harpyladyval

[harpyladyval]

People have been nagging me to share “the curry story” on here for ages, so alright, I’ll do it. (If you’re Indian and reading this, I am so sorry).

I swear to god, everything I am about to say in this story is true.

When I was eleven, I moved to a small town in rural England and acquired a new best friend at school. Her at that point seemingly-very-normal-parents- nice suburban house, three kids, trampoline in the backyard- invited me over for dinner, and said they were making curry and rhubarb crumble.

“Curry and rhubarb crumble”. Never in the history of mankind have words been so untrue.

The “curry” consisted of, I swear I am not making this up, a vague mixture of * deep breath, oatmeal, tofu sausages, corn, tomato juice, chopped onions, raisins, “leftover broccoli leaves”, kale, and scrambled eggs. The only spice in it was the tiniest smidgen of turmeric. All these ingredients were vaguely stirred together, undercooked, and stuck under a broiler for ten minutes. 

They gave me a massive portion. I somehow, I still don’t know how, was polite enough to finish it.

“I’m done,” I said.

“No,” said her father. “In this house, we LICK our plates clean.”

He did. They didn’t make me hold it up and lick it like they all did, but they did make me clean the plate with a piece of bread and my fork until they were satisfied.

Desert came. The rhubarb crumble was entirely unsweetened. Not so much as a raisin. I can’t remember what the crumble part was, because my mind is still haunted by the memory of being forced to eat an entire bowl of unsweetened rhubarb. You know in old Looney Tunes when characters would be tricked into eating allum and their heads would shrink? That’s what eating it felt like. They made me clean my bowl of that too, and wouldn’t let me leave the table until I finished. 

The next time, (I was in middle school and as yet too polite to turn down my best friend’s parents) they made “spaghetti and meatballs and salad”. The spaghetti was utterly plain and so undercooked it was crunchy, the “meatballs” consisted of a single large orb of some grey material i have yet to identify, and the salad was, i shit you not, limp boiled lettuce. Crunchy spaghetti, unidentified lumpy grey stuff, and boiled lettuce.

The fascinating thing is that, while yes, these people were obviously health nuts, it was so much more than that. They were health nuts who also cooked like aliens who had never seen human food before. Or like small children making “potions”. One of the more edible things they served to me once was a dessert they made up which consisted of halved apples rolled in cornflour with some milk poured on top. One time, they were convinced to make pizza as a treat. They decided to put an onion on it. Fair and fine, you’d think. Not in that house. They just cut the onion in half once, and stuck each unchopped half facedown on one side of the pizza.

Speaking of onions, one time, my friend decided to make a banana and yoghurt smoothie. Her dad came in, said it wasn’t healthy enough, and made her add an onion to it.

They had a homemade cereal I thankfully was able to opt out of trying which 100% looked like the contents of a vacuum bag. I still have no idea what it contained.

Amazingly, it was by no means just me who experienced this. It was a small town, and every girl in it my age had a selection of horror stories about being invited to dinner at this friend’s house in the exact same ritualistic horror-film fashion. We used to sit around comparing them at sleepovers. Age did not exempt you. One time, this friend’s six year old brother had a friend over for dinner at the same time, poor soul. His mom arrived to pick him up, and wasn’t allowed to take him home until he finished whatever crime against cooking was on the menu that night. 

Every story was the same. The ritual that never varied. Every time, these people would make a huge fanfare out of inviting you over for dinner, act all hospitable and excited, set the table, and then serve you a massive helping of the worst food in the world, and make you clean your plate of it, desert included. Who the hell forces you to finish your DESERT?

It’s a mystery to me. They clearly had SOME degree of self-awareness, because after I came to my senses and started coming up with excuses to avoid eating at their house they would tease me saying things like “ohoho, you don’t like LIKE our food do you”. If they had been a bit more fun and less generally puritanical sort of people, I could totally believe this was a family trolling activity where they secretly schemed to come up with the worst possible dishes, secretly filmed themselves forcing people to eat them and watched it and laughed afterwards, I could believe it.

All I’m saying is I’m pretty sure they weren’t aliens, but the more I type this out, the more tempted I am to believe it. Fuck it, maybe they WERE aliens.

[harpyladyval]

Ouran high school was my favourite anime when I was like 14 which is really funny because thats also the age I basically was in a Haruhi fujioka situation. Not like fully literally but the meat of it was the same

I was the one single middle-class kid in a super high-end rich kid private academy with like pressed uniforms and building wings and everything. I didnt get any sort of scholarship, my dad just got a job as a teacher there and teachers kids got to enroll for free because the tuition was like 30 grand a year and you arent affording that on a teacher salary. So I understand her on a very visceral level and perhaps enjoyed OHSHC so much because she was SOOO me fr. These damn rich people

[harpyladyval]

You can teleport one (1) single individual live seagull into any time or place in history. Where would you choose to put it to best fuck with peoples' heads and cause as much confusion as possible?

I'd pick Tutankhamun's tomb, just behind the sealed door, 30 seconds before the seal is broken and the tomb is opened. Imagine throwing that into the curse myth - just as these people are about to crack open the greatest cold one in history, knowing that this is what they'll be known for from hereon, they open the door that must not be opened, and out scatters a frantic, deeply baffled bird, entirely healthy and intact, fluttering away never to be seen again, with no apparent way of how it got in.

[harpyladyval]

while I don’t agree with that referring to men in their 30s-early 40s as “old man yaoi”, I UNDERSTAND why many people who primarily consume honest-to-goodness BL manga are quicker to call it that, because there is just such poor representation for men that aren’t hairless dehydrated 20-something twunks. They’re wrong, but I get why it happens.

I also understand that “middle-aged yaoi” isn’t as fun to say as “old man yaoi”, even when it’s more technically accurate.

So I would like to propose new vocabulary: Grown Ass Yaoi. yaoi that’s grown ass men. they’re not old but they’re not young adults either. you get me? Grown Ass Yaoi

[harpyladyval]

Ive come up with the phrase "blorbo-in-law" which is a fictional character who isn't, like, YOUR blorbo from YOUR shows but it is your mutual's blorbo who you nevertheless have developed strong opinions about due to long term dash exposure

[harpyladyval]

@dragon-reblogs-and-rambles

umamusume but make it FE4

[harpyladyval]

“why are you smiling at your phone?”

um. cuz. my friends are silly

[harpyladyval]

Mutuals to have floor time with

[harpyladyval]

I put them on wplace

[harpyladyval]

its been about 6 months

[harpyladyval]

famous last words

[harpyladyval]

you're cute and it's tuesday

[harpyladyval]

[harpyladyval]

reblog game put in the tags how you found prev

[harpyladyval]

Cursed to always think girls are just being friendly instead of flirting, lol 😅

[harpyladyval]

[harpyladyval]