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Everyone who plays around with Tarot cards long enough winds up with a “bad” card that they love. I just barely persuaded my husband not to get the Ten of Swords tattooed on his body; traditionally, it shows a corpse with ten swords stuck in their body and means “utter ruin,” but he thought that if it took ten swords to kill you, then you must have put up a pretty good fight.

honestly this is the most badass ten of swords interpretation i've ever heard.  i'm stealing this

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Pyrrha Dve the woman that you are…

New mini animatic on my YouTube channel! Also the comic version under the cut :)

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harrow the ninth book cover reimagining

done in oil, put a lot of love and care into it :)

below is the painting without

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test

edit: DO NOT VOTE BASED ON THE VIBES OF THE FLUIDS 😭

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Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

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you know, thinking about it more

yeah I, as a writer, would feel uncomfortable writing a fic in first person unless I had a really good grasp of the character's voice

but as a reader, I can't recall very many times where awkward writing has brought me out of a fic

so my conclusion is i could really stand to read more first person fic

my other conclusion is i should write some first person fic. out of spite, you know?

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is there any kind of pov you wont read? like ever?

-first person (i, me my)

-second person (you, your, yours)

-third person (he, him, his)

-first and second

-first and third

-second and third

-i read any

(ik theres technically a fourth pov but ive never actually seen it used so) (also this is mostly cus im writing a fanfic and wanna know if I should write it in first or third)

Note in ask :)

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my family is fucking addicted to macgyvering and it's becoming a problem. every time something in this house breaks, instead of doing the sensible thing of replacing it or calling someone qualified to fix it, we all group around the offending object with a manic look in our eyes and everyone gets a try at fixing it while being cheered on or ridiculed by the rest.

it's a beautiful bonding activity, but the "creative" fixes have turned our house into a quasihaunted escape room like contraption where everything works, but only in the wonkiest of ways. you need a huge block of iron to turn on the stove. the oven only works if a specific clock is plugged in. the bread machine has a huge wood block just stapled to it that has become foundational to its function. sometimes when you use the toaster the doorbell rings. and that's just the kitchen.

it's all fun and games until you have guests over and you have to lay out the rules of the house like it's a fucking board game. welcome to the beautiful guest room. don't pull out the couch yourself you need a screwdriver for that, and that metal rod makes the lamp work so don't move it. it also made me a terrifying roommate in college, because it makes me think i can fix anything with enough hubris and a drill. you want to call the landlord about a leaky faucet? as if. one time my dad made me install a new power socket because we ran our of extension cords

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reading a bunch of articles on phonics and whole word reading and listening to old vi hart videos in the background and realizing that if there's an equivalent to phonics for math, i don't think we get taught it

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something i've been thinking about is pyrrha's herald bullet.

pyrrha has one herald bullet, stolen from wake. and there is a moment where she points it at ianthe and tells her that it isn't meant for her. a real jack sparrow moment. move aside, neither of us wants this particular bullet to end up in you.

and then she uses it anyway. she uses it on ianthe to get past her into the tomb. and i can't stop thinking about that.

it was for john, right? pyrrha had one bullet and she can only have been saving it to, at a crucial moment, incapacitate john.

and pyrrha picked nona. like, yeah, you could argue that opening the tomb is more useful to killing john in the long run, but is it really? that "death of the emperor" stuff is mostly a lie. pyrrha knows that. pyrrha of all people knows it's not as simple as "open the tomb, the emperor dies."

and yet she wastes the bullet on ianthe, with no fanfare. fuck it, fuck john, fuck revenge, fuck any plans she might've had. she's gotta save nona. and if that pasty bitch is gonna stand between her and her nono's best shot at survival, then there's no question about it. no hesitation.

and isn't that what all this is about, in the end? pyrrha - jaded, angry, cynical pyrrha - forfeits personal revenge because nona needs help, and she can't waste time.

i'm having feelings about it.

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No middle sliders, but if you have an "it depends", put it in the tags or reblogs!

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also, per that one post about how the "cradle creature" in nona's drawing might be an elephant:

in that scene, aim says they attended underground archaeology talks in college, which is how they can recognize a cradle creature, which implies that there's a sect of rogue scientists doing illegal guerilla archeology on the first house, and i would give literally fucking anything for a short story about those guys.

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I think we don’t give Camilla Hect enough badass credit for making the vengeful eldritch soul of the earth do physical therapy and DBT exercises. she’s like the meme of Eddie Brock asking for two bagels when Venom says they want to eat the souls of the innocent. and then she snuggled with her at night.

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Ideal work schedule:

I show up and am given a list of cognitively engaging but achievable tasks

I complete the list

I leave immedietly

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To be clear, all noodle fan art is precious to me, but im not sure that it's book acurate

How noodle is discribed in in the book:

To me the six legs imply a rather long torso, but not extreamly long like a hot dog dog. And because my family had a small wire haired terrier with a long torso and shortish legs, I imagine noodle being similar. Like a mutt with a bit of highland terrier or PBGB in him.

That the entier tlt fandom has decided to draw noodle as: a borzoi.

Because we English speakers assume that any dog named noodle will automatically be a borzoi. I dont know why....it just is that way....they are just spaghetti ass looking dogs (affectionate)

So I have a theory, Noodle's name isn't "noodle"... its "udon" or "pasta" or "Spätzle" or "lamein" or one of the hundered other names for noodles from around the world. Nona is the only narrator I can think of who could cause this confusion but that first dog pictured could totally be named "ramen", but the second dog is clearly named Noodle.