Stuff

Autistic enby with ADHD. Aroace. Any pronouns. Considering turning this into an OC infodumping site.

[wren--bee]

Fandoms and whatever else

I've been putting off doing a pinned post even though it's 99% for my own benefit because ADHD and the need to get it perfect before I even start. So fuck it, this is rambly and messy. But that's better than not being done.

I'm Wren, staring down at my 40s, aroace, autistic, ADHD. Not witty enough to come up with a joke about AAA batteries. Transmasc nonbinary. Any pronouns, idgaf, just switch them up if we actually end up talking.

A small collection of video games are part of what I call my special interest library. I intend to make profiles of my characters from these games, and I like commissioning art of them. Games include Our Life, Arcadia Fallen, Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. I'll have a list of characters at the end, searching their names or their game should bring up any posts on them.

I love Jane Austen and will post analysis on her works. I also love Terry Pratchett but am less likely to analyse his works, partly because that's been done far better by a lot of people.

I don't post about my pets often enough, but they're tagged as "my pets". I currently have an elderly rabbit called Iniya. I'm married and don't make posts about my spouse at all but they are great.

With games my real love is games that let me have a character who both feels grounded in the setting but also that I can design and build. I like to spend time developing them and giving them arcs, personalities, and a sense of being a full character. Games where I can't decide who the main character is or where the main character is a blank slate don't grip me- I play them sometimes but usually only once and then I'm happy to be done with them.

Game most focused on as of May 2026- Arcadia Fallen 2. Arcadia Fallen- Reed, they/them. Arcadia Fallen 2- Yasmin, they/them, transfemme. Our Life: B&A- Bhelen, he/them, transmasc. Our Life: N&F- Ellen/Eli, he/she/them, gender fluid. Character still in development as the game is perhaps half done. Pillars of Eternity (1 and 2)- Thalei, she/her, orlan ranger. Mass Effect trilogy- Cameron Shepard, he/him, infiltrator, Earthborn/sole survivor, paragon. Mass Effect trilogy- secondary character- Keya Shepard, she/her, vanguard, colonist/war hero, renegon. Dragon Age Origins- Theron Mahariel, he/him, mage w/rogue skills, blood mage/arcane warrior/battlemage. Dragon Age Origins- secondary character- Rohesia (Ro) Cousland, she/her, warrior, champion. Dragon Age 2- Derin Hawke, he/him, melee mage, spirit healer/force mage/fade weaver. Dragon Age Inquisition- Dubheasa (Duv) Lavellan, she/her, mage, knight-enchanger. Dragon Age Inquisition- secondary character- Kaaras Adaar, they/it, mage, knight-enchanter, specced specifically to use a two-handed mage blade. Dragon Age The Veilguard- Eshalle (Esha) Aldwyr, they/them, Dalish/city elf w/Circle history, orb/dagger mage, spellblade. Dragon Age The Veilguard- Kalais (pronounced Kah-lay) Mercer, she/her transwoman, Tevinter dwarf, both bow and daggers, saboteur.

[cosmonautroger]

jellyfish babies

[wren--bee]

This looks so unreal. I think it’s the zoom, it makes it look almost like a view through a telescope of alien creatures rather than a zoomed in view of teeny tiny weird little creechurs.

I love it.

[fuzzygifs]

x

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

so what you're gonna do is you're gonna trim the top off a bulb of garlic, using the knife's edge to take off the tip of every individual clove, that's important. you're gonna place the garlic face-up in a square of tinfoil, drizzle with olive oil, wrap completely in foil, place in baking tray, repeat with a copious amount of garlic bulbs. you're gonna put that baking tray in an oven set to 375-400°F, for 30-50 minutes, until soft and browned. you're gonna toast some good bread, slather generously with butter and honey, maybe a tiny lil bit o' salt. and then. you're gonna SQUEEZE. OUT. THAT. ROASTED GARLIC. onto the butter honey toast. and you're gonna eat it. food stolen directly from the plate of the gods. that's what you're gonna do.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the garlic. it beckons you

[thesweetestsupervillains]

It occurs to me that "1920s gangster doing a cooking show while holding you at gunpoint" is an untapped market.

We've had normal cooking shows. Now we need period piece cooking shows in character.

[tamvmat]

Oh I think I deleted it by accident..

My meme-ish poster about executive dysfunction, or "The Sits" as we call it in our house. This is to share my experiences with exec. dysfunction, everyone's a little different ☺️

[lost-carcosa]

[stjohnstarling]

The reason most indie novels are written like the author is terrified of doing something wrong is because the overwhelming majority of indie novelists get their start by networking in the violent panopticon of the social media indie publishing community, which favours the people who are able to win at the social policing game.

[3s-are-green]

Okay so this comment got me googling because I hadn't heard of Isabel Fall

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

[headspace-hotel]

I had heard of the whole messed up situation with this story, but I hadn't ever read the synopsis of the story before, and WOW

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

It's so important to be able to deal with stories that give you uncomfortable feelings in other ways than just attacking it. Being shown new perspectives sometimes has feelings of discomfort because it's an unfamiliar way of seeing the world.

[mickpin]

You can read it Here

[headspace-hotel]

...

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

For the love of God, please read this story. It is so fucking good in ways that I can't even begin to articulate.

[goingrampant]

Isabel Fall alluded to Nazi concepts in an edgy ambiguous Nazisploitation aesthetic that, if you read it in good faith, you could tell was ultimately in subversion of those concepts. However, the general sentiment of edgy South Parkian ambiguity caused the hypersensitive leftist critics to read her as a Nazi as a baseline assumption. It's the same phenomenon as The Boys viewers reading the (very Jewish) show as Nazi because of the presence of a likable Nazi character. Any attempt to put the brakes on it has everyone scrutinizing you as a Nazi, so the most extreme voices intimidate the rest into staying quiet.

When the detail that the writer was a trans woman (and a specific one people knew) had filtered into common knowledge, the consensus of the vocal detractors was that she had done Nazi actions equivalent to being a Nazi that hurt every trans woman, and it was their responsibility to terrorize her. When she ended up suicidal and swore off writing, that was viewed as a great victory against an enemy of trans women. (Not dissimilar from people harassing Jewish actress Aya Cash for portraying a Nazi on The Boys.)

Also, people like to single out N.K. Jemisin for participating, but she was pretty much doing what people expect of an ally: following the leading voices of the relevant minority, repeating their messages, and using her social capital to boost theirs. The problem was the trans women leading the mob. I find the presence of trans woman author Alexandra Erin more objectionable because she was run off Tumblr for being into vore and bondage and because she liked a post from a black submissive woman showing off a collar, which was framed as her wanting to enslave black people, so you would think she'd be sympathetic to a trans woman author stigmatized for being into edgy humor. Instead, she likened the story to firing randomly in the air and hoping only bad people would be hurt, when it should be clear innocents would likely be hurt, making the whole endeavor harmful. (Like being open about liking controversial fetishes on Tumblr?)

Edgy humor sets off mainstream leftists like Daleks sighting an enemy.

[baelpenrose]

And there is some reason to say NK Jemisin was doing what people expect from an ally, but if this was the result, maybe it’s time we actually think about that a little.

Like, how many times can we see a marginalized creator get torn to bloody shreds by other marginalized people and well intended “Allies” who never actually looked at the evidence themselves and just went off what “the affected group” was saying? The queer experience is subjective as hell, and I can’t imagine any other marginalized experience is different. Maybe we should stop mob harassing people for making something without looking at the thing ourselves.

And it’s fine if you don’t want to look at a thing, but at this point I think we need to bring back the old rule that if you haven’t seen/read something, you ought to just not talk about it at all and admit you don’t know anything about the subject. Because here's the other thing? The people who did this to Ms. Fall? Entirely other progs/lefties/libs. Not a single conservative was involved. It was all lefties attacking our own. You will never see this happen to a more 'conservative' or even 'apolitical' (read: written by a white man from a white man's perspective) indie novel, because those perspectives aren't hounded like a transfem's are. They aren't expected to be perfect the way a transfem's are. By engaging in harassment campaigns like this, you are purely and totally making it harder for marginalized people to publish, because at the end of the day, they are the ones who lose their social support networks to harassment campaigns by the terminally online, while the mediocre white dude can just fucking ignore anything the twitter mob says.

[vaspider]

I think it's important to point out that, if I am reading the interview she gave not long after it all went down correctly, not only did she get harassed until she gave up writing, she fucking went back in the closet.

Because there was little biographical information available about its author, the debate hinged on one question: Who was Isabel Fall? And that question ate her alive. When she emerged from the hospital a few weeks later, the world had moved on, but she was still scarred by what had happened. She decided on something drastic: She would no longer be Isabel Fall. As a trans woman early in transition, Fall had the option of retreating to the relative safety of her legal, masculine identity. That’s what she did, staying out of the limelight and growing ever more frustrated by what had happened to her. She bristles when I ask her in an email if she’s stopped transitioning, but it’s the only phrase I can think of to describe how the situation appears. Isabel Fall was on a path to becoming herself, and then she wasn’t — and all because she published a short story. And then her life fell apart.

...

After she checked out of the hospital, Isabel Fall ceased to be Isabel Fall. “I had a few other stories in the works on similar themes, and I withdrew them; that is the most concrete thing I can say that I stopped doing,” Fall says. “More abstractly, more emotionally, I have stopped trying to believe I am a woman or to work towards womanness. If other people want to put markings on my gender-sphere and decide what I am, fine, let them. It’s not worth fighting.”

That makes me so fucking angry every time I think about it that I want to spit or cry.

I have not been the subject of the level of intense, sudden, overwhelming attention that she has; I have been the target of a lower-volume, sustained campaign, and there is a reason that I call it "the acid fire hose." That shit will strip the fucking flesh from your bones.

So yeah. Of course indie authors flinch.

Honestly, there are plenty of books by indie authors, especially trans authors, that I've wanted to say, "I liked this mostly, but I really didn't care for [aspect]," but I was so concerned that I would cause problems that I fully just... didn't talk about the book at all bc I couldn't honestly just be like YUP I LIKED IT ALL.

[wren--bee]

I just realised I never posted the finished piece of Yasmin and Elias dancing!

I almost made them look rather sombre, because it's not really a happy moment, but you know what? I'm sure there's at least one moment where they both smile. So.

I'm trying to tell myself I'm happy with it.

Sketch from here.

[sunny-arts-blog]

Derek Commission batch!

[wren--bee]

Ffft my boys ❤️❤️❤️

[samirasystole]

random but here is a recipe for cold peanut noodles that you can make during hot weather because i just ate this and had a fantastic time

2tbsp of peanut butter. a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. some chili flakes, some sesame seeds. a splash of water to thin it out. now you put in your noodles (cooled!!!! boiled and rinsed so they’re cold!!) and then some chopped up cucumber or carrot or avocado or cabbage or any crunchy vegetable. i just used cucumber

you can also put in lime juice or herbs or sriracha or grated garlic/ginger or anything like that; tofu/tempe/meat for more protein etc. noodle wise this can be ramen soba udon whatever, i used soba. enjoy homies

[deadsetagainst]

australian sour patch kids have gluten in them i am truly at my fucking limit im crashing out im waging war against wheat idgaf anymore

[amvs]

oh is that one of those things where ableist companies put in traces of common allergens so they can just avoid the cost of making it safe

[deadsetagainst]

WHAT

[amvs]

Why Manufacturers Are Intentionally Adding Allergens to Their Foods

A trend we predicted in 2016 continues.

US based but it’s similar reasons in other countries. and of course many companies have international locations. idk if that’s why it’s happening with sour patch kids but this is a thing

[rosetintmyworld84]

I cannot even explain how ANGRY I am at this.

My nephew is very allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame. Last year my sister discovered all hot dogs and hamburger buns now contain sesame. Not "may contain", but listed in the ingredients. This year basically every brand of sliced bread also now contains sesame, making it very difficult to find bread items he can eat.

They're just adding it to their products, so they can just list it as an ingredient and not bother with worrying about cross contamination. And they aren't even bothering with telling anyone. Capitalism is going to kill us all.

"Which brings us back to Kellogg’s. Back in 2016, the company found a way around the added burden and expense of complying with the FSMA: they simply began adding trace amounts of peanut flour to their cracker products. Doing so allowed them to list peanuts as an ingredient of the product, freeing them from having to prevent cross-contact.

At the time, Kellogg’s notified Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) about the impending change and left it to them to warn the allergic community. In this case, Pearson’s didn’t even bother as near as we can tell."

[gothiccharmschool]

I wonder if that’s part of the reason behind my seeing an upswing in products adding corn starch or corn flour to things that didn’t have those before? <- rhetorical question, because I’m certain that’s what’s going on.

[pangur-and-grim]

"Claws like sharpened bananas shot toward me."

this sentence is

good

bad

Voting ended onJun 20

[pangur-and-grim]

ITS EVOCATIVE! LIKE GREAT BIG HUGE BANANAS EXCEPT SHARP!

[pangur-and-grim]

YOU DO IT ON ONE OF THESE! OBVIOUSLY!!!

[pangur-and-grim]

[pangur-and-grim]

a lot of people are very angry with me over this, but I'd just like you to sit down and imagine a banana. maybe a green one so it's extra firm. if you need it to be harder, you can toss it in the freezer.

and that brown end? the hard bit? pencil sharpener. or sharpened with a blade. are you following me? now, attach six of those to a harpy.

yeah. I think you're seeing the vision. you can apologize to me any time you're ready

[pangur-and-grim]

check in time:

I see the vision

it's still really bad

Voting ended onJul 11

[pangur-and-grim]

GOD DAMN IT!

[pitchdarkedge]

[wren--bee]

See the problem for me is… at first it sounded like the reference to bananas was about the size and shape. Would work with an absurd narrator. Cameron probably could have pulled that off in amongst other absurdity.

BUT. The moment you actually leaned into sharpening bananas it calls the consistency into mind more than the shape and size and becomes… bad. So the attempt to defend the choice made it much worse imo.

[weaver-z]

If you ever, and I mean EVER think that you fucked something up royally, remember that the organizers of the 1904 Olympic marathon:

- Had zero stations for water on the 26 mile (42 km) course

- Accidentally gave North American competitor Tom Hicks a cocktail made of egg whites, brandy, and actual fucking rat poison

- Had a guy come into the race late wearing a beret and cutoff slacks, sneak into an apple orchard during the race because no food had been given to him for 40 hours, eat rotten apples, projectile vomit onto the track, fall asleep for hours, and finish in fourth place OVERALL because most of the other runners collapsed of exhaustion or injuries

- Conducted the race on a dusty road, which caused so much dust to be kicked into the air that an American runner somehow inhaled enough to tear his STOMACH LINING open

- Accidentally released feral dogs onto the track

- Fucked the other competitors up SO BADLY that Tom Hicks—the guy who ate RAT POISON and was HALLUCINATING the entire run—came in first place

[postmarxed]

[wren--bee]

Unsurprisingly, this phenomenal display of incompetence (and stupidity) was put together by a racist for racist reasons. The whole event surrounding the marathon was intended to- to quote the article I read- “showcase white American excellence”, and included what the article calls “nonwhite performers” (so… presumably not athletes?) competing in events they had never done before “to flaunt their athletic inferiority to the world”.

Soooo yeah. Outside of rather outdated ideas such as drinking during exercise being bad (some people are saying the drink with rat poison was on purpose because they believed it would make the competitor run better, some people are saying it was an experiment and I don’t know if either point is true) the absolute incompetence on display is because the priority was… well… racism, rather than. You know. Competence. So. Through that lens it becomes less shocking.

[skyevibesworld]

A hypothetical scenario for queer people because me and my cousin were talking and it came up:

Would you be willing to call your marriage a civil union (or some other name that isn't connected to the Christian religion) if it granted you all the same rights as marriage, and in exchange your right to marriage would NEVER be threatened or questioned again?

Yes, I don't care what it's called

No, I want it to be marriage specifically (please say why in comments!)

Voting ended onJul 14

[wren--bee]

“In exchange your right to marriage would NEVER be threatened or questioned again” implies that it would be a worldwide thing, so in that case yeah I would be willing. But I wouldn’t like it, because marriages are not considered Christian- certainly not where I live. They’re just the legal union of two people. By referring to queer marriages as something other than a marriage implies that it is different in some way, which also implies that it is lesser.

Now, if this hypothetical situation had ALL non-Christian marriages being called civil unions (or whatever, I’m sure other religions would supply their own phrasing too), and ALL Christian marriages- including queer ones, that’s important- were the only ones actually being called marriages, I’d be a bit more comfortable with that. However, my preference would be to give Christian unions their own name, since marriages are not a Christian thing. Maybe an argument could be made that they were at one time- and if so we could make counter arguments, both within and without historical Christian cultures- but now, the concept of a marriage is not Christian. So no, I don’t think anyone should be giving up on the commonly accepted social language around marriage, because again, it implies that the people who get to keep the word are more valid than those who don’t.

(I’d have posted this in the comments if I could have, but I couldn’t, so here we are. A bleary morning ramble.)

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Magpie Love

“The first rule of love,” her mother says, voice crackling over the phone, “is to never take more than they can give.”

Finola’s eyes dart to the shoebox under her bed and then back out the dorm window. Her room is on the second floor this year and she can see more of the trees than she can see of the grassy space preceding the dining hall. “I know, Mom.”

“Remember.” Her mother’s voice is sharp and Finola can almost see her heavy, thick brows lowering until shadows cover her eyes. “No clothing. No bags. Never any jewelry.”

Finola wraps her free arm around her waist and closes her eyes. The light breeze rolling through the window smells like eucalyptus and mint. Her mouth waters. “I know, Mom.”

“Those are the big things,” her mother says, “but remember that too many of the small things can amount to a big thing.”

The shoebox under the bed gleams in a stray ray of light. Finola licks her lips. “I know, but—I need something. I have to. I feel like she’ll disappear if I don’t.” The words are inadequate for the sick fear in her stomach each time she loses sight of her. The horrible certainty that something bad will happen if she’s not by her side. She rubs a hand over her mouth.

Her mother’s tongue clicks. “That’s old instincts, Finola. Fight it. You don’t want your father and I to pull you out of school, do you?”

The memory of watching her high school fade out of sight surfaces and, in that moment, she’s sixteen again. She can feel her heart beating too fast, the scream ripping out of her throat, the way the ropes chafed her wrists. She can smell her first love’s perfume, cloying peach, in the air. She can feel their separation like a death in the pit of her stomach, radiating up into her chest, her throat, her head.

Keep reading

[wren--bee]

Oh… I really love this.

[selkaycik]

I legit thought everyone felt the same

[wren--bee]

…Oh. Lmao, this is familiar…

[underthesedarlingskies]

qft

[bethanydelleman]

I just saw someone describe Elizabeth Bennet's reaction to Charlotte's engagement to Mr. Collins as "catty and classist." Any thoughts on that?

You need to get off Facebook, they have the worst takes 😅 (honestly, it's ridiculous over there)

Also, her and Charlotte are approximately the same class, so that's kind of an odd idea. Charlotte's marriage will eventually elevate her to the same status as Elizabeth's mother. It's not really catty either, Elizabeth is genuinely shocked.

[wren--bee]

There are 100% critiques to make of Elizabeth’s reaction but the crucial point is that the novel makes them. You’re not left to read between the lines- at least not on that, but I’ll get to what you are left to work out for yourself.

And the main critique is that Elizabeth treats Wickham seeking out a (moderately) wealthy woman to propose to as normal and fine regardless of who she is, whereas she treats Charlotte accepting a man who is comfortable and likely to become wealthy later in life as shocking and disappointing. Because she likes Wickham and does not like Mr Collins (oversimplifying here) she cannot treat Charlotte’s choice to accept Mr Collins with anything like the consideration as she extends to Wickham.

Part of this is something we’re left to infer instead of having it laid out for us, but a significant part of Elizabeth’s story is that she doesn’t want to end up like her parents. She doesn’t want to marry for love, despite the adaptations- she wants to only marry with mutual respect. (Jane is the romantic, which isn’t usually recognised! But not the point.) And we see, in her two failed received proposals- at least in her perception of them- a reflection of her parents’ relationship if she accepts; being treated poorly as her mother is by her father by someone she (thinks) looks down on her in Mr Darcy, vs (and more to our current point) someone she cannot respect or view as an equal in Mr Collins, putting her instead in her father’s position here.

And as Charlotte is Elizabeth’s closest friend and confidant after her older sister, it is shocking to her that Charlotte can accept him, given her own motives and perception. He represents the relationship dynamic she wants to avoid, after all- at least one half of it- but eventually we can see the Collins’ as a sort of alternate reality of the Bennets, in which the more intelligent (who in this case went into the marriage with her eyes fully open) able to manipulate her husband to make things more palatable to her. (She might be comparable to Lady Elliot in Persuasion or possibly Mrs Tilney in Northanger Abbey, now deceased wives who were able to alter how their husbands lived and were perceived in life.) She does what Mr Bennet could have but was unwilling to- deal with her spouse’s foolishness in a way that will at least not increase how much of a fool the world sees them as, and may actually make them pass better in society. As Mr Collins is comparable to Mrs Bennet in how he represents one half of a relationship Elizabeth specifically wants to avoid, he must be a deeply undesirable husband from Elizabeth’s perspective- but Charlotte is proven to be so unlike the other half of the relationship as to make it likely to be very different to what Elizabeth assumes.

Just some (deeply rambling) thoughts. :)