When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf

here's a mashed potato recipe from my homophobic mother that i swore to never share that would pair perfectly!

(6 servings)

-2lbs red potatoes

-1 cup butter (2 sticks)

-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)

-Chives (optional)

-Salt & Pepper to taste

1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U don't even have to chop them just wash them

2. boil til soft!

3. Drain

4. Mash (usually they're small enough you can use a fork if u don't have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix

5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing

I like my mashed potato consistancy more lumpy but its all up to you!! Peel the potatoes or keep them on, it literally makes the creamiest fluffiest mashed potatoes which she always served with the nastiest fuckin meatloaf

Now if anybody got some revenge rolls and revenge green bean casserole we'll get a full meal

Got room for desert? Cus my Grandma was just a generaly evil old hag who was abusive to my mum and my siblings also you guessed it since I came out I was not said hello to at christmas

She made pretty god Dampfnudeln (its like a sweet bread rool you eat hot and with vanilla sauce)

1. Put 300 gram flour into a bowl and make an indent in the middle

2.combine

mix until smooth

3.mix into part of the flour but leave a big flour rim on the outside

4.set 30 gram of Butter on the flour rim and cover everything with a towel

let sit till you see bubbles in the dough

5. add

and knead the dough until smooth

6. put

into a heat resistant glass bowl and let melt (the glass bowl is quite important)

7. Form about 12 dough rolls and put them into the milk

8. Cover with a lid (any lid will go it does not need to be sealed air tight)

Let bake in the pre heated oven at 200°C for about 30 minutes or until they start to get brown and fluffy

9. Serve with vanilla sauce or fresh fruit

Behold the Fuck You buffet

So, I never came out to my evil grandmother, for two reasons. One, my dad asked me please not to because he didn’t want to deal with her shit, and two, see “evil”. Not fucking worth it. I was glad she died before I got married.

These were her mama’s biscuits, and her mama was a mean old woman, too. I’ll spite ‘em both and post it for y’all.

Angel Biscuits 2 pkg. yeast 1 T. warm water 2 T. sugar

5 C. sifted flour 3 t. baking powder rounded 1 1/2 t. salt 1/2 t. baking soda rounded 1 C. shortening or oleo 2 C. buttermilk Dissolve yeast in water and sugar. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and soda into a large bowl. Cut in shortening. Add buttermilk and yeast mixture. Mix well. Turn dough out onto a floured board and knead 2 or 3 times. Roll dough out 1/2 inch thick. Cut biscuits. Let set 45 minutes to 1 hour to rise. Bake at 400F. for 12-15 minutes. Note: Dough may be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until needed.

This is excellent.

this post is a true gift

Since someone mentioned a revenge green bean casserole, here you go. I follow my evil grandmother's recipe this way, and it turns out rather well for me, every harvest time holiday, but one can always replace the canned beans with frozen or fresh. 'Cause gods know fresh always tastes better, when you can afford it. 1 can green beans, long cut 1 can mushroom soup 2 tablespoons dried minced onions 1 tablespoon dried minced garlic 1 container of French's fried onions (canned goods aisle, usually, if you've never seen these) Preheat to 325. Mix the beans, the soup, the minced onions, and the minced garlic. Pour into your baking dish. Bake this thing for about 30 minutes (longer if you needed a giant batch or if it hasn't turned a bit golden across the top; I am the most haphazard of cooks), and then add the French's fried onions across the top. Put the mess back in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the fried onions look crispy. Not burned, just crispy. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I always do.

(reblogging so I’ll remember to put all these into Paprika) (especially the mashed-potato one)

Tumblr rn

Made a wallpaper for my new phone~

Introducing: Moth to a Flame, the final book in my trilogy about a traumatised teenage assassin trying (and mostly failing) to live a normal life in a fictional closed city in Yorkshire. And also in Leeds, as this graphic suggests 😆 Sorry, that's sort of a spoiler for THK...

I figured I'd give you all three of these graphics so you can get a sense of the overall vibes of the trilogy. And so you know why I'm still using this overly cutesy font, because 2022!me made this decision and I guess I'm sticking with it. I know most people use these graphics to label tropes you'll find in the book, but aside from "found family", I'm not sure any of these really count as tropes. (New trope: Yorkshire?) You can also tell I've been getting steadily worse at marketing since 2022. Or maybe better. Who's to say, really.

(Yes, it does annoy me that the arrows for book one go in the opposite direction. No, not enough to re-make the whole thing.)

And if you're wondering what constitutes "considerably less murder"... I tried to track the body count of THK, and lost count at around 50. MTAF, by contrast, has, like ... 3 murders? Very different vibe. THK was when I broke everything and MTAF is where I slowly start putting it back together. This is the Bucky Barnes Recovery Fic of the series. We're talking grief, grappling with trauma, learning to be a person again, finding solidarity with others who've been messed up by the military and the arms industry, possibly joining a support group full of gay communists, and ultimately, realising that sometimes it's not enough to escape, because the whole system needs to be dismantled to stop it from hurting anyone else. I'm terrified no one will like it because they're here for the violence, but it was important to me to write it this way.

It's coming in May! You can preorder it now! And if you haven't read the first two books, you've got a perfect amount of time to buy and read those ahead of book 3's release to minimise cliffhanger agony.

Also: it still contains Esperanto, street art, no romance, an aroace protagonist, and bad life choices. I just figured those were a given at this point and didn't put them on the graphic.

Morning reblog with the autocorrect-induced typos corrected! (I hope...)

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/

I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful

if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.

but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.

christ, he's good.

the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.

Get this man a starring role as Marc Antony in a southern adaptation of this show PLEASE.

This man is fantastic. 💕

The thing that just destroys me about this, though -- we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which...let's be fair, most are, but not the way it's said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I'm not really sure how to explain it except... like... "Thrice" is not a word you hear in common speech...unless you're in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.

Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.

One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.

In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.

One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.

I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.

This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:

First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.

Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.

TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

To Summarize:

Well…..

FUCK

csak egy nátha!!

article link

Wow.

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

Deep breath.

I am a solidly middle-aged fangirl, and my last real fan community before OFMD was the X-Files. (I feel like I am not the only one here who fits that description).

The news that we aren’t getting a new season of Our Flag Means Death is hitting me harder than I expected.

So I am thinking about Scully.

There’s this X-Files episode called “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” The plot is about a guy who can see into the future and tell people how they die.

Scully asks him, "How do I die?"

And Clyde Bruckman replies, simply, "You don't."

I've seen fans speculate that Scully winds up becoming immortal by the end of the series. But, 22 years after the end of the show's original run, that line has taken on a new meaning for me.

Scully doesn't die, she can't die, because I still think about her. Scully is immortal because there are fans still writing her into stories, still making art, still getting inspired by her and pursuing medicine and science.

You cannot truly kill a story. You can cancel a TV show. You can, if you're an asshole, make fun of fan creators and their ideas. If you're really an asshole (and a media conglomerate), you can send them cease and desist letters and tell them to stop making art that breathes new life into that story. But the story will not die.

I draw a lot of hope from the long, long history of fandom. The people who loved stories enough to keep them alive, even when it wasn't clear that there would ever be another "official" work in their lifetimes. The Sherlock Holmes fans. The Star Trek fans.

How does a story die?

It doesn’t.

Dear Tumblr, I have been desperately wanting to share this news with you since May last year and now I finally can: Gollancz is publishing not one, not two, but THREE of my queer medieval retellings over the next few years! You'll have seen me posting little bits about these books in the past, but I'm so excited to get to share them with you properly.

First up in 2025: The Wolf and His King, a queer retelling of Bisclavret that uses werewolfism as a metaphor to explore chronic pain and illness. It's also very much about gay yearning, fealty, and the mortifying ordeal of being known. Partially in second person and partially in verse, you can see my previous posts about it under the tag the wolf and his king or, for the really early ones, werewolves and gay yearning.

In 2026, I'm bringing you The Animals We Became [working title], which is a queertrans retelling of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, looking at gender, compulsory heterosexuality, and trauma, via nonconsensual shapeshifting. Lotta trans vibes, lotta trauma; I wrote a first draft of this last year because I got carried away writing the sample chapters for my proposal and I'm excited to get deeper into it in edits. Aka t4t shapeshifting and trauma; generally tagged as also owls are transmasculine now.

And finally, in 2027, which is the one I've honestly been most excited to tell you guys about, it's To Run With The Hound [working title]. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I wrote a book with this title way back in 2018… well, the one I've sold isn't exactly that book, it's a proposal for how I intend to completely rewrite that book from the ground up, but yes, this is it: my Cú Chulainn novel, my queer medieval Irish book, my (hopefully) magnum opus. Haven't written it yet, but the plan is to use a nonlinear narrative to explore why Táin Bó Cúailnge is a tragedy, featuring a great many feelings about Fer Diad, Láeg, and Cú Chulainn himself.

There's a bit more detail and some FAQs on my website right now, but the most important thing is QUEER MEDIEVAL BOOKS WRITTEN BY SOMEBODY WITH MULTIPLE DEGREES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE. If that sounds like your jam, stick around.

Hey, if you're a minor and you're following my blog, I just need you to be aware:

You have been on this earth for fewer years than my cat has.

She turns 20 this week, everyone please say happy birthday 🥳💖

Update! She tolerated wearing a hat for the occasion ✨

Good news, everyone!! 🎉

When absolutely 0 of Biden’s accomplishments have made any kind of news, and we’ve been fed a steady diet of fear and panic for 3 years, no one gets to be shocked when he loses the next election to Donald 2.0.

Posting anything positive about the president here will get you called a capitalist bootlicker.

What do we expect to happen?

Anger sells better. Anger feels better, it feels righteous.

It’s easier to protest against a president you don’t like then to actually remain in charge and keep pushing ahead, even if small, consistent accomplishments are all you receive.

I know I’ll never be missing an election in my life again (barring some kind of major medical event).

I just wish it weren’t so damn frustrating, feeling like you’re screaming into the void constantly, fighting against apathy.

CMS just announced that the government will start taking high-cost drugs that were developed with taxpayer dollars and start pulling patents to force competition and low cost generics. That’s fucking momentous.

I saw 1 news article on it. I wouldn’t have known it happened if I didn’t read the news every day. This should have caused the kind of celebration that erupted when companies started announcing $35 insulin caps. Why didn’t it?

Low cost hearing aids, lower and $0 student loans, concrete investments in green architecture…there was an announcement like 2 days ago to replace all leaded pipes out of US cities over the next 10 years, which will be an absolute boon in jobs for construction workers and can make our homes safer for kids. I’m sure I’ll see a headline in a year, “Biden’s lead pipe program causes drivers traffic headaches.”

Republicans want 20 foot concrete barriers topped with barbed wire across the entire southern border, and Democrats want amnesty and ease to citizenship for just about anyone who crosses, and it really seems like until a compromise is made somewhere in there, Republicans will continue to turn out in massive numbers to elections because God told them to, and Democrats will continue to stay home because the last president didn’t accomplish 100% of their goals and voting for an imperfect president is a personal and ethical failing.

Now take that mentality and spread it over every single social and economic issue.

I remember how utterly scared and angry we were sone years ago when Trump was trying to bankrupt the USPS. People were talking about it left right and sideways, asking people to buy from the USPS gift shop, start a stamp collection, anything. Then, Biden got elected and put a huge stop to that by getting rid of the unfair laws that only the USPS had to abide by. Overnight, the USPS was saved, and how did everyone react?

They didn't. It was hardly mentioned. Not a blip.

Same exact thing when it came to net neutrality!! It was DEVASTATING when it was killed. People died in wildfires because Internet providers throttled data of firefighters. Xfinity actually stole identities in order to make it happen.

About a month ago, BAM, it was restored because Biden appointed a Democratic leader to the FFC. Did anyone talk about it? Nope. I saw ONE post.

Adding to this list, the Biden-Harris administration has also:

And honestly, this administration has done so much more that I don’t have time to list - with wide-ranging effects that won’t be fully felt for another few years, but are MONUMENTAL for our country, our healthcare, our environment, our jobs, and our futures.

Please don’t allow shills and bots to convince you that voting doesn’t matter or that your vote is inconsequential.

Please register and vote in 2024.

Please.

This is a stupid conversation! and I'm not going to continue it! literally so fucking correct

What I’m really proud of is the fact that he made SURE the audience understood why the caller was being an idiot. He made a PERFECT comparison, gave the caller an honest chance to re-evaluate and change his mind. His point landed, everyone knew it, even the caller (note his pause and almost hesitancy after being asked).

But when the caller decided to bulldoze on anyway, because god forbid actually listen to the other person in the conversation, the expert cut him off and refused his time. And good for him.

[VD: A tweet by @ g33kgurli, tweeted at 9:47 PM on Dec 17, 2021. It reads, "Perhaps the best clap back to antivaxxers and antimaskers." Attached is a video from The Thom Hartmann Program, where Hartmann is talking with a caller. The conversation goes as follows:

Caller: Hey Thom. Uh, I was listening to you for the last hour so, um, I heard survival of the fittest. Um, you know some of us choose not to vaccinate and uh--

Hartmann: You're nuts, Nicholas.

Caller: --because we work very hard about staying fit, eating healthy, and our natural immune system.

Hartmann: So Nicholas if you're so healthy, would you have unprotected sex with somebody who has syphilis or gonorrhea?

Caller: You're missing the point.

Hartmann: No, I'm not missing the point. They're contagious diseases. Would you have unprotected sex with somebody who has syphilis and gonorrhea and not worry about it because you're so healthy?

Caller: [pause] No, I wouldn't do that.

Hartmann: Okay, then why would you expose yourself to covid without having some protection?

Caller: Because the protection is my natural immunity.

Hartmann: No, it's not. Tell that--

Caller: Yes, yes, my natural immune system--

Hartmann: Tell that to eight hundred thousand dead Americans. Nicholas, this is- this is a stupid conversation and I'm not going to continue it.

/end VD]

Everyone who’s ever died of a disease had an immune system

…i may have put way too much time into this

Can’t say I was expecting that.

#I know the TARDIS has a lot of rooms but the empty control room shot absolutely implies#that this is just the TARDIS vibing by herself with the others are out saving the day etc#and that makes this for me (via @starsailorstories)

She isn’t alone 12s passed out on the floor

The Bookworm & The Cactus Friend - (2024)

Two artworks inspired by the works of Carl Spitzweg, The Bookworm and The Cactus Friend (Note: I drew the characters but the backgrounds are the ones from the original paintings with a small amount of reworking here and there)

Take this with you

to all my white followers who stew in unnecessary guilt trying to come to terms with the privilege you have, watch this

White people and White passing people, this is a good video

Listed fandom fun

A bit of random data before we jump into the rankings for listed fandoms …

Since the numbers post yesterday we've had signups for nearly 60 new auctions, bringing the current total to 779. That beats the number of signups for 2016/7, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, and puts us withing spitting distance of our record last year of 819. Can we do it? Will we do it? Signal boost FTH posts and encourage others to participate. More money raised for good causes, more fanworks in the world — it's a win/win!

We posted yesterday about the state of our unlisted write-in fandoms (we've had nine new ones since then!). Time to check in with the rankings for the listed fandoms.

At the top of the pack we have:

87 K-Pop * 66 Good Omens 50 Sherlock Holmes * 44 Harry Potter * 37 Marvel * 32 DC * 31 Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed 27 Red, White, & Royal Blue 25 Star Wars * 23 Scum Villain's Self-Saving System

Our first tie is for 11th place -

22 Avatar The Last Airbender 22 Teen Wolf

And after that, nearly every other place is a tie. And which ones are ties for which places can be shifted slightly with just one signup. Or completely upended with two. Where will your fandom land?

Remember that if your fandom isn't here (or in the rest of the list below the cut), you can write it in. Signups are OPEN through Monday!