sugarglazed

[sugarglazed]

"when people ask how you're doing, they don't really care." most of them do, actually, the amount they care is just directly proportional to how well they know you. you're just mad you can't be the main character of the Twice Daily.

[sugarglazed]

I know that some British people take umbrage at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

[sugarglazed]

CLOWNROSARY OFFICIAL STONATHAN FIC RECS

if u follow me on twitter, you may have seen that i made a silly "stonathan wrapped" presentation for some friends :) and part of that was a list of all my fav stonathan fics, which i am sharing w u all today <3

these will all be sorted by genre, and include WC + some tags!

happy reading :D

FLUFF

wild is the wind - seraphy (first kiss, hurt/comfort) - 9k

no kingdom to come - lesbianrobin (established relationship) - 1k

Please linger in my doorway. - Lynnn_x (secret relationship) - 3k

Hey Sailor - Star_Madison, Xirayn (humor, script/screenplay format) - 1k

you just keep me hanging on - Kypros (slice of life, friends to lovers) - 15k

Into Slumber - listlessness (established relationship, massage) - 1k

sun in an empty room - Kypros (gender roles, internalized homophobia) - 5k

prepared for absolution (if only you’d ask) - delusionaltogether (slice of life, friends to lovers) - 18k

Plastic stars. - Lynnn_x (established relationship, sharing a bed) - 800

terms (of endearment) and conditions - dharmainitiative (established relationship, sickfic) - 1k

ANGST

teenage wasteland - kypros (Steve character study, non-linear) - 3k

halfway to home - fastcardotmp3 (grief/mourning, friends to lovers, past steddie) - 15k

Mondegreen - Xirayn (post-canon, Kas!Eddie) - 3k

bruises that won’t heal - witchjeons (exes) - 3k

Great Pretender - BenLMoore (childhood friends, trauma) - 13k

All this, and love too - (Steve character study) - 4k

Five Stages of Moving On - listlessness (epistolary, pining) - 1k

the free fall - kypros (established relationship, angst) - 4k

AU (MODERN)

i bet you think about me - dharmainitiative (exes, miscommunication, hopeful ending) - 38k

june bug versus hurricane - until_then (angst, baseball, hopeful ending) - 27k

Big Mouth - loudsnapdragon (FWB, miscommunication, happy ending) - 35k

Those people problems. - Lynnn_x (developing relationship, slice of life) - 21k

AU (CHILDHOOD FRIENDS)

The Way the World Ends - KidA_666 (exes, angst) - 22k

And if you lost it all, (and you lost it) - GibbousLunation (pacific rim, angst) - 11k

and i danced myself to death - flwrgardens (coming of age, non-linear) - 11k

SERIES

The Chicago Chronicles - lithium_creep (roommates, getting together, domestic fluff) - 11 works

Undone (Like Me) - ceruleanandconvalescence (childhood friends, POV alternating, angst) - 2 works

A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts - KidA_666 (slow burn, enemies to friends to lovers) - 4 works

IN PROGRESS

Old Friends and Dead Ends - stott183 (boxing)

nowhereland - kypros (timeloop) 

So It Goes - KidA_666 (reincarnation)

A Haunted House With a Picket Fence - nay_na (apocalypse)

[sugarglazed]

I dunno man. I found out today that a subway sandwich is $14 now. A shitty subway footlong sandwich that isn't actually 12 inches long and is occasionally made with expired ingredients and was never a great option to start with. I ate those in high school because I was broke and at the mall a lot.

There are poke bowls in my city from a local place for $16. Super fresh fish and veg, warm rice, more than I can eat in one sitting, for the price of a sandwich and a drink at america's most mid-tier sandwich shop.

Someone in another post said (paraphrased) you used to be able to get something mediocre for cheap, but now the mediocre things cost as much as the nice things so why would you?

[sugarglazed]

the fact that "eco" and "ethical" are two separate concerns in the global north, and that "eco" is a much more popular concern, with many "eco" products being made in actual sweatshops, is a big part of why i am The Joker

[sugarglazed]

i love the -with mama trend but sometimes i get sad because that is clearly papa and he aint getting any credit raising those darn kids...

[sugarglazed]

one of the most enlightening realizations ive had was finding out that non-24 hour circadian rhythm people were a pretty large group and most of us have oddly similar cycles of usually around 28hr internal "days" and this masquerades as "insomnia" but if allowed to sleep and wake naturally we will just advance forward through time an extra 2-4 hours a day at a relatively stable pace. we can't go to school or jobs or even run errands on normal schedules without massive pharmacological and behavioral intervention. most of the people who have been diagnosed or figured it out themselves will report horrific, life-ruining disruption in their professional lives and terrible health from accrued lack of sleep. this disorder is most common in vision-impaired people which seems to suggest it's related to light cues. anyway just thinking about this as extremely loud yard work woke me up at 8am for the second day in a row

[sugarglazed]

love when a mother asks if they have ever done anything to hurt you. ma'am, you will literally never be ready to have this conversation

[sugarglazed]

I've been trying to create to keep my mind off the state of...everything and yet I cannot...so frustrating truly

[sugarglazed]

hey guys, i’m here to relieve you of your fear-mongering For You Page, here’s what we know:

1. this is not “world war 3”. that would be insane, unrealistic, unnecessary, and would never happen immediately off of one (albeit, awful) event like this. absolutely no country wants to go to war right now lol. anyone who makes any joke or post about “getting drafted” or “we’re all gonna die” has not done a lick of research, do not engage with it. plus, we’ve been at war with the middle east for ages, so for them, the timing of this attack is a bigger shock than the attack itself.

2. people in the US are not going to get hurt. more than likely, the worst this can get is some type of gulf war with the middle east limiting access to our resources, which still isn’t ideal. the best course of action for iran right now is to control what they can, which probably means cutting off the strait of hormuz, a strait that runs to the US (and other places) and provides it with resources like oil. (at least, that’s what i predict will happen based on the research i have done, but the resources part still stands). the US military is too advanced and too strong for an attack on US soil to be a strategic move for iran (a country with a population less than a third of the US’s) because they know that whatever they do, the US military will hit back even harder (that is apparent from one of trump’s latest social media posts… that heinous bitch 😒)

3. president trump wants you to be living in fear. that’s what his entire platform has been run on, along with lies and hypocrisy that more and more people are starting to see through. whatever happens in the future, this will be a huge turning point for a lot of individuals who may or may not care about who they voted for. but for those who did not ask for this, here’s what we can do:

stop making everything about the fear in the US and do what you can to lift up the people of iran, the people who were actually attacked, especially if this situation progresses any further. if military attacks do break out, it will most likely be on iranian soil, not the US’s, so do your best to try to be selfless, even through the fear.

please for the love of god do your own research, and keep it as unbiased as possible. news articles, reports, even historical articles, anything is better than scrolling through tiktok or tumblr and making your anxiety even worse. don’t even take what i say as fact! yes i’ve done research, but things can (and will) change, so it’s best to stay updated in whatever way you can.

spread positivity, build community, and gather information. as civilians, that is our current best course of action, and our collective greatest strengths. living in fear is feeding into what our government wants you to feel like so you’re easier to control. do not let them.

this is my own pet peeve, but stop saying “we bombed iran” or “we started a war”. WE did not do anything. donald trump did. that is not the america i associate with, nor should it be the one you associate with, either.

lastly, and i’ll say this until i die, everything is going to be okay. there will be issues, of course, but it won’t last forever, i promise. take a break from doomscrolling and get a good night’s rest. stay safe 🫶

[sugarglazed]

Hiii, I was just wandering if you wouldn’t mind blabbing about the symbolism and stuff behind some of your design choices with the horse men that you might not have mentioned. Like with pestilence and death specifically I feel like there’s a lot of symbolism I’m picking up on without fully understanding. Like with Death’s sickle, both a homage to the classic scythe and a nod to the “reaping/harvesting” of souls. And with pestilence I feel like there’s something that I’m skirting around without grasping. The multiple legs strike me as a deliberate similarity to insects, and if I’m right I think that the rider is bound in a body bag type deal, similar to how disease and pestilence is so often both spread through the improper disposal of body’s, and how wide spread pestilence leads to mass graves filled with disease and the horrible anonymity that comes with being just one face in a pit of hundreds etc? All of this is, ofc, to say that I’ve adored your series of the horsemen so far and would go absolutely rabid for some insight on some of your design choices<3

My horsemen of the apocalypse! I will add the original commentary and some extras, less about the symbolism and more about what brought me to design them the way I did.

The symbolism is for you to chose, there is no wrong answer.

WAR

I can't bring myself to represent war with a cool knight. It's horror. War is a bound child crowned with shrapnel, tied to a wounded horse that is being pulled forward by unseen people.

I've read a handful of books regarding war. A lost quote said that it should be shown as horror, it should make generals vomit, it should make you sick. I haven't seen war but my family has.

It was the first horseman I've designed, and it was in my sketchbook for months (maybe over a year, maybe even more) before I had the courage to draw it. I was really scared about how people would react to a mutilated child.

Recommended reading: The Red Crown - Mikhail Bulgakov, a short story about a man coping with the loss of his brother in the war

FAMINE

Someone who lived thro a famine shared that their head was only occupied with thoughts of food. Famine consumes your mind. All animals were eaten. Neighbors gave their pets away cuz they couldn't do it themselves. People walked around town as if in a dazed dream, slowly

Recommended reading: The Last Witnesses - Svetlana Alexievitch, a collection of testimonials of people who were children when WW2 began. Some quotes below;

'''A cat! A cat!' Other children saw it and started chasing it. The educators were local habitants, looked at us as if we were insane. In Leningrad there were no living cats left...A living cat was a dream. Food for one month...We talked about it, but they didn't believe us.''

''During the first year of evacuation, we didn't notice nature, everything that was nature provoked in us only one desire - taste to see if it's edible. Only a year later I noticed the beauty of the Urals''

''I dreamt of catching a sparrow and eating it...''

''A candle burns and the shopgirl cuts the bread pieces. People follow her with their gaze. Her every movement...with burning eyes...crazed...and all that in silence.''

''People walked slowly through the city like shadows. Like in a dream...a deep dream...As in, you see it, but you think you're seeing a dream. Those sluggish movements...floating...As if a person walked on water and not on land.''

''In Leningrad there are a lot of monuments, but one is missing that should exist. They forgot about it. The monument to the dogs of the seige. Dear doggy, forgive me...''

I don't like talking about it. It made no sense to draw Famine with a horse.

PESTILENCE

Based on the notes of a doctor who said the most frightening thing about viral disease was how it didn’t frighten. People didn’t know or didn't care. They lived and spread until it was too late and they became another name on the record

The clothing being made out of shredding plastic is no coincidence; pollution is a form of pestilence too

Recommended reading: Notes from a Countryside Doctor - Mikhail Bulgakov. Roughly translated quote below;

''Ah, I verified that here syphilis was frightening precisely because it did not frighten. That was why I evoked that woman.* I remembered her with a kind of affectionate respect: because she had been afraid. But she was the only one!''

*Early in the chapter, doctor mentions a woman that appeared in the clinic with a letter from her soldier husband, where he wrote that he had syphilis and told her she should go to the doctor too.

DEATH

Recommended reading: Voices of Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievitch. The Death of Ivan Ilitch - Lev Tolstoi

“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone - the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.”

Death is the only horseman that doesn’t need to mount their horse; they will reach everyone eventually. Who is the saddle for then? Open ended question because this one you have to figure out personally

Many people pointed out how the horse is a Clydesdale. Good eyes! I purposefully asked a friend to guide me towards what type of horses are the sturdiest and most-friendly looking. I drew the horse grazing. It's not injured, it doesn't gallop. It's grazing peacefully because life moves on.

This is the only design that had a painting serve as a base - The Reaper, by Alexey Venetsianov. Not much or nothing at all is written about, I saw it in a book. It is a literal reaper but it haunted me, as if it's portraying more than a person.

The choice to make it a woman was due to a book about a crematory (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty) that connected women to death because everyone born is bound to die.

Ahhh, I don't want to give it all away. It's fun to figure things out. About them all. From the enviroment, to the movement, to the horses themselves. Many people even mentioned details that I did not notice and didn't add purposefully that were so inspired and amazing. I truly mean that the interpretations of the public enrich the works even more than my own words. And it's an honor to share that work with everyone.

Thank you anon!

[sugarglazed]

hearing that your characterizations are good is like. the best thing to hear as a fic writer.

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lowkey fucked up if you think about it

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so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

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my humor might be broken cause I find this trend actually funny

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“i also choose this guy’s dead wife” was easily the #1 funniest thing to ever be written on the internet.

[sugarglazed]

hello physically disabled person reading this. it is not your fault that your medical supplies are made from a lot of single use plastic and you can continue using them guilt free. your health comes first. thank you for existing.