nakiju13

[nakiju13]

[nakiju13]

Knowing a fic author through AO3 is like attending someone’s thesis presentation and politely clapping at the end, knowing a fic author through this hellsite is like going over to their house at 3AM to watch them eat mayonnaise out of a jar

[nakiju13]

[nakiju13]

I come from a culture that has no nudity taboo - nudity is not considered inherently sexual, or somehow traumatising to witness. What that means in practice is that there is a clearly drawn line between sexual and non-sexual nudity. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a sexual context, and nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a non-sexual context. However, it is 100% inappropriate to be nude in a situation where it is not obvious from context whether this is sexual or not.

I've seen random kids who briefly escaped from their parents bolt across a public park buck-ass naked after they were playing in the water fountain and their parents were in the middle of changing their kid from wet clothes to dry clothes when the small nudist escaped. Changing your small kid's clothes right there in public is ok because there is obviously nothing sexual about a child whose clothes got wet. But although people will have baby pictures of their kids in the bath or just running around the house like that because sometimes little apes hate clothes for some reason, it's considered common sense to not share those pictures on facebook mom groups and such, because you have no way of knowing who's seeing them, and that blurs the line of context.

It all boils down to the clearly defined context. Bathing nude in the same sauna with five of your co-workers at the office christmas party? Clearly nonsexual, therefore completely fine. Your friend-with-benefits inviting you to come over and opening the door in nothing but a doggy collar and the most porn-scented perfume? Clearly sexual, therefore completely fine. A woman checking her breasts for lumps in the gym lockers just before or after a shower? Clearly non-sexual, therefore completely fine.

But if you went to the bank today and there's some guy who walks in and immediately strips naked, doing his banking business wearing nothing but a deep smile and being clearly very content with this situation, you have no way of telling whether he's getting kicks out of this or not. There is no contextual reason for him to be nude. Therefore, that is inappropriate.

Then you go home and post on tumblr - as one does - going like "there was some dude completely fucking buck-ass naked in the bank today. That was fucking weird and I wish he had not done that." And someone immediately swoops into inform you that actually nudity is not inherently sexual or inappropriate, and there are cultures out there that have no nudity taboo. It's not fair to call somebody a freak for something like that, maybe that guy was just finnish.

[nakiju13]

Hi Gallus, I'm doing some worldbuilding and you seem like you could be connected enough for me to find an answer to the problem of dwarven agriculture. Many problems are created by the requirement of no sunlight, as even the common response of mushrooms still need light to break down decomposing matter as a primary energy source. Currently, we're thinking that they use a special type of mushroom that breaks down rocks in an energy-producing reaction, giving them enough energy to absorb nutrients and grow - this would serve a second purpose in explaining why building a massive hollowed-out mountain fortress doesn't produce an equally large amount of gravel.

Any thoughts? We're grasping at straws kinda lol

Well, some thoughts:

There's plenty of cave systems (especially Karst Systems) that are at least partially open to Sunlight- especially the kind that have rivers running through them, which is something else that's really helpful for agriculture.

For Example: This Cool AF Sinkhole cave in china that has an entire Forest in it

Now There's a view to put outside the city Gates!

Karst specifically is a landscape where underground rivers hollow out the limestone underground and then the cave roofs fall in. This kind of landscape answers your gravel question nicely: the hollowed out mountain does produce an equal amount of gravel, but the gravel turns up as the sandy banks of the river system hundreds of miles away.

So, there's your sunlight that can be used directly, or reflected or magically transferred deeper into the cave system.

Or they just put more holes in the roof! Unless your dwarves are also vampires, there's no reason for them to not hollow out a few Skylights into the mountain too.

But let's talk some other cave ecology and agriculture!

For starters, your dwarves could be sitting on top of a literal gold mine that would allow them to trade for a lot of needed materials and crops.

And by gold mine, I mean Salt Mine.

Historically, salt comes out of hollowed-out mountains and is worth more than gold.

Also something the humans have historically fought a bunch of wars over, so there's some free political tensions if you needed that!

I can also mean the possible fucking enormous piles of bat guano that accumulates in Karst caves, which is the world's most insanely good fertilizer, and ALSO something that has been worth more than it's weight in gold.

Speaking of Gold, another thing that often lives in sinkhole caves in abundance is BEES. turns out, limestone stalactites are a terrific place to build a hive that is difficult for predators to reach, stays dry and the stone substrate means the hives can reach many tons in weight before they start having structural issues. That sweet, sweet insect-derived liquid gold is already important to Dwarves in a lot of folklore- it's really hard to have a Traditional Dwarven Mead Hall without the honey to make the mead, you know?

So you got your mushrooms, you got your sunlight-grown sinkhole crops, you got your traded goods and you got your source of alcohol- the only thing really missing from an ancient food pyramid here is a staple carbohydrate. To that end, may I propose our good Peruvian Friend: The Potato.

Grain crops aren't actually all that nutritious and were kept around in ancient societies more as legal tender that kept the peasants busy, because wheat or rice takes months to grow, an enormous amount of labor to harvest, and wheat also needs to be milled before it can be turned into food- all enormously time-consuming processes that keep peasants busy and easy to rule tyranically over.

Potatoes though? Pop one in the ground in spring and you can dig up fingerlings all summer, and if you make potato towers, you can harvest up to 40lbs of delicious, easy-to-prepare-and-store carb out of a single plant- a real space-saver for the limited sinkhole skyspace.

If your dwarves have cheese, the potato makes even more sense, because Potato+dairy is the easiest, most nutritionally complete survival food there is.

Finally, consider: Dwarven Vodka.

This post is open for anyone to comment suggestions on, but that's my take: put your dwarves in a Karst-sinkhole cave system, give them a highly in demand resource like salt or guano, bees, and taters. Boom. Whole agriculture, economy and political scheme starters.

[nakiju13]

"I'm a woman written by a man." "I'm a man written by a woman." "I'm an adult written by a child."

Boring.

I'm a misfit female protagonist written by Guillermo del Toro.

[nakiju13]

Poll: if your mom remarries when you’re 26 years old is that guy still your stepdad or is he just your mom’s husband.

[nakiju13]

I don’t really agree but this is still funny.

[nakiju13]

[nakiju13]

Every time I roast a new kind of vegetable I'm just as shocked and amazed as the first time. Woag. Did you know that you can put some frozen corn in the oven with salt and pepper and olive oil. And it will Taste Good. I was aware of this regarding broccoli. Brussel sprouts even. But corn? The world is a beautiful place

[nakiju13]

Hu Qing Yu Tang 胡庆余堂 is a historically significant Chinese pharmaceutical company.

Founded by Hu Xueyan with the “Hui architectural style” 徽派建筑 from his hometown Anhui province in 1874, alongside West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The drugstore opened in 1878 and is now a TCM museum.

Hu Xueyan’s former residence, built in 1875, and also showcasing Hui-style architecture.

[nakiju13]

tumblr is the root of half the internets trends and memes

[nakiju13]

the shimp got too much attention and now there are transphobes in my notes, this is a transgender blog run by a transgender dyke. fuckers.

[nakiju13]

when people pop off with some ass take like "why should I have to put my pronouns in my profile or signature or whatever, my name is Tom and I have short hair and am wearing an oxford shirt in my profile pic, figure it out" I always think

so do you just not talk to people from other countries for your job, ever?

like, some people don't, and you can follow the flowchart to a different part of the argument about why pushing back about pronouns is stupid, but I e-mail people in Singapore and Dubai and Japan and India every day. A lot of those people have names that are probably their local equivalent of "Tom," but I have never seen them before and I have no idea if that's a girl's name or a boy's name. They usually have profile pics too. I don't know how common short hair is for women or long hair is for men in their country. I don't know if that style of shirt is more common for men or more common for women. I'm not writing this from some homogenous whitebread oasis, either, I live in New York City, it's just simply not possible for me to know the common names in every language of every country where the people I need to work with, live.

just put your stupid pronouns in your signature, some exasperated project manager in Mumbai will one day appreciate it

[nakiju13]

I need to buy more tiles to finish the room but there is a $50 delivery fee. This is not a problem; they're heavy, they gotta send a truck, I get it. But if I'm paying a delivery fee then I'm taking maximum advantage of it, and that means I need to buy all the other big heavy stuff I need at the same time. So I can't finish the tiling until I've collated all the big heavy stuff I need for other projects so I can order it all at once and save on delivery, and that means planning out the next steps of all my other ongoing projects before I can finish this one. Modern life is a circus.

[nakiju13]

love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded