cool kids can't die @sloblesbian - Tumblr Blog

WRONG BLOG LOL anyway hi im not coming back but hi still on twitter same @ as this

#i check back like every once in a while if u send me messages but i dont really look at my dash #bye

vegan green bean casserole

ok my gf asked for my recipe & i pretty much just wing it, but i tried to estimate what it was & write it down here. there are no measurements because i just kind of adjust to how much i’m making as i go.

ingredients

green beans, ends trimmed & halved

shallots

flour

cornstarch

vegetable stock (bouillon works fine)

garlic

soy milk

soy sauce

poultry seasoning, salt, pepper, other stuff you feel like. thyme & rosemary i guess. those are in poultry seasoning but you know. more.

fried onions (from a can or hand made but i never make em myself cause lazy)

sautee some shallots (however many you want i guess, i don't measure. a lot because they're good) in the bottom of a stock pan with a generous amount of olive oil.

when tender add minced garlic, salt, poultry seasoning and sautee for a minute more.

add ~2 tbsps of flour to begin making a roux*.

alternate adding vegetable stock (better than bouillon not chicken stock + hot water works great), soy sauce, soy milk, and corn starch slurry (this is about a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with two tablespoons of soymilk, whisked in a separate dish before adding to the roux, because cornstarch will be lumpy otherwise), and also maybe some more flour if needed.

continue until you have enough gravy to cover cooked green beans & add the rest of the spices to taste.

turn off heat and add green beans. add fried onions (check to make sure they’re vegan- the canned ones from trader joe’s are, not applicable if you are a superhero and make them yourself), about 2/3's of your total amount, mix and pour into a well greased pan. top with the rest of rest of fried onions, bake in 350f oven until, eh, doneish. not burnt. 20 minutes? keep checking. maybe cover with tinfoil to prevent fried onions from burning.

[* a roux is flour mixed with fat in order to create a paste which becomes the base of a sauce. if you are worried that you aren’t doing it correctly or won’t know how to, watch this video of a vegan gravy being made to see how it’s done (though in our case we are adding the rest of the gravy ingredients to the roux instead of the other way around, which i believe is how it’s usually done? i dunno). if you have any problems i know like all four of my followers here so hit me up and i will try to help you]

#mine #vegan green bean casserole #this is hobbled together from several recipes plus several years of just Winging it

mystery-ink

forgot to say that, without Howl chasing girls and Sophie resenting him for it, the film completely erases part of the point of Sophie being old. Wynne Jones is using an idea that Beauvoir talked about - that being an old woman is both tragic (as we lose male attention/attractiveness) and freeing (as we are freed from the male gaze). the idea is that with being old comes liberation, and the true meaning of what it is to be a woman, as society no longer forces gender norms on us.

Sophie is free from Howl’s attentions and therefore safe from harm (a big part of the book is the fact that Sophie believes he eats women’s hearts, and him chasing girls proves this to her). she takes solace in the fact that she’s old, and finds it freeing. when she learns more about Howl (notably: that he doesn’t eat hearts and that he’s not evil), she starts to curse her age and resent him chasing girls. BUT she remains old OF HER OWN VOLITION - Howl notes that she’s perpetuating the spell by wishing to remain “in disguise”. there are SO many layers to this, and lots to do with gender politics - if she’s still old Sophie can’t get hurt, she likes the freedom, etc. but of course on a personal level being old is her denying her feelings for Howl, and also a representation of her low self esteem - being old is a defence mechanism and protection, both on a gender level and a personal one.

and the film kinda… loses this? the only thing that remains is being old = low self esteem. which really sucks. because there’s SO MUCH MORE to Sophie being old in the book (perspective I already mentioned), and a HUGE amount of this is gender politics. that the film just erases.

sylvester-malone

Also there’s the subversion of that in the book. Sophie’s belief that she’s safe from Howl, isn’t quite true because he fell in love with her while she was under the spell (and in the book, there’s no switching between looking young and old. Sophie is looking ninety the entire time, and Howl falls in love anyway.)

Also, her belief that being old means she can’t go to her stepmother or her sisters, that they’d fail to recognize her or reject her, is also unfounded. Fanny almost immediately recognizes her at the end of the book, and hugs her and cries over her and asks why Sophie disappeared. Sophie’s belief that the love of her family, friends and even her romantic interests is somehow conditional on her appearance is shown to be completely false at the end, which I think is absolutely beautiful.

Like, there’s definitely gender politics and commentary going on about beauty and youth and age and the male gaze and male violence going on, but there’s also this message about how love, real love, transcends all of that.

ellorgast

I actually adore the movie on its own merits, but I think it absolutely did a disservice to Sophie as a character. When I was doing a reread last month, what hit me was that Sophie is every bit as much of a volatile emotional disaster as Howl is, and that’s pretty heckin’ great.

Howl is a pissy, dramatic asshole even when he’s at his best. He dissolves into green slime when his hair looks wrong. He deals with his problems by getting falling-over drunk and makes the walls shake every time he sneezes just so everyone will take pity on him. He’s a self-proclaimed coward who has to trick himself into taking responsibility for anything.

Movie Sophie deals with this as well as she can. She learns to look past his drama and sees his tender heart and noble intentions. She becomes the mature one in the castle, fixing everyone’s problems, essentially taking up a motherly role to all the other characters.

Book Sophie does the same… but she does it while dealing out as good as she takes. Howl is chasing after every woman except Sophie? Sophie meticulously cuts up his suit into triangles. Howl floods the room with green slime? Sophie hate-magics weed killer strong enough to melt concrete, and chucks it at Howl’s head. Howl can’t stop avoiding his problems? Meet the queen of avoidance, who clung to her curse to avoid confronting her feelings for Howl. Howl has to basically trick himself into taking action? I would like you to meet Sophie, who was too scared to leave her home her whole life, but the moment she’s under a curse is like “WELP, GUESS I’D BETTER LEAVE HOME RIGHT THIS MOMENT AND NEVER COME BACK.”

The moment of Howl and Sophie getting together in the book isn’t “Sophie fixes everything through her inherent goodness.” It’s “Sophie realizes that Howl has been secretly scheming to fix all her problems exactly the same way that she has been secretly scheming to fix all his problems because neither of them is a normal functioning adult, and they both look forward to yelling at each other for the rest of their wonderful lives.” And losing that, losing all of Sophie’s flaws and ridiculous moments as well as Howl’s efforts to fix her life as much as she’s trying to fix his, means that we’re left with a typical romance trope of a woman having to fix all of a man’s problems and be the perfect, mature one in the relationship, while he can coast purely on charm. The revelation that half of Howl’s antics were actually schemes to break Sophie’s curse or even just make her happy is important because for once it goes both ways. Not just “woman fixes man with her love,” but “people fix each other with their love, sort of, except for all the parts that will never change and that’s okay because flaws can be just as attractive as virtues, and if he laughs when you throw weed killer at him then he might be the one.”

sylvester-malone

Omg YES

#howl's moving castle #true love is just amicable bickering for the rest of your life

choodraws

poke

#pokemon

myfairynuffstuff

Matthew Cusick (b.1970) - Rose Wave. 2017. Inlaid maps, acrylic on panel.

loumargi

Hanmo Sugiuura, circa 1981

contemporary-art-blog

James Tapscott, Ring of mist encircles river-crossing bridge at the the Japan alps art festival.

#circles

anayellowbendyfruit

So this was a really personal project for me, after listening to TAZ i wanted to do something to show my love and appreciation for it, as well as get the chance to say goodbye to all the characters again. Hopefully that comes across (wow this is truly the dorkiest thing I’ve ever done)

Anyway feel free to ask why i picked which character for each Tarot card (trust me i thought way to far into it) and please listen to taz if you haven’t already!

#tarot #adventure zone

lesbitchka

can i still be valid if im nonbinary but i read and understood what you were saying the first time?

i did say that i do still lowkey ID as nb BUT it has 0 material as well as social impact on my life since i stay away from ~nb communities~ bc they’re full of bad politics that are centered on How To Make Nb A Political Category (stuff like “make nonbinary a viable gender marker on IDs!!!” instead of “remove gender markers from IDs”) and how Oppressed that makes them instead of tackling transphobic and misogynistic issues that make way too many people take refuge in nb identities in the first place

i’d prefer to tackle the issues that make (primarily) women alienated from womanhood and i dont have time for people who want to pretend that being a nb woman makes their material reality completely different from that of a cis woman (and not only because that completely ignores the existence of gnc women; and yes, plenty people do call themselves nb while what they mean is actually gnc, because the former is way more popular and Desirable in (online) politiks nowadays) or for people who want to act like everyone else is perfectly content and connected with their womanhood

i keep getting questions like “how do i know if im actually nonbinary or just disconnected from womanhood” and the whole point is, it doesnt really matter outside of your personal identity. it really doesnt. like by now “nb” is interchangeable with “disconnected from (gender)” and it doesnt affect your material reality in the slightest, so all it provides is a social group to align yourself with, it’s nothing to lose sleep over