and dancing is not a female only occupation.

Tattoos and jewellery were not a female only items. Men wore jewellery in Ancient Egypt and this practice didn't end with Roman occupation. Tattoos were also for both genders (Egyptian definion of gender not modern) and the lotus flower is a symbol of rebirth, it's not consigned to one gender but an extremely important symbol connected with Egyptian mythology. A lot of early research, I won't lie, was extremely biased. It labelled tattoos as for dancers and sex workers only, which reflected the views of tattoos in wider society. A lot of people even today believe that tattoos mean you should be shunned. Thus it was assumed that only women had tattoos. In fact, I can find a paper from 2003 that boldly claims that no male mummies have tattoos (citing a 1988 paper)...then cites several examples of male mummies having tattoos. That's a level of head/desk someone should have caught, because the paper I link for 'tattoos for both genders' shows them from the Pre-Dynastic period (c.6210 BCE - 3100 BCE) on both genders. We also have very few mummies from the Old Kingdom through to the New Kingdom because mummification was still developing, so we don't exactly have a wide data set to say 'men don't have tattoos' thus, I'd take this claim with an extreme pinch of salt since we have examples. I would also state that the caveat is that most tattoos are found on Nubian dancers in one Meroitic cemetery. Something something, sample size.

Fun thing, after that little segue, the mummy doesn't have tattoos. The 'tattoos' are the painted lotus flowers on the linen above the knees that's covering the mummy. Which, at this point, if they're solely on the mummy coverings (we can't check the physical body without unwrapping and we're not doing that) they're more likely to be rebirth symbols and not literal tattoos. Thus taking us even further away from the 'only dancers have tattoos' assumption. The face is painted on too, including side burns and a beard which are what those dark marks are along the side of the cheeks.

That's a beard. It's not the best beard, but it's a very artistic interpretation of side burns.

Likely immitating something like this, which is backed up by the CT scan showing the mummy has short hair on the head and face. It also shows one of their teeth has fallen out and is resting at the front of their mouth, which is pretty cool.

The final thing I want to address is the 'pink' skirt or kilt that was found on the mummy at the time it was accessioned into the BM catalogue. It's not mentioned above, I know that, but it is mentioned in other articles about this mummy. This hasn't survived, so I can't look at it and say what type of garment it was. I don't even want to take 'pink' as the definite colour as we're talking about a c.2000 year old piece of clothing that absolutely will have faded with that amount of time having passed. I would also discourage 'oh they're wearing pink they must be...' because no we're not doing that c'mon people.

So, in summary: this mummy is likely male. I won't say for definite because, we genuinely can never say for certain how someone's gender was presented and new information could become apparrent in the future that changes this, but as of right now there is nothing to say this person had changed their gender presentation. As far as I'm aware with current research, we have no clear way of identifying individuals who transgressed Egyptian gender roles. Their gender roles are much different to ours, and we simply don't have the language or understanding to find them yet. We will, I'm sure of it, but as of right now we just don't have enough information on what the Egyptians classed as 'going against gender roles' to make these calls. In the case of this individual, they have facial hair painted on the mummy and seemingly still on the face of the mummy itself that is in the style men wore at the time. They have fat rolls that have been formed after death that are culturally like those depicted on high status male individuals, and since the mummy has gold leaf on the skin we know this individual is high status. Jewellery is gender neutral in the ancient world, so I'm absolutely not assigning a female gender just because this person has faux bangles. Tattoos? Well the mummy doesn't have them, they're merely painted on the knees and are a known symbol of rebirth not a female only thing. In all, there is nothing to suggest that this individual wanted to be presented as having a different gender. Assuming so based on your modern understanding of what constitutes markers of gender is damaging, and you could be assigning a lived experience to this person without ever understanding how gender was constructed in the time they lived. Based on my knowledge of Egyptian gender presentation, and the evidence I've presented above, this person didn't do anything out of the ordinary for 'male' presentation, thus the skeleton sex identification does not contradict this.

[fenmere]

Couple of quibbles that do not change your analysis otherwise. Too many other bits of evidence, context, and important lessons aren't changed by this, but: Skeletal structure is notoriously inaccurate for sexing human beings. With a well preserved mummy, convention is that it can be up to 90% accurate, yes, but that's still a huge margin of error there. 10% chance of being wrong is a high chance. There is no trait in a skeleton that is exclusively found in "males" or in "females". (Putting those in quotes because, Ew!) Now, if there was enough soft tissue preserved, one would think that the CT scan or X-Ray might pick up the configuration of genitals. And that might be more reliable. It is a mummy, after all. Also, human cis men have breasts. Their mammary glands are latent and undeveloped, but the tissue is there ready to be activated by estrogen. And in fat cis men, that estrogen is often present, and the result is called gynecomastia ("woman-like breasts"). There is absolutely no good reason not to call them breasts. Especially when they are enlarged. "Fat rolls" is a weird and inaccurate term for what they are. People are too precious about this in a way that really just results in misogyny, transmisogyny, and dyadic-centric sexism.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

You’re right!

Sexing skeletons is an incredibly tricky business and is liable to change given new techniques or technologies as they become available. The skeleton in this case was identified to belong to a woman when first discovered solely based on the jewellery, skirt (though it could be a kilt), and the fact that the coffin was made for a woman. When the body was reexamined in the 1960s they discovered that the body more than likely belonged to that of a man and was likely in the wrong coffin (something that happens very regularly in Ancient Egypt). Subsequent studies have not changed this, but there is always the possibility that this body does belong to a woman and we’re all wrong. There are no certainties with this sort of thing unless you have a good deal of contextual evidence. But we wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell the “genital configuration” through scanning.

Many things happen during mummification and one of those things is uhh…shrinkage. This makes it nigh on impossible to see on CT scans. Even mummies were sure of the identity on (those of pharaohs) the actual presence of an identifiable phallus is extremely hot and miss. For most of the kings we can’t actually see it at all!

I’m aware cis men can have breasts and I’m very aware of gynecomastia. But when I say “fat rolls” I am talking about a very specific detail that the Egyptians culturally used. I’ll show some images of what I mean:

Both of these images show the “fat rolls” because they’re not just breasts, they breasts with fat rolls underneath. This is what they’re referred to colloquially in my discipline and since I was doing scicomm and can’t verify independently that this is the condition this person has, I chose to use the more appropriate term for dealing with a lay audience. It was nothing to do with being precious, I was simply explaining an Egyptian art convention in simple terms.

[filmnoirsbian]

I love getting unaccompanied minors (kids flying alone) who so clearly just. Don't want to be here lol. Sometimes I get to know a little of their story, like their parents are divorced, or a family member died and they're heading to the funeral, but usually they just don't want to talk about it and that's fine. But I always treat the flight like it's a challenge to make them smile. I offer them snacks and soda but that's never enough, that's whatever, they could get those from an airport vending machine. Chump change. So then I tell the worst jokes. Just the most embarrassing, kindergarten teacher, annoying dad jokes you can think of. And those always get a groan, or a "Seriously??" And that's my in! Now I can say "Why, what's your idea of a good joke? No, come on hotshot, make your best joke, let's see it." And they hem and they haw but of course they eventually tell me their very best joke because kids are little competitive comedy goldmines. And it's always super funny, so I laugh, and that's where they slip up. Because you know what you almost always do when your joke successfully makes someone laugh? You smile. And I'm like. Gotcha. Rookie move. Now you're going to end up having a good time in spite of yourself. I win.

[filmnoirsbian]

Did this with an 11yo u.m. today and he said "What did the ghost say to the other ghost?" And I said "What?" "Nothing. Ghosts aren't real."

[filmnoirsbian]

I'm literally a flight attendant, offering snacks and drinks is my job

[this-is-a-name-dont-worry]

gshsjb

[raccoonmilf]

Chat, is it considered “abusive roommate behavior” to release a raccoon into the living space after you have asked your roommate for months to please clean up their messes (they do not pay any of the mortgage)

[raccoonmilf]

For context, when I used to live alone I would do something called “Princess Time” where I would do an initial sweep (to remove any significant hazards) and then I would release a raccoon into the living area and clean. This helped because I would 1) feel like a princess and 2) the raccoon would bring attention to things my ADHD brain had decided to ignore and I’d quickly clean that stuff up.

So like, if I’m expected to clean the house now, I will be doing it in the way that is most effective for me. And anything that has not been cleaned up after months of having sit-down talks and sending reminders and being promised things will change, might be deemed “trash” by the trash panda and thrown away.

[raccoonmilf]

We haven’t done since we moved into the house, because I didn’t want to cause my roommate or their cats destress or have their things destroyed by a raccoon

[raccoonmilf]

I am a raccoon biologist and one of the few people in the state allowed to take in captive bred raccoons that had been possessed illegally. The raccoon in the photos is Moonshine, but she is currently at the animal sanctuary where I work as I had been quarantining multiple new intakes from an abuse case. I still have two males (Rum Tum Tugger and Electra) left in my home enclosure as we are getting them neutered and then hopefully sending them to an AZA accredited zoo.

I wanna make things very clear that underneath all the whimsy, I am a trained professional.

[raccoonmilf]

Those vibes are likely because I’m the original creator of Dashcon and my personality has not changed since 2012 lmao

[fipindustries]

[deadpowol]

[tahthetrickster]

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”

[neopolitanfox]

This is especially funny because they aren’t even right. Foxes *ARE* dogs.

[trojanhorse8-2]

No they aren’t.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

yes they are. because they are fluffye.

[trojanhorse8-2]

OK yes they are.

[mr-deep-downer]

Dog

[jooshthepunished-deactivated202]

Dog

[utah-mountain-drifter-deactivat]

Different family, but same order as @pictures-of-dogs

[zarabithia12365-deactivated2022]

No, they are the same family. They are the same kingdom, phylum, order and family. They separate at the genus.

They’re a dog.

[birdsareblooming]

yeah they’re fluffye

[dacavendishtime]

theyre literally not dogs theyre not even fluffy. can we get science tumblr over hear or what!?

[birdsareblooming]

checkmate athiests

[ajarofpickledtears]

fluffye

[pa-pa-plasma]

okay but they literally are dogs, for those who are confused

[stele3]

If foxes are dogs, then so are wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, and several other extant and extinct species.

Behold! A dog.

[lemon-badgeress]

of course it’s a dog you buffoon. it’s fluffye.

[findingfeather]

Why on earth would someone think “BUT IF THEY’RE DOGS SO AR -”

Like yes of course wolves are dogs, where have you been. Jackals are excellent doggies! So are coyotes. Why is this confusing.

[theknightlywolfe]

I love that this is literally two completely different arguments running simultaneously.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

That guy up there who said they’re not even fluffy was thinking of sharks

[thebelovedlion]

sharks are also dogs. ravenous water dogs, but still dogs

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Sharks can NOT be dogs they are SMOOTH

[porcupine-girl]

Tags via @jenroses

[gabyluvsxena]

sharks are smooth dogs

[grubby-gerblin]

BEHOLD, a SHARK

[bamboozled-bumblefuck]

17 clown car pileup 84 injured 193 dead

[etherealthistle]

sharks are obviously not dogs. sharks are smooth lions, and therefore sharks are clearly cats.

[liquidstar]

If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)

At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.

Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.

[liquidstar]

Same guys btw. So they did turn out good yeah

[likepetalswealleventuallyfall]

im laughing so hard because no matter what song you listen to 

spiderman dances to the beat

no matter what song ive been testing it and lauing my ass off for an hour

[creepymutelilbugger]

hey guys do you want to circulate the heirloom dancing spiderman again i feel like we could stand to do that

[spacepetals]

[longstringofnumbersandletters]

Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.

So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.

He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.

Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.

There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.

There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.

When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.

He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.

I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.

Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.

He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.

One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.

I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.

It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.

—

I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!

[burgerdotcom]

reblogs were off

[queerolddad]

Don’t let fake fans tell you different, Trek has always been queer 🏳️‍🌈🪐🚀

[was-once-somewhere-else]

I just saw a video title on YouTube that said something like “Why is glass transparent?” And that’s an interesting question and I’m sure it’s great that the video exists but my first thought was like “Because glass is terrible, obviously.” Because it’s unwieldy and let’s out warmth and needs to be heated to hundreds of degrees to be shaped and turns into hundreds of tiny daggers if you drop it. Why the hell would we bother with that if it didn’t have some magical quality like being totally transparent despite being solid? Glass is transparent because if it weren’t, we’d use something else.

[was-once-somewhere-else]

looking through my “me” tag and this is apparently what I was thinking 3 years ago

[totally-a-wizard]

If you’re still curious we did not start working glass for its transparency.  It was most likely started as a sanitary concern.  Glass is easy to clean with soap and water, once it’s cleaned out you can use it again for anything and no germs or flavor from the previous meal or drink will remain.

Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it.  That would leak out seemingly at random no less.  Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.

Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness.  Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation.  Also beads.  Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.

The fact that it could become see through was a side benefit.

[was-once-somewhere-else]

this is amazing and I’m really glad I reblogged that old bullshit post because I got to learn this

[theosvangogh-deactivated2021041]

“Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom … at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don’t suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… . [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective … . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley on the lifestyle of Lord Byron (via timemarauder)

[fluffmugger]

#i am glad history has produced at least two people whose shit was even less together than mine

[homunculus-argument]

Random worldbuilding: there's a region in the country with a strong culture of offering homecooked dishes as gifts for all occasion. And over time, they have accumulated an entire category of dishware that aren't any particular individual's property - they are constantly in rotation, being gifted and re-gifted as the dish holding a pie, a casserole, loaf of bread, the list goes on. Once a gift dish is in your possession, you need to make something in it as a gift in return - not necessarily to the one you received it from, but to someone nonetheless.

They're called lovers' dishes, but not for any romantic reasons. The name was adopted after people started deeming the previous name, courtesan bowls, inappropriate. The term courtesan bowl was also a slightly more cleaned-up term replacing a previous one, as the dishware were originally known as slut cups. As they, you understand, they get around.