wholesome laffy taffy jokes

I'm reading a book named "A Guide to The Correction of Young Gentlemen Or, The Successful Administration Of Physical Discipline To Males, By Females" - essentially, a fantasy femdom BDSM book, written in 1924 by Alice Kerr-Sutherland but first published in 1991.

It has some genuinely fascinating stuff to say about gender, and I feel like it's worth looking at/thinking about in the context of Historical Gender Stuff. This 100 year old book has the following to say:

"The truth is that some young gentlemen would rather they had been born young ladies: they cannot admit this openly, because in the male world to confess as much would lead to instant ostracism if not worse; but they cannot conceal it either, and by preferring the company of girls, and soft, feminine clothing, and by flinching during the rough pursuits to which all boys, willing or no, are occasionally heirs, they attract opprobrium."

"Such boys weep too readily for their fellows' tastes - weeping is a great crime among boys unless it is generally admitted that circumstances left little choice - and are hounded for that reason."

"Just as there are girls who had rather been boys - we all know examples of the type - there are boys who, in a kinder world, would have been born into the gender more suited to their dispositions."

"Many young people of this sort are riven with a guilt they do not deserve but have been forced, by the conventions of society, to adopt; they are confused, ashamed and thoroughly unhappy."

"The ideal thing to do would be to treat these cases on their merits, send them to girls' schools, and so on. (The same thing should happen with those girls who would rather be young gentlemen.) Boys of this sort are girls in any case-in all respects save one."

"Most subjects of this sort have a secret name - a girl's name."

100 year old femdom kink book understands transmisogyny better than the average tumblr user

Texts From Superheroes

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dissertation writing advice

this is amazing and I'm glad I saw it

i do this when im writing fiction. Each fic has a cut document full of discarded dialogue, scene settings, metaphors etc that dont quite fit yet I might want to use down the line or other fics.

my cat somehow took hundreds of selfies on my phone when i was sleeping

my personal favorites

Say what you want about the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park production of Hamlet, but the choices made in that play WORKED. Having Hamlet wear a black hoodie and camo pants and him dramatically putting his hood up when he was pissed off was inspired. Having Horatio video tape Claudius on an iPhone camera from the side of the stage during the play within the play was hilarious. Having the play within the play be a hip hop dance number that represented the murder!?! Fantastic. Having Ophelia be a singer before she went mad and having a beautiful voice that everyone loved to listen to and then seeing her singing get worse and worse as she got nearer to death?!?! Hamlet pulling out his iphone after killing Polonius to show his mom a picture of his dad compared to a picture of Claudius and angrily swiping back and forth between the two as he said “What judgement would step from this… to this?” The crowd fucking lost it every time. Horatio singing to Hamlet as he died made me fully sob every time. The way they did the ghost on stage was so chilling and I can’t even accurately describe it, you just had to be there. Hamlet being deeply exasperated the entire time was just perfect. Hamlet and Horatio had a secret handshake. Laertes inexplicably carried an acoustic guitar case for much of the play which was very funny but also hit you with the heartbreaking implication that he had used to play while Ophelia sang and he stopped carrying it after she died. It was peak teenage-angst-hamlet and it was so dear to me. PLEASE if anyone has a recording, send it to me.

OMG EVERYBODY LISTEN UP!!!

THEY'RE GOING TO BROADCAST THIS PRODUCTION ON PBC FOR FREE!! YOU CAN WATCH IT!! PLEASE DO!!!

Going to try to tag everybody who said they wanted to watch it in the notes:

Broadcast date: May 10th, 2024!!

i don’t remember if i ever shared this here, but a while ago i posted a little twitter thread about bats and gas station snacks and some very talented podficcers made a podfic of it! 🎧

[podfic] Jersey Vigilantes Don't Pump Gas by isweedan & reena_jenkins

original thread (text under the cut):

More on pre-electricity lighting.

Interesting to see this one pop up again after nearly two years - courtesy of @dduane, too! :->

*****

After experiencing a couple more storm-related power cuts since my original post, as well as a couple of after-dark garden BBQs, I've come to the conclusion that C.J. Cherryh puts far too much emphasis on "how dark things were pre-electric light".

For one thing eyes adjust, dilating in dim light to gather whatever illumination is available. Okay, if there's none, there's none - but if there's some, human eyes can make use of it, some better or just faster than others. They're the ones with "good night vision".

Think, for instance, of how little you can see of your unlit bedroom just after you've turned off the lights, and how much more of it you can see if you wake up a couple of hours later.

There's also that business of feeling your way around, risking breaking your neck etc. People get used to their surroundings and, after a while, can feel their way around a familiar location even in total darkness with a fair amount of confidence.

Problems arise when Things Aren't Where They Should Be (or when New Things Arrive) and is when most trips, stumbles, hacked shins and stubbed toes happen, but usually - Lego bricks and upturned UK plugs aside - non-light domestic navigation is incident-free.

*****

Here are a couple of pics from one of those BBQs: one candle and a firepit early on, then the candle, firepit and an oil lamp much later, all much more obvious than DD's iPad screen.

Though I remain surprised at how well my phonecam was handling this low light, my own unassisted eyes were doing far better. For instance, that area between the table and the firepit wasn't such an impenetrable pool of darkness as it appears in the photo.

I see (hah!) no reason why those same Accustomed Eyes would have any more difficulty with candles or oil lamps as interior lighting, even without the mirrors or reflectors in my previous post.

With those, and with white interior walls, things would be even brighter. There's a reason why so many reconstructed period buildings in Folk Museums etc. are (authentically) whitewashed not just outside but inside as well. It was cheap, had disinfectant qualities, and was a reflective surface. Win, win and win.

*****

All right, there were no switches to turn on a light. But there was no need for what C.J. describes as stumbling about to reach the fire, because there were tinderboxes and, for many centuries before them, flint and steel. Since "firesteels" have been heraldic charges since the 1100s, the actual tool must have been in use for even longer.

Tinderboxes were fire-starter sets with flint, steel and "tinder" all packed into (surprise!) a box. The tinder was easily lit ignition material, often "charcloth", fabric baked in an airtight jar or tin which would now start to glow just from a spark.

They're mentioned in both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Oddly enough, "Hobbit" mentions matches in a couple of places, but I suspect that's a carry-over from when it was just a children's story, not part of the main Legendarium.

Tinderboxes could be simple, just a basic flint-and-steel kit with some tinder for the sparks to fall on...

...or elaborate like this one, with a fancy striker, charcloth, kindling material and even wooden "spills" (long splinters) to transfer flame to a candle or the kindling...

This tinderbox even doubles as a candlestick, complete with a snuffer which would have been inside along with everything else.

Here's a close-up of the striker box with its inner and outer lids open:

What looks like a short pencil with an eraser is actually the striker. A bit of tinder or charcloth would have been pulled through that small hole in the outer lid, which was then closed.

There was a rough steel surface on the lid, and the striker was scraped along it, like so:

This was done for a TV show or film, so the tinder was probably made more flammable with, possibly, lighter fuel. That would be thoroughly appropriate, since a Zippo or similar lighter works on exactly the same principle.

A real-life version of any tinderbox would usually just produce glowing embers needing blown on to make a flame, which is shown sometimes in movies - especially as a will-it-light-or-won't-it? tension build - but is usually a bit slow and non-visual for screen work.

*****

There were even flintlock tinderboxes which worked with the same mechanism as those on firearms. Here's a pocket version:

Here are a couple of bedside versions, once again complete with a candlestick:

And here are three (for home defence?) with a spotlight candle lantern on one side and a double-trigger pistol on the other.

Pull one trigger to light the candle, pull the other trigger to fire the gun.

What could possibly go wrong? :-P

*****

Those pistol lanterns, magnified by lenses, weren't just to let their owner see what they were shooting at: they would also have dazzled whatever miscreant was sneaking around in the dark, irises dilated to make best use of available glimmer.

Swordsmen both good and bad knew this trick too, and various fight manuals taught how to manage a thumb-shuttered lamp encountered suddenly in a dark alley.

There's a sword-and-lantern combat in the 1973 "Three Musketeers" between Michael York (D'Artagnan) and Christopher Lee (Rochefort), which was a great idea.

Unfortunately it failed in execution because the "Hollywood Darkness" which let viewers see the action, wasn't dark enough to emphasise the hazards / advantages of snapping the lamps open and shut.

This TV screencap (can't get a better one, the DVD won't run in a computer drive) shows what I mean.

In fact, like the photos of the BBQ, this image - and entire fight - looks even brighter through "real eyes" than with the phonecam. Just as there can be too much dark in a night scene, there can also be too much light.

*****

One last thing I found when assembling pics for the post were Folding Candle-lanterns.

They were used from about the mid-1700s to the later 20th century (Swiss Army ca. 1978) as travel accessories and emergency equipment, and IMO - I've Made A Note - they'd fit right into a fantasy world whose tech level was able to make them.

The first and last are reproductions: this one is real, from about 1830.

The clear part was mica - a transparent mineral which can be split into thin flexible sheets - while others use horn / parchment, though both of these are translucent rather than transparent. Regardless, all were far less likely to break than glass.

One or two inner surfaces were usually tin, giving the lantern its own built-in reflector, and tech-level-wise, tin as a shiny or decorative finish has been used since Roman times.

I'm pretty sure that top-of-the-line models could also have been finished with their own matching, maybe even built-in, tinderboxes.

And if real ones didn't, fictional ones certainly could. :->

People who make assumptions about period lighting are also imagining a room from a modern perspective and what it would take to replicate the lighting sources we have in a modern space, i.e. a ceiling light or a table lamp, both of which are substituted with candles, either a chandelier or a candlestick. There's the assumption that candles are the only things lighting a room.

Firstly, It's been stated before, but even a few candles do a damn good job if you allow your eyes time to adjust. Because I am an annoying romantic, I read by candlelight sometimes, and by positioning about four in the right spots, I can have great lighting for my book and good lighting for the rest of the room. It's not going to replicate daylight, but you're going to be able to see just fine.

But also, most buildings prior to the 20th century were built to accommodate lack of heat as well as lack of light, and this meant that there was a fireplace, often in every single room. Yes, you have to scatter small fires across the room, but on one wall you are going to have a giant fire that's going to help quite a bit. How much light that gives off depends on the size and construction of the fireplace, but it's an important addition.

Note on @beggars-opera's excellent notes: It might be WAY too expensive and risky to put a whole fucking fireplace in every single sleeper's room! Building technology (can you make enough chimneys or some kind of ventilation, WITHOUT compromising the building's integrity?), the risk of accidentally starting a building fire (castle kitchens were often separated from the main buildings because all that fire in one place is NOT good), and simply the insane cost of heating (how many acres of firewood would your subjects need to cut down for a dozen fireplaces???) would probably bankrupt people!

So what can you do if you're a lower noble in a less-prestigious manor, or a noble living in a VERY old castle that either can't be renovated or that just has a lot of emotional attachment behind it?

Then you buy a brazier, stick it near the bed, and crack a window open!

As for lighting in a place where candles may ALSO be extremely expensive: A chandler would often be employed by the wealthy, or they might be roaming around regular clients' homes. Peasants and townsfolk would NOT be buying fancy beeswax candles; they'd have a chandler stop by and make however many tallow candles they can get from leftover meat trimmings!

Many people used oil lamps for lighting, usually in Arabia, India, and prehistoric Europe! The oldest known oil lamp was found in the Lascaux caves, if you want a time reference!

With an oil lamp, you just need a wick, a cup/bowl-shaped container, and whatever oil you don't need for eating! Fine perfumed oil or melted beeswax could be used by the church, or by a wealthy noble with money to literally burn; peasants could easily repurpose spoiled cooking oil or meat trimmings for their lamps.

Note on using tallow/animal-fat for candles and lamps: I have rarely seen anyone use or even mention tallow candles instead of beeswax; the only time I've seen it was in the Iron-Age mythology of Gaelic Ireland. This is probably a symptom of how well-off we are compared to preindustrial folks, but beeswax was (and really still is) VERY expensive!!! You can burn a LOT of other fuels.

Rancid oil or burning fat may not smell nice, and tallow in general is often smoky, but if you're poor? You'd be used to that, and you cannot afford to throw too much away.

Speaking of "other fuels" in creepy folklore for the goths and horror writers: The Hand of Glory involves chopping the hand off a hanged man or a murderer, making a candle from their body-fat, and then using it as a magical "candlestick."

Good additions - my knowledge is based on 17th and 18th century New England, where homes were generally heated by a single central chimney that has multiple openings into the different rooms of the house, generally two or three on each floor. You can see what this looks like on this house that burned down, leaving the chimney intact:

This did take an incredible amount of firewood and is a large part of why most of this area is now new-growth forest, because it became deforested very quickly. However, you would generally bank the fire in whatever rooms you were not using to preserve hot coals for the future, and then do the same in the room you were sleeping in before bed, so you didn’t have to have the place blazing all day and night long.

Simony broke the silence by patting Brutha on the shoulder.

"It will all work out," he said. "We won't lose. After all," he smiled encouragingly, "we have God on our side."

Brutha turned. His fist shot out. It wasn't a scientific blow, but it was hard enough to spin Simony around. He clutched his chin.

"What was that for? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"We get the gods we deserve," said Brutha, "and I think we don't deserve any. Stupid. Stupid. The sanest man I've met this year lives up a pole in the desert. Stupid. I think I ought to join him."

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"9-1-1" S7.E06. firefighters + some text posts

I found an interesting thread on twitter about how fandom puts the well- being of fictional characters above that of actual abuse victims and I wanted to share it cause some of y'all really need to read

[ID: a twitter thread. Witch Hazel @ HazelMonforton: "it's pretty easy to advocate for fictional characters when they literally do not exist and therefore cannot disagree with you or question your advocacy"

peony @ p_e_0_n_y responds: "It's what I call the 'perfect victim complex'

People love the IDEA of helping victims, but they don't actually want to deal with real victims. Because a fake victim can be a tool for whatever idea or point of view you want to push, where a real person cannot.

A Schrodinger's Victim, who can hypothetically exist when needed to win arguments, but remains conveniently absent, silent, unobtrusive, and most importantly never counters the speaker's thoughts, opinions or ideas.

A real victim can counter your predetermined beliefs. A real victim could make you face their humanity and complexity, and disagree with your opinions about how to help them

A phantom victim cannot. A hypothetical victim cannot. They can be whatever you want them to be.

It's why people ramble on about helping 'starving kids in 3rd world countries', but won't do a damn thing for the poor kids in the neighborhood.

It's why people want to ban sex work to save sex workers but never listen to actual sex workers.

It's why a Columbine survivor's story was misattributed to a dead girl, because the dead girl can have a whole mythos and moral crusade made up about her and never counter it, like the living girl can.

It's why people would rather defend fictional characters and the hypothetical victims who maybe, potentially, *might* be hurt by fiction, and not actual victims of abuse and grooming who tell them they're {their} methodology and conclusions are wrong.

The folks angry that this is to 'justify pedophilic ships' while ignoring actual survivors who say not to equate fanfiction ship wars to their very real abuse are some {of} the exact type of clowns I'm talking about here.

Please exit through the gift shop." /id]

id like to point out that the right wing loves unborn babies but doesn't do shit for alive mothers... and they love soldiers who are unable to participate in politics during their term of service, while firmly ignoring the self-advocacy of veterans.

meanwhile petty, self-absorbed antis build elaborate crusades on behalf of their fictional friends so as to destroy the lives of real artists.

Kabru thinks he's playing 5D chess but Laios and Falin are cooking and eating the pieces

girldad mode activate