ScizzorStache guitarist Viktor. I don't even know what this blog is about anymore. lots of cats in the #cats tag. and lots of dogs in the #pups tag. basically lots of tags! a fairly harmless blog I hope!
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like âI mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it worksâ
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
text: [ âSome of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we canât do things weâve been doing for 5000 years.â ]
And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", but it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.
They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?
I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.
I was tidying up a room, and right in the middle of it I saw a massive grandfather clock. At some point I noticed it had the AO3 symbol on it, so obviously I decided to take a picture and post it on Tumblr.
Except I accidentally captioned it, âguys check this out, Iâve got the one and only AO3 grandfather cock.â
I realized immediately, but by the time I reblogged it with âCLOCKâ in all caps, it was too late. It had already done numbers on this hellsite.
when people defend the âCis white guy is defaultâ thing like âHeâs meant to be an everyman we can all relate to and project on!â kindly remind them the largest ethnic group in the WORLD is Han Chinese and the highest gender percentage fluctuates so if you want an ACTUAL  âdefaultâ you want a 40 year old chinese person whose gender changes from year to year. Â
okay I am begging people to understand that it is not "planned obsolescence" or "corporate greed" for manufacturers to stop selling things because genuinely better technologies become available. I just had someone arguing with me that they should be able to buy a new nickel-cadmium battery for their 25-year-old cordless vacuum. NiCd batteries were outlawed a decade ago for very good reasons. if you really want to have the same effect as using one you can just go out and shoot 10 people with Bullets That Give You Cancer and then rip out your own kidney
Dreaming up an Obsolecence scale between 'we intentionally want to make our customers buy new things bc profit' to 'yeah so we don't do that any more because that would be intentionally giving kids cancer'
Planned Obsolecence: This thing could last ten years or more but then no one would buy a new product from us for ten years, which will eat into our profits. Luckily we can make our product incrementally worse to force people to buy new ones before that ten years is up.
Scheduled Obsolecence: As less and less people use this old method, it becomes more prohibitively expensive to keep supporting those few people, and resources are better spent on trying to help them transition to the newer, cheaper technology - as a result we will completely stop supporting the old method in a few years.
Regular Obsolecence: No one beside a few weirdo hobbiest would use the old method because we've just developed affordable, more effective technology to achieve the same thing. There's a reason no one sends a telegram any more.
What the Fuck Obsolecence: Yeah so no we don't do the Coca Cola with cocaine in it any more for the same reason we stopped treating headaches with leeches and arsenic.
Thereâs a college in my city that has a rumor that thereâs a secret basement below the known basement that can only be accessed via some hidden stairs scattered around the school or by pressing a secret number sequence in some of the elevators. The staff at the school are super annoyed by this and have no idea where this rumor started.
But I know. I think it was me.
In my defense I never intended to start a rumor. Many years ago I worked as a cleaner at the school and one evening I had to transport one of those big floor washing machines from the basement to the second level via the elevator. When the doors opened a very confused looking man stood inside. He was one of those slicked back gym-bro IT guys and made no movement to get out. The elevator wouldnât fit him, me and the machine so I asked âWhere are you going? Up or down?â
He gave me a smug shit-eating grin and said âDown?â in a mocking tone.
It took me a second to realize that of course he wasnât going down, we were in the basement, but his look and tone annoyed me so much I refused to admit I misspoke and instead said âYeah, down. I donât know if youâre going to the second basementâ
His smile disappeared âThereâs a second basement?â
âYeah but it sounds like you donât have access to it so I guess youâre going up? Iâll just waitâ
I never thought of it as anything other than a funny story to tell about that time I got so annoyed with a guy that I invented an entire second basement, but it turns out he probably refused to believe a cleaner fooled him and the story spread.
Things that will never make me think less of someone: Enjoying media, entertainment, or aesthetics with ideologically reactionary elements
Things that will IMMEDIATELY make me think less of someone: Insisting that the ideologically reactionary media, entertainment, or aesthetics they enjoy are actually Le Hecking Epic Wholesome Leftist Praxis
To draw upon a semi-recent Discourse topic, if you encounter a claim along the lines that, idk, for example, the imagery and cultural idea of Knights as it exists in pop culture is entrenched with a long history of islamophonia (due to how much of this cultural imaginary comes directly from the narrative of the Crusades) and your response is "I still think knight imagery is cool, I don't enjoy things based on how ideologically correct they are" I'll respect you infinitely more than if your response was "Actually liking knights is leftist because there's nothing more leftist than protecting those weaker than you"
"I don't engage with this thing to have my politics parroted back at me" will always be 1000x more graceful and productive than trying to argue that everything you like is Fundamentally Leftist, Actually.
Theres a sentiment I'm noticing in the tags that I'd like to address. I dont think learning to love bugs with all your heart means forcing yourself out of discomfort you have with them overnight. It's about observing a different sort of being going about its life and deliberately trying to reframe your observations through a sense of wonder and delight. It's about cultivating a positive interest and curiosity for their ecology and behaviors. It's especially about trying to uncouple the value we find in them from how 'convenient' they are to us; to face head on the part of us that wants to assign moral evil to another organism who just happens to live life in a way that is not harmonius with ours. You can love insects in this way and still recognize your own health and safety needs. We are animals living side by side within a biosphere. This is how it is, sometimes.
I think this is important to cultivate because, if you are alive at all, you are coming into conflict with countless other people and things that dont owe you an apology for their existance and needs. If you are alive at all, you are encountering countless other people and things that harmful bias and personal discomfort have made repulsive to you. This is about bugs, but its also about way more than bugs.
It's hard to explain to the uninitiated that you can just go for a walk just about anywhere with a bit of green (and sometimes even in the heart of a city) and find like a dozen neat little unique guys if you're patient and observant.
People get really into bird watching but here's a secret: bugs are WAY easier to find than birds and they let you get a lot closer.
Try to approach the world with wonder and curiosity rather than fear and revulsion. Bugs are a great place to start.
You donât have to let them live in your house. You donât have to let them crawl on you. But they are Animals; they are Earthlings; they have just as much History & Lineage as you do. They all do âusefulâ things, even when itâs not obvious or intuitive. A rich biosphere is its own reward.
The preponderance of scientific evidence indicates they have feelings! They have minds! You are like a god to them; in your power, you have the chance to be a benevolent god to fragile and delicate living things! Itâs really fucking cool! You should try! It feels nice!
i cannot begin to explain the emotions i feel every day knowing that this post i made in the middle of playing tf2 when i was 16 is going to be the one thing of mine that has made the largest impact on the world by a fucking mile
