#miscellany

[jennycalendar]

i'm gonna be so real here i can't come up with a snappy caption for these images i just wanted them next to each other. the dark age as an episode is such a win for bisexuality. we get the two great loves of giles's life in one episode and they never once interact but they both share this moment of existing on the outskirts of an intimacy they don't/can't/will never understand. yet at the same time absolutely they get it because both jenny and ethan are irrevocably changed by giles and their mutual desire to Get Him Back is what eventually destroys them both in one way or another.

and GOD the difference in the way giles grips ethan's hair vs. cups jenny's face!!!! does that not say it all??? jenny as quietly unnerved by a violence she has never experienced vs. ethan as quietly resentful about an unguarded intimacy he has never experienced. jenny knows he's never gonna touch her like that & ethan knows he's never gonna touch him like that. very different contexts.

[finalfantasythings]

Thank you for the memories.

[windermeresimblr]

This week was a bit of a bust.

I played up to the challenge portion of the bachelor save, so all that's left is last-minute socialization and a rose challenge.

I also got distracted and started working on a bronze-age style hairnet, which I have put images of below the jump.

On the not so great side, my hearing aids broke, so I had to send them away to get repaired. While fortunately they're under warranty, there's no warranty for inconvenience!

The hairnet itself is from Almighty Hat's "Whites Load" collection. I adjusted the texture so there's just a strip holding the hairnet to the head. The hair is a de-bunned Buckley Bella, which itself is an undecorated Elegant Teardrop Maang Tikka. I think the shadows will vanish in TSRW. I hope.

It's inspired by various Bronze Age finds, though a good hairnet is of course classic enough to be used in any period. I have no idea how I'm going to bone this. It's going to be teen through elder, mostly because I don't think this hair has been made for children.

[symphony-calamity]

I think Wikipedia should have a feature where you tell it some articles you enjoyed recently and it recommends you some new ones. This feature would be purely opt-in because fuck having algorithms forced on us but I think it would be fun and silly

[upennmanuscripts]

A wee unboxing video for a wee manuscript! We have looked at Ms. Codex 1248 before; see:

It's a 15th c. Italian Liturgical Miscellany, kept in a modern clamshell box.

Record: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9943817163503681

[16ruedelaverrerie]

Rest of messages in thread not included for reasons of mortifying inadequacy on my part! Anon you sent this in on August 22. I just want to type that out loud so that I can nail my shame to my front door like Martin Luther with his 95 Theses, except every thesis is "Nat can't fucking answer a single thing in an even vaguely timely manner". I would say I'm sorry for what I have become, but the truth is that I was ever thus. I'm sorry for what I have always been.

I'm sorry as well that it is so hard to find me across platforms because I have a thousand different usernames! Some of it used to be intentional, but intent or none, it functions as a real pain in the ass and I apologize. I've been trying to address this issue via the sidebar link on this blog and the cross-platform links in the author's notes on AO3, but we could have avoided all this if I had just stuck to a single identifying name. Still, DESPITE MY BEST EFFORTS TO THE CONTRARY, I'm so glad that you found me! Not least because it has led to you sending this absolute conflict-free lab-grown diamond necklace of messages! Thank you so so so much 😭💕 It's hard for me to explain this in a sensible manner, but my slowness in answering genuinely is in large part because the message means so much to me. I want to save the act of answering for a moment when I can feel articulate enough to do some justice to the kindness you have shown me, but then it's 10PM every night when I finish writing work emails and I am incapable of stringing two words together. Tomorrow, I think, I will try again! And then it's another 10PM and another 10PM and more than two months goes by before I have to accept that I will never feel articulate enough to respond the way that you deserve. That would be true at any other time of day, besides!

But thank you. I hope that you can stick around for the frustratingly glacial pace at which I do anything at all; what I lack in output, I make up for in stubbornness. One day, 88 will be a complete fic, even if I have to break my own bones to do it. (Please don't ask me the perfectly legitimate question of why broken bones would facilitate fic writing. It is a statement about the strength of my resolution, but it is an incomprehensible statement.)

This is such an interesting question! HOW DID I? I'm combing through my (admittedly blurry) autobiographical memories, but I can't seem to find a particular originary point for reading. Saying "I've always been a reader" is so boring, and it implies a certain kind of relationship with literature that I don't think I actually have-- I didn't particularly gravitate towards reading at the expense of other activities, and I read such a hodgepodge mixture of stuff that I can't fathom what it was about the act of reading that I actually enjoyed. And now, well, I read almost exclusively for work, to the degree that the thought of reading for pleasure makes me recoil.

The writing, I do have an originary point for. I was in elementary school, and my class had recently held a small creative writing competition; we were at an age where it was embarrassing to try very hard to achieve anything, so I blew it off, because I had to perform coolness due to it not coming naturally to me. Our homeroom teacher announced the winner, and asked that they read out loud their winning entry for the rest of the class. They did, and I remember thinking very clearly: This is fine, but I could do it better if I tried.

This is a story that is immensely unflattering to me-- or rather, it's a devastatingly accurate portrayal of me. It contains all the seeds of my worst qualities as a writer and a human being: competitiveness in something I consider myself to be proficient at, the need for external validation, baseless arrogance. But when I found myself being so hideously jealous of that kid, it wasn't primarily jealousy over the fact that they had won something; I was jealous that they had this stage time to show people what the world looked like to them. I felt robbed of the chance to connect with people in that way. Of course, no one robbed me of anything -- I chose to pretend that I was too cool for school -- and there was absolutely no reason to think that I would have won the competition and gotten that stage time for myself, even if I had tried as hard as I could. But still, it got me writing. Not because I had anything to say, but because whatever banal cut-rate shit I would end up saying, I just wanted someone else to hear it and tell me that I made sense to them. That's still why I do it, I think.

Seeing as how my twitter is just my tumblr with 100% less overwrought rambling, I can't decide whether you had a worse experience or a better one than binging this blog instead! On the one hand, I can't recommend the overwrought rambling; on the other hand, what's left after the overwrought rambling is excised is still just a lot of mid art determined to insist that dick jokes comprise an entire genre of creative output. IT'S DISMAL EITHER WAY! But it's too late for you! (Thank you.)

Anon!!!!! The very FACT THAT YOU SENT ME A ONE PIECE MESSAGE!!! My past in One Piece fandom is a really deep cut in that it very rarely comes up on this blog, so I'm super pleased that you thought of me!!!!!!!!!! 💖

Tragically, I have still not watched it. I KNOW, PLEASE DON'T THROW ME OUT OF THIS PORTHOLE. I agree wholeheartedly with you-- I'm thrilled that it got new fans into OP, and that it was made with so much visible love! I wouldn't say that I'm someone who is ever looking for live action versions of stuff -- if push came to shove, I'd probably admit that I don't necessarily see the inherent appeal of live action adaptations -- but it makes me truly happy to hear all the enthusiasm and praise for this one!!! Me not watching it yet mostly has to do with the aforementioned "it's 10PM when I finish writing work emails" problem.

As someone who is unfortunately very well-acquainted with what I am into (or so I must presume, by the sheer miracle of you sending me an OP message), it probably comes as no surprise to you that the single most affecting piece of promotional media that I encountered was a teaser clip from the Baratie arc. Anon when I tell you THE BREATH CAUGHT IN MY THROAT. THE BARATIE SHOT LIKE A RESTAURANT SHOW!!!! THE BARATIE!!!!!!!! WHERE MY SON WAS RAISED! HIS FISH-HEADED NURSERY! MY SON! THE DARLING OF THE BARATIE! A KITCHEN PACKED TO THE GILLS WITH SHORT TEMPERS! THE THORN IN THEIR SIDE! THE APPLE OF THEIR EYE! CRADLED TO SLEEP BY THE WATERS THAT TOOK HIM IN! GENTLED TO WARMTH BY A COMMERCIAL GAS RANGE! THE BRINE-SWEET CHILDHOOD HOME OF MY SON!!!!!

One Piece was so early for me that I can't even distinguish what came first, my Sanji bias or my commercial kitchen obsession. What remains crystal clear is that I am predictable in my perversions. I will watch it, anon. Someday hopefully soon.

[cuppakasha]

Lizard in the video game store what crimes will he commit

[wi1he1mina]

Happy allergy season :,)

[fidelesir]

County Wiltshire, June 1588. Accompanying mine compagnions to the annual Computre Age Faire.

[tentakrool]

getting tired of having a real job, seriously considering going into a new field. no not a specific field just any field, preferably corn or wheat so I can lay down and disappear. soybeans are also acceptable.

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Gazette confession:

I have to look up Ian's henchmen's names for every article, because other than Shaw's I do not know them.

[jennycalendar]

thinking about it some more rn and i think the reason amy resonates so hard w me is that she is kind of fucking shitty to people. she is inconsiderate when it comes to rory, has these lofty expectations that the doctor can never reach, and all of this is coming from her own comfort (not ALWAYS but OFTEN) taking precedent over the feelings of so many other people. and this is not something that the rtd era companions had going on in the same way — they had moments of smallness and pettiness but they were all such fundamentally compassionate and big hearted individuals who always tried to do the right thing by the world at large! but amy, while decisively caring, cares about herself and her circle first and foremost. she is on a Wild Crazy Adventure and helps people when she can but is predominantly just there to have fun and be silly and not have to commit to anything real. and to have that presented as the lovable and sympathetic companion …. idk i kinda vibe with that. i like it :) i like that she is kinda terrible sometimes and expects the doctor to fix everything and takes rory for granted and they both still love her so much.

[finalfantasythings]

Remember when Square Enix withheld Type-0 from the West for four years, released it with shitty English voice acting and horrid motion sickness inducing camera controls, created a sequel teaser that made no sense, launched a bunch of cash grab mobile spin-offs that either flopped or were outright canceled, then finally threw their hands up and said lol fuck these fruity ass kids

[crazghetti]

hrgh old? kinda, not that old def

[symphony-calamity]

We should invent new terms for people who are pedantic about grammar that do not involve comparing them to fascists.

[hauntedprinter]

Theres something so personal about the piece of media you get attached to in your teens and then revisit in your late twenties and observe how much it shaped your ideals and personality, with a tinge of sadness for the innocence lost along the way. Its so personal.