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Happy fourth anniversary

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I love the dynamic in the Discworld fandom on this site, I think it's mainly because there are a lot of dormant fans, if you will, who've read and loved the books for years but haven't engaged much recently, who sort of reappear whenever a fun post is doing the rounds. It's fantastic. We get the cozy small fandom vibe without the screaming matches, but also get the popular posts from time to time, y'know?

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I found this camera on the subway and look what was inside...

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The Dothan Eagle, Alabama, April 30, 1923

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The Ides Of March

Conservation status: Least Concern

Classification: Non-native, non-invasive

This meme population has persisted in the pre-internet ecosystem since 44 BC, but for over a millennium the meme remained at very low population levels. Introduction to the theater habitats of England in approximately 1599 by an early meme ecologist (also notable for the introduction of such memes as Damned Spot and To Be Or Not To Be) caused a population boom that has led to the continued stable population of Ides of March despite the extinction or near extinction of the Ides of other months and all known Nones and Kalends.

The Ides Of March, like many other calendar memes such as April 25th (The Perfect Date), Thursday The 20th, and It's October 3rd, has a life cycle that can confuse amateur memeologists. These memes benefit greatly from the presence of scheduled posts in the ecosystem, appearing absent until their highly specific time, when the memes all bloom simultaneously and dominate the dashes of many users.

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240217 | Xiao Zhan Studio Weibo

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Demeter, goddess of fertility and the harvest, taken from the temple site of Eleusis

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You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.

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sometimes I remember that there was a trend for bronies to try and make My Little Pony tulpas and lots of people got super into it, like asking for advice on mysticism forums and making meditation blogs where they recorded the process of visualizing their astral pony companion in excruciating detail

like, a startlingly large number seemed absolutely 100% serious about trying to manifest a My Little Pony tulpa

i sort of cannot believe this happened, like this is some certified Unknown Armies shit. bronies dedicate themselves to creating self-actualized, sentient MLP thoughtforms. holy shit. 

I wonder what happened to the people who were really serious about it. did anyone actually create a permanent unicorn dream-friend. how many people did it and then got over MLP and moved on and forgot about it. should we be worried about an army of resentful, abandoned pony tulpas galloping around the higher planes of reality. how many of these people tried to fuck their tulpa.

what i’m saying here is that modern fantasy literature needs to step it up because the actual real world is way, way more fucking weird than any secret-occult-underground story i have ever read in my entire life

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Leningrad Region, commuter train 1993

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Me every time I start a palace drama: can a bitch get a flowchart and some name tags

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Alexander never died...................... he's just out there................. somewhere.................................... being rawed on a Persian hillside..................................................

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Look at the delicious sushi for llamas I made today:

It's courgette stuffed with deworming paste and thanks to Poldine my plan went swimmingly. Pampelune is sometimes distrustful on deworming day, but when they saw Poldine get a treat then try to steal the other treats which were obviously meant for them, the other animals hurried to claim their own medicinal courgette as well.

Except Pampe. (How many times have I written these words.) She looked at her sushi, looked at me, sniffed every side of the courgette, decided it smelled like deceit, and walked away.

I felt daft for not going the muesli route straight away. Like all great tricksters Pampérigouste is suspicious by nature but she can't resist muesli. So I un-stuffed the courgette and used the sticky deworming paste to fashion a little muesli ball.

It was gooey and not very appetising but it's muesli, right? I camouflaged the muesli ball in a dish of innocent muesli and offered it to Pampe, but unfortunately she was now very aware that I was up to something. Instead of mindlessly vacuuming the contents of the muesli dish as she usually does, she examined the strange slimy little ball, pushed it away with her nose with obvious contempt, then ate the normal muesli. I tried (with increasing insistence and frustration) to convince her to eat the damn muesli ball, but no.

New idea: I went to the kitchen to get some pumpkin rinds, and squished the muesli ball between two small pieces of pumpkin skin like a Choco BN (if you're from the US, picture an orange worm-killing Oreo). Pampe likes pumpkin skin! I tried to explain to her that she would be punishing only herself if she refused the (admittedly deceitful) offering out of principle.

Somehow she managed to eat the outside 'biscuits' and spit out the stuffing.

At this point I had to shame her. (I told her to look ashamed for this photo; not sure she understood the assignment)

I had exhausted my creativity and had nothing left but the mean method. I got Pampe in llama jail, aka the school room where I spent many hours trying to teach her to wear a halter and be a good docile llama when she was little, while she spent many hours trying to escape by any conceivable means—high jumps, bribery, tunnels, you name it.

(In the background behind Poldine you can see the bag of hay that I used to get the llamas to follow me into the corral. Pampe naively thought I had given up on trying to make her eat gross slimy things and was about to give her a normal meal)

She tried a strange kind of escape this time around, which honestly might have worked if she were a swift salmon returning to her natal river to spawn, slicing against the current in a series of graceful, forward-arching curves. But she's a llama. It's like she forgot she wasn't all neck and also had a body that needed to clear this obstacle.

I sang her a little song to soothe her, and scritched her face, and managed to get a llama kiss which is more affection than I've ever received from a currently-jailed Pampe—her daughter really is a good influence on her!

So of course I took advantage of this moment of calm and trust to stick my hidden secret syringe in the corner of her mouth and push 2cm of deworming paste onto her tongue.

She was VEXED and WROTH.

We were talking about learning poetry by heart the other day; well, if Pampérigouste did that, "I am rowing (a hex poem)" is the poem she would have invoked in that moment.

After I left, all the other animals hurried into the corral to eat the hay I had used to get Pampe in, while Pampe turned her back on the meal and walked away a strategic distance, far enough to show me that she felt betrayed and would never eat any food I bring her ever again, not so far that she couldn't go back in and fight the donkey for what was left of the hay as soon as I stopped looking.

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I was dying when we first met. I mean, I looked well enough, just got out of rehab and all that. Thought that I knew everything, but I didn’t. I didn’t realize how much work I would have to put in and how much time it would take. But most of all, I didn’t realize that things could get better. And that I could actually be… Yes, I was dying. And no one could see it but you. You saved my life, Joan. We’re partners. No, we’re much better than that. We’re two people that love each other. We always have been.

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Today I found out that yarners think crocheting socks is subversive and controversial and I just…on one hand, why the fuck not, I guess yarners are allowed to have their controversies, but on the other, how much time do you have in your FUCKIN DAY??

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Tintype of what appears to be a light-hearted spot of stabbing between friends, circa 1880