modernwizard

[modernwizard]

There are definitely some Saxons in the business of revenge, and they're just as capitalist and morally compromised as this guy. They're probably mostly Landlords and Lawyers.

[modernwizard]

The Magister entertained the thought of getting an Odyssey solely so he could put this bumper sticker on it, but the hearse still functions perfectly [despite pushing seventy at this point], so he decided not to.

[modernwizard]

A DORKLET! Probs Little Theo, who's a hiker and camper and budding field biologist, but it could also be Little Allison, Silencitx, Ethancitx, or Little Night.

HEEELPPP a six year old just came into the nature center and she had SO many questions. it's pouring rain and nobody else is here but her family so non-stop for an hour she had my full attention. by the end of it i had half my field guides open to various insects and mammals and birds and she just kept going.

she became extremely fixated on bigfoot and asked about the ways people try to prove its existence until I was explaining DNA to her, and she asked such thoughtful questions! she said, "what if someone found a skull they thought might be bigfoot, and there was hair left over. could we use DNA from hair to prove it's bigfoot?" but before i could answer, she said, "but if you don't have a living bigfoot that you KNOW is bigfoot, to take hair from, how could you know this hair from this dead bigfoot is really bigfoot hair?" !!!! what an awesome question!!

so this 6 year old and i started discussing control groups in scientific studies and she was so engaged!!

then the bigfoot talk led to discussions of extinction which led to dinosaurs, and she said, "what I don't understand is why people say dinosaurs are extinct, but they also say that dinosaurs became birds. how could they all be extinct if they became something else?"

she asked questions that really challenged me in that figuring out how to answer them on the fly in a way that's digestible wasn't totally straightforward.

a few minutes ago, the adult with her said it was time to go and get ice cream and she said, "can't you see I have 1,000 more questions to ask? i have to just bloooowwww them all out now so you don't have to answer them later."

I saw my younger self in her so much LOL. They said they're coming back tomorrow and I said, "I won't be here, but my colleague knows even more than I do!" And she said, "Well, I hope so. He's gonna need to."

[modernwizard]

Silence!!

...Although she would copyedit this post:

"This fic is literally just porn. Why do you care about the quality of the editing?"

Unfortunately, both my brain and my dick had strong opinions about verb tenses.

"This fic is literally just porn, why do you care about the quality of the editing" unfortunately, both my brain and my dick have strong opinions about verb tenses.

[modernwizard]

A perfect example of kid logic and innate kid understanding of language! Also a perfect example of a dorklet.

Six year old, bouncing up and down with glee as desserts are unpacked: "I'm so appointed!"

Took me a moment to realize she had logically assumed "appointed" must be the opposite of "disappointed" and used it as a synonym for "excited."

[modernwizard]

The kind of thing the Elder Witches would do when they were dorklets, assuming giants existed. [They do not in the Hardshipverse.]

05.10 - “The wizards had been summoned to wake the sleeping giant”

[modernwizard]

Parents of dorklets' house rules.

[modernwizard]

DORKLETS! Little Night and Little Day, probs, given that one of the parents just sews people up. [That would be the Stylist, who is also a surgeon.]

i dont know why anyone else misses analog board games, but to me, it's because physical parts let me cheat. there's no moving pieces around when someone isnt looking in a chess app, no sneaking bonus pieces out of the graveyard in checkers, no double drawing cards in go fish.

i spent years developing those skills as a Professional Little Brother. what am i supposed to do now, go back to college? learn how to play games the right way? i mean, who gives a shit? the fun part was never the game, it was the Getting Away With It. or, you know, for the rest of my family, Catching The Bastard. now that was entertainment.

[modernwizard]

The Magister upon being interrupted incessantly by dorklets.

[modernwizard]

What do you get when you cross my inordinate admiration for Sacha Dhawan and MerMay?

Pictures of Sacha Dhawan as the Spymaster playing Rasputin as a merperson, of course!

Today we have "The Girl with the Pearl...Everything," in which the mer-Master reflects that the earth probably moved just now, and now there are pearls everywhere!!

@natalunasans @sclfmastery @bellejanewednesday

[modernwizard]

What do you get when you cross my inordinate admiration for Sacha Dhawan and MerMay?

Pictures of Sacha Dhawan as the Spymaster playing Rasputin as a merperson, of course!

Today we have "Things in My Beard," in which the mer-Master experiences a side effect of extensive fake facial hair.

And a close-up of his INDIGNANT expression. How dare things hang out in his beard when he's trying to preen?!

@natalunasans @sclfmastery @bellejanewednesday

[modernwizard]

The Magister's reaction, probs.

Need you to know that I heard about the pope news in the most normal and natural of places: the person tabling the Medieval Academy of America table at the International Congress on Medieval Studies declaring "HABEMUS PAPAM AMARICANAM?????" in bafflement.

[modernwizard]

What do you get when you cross my inordinate admiration for Sacha Dhawan and MerMay?

Pictures of Sacha Dhawan as the Spymaster playing Rasputin as a merperson, of course!

This series started off with regular ol' Spymaster Rasputin pinups....

Looking fierce! [Yes, he's supposed to look kind of silly....]

Grinning...

Inviting you to warm him up [note ushanka and silly socks]...

And welcoming you into the water with some completely innocent rusalki [Slavic folkloric water creatures, sometimes the spirits of drowned people, who tend to drag people to watery doom]... "Come on in! The water's fine!"

From there I started thinking that mer-Rasputin would be hilarious, especially the association of merpeople with feminine sexiness combined with the Spymaster's gender-bending.

The first effort in this occasional series is called "Serving Pearl," with a suggestively located pearl and a shit-eating grin on Rasputin's face.

Tagging my fellow Spymaster fans, particularly @natalunasans andf @sclfmastery because I know they'd appreciate this. @bellejanewednesday

All hail the glories of mer-Rasputin!

[modernwizard]

The Magister and Ethan don't argue with Silence. They just point out different aspects of her statements that need refinement.

Not to sound like a T-Shirt slogan but sometimes I am genuinely “not arguing with you, just explaining that you’re wrong” because the first implies equally valuable perspectives and the second acknowledges either a true objective reality, or at least a universally subjective one, wherein data exists and can be reliably assessed

[modernwizard]

Silence and the Magister have mutual ecstasies over this.

common origins of suffering, euphoria, and ferret

substack

[modernwizard]

This happened in Hardship. Hell, it probably happens with unnerving frequency in Hardshipper.

Hardshippers might just pass around Powerful Magical Items, hoping to catalyze kids' adventures worthy of an eight-book series. It's either a bunch of severely bored witches or a loose-knit group of very, very, very frustrated creative people who have been trying for generations to spawn a series so they can get it published.

Your goal should be to get weirder with age and im not kidding. Become that odd estranged extended family member that owns a whacky home wherein a powerful magical item is kept that is the catalyst for the story of a children's adventure novel protagonist

[modernwizard]

Memory and Solace, among other twins in Hardship, probably have cards like these.

some twin I sort of know handed me this punch card when I said "I saw your brother last week"

trying to get a read on this...did I offend him? Is this normal twin behavior