#and that's where the… bulk of the… meat? lives? i dunno why there would be pointless holes that aren't for their eyes‚ then

[umihoshi]

some tips for people who just started living on their own

It's been 4 years now, and I'm not regretting a single day that I moved out. No more adapting to what my parents want, no more reporting where I'm going or who I'm bringing over, I can create my save haven the way I like it. For me, it was really the start of becoming myself.

But, there's a bunch of stuff here and there that would've been nice if I had known it from the get-go. And I thought: let's share them!

1 what appliances to invest in?

one thing that is going to come back every single day is cooking. and food is expensive AF if you're not careful. I found 2 great ways to save a bunch of money and they both rely on one thing: Invest in a good freezer! Many grocery stores have systems where they price down things that are close to the shelf life date. One of our local grocery stores can go up to 70% discount! But the problem with those is, you need to eat it right away.... OR DO YOU??? Freezing things close to expiring will let them last for a full freaking month extra. and vegetables go even longer. Plenty of time to use it when you need it (just don't forget to thaw) Be careful though: once you thawed it, you can't freeze it again.

Items are usually also WAY cheaper if you buy them in bulk. Chop them up and in the freezer they go! This one's also great if you don't always have the energy or drive to cook: cook up a large pot of whatever you like, put it in containers and freeze them. I always like doing so with pasta sauce and then cook the pasta fresh~ But it also works great with stews, curry and other types of sauces. stores like IKEA have containers that are just the right size for one meal.

For some of you, the next one may be a no-brainer, but.... My mom was really proud of how fast she was with doing the dishes. She was always like 'why get a dishwasher, I'm faster if I do it myself'. And I have lived up to that same idea up until half a year ago. My kitchen was always a mess, I didn't feel like cooking, inviting people over was embarrassing. I exhausted myself every time visitors would come and I had to fight that monster pile. Please, if you recognize these problems: invest in a dishwasher. Life became SO MUCH easier. My house is clean, my mind is more at ease, social contact increased cuz it's not as big a hassle to clean before guests show up. I really wish I wouldn't have wasted those 3 years fighting a monster that was this easy to tackle in the end...

2 easy cooking

Though it's also a bit of an investment: cooking becomes fucking easy with an airfryer. No oil is added, so it's a bunch healthier. you just put the temperature and timer and it's done. and a lot of things can just fry simultaneously. chuck in some meat and potato's at 400F (200C) for 20 minutes and all you'll have to worry about is adding some vegies with it. springrolls, pizza, potato's, meat. it all gets nice and crunchy too. (prepare vegies in a rice cooker for the same don't-have-to-keep-an-eye-on-it experience. you can cook them simultaneously with rice too!)

Something that became one of my fave dishes of the late is 'stir fried whatever'. it goes like this: Bake whatever meat you fancy, great with egg or tofu too. add whatever vegies (straight out of the freezer is fine). add stir fry sauce in whatever amount seems nice (little for coating, more if you want it to be saucy). make some carbs and you're fucking DONE! no measuring, no thinking what spices to use, it goes with anything and everything. and your local grocery has probably like 5 different flavors. (or at least, it does here. dunno if that's true for America...) like it creamy? add half a cup of soya milk. it takes like 10 minutes tops (not counting the cooking of rice/pasta/potato/bread)

3 think in money or think in space

With tricks like a good freezer, saving money with discount products becomes a whole lot easier. But there are also different discount products that can save you a lot of money. my mom always used to buy like.... packs of 4 toilet rolls. and if you calculate it, buying 3x4 rolls is so much more expensive than buying a 12 pack. But what you'll need for that is space. Try keeping account of a spot like that in your house. cupboard underneath the sink, the spot where they installed the boiler, top shelves you don't often use cuz it's high up, on top of the fridge, garage. I live in an apartment and have a small storage space for my bicycle. Perfect spot for non-consumables. (be careful to keep them out of reach for mice) think toilet paper, tissues, cat litter, soap, shampoo, toothpaste. they'll be good in 2 years too, and you'll still be needing them all the same. I once found this 6 pack of toothpaste for like 3,-! aint no one selling 1 tube for 0,50 when I buy it once I need it.

dunno if this is of any use to someone, but I hope this can help out anyone to safe some money, time or energy! Because it sure did for me.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[vannahfanfics]

From Time to Time

Category: Friendship Fluff

Fandom: Noragami

Characters: Kofuku, Daikoku

“Daikoku~” Kofuku keened as she waddled up behind where he was standing at the kitchen counter lazily flipping through a magazine. Her fingers hooked behind her back as she impatiently stood behind him. Daikoku grunted, not turning towards her as he was too engrossed in the reading material. Not one to be ignored, she boosted herself onto her tiptoes. Of course, even with the few extra centimeters in height, Kofuku had no hope of clearing the grand climax of his broad shoulders; thus, she shuffled a little bit of the left and cocked her head so she could peek around his large arms at the publication he was perusing. A great big smile split her face when she realized it was a cooking magazine. 

“Daikoku~” she cooed once more. “Daikoku, I’m hungry.” 

“You’re a centuries-old god,” the large man challenged brusquely, adding a disdainful sniff that made Kofuku’s bottom lip poke out in a sour pout. “You are capable of cooking for yourself.” Kofuku whined and began pawing at his button-up shirt. He knew perfectly well that Kofuku lacked cooking skills; he’d lived with her long enough. 

“Daikokuuuuuu, you know I can’t cook! I burn everything because of the misfortunnnne,” she whined, dragging her fingers into the cotton fabric of his shirt. From her angle, she could see the rugged line of his jaw tense, belied by the beginnings of a smile curling at the edges of his lips. He had long since ceased flipping pages, instead avidly scouring the article detailing a recipe for shrimp fried rice. Kofuku pressed her squishy cheeks into the muscle of his arm and batted her salmon-colored eyelashes for good measure. “Pleeeeeease?” 

Daikoku released a deep sigh, dropping the magazine down on the tiled countertop. Kofuku cheered with delight, however, as he reached up to pull open the cabinets level with his head. 

“Such a needy thing,” he tutted, rifling through the dishes with his eyes closed for he knew the placement of everything in the kitchen by heart at this point. Kofuku giggled and hugged his waist, barely able to loop her fingers together due to his bulk. She blushed elatedly as he flashed her a warm smile. 

Kofuku kept her arms snug around Daikoku’s waist, tottering behind him like a duckling, as he strolled around the kitchen. He was very much used to her childish antics, so it didn’t even faze him that she adhered to him like glue. When he opened the refrigerator to retrieve the eggs, vegetables, and shrimp, Kofuku wrinkled up her nose from the cold air blasted into her face. Daikoku bundled it all in one arm, balancing the packages and ingredients precariously as he used his free hand to swing the appliance shut. He then returned to the counter, pushing the recipe to the side to dump all the ingredients into his workspace. Kofuku wedged her head underneath his right armpit so she could watch him prepare the food. 

Kofuku loved it when Daikoku cooked, primarily because he simply worked wonders with food. He handled the kitchen knife with expert precision, chopping the vegetables into little chunks without even really concentrating. He could be reading three steps ahead on the recipe while his hands still maneuvered the blade and half-cut carrot or onion or leek, cubing with rapid tak-tak-tak-taks. Kofuku found it so amazing. Despite her looming misfortune blighting people wherever she went, Daikoku never suffered any mishaps while in the kitchen. She wondered why that was, but never wanted to investigate too far lest she ruin the apparent good-luck spell. 

Kofuku loved it when Daikoku cooked, but she always felt some sadness too. I can only watch. I can never help. Kofuku had never tried to cook with Daikoku, but she knew the result all the same; Kofuku couldn’t cook for herself. All manners of comedic accidents destroyed her efforts- lighting spontaneous fires, dropping bowls and splattering things all over the floor, tripping and slathering a finished dish all down her front. Before Daikoku, Kofuku had suffered every tearjerking cooking disaster in the book and then some. 

Kofuku’s violet eyes trained on his large hands skillfully deveining the shrimp. If she thought too hard about it, she would cry, and Daikoku hated it when she cried. 

“You’re awful quiet,” he quipped suddenly. He did not look up from his work; he didn’t have to. He could carry on a full conversation even while preparing the ingredients. Kofuku pressed further into his warm body, feeling comforted by the gentle heat enveloping her front. It chased the cold sadness away, even if only a little. Kofuku wasn’t quite sure why the melancholy had gripped her so tightly in its sharp, cold claws tonight; it was a wily beast, sneaking up on one when they least expected it, she supposed. Sighing, she pushed her cheek into the meat of his side until she could feel his ribs and her teeth clacking together. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Daikoku stopped moving immediately. 

“Sorry?” he echoed. 

Kofuku felt the cold flush of shame push through her arteries. Instead of meeting his gaze as it flickered down to her, she focused on the lumps of shrimp piled on the plastic cutting board. The silver knife flashed as he lowered it. When he wiped his hands on her apron, she knew it was in preparation to cup her cheeks, and she hurriedly pressed her face into his side to shield it from his affections. 

“Hey…” His deep voice rumbled through her person, bringing warmth to battle the raging cold swirling inside her body. He lifted his arm to gently push her form until she was standing in front of him. Her face skidded along the curve of his ribcage to press into his sternum. She couldn’t see his expression, not compressed into his shirt just before the point of suffocation, but she could just tell he was gazing down at her with a bemused smile. “Hey,” he repeated, resting his hands first on her shoulders. They soon slid down to gently hold the point of her arms just below. “Talk to me.” 

Kofuku squeezed him tightly. She’d gone from happy to sad to embarrassed, all in a matter of minutes; the emotional rollercoaster left her brain jelly, unable to control any of her nerves. Her tongue flopped like lead in her mouth, heavy and useless. Finally, she managed to force herself to speak. 

“I shouldn’t make you take care of me like this… It’s not fair.” 

“Kofuku.” A cringe jerked her body at the pain in his voice. Tears sprung to the corners of her eyes, but she could only stand there, rooted to the floor, as he pried himself away from her iron grip to crouch down in front of her. His hands slid back up her shoulders to hold her neck for a moment. He could probably feel her blood pulsing through her carotids; could he feel the guilt tainting the red liquid, killing her from the inside out one poisoned cell at a time? When they slipped up to hold her cheeks gently, big thumbs sweeping over the lines of her jawbone to catch the tears rolling over them, she released a small, involuntary moan of despair. “What brings this on all of a sudden?” 

Kofuku poked out her bottom lip again and slowly swung her hips from side to side, suddenly bashful. 

“I just… I dunno,” Kofuku evaded. Her purple eyes shifted to fix momentarily on everything but his face. Her unfocused gaze flitted to the seam of his shirt sleeve, the kitchen bar behind him, the clock on the opposite wall, the houseplant glistening with water droplets from where she’d watered it not thirty minutes ago. When her eyes landed on her feet, hyper-focusing on the little flyaway threads wisping from the toes of her socks, she mumbled, “I can’t help you do anything because I mess everything up, so I just dump all the work on you. It’s not right… I’m horrible-” 

Her voice cracked with the last word as a fresh wave of guilt crashed over her. Kofuku released a broken sob and reached up over his arms to rub at her red, tear-filled eyes. “Th-this is not how a god sh-should treat her R-regalia… I should kn-know better, but…” As she faltered, she felt Daikoku’s knuckles softly ghost over her cheek. The sweet touch made her pull her hands away from her eyes to flutter her lashes. His kind, smiling face appeared within the mosaic formed by her tears. 

“But…?” he pressed. Meekly, Kofuku dropped her hands to hold onto his biceps. 

“But… It makes me happy… Watching you do all the things I can’t do for us,” Kofuku admitted quietly. She expected him to laugh, or snort, or even grow angry at her inconsideration for his feelings. Instead, Daikoku’s smile widened, and he leaned forward to press his forehead against hers. 

Though Kofuku’s cheeks had always flushed from her crying spell, they darkened still, shining the rosy hue of her hair as his face rested so close that she could feel his hot breath puffing over hers. It smelled vaguely like mint, and just like the herb, it spread soothing calm through her frayed nerves. 

“If you are happy, my lady, then I will gladly do those things for the rest of time.” As Daikoku purred the words with a broad smile, Kofuku could not help the tiny grin that began to tug the corners of her lips up. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he chuckled. “I’ve long since accepted taking care of you. You are the one who gave me this life. The least I can do is make you some fried rice from time to time.” Kofuku wanted to argue his liberal use of from time to time. However, Daikoku was already rising, pulling her hands away from his arms by her wrist. She squeaked as he maintained his grip on them to manipulate her body like a puppet, deftly spinning her on her toes to deposit her against the counter. 

“Daikoku, hey- Oof!” All the breath forcibly expelled from her body as he smooshed her between the counter and his solid build. His laugh thundered against her back, making her puff out her cheeks indignantly. “Is this your form of payback?” 

“Maybe~” he sneered, flashing her a wink and a roguish smile before retrieving his kitchen knife. His tall form enclosed around her as he leaned in to resume his preparations. “You like to watch me work, yeah?” he hummed. “You can see much more up here.” 

Kofuku’s face burned hotter than the oven ever could now. Still, pressed between the marble and Daikoku’s sturdy frame, she wasn’t going anywhere. Resigning herself to her fate, she reclined back against his muscular chest and allowed her eyes to follow his skillful movements. A serene smile soon spread across her face. Really, it wasn’t a bad spot to be in; she could see so much more up there, and with his warmth wrapping her up like a fresh-spun cocoon, it was almost impossible for the crushing doubt to creep back in. 

“Daikoku…” 

“Hmm?” 

She snuggled into him, eyes lidded with contentment. 

“Thanks.” 

Daikoku grunted, too absorbed in reading the magazine recipe once again. He had to get it just right for his lady, after all. 

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Powers of X #5

Didn’t quite catch up to Hickman, but I’m still going to get this done!

Can It Be Done?

Let me say off the bat that I think this is definitely the weakest of the HoX/PoX issues I’ve covered to date, although I still think there’s some useful stuff to be mined from here.

Starting with Xavier’s meeting with Forge: Hickman said in an interview that Forge being in his 90s X-uniform was an error, which suggests that this scene is supposed to depict Forge in his popped collar/short-shorts look before he joins the X-Men, which would make sense what with the meeting happening at his Dallas holographic house. (Although Xavier being in his X-movies wheelchair confuses the timeline some.)

Moving on from that, the bulk of their conversation revolves around the logistics of a fifth-generation Cerebro unit - which given that the specs we get later are for the seventh generation, makes me wonder what happened to the sixth.

Xavier claims that the first iteration was “solely my design” but that versions two through four were “Henry McCoy’s doing.” Is he hiding Moira’s involvement here?

We learn that the shift in primary function from location to copying didn’t happen until the fifth generation, which should give us a rough cutoff of how far back resurrections can go.

Forge identifies three key issues: storage, power, (namely, that they would need “an unlimited power source and unlimited storage”) and redundancy. More on this when we get to the infographic.

Xavier wanting five-fold redundancy is another example of five being a recurring number in HoXPox.

The solution to Forge’s issues turns out to be a combination of mutant technology and Shi’ar technology (notably antimatter engines and logic crystals...more on that in a bit), which Xavier seems quite smug about. Presumably this is due to his relationship with Lilandra - a lot of X-tech from the early 90s used “Shi’ar” as their technobabble of choice - but, given what we learned about Shi’ar in Moira’s Ninth Life using mutants as imperial subalterns, I wonder what their broader political interest is.

On a more general note, Xavier is being really manipulative throughout this discussion, but he barely needs to be, because Forge is always going to go for the technical challenge of pulling this off than the broader ethical questions of whether they should.

Cerebro Infographic:

Here, we learn that the current version of Cerebro is Version 7.0 - so at least two major updates beyond what Xavier and Forge were discussing.

The two main differences seem to be that, A. the new system is portable (hence why Xavier is always wearing it in HoX), and B. it no longer relies on Shi’ar power in favor of a Krakoan No-Space vent. This suggests a concerted effort to ground the new Krakoan culture on mutant technology without relying on outside sources (even allied ones).

Speaking of my earlier thinking about Krakoan biomachinery and cultural heroes, Forge will probably go down in the mutant history books for starting the Krakoan scientific revolution and directing it down firmly biological rather than mechanical lines. 

A sign of how sci-fi this all could get is that he’s accomplished the astonishing feat of harnessing a “Krakoan No-[Space] Vent” to provide “an unlimited power source for mutants living on the island,” even before the revolution begins. At the same time, if my hunch about where the power is coming from is correct, it might not be the best idea to use literal hellfire to fuel the engines of your new society.

One sign that Krakoa isn’t at technological autarky yet is that they’re still reliant on “Shi’ar logic diamonds” as the “primary choice for data storage.” This raises two interesting questions: first, who has possession of the digitized Sinister database? And second, is this the technology that Doctor Gregor seems to have gotten her hands on in X-Men #1?

As with The Five, this infographic sets up story hooks by establishing points of vulnerability: the system requires a weekly three-hour backup and a yearly hard backup “during which the process cannot be interrupted and Xavier cannot be disturbed.” This creates opportunities for things to go haywire while Xavier is looking the other way.

There’s a bit more on the issue of downloading the wrong mind into the wrong body, although here there’s more of a suggestion that it would usually be fatal...unless you have a mutation that would allow you to survive. Dunno what kind you’d need tho.

We also learn that skilled telepaths can replace their own minds with previous versions (presumably outside of the resurrection process)...and that Xavier’s done it twice. When he did that is an interesting question, because there have been a couple instances in which Xavier has had to switch bodies, which may have prompted his downloading.

Finally, we learn that the backup locations are really spread out: one’s on Krakoa Pacific, one’s on Krakoa Atlantic, one’s on Octopusheim, one’s on the Mind, and one’s with Moira in No-Space. So definitely trying to spread this system out so that it can’t be easily destroyed.

For the Children:

Finally for the best part of the issue, Emma’s recruitment scene. As befits Emma’s personal idiom, the meeting takes place at the Louvre, as Emma contemplates the Winged Victory of Samothrace. An omen of victory or of the glory of a lost civilization? 

Charles’ three-piece-suit and Cerebro is suprisingly dapper. 

Speaking of Hickman and character voice, Emma Frost is clearly a character that Hickman just gets on a bone-deep level, and despite all the claims that HoXPoX is all exposition and no character work, this scene really is a tour de force for the woman that Emma Frost has become since New X-Men.

Notably, Emma Frost is here to ask some of the big meta-questions in her usual acid-tongued way: is the Krakoan project “heroic” or “reckless” or “both”?

We can see from the jump that Charles is interested in “the Hellfire Corporation” as “an international prime mover;” he wants Emma as the lynchpin of his economic/geopolitical blackmail system.

In order to get Emma - who’s still pissed about what happened with Genosha, as she has every right to be - to sign on the dotted line, Xavier needs Magneto to make the argument that only he can make about this being the opportunity to “make right all the things that went wrong” by using the resurrection system to reverse the genocide.

This is where I start to wonder about Sinister and timeline issues - Magneto talks about getting mutant populations from 198 to 100,000 to 2 million in the space of a year as being “woefully behind” schedule, which makes me think that Xavier and Magneto were primarily concerned with getting their system not only active but in mass production before ORCHIS or anyone else could stop them.

Emma asks the meta-question, “what’s going to make it different this time?” And we don’t really get an answer - beyond showing us the sweeping vistas of Krakoa, we don’t really learn what Emma saw that convinced her this could work, although we do get the more important character beat that explains that Emma gets on board “one more time, then, for the children.” At her core, Emma Frost is a teacher who will fight for the next generation of mutants.

At the same time, it’s not like she doesn’t like money...so the new Hellfire Trading Company will handle the international distribution of Krakoan wonder drugs with a fifty year monopoly giving them a quite lucrative world-wide market all to themselves. I will have a lot more to say about mutant economic policy in the future, let me assure you. 

Interestingly, Xavier considers the “real matter at hand” to be getting the Hellfire Corporation representation on the Quiet Council (most likely out of an enlightened self-interest basis that you don’t really want that kind of mutant socio-economic power on the outside of the tent pissing in when they could instead be given a stake in Krakoa. It’s all very Hamiltonian.

I love the reaction shot when Emma learns that they want to bring Sebastian Shaw back from the dead to “run the black-book operations into countries who reject our sovereignty.” My guess is that Xavier and Magneto look at it as Shaw being a disposable and deniable asset who they could easily throw to the wolves if they get caught drug/mutant-smuggling. We had no idea, rogue actor, will face Krakoan justice, etc.

Finally, we get some good setup for the upcoming Marauders #1: Emma wants a third seat for Kitty Pryde (no matter what the actual title is), whose job it will be to “get the drugs in, get the mutants out.” Speaking of geopolitics...it surely didn’t escape people’s attention how many of the non-friendly nations had coastlines?

Quiet Council of Krakoa:

I don’t really want to spend any time discussing the Quiet Council here, because we get the reveal in the next issue. This is one of the few times where the whole delayed reveal through redacted infographic thing just did not work. 

Hhowever, we do get a sense of future political conflict with “there is some debate as to whether this council will continue in perpetuity or if some other system of government will replace it.”

Xavier Reaches Out:

This is a bit more interesting: here we see the other speech that Xavier gave, the one that went out to mutants rather than humans. (Somewhat annoyed that we don’t have a clearer timeline on this.) As we might expect, Xavier leans heavily on the unity message: “now is the time to put aside all differences and realize we are one people.”

And we see the “invitation” being extended to any number of groups that Xavier has had issues with in the past: Exodus and the Acolytes, Mister Sinister (who’s killed off the other SInisters and walked off with the database...I guess because Xavier’s message set off the psychic “reminder”), Omega Red (who we haven’t seen much of), and Gorgon (only slightly more).

But the meat of this is Namor, who’s the only one actually having a conversation with Xavier. Namor comes off very Nietzschean, implictly describing himself as one of “those beyond” good and evil, and arguing that anti-mutant bigotry ultimately stems from ressentiment. 

At the same time, Namor’s reason for rejecting Xavier’s offer raises the question of whether Moira fully “broke” Xavier of his original philosophy. 

In the Year One Thousand...

Ah yes, X^3. In retrospect, a lot of this could have been more compressed, if that wouldn’t undermine the six-part structure.

Here we really get into the ambiguity of ascension: in order to “ascend,” homo novissima have to divorce their minds from their flesh - only their minds will be saved, while all that lives will be destroyed in fire and lightning. It’s very Gnostic, if you think about it.

Nimrod really goes into Exposition Mode to lay out what Hickman is getting at:

emphasizing how all of these scales end up suggesting an endless ladder of “self-improving, self-replicating machines" - it’s turtles all the way up and all the way down.

Kirbons is a nice touch.

I’ll get into Titan theory come the infographic, but I’ll reiterate that these intelligences don’t seem to be acting very intelligently: “we reached beyond ourselves to to build a world-mind and attract a...protector...instead we attracted a predator.” Predation and consumption sounds way more Jack London nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw.

Types of Societies Infographic:

Titans being “isolationist” is a bad sign, until you realize the alternative.

When Hickman talks about a “Type O” on the Kardashev Scale, I think he’s referring to a “Type Omega-minus” (a civilization that can control “the basic structure of space and time”), since a Type Zero civilization isn’t nearly advanced enough to fit this group.

Strongholds aren’t isolationist but “warring factions seeking to actively destroy or absorb other Strongholds in order to achieve Dominion status...expansion and conquest are the altar at which Strongholds worship.” Two rungs higher than the Phalanx, and we’re still talking about imperialism...

Only with the Dominion are we told (not shown) a civilization that’s truly godlike. The fact that they feel threatened by the Phoenix is definitely going to come back; Hickman loved playing around with Galactus on his FF run, so I can’t imagine he wouldn’t want to take a swing at the purple guy’s opposite number.