#eating book. eating knowledge!

[lumiere-angel-90]

HeartBreak and Psycopathe ! from @my-little-heartbreak and @thetruepsycopath

Commission by @foodielovethealicorn

big thank you ^^!

[vintage-tigre]

[spidey-bie]

Hold up a minute. Do y'all think Hobie can cook? I was just thinking about this. Does his blackness overrun his Britishness? Can he cook but only simple meals?

I've found that he potentially uses roadman' slang (source) which is "a mix Jamaican and British terms". So going off of this does was he taught how to cook Jamaican cuisine? Does he teach his s/o how to cook his cultures foods? Does he cook a fusion of British and Jamaican foods?

Who's the person who does the most cooking in the relationship? Do you both cook together? Is he a disaster in the kitchen, an absolute expert, or just an average chef?

(Forgive me if I say something insensitive I promise that it wasn't my intention.)

[cannibalisticskittles]

in the spirit of that last post -- obviously, astarion burning in the sun and running off to hide, alone, would not fly.

amity would be running after him right away, casting darkness. she'd throw her cloak over him. crouch down next to him, behind those crates he hides behind, and start casting the teleportation circle spell that's linked to the circle she made in her home/company basement while frantically muttering all the invitations she thinks he could ever need as she writes the sigil(s) -- it takes a full minute to cast so she has time to cover everything, she hopes. "i invite you into my home and my place of business and anything and everything i do or have ever called mine -- okay go go go go go"

helps him into the portal, if he needs the help; it only lasts 6 seconds so they've gotta be Real Quick

runs back to everyone else and gives an almost incoherent goodbye/explanation before scurrying off, like "YOU'RE ALL INVITED TO MY HOME, I WILL SEND WORD TO THE ELFSONG TAVERN WITH WHERE TO FIND IT BEFORE NIGHTFALL, I HAVE TO GO NOW"

and then she fucking books it through the city

full crying because two of her best friends just consigned themselves to wandering the hells just to keep one of them alive and yeah they can probably fix that eventually but that's so awful, karlach is so scared, and now astarion is all burned up in her basement, gods damn it

a tiefling running at full speed, openly weeping, probably snotty, bloody and covered in brain goo, getting closer and closer to the actual ritzy part of the city and getting stranger and stranger looks all the while

using a sending spell as she runs -- she has three 3rd level spell slots and she's using all of them on sending spells, addressing them to whichever of the company employees she thinks would be most likely to be there and/or to go down to where the teleportation circle is -- "friend in basement FRIEND NOT FOE DO NOT HARM help please, be there soon, close windows and draw blinds please, urgent urgent urgent"

meanwhile in the basement of the morninglade trading company hub, someone is coming down the stairs with an armful of scrolls, sees a dazed man hastily wrapped in a cloak who smells distinctly of ash and burnt flesh, and says "oh hey! new recruit? haha, wow, you're in slightly worse shape than we usually get. welcome aboard tho!"

astarion has just had something dear to him ripped away from him, and might never see sunlight again. just rolled into a portal that spat him out into a basement. has just sustained a minimum of 20 points of sunlight damage. he's not at his best.

it's a nice basement tho, at least

[bsaka7]

can i ask a question. (i'm going to ask it anyway). ok so u guys all know i like to read sports books (memoirs, histories, etc.). r there any. books about hockey i should read

[buckets-of-dirt]

Not sure if it's my english minor trying to fill the void left by no longer being a student or if I just watch too many video essays but for some reason I'm focusing heavily on writers craft during this Artemis Fowl reread to the point that my dad (the only person I know who also read all 8 books and thus the best person to rant at about how much better the last half of the series could have been) accused me of "sound[ing] like a college professor" the other day

[alaraxia]

hey guess what I got

[bluesidedown]

.....

[realitys-ex]

One kinda fun/odd bit about Discworld is the place of Jews/Judaism in it (no, this probably won't go where you expect).

So there are the 2 obvious places and one arguably subtle/debatable place:

Feet of Clay/Golems very clearly drawing from Judaism (though in subsequent books that was toned *way* down)

Omnianism is a very clear stand in for/amalgamation of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (the amount of each is left as an exercise to the reader).

and Lastly / debatably many people find a similarity between the description of the Dwarf religion and Judaism (I am not stating I agree, just I would have been remiss if I didn't bring it up)

Now the one thing that kinda gets forgotten is that: Judaism as a whole independent religion is somewhat confirmed in Discworld leaving arguments about the above somewhat moot! (you can't have a stand in for a religion if you already have the religion itself).

In both Feet of Clay and Fifth Elephant it mentions Vampires working at Kosher Butchers (for those unaware blood is not kosher so it needs to be drained extra well from meat, a perfect job for a vampire).

Now what does that actually imply? Absolutely nothing.

PTerry often had off the cuff jokes, as well as mucked about with continuity (remember how Trolls originally would continue to grow until they died, and could get up to the size of a small mountain, which only came up in one of the early books and was ignored in the rest?) and (I am sure) just liked that joke and did not intend to imply any theological ramifications or serious world building from it.

But dammit, it is (to me) incredibly funny to step into a (semi) serious discussion about Judaism in Discworld and completely derail it with a throw away line.

[randomwriteronline]

Thinking about volo and cogita living like a fuckton of decades but still eventually. You know. Dying. And how that would fuck up volo specifically.

Like this guy is absolutely driven by one thing and one thing only. Hes 100% ready to spend his entire life looking for a way to get up to God's doorstep to ask it why he wasnt chosen to be its most specialest boy, and the fact cogita is always sort of somewhere next to him metaphorically or literally is like an afterthought. She's his only semblance of family through one way or another and also old as balls and looking just fine for her age so of course shell just always be in her tent drinking tea, using unfathomably powerful ancient artifacts to cut the vegetables for her evening soup that she will serve to him while berating him for being an idiot with delusions of grandeur when he comes back after another useless search.

Except one day he walks in and shes laying on her chair completely still. Her hat is on the floor and her pose is absolutely graceless. Shes cold. Unmoving.

Shes dead.

And he looks at her and doesnt even check, theres a layer of dust on her gloves and everything else, and the water in the cup that shattered on the floor is completely dried up, and there's a pungent smell of sorts that he didn't realize drenches the whole tent. Shes dead. Shes been dead for a bit of time now.

And volo stands and looks at her dead; he buries her with no thoughts, and then he sits at the same chair she sat in when she died, at the same table she sat before when she died, and he realizes, hes alone; and he realizes, dear God, i will die too eventually.

And he goes insane.

But its not his kind of boisterous and excessive deranged sort of show, where he makes himself a little outfit and a stupid haircut and screams at the heavens and siks a giant ghost worm from hell on a teenager, its a perfectly quiet madness that makes him feel incomprehensibly small and meaningless and powerless against everything: against nature, against others, against himself. Hes alone and he realizes cogita will not chastise him, and it feels good; he realizes he doesnt know how she makes her soup, or her tea, how she keeps her calligraphy so neat, how she dealt with not having an heir for ages, how she dealt with having such an incomprehensible heir, how she handles enamorus (who doesnt even show up to volo when spring comes, and simply never comes back) or what she thought of her own myths; and he feels like shes resting her hands on his shoulders with a weight that will crush him, and he realizes, dear God, i will die too eventually, and nobody will even know i existed.

Maybe he just needs to find God. Maybe he just needs to find Arceus. Work harder on it. So he can ask it everything. So he can figure out how to never die, or how to exist forever.

And when he finally does it (because the times change and life has many doors, johnny boy) and he finally stands out of time and space and reality and he has Arceus right before him and so many questions, his mind wanders to ask about where enamorus is now, and it brings him to the image of cogita cold and graceless and unmoving, just dead, and replaces her body with his, and he spends the precious time he could use to question god in perfect silence, drawing the biggest blank of his life.

And then before he knows it its over and he has no second chance.

And he realizes, dear god.

I am going to die alone.

And decades later his only granddaughter forgets to visit him one day, and shows up the next with a book of myths under her arm as an apology, and she finds him slumped over his chair cold and still and graceless, with a broken cup of water drying up still on the floor.

And Cynthia looks at him and thinks, very slowly: dear god.

I will die too eventually.

[thecrenellations]

Is the lymond chronicles something I can get into if I know little of history and do not speak many romance languages?

Yes! I mean, it depends on your reading preferences and how you feel about being confused, but I certainly did!

That's my short answer! If you give them a try, I hope you find the series worth it, and I believe that what you like in a story will matter more than what you do or don't know going in.

My much longer answer, about my reading experience, is ....

In my case, I knew the names of monarchs and had a vague familiarity with the setting of the first book (Tudor/1540s Scotland and England). I speak a useful amount of French and a tiny bit of Spanish. Comparing experiences with friends, French was an especially helpful language to have, but I feel confident saying that I would have loved these books without it.

The thing about The Game of Kings (book 1) is that it’s just confusing. Dorothy Dunnett wastes no time in throwing political intrigue, multilingual references, and many characters at you. But even if you’re an expert in the history and in (modern and archaic) English, French, Latin, Spanish, Scots, and a little bit of Italian and German, you are faced with a protagonist who’s running back and forth across the border and interfering with that history … while guarding his goals and motives, explaining nothing about his past, and constantly quoting poetry from the personal library of a mind he doesn’t want to let anyone inside. Most of the people he meets don’t understand him, either.

For me, it was so rewarding when I finally started to learn what was happening and who he is, and after that the ride truly began…

I did not look up many references or translations and just kinda went with it. I was enjoying myself enough that I didn’t mind that so much was going over my head (especially if it was coming out of Lymond’s mouth), and within a few chapters I’d gotten invested in one of the characters (Christian!) and was entranced by a recurring joke/element. By the second section (let’s say … 175 pages in …), I was hooked, obsessed with a second character (Will!), interested in most of the rest, and having a great time.

There’s a character list in non-audio editions (the David Monteath audiobooks are very good, though), and companion books exist with translations/sources for many of the references. There are also various online recaps and chapter-by-chapter discussions. Looking things up yourself as you go along can reduce confusion, but be warned that many of the characters are versions of real people, so you may learn more than you want to know, such as when they die. 470-year-old spoilers, but still.

For me, the characters (complexity, parallels, relationships) and writing (playfulness, beauty, INCREDIBLE use of perspective and unreliable narration) are what make the books so good. They reward rereading, so, when/if you return, you’ll have another chance to go down some reference rabbit holes, and even if you don’t, you will understand much more.

The second book is generally agreed to be easier to understand! Also, there are elephants.

Perhaps more important than knowledge of history and languages is the reader's tolerance for …

angst. pain. agony. devastating reminders of prior angst and pain and agony

on the flipside, truly ridiculous antics, hijinks, and capers

many, many kinds of traumatic/potentially triggering content

bias/bigotry that shows up in characters’ perspectives and in general (not that newer media is free of this, but these books are from the 1960s and 70s, for context)

occasional elements that stretch the definition of historical fiction

revelations about your favorite authors’ influences (this was fun)

excessive reference to and description of Lymond’s beauty

half? a third? a large amount of the cast being in love with Lymond. This made for way more queer text than I knew to expect, which was great, but also … oh my god everyone is in love with him

the most bantering banter to ever banter, mostly, but certainly not entirely, courtesy of Lymond

Thanks for asking! If any of this raises more questions, ask again!

related: my lymond recs tag. There are mild and out-of-context spoilers, but these posts all sum up something about the series. :)

[mostlymilkwood]

I’m feeling nostalgic from touhou*

*everything I know about touhou is based on yuri doujins from 2008

[ironmanstan]

.

[starsundertheceiling]

Isn't it interesting that sometimes people who enjoy a show a "regular" amount are friends with people who are also fans of the show? But they aren't sure if the other person likes the show as much as them, so they fake liking the show actually a regular amount? But what if the other person is in fact also super into the show and doodles the names of the characters in their notebooks and changes them into drawings when somebody asks to borrow their notes?

We have two friends who are obsessed with the same show, but try to appear "normal" in the other's company because they don't want to come off as weird and potentially ruin their friendship. However, if they were honest, they would gain an irl companion to freak out with.

So, anyways, queer experience much?

[yvehattan]

The fact that ‘only dull people are brilliant at breakfast’ implies that only brilliant people are dull at breakfast.

[coastalroses]

i love the library so much. omg. libraries are so awesome and wonderful and cool and like. i think i’m hyperventilating. out of everhthing in the word libraries are the one thing that have resisted capitalism. omg. the library is so amazing