i lurk

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

today I found out my mother doesn’t know what dandelions are and now I’m wondering what other strange secrets she’s been quietly harboring

[krystal-prisms]

Where do you live that you don’t have dandelions?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we have dandelions EVERYWHERE, they are basically our State Weed, it is absolutely impossible that my mom has never interacted with a dandelion before, this requires further investigation

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

So after extensive interrogation I have an update:

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

she answered, with complete confidence: Daffodils.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

gosh I enjoy this website

[authoratmidnight]

For comparison, this is a daffodil

[quietlygrousing]

See, folks in the southern US will tell you up and down those are buttercups, actually.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i don’t think so? i’m southern and buttercups are what we call these things (much tinier)

[maejacrezz007]

Wait I thought those bigger cup ones were Easter Lillies???

[fractiousrvt]

This is an Easter Lily. It is an actual lily and therefore deadly to cats.

[blood-trip-god2]

They’re marigolds and I know a bitch when I see one!

[delphinidin4]

This is a marigold:

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

….we need to start taking the phrase “go touch grass” more literally. go outside and examine a flower i beg u

[zhang-ling-he]

260314 | Zhang Linghe as Xie Zheng 《逐玉》 Persuit of Jade (2026)

[dangermousie]

Bwahhaha, she's collecting secret nobility like pokemon.

UMMMM

The thing is - this is so on point but I totally get why XZ is terrified - he knows she loves and wants to spend her life with Yan Zheng, a matrilocal husband of her own class. But Marquis Wu'an is a whole other thing - classwise, repwise, personality wise to some extent. And so he's postponing out of terror of losing the first bit of caring warmth he's had since childhood.

[dramashii]

So, he's the husband you were talking about?

PURSUIT OF JADE (2026) | Ep 24

[alipeeps]

Stumbled across this on Facebook... 😍😍

[yingtan]

PURSUIT OF JADE 逐玉 (2026)

[thenatsdorf]

Box + Cat.

[cpopjukebox]

Visit Original Link

[otternottertv]

poke you with my noise

[birdplushie]

"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!

[magn-animously]

DIG

[14-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat]

DIG

[buriedunderyourmum]

DIG

[hannisconfused]

DIG

[kitsunesakii]

DIG

[yourlocalfandomfriendo]

DIG

[apple-notplural]

DIG

[vivitur-moritur]

DIG

[spacecat24-7]

DIG

[chub-froggy]

DIG

[thatghostthateatspeople]

DIG

[krowbreaker]

DIG

[spid-the-spider]

DIG

[annabelle--cane]

DIG

[yellow-faerie]

DIG

[vampiraptor]

[philosopherking1887]

OOPS TOO DEEP

[yve-e]

Curation is power

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s okay to NOT participate in political discourse. It’s okay to mute. It’s okay to unfollow. Some may need a breather before getting back into the fight. Some are here to create a better world full of compassion and kindness and play. Some are simply trying to survive. It’s okay to curate your experience in whatever way supports you, because you matter —…

Curation is power

[yve-e]

Hurricanes and firestorms

One of the most useful things my mother taught me is that, if I accept that the worst possible thing I could think of might happen, it becomes infinitely easier to deal with whatever does happen. One of the most useful things my eldest child taught me is that the first step when struggling with “but it shouldn’t be this way!” is accepting that yes, it is. When we shift from “It would be/is…

Hurricanes and firestorms

[clandestinegardenias]

My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.

[clandestinegardenias]

This sounds fake but the logic behind it is actually really interesting? She said obsession with a new fandom triggers quick dopamine release when we consume all this related content--it's easy and addictive.

What we're NOT getting is that 'slow dopamine' that's more sustainable and engaging. That's the kind we get from DOING things that take effort but are ultimately rewarding.

So like, she suggested that writing fic and making fanart are ways to balance the quick dopamine of watching a show/reading fic with the slow dopamine of working at something that takes effort.

Moral of the story is you should engage in the process of creation around your favorite things. You'll feel better for it.

[owldaughter]

Oh.

OH.

[purpleinsomniac20]

Suddenly, the timing of my recovery from certain events begins to make sense...

[creativepromptsforwriting]

Is this part important to the plot?

No, but it is important to me.

[theradioghost]

dead metaphors are really interesting honestly and specifically i’m interested in when they become malapropisms

like, the concept being, people are familiar with the phrase and what people use it to mean metaphorically, but it’s not common knowledge anymore what the metaphor was in literal reference to. people still say “toe the line” but don’t necessarily conjure up the image of people standing at the starting line of a race, forbidden from crossing over it. people still say “the cat is out of the bag” without necessarily knowing it’s a sailors’ expression referring to a whip being brought out for punishment. some metaphors are so dead we don’t even know where they come from; like, there are ideas about what “by hook or by crook” references, but no one is entirely sure. nobody knows what the whole nine yards are.

and then you throw in a malaprop or a mondegreen or two, where because people don’t know what the actual words of the expression refer to, they’re liable to replace them with similar sounding words (see “lack toast and tolerant”). so we can literally go from a phrase referencing a common, everyday part of life to a set of unfixed, contextless sounds with a completely different meaning. that’s fascinating. what an interesting piece of the way language and culture are living, changing, coevolving things.

maybe part of the reason we can’t figure out where some phrases come from is that over time the words themselves have changed! one of the theories about “the whole nine yards” is that it’s a variant of “the whole ball of wax,” which some people further theorize was originally “the whole bailiwick,” meaning just “the whole area”! the addition of “nine yards” might be related to “dressed to the nines,” which might reference the fucking Greek muses! language is so weird and cool! (and I only know any idioms in two languages!)

the point is. I just came across the words “nip it in the butt” in a piece of published, professional fiction, and now I can’t stop giggling.

[whetstonefires]

someone put ‘within a hare’s breath’ in an AO3 tag and it stopped me cold. because you’re leaving the general sense of the idiom and its physical phonemes almost intact, and yet replacing the actual words and metaphor with something completely unrelated.

a hare’s breath is small in a completely different way than a hair’s breadth and works very differently as a unit of distance.

and yet the general idea of ‘small, close, tiny gap, no barrier, a near thing, almost’ remains intact, and if you didn’t know what had happened there you would never figure it out.

[inkskinned]

when i was little i had a book by the side of my bed called who put the butter in the butterfly and it was about the history of idioms. i would read it to calm down and sleep. i have it practically memorized and i do not recommend it because it was very boring. (no, i somehow wasn’t diagnosed until my late twenties.)

according to that author, “whole nine yards” is hotly debated with a few more-modern popular origins; such as the length of ammunition within a WWII gun (but it most likely is more modern than ancient greece - the first use i can find of the term is in 1855).

however, the author favored a more simple, textile explanation (which i in turn also favor): when you go to a clothing store, they measure out your purchase in yards in front of you. i am not a seamstress, but google says that an everyday dress can take between 5-7 yards, whereas a fancy ballgown can take 8-10. asking for the “whole nine yards” is twofold: it both assumes you’re going to be making something big and fancy, and it is making sure you don’t get shortchanged by the fabric merchant (literally receiving the entire nine yards you are asking for). and although unsubstantiated, i wonder if it might be part of where we get the term “dressing to the nines” from as well - you are so fancy-dressed, you need nine yards of fabric.

i feel strongly this is backed up by the “ball of wax” connection as well; since (like you said!!!) there’s historical precedent that “ball of wax” as an idiom “most likely [is] a mondegreen of the idiom the whole bailiwick, meaning the whole territory.” (It also connects with a 17th century practice of dividing territory amongst heirs). but if whole ball of wax means the entire territory, doesn’t it make sense that whole nine yards would also mean a legitimate and tactile nine whole yards of fabric? doesn’t it make sense that we would smoosh together the meaning of “whole territory” with “whole piece of cloth”? i don’t know, i like that idea :)

additionally - just in the evidence? one of the first uses of the term “the whole nine yards” is the following line from a woman complaining in a 1855 news article: “[…] I told her to get just enough to make three shirts; instead of making three, she has put the whole nine yards into one shirt!" 

i have loved doing this research with y'all, thank you for listening. but i do just want to say - sometimes, the practice of linguistics shows us places where people have been silenced or devalued. there’s something here about the silent history of working-class people and of women’s work specifically - that it usually takes some digging before people consider that women and (worse! alas! a working woman!) seamstresses might be the ones who coined a very-popular term. in a lot of the articles i read for this essay, the first assumptions were that men (men in war, men on boats) had to have coined the term, even when it didn’t make any real sense. there is a very normal and even very likely reason for this term - and still, people are baffled by it, just because men don’t know where it could have come from.

and i think, to your point beforehand - how interesting, when idioms show us the places that we have been able to cover up and forget about. what makes something dead? i have no idea where the word podcast comes from, but the boomers were horrified when kids didn’t know why the save button is a floppy disc. that word i used up there, mondegreen? it was coined by Sylvia Wright. i have no idea who coined your guess is as good as mine and i have used it within the last 2 hours.

and, like, on a less serious note - do you know how long it took before i learned it’s actually spelled bury the lede? and like, i have always been honest about this, but when i was younger i thought a ”garden-variety longhair cat“ meant literally a variety of cat related to the garden.

so, yeah!!! a little bit of joy. i love so many things about this, about this discussion - across all of time and space and the internet, we get so freakin’ excited about words. and sometimes it makes us think about a bolt of cloth passing over someone’s hands. and then sometimes, there’s this really beautiful moment where something is just-as-true-now as it was back in 1855. we still measure out our fabric in yards in front of the customer. the person on the other side of the counter still has to prove it’s all nine yards.

and like, sometimes you work in a big office in a fancy building and your boss confidently commands you to whether the storm. within minutes of this, flustered, he will ask for your hodge jancock, and you are going to be so brave about it and not even laugh once.

[writing-prompt-s]

Many ages ago Death was defeated and sealed. Immortality is the norm, but the loss of death has lead to a society of ultralites that rule over never dying slaves. As Death’s first reaper after the unsealing, you are here to remind them why Death exists… and why your master should be feared.

[dragonwafle]

It had been a long time. Too long. Claw took a step onto the balcony, the same step he had taken over and over and over again, enough that the once-solid metal creaked under his weight. The city he had created glowed under the false moon.

Death… death was something Claw never forgot. He was much younger then, back when he saw the end of life as just a disease to be cured, just another illness, as final as it was. And yet, he weilded death in his path. An empire cannot be built on treaties alone, after all. Brains were not built to accommodate so many.

But now… peace. Unending peace. Unending, eternal, continuous *stagnation.* All the stories had been told, the adventures had, and yet life still continued. There was no death anymore after all.

And yet… Claw rested a synthetic talon on the railing, looking over what he had spent his whole life creating. It was all hollow, a piece of history stretched out far too long. How many times had ge loved, only to hopelessly watch as the love faded away? How many times had he seen grudges start centuries ago, only to stay for eternity? How much suffering was there, even in peace?

How much longer would he let this go on?

It was so simple in the second century. Death was defeated, and as long as he was around to course correct, everything would be fine. Anyone who followed him would never die! He would be a just ruler.

Maybe the woman who stared in his eyes defiantly as he cut her down was correct. Maybe his treatment was worse than the disease he had cured.

The metal groaned under him. After the second millenia, he had stopped refurbishing it. It was temporary while he was eternal. He would outlast his creations.

He almost felt something again at that thought.

Claw let out a low, heavy sigh, turning from the city. There was so much anger, so much weight everywhere. He wondered how it would look in another year, in another century, another millenia…

It would all look the same of course, so why stay? Why not, cut his losses and disappear? Would anyone even care at this point? His empire was self-sufficient after all.

Why shouldn’t he indulge in death, just a little?

Claw walked through the palace, the architecture covered in dust dispite Claw still living in it, at least in a sense of the word. He stepped down the staircase, hearing the decay as the material, originally thought to be as timeless as him, shreaked in protest. He didn’t even weigh much, his diet consisting of synthesized nutrients and nothing else.

At the bottom of the tall set of stairs, the mural depecting the crest he had inherited stood still, having decayed at a slightly slower pace than everything else. Claw stared at it, as he had done several times before. The irony of the cyclical nature his life had fallen into was not lost on him as he stared at the concentric circles, letting out a breath. Would he do it this time?

A small piece of rubble clattered to the floor beside him. Claw didn’t even flinch, letting his gaze drift from the mural to the rock.

The debris was from the mural. A piece of the layer representing fear. Terror. One of the gods he had left to rot, as gods don’t die already, they fade. Claw blinked.

What does it mean to fade? Because most definitions fit Claw monstrously.

Claw turned back to the mural. He didn’t have a will to steel, his fear had already dissolved long ago. He put his mechanical talon to the wall, and closed his eyes.

It was easier than he remembered. The seal was, more symbolic than anything, ater all. He could still remember their face laughing as they faded away…

There was an eerie stillness in the air. The scent of fresh rot filled his nose, and he opened his eyes.

They hadn’t changed a bit. Their cloak, made of leaves, rustled as they slowly moved over, the long-healed scars from the thorns pricking at their scales caught Claw’s eyes as they did long ago. Their eyes were covered with black branches… dark, thorny vines that crossed their body in an art that Claw had lost the meaning of. They raised a claw, bones wrapped in the foliage rattling as they gripped Claw’s synthetic one. They let out a sigh that chilled Claw to the bone, before grinning a smile that cracked like rotting wood.

Their voice was a whisper on the wind, something so quiet you wouldn’t pay it any attention, yet the silence of its disappearance was deafening.

“…so… have you had your fun?”

Claw hesitated, before nodding. Death tenderly pulled him into a hug, their scarred, skeletal talons holding him close

“…so selfish, you were… keeping death to yourself… you weren’t meant for eternity… you know… only I… should bear that curse…”

Claw shuddered, burying his face in their chest, ignoring how the thorns cut his flesh, his blood running cold. They stood there for a bit before death let out a small hum.

“…would you help those you… entrapped into a lifeless world… remind them *why* they live… grant them peace..?”

Claw looked up. A scythe had grown from the rotting metal underneath him, covered in thorned vines, the handle made of black wood, the blade made of shadows and fear… and peace.

Claw stared at the scythe for… a long time. Time had no meaning, after all. But… he was so, so tired…

“…and do you think… they… are not..?”

Claw jerked, surprise taking him for the first time in eons. Death chuckled, the sound of crackling flames coming from their decayed maw.

“…so selfish… and yet… so gallant… your story… hasn’t ended yet… but you’ve kept… so many from theirs… don’t you want to help them..?”

Claw shuddered. He felt so heavy… but… he never wanted to hurt his followers, those he once called… friends.

He reached out and grabbed the scythe. Pain shot through his synthetic arm as though it was organic, and he watched as the vines grew through it. He let out a laugh. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad… after all, if only for a moment, he could feel again.

“…I knew you would choose that… Reaper Claw.”

[insanitysilver]

AO3 Tagging Inspiration.

Mainly a reference for me bc I always blank when it comes to tags. Sharing in case it helps anyone else, but not intended to be prescriptive. Further references:

Ao3’s Rating System Explanation

Difference Between "A/B" and "A&B"

Fanwork Ao3 Accepts Beyond Fanfic

How tagging a pairing in the “Relationship” field vs in “Additional Tags” changes search results

List of Writing Genres

Trope Examples

Most Popular Tags on Ao3

My humble plea for people to cross-post their meta & other fannish nonfiction to ao3, and tag it with “meta analysis” so I can find it and adore it

[mikkeneko]

so conditioned by this format that for a hot second there I literally thought there was a show out there called "No Fandom" featuring characters named "A" and "B"