james-preble

[james-preble]

'yeag' is a typo to YOU but to me she conveys a feeling that 'yeah' does not

[james-preble]

People have been nagging me to share “the curry story” on here for ages, so alright, I’ll do it. (If you’re Indian and reading this, I am so sorry).

I swear to god, everything I am about to say in this story is true.

When I was eleven, I moved to a small town in rural England and acquired a new best friend at school. Her at that point seemingly-very-normal-parents- nice suburban house, three kids, trampoline in the backyard- invited me over for dinner, and said they were making curry and rhubarb crumble.

“Curry and rhubarb crumble”. Never in the history of mankind have words been so untrue.

The “curry” consisted of, I swear I am not making this up, a vague mixture of * deep breath, oatmeal, tofu sausages, corn, tomato juice, chopped onions, raisins, “leftover broccoli leaves”, kale, and scrambled eggs. The only spice in it was the tiniest smidgen of turmeric. All these ingredients were vaguely stirred together, undercooked, and stuck under a broiler for ten minutes. 

They gave me a massive portion. I somehow, I still don’t know how, was polite enough to finish it.

“I’m done,” I said.

“No,” said her father. “In this house, we LICK our plates clean.”

He did. They didn’t make me hold it up and lick it like they all did, but they did make me clean the plate with a piece of bread and my fork until they were satisfied.

Desert came. The rhubarb crumble was entirely unsweetened. Not so much as a raisin. I can’t remember what the crumble part was, because my mind is still haunted by the memory of being forced to eat an entire bowl of unsweetened rhubarb. You know in old Looney Tunes when characters would be tricked into eating allum and their heads would shrink? That’s what eating it felt like. They made me clean my bowl of that too, and wouldn’t let me leave the table until I finished. 

The next time, (I was in middle school and as yet too polite to turn down my best friend’s parents) they made “spaghetti and meatballs and salad”. The spaghetti was utterly plain and so undercooked it was crunchy, the “meatballs” consisted of a single large orb of some grey material i have yet to identify, and the salad was, i shit you not, limp boiled lettuce. Crunchy spaghetti, unidentified lumpy grey stuff, and boiled lettuce.

The fascinating thing is that, while yes, these people were obviously health nuts, it was so much more than that. They were health nuts who also cooked like aliens who had never seen human food before. Or like small children making “potions”. One of the more edible things they served to me once was a dessert they made up which consisted of halved apples rolled in cornflour with some milk poured on top. One time, they were convinced to make pizza as a treat. They decided to put an onion on it. Fair and fine, you’d think. Not in that house. They just cut the onion in half once, and stuck each unchopped half facedown on one side of the pizza.

Speaking of onions, one time, my friend decided to make a banana and yoghurt smoothie. Her dad came in, said it wasn’t healthy enough, and made her add an onion to it.

They had a homemade cereal I thankfully was able to opt out of trying which 100% looked like the contents of a vacuum bag. I still have no idea what it contained.

Amazingly, it was by no means just me who experienced this. It was a small town, and every girl in it my age had a selection of horror stories about being invited to dinner at this friend’s house in the exact same ritualistic horror-film fashion. We used to sit around comparing them at sleepovers. Age did not exempt you. One time, this friend’s six year old brother had a friend over for dinner at the same time, poor soul. His mom arrived to pick him up, and wasn’t allowed to take him home until he finished whatever crime against cooking was on the menu that night. 

Every story was the same. The ritual that never varied. Every time, these people would make a huge fanfare out of inviting you over for dinner, act all hospitable and excited, set the table, and then serve you a massive helping of the worst food in the world, and make you clean your plate of it, desert included. Who the hell forces you to finish your DESERT?

It’s a mystery to me. They clearly had SOME degree of self-awareness, because after I came to my senses and started coming up with excuses to avoid eating at their house they would tease me saying things like “ohoho, you don’t like LIKE our food do you”. If they had been a bit more fun and less generally puritanical sort of people, I could totally believe this was a family trolling activity where they secretly schemed to come up with the worst possible dishes, secretly filmed themselves forcing people to eat them and watched it and laughed afterwards, I could believe it.

All I’m saying is I’m pretty sure they weren’t aliens, but the more I type this out, the more tempted I am to believe it. Fuck it, maybe they WERE aliens.

[james-preble]

gonna be on a 5h flight so i guess its time to finally get all my artfight refs done...

[james-preble]

EAH animated series Dexter: He isn't confident in himself because he can't ask out Raven.

EAH books Dexter: He's a victim of child abuse, being emotionally taken advantage of behind closed doors by his father. He grew up thinking that he is always meant to be second best to Daring. His destiny crisis leaves him wondering what his future would be like at all if he doesn't even know who his true love is. He tries his hardest to please his father to let him know that he has what it takes to be like his brother (even though he might be doing it out of fear of being useless or poofing away if he doesn't). He influenced Raven to question her own destiny, causing her to identify as a rebel later after that.

[james-preble]

(doomed siblings enjoyer voice) I like the charming siblings a normal amount. why do you ask

[james-preble]

(sees a normal and common thing) no way is this specifically a reference to my friend #myfriend?

[james-preble]

[james-preble]

"This is my comfort show" I say about a show that has brought me nothing but distress and pain

[james-preble]

made a picture i will use a lot

[james-preble]

"there should be some kind of test you have to take before having kids" -> wrong, extremely dangerous and highkey eugenicist and racist "the youth should have safe and effective legal pathways at their disposal to make sure their human rights are constantly protected and upheld" -> based, centers the youth, gives minors more power to fight inequality and does not reinforce the idea that parents are immune to scrutiny from their kids

[james-preble]

When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger

1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix

1 TBs ketchup

1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,

1 Tbs bbq sauce

1 Tbs steak sauce

1 egg

mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)

You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf

[james-preble]

Thinking about grief leaving a more lasting visual impact to Witnesses than just the black cross over the heart.

Jupiter avoids looking himself in the mirror, lest he has to see the gaping hole in his chest that Rosie left. It's become smaller over the years, but it still sticks out like an ugly scar. Usually, he can block it out, but sometimes, on bad days, he can't bare the effort, and he just stares into the void his best friend left in his soul.

Jack's grief lingers around the back of his head, the back of his mind. It's like a red storm, growing and shrinking depending on how much he's thinking about his plan. It crackles with electricity when he speaks to the League. It rains when Jupiter leaves on a mission. If he really concentrates, he can feel the patter on the back of his neck.

Morrigan carries her mother in little handprints on her back. Even if she was a Witness, she'd never see them. Her grief is quiet, almost an afterthought. She grieves somebody she never knew, not really.

[james-preble]

I’m seriously about to fucking (remembers this tweet)

LOSE MY FUCKING MARBLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[james-preble]

Annabeth being a Greek Demigod descendant of a Norse God with a cousin who's also a Norse Demigod and who knows the secret name of an Egypt magician which ended up with her being able to perform Egyptian magic and who's going to college in a city placed in the camp for Roman Demigods... Who's doing it like her (my head would hurt)

[james-preble]

Thinking about Lilo & Stitch makes me really appreciate certain things about the original + the series. Almost every single named [human] character in the movie isn’t white: the only exception being Mertle, y’know, the bratty little girl we’re not supposed to like.

Besides all of the racial representation, Lilo herself is very much a neurodivergent icon, and her portrayal as the protagonist is amazing considering how characters like her are typically either sidelined or depicted in ways to make them less sympathetic/human (modern media does at least a slightly better job at adressing that kind of thing tho).

So all of that is great, but to anyone that hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch: The Series, it also does some extremely refreshing stuff.

Pleakley gets tons of validation to dress in drag, everyone always referring to Pleakley as “she” when dressed up as “aunt Pleakley.” There’s even an episode that tackles Pleakley dealing with the pressures of his family that wants him to marry a girl and settle down to have a “normal life.” After the episode's shenanigans, there's a realistic depiction of the misunderstanding of a heteronormative/traditional parent with their non-traditional child: Pleakley's mom says that she just wants her children to be happy, but when Pleakley says that he is happy, she thinks he's only trying to console her as she insists, "How can you be happy? You aren't even married." But Pleakley finally gets it through to his mom when he says, "I don't want to be married, mother! I'm happy just as I am."

After getting to meet all of Pleakley's ohana throughout the episode and hearing from Pleakley himself -after all of the previous misunderstandings- that he really, truly, is happy, she's finally starting to understand.

Even though his mom comments as they leave that she wants him to “try wearing men’s clothes more often,” she still does walk away accepting that she simply doesn’t understand her son's way of thinking. It’ll definitely be hard for her since she’s so much more “traditional,” but she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that her son is who he is, and likes being that way, so she’ll love him regardless. She's trying her best.

The portrayal of people with physical disabilities is also great. It’s not because there’s one recurring character with some condition, but almost because there are non-recurring characters. It isn’t in every episode, but here’s an example: they want to show someone at the park playing fetch with their dog for just one shot. They could very easily have it be any a random person, but they decided to make it a lady in a wheelchair. There's another episode where Nani's friends from highschool show up and one has forearm crutches, but not just because she had some recent accident. No one in the episode questions her condition or feels the need to point it out, the only comment on it being that the friend will use the crutches to lightly bonk the others' arms, and Nani jokes, "You are still deadly with that thing."

The fact that they include characters with disabilities when they "don't have to" makes it that much more normal. These people aren't some special case or the main highlight of the episode, they're just another person. They're normal.

There's so much that all of the original Lilo & Stitch media did right, but now the name will forever be tainted with the association of the remake, which I'm sure will have absolutely none of the tasteful writing and ideas of anything prior to it.

[james-preble]

"backstage at a live event" is perhaps my favourite human collective emotion ive ever experienced. From running through the creepy empty school hallways before a theatre show, to the staff only breakroom at a convention or event where youre running a stall, to the bridal suite getting ready before your bestie walks down the isle.

Theres a little wall between the guys who are 'in on it' with you, whatever it is, and your audience or customers or guests or just all those people who are *not* in on it. Youve got a wallkie talkie, or a backstage pass, or an exhibitor badge, and youve never felt more alive

[james-preble]