Beautiful Things

I'm Julia (she/her) and these are things I like.

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[sinharder]

Me and the one (1) other person at the grocery store still masking.

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

“liking something in fiction doesn’t mean you condone it in real life” but instead of dark fanfiction tropes it’s about liking jeeves and wooster while being a socialist

[ironmyrmidon]

Reading Lord of the Rings, but shaking my head so people know I don't support the divine right of kings.

[viralfrog]

[tarriecat]

The more I see the video they're replying to the more I suspect this person is a troll

If they're not a troll, then a grown adult calling a completely normal glove compartment a "hidden drawer" is...I don't know what it is, but it makes me fear for humanity.

[conspiracyofcrazy]

[variousqueerthings]

[IMAGE ID:

A facebook post that reads: "Doctor Who finally bows to the woke agenda and has a gay man of colour direct an episode. (1963)"

Two images beneath show an image of Waris Hussein next to the title card of An Unearthly Child, the first Doctor Who serial.

A comment beneath reads: "When someone tells me that Doctor Who has suddenly gone all woke, I often reply by pointing out that the very first episode was directed by a gay, Indian man and produced by a Jewish woman. They tend to turn a sort of puce."

/END IMAGE ID]

[architeuthisducks-blog]

Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest

Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind

Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone

[mythid-cryptid]

can't keep that in the tags

[sabra-n]

Me watching "Ratfish" like a very normal person:

Oh hey, everyone has an orange notebook.

That's a Rhodia Webnotebook! Nice choice!

No wait, there's a pen loop.

Ah, it's a Rhodia Goalbook. A little odd because they don't really need the bullet journal features, but pen loops are always nice to have.

...oh right there's a game happening.

Anyway, nice taste in stationery, someone in Dropout production!

[notfye]

is this silly. be honest.

[tarriecat]

I don't think it's silly I've made some too! (On the right in the picture)

They're not even for a concert or anything I just thought my Swiftie ones shouldn't get to have all the fun so I made Decemberists ones and also Mountain Goats and Chappell Roan

We should just get to have cool jewelry with songs we like on it

Now I kinda wanna make more Decemberists ones now that the new album is out

[foone]

date ideas:

find him

bind him

tie him to a pole

break his fingers to splinters

drag him to a hole

until he wakes up, naked

clawing at the ceiling of his grave

[tarriecat]

Not gay as in "happy," queer as in "watching Chappell Roan concert footage and listening to the new Decemberists album in the same morning"

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Cats

Lilian Jackson Braun: ok so hear me out on this one Braun: what if there was a cat that solved mysteries? Rita Mae Brown: a cat that solved mysteries?!?!? Carole Nelson Douglas: a cat that solved mysteries?!?! Cate Conte: a cat that solved mysteries!!??

Brown: this is the greatest thing i've ever heard Braun: you think? Brown: listen i have 2 interests in life Brown: radical lesbian liberation Brown: and cats that solve mysteries Brown: and this idea definitely fits into one of those categories

Lilian Jackson Braun: anyway Braun: here's a picture of my cat Rita Mae Brown: oooh she's precious!! and here's a picture of MY cat Braun: she's adorable! Carole Nelson Douglas: and here's a picture of MY cat Braun: she's so adorable! Brown: precious!

Dean Koontz: hey what if it was a dog that solved mysteries? Lilian Jackson Braun: Rita Mae Brown: Carole Nelson Douglas: Cate Conte: Darlene Ryan: Sofie Kelly:

Koontz: i was just thinking, what if it was a dog- Braun: i'm not even going to dignify that with a response Brown: a dog! really! Braun: how would a dog solve mysteries anyway? by barking at them? Brown: ha ha good one lilian Koontz: but Braun: the very idea is absurd

Braun: a dog lacks a cat's observational skills and deductive reasoning Brown: yes exactly Brown: ridiculous Brown: the very idea Brown: what are you even doing here Brown: at the st. westminster ladies cat fancy society tea and crumpet social on the green?

Braun: ugh! dogs! DIS-gusting! we won't have any smelly mutts here! Away with you! [sweeping Koontz out the door with a broom] Diane Duane: you know cats can be wizards too Tanya Huff: oh yes yes definitely

[at midnight society] Dean Koontz: and they said that cats were better at solving mysteries than dogs! Poe: i really fucked up by not making auguste dupin a cat Poe: i didn't realize how much money i was leaving on the table

Koontz: but they're wrong! dogs solve mysteries! all the time! in real life! George Romero: ACAB includes cop dogs Poe: not now george Poe: dean's in a fragile state

[dduane]

:)

[abigailmoment]

A monster has its teeth in your companions.

It builds nightmares out of their worst memories and drinks their pain.

One of your companions has a particularly bad worst memory.

Play Here

----

Art by @cymk8

Character Specific Achievements:

Aldiirn - Dusksong Be a bard. Use music to make first contact. belongs to @mistercrowbar

Andar - Poor Man's Dancing Lights Be an arcane caster. Try to cast magic. belongs to Tatsunara

Ember - Ghosts Need Sleep Explain why you're sometimes absent. belongs to @catsharky

Finch - Get Safe And Cared For Idiot Successfully hug Astarion. belongs to @everchased

Francys - Priorities Ignore everyone else in the campsite. belongs to @ineadhyn

Greygold - Psspsspsspss Be a ranger. Help Astarion calm down after being frightened. belongs to @jeeaark

Nawen - You're Unbreakable Be a rogue. Give your vampire a pep-talk after a particularly difficult day. belongs to @ineed-to-sleep

Ria - Music Box Be a bard. Play the theme. belongs to @ladyofrosefire

Staeve - Don't Forget Me Say something memorable. belongs to @velnna

Temiter - This Is All A Bit Much Abandon the dream using the silver cord. belongs to @not-poignant

----

Another link to the game.

[abigailmoment]

Dream of Silence Update: Act 1, Patch 1

Fixed error where punching Godey sometimes leads to a blank screen. Please continue to punch Godey.

You now have to have seen the mouse before you can tell Astarion about the mouse.

Clerics and paladins can now pray for help before resting. It does about as much as one might expect.

Fixed error where poking the Nightmare sometimes locks you out of resting. There was some poetry to that, but it also made the game impossible to continue.

Fixed Malarthi's extremely strange startup error. I think.

Non-rogues can now figure out how the tomb door opens and oil its hinges.

If you have Speech 3 or higher, you can now say a special, elf-specific greeting on day 161.

Astarion will now sometimes criticize your grammar.

Replaced the necklace with a burial shroud for Act 2 reasons.

You can now ask Astarion about the skeleton in the hallway.

Color coded the companions. I am accepting feedback on this. Feel free to argue with me about my choices about anyone except for Gale.

Added a custom response for the name 'Andar.'

You can now attempt to be Drizzt.

New feat: Vampire Enrichment

Added Options menu with Accessibility options to adjust Font Size and enter Color Blind mode.

Made the text in 'Practice Existing' more comprehensible.

Adjusted how the game displays on phones to make things more accessible and readable.

Adjusted how the game displays so that when you are inside the sarcophagus the text will now always be trapped within the bounds of the sarcophagus frame, no matter how much you resize the screen.

Minor typo fixes.

Please let me know if any of these fixes caused new errors!

[abigailmoment]

Act 2 is written and programmed.

However, it is an unstable, hot mess of problems. (Much like its protagonist.)

I'm running alpha test on my discord. If you would like to try the early version and help me find errors, you can join it here.

I expect it to be in a state where I'm comfortable posting it on social media in perhaps a week.

[tarriecat]

Abigail's discord is a fun place and alpha testing for her is a fun thing to do!

[burntcopper]

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

[windycityteacher-deactivated202]

WOAH WHAT?

[ice-light-red-deactivated201611]

That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.

[moved--306389]

What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.

[exomoon]

Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right

[arkthepieking]

Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit.  That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.

[canthinkofaurl-deactivated20221]

How did I even learn this language wtf

[titaniumelemental]

I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”

[arjan-de-lumens]

I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” - like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size - that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat - like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.

[the-real-seebs]

yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.

[whetstonefires]

yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar

[delphinidin4]

Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.

Things this article has taught me:

This same order of adjectives more or less applies to languages around the world.  “It’s possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way,” says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.

One theory is that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. But that doesn’t explain everything in adjective order.

Another theory is that as you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we’re talking about, and adjectives describe it,” Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall.

Rules are made to be broken. Switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size).  Scrambling the order of adjectives also helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of “brown tired autumn earth” and a “flat moist plug of apple tobacco.”

Brain scans have discovered that your brain has to work harder to read adjectives in the “wrong” order.

TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.

[cuzosu-blog]

@deadcatwithaflamethrower Linguistics tidbit.

[sindar-princeling]

Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do

[perihelions-babyteeth]

I have a theory that somewhere back up the line gandalf fucked a took. This sounds like complete crack but hear me out. The tooks are rumored to have “fairy blood” which in LOTR terms means either elves or maia. There is an ancestor who’s unusually tall and many of them are noted to live unusually long lives unless they meet with illness or injury, same as the numenorians did. They don’t hve extra pointy ears and elves don’t have a special interest in the line. But who DOES have a special interest in looking after tooks (and bilbo who is a took on his mother’s side/his adopted son frodo)? Gandalf. That dude is ALWAYS fussing over some silly little guy. He regularly brought the old took birthday presents.

Back in the day some bold hobbitess decided to climb that old man and ever since then gandalf has been looking after his line of tiny crazy bastards and no one will convince me otherwise.

[psychotic-gerard]

Draw badly. Write nonsensically. Embroider messily. Burn what you bake and cook. Get paint everywhere. Read half a book. Lose your mind for a bit. Plant things. Have faith in the process. Abandon 70 wood-carving projects. Get a kit and do some of it and never return to it. Get comfortable with sucking and losing motivation. Continue to create with reckless abandon.

[tarriecat]

I'm currently crocheting a hat. It isn't a good hat. I have no idea if I've got the fit right and I have split the damn cotton yarn more times than I care to count. But to paraphrase shamelessly from Sondheim, I am creating a hat where there wasn't a hat. And that's important.

[tlirsgender]

Sometimes a creative outlet is a fun little hobby and sometimes it's a lifelong affliction. Like I crochet because making little woven animals sparks joy and I'm a writer whether I like it or not because I'm tormented by visions

[tlirsgender]

Me crocheting: I made a duck ! ^_^

Me writing: pacing around talking to myself compelled by forces beyond my comprehension

[sage-nebula]

I've watched pretty much all of Jenny Nicholson's videos (despite not being into most of the things she's into) for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons I watch her content is because I think that she seems like a truly stand-up kind of person. Of course, given that she is a person creating content for YouTube, we're only allowed to see the version of herself that she wants us to see. I'm under no illusions about that. But the version of herself that she presents to us, the viewers, seems to be a person who is not only genuinely passionate about the things she discusses (and honest about why she'll hold back on discussing certain topics when fans of those topics can be awful about it), but also who considers the experiences of (for lack of a better phrase) the average person when it comes to the theme parks and other experiences that she reviews.

Three specific instances come to mind: one from the Evermore video, and then two from her most recent Star Wars hotel video. (Side note: she was so, so right that Disney marketing is stupid as hell for not letting influencers et cetera use the common names for things. The average person doesn't know what "Galactic Starcruiser" is, but will understand "Star Wars hotel." Get it together, Disney.)

In the Evermore video, Jenny talks about how she emailed Evermore Park ahead of her visit to try to get more information prior to her visit. Things like whether there was a dress code, what she could expect when she arrived there, information that should have been readily available on the website but wasn't. She mentions that she could have mentioned that she's an influencer and that she probably would have gotten a response (because they never emailed her back), but that she deliberately chose not to.

"So I did attempt to email ahead of my visit, trying to ask basic questions about the park and inquire about renting it out. When I did that, I was intentionally vague; I didn't link my channel, and I didn't use my primary email. And I sort of suspect that if I had done the whole influencer song and dance -- said my channel name, my subscriber count -- I might've had better access to the park, and perhaps even a better experience. But that wasn't the point. I didn't want to call ahead. I'm the mystery diner! I'm the undercover boss! If you can't deliver an equivalently good experience for all guests, that's on you and your business." [x]

Then, in the Star Wars hotel video, there were two instances in which Jenny had to reach out to Disney customer support for assistance, and received absolutely nothing in return. The first was when she paid for a photo taking service, but had absolutely no photos taken of her. When she reached out to Disney customer support for a refund, they refused to give her said deserved refund. The second instance was when she had purchased a large droid figure from the hotel, and had it shipped to her house via the Disney shipping service. The Disney shipping service inputted her address incorrectly (in fact I think she says they put in a completely different address altogether), so her droid was lost. Once again she reached out to Disney customer support to find out what she could do about this expensive item she had purchased, only to be told that they couldn't do anything to help her.

In both cases, Jenny took to twitter to post about how Disney was refusing to a.) issue her a refund for a service she paid for but never received, and b.) help her receive an item she'd paid for but never received. Both times, Disney reached out immediately, issued her the refund, and overnighted her lost item. Jenny correctly identifies that they only did this because she's an influencer with a large twitter following, and has this to say in the video:

"They didn't even ask for my phone number. Like someone at Disney just did the legwork to go into the database, look up my booking info, find my phone number and then call me within a day of the tweet going out. And the person who called me was really nice, and I'm thankful he cared to resolve it. BUT, I just always feel very cynical when I try to resolve issues through the appropriate channels available to all customers and nobody will help me until they find out I'm an 'influencer.' I spoke with several other guests who got [the photo taking service] and had the exact same problems as me, and they never got refunds." [x]

And

"But then after I tweeted about it on my twitter account with a lot of followers, Disney suddenly resolved it and they sent me a replacement. They actually overnighted it to me. And along with it they sent a lot of miscellaneous goodies which I really appreciated. So here again, I feel if this had happened to anyone without a lot of twitter followers, they would have had a significantly more frustrating experience." [x]

I feel that this post will probably read as giving Jenny kudos for doing the bare minimum. And I think that on some level, that's true. But it's true because nowadays, many influencers won't even do the bare minimum. They would have Disney immediately issue them a refund, or overnight the droid to them with the additional goodies, and then make posts gushing about how great Disney's customer service is, despite knowing full well that the (again for lack of a better term) average person who doesn't have a huge internet following would never receive that kind of support from Disney. Similarly with Evermore, most influencers would call ahead and flex their follower count to try to get a bespoke experience to then show on their channels. They wouldn't want the same experience everyone else gets. That won't generate good content, in their eyes, and besides, they're better than that. Don't you know who they are?

But Jenny, despite her follower counts, keeps it real. Yes, she appreciates that Disney did give her the deserved refund and did send her the droid + gifts. But she also points out, both times, that if she'd been a person without a large twitter following, they would not have done that, and people in the exact same position she was with the photo service didn't get their deserved refunds. With Evermore, she didn't call ahead because she DOES want the same experience everyone else gets. She wants to be able to give a genuine review. Whether that review is positive or negative is dependent on the business itself.

Again, this probably seems like giving Jenny kudos for the bare minimum of decency. And I agree that on some level it is. But I also think that, in today's day and age, we really don't get that with a lot of influencers, who are in it for the sponsorship money (and who get their egos way inflated), and so it's nice to have a reviewer / theme park influencer who is honest with her opinions, and who recognizes that yeah, Disney did give her special treatment, but that it shouldn't have been special treatment, that they should be helping all of their guests like this, through the normal channels that she tried using, and they are a shit company for not doing that.

I just really appreciate Jenny.

[bebsi-cola]

disabled people are worth whatever cost or resources is needed to keep them alive. disabled people are worth it even if they don't live long. they're worth it even if they will need extra support and resources for every day of their life. they're worth it even if they spend all they life indoors. none of it is wasted. none of it is in vain. time, effort, money, resources spent on a life are not wasted. these things have served their purpose. the joy of someone's existence is not undermined by not lasting forever. there's no meaningful point, some threshold where you can say "okay this is enough. after that it's not worth it." it's always worth it.