#Sorry for such a long post

[beivfac]

okay lets talk about grifting patterns:

Sophie is comically bad at acting, but when she grifts, she shifts seamlessly into these characters that she invents. And I think it's because she identifies so strongly with her own characters that she isn't really even acting as them, she just becomes them. She has horrible identity issues, but really, every single person she becomes is a part of The Real Sophie Deveraux. 

Nate has an all consuming need for control and so when he grifts, he goes for really sleazy, overbearing roles (the lawyer, the salesman, etc) and he plays them incredibly well! He plays roles that demand control and clearly have ulterior motives, which is just. him lol.

Elliot, as stated by the director, plays his grifts very "power negative", which takes advantage of other people's need for control. He gives a vibe of being very non-threatening, like "don't worry, you're the one in charge, i'm just a meek little IT guy". He's sort of the polar opposite of himself when he does these roles, and so I think it's interesting that he chose to play the role of a doctor in that one multi-perspective flashback. Cause he sees himself as a guy who hurts others, and there he was playing the role of someone who heals others. 

Hardison is fun because I think it's kind of a common trope for fictional MMORPG players to create their avatar in a way that makes up for the things they lack in real life. Which is cool because when Hardison grifts, he tends to go really big!! He plays up his characters with such big grandiose personas that they're just, completely fictional. 

And then Parker. She's bad at grifting. She's emotionally and socially stunted and really can't tell how people are feeling or what they want, so she can't effectively Give them what they want. She's also been a thief her whole life, so her instincts at this point are "get in, steal, get out. don't be noticed. dont be discovered". Having to stand there and interact with some person and create this fake bond with them goes entirely against the way she is supposed to work. So she has to rely on the bonds she has with her team and trust that they will get her in and out of the locked safe of human interaction unscathed. It makes me emo to think about.

[come-hell-or-high-water]

Harry had to act immediately. Since Frances had become unresponsive and her body lethargic, he gathered her children and took them and her by car to his house, where they were hopefully safe - at least for a few hours. His sisters condition terrified the children, who came along without resistance or unnecessary questions.

When they arrived, Nina and his two sons were shaken by Harry's rugged appearance. He held his wife in his arms for a long time, knowing full well that he had been close to not returning home to her and the children.

"Can someone please tell us what's going on?" asked Esther, who could hold her silence any longer. "We're not children anymore, it's obvious something serious happened that we need to know about." Harry agreed with her and asked everyone to gather in the living room where he began to tell them as quickly and unemotionally as possible about the situation they were in. He was well aware that they were wasting time, but everyone involved needed to understand the seriousness of the situation. As he talked, everyone but Frances gasped as he recounted Arnie's untimely demise and Charles' cold-blooded atrocities.

"What about my father? Where is he now?" said Charlie. He didn't seem as affected by the news of Arnie's death as the others. "Your father is a cruel man and I would advise you and your siblings to distance yourself from him. You would do well in relocating with your mother. To a place where you'll be safe from him", he said, but he immediately saw that Charlie's temper began to rise.

"Can you blame him?" Charlie said, lunging at Harry. ''He's just declared bankrupt and suddenly it turns out his wife has been unfaithful for who knows how long! He trusted all of you and you betrayed him!" Harry patiently restrained the young man, not engaging in the brawl that was about to erupt.

"Please, now is not the time," said Frances, getting up from the sofa. Her face was no longer covered in tears. "We can speak about this later." "She's right," Harry said. "We have to decide where you all will go. It doesn't have to be permanent - the important thing is that you leave immediately."

"What about Moonwood Mill?" suggested Frances. "It's the remote village where Maggie lives. He will never find us there. Her house is small, but perhaps we can make it work temporarily." With that, the matter was resolved. The family was to head to Moonwood Mill that same day.

[mapofthemazeinthemirror]

So, these are the fics I’ve been working on. They’re all one shots, nothing impressively long, but longer than anything I have written here so far. There are two seperate collections/series containing fantasy, royal, sci-fi and supernatural stories. I’m excited about all of them, but there are a couple that I’m super excited about. But, if I can be honest, I’m a little worried that I’m getting too excited about this project after posting the first instalment, Bound. I’m wondering if maybe this is not a genre people want to read and I’d be better off sticking to slice-of-life type works.

So I guess we’ll call this an interest check. Not all the banners for the second series is complete yet, as you may be able to tell, since I only have a rough outline of the story for some so far. I will still write on them, just not make them as much of a priority if people prefer something else.

Series A: sci-fi/royal

Snippet: His body was so hot it felt as if there was fire burning in his veins. His bones ached. Light was searing through his closed eyelids, as bright as if he was staring open-eyed into the sun. His breathing was deafening in his own ears, and behind that was silence—even the silence was loud.

Snippet: Never in a thousand eons did you think you would be in a situation like this. Having just broken a criminal out of prison, you were crouched in the black of night, waiting for said criminal to swing back around and pick you up in the air-ship you had arrived in. Your body was not thrilled with the situation either; your kneecaps and hands groaning from the long crawl through tight metal airways, your neck strained and your back also complaining. But your body would just have to get used to it. You were a rebel now.

Nothing yet…

Snippet: Standing in the junkyard was like standing in an oasis of opportunity. A wilderness of abandoned parts and scrap metal. It was worth getting up before dawn to beat the peddlers flocked to the place and took all the good gear. The markets sold android parts, of course, but it was always worth perusing the junkyard for any overlooked scraps that might be reused.

Series B - supernatural/fantasy

Snippet: Your magic has been weaker lately, leaving you feeling drained and lacklustre. This occurrence seems to have coincided with the disappearance of your familiar at the last full moon, and he'd never stayed away this long. The empathetic bond you shared with your familiar was strong, and you could sense that something wasn’t right, that your dear companion needed your help.

Snippet: Looking at Taehyun, you could see he was burning up. What you were able to see of his chest with his low neckline was fire red, his brow wet. "Taehyun, what did you see?"

Summary: Beomgyu's been working so hard at his job, he hasn’t been thinking about anything else—not even the moon cycles. When you can't reach him by text message, social media or phone calls, you take it upon yourself to go to the apartment.

Snippet: The thought nagged at him again—or maybe, was it his conscience?—that he shouldn't be this close, that this was not how things were supposed to be done. But he turned his back on that voice of reason. He felt his presence was needed.

Snippet: You spent a lot of your childhood on your father's boat, reluctantly dragged out to sea where he did most of his work. One bright afternoon, you were staring onto the water, wishing to be anywhere else, when you noticed a blur beneath the blue. A head broke the surface, dark but warm eyes smiling at you as a boy held his finger to his lips.

[nat-amations]

its fucking 2 am in my time agh but I didn’t want to be too late

Eddsworld helped me discover my love for drawing. It’s what helped me discover my dream of becoming an animator. Edd Gould animated eddsworld (basically) by himself. Not in a big studio, in his house, on a computer. If I had never found Eddsworld or it had never been created I don’t know if I would have the passion for drawing that I do now. I discovered Eddsworld in 2021 (I’m sorry I’m such a newbie lol) and when I found out that edd Gould passed away I was devastated. I would never meet the man who created one of the best pieces of media on the internet (in my opinion). The man who taught me that you don’t need to be this fancy person in a fancy studio. Happy Birthday to him. One of the biggest inspirations in my life, and the man who has created some of the best content on YouTube (in my opinion)

Happy Birthday Edd 💚💚💚

[rainy-matcha]

Ok but casino cups fans have been so deprived of fan content that if anything remotely good is posted on youtube it blows up. Like gacha reaction videos that usually don't do very well (most ppl think they're cringe and would rather consume other types of fan content) can get 100k views pretty quickly. Another youtuber I subscribe to (1tz Oll13, check them out!) has gotten pretty popular from posting almost exclusively fancontent. Like more views/likes than the og tumblr posts.

(If you havent heard of it, casino cups is a really amazing au created by brighgoat, now taken over by camodeilsart, and I would reccomend checking it out! Its posted on the blog askcupsandcasinos, and you can watch it dubbed by shavsmedia on yt!)

[climbingthefloors]

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

[willinghands]

i think r/BenignExistence is my favorite subreddit 🥲 i love these pleasant little glimpses into strangers' lives

[whiteshipnightjar]

Zoozve, my beloved

[yumenikkii]

just another average day in gravity falls

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

[christadeguchi]

studio trigger understood the assignment. i would let her wreck me.

[alectricblue]

the og post was way too long so I'm making a new one

thanks for the tag @lombolica !! :D

You're stuck in a room with the last character in your gallery how safe are you

very safe

the worst thing that could happen is him being clumsy, so I think I'm alright (unless monsters find him I guess)

tagging (no pressure): @flaretheidiot @lemonic-whimssyy @wibbly-wobbly-blog @cryptidanathema @virtualunease @aurlworthfightingfor @angrysheep @sugarplumanderson @time-travelling-chaos @fateisnotafactor @monstrousmaws @sinfulauthor @idkaguyorsomething @vampireopossum and anyone who wants to do this!

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)

[emberglowfox]

Keeper -- a short comic about an angel meeting a robotic lighthouse keeper that doesn't know the world has already ended. Made in about 18 hours for a 24-hour 24-page* black and white comic challenge (that I arrived late to, ha.)

*the actual submission does not include the cover, which was created after the fact for this post.

This was a really great learning experience as someone who's... never really made a completed comic. I ended up really attached to the story by the end of the project (possibly due to all-nighter deliriousness lol) and ultimately am very proud of what I made.There are some things I'd still like to change, particularly text placement, but in keeping with the spirit of the challenge I've elected to leave it as is.

[officialspec]

so we just moved, and the house we moved into has been abandoned for a few years so weve discovered some fun little secrets scattered around as we explored. for example, theres a little room downstairs with graffiti on the door dubbing it 'the dog box'

of course we were intrigued. aside from some storage and a place to put a washing machine, the dog box seems to exclusively contain this old ass piano, with a little window to see into it from outside

also pictured sitting on the piano is a little novelty dagger we found in the grass outside. its all very funny and novel, right? we thought so

that was when we found The Stain

of course, we immediately jumped to some conclusions. the knife outside, the abandoned house, 'do not enter' written on the door. whatever it was, it had dripped through the floorboards from upstairs, from approximately just outside the bathroom. we decided to wait until we finished moving and then grab some peroxide to test it just in case

still, the dog box bloodstain remained a hot topic, and the curiosity was killing me. after figuring out where upstairs the stain wouldve dripped down from, we noticed it had also seeped up through the newly installed flooring, and i decided i couldnt wait to investigate

looking around the dog box, i noticed that there was a section of the ceiling/underfloor that was noticeably newer than the rest of it, meaning the place the stain had leaked through had been pulled out and replaced just before we moved in. suspicious

im using my phone torch to look around in the dark, and when i shine it on the bloodstain it lights up in a distinctly.... glossy way. when i get closer i can see its not matte, but sticky. so i decide to touch it, and immediately im hit with a STRONG smell of something deeply familiar. all the pieces fall together at once, and using my superior investigative prowess i have deduced the culprit

it was bees. there was a fuckoff massive beehive in the floor that got taken out before we moved in and it leaked honey up through the floorboards and onto the floor of the dog box and the landlord didnt feel like cleaning it up. mystery solved

[overseer-picard]

TNG text posts part 5 feat. DS9 era O'Brien