alas-pancakes

[alas-pancakes]

concept: there are lots of different worlds and all of them have different levels of access to magic. Some are just all over the place and some have no magic at all.

You would think that we would be one of the strictly non-magical worlds, but actually, that’s not the case��we don’t have like, a huge excess of magic, but we have, like, dreams, and the placebo effect, which puts us pretty solidly in the “Numinous” world category.

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i want to start using tumblr again but this account is so messy from all my inactivity but at the same time, im too emotionally attached to this to move on. idk ill think about the new account later

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you know, you’re right. i never learned how to walk away before it was taken from me. i have 24 hours to prove that i can right now.... and im failing

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a concept

-You’re going soft on me, Blight?

 -In your dreams

author of the AU twi: FiveyWivey

[alas-pancakes]

This Is How You Actually Take Notes In College, Bitches

it’s occurred to me that nobody fuckin knows how to take notes in classes and most advice about it is bad. What the fuck are “key words?”

So anyway here’s how I’ve gotten a’s in all my classes in college so far

I’m not gonna bother too much with telling you to take notes in class. Everyone knows that shit. But most people’s note taking skills suck ass and there are two main types of sucking ass I have observed

The first is the one where your notes look like a list of key terms and words. Sometimes they are underlined or there are dashes that connect them to other words. So if your prof was talking about Henry VIII you’d write down something like

Henry VIII

Church of England—divorce

DON’T DO THAT. Those words are gonna show up on the test, sure, but writing them down isn’t gonna help you with the test. What the fuck does any of that mean? High school is shit and your “key words” can’t help you now.

Here’s the other type of bad note taking:

It was necessary for Henry VIII to have a male heir who could succeed him, but his wife was unable to conceive a son. The Catholic Church

I stopped writing there because your professor moved on to something else. But, tbh, even if you can write fast enough to keep up with the content of the lectures (and you can’t for the entire lecture) it’s not helpful to have a solid wall of Everything That Was Covered In The Lecture, in grammatically correct complete sentences. Are you gonna read that shit again? No!

And honestly most people have like, sentences here and there that look important instead of the whole lecture. Which is also bad.

So what’s the not shitty way to take notes? It comes down to these principles:

Shorthand

Show Relationships of Things

These kind of go together

I cannot emphasize enough that you don’t need to write sentences like a normal person. Shorthand everything, and I don’t mean some fucked up studying shorthand you just came up with like “AmR” for American Revolution, I mean like...fuckin text/memespeak. Don’t write complete sentences, completely abandon formality. Abbreviate anything you would in a text message, you know what it means.

HOWEVER: You Must Show How Things Are Related To Things

To understand broad concepts you gotta understand how the things in them are related to other things.

That’s why writing down “Henry VIII” and “Church of England” isn’t gonna help you, because you’re not learning that there is a Church of England.

Did Henry VIII burn the Church of England? Cheat on his wife with it? Who knows? Definitely not you.

This is why you have to connect stuff like

Catholic Church says no divorce

Henry VIII—starts Church of England

But ya know you can make that more memorable AND more clearly show how one thing caused the other

Henry VIII: divorce >:)

Catholic Church: no

Henry VIII: fuk u *church of england*

I’m completely dead serious about this, this kind of slang is very good at indicating exactly how things relate to things in zero time and you know exactly what it means and you’ll remember it

But furthermore

You have to come up with shorthand to quickly indicate how things are related. Say you write down the definitions of two terms for like, opposing theories on government in class. That’s great but you’re leaving it to yourself to work out the opposing part later from what you write, and your brain’s a flaky bitch.

Like part of what you’re doing it giving yourself help with HOW to study your notes later.

So like. Do something like write a jagged line in between the definitions, indicating conflict. Write “OTOH” or “HOWEVER” in between in big fuckin letters. Writing down “Catholic Church” and what that is and “Church of England” and what that is, is fine. But like, if the main theme is the contrast between the two, “Catholic Church HOWEVER Church of England” immediately tells you the basicest basics. It’s like a tiny outline, telling you what to expect. Sure, you can figure it out reading your notes but I’m telling you how to write skimmable notes that you can glean stuff from even when you’re half spaced out and shit, okay?

Same thing for like, dates and sequences and cause-and-effect and stuff. Even if you’ve got the dates down...be sure to put arrows or something so even at a glance you’ve got basically what’s going on.

Also i know it feels like wasting paper but DONT scrunch all your notes together into small space on the paper. That lil dialogue between Henry and the Church of England is spread out over 3 lines which means if you have ADHD like me you can actually fuckin read it. Turn things into bullet lists. Indent things with little arrows to show things leading to things. If there’s a clear move to a new topic, new page. If you’re actually filling up the paper all the way that shits hard to read and it’s even harder to pick out the Big Important Stuff.

Last word of advice: If you end up like writing down two things and can’t tell what they’re for or how they’re related to each other...ASK QUESTIONS. Like “I’m sorry can you explain how the Church of England is related to the Catholic Church? I didn’t quite catch that.” If talking in class makes you feel like you might be percieved badly, you can frame it like a Nerd Question “So, what kind of relationship would you say the Church of England and the Catholic Church had?” or just play it off like you didn’t hear it like “I’m sorry, what was that last thing you said about the Church of England and the Catholic Church?”

Or just make a mark on your notes to remind yourself that you need more info and to go to your prof’s office to ask questions. I would really not be nervous about that, professors normally really like it when students show that they really want to succeed in the class and that they care. Unless they’re like, a complete dickhead, in which case, fuck what they think, right? You’re gonna ask questions and it’s their problem because you’re essentially paying them for your presence in the class.

So...yeah.

[alas-pancakes]

HLKFGDFSDAJH

I don’t know what ‘the dynamic is’ and I don’t care. best possible ship dynamic is funnyhat/knifeboy. criteria:

funny hat: wears a funny hat

knife boy: has a knife and is not afraid to use it

example 1:

example 2:

example 3:

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What are some good uses for Minor Illusion? I have it but I never use it.

Well, just from tonight, where we’ve all been Honey I Shrunk The Kids’d:

Other PC can’t tug a spell scroll from a book shelf. Minor illusion a giant rat beside them to startle them, giving them some fear adrenaline and advantage on the strength check.

A cat is chasing us while we’re the size of bugs. Minor illusion a glowing red dot on the wall to catch its attention in the other direction.

We’re too small to catch the attention of a wizard focused on transcribing spells into her spell book. Minor illusion a giant rat on top of her papers.

She looks around but doesn’t see us in the carpet. Minor illusion a giant rat on her lap, then on the ground, then a trail of them leading to where we are in the rug. 

Basically you can minor illusion ANYTHING that fits in a 5ft by 5ft cube, or make ANY sound. (If you’re an illusion wizard you can do both at the same time!) It’s SO good for quick distractions, describing a person or a thing, making diagrams. OR you can use it to trick people into missing the cave you’ve just ducked behind by covering up the entrance, or create some misleading track in the mud. OR you can create an illusory gold coin or diamond or any object to use as bait for a trap.

You’ve got a getaway car, a laser pointer, a Powerpoint App, a small animal menagerie, all contained in One Perfect Cantrip. It truly is limited ONLY by your imagination and it SLAPS

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was i raised to be convenient??? i dont know but i am physically incapable to ask my parents to email teachers, even when they are nice and offer because i dont want to bother them...........................

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They're canon!! Everyone say thank you to Dana!! 💖💖

[alas-pancakes]

... I may regret this but... why is Lake Baikal cursed?

lol i found this out by accident and hated it gjskjd i was actually looking up how deep the various great lakes are while watching that one ask a mortician video about lake superior and the edmund fitzgerald ,, there are a LOT of charts about how deep various bodies of water are (i like Numbers but visual representation always helps) so heres an example of what i found

so yeah ...

to make it worse as well, it owns a lot of deeply unsettling top or high on the list spots

> 7th largest lake by area (lake superior is 2nd to the caspian sea)

> THE largest lake by depth by nearly 200m

> because of those two its absolutely the 2nd largest depth by volume (again after the caspian sea) and contains more water than the whole great lakes system combined

> it has a clarity depth of up to 50m in some times of the year, and the whole lake is very oxygenated which is pretty odd for such a deep body of water

> its also classified as an ancient lake ! lakes and bodies of water are actually pretty transient ! it may well be THE oldest lake currently on earth, at around 35-20 million years old

> despite all that shit, its average residence time (the time it takes for all the water to have cycled out) is only 330 years

> a quick blessed fact before i make it truly cursed, it has amazing biodiversity !! 80% of its species are endemic only to the baikal system !! theyre species of ALL kinds, some of these are entirely endemic families and genius’ , and the googly eyes tiny tiny freshwater seal i put the baikal tag on is one of those endemic species :’)

> okay now for the worst bit .. its a Rift Lake, as in the lake is where the Siberian Craton of Eurasia and Amur Plate pull apart, its basically a giant split in the earth’s surface, and it covers MOST of the rift basins’ area. thats all well and good, but the current estimate is that the bottom of the rift is up to a good 11km below the ground surface so about 7km of that is sediment with the lake sat on top :)) its not an overly geologically active area considering how active the rift is (2cm a year is pretty decent going) it has little earthquakes and hot springs but its quiet compared to its strain ...

so yeah !! lake baikal !! fascinating, has tiny seals with puppy eyes !!! may have eldritch horrors in it !!!

also heres a link to a similar chart with like .. all of the water on it and some jokes too

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Did Anne Boleyn not actively seek to become his queen? (not a rhetorical question; genuinely confused)

    No, Anne Boleyn did not seek to be Henry’s queen, not at the beginning, anyway.

    The first year of Henry and Anne’s relationship can be better described as sexual harassment in the workplace than a romance. Anne spent most of 1526 trying to tactfully dodge Henry’s advances. She had told him she would be no man’s mistress, but he didn’t respect that.  

    In February, he made a public declaration of his interest in Anne, hoping the fawning attention of the court would pressure her into giving into his advances. it didn’t work. Anne still would not become his mistress. Henry now spent more time in his wife’s quarters than he had in years, but it was to visit Anne where she couldn’t escape his attentions.

    In May, it got so bad that Anne actually quit her job as a lady in waiting and retreated to Hever, where she refused to answer Henry’s letters and sent back his gifts. Henry’s letters to her at this point are full of pouting complaints that she won’t write back to him.

    Henry still wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and chased after her. He went to stay with a cousin of Anne, Nicholas Carew, whose house was a convenient distance from Hever so he could ride over at his leisure. It wasn’t like Anne could refuse to receive him at the house. She refused wherever she had agency, but in this she did not. No one could refuse the king admittance.

    Anne had to walk a delicate balance. If she had offended the king, it would have put her entire family’s future in danger. She undoubtedly faced pressure from her family and friends - who were benefiting from the king’s attentions to Anne with a stream of offices, appointments, and titles - to keep the king “happy” and not anger him. And so Anne had to remain polite and friendly, smiling while she tried to duck away from his reaching hands.

    Anne wanted what every girl of the era wanted, to make a good marriage. She was intensely religious, something that’s often forgotten in her on-screen portrayals, an evangelical with a reformist zeal. No matter what the king offered her, she would not sleep with any man unless he was her lawfully-wed husband. But she couldn’t find a husband while the king was pursuing her. No man would ask for her hand and risk enraging the king. And the longer the king chased her, the less people believed Anne could still be a virgin. Her reputation was just as ruined as though she’d been the king’s mistress in truth.

    Later writers, seeing how things turned out, have posited that Anne planned the whole thing from the start, “luring” Henry away from his wife with her sexy feminine witchery. They imbue her with supernatural foresight, as if she somehow knew if she ignored him, refused him, and left court, it would drive him mad with lust and he would leave his wife for her. But that’s ridiculous.  Anne could not have possibly hoped Henry would make her his queen when he was chasing her back in 1526.

    In the past, Henry had always gracefully backed away when a lady indicated she wasn’t interested in being perused by him. Henry had a very fragile ego and was pained by being refused. His way was to sniff around and drop hints, and if the lady was cool toward his overtures, he would step back quickly and pretend the whole thing never happened. “Interested in her? Huh! Me? No way. Maybe she was interested in me, but I wasn’t into her!” 

    In Anne’s case, he wasn’t taking the hint. Anne was as blunt as she could be without being outright rude, but he kept coming back, offering her larger gifts, and promoting her family members to higher offices with greater income. Her family must have despaired when Anne left court because it put her prestigious career as a maid of honor in danger, but even that drastic move wasn’t enough to push Henry off his course.

    Thomas Wyatt, who watched the whole thing and may have been in love with Anne himself, wrote a poem about it, Whoso List to Hunt. He portrayed Anne as a deer, fleeing for her very life, with Henry and others in pursuit. But Henry has already put a collar around the deer’s neck, proclaiming the prize as his own, whether she likes it or not. And though Anne seems “tame,” she has a wild longing to be free. But later writers have portrayed it as though it was the deer luring Henry into the hunt.

    While everyone knew by 1526 that Henry wanted to divorce Katharine (he’d stopped sleeping with her years ago and had told several people he thought his marriage to her was invalid), everyone fully expected his next wife would be a princess of the blood, someone who would bring him a huge dowry and an alliance with a foreign power. A king marrying a mere gentlewoman for love? The idea was ridiculous. All the time he was trying to arrange Henry’s annulment, Wolsey was planning the king would marry a French princess. Even he, who probably knew the king better than anyone, didn’t think Henry would really marry Anne.

    In 1527, Henry asked Anne to marry him. Two things are important to note here. First of all, a royal proposal was not a request. A woman did not turn down a proposal of marriage from a king. She just couldn’t. (Ask Kateryn Parr, who was in love with another man when the king proposed.) It’s not like today, when a woman has agency in deciding her marital future. In those days, if a man of appropriate rank and wealth approached for a marriage, the girl’s father would decide if the union was good enough and if it was, the girl was expected to accept. If his rank was much higher than her own, or her father’s, the girl and her father had no little choice in the matter. They could appeal to higher authorities, such as the king or cardinal, and they might put a stop to the match, but the girl’s opinion on the matter was inconsequential. In this case, there was no higher authority to whom Anne could appeal if she didn’t want to marry Henry.

     Secondly, once Anne had accepted, they were legally bound to one another. A betrothal was almost as legally binding as a marriage itself, requiring a dispensation from the pope to dissolve. Once she had accepted, Anne had to put her effort into furthering her marriage. If the king had changed his mind at this point, Anne would have been ruined. Few men would have been willing to take the king’s discarded “mistress,” and even with a papal dispensation freeing her from the engagement, her marital prospects would have been dim.

    In short, there is no evidence whatsoever that Anne had a grand, cunning scheme to make herself queen. It would have been a ridiculous plan, and incredibly reckless. “I’m going to risk inciting the queen’s hatred, the king’s anger (potentially ruining our family), and destroying my reputation around Europe on the off chance that this time Henry won’t back away when I refuse him. Because I’m just so awesome, he won’t be able to quit me, you know.”

    Humans have a tendency to look back at events once they’ve occurred and see a master plan behind it all, but there’s simply no evidence of it. Instead, what we see is a young woman harassed in her workplace to the point of quitting her job, but was still unable to shake off her boss’s attentions.

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*blep*

[alas-pancakes]

~ Character Sheet Designs by Azure&Copper Here are all the options available in the etsy store so far (plus 2 colour variations). I have a few things on the way that I’m really excited about, but I’m locked in until the reveal date. In the mean time, I’m hoping to get a new design out soon for the shop. Had a bit of a setback with an injury, but am on the mend!

[alas-pancakes]

Luz has adhd and her being a human trying to be a witch is a metaphor for her being neurodivergent, here’s why

Note that this is just my take on the canon and it’s okay if ya disagree. And if I get anything wrong feel free to tell me because while I’ve researched, I’m not a professional. Also I typed this out three weeks ago but eh it’s all good

Anyway, first I’ll say why I think she has adhd. While the stereotype of someone with adhd is a kid who’s hyper and can’t sit still and is super impulsive (and while for some people that’s their experience), adhd in women often looks different because females are more likely to have inattentive adhd.

Some symptoms of adhd are (also I’m summarizing to keep this somewhat brief)

1. Lack of focus/tendency to daydream/being easily distracted

2. Impulsivity

3. Fidgeting in seat/inability to sit still

4. Talking excessively

5. Hyperfixation

1. In the episode Adventures in the elements, Eda tells Luz to sit still and focus on the boiling isles.

Despite her best efforts, she can’t focus and her mind starts wandering. She plays out fake conversations and then when she gets bored she leaves

2. Ties into my first example because when Luz gets bored, she immediately looks for something to distract herself and finds that instant gratification in stealing Amity’s wand. And she definitely wasn’t trying to be malicious because we see how quick she is to regret it when she sees how it affected Amity.

In a similar manner, she took Eda’s staff without thinking. She didn’t really think through the fact that she didn’t know if she could even fly it, how close Eda and Owlbert are, the idea that she might hurt him.

This example is a bit different from the first one considering how King lies and said she had permission, but it also displays the cycle of Luz doing something impulsive and then immediately regretting it. It’s a familiar cycle for many people with adhd

3. Again, ties into my example of adventures in the elements. She can’t sit still for the life of her. Also, she’s often jumping around and stuff instead of just walking

4. When Luz was looking at the Hexside pamphlet, she couldn’t stop talking about it. When she gave her book report in the first episode, she got super into it to the point where here principal/mom were left there confused. And she talks about the Azura books to anyone who will listen to her

5. To build off of 4, although Luz can seem “lazy” or “unmotivated” when it comes to activities most girls her age like (exemplified in the first episode)

When Luz is into something, she gets really into it. Whether it be her art, Azura books, Amity, or magic, her passion shows. If she cares about it, she’ll give 110%

What this means in the context of the series

Even if my theory that Luz specifically has adhd isn’t true, she’s at least neurodivergent or “weird” in the context of the show. And how she related to other humans has clear parallels to how Luz relates to other witches. In Covention, Luz says

“It [magic] doesn’t come naturally for me, like it does for you. So I’ve had to improvise”

Because Luz’s body doesn’t naturally have the capacity for magic like witches do, she has to find her way around that, her own way of doing things. And, with the adhd analogy, because her brain isn’t like those of most of her peers she has to find her own way of doing things. That doesn’t mean she’s worse as a witch or as a person. What the Owl house is saying is that that difference is awesome.

I feel like Luz will have a moment where she connects the dots and realizes that just like with her learning magic, her differences are just as valid

[alas-pancakes]

Lumity doodles by farfaret.is.mark (Twitter)

[alas-pancakes]

Rayla icons!

please like/reblog if using ♡

(no credit necessary)

[alas-pancakes]

Just a batch of all the flower crown icons I made so far, together. Feel free to use, that’s what they’re for 🤗