Val's Vale

18+ Queer, Ace, vampire enthusiast, personal blog consisting of games and whatever I'm feeling at the moment.

[eorzean-cabbage]

OH FUUUUUCK RASPBERRY SHRUB IS SO GOOD WITH SPARKLING WATER.

The tangy sourness of the white wine vinegar + acidity from the raspberries, and it's all tempered by the sugar you cooked in. Mixed with sparkling water. It's like a fruit soda with none of the mildly alchemical taste the cheap brands could have.

Max Miller has this for free on his website - it only needs raspberries, white wine vinegar (canNOT be distilled vinegar, it will ruin the taste, but if you don't mind the color looking uninviting you can use apple cider too, red wine vinegar would have the same effect but a different taste I imagine), and sugar.

Link to the recipe.

Link to his YouTube video on this, also free.

Support Max on Patreon though, if you feel generous! He makes these historical recipes all the time and has his own cookbook, though I'm not really a chef and don't have it. I can't pull Patreon link right now because I'm on mobile, but.

#MyPotion

[teaboot]

May I see a picture of your cat please, he's cool looking

He's ready for an adventure! :D

[apollosfallen]

The only way forward is to stop treating masculinity as synonymous with harmful, monstrous, or dangerous.

[apollosfallen]

There is a fundamental difference between "men are dangerous" (wrong, bioessentialist) and "the patriarchy allows dangerous men to exist unchecked" (true).

[ceruleanheaven]

month starting on a monday we have no excuse guys lets get to work and lock the fuck in

[ceruleanheaven]

yk its actually very chic and avant garde to start on tuesday the second

[ceruleanheaven]

many claim theres nothing more subversive and revolutionary than starting on wednesday the third

[canonkiller]

I just think everyone should take a moment to consider the question "what is your visual shorthand for cruelty?" and then follow it up with a critical "and who taught you that?"

specific examples include but are not limited to

why is an evil timeline character design disabled? (why do the heroes go through equally punishing battles and never lose an arm, a leg, an eye?)

why are the futuristic scifi terrorists uniformly darker skinned? (why are the heroes so much lighter?)

why is the greedy boss fat? (why are the heroes skinny?)

why is the criminal mastermind heavily scarred? (why is the brooding, traumatized hero unscathed?)

why is the predatory creep a bearded person in a dress and makeup? (why are none of the heroes trans women?)

who taught you that this is how things are?

how long do you plan on repeating it?

[canonkiller]

guys the point is "reflect on how you have learned bigotry through exposure and you parrot it in your own works and in the fandoms you engage with without self awareness" not "tell me, specifically, what random motifs you think are evil"

[canonkiller]

on the flipside, to everyone adding notes about hooked noses, turbans + headscarves, nonwhite features and cultural clothing in general, mental and physical disorders, and surely others I've missed in recollection: you are entirely right and should say it.

[apolladay]

Before you are two magic buttons. Button A: you will never have to clean your kitchen again (dishes are automatically done; floor swept and mopped; etc). Button B: you will never have to clean your bathroom again (toilet & sink & tub/shower cleaned and sanitized; etc) Which button do you push?

A

B

Voting ended on11h

[heliophile-oxon]

So many comments, many of them wise and all of them heartfelt, and yet nobody has thought to add ...

the fridge-freezer is in the kitchen. Not only are there dishes every day, not only are there food preparation surfaces of various kinds every day, not only are there crumbs and odds and ends that fall on the floor every day ... but the fridge-freezer is in the kitchen. The oven is in the kitchen, the food cupboards are in the kitchen, and above all THE KITCHEN BIN IS IN THE KITCHEN.

I mean, it's not like the bathroom is all sweetness and light, but seriously! Who in their right mind is choosing the bathroom?!?!?!?

Ils sont fous, ces Romains tumblrains.

[sufficientlylargen]

Having a magically-self-cleaning bathroom would be cool, but it wouldn't dramatically change my lifestyle.

If I could cook or bake whatever the hell I wanted, knowing that all my pots and mixing bowls and baking sheets would just zap themselves clean when I finished? If I knew that I could spill batter or grease inside the oven or burn things onto baking racks and it would just go away? I would be making delicious shit constantly.

[saveyourhelplessspite]

its always morally correct to give your blorbos disorders

[dimension20official]

Gamers Are Pissed

[birdsofafeathercolchester-blog]

[2-shane-s]

I thought that only the bag of chips was knitted so I was like lmaoo fucking idiot bird got owned then I saw that the bird was knitted as well then I realized I was the fucking idiot bird getting owned

[roadhogsbigbelly]

are twinks who go to bear-related events the "straight boyfriend at pride" of the bear world? i don't go to enough irl bear events to know for sure but i am curious if that discourse exists at all in real life, cause it's really funny to me.

[roadhogsbigbelly]

"sorry Richard but your boyfriend Miles has to stay in the car. i don't care if there's a heatwave, his bmi is under 23 he should of known better than to come here, he'll just have to deal with it"

[roadhogsbigbelly]

you hate to see someone else living you're dream. hell good for him

[cardentist]

happy pride month

[zedogica]

ok. i survived 25 years outside the international space station. who gives a shit

[biglawbear]

Technically most moss is outside the international space station

[davvvd]

[singlethread]

Y’all making women in their thirties feel old is my villain origin story actually

[lily-orchard]

ARE YOU AN ELF?!

[peachtea20]

Questionable math but thirty IS young.

[parakeet]

just saw a 'comments' tab on someones blog you know where the following and likes tabs would be if enabled and it was just showing all the replies theyve made on peoples posts. this is fascinating when did this feature come out

[parakeet]

EMERGENCY - ITS AUTO ENABLED!

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

figured i'd get the word out bc i have not seen a single mention of this and i'm sure there are plenty of people who maybe comment on things they don't want on display for everyone to see on their blog lol. you can still look at your replies with it toggled off just no one else can, like locking the following and likes list

[parakeet]

so for some reason this feature was actually announced on the tumblr engineering blog. interesting choice not to reblog it to the staff or tumblr blog, esp considering they asked for user input on how to implement it, but i suppose considering the response to the last update maybe the replies would be too overwhelming...

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

posts you comment on may show on your followers 'for you' page if you leave your replies publically available. they may, in the future, show in on your followers dashboard if your follower goes to their dash settings and enables this. apparently, if your likes are enabled, your followers can already see those on the dash if they've gone into preferences and selected to do so, which I was unaware of, and that seems to be disabled at default, but it's possible i disabled it previously and forgot about it ig

[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.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[yaketysmax]

here is the art energy i’m wanting! and why i call my stuff eyecrimes. draw it! post it! enjoy! be freeeeeeeeeee!

[thehubby]

And don’t let yourself be held back by choice of art medium. I’ve made some damn fine wordcrimes in my time and I will make more. My game design can be occasionally described as a braincrime. I am sure a few of you out there can put up a solid earcrime.

You nosecrime people…well, do your own thing, just do it a little bit further away, okay?

[browsethestacks]

What A Beauty!

Art by Theo Van Den Boogaard (1985)

[dduane]

Scientists recorded a sperm whale birth up close for the first time. They discovered something extraordinary.

The marine mammals act like midwives, supporting mothers and their calves through delivery.