You guys are commenting on the fics you read right? You’re at least leaving kudos on the Astarion smut and the pairs that have less than 20 fics for them too? You’re bookmarking stories you really like that are still being updated and ones that haven’t been touched in over a year right?

You know that even the smallest interactions are like cocaine to fic writers right? You understand how important a string of emoji hearts left behind on chapter at three am is right?? Right????

You’re treating AO3 like a community and not a content factory….right?

So, a post came across my dash / to my attention about diet and of course it's the meat-eaters vs. the vegans as usual. And it's got me to thinking about my place in it and how I'm just... a non-starter in the argument. In terms of vegetarianism and strict veganism, those who are "evangelistic" about it run into a full-stop with me and there are reasons why that have little to do with me trying to justify "carnism" in the greater whole and whatever. It has everything to do with "press me and I'll just self-identify as evil and call it a day." From a personal standpoint: Here is how I grew up. My father was a butcher. He worked as a retail butcher. Furthermore, I grew up in the country (specifically in the desert) - but in a neighborhood where it was quite common for people to raise their own meat and some of my earliest memories involve this. We had a pig that my parents let me name "Charlotte." She became bacon and while I don't remember it entirely, my father said that I came out to "help" (at 4 years old) when most little girls would have run away from that. I *do* have memories of helping him with our chickens (not that "helping" at that age was anything more than watching or maybe doing a little plucking). Later on, when my dad decided that he was tired of doing double-duty at work and at home and we just bought our meat, we continued to raise chickens for eggs. Sometimes one would get out of the pen and be mauled by our dogs or get into the neighbor's yard and get mauled by the neighbors' dogs and would be lingering away, running and hiding and slowly dying from infection. I was older then and was happy to help Dad catch the chickens and to hold a dying chicken still while he took the mercy-hatchet to its neck. (These were not eaten, of course). I had uncles and aunts who hunted. I never took it up (and kind of regret it, as venison and wild turkey are delicious). I DID take up fishing. I've looked my food in the face as I've put it into an ice-bath or taken the tip of a knife to ike jime... I tend to say a little prayer, but, you know, fish-blood is on my hands... And I always feel a part of nature when I'm catching my own food. Get some nice beef sometimes from a friend whose family has raised their own cattle... And, yeah, there was a time in my youth when I considered becoming a vegetarian. My sister drew me back with how good roasted turkey is. In other words, when answering the question of "If you had to kill your own meat, would you eat like you do now or would you become a vegetarian?" and how most people would choose the latter option? I'm one of those rare, one in a million people who *might* choose the former option. Although, I expect I'd eat meat more rarely if I had to go through all the steps of dealing with it myself, because raising / butchering is very difficult and annyoying - even my pro butcher-dad just gave it up after a while because he got sick of taking his work home with him.

All in all, while I do want livestock as a whole to be treated better, when it comes to the ethics of eating it at all? I was raised in a way that makes me chill with death and life-cycles. If I get my way with a natural burial, the worms will eat me one day.

Ghost Kitchen (brought to you by criminal entrepreneur, Red Hood)

Danny’s got the easiest job in Gotham.

He works as a fry cook at a shoddily-run, independent burger joint. Hardly anyone comes in, despite prices being criminally low, and portions insanely large, and while the manager looks like the average tough-as-nails ex-con, he lets Danny mess around in the kitchen whenever the place is empty. (Which is often. This place has to be the city’s hidden gem or something!)

Mr. Manager’s the only one ever there with Danny, except for sometimes when his buddies come over to smoke and play cards. Danny would find it shady, except part of his job is not to ask questions. Literally, he was told during the interview.

(It was a weird interview. Why would they need to hire someone who’s been in a gunfight before? Like, he has, but Gotham’s idea of “hirable qualities” is so bizarre.)

So instead he whips up some killer burgers with the frozen ingredients, and basks in the praise as the guys tell him he shouldn’t have, he does too much for this joint, ain’t that friendly!

Now, Danny’s a chef on the newer side. As a teen he’d preferred the look of Nasty Burger over anything with Michelin stars, and he only really took up cooking after Jazz moved out for college. But just like ecto-exposure used to turn the groceries sentient, Danny’s low-level ecto signature imbues all his food with something historically haunted Gothamites just love! And Danny’s never been one to half-ass a job when it makes people happy.

With fresher produce, real meat, Danny’s sure he can take his dishes to the next level. It takes a couple months of badgering, but his manager finally agrees to contact the mysterious store owner, who keeps the place going, despite profits Danny knows have to be in the red.

Danny spends the morning prepping. He pours his heart into his food, eager to impress. The big boss will be here soon, and he wants to prove that despite the dangerous location, this place has real potential!

It isn’t until the Red Hood shows up that Danny realizes he’s been working for a money laundering scheme.

look we all want buck in tommys hoodie....

but i raise you a tommy who accidentally grabbed bucks hoodie and walks into harbour only to have lucy laugh so hard she falls out of her chair

The one where having a secret lab in the basement is not as much of a red flag as it should be.

Because somehow, EVERY. SINGLE. ADULT. IN ALL OF AMITY. Have “secret” basements.

Sure, MOST of them have refitted them to act as emergency bunkers in case there’s another large-scale ghost attack, with rations and shields and blankets and all that, BUT. Even BEFORE the portal opened up, they were there.

Some of them were laboratories dedicated to one of many sciences. Some of them were just storage for the more concerning family heirlooms. At least one person kept the taxidermied bodies of each and every pet they had over their lifetime. Really, it was more odd for someone to not have some weird secret in their basement.

So when Danny ran from Amity and learned just how many people didn’t have strange, niche basements for their hobbies, he was a little put off. When he was eventually asked to stay with the Wayne family in Gotham, well, maybe he could have phrased it better.

How was he supposed to know that asking if they had a “super-secret basement either for your job, your personal life, or disaster prevention” would lead to them thinking he knew about their nightlife?

CALLUM KEITH RENNIE as Captain Rayner in Star Trek: Discovery

in honour of the show that will be coming out eventually (and the fact i've been obsessed with this series since middle school) i drew these three. i swear i'm trying to work on my own stuff but then i draw fanart then have zero energy left to draw what i actually want to

HI. IM PLAYING CATCH UP 24 DAYS LATER DONT MIND ME HERMIT A DAY DAY 1 - ETHOSLAB

Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.

His grey hairs are so earned

How far did you get? (Patreon)

I always though Mal's mom was meant to be like "Eleanor" but they stuck an M at the start honestly, Sobbing Emoji. But "Maleanor" also makes me feel less insane since in that scene where she's just handed egg Malleus to Lilia and went to battle, it sounds more like Lilia is saying "Maleanor" than "Meleanor" (Japanese accent pending). Mayhaps they went more with what it sounded like the characters were saying :0 (we don't talk about Doodle Suit to Paint The Roses)

the transliteration of her name is Marenoa (マレノア), which is what all the voice lines are saying! all the Draconias' names start with マレ (Malleus' grandma is Maleficia/マレフィシア) as a nod to Maleficent. :D it's almost certainly a take on Eleanor, which is Erenoa (エレノア), but her name is written in English at a couple points, and I was pretty surprised to see it was Mel instead of Mal!

and, like, that's fine, it wouldn't be first Twst romanization that's tripped me up (like Keito for Cater, I know that's something to do with the loanword specific to playing cards(?) but it's just not how my brain wants to read it). but now Eng has given us Maleanor! and someone else said it was spelled inconsistently between Maleanor and Maeleanor??????? so WHO KNOWS it's a SPELLING FREE-FOR-ALL

I AM torn on which I want to use, because Mel just sounds so cute to me (and is what I'm used to now), but...the Mal consistency is kinda too good to pass up. alas, alas, truly these are the most difficult conundrums of our times. 😔

Hi. I'm cyberbullying a long dead poet because of his shitty fanfic. Enjoy. I'd love it if you joined me.

(Before you get mad at me, yes, I know Eugammon of Cyrene is an important figure and all that. I'm sick with some sort of flu. Let me cyberbully an ancient dead fanfic writer in peace.)

youve heard of sex flowers get ready for the flower that makes you into a celestial shoujo herione complete with particle effects you cannot turn the fuck off and creates a wifebeam so powerful it can incapacitate and maim and keeps making you burst into tears and fall on your ass which makes the wifebeam More Powerful and you also cannot turn this off either. and is also still, sort of, a sex flower

from one of my favorite fanfictions, Celestial Afterglow by elanor_pam, a fic that defies description in the best possible way

I jokingly thought before that reading Junie B. Jones as a kid turned me into a feminist, but unironically, it kind of did.

I honestly think it comes down to the fact that Junie B. was not only allowed to be "weird," but her character arc never concluded like other girl characters would. In other media featuring "weird girls," the girl always ended her arc tamed - by force or convince, she would be prettied up, she would smile and be polite, and she would never speak out of turn. She would be perfect then, and would shed her veneer of individuality with the freedom that is conformity. As a kid, I noticed that girls weren't permitted to be "weird" like boys were. So when I read Junie B. Jones, I loved that she was frankly just fucking weird. She said things out of turn, she was rambunctious and imaginative and she was a realistic portrayal of a little girl. I loved reading those books because the narrative taught her lessons without punishing her for being weird, if that makes sense. So often, narratives punished weird girls for the crime of being a socially unacceptable girl, not for any true wrongdoing like lying.

Anyway, I just think it's interesting, because I watched and read a ton of books and shows and movies featuring girls and women, but none of them truly empathized with (or even tried to empathize with) weird girls on their own merits and capabilities and terms, or embraced the idea of a "socially inept/unacceptable" girl without punishing her in some way for her supposed ineptitude.

This Friday's meme is: no context

this is a largely meaningless observation but, based on the fleki uniform demonstration comic, mithrun seems to wear the default style of the canary uniform, probably because he has no desire to personalize it or preference for how to do so, etc. when he does seem to pick his own clothes, though, they don’t look super in-line with what we’re shown of elven clothing styles in his region: high collars look like they’re fairly popular with elves in general, but out of uniform he tends to be a lot more covered up than everyone else—long sleeves, long pants, boots rather than sandals, and he dresses that way both prior to getting eaten and after the events of the series. anyway it’s kind of cute that after everything that happened to him, someone cared enough to remember what his clothing preferences used to be.