questions I think would be fun to be asked

(this post was stolen from @teenage-mutant-ninja-freak, since it couldn't be reblogged anymore)

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

publishers are not writers. publishing companies are not the academics who submit to them. Science and Nature and all the big, rich journals academics have to submit to are Not the researchers who submit papers to them! your average academic is not the one asking for money to access their paper, and it is unfair to lump them in with those journals when you complain about barriers of access to information

Obsessed with how rogue planet introduces us to anakin and obi-wan, three years post phantom menace and I think this blurb describes both their dynamic and mentality very well

Anakin: I don't really care about trophies, my life trained me to bite and kick until I come out on the other side. Also I'm mostly just interested in Being Amazing.

Obi-Wan: We must be flamboyant and Cool and Composed even if we die. Especially if we die.

my favorite thing about Corporal Carrot is that he’s a romantic hero plopped right in the middle of the greediest cesspit of a chaotic neutral city ever to debase the pages of literature, and yet instead of having his shining idealism destroyed by an uncaring reality, he makes reality embarrassedly put down the weapons and agree to make nice, and then mutter an awkward “Good morning” whenever it passes him on the street.

And conversely, Vimes is a noir hero in a noir setting (Ankh-Morpork) but instead of an acceptance of the unstoppable awfulness of people in power, these are stories about Vimes dragging them in by their neck and saying, I’ll arrest you, yes, even you.

I love a genre breaking story, and always loved that Terry Pratchett wrote them, but hadn’t considered that these break genre in two very different directions. (For those who haven’t read them, the two characters work closely together and Mr Fantasy, Destiny’s Chosen Polite Refuser of Awfulness and Destiny, really looks up to Mr Screw You Nihilism and Also The Monarchy as a shining example he will follow.)

I also love tumblr because here I can find long-form text analyses of media, either that I already love or gain new appreciation for by seeing their love. I’ve gone on sprees of meta reading on various tumblrs just to bask in that love for story, and celebration of its meaning. I’ve also been asked after panels for more exact citations of that extremely insightful scholarly article I was quoting from… I do of course direct them here. They don’t realise treasures await!

Carrot and Vimes are an especially fun dynamic due to Carrot being the One True King of Ankh-Morpork by heritage… who is happily subordinate to Vimes, a scion of a king-killer and a devoted anti-monarchist and egalitarian. Carrot doesn’t want to be in charge or on a throne, he just wants to be Some Guy Doing Good; meanwhile, Vimes gets bestowed with title upon title and as ennobled as Vetinari can possibly make him without actually bedazzling him wholesale, like an extremely grumpy cat shoved into an elaborate Halloween costume. It’s fantastic.

Vetinari gives Vimes fancy titles for safekeeping like a spy entrusting coded messages to a messenger who can’t read

was in class the other day and the professor was talking about how he'd be grading our research papers and said "I'll just give you your rubrics, I know you all don't read comments on your essays anyway," and never have I been so surprised to hear any single sentence in my entire life. I immediately said "what? I always read them, what are you talking about?" and he said "okay marina, for you specifically I will print out your paper and annotate it," so I'm not fussed on that front, but I remain taken aback at the idea that most people aren't reading their essay feedback. that's literally what I'm here for, I want to put in effort to do reasonably good work and hear back from someone else who's read it. I literally cannot conceptualize a mindset where I would ignore written feedback that has been given to me. What.

the humble "like" is oft mocked despite what it does for us. "like, three people" is a vastly different statement from "three people". "and i was like 'what the fuck'" is vastly different from "and i said 'what the fuck'". i love you "like" and anyone who says you make people sound stupid will be killed on sight

Like, when used in this manner, functions as a quotative participle that tells the audience the statement that follows it is paraphrased, exaggerated and/or meant to be interpreted as metaphorical instead of literal.

--Terry Pratchett, "A Hat Full of Sky"

i am about to bestow upon you the secret butter technique. i am sorry, but it is french. i am sorry again, this only works with cow butter. i am certain plant based butters wouldn’t work, and alternative animal butters may or may not work

has this ever been you: you have a nicely steamed vegetable, or maybe you want to make the best butter noodles, but you know that if you put butter on those it’ll just melt and you end with kind of greasy noodles or vegetables? don’t you wish it was instead a luscious buttery glaze?

introducing: beurre monté

you will take a small sauce pan, and begin heating it with 1-2 tablespoons of water (use very little water) and bring it to a hard simmer or boil

turn the heat down slightly, and add Butter. how much? however much you dare. (start with 3-4 tablespoons and go from there)

you are going to either whisk Aggressively or you can pick up the saucepan, still holding it over the heat, and swirl aggressively so the butter is skating around the sides of the pan

done correctly, you will have liquid butter that is still emulsified. you have made Butter Sauce. season it with a little salt, and toss whatever you want in it.

if you’re butter splits, i’m sorry. you didn’t agitate it enough to maintain the emulsion, and now you have melted butter.

you can use this knowledge to make other sauces by swapping out the water for another liquid. white wine becomes beurre blanc. red wine is beurre rogue.

you want to CUM? sweat minced shallot in a tiny bit of butter, add white wine and cook it out until it’s reduced by about half. then whisk butter in hard. a few flecks of minced thyme or fennel frond stirred thru, and you eat that with a nice seared fish? or scallop? or even shrimp? wow. you will Nut

your boxed mac and cheese game can also be elevated by cooking your pasta and making a beurre monté first, tossing your pasta in that and adding the cheese packet. wow. hey; you’ll cum

go forth now with this butter secret

-- Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith

have i ever shown you guys my professor’s DNI list

this is environmental storytelling to me. i just KNOW she’s so so tired of gay cottagecore bitches

Smurfs dni

everyone shut the fuck up this is the only funny addition to this post

when dni means "do not illustrate"

Oh that makes more sense

So this is like a mega no go:

Dragon Bones, Stefan Koidl, Digital 2018

Let's see what do we check off ...

dragons

bones as part of the scenery

And you could argue that it is related to violent content, because why else would a dragon die in or above a lake?

So big no no ...

...but...

PRETTYYY

All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"

Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"

"I mean, on the plus side, there's live rats in a lot of places, so the odds of you casting that spell within close enough range of a live rat to work is pretty high? Like, if you've ever had that spell just randomly fizzle out on you, then you tried it again ten minutes later without changing anything and it suddenly worked, a rat probably just wandered into range in that time."

disclaimer: spell does not work in Alberta

Everything you do should be either fun or productive. Tragically most things cannot be both, but never do things that are neither. If it's neither amusing you nor benefitting you, stop that right now.

-- Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent

Highlighting all the hilarious bits and realizing this whole book is going to be yellow by the end.

-- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Just. The imagery. The cadence. The alliteration. This is a middle grade book but Sir Terry didn't write down to his audience.

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

publishers are not writers. publishing companies are not the academics who submit to them. Science and Nature and all the big, rich journals academics have to submit to are Not the researchers who submit papers to them! your average academic is not the one asking for money to access their paper, and it is unfair to lump them in with those journals when you complain about barriers of access to information