#carrot has an opinion

[virtualcarrot]

Always sparring a thought for how essentialist racism discourse has become, but especially today as I think of this guy that I met two days ago, whom I sincerely believed had origins from the Maghreb/Middle East, and who it turns out is merely part Spanish--with all that entails of historical intermingling, sure, but far away enough that he didn't have anyone to point to as a reference of racialization

Anyway, that "white" dude keeps getting stopped and frisked whenever he's in an airport

[mybrainproblems]

can you expand on what you mean about 12x22 and berens? i’ve never really looked at the writer patterns before but i’m intrigued

so jensen did a solo panel at JIB 8 in 2017 and an earlier question prompted him to recount his experience having difficulty connecting with the mary & dean relationship in s12 and the character motivation behind it. (and i think he's correct in saying that fans picked up on him not gelling with it which actually works in some episodes but feels off in others.)

anyway! berens was on-set when they were filming 12x22 "who we are" and jensen told him "oh god i get it now!" with the "i hate you, i forgive you" speech (that dean's character arc was him needing to forgive mary) and berens had no idea what he was talking about.

hopefully this embedded correctly to start at the right time code, but if not, he starts talking about it at 19:45

which yes, there's the possibility that berens was just yanking jensen's chain* about not realizing the "i hate you, i forgive you" was the thesis of mary & dean's relationship arc in s12. but also i really am inclined to believe he didn't realize he'd tied up the whole arc bc berens has been such a chronic dean misunderstander over the years. like folks will talk about dean as the "angry man" in late seasons and... that's mostly berens, baby!**

and i know you didn't ask but this is why the confession falls so flat for me. it rings hollow bc this is the writer who has done more than anyone else in the last few seasons to make dean an un-likeable prick. i do like the confession as a radical act of self-love (that "having" doesn't matter and "being" is more important) but as cas confessing his love to dean? yeah, i just can't buy it given the other stuff berens wrote over the years and the narrative framing is just off. much like the finale, it's tragedy wearing an ill-fitting ballgown and looking in a fun house mirror.

so, in summary (x)

* this is a bit unkind, but jensen is such a consummate pro that i would not be surprised if the "maybe he was yanking my chain" was a way to save face for berens since jensen has disagreed with him on his episodes before.

** i did not jive with 14x20 "moriah" until i re-watched it without the baggage of 14x18 before it (14x19 isn't great but does set up the "logic" of dean's actions in 14x20; never 5get that cas wanted to put jack in the cage... how is that different from a ma'lak box?). i think berens was just not a good fit for spn and especially not the direction they were going in during dabb era. i'm not a big fan of him in carver era either but he fit the vibes and direction way better.

[smartass-hoot]

published stories have such a no-nonsense and cutthroat kind of pacing like,,, where are the grocery runs? the casual moments of gay panic? the slowburn that edges the living fuck outta you? the sideplots that are borderline crack but written so well? LIKE FUCK THE PLOT, GIVE ME CHARACTERS

[thelastspeecher]

btw of the Discworld books I've been reading over the last couple weeks, by far my favorite is Men at Arms and the reason is 50% there's really excellent writing, and 50% HOLY SHIT ANGUA AND CARROT ARE SO GOOD TOGETHER

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

ate an entire vegetable party platter in two days. ate 3/4 of it tonight alone. it was a decision

[haropla]

my one and only worry about newcomers coming into gundam from watching g-witch is that because the rest of the franchise doesn’t feature a same-sex pairing front and center like g-witch does, they’d call the rest of the gundam franchise conservative.

[old-stoneface]

im listening to the audiobook for making money (ive read the book but it was a couple years ago now) and my review is that the antagonists for this book are my least favorite out of all of the city books ive read. they completely lack charm and theyre mostly just horribly annoying

[lucysarah-c]

“Then Lauren said—”

“Stop eating my carrots!” Levi slapped her hand away from the bowl.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed, pouting at him as she remained seated on the countertop. She caressed her hand, but the pain wasn't real. “Why?” she complained, playfully pretending to be hurt.

“Because I’m trying to make myself dinner,” he replied, continuing to slice up the vegetables. He momentarily pointed with his knife toward the boiling stew on the stove. “And when I asked if you were hungry, you said no,” Levi added, pushing the chopped vegetables into the bowl.

His stern gaze was quick to return when she grabbed another carrot slice. “I’m not hungry,” she insisted with her mouth full.

Levi maintained his stoic expression, one hand resting on his hip. “Is this going to be one of those times where I ask if you want something to eat, you say you’re not hungry, and then you end up eating half of my meal?”

There was a brief, intense silence until she swallowed her food and replied, “I never do that.”

Levi simply sighed and bent to pick up an extra batch of ingredients.

“Where’s your squad?” Y/N asked as she swung her legs on the countertop. Levi kept cooking, both of them enveloped in the dim light of the almost deserted kitchen.

“No idea,” Levi replied quickly. “Until tomorrow’s morning practice at 6, they’re not my responsibility.”

His girlfriend chuckled. “I bet they’re getting drunk downtown.”

“Good for them. As long as they don’t break anything that belongs to me and they’re on time tomorrow, they can get as shit-faced as they please.”

“What if they break something in the barracks?” she insisted playfully.

“Those budget issues are Erwin’s problems,” Levi said.

She laughed softly, her laughter echoing in the empty, massive room meant to hold many more soldiers than just the two of them. “I went downtown. I met up with friends from other divisions, had lunch, went shopping, had tea, saw a theater presentation, and then had dinner. What did you do all day?”

“I did a deep cleaning of our chambers,” Levi replied, a hint of resentment in his voice. “Something you were obviously not going to do. I did laundry, cleaned everything—even the clothes I was wearing. So, I lounged in my boxers in my desk chair, catching up with a book and drinking tea. When it got dark, I turned on a light, swapped the tea for whiskey, and kept reading. I spent my free day reading, having zero human interactions, and not dealing with anyone’s shitty problems. Best free day I’ve had in months.”

“Does that mean you’re done with your tasks for the day?” she asked playfully, giving him a sly look despite him being engrossed in his cooking.

Levi quickly replied, “Don’t worry, I still have plenty of time to do you, girly.” The words didn’t match his uninterested tone and expression.

But it made her chuckle anyway, mostly out of embarrassment. She softly hit his arm and complained, “Levi! A cadet might hear you.”

A subtle smirk appeared on his face, but not much more. There was a brief, comfortable silence as he put the ingredients into the boiling water and stirred them around.

“You know, I want your opinion about something Juliet told me. So I want you to be honest, be yourself,” Y/N commented. Levi simply hummed in agreement, his eyes fixed on his upcoming dinner. “But be nice,” she warned him.

Levi stopped stirring his meal, looked up at her, and said, “I can’t be both.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever. She’s dating a new guy… and I don’t think he’s good for her.”

“Like the last ten guys,” he interrupted her, “in the last eight months?”

Levi wasn’t a social person, but he was certainly up to date with his girlfriend’s gossip.

“Hey! Are you slut-shaming my friend?”

“No, your friend can sleep with the entire male population of the walls if she pleases,” Levi said casually as he moved around the kitchen. “But she has this tendency to think each one is the love of her life, and they last two weeks.”

Y/N couldn’t deny it. She sighed loudly. “She’s… a hopeless romantic.”

“Daddy issues.”

She snorted and then chuckled. “Hey! She’s my friend!” Y/N tried to defend her, but there was no conviction in her words. “…She used to have a crush on Erwin, remember?”

“Exactly. Having a crush on Erwin is the definition of daddy issues,” Levi said with a playful smile as his girlfriend burst into laughter. “Am I wrong?”

“No, no.”

Returning to stirring before heading back to the kitchen board to cut the potatoes, Levi asked, “So?”

“Oh yes,” Y/N caught herself and continued, “Well… she’s seeing this new guy. He’s in his mid-thirties, and the way she described him made me realize he’s a fuckboy and—”

“A fuckboy?” Levi quickly snapped, looking at his girlfriend, who simply hummed back, not understanding his reaction. “God,” Levi raised his hand to press on the bridge of his nose and slightly shook his head. “Your friend really has a radar for choosing the worst dudes out there.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet!” she complained. “Let me finish!”

“There’s nothing to finish,” he said. “A fuckboy, for fuck’s sake,” Levi repeated under his breath, almost cursing at the idea.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“A fuckboy, Y/N, really?” He repeated, louder this time, as if trying to make her see reason. Not sensing her understanding, he sighed loudly. “I was a fuckboy when I was 18, maybe even into my mid 20s. Yeah, maybe I fought the MPs in the underground, smoked around, got drunk, had a bunch of casual sex, and got high with Farlan. But I was 18!”

“What does that have to do with any of this—”

Levi quickly interrupted, “18! You can be a fuckboy at 18, maybe until your mid-20s,” he said. “You can’t be a shitty fuckboy in your mid-thirties! That’s not a fuckboy, that’s an unstable, immature, stupid dude,” Levi explained as his girlfriend burst into laughter, with him continuing to curse under his breath. “At this rate, he’s having a fucking midlife crisis, not being a fuckboy.”

Her girlfriend kept laughing, and he looked at her from the corner of his eye. "So. What is the fucking issue? Don't tell me your shitty friend got knocked up by that idiot."

Y/N kept laughing, tears running down her cheeks as she tried to calm down. “No,” she whispered out of breath between laughs, “it’s the opposite.”

Levi raised an eyebrow silently, questioning what she meant.

“He couldn’t get it up.”

It was Levi’s turn to chuckle. “Well… you definitely can’t be a fuckboy if you can’t get it hard… that’s for sure.”

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[ohnoitstbskyen]

What are your thoughts and the same-face-syndrome Oda has going on with Nami, Vivi, Rebecca, and Shirahoshi?

Oda is kind of a frustrating artist in this regard, as he is in many regards.

Because on the one hand he demonstrates, to a greater extent than almost any of his peers, the ability to design interesting, varied, creative, compelling and fun characters, with a huge variety in presentation and body type, and without the dehumanizing distancing that a lot of artists employ when depicting non-normative bodies.

Charlotte Lola for example, one of my favourites, is a character who is extremely caricatured, and depicted as stocky, broad, and rough around the edges, with a missing tooth and odd proportions. But the story consistently treats her interiority with respect and depicts her as complex and interesting beyond her sillier surface traits.

... and then up AGAINST that you have the Infinite Leggy Busty Beauty Brigade, which includes Nami, Robin, Carrot, Pudding, Doll, Domino, Boa Hancock, Vivi, Kalifa, Shakuyaku, Alivda, and on and on and on and on.

And it's this frustrating binary where Oda seems to know exactly ONE way to visually present feminine beauty: thin, curvy, busty, with long legs and a round face, and he repeats it over and over and over again like his only two modes of design are either Copy Paste Pin-Up or Crazy Caricature.

The same face syndrome comes out of that, I think. Because the gamut of what A Beautiful Woman™ can look like in One Piece is so narrow and has so few traits available to it, repetition becomes inevitable.

And idk if this is just Oda's personal indulgence, maybe he just draws the kinds of women he's attracted to, and fair enough I guess, people have the right to be self-indulgent in their art, but it is consistently one of his biggest weaknesses as an artist and designer that he just can't seem to stop reproducing the same hot babe design over and over again.

I will say that Oda is not noticeably any worse in this regard than most anime and manga - copy pasted normative bodies with same-face syndrome is the norm, not the exception, especially for female characters. And that doesn't make it not a flaw in Oda's work, just a flaw that should be understood and assessed within its context, where Oda's repetitive babes are (at least in my opinion) still more distinct and interesting than how most of the industry treats its Hot Babe characters visually.

Still wish he would incorporate, like, ONE new idea for what a beautiful woman can look like, though.

[fangsandfeels]

I've seen the "Non-ascended Astarion ending is bad for him because you have to persuade him to reject the ritual" opinion...

..implying that he never really wanted not to ascend, it's you the player who selfishly forces him to give up on his goal. To prove their point, they state that you can get a good ending out of all other companion's quests without using Persuasion at all, except for Astarion.

And boy did I want to talk about this...

(In fact, everything I wanted to say has already been told in this amazing meta post, but I still gotta ramble)

First of all, Astarion was going through an intense PTSD. The game gave him a debuff to show how badly going back to the place of his torment was affecting him. Larian couldn't make it more obvious that he wasn't thinking clearly.

Second, there is one thing all abusers have in common: they destroy their victim's feelings of self-worth to the point, the victim no longer wants or knows how to ask for help or have relationships outside their abusive circle.

Who would want you like this? Look at yourself, you think you're better than me? You're nothing. Who would want to waste their time on you? You think somebody else would treat you better?

Since entering the Cazador's palace, Astarion is reliving his worst moments. Initially, he takes it in stride, hiding his discomfort underneath performative and emotional expressiveness. He talks about how he spent time in the bedrooms where he never did any sleeping, about the kennels where he was tortured, about the barracks where he was sent to when he "deserved neither carrot nor stick". Bad memories, but he shares them with Tav because he trusts them with his scars already. They might as well know the rest.

But after descending into the dungeon, Astarion starts spiraling into self-loathing at a break-neck speed. He used to think that all Cazador victims he ever brought to him were long gone, drained, and discarded. A horrible, undeserved death, yet the thought of them not having to suffer for too long was a small consolation, one of the threads holding his sanity together.

But then it turns out that they weren't dead. They were turned. Locked away deep underground, alone with their new selves, with the hunger and isolation. They did suffer. All these years, they suffered, buried in this tomb - because of him. Cazador may have turned them, but it was Astarion who brought them to him. And they remembered it. They recognized him. The monster who stole them from their home. The monster who ruined their life. Monster. Just like Cazador.

So, as if his PTSD wasn't enough, this revelation was another blow to his grip on himself, his perception of himself. His confident facade was shattering - and in his head, he was starting to think that Tav's idea of him, of who he is, was shattering as well. He tried to warn them before. He said he couldn't be what they saw in him. Whatever person they believed him to be had never existed - and Tav was finally coming to realize that as they walked through the gallery of his sins, looking his victims in the eyes and hearing out what they had to say. Of course, Tav hated him now. They had to. How could they not?

So, at the end, he is scared. Terrified. He bit off more than he could chew by walking into the manor and thinking he had only six fellow spawns to deal with. He saw their lives as a small price to pay because Cazador made sure to erase any solidarity between them. He made them torture each other and compete with each other. He twisted the very meaning of family bonds to his perverted liking, and he knew that by doing so, he would make sure every single one of them would get a whiplash from anyone trying to mention family in a positive connotation. Astarion takes no issue with getting rid of his "brothers" and "sisters" because he is fully aware that had the roles been reversed, they would have sacrificed him without a second thought. And he was certain that Tav would change their mind once they learned more about his brethren.

But the spawns in the dungeon...All the faces he remembered. All the lovers he lured. They did nothing wrong. They never hurt him. They never tortured him. Their only mistake was to trust him.

The revelation horrifies him. His first response is to be shocked, overwhelmed with emotion - and then he has to remind himself that sacrifices must be made. He feigns indifference. He tries to cover his internal conflict with gallows humor. But his flippant mask keeps slipping as he lapses from indifference to anger, to guilt, to begging Tav not to hate him as his greatest crimes glare back at him and claw at him, shouting out threats and seething with hatred.

He can't bear the thought of dealing with all the people whose lives he helped to destroy. He can't do anything for them. Just killing Cazador won't undo what he did to them. He will never be anything but a monster in their eyes. And this is what he deserves to be. He will always be reminded of what he is.

He has no choice but to do the Ritual.

He has no idea what will happen to him after he is done - he isn't a planner. He has never been. But at this point, he doesn't see his soul as something worthy of preserving - and by association, he extends that to other spawns. He knows it all too well because he remembers how it felt. He dissociates, projecting everything he hated about himself onto Cazador's victims, trying to rationalize why he should live and why they must die while he actively avoids the truth.

Completing the ritual is no longer about being free. Or protecting himself and his lover. It's about running away. Even when Astarion has Cazador at his mercy, he still thinks of running away. Getting lost forever. So nobody could ever hurt him.

A part of him even realizes that it means running away from Tav too. But Tav can leave, he naively thinks, not knowing the full consequences of the ritual. Tav will leave to find someone else, someone better, and he will start everything anew, a king of his castle.

So, of course, Tav has to reach out to him through that thick haze of fear, anger, and self-hatred. Persuasion isn't about strongarming someone into doing what you want. It's not subjugation or emotional blackmail. It's reasoning with someone. And that is exactly what Tav does - reasons with Astarion after watching him mentally struggle, after seeing his genuine shock and fear, after understanding that he isn't fully on board with the idea.

It's true, vampire spawns tend to gravitate toward power, especially if nothing is pulling them back. A vampire spawn is a feared and scorned creature - it no longer matters whether they were an unwilling victim, forcefully taken and turned. They are seen not as an individual but as the extension of their master - and the only natural transition for them is to get on the top of the food chain. The only way to make a name and become treated as something more.

Astarion saw power as the mean to safety and freedom, first and foremost. Ironically, he never planned beyond securing these two priorities. He never saw himself after accomplishing his goals, and it's kinda amazing how people can make conclusions about his hedonism because he misses petty vanities, wants to drink blood from a goblet, and sleep on silken sheets. The man who was held and tortured in the kennels, fed rats, and had to stitch and fix his only set of clothes over and over to keep it presentable, the man who has never felt happy for most of his conscious non-life is called hedonistic for wanting nice things. For still wanting to take care of himself for once.

He wasn't harboring any grand plans, conquests, or schemes. Even his idea of taking control of the Absolute was abstract and shapeless because he didn't care about getting control over the most influential people as much as he was afraid of breaking whatever protected him from Cazador's domination. He never really knew what to do with power aside from keeping Cazador and the likes of him at bay.

The way Astarion behaves in a relationship also speaks tons of how controlling he really is...or how he isn't controlling at all. When his romance with Tav transforms into something real, and he enters a new territory, Astarion is empowered to make decisions and think about what he wants instead of pleasuring others. It's clear that he and Tav don't have sex after they come clear about their feelings. Tav respects his comfort and boundaries, gives him all the time he needs, and lets him take the lead. Whether they will have sex again or not is entirely up to Astarion. Whatever he decides, it won't change Tav's feelings for him. He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do.

Astarion enjoys this new autonomy. He is playful, affectionate, outspoken...and afraid of messing everything up. If Tav mentions breaking up, Astarion thinks he is the problem. If there is another potential love interest showing they have eyes for Tav, Astarion encourages Tav to be with them because he believes they can give Tav everything he can't. When Tav says "I choose you," Astarion is taken aback, needing a moment to hide his genuine confusion at Tav actually wanting to be with him rather than Gale, Karlach, or Halsin.

For all his talks of control and dominating others, once Astarion finds himself with a lover who values his autonomy more than getting power at the cost of his dignity, who makes it safe for him to be honest, and who listens to him, he almost stops mentioning control. He merely lives in the moment, happy not to know, not to pretend, not to manipulate. Just to be.

What Astarion truly craves - not wants on a superficial level, not conditioned to want - is not to be a vampire lord. He wants the freedom to be anything. Anything he wants. Little does he know that true vampires rarely get to be anything they want, even if they gain the ability to walk in the sun -- we see it in his Ascended path as, instead of acting up on his supposed freedom to be anything, Astarion repeats Cazador's rules step by step. Just like Cazador did. Just like Verlioth did. He isn't anything he wants. He is the replica of his former master.

Astarion never had the luxury to explore who he wanted to be outside what Cazador made him. He only makes his first steps once he is free. We see glimpses of that deep-seated aspiration to be seen as a person. Treated like a person. Loved like a person. To be reflected in someone's eyes. He wants to know if there is someone beneath his usual mask, something his, not tainted by Cazador. Someone real. And at the same time, he dreads to know the answer. Because that part of him knows regret. Knows shame. Knows guilt. Confronting it posed the risk of realizing he didn't deserve love, kindness, or a future. What if real him truly doesn't amount to anything? What else for him to do?

So, he tells himself that he has no choice, and he expects Tav to affirm it -- not because he wants them to, but because he believes that Tav has seen enough to make the same conclusion. However, Tav objects, trying to be louder than all the inner demons hissing into his ears. Tav speaks to the Astarion, who asked them what they saw when they looked at him. The Astarion, who thanked them for standing by his side when he said "No" to Araj. The Astarion one who stood frozen in their hug before returning it tentatively. The Astarion who diligently, dedicatedly, caringly kept pulling himself together instead of letting himself unravel completely.

Tav reminds him that this Astarion, right here, right now, is worth fighting for. That he didn't survive all these years of torture, pain, humiliation, and dehumanization to give himself up now. He already has the power to avenge himself, avenge all Cazador's victims. He can end everything right here, right now - and this is the only power to free him. He has the power (and responsibility) of having a choice.

Tav empathizes with other spawns as victims not because they're more "innocent" than Astarion, but because associating with them doesn't brand Astarion as weak or broken. These spawns aren't horrible wretches, and neither is he. They don't deserve this, and neither did he.

The only one who deserves to die today is Cazador - the vampire, the monster, the pathetic piece of shit.

Astarion Ancunin deserves to live.

[virtualcarrot]

I think stanning them is the single most boring thing you can do to a character.

Like, I love Iruka. Iruka's my blorbo from my manga since my teens. He's a caring adult who used to be a conflicted kid hiding his sorrow with laughter, what's there not to like? Him speaking his mind about the chuunin exam spoke to me for extremely relatable reasons. He's my projection character.

And you know what? There's nothing more interesting to me than exploring his faults. Please let's discuss his lack of self-control, getting so riled up during the chuunin exam nominations. Let's talk about his failures with regards to Sasuke, who had good grades and didn't act out so Iruka didn't pay him much mind even though Sasuke should have been flagged as a traumatized child. Iruka playing favorites. Iruka using his connections to keep playing favorites because he's worried... about his favorite. Iruka not fitting the shinobi mold. Iruka being lame. Iruka who spent years being a stern teacher to Naruto and apparently didn't think worth mentioning that he saw and appreciated Naruto's efforts until it was almost too late. Iruka failing.

Anyway, stanning is the single most boring and unproductive and dishonest thing you can do to a character

[gotholdladywithadhd]

Unpopular opinion, probably.

So I've read many metas, and thought a lot about it and have come to my own personal conclusion about the final 15.

I'm taking it at face value.

Because it was the most human Crowley and Aziraphale have probably ever been and I think that is at least part of the point. Love makes people stupid and they are navigating a very human thing in very unhuman circumstances, and it's hard enough to do as a human in human circumstances!

I think Aziraphale believed the Metatron about Crowley bc he was expecting the worst when TM mentioned Crowley but instead got the one thing he wanted most (him and Crowley together and safe, not Crowley being an angel. ) Crowley was absolutely the carrot here. (and no I do not think Crowley would have been safe or happy, but that's besides the point.) I can't tell you how many times I've believed patently ridiculous things because I wanted to believe them so badly even though if I was looking at the same situation objectively from an outside POV I would see how ridiculous it was, so I totally get it. This isn't to say I think Azi had a real choice to go to Heaven or not and I think he did understand that as well, but I get the temptation the Metatron threw out to him, I really do.

As for Aziraphale literally saying all the wrong things to try and get Crowley to come with him? Um yeah been there done that too, the nerves take over, the brain shuts off, the mouth goes into autopilot pulling stuff out its ass, and "WITAF did I just say?" happens.

Crowley not taking any of it well and only hearing what he expected to hear (I'm not good enough for you bc I'm a demon and you only really want me if I can be an angel) *and* also being more able to see through heavens bullshit bc he has lived it, and can see it from the outside, *and* all whilst being the most honest and vulnerable he has ever been with Aziraphale in 6,000 plus years (or in fact possibly to anyone, ever. the closest before this admitting he was lonely to Azi during the Job minisode,) *then* hearing what he took to be the same Heaven will save us line from Azi was enough to trigger a massive bout of RSD and a broken heart. Everything was supposed to "vavoom and sorted! " and instead the stupid awning broke and everything went wrong. I think I've said it before that at this point Crowley can't hear anything over the sound of his heart breaking into a million pieces.

That's a whole lot to pack into the brief moments before Azi has to leave with the Metatron (who let's be honest was rushing him before he could change his mind) esp when neither of them are used to discussing their relationship openly. They didn't have time to think, to ask questions, to share information, (like hey guess what really happened to Gabriel?) Crowley tried to communicate as much as he could about his feelings with the kiss but Azi didn't have the time to properly process all that and said the wrong thing again and Crowley was rejected (he thought) again and it all just went so very wrong. You can't fix a 6,000 year relationship in 15 minutes, you just can't no matter what the story books say.

It's about two people wanting the same thing but not being able to get it (yet) because of circumstances and personalities. All of S2 was about them seeming to be closer than ever (and in many ways they were) but really they were opposed at almost every turn. (in RL not the minisodes, those actually showed them working together and coming out okay mostly, if you don't count wee Morag or Crowley getting dragged to hell) The way they both handled the Gabriel situation, how they both worked to solve the mystery, even how they tried to make Nina and Maggie fall in love were all either done alone, or in opposite ways. I've said it before and I'll say it again, as it was pointed out right in ep1, their exactlies aren't the same and until they are, they aren't going to be able to be together. The one time they did work together in the season, they produced a 25 lazuri miracle. That is the point of the final 15, and the whole season 2 in my opinion.

They'll get there in the end though!

[that1nkyone]

Unpopular opinion:

I like Fourchenault. He sucks.

Imagine being an emotionally-stunted man who's in this society that's all about peace and nonintervention and Knowledge, so obviously you know better than anyone else in the world and their petty conflicts.

And then you get told that the world will end in your lifetime - and then you get two kids, which makes you panic about it all the more. So when your kids come of age and go off to explore this world while you're figuring out the Evacuation Plan for End Times, and then come back having involved themselves in almost all the petty conflicts you've heard about, you get mad.

You think they're being rebellious children who don't know any better, so you decide the best course of action is to disown them of the family name so they're suitably punished, don't get support, or don't get in the way if they ever rock up to your doorstep. And then you can shove them kicking and screaming onto the Noah's Ark you're making when it's time to scoot off this planet. Flawless plan. Cool.

Within, let's say, a month - your kids, with their very powerful friends, rock up to your front doorstep just as your promoted to the leader of your life's work. And after agreeing that they won't work against your plans, your kids proceed to systematically hijack your entire life's work, using all the knowledge, allies and experience they have accumulated during their trip into the rest of the world. Everything that you have lacked.

You're actually proud, but you are struck dumb because every single thing you thought was right has been flipped on its head. Because your kids (and your wife) are too smart for you to comprehend. So, you swallow your pride and you relinquish the wheel to your whole operation. And the Doomsday Evac plan never happens. It doesn't need to. Your children and their friends do the impossible - they stop the world from ending.

You're lucky that your family is willing to give you forgiveness in the face of all this - because you will forever be plagued by the looming presence of the Warrior of Light, whose attitude will range from "Fuck the narrative, these are my kids now," to "I respect your kids' decision to forgive you, and I will work with you, but you are on Thin Fucking Ice."

The cherry on the top is that if your Doomsday Evac plan had actually happened, your distant collaborators would have only been able to provide food in the form of carrots.

You would have been stuck eating your most hated food for perhaps the rest of your life.

Just, mwah. Poetry.

[corroded-hellfire]

Gimme A Break - Eddie Munson x Reader

An As You Wish Story

Collaboration with my beloved @munson-blurbs

Summary: A trip to the grocery store has you running into some familiar faces--and one not so friendly.

Note: Let Brittany bashing commence!

Warnings: talk of body image

Words: 2k

[As You Wish masterlist]

In your opinion, there’s no such concept as a bad time for soup. The dead of winter, the stifling heat of summer—it’s all good. 

The fall weather that’s rolled into Hawkins has inspired you to try your hand at making some from scratch, bringing you to Bradley’s Big Buy on a Sunday afternoon. You’re inspecting a bag of carrots for freshness and tossing them in the cart haphazardly when you feel a sudden thump against your leg. 

“Wha—” you start, ready to confront whoever was careless enough to ram into you. Your scowl immediately softens when you see the two smiling faces looking up at you. “Oh, hi boys!”

Luke, unsurprisingly, is the one who ran into you at full speed. Ryan is a few paces behind his bull-in-a-china-shop brother, but his expression is equally happy. 

You crouch down to give each of them a hug. The way they both wrap their arms around you radiates love’s warmth, and it melts your heart. 

“Are you buying anything good?” you ask, knowing they’ll be wholly unimpressed with your basket full of vegetables. 

Luke nods vigorously. “CHICKEN NUGGETS!” He bellows, drawing irate glares from nearby shoppers. “Daddy has a cool-pon.”

“It’s coupon,” Ryan says with a gentle roll of his eyes. 

You’re still stuck on the mention of their dad. Eddie’s here? And you don’t have on a lick of makeup—of course. 

“Where is Daddy?” you ask, looking up and down the aisle in the unlikely event that you missed him. 

“He’s uh…” Luke trails off, scrunching his nose as he searches for his dad. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” crinkles over the PA system after being interrupted by a call for assistance in the frozen food department as Brittany appears at the end of the aisle.

An irritated voice calls out from the end of the aisle. “What’s taking you two so—oh. You’re here.” Brittany crosses her arms over her chest, huffing out an impatient sigh when she spots you. 

Luke pipes up, still attached to your leg. “We can’t find the asper-, uh, aparag, the um…”

“Asparagus,” Brittany corrects him as if the five-year-old should be able to pronounce words perfectly by this age.

“Oh,” you say, turning to exactly where you know the asparagus is. “Here you go.”

Ryan gladly takes it from you with a grin. Huh, maybe there is a Munson who shares your affinity for veggies. It certainly isn’t Luke—or Eddie, for that matter. 

“You’re the best!” he says cheerfully, placing it in the cart that Brittany’s been pushing.

“Boys.” It almost sounds like she’s admonishing them for being kind to you. She looks at you with unkind eyes. “Maybe you should work here instead of for us,” she says, trying to play it off as a joke, but you can tell there’s some underlying threat. 

Luke is not amused by this, his little fingers digging into your leg as he clutches onto your jeans even tighter. “No! She has to be our babysitter forever and ever!” He pouts, eyes welling up with tears at the mere mention of you leaving. 

“Maybe not forever,” Ryan points out, always the practical one, “because one day we’ll be grown-ups with our own kids—”

“And then she can babysit them!” Luke declares, proud of his idea, loosening his grip on you. 

Brittany shakes her head, immediately eschewing the notion. “C’mon, let’s get going,” she says tersely. “Dad’s gonna be wondering where we are.” The cruel curl of her lip serves as a painful reminder of what’s hers; more specifically, what isn’t yours. 

As if on cue, Eddie meanders out from a nearby aisle, a canister of quick oats tucked under his arm. He’s wearing gray sweatpants that lay low on his hips and leave little to the imagination. Somehow on this brisk autumn day you have sweat beading along the back of your neck as you take him in.

“You’re So Vain” fades out on the speakers above, only to start playing the infectious opening notes of “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel.

“Britt, I couldn’t find the old-fashioned kind, but will this—oh, hey,” Eddie says, stopping in his tracks to acknowledge you. “You here to make sure these gremlins don’t lock themselves in the ice cream freezer?”

Luke grins, lets go of your leg, and takes your hand proudly in his as if it was somehow all his doing that you’re here in the grocery store the same time as they are. 

“Hi,” you greet before realizing you have a dopey smile on your face. “Uh, yeah. And it seems like I got here just in time. This one here almost had the lid off a rocky road before I caught him.” You shake Luke’s small hand in your own for emphasis and the boy wrinkles his nose up at you, the spitting image of his father.

Eddie chuckles and goes to respond, but his wife cuts him off.

“I guess those oats will work,” she says as she takes the canister from him—or snatches it, more like. “Come on, we didn’t even get to the dairy section yet.”

“Or,” Luke ventures, his hand gripping yours tighter in the chill air of the produce section, “we could get a cow in the backyard and get our milk that way.”

Eddie chuckles. “Hard pass, little man. We had to bring in reinforcement just to handle you and your brother.” He looks over and winks at you. 

It takes all of your strength and will power not to immediately vomit right then and there at the wink. Such a simple gesture from this man has you ready to lose all control of your body. 

Brittany huffs, clearly annoyed at the interaction. How dare anyone be having a conversation in her presence that doesn’t revolve around her? 

“Well, we need to keep shopping.” Brittany turns on her heel, spotting a red bag of fun-size KitKats in her husband’s other hand. “And put that back. The last thing you need is more junk food.” Her eyes flit down to his stomach, which has softened with time and a steady diet of pretzels and Mountain Dew.

The tips of Eddie’s ears turn pink, and he tries to hide them behind his curls. He clears his throat, the whole time avoiding your eyes, and tosses the KitKat bag onto an empty spot of a nearby shelf. He’s clearly embarrassed, but you’re seeing red. Fury scorches you from the inside out and it’s so potent that it might just dry up some of the vegetables around you. There have been many times in the past where you’ve wanted to tell Brittany off, but this one takes the cake. The callous yet truthful words rest on the tip of your tongue, but you know it would only make the mess bigger for everyone involved. You don’t want to add any extra stress for Eddie. Brittany is the one who should be embarrassed for treating her husband that way, not Eddie. That man is drop dead gorgeous and he still would be if he inhaled a bag of those KitKats every single day. 

Leave it to Luke to break the tension that he wasn’t even aware of was surrounding them all on this produce aisle. The young boy spies a can of spinach on the shelf and snatches it up, staring at it with wide eyes.

“Will this make me strong like Popeye?!”

“Sure, sweetie,” Brittany says, not paying any attention to her youngest son whatsoever. 

Brittany turns and heads towards the end of the aisle, no goodbye to you, no saying where she’s going, just leaving and assuming the guys will follow behind her. 

“We’ll see you tomorrow after school, right?” Ryan asks, bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet.

“I’ll be there,” you assure him, booping the tip of his nose. He gives you a quick, strong hug around your middle.

Luke, still holding on to the can of spinach, blows you an overdramatic kiss which you pretend to almost drop into a bed of lettuce. The little boy giggles and it’s one of the best sounds you’ve ever heard. 

Eddie takes a step closer to you, still feeling the sting of embarrassment, and speaks in a soft voice. “We, uh, should get going.” Eddie clears his throat. It kills you to see how Brittany zaps the life out of him. “I’ll—we’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“I’ll be there,” you promise once again. 

Eddie offers you a small smile before turning to his sons. 

“All right, come on. Let’s catch on up to Mom.”

The boys don’t look too enthused about that, and it warms your heart that they’d rather stay here and hangout with you. 

“Bye guys,” you say, waving to all three of them as they head down the aisle.

Once they’re gone you heave a heavy sigh. Being in Brittany’s presence for two minutes was exhausting enough, you have no idea how those three manage to live with her.

You try to refocus on your shopping, however impossible that might seem now. When you’re checking over the items you already have and look back up at the shelves, you spot the red KitKat bag that Eddie had wanted to buy. There’s no hesitation at all to pick it up and add it to your pile of groceries.

The Munson car isn’t hard to spot as you step out into the parking lot of the store. You see it almost every day and the gorgeous, familiar looking man loading groceries into the trunk is also a huge indicator. 

Not surprisingly, Brittany is in the car while Eddie does all the work. The boys are in the backseat and from what you can make out of their silhouettes, they’re arguing with one another. They’re kids, they’d probably be more of a hindrance than help to Eddie. But Brittany could at least be doing something. 

Steeling your nerves, you take a deep breath and head over to him. 

“Eddie?”

His head whips around. “Hey,” he says with a small smile. “Everything okay?”

“Mhm,” you nod, summoning all of your courage and handing him the candy. “You left these on the shelf.” You try to play it off casually, but the slight tremble in your voice gives your nervousness away. 

He starts to take them but pulls back. “I probably shouldn’t,” he mumbles, shoving his hand into his pocket. “Britt’s been on me to lose the ‘dad weight’ for a while.”

You shake your head, mostly to keep from opening your mouth and saying something about his wife that you’ll regret.

“I think you look good,” you say. “Um, like, you don’t need to lose any weight.” You’re perfect the way you are, you ache to tell him, but you shouldn’t. You can’t. 

Eddie senses that you have words unspoken, but he doesn’t press further. “Well, um, thanks.” He takes the bag and opens it, grabbing two before giving it back to you. “Can’t get caught,” he explains with a laugh. 

You grin at him, an idea already taking form. “I’ll bring one each day I babysit. Sneak it in like contraband.”

“As long as the boys don’t find it first,” Eddie chuckles, crossing his arms over his chest. “The last thing they need is more sugar.”

You agree with a laugh. “Deal.”

Eddie tucks the KitKats into his jacket pocket. 

“Thank you, by the way,” he says softly. 

“No problem. Just some candy,” you shrug. 

He shakes his head. “No, it…” he trails off. “Just…thank you.”

You smile as he ducks into the driver’s seat, and you walk back to your own car. As you pack up the back with your groceries, you mentally calculate how long this bag of KitKats will last if you bring Eddie one every day that you work. You purse your lips as you slam the trunk closed.

“That’s not nearly long enough for my liking,” you mumble to yourself as you slip into the driver’s seat.

Once you put the key in the ignition, the car rumbles to life and the purr of the engine sounds like it’s coming from your brain as it churns out an idea. 

You smile to yourself and shift your car into gear.

“Guess I’ll just have to buy some more bags of candy.”

[melrosing]

What do you think of the Sansa bullied Arya take if you don’t mind me asking (just don’t answer if you don’t want to haha)

per my usual practice on Controversial Topics im putting this under a cut

At the real risk of that lot showing up in my notes again, I think this ‘Sansa bullies Arya’ pins their pre AGOT dynamic squarely on Sansa herself, rather than the way they are both being raised by the adults around them to behave towards one another. Sure, Sansa is mean to Arya sometimes during their childhood! We don’t have a lot of examples besides the oft-mentioned ‘horseface’ insults, but I think it’s fair to assume that more often than not, Sansa was looking down on Arya. Meanwhile, Arya herself feels inadequate and like she just can’t do anything right. She resents Sansa, but also worries that Sansa’s opinion of her may be true.

Fine. But where has Sansa’s opinion of Arya come from? Is it her cold black heart? Fucking no, it’s come from Septa Mordane, Catelyn, and whoever else surrounds them growing up. The men don’t seem to really give much of a shit how Arya acts because it’s not their business and she’s just a kid anyhow, but the women pointedly give many shits. In our first scene with Arya, Septa Mordane scolds her for not being good at ‘women’s work’, and there’s plenty to suggest that this is just another day in the life for Arya. Meanwhile, Sansa gets the carrot for excelling. Both Arya and Sansa are learning their own worth in this chapter, and the worth of one another. Sansa internalises the praise whilst learning that Arya is bad, and everything she mustn’t be. Arya internalises the criticisms whilst learning that Sansa is good, and everything she can never be.

They’ll be getting this from Catelyn as well. Catelyn clearly adores both her daughters, and will move heaven and earth to get them back in ACOK. But one good adjective for Catelyn is ‘dutiful’ - it’s in her house words, and it’s how she’s lived her life up to AGOT. Doing as she’s told, even when it pains her. She expects the same of her daughters, and finds those expectations satisfied in Sansa’s case, and apparently flouted in Arya’s. So again, from their own mother, Sansa internalises that Arya is bad, and that she, Sansa, is good. Arya internalises the same. If societal standards were reversed, perhaps it would be Arya lording over Sansa, but such as it is, it’s Sansa over Arya. 

Now, Sansa is a child. When children are told over and over that X is good and Y is bad, they generally don’t question it, at least until they're older and more experienced in the world. They will also parrot what they hear, often in graceless ways. Because they’re children. Sansa is told that Arya wilfully misbehaves because she’s bad, and so Sansa thinks: then I should look down on Arya. It sounds like Sansa mostly keeps her distance from her sister pre AGOT. Not always - they play together sometimes - but a lot of the time. She has internalised the teaching that Arya is an aberration, and as she herself knows the adults value obedience in girls, and she wants to please them so badly, the distance between her and Arya demonstrates to them just how good she is - she won’t descend to Arya’s behaviour. 

When Sansa does interact with Arya (pre Darry), we see her being a bit bossy - telling Arya what to do, etc. Sansa is replicating what she has seen the adults do with Arya, and is mimicking them to assert her own position as the good, obedient child. If Arya ever doesn’t want to do something, it can only be because she’s bad. 

[sidenote, it all really reminds me of these short stories me and my sister used to get read a lot as kids, called My Naughty Little Sister (lmao) by Dorothy Edwards. They're pretty old and I don’t think they ever got major circulation outside Britain, but for anyone unfamiliar, you can probably guess how these stories go. There’s an elder sister, good and obedient, who narrates short tales of her ‘naughty little sister’ doing terrible things like idk, making a terrible mess etc, and going ‘now I’m sure you [the child audience] wouldn’t do a thing like that!’ They’re supposed to be short morality tales for the children, and amuse the parent reading them aloud, who recognises the mischievous behaviour of the younger and is charmed by the haughtiness of the elder sister, who you can hear is narrating the incidents of her sister’s mischief with the disdain that she’s heard the adults do so, and is asserting her own good behaviour over said sister. And the whole fucking reason we were read these stories was because my younger sister was precisely the kind of kid who got up to all kinds of shit as a little kid (which now all of us find hilarious but DIDN’T AT THE TIME), and I was the elder sister like ‘my goodness how could she do such things as these!!’ (e.g. paint an entire bookcase with grout). It amused us both to see ourselves in the stories. You could say this was life imitating art, but I think this is simply an age old dynamic, familiar to many people with siblings: you would see how the adults spoke to another child in your family, and replicate their manner in an effort to come across as an adult. Except you weren’t an adult, so you weren’t always as graceful about it as they were. That is pre AGOT Sansa, to a T. And I’m sure that’s what GRRM, a child of three who had two sisters of his own, is replicating here.]

But I think there’s also a loneliness in being the ‘obedient child’. Doing as you’re told all the time can be boring, and living up to expectations is a lot of pressure. Sansa wants a companion in all that, but Arya has no interest in sharing in it. Arya is offering friendship, but from a place Sansa believes she can’t reach her sister - Sansa thinks she’d have to ‘descend to Arya’s level’ to accept it, and she can’t do that. You get a sense of Sansa thrilling in trying Arya’s ‘misbehaviours’ for herself when she quietly delights in behaving ‘as wicked as Arya’, but you see in this that she has to condemn such behaviours and herself for exhibiting them, all in the same breath. And in the end, I can easily imagine Sansa resents that Arya has more fun with their brothers than she ever does with Sansa herself: that the one sister she has is one she has nothing in common with. Sansa can’t find a like mind amongst her siblings, and so clings to Jeyne Poole, and the praise of the adults around her.

So with all that in mind, YES! Sansa is sometimes mean to Arya, and calls her horseface. That is because Sansa is a child, nobody is correcting her behaviour, and she understands that Arya is bad, and the way she behaves is frustrating to Sansa herself, so really what does it matter if she’s a little mean sometimes? She knows that she is good, because everyone says so. Even if she calls her sister a name now and then, she’s still the good child. 

AND THEN we get to Darry. And Sansa starts to see that society isn’t a song, and sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are, horrible things can happen to you anyway. But she doesn’t want to believe that, because it would turn her world upside down, and her future would look a lot darker, too - Ned has not ended her engagement to Joffrey, and Sansa has to live for the foreseeable in KL. So when Arya doing the thing she ‘wasn’t supposed to’ (playing with Mycah) snowballs into a terrible miscarriage of justice where Sansa’s wolf is killed, Sansa rejects the notion that the songs could be wrong about beautiful princes, and shifts the blame onto Arya for that original 'misdemeanour'. The grief at losing Lady is terrible too (the wolves are meant to have a soul deep bond with the Stark children), and so the target of that grief likewise becomes Arya. What was previously a normal, childishly complicated sibling relationship gets twisted into something else.

This is where I think Sansa becomes different level of unpleasant towards her sister. She’s cruel about Arya’s loss of Mycah, tells Arya she wishes she were dead instead of Lady, etc etc. Arya is not giving as good as she gets here - she even tries to make amends with Sansa, but Sansa throws the offer in her face.

The reasons for Sansa’s behaviour are complicated, but not that complicated. She’s been raised to slot perfectly into this world, without ever being told what that world is really like. And when abruptly it turns out that what she’s being raised for is essentially the slaughter, she rejects it. She can’t see Joffrey as he truly is: she’s been told that princes are charming, that Kings are just, Queens are kind, and she herself will be a Queen. Sansa is going to be handed over to the Lannisters, and she’s going to live the song of her dreams, and the only thing between Sansa and the realisation of those is the thing that’s always been wrong: Bad Arya. Because again, if Arya isn't bad, then everything else is, and Sansa is in terrible danger.

No one is sitting Sansa down and explaining to her that Arya is not bad, just different from her, and that they should love one another - that there are dark forces here far stronger than them that could tear them apart, that the Lannisters are the greatest of them, and they have to fight together, not each other. Arya gets this talk, funnily enough, but not Sansa. Arya is asked to understand that Sansa is different from her, but Sansa is only ever taught to abhor that her sister as different from her. Where Arya is told to be wary of the court of King’s Landing, Ned leaves Sansa to continue her fantasies, and then, when he abruptly tries to put an end to them, he doesn’t bother to explain why. I’m not saying this is unforgivable on Ned’s part - he has a lot on his mind lol - but it’s quite obviously a major failing. Ned leaves Sansa in a fantasy world. It’s fucking Joffrey who has to step in and clarify for Sansa that actually, she’s been dreaming.

So as long as they’re together, Sansa is never able to come to terms with the fact that Arya was not the aberration, but rather, everything else was. In the absence of one another, they cannot reconcile over that fact. So yes, GRRM says they’ll have deep issues to sort through when they meet again, but those aren’t going to be the times that Sansa called her ‘horseface’ - they’re going to be about what happened since they left Winterfell, when their relationship was twisted by forces much darker than Septa Mordane. 

So no, I think the ‘Sansa is a bully’ diatribes are seriously tedious, because even if you want to insist that calling your sister ‘horseface’ a few times even qualifies, you can still accept such wrongs without deciding that that makes Sansa a fundamentally unkind person who cannot be reconciled with Arya and doesn’t deserve to be. It is on the page that the two of them miss each other. Like I genuinely cannot imagine going through everything Arya does in the story and then, upon reuniting with a sister I thought lost forever, deciding I’m actually still mad about the things she got wrong as a child that she herself has paid dearly for, both physically and emotionally. Like jesus fucking christ man. By all means let them talk about it!! But who do you think Arya is lmao

Tl;dr: Sansa is a kid in a society. She is not the arbiter of Arya’s place in society. She is not mean because she’s cruel, but because she has internalised the exact same things that Arya has, based on the example of the adults surrounding them. It just happens that those things were a carrot for Sansa and a stick for Arya. But then in the end, they weren’t a carrot for Sansa either.

tl;dr 2: clarifying once again - i am a jaime stan. i find the stark sister relationship interesting bc I have experience of a similar sisterly dynamic and find it interesting to see a version of that explored on the page. so if you think one has to be a sansa stan to observe all this then that kind of just demonstrates how dichotomous you've become on this issue lol like if I'm talking about takes I dislike re JB I don't generally feel the need to attribute them to JC fandom. let's all grow up x

tl;dr 3: no i don't hate sansa or arya, since i know these are both conclusions various people reach whenever i even mention these two. in fact i think they are both great girls! imagine

[dduane]

Of parsnips and parsnip soup

So the question of parsnips, and particularly parsnip soup, came up secondary to this quote from an interview with Terry Pratchett. (Thanks to @captainfantasticalright for the transcription.)

Terry: “You can usually bet, and I’m sure Neil Gaiman would say the same thing, that, uh, if I go into a bookstore to do a signing and someone presents me with three books, the chances are that one of them is going to be a very battered copy of Good Omens; and it will smell as if it’s been dropped in parsnip soup or something in and it’s gone fluffy and crinkly around the edges and they’ll admit that it’s the fourth copy they’ve bought”.

And when @petermorwood saw this, he immediately reblogged it and added four recipes for parsnip soup.

These kind of surprised some folks, as not everybody knew that parsnips were an actual thing: or if they were, what they looked like or were useful for.

The vegetable may well be better known on this side of the Atlantic. (And I have to confess that as a New Yorker and Manhattanite, with access to both great outdoor food markets and some of the best grocery stores in the world, I don't think that parsnips ever came up on my personal radar while I was living there.) So I thought I'd take a moment to lay out some basics for those who'd like to get to know the vegetable better.

The parsnip's Linnaean/botanical name is Pastinaca sativa, and in the culinary mode it's been around for a long time. It's native to Eurasia, and is a relative to parsley and carrots (with which it's frequently paired in the UK and Ireland). The Romans cultivated it, and it spread all over the place from there. Travelers who passed through our own neck of the woods before the introduction of the potato noted that "the Irish do feed much upon parsnips", and in the local diet it filled a lot of the niches that the potato now occupies.

You can do all kinds of things with parsnips. The Wikipedia article says, correctly, that they can be "baked, boiled, pureed, roasted, fried, grilled, or steamed". But probably the commonest food form in which parsnips turn up around here is steamed or simmered with carrots and then mashed with them: so that you can buy carrot-and-parsnip mash, ready-made, in most of our local grocery chains.

It also has to be mentioned that most Irish kids have had this stuff foisted on them at one point or another, and a lot of them hate it. (@petermorwood would be one.) I find it hard to blame anybody for this opinion, as one of the parsnip's great selling points—its spicy, almost peppery quality—gets almost completely wiped out by the carrot's more dominant flavor and sweetness.

Roasting parsnips, though, is another matter entirely. They roast really well. And parsnip soups are another story entirely, as it's possible to build a soup that will emphasize the parsnip's virtues.

So, to add to Peter's collection, here's one I made earlier—like yesterday afternoon, stopping the cooking sort of halfway and finishing it up today.

I was thinking in a vague medioregnic-food way about a soup with roasted bacon in it, but not with potatoes (as those have been disallowed from the Middle Kingdoms for reasons discussed elsewhere. Tl;dr: it's Sean Astin's fault). And finally I thought, "Okay, if we're going to roast some pork belly or back bacon, then why not save some energy and roast some parsnips too? The browned skins'll help keep them from going to mush in the soup."

So: first find your parsnips. I used four of them. You peel them with a potato peeler...

...sort of roughly quarter them, the long way...

...then chop them in half the short way, toss them in a bowl with some oil—olive oil, in this case—spread them on a baking sheet, and season them with pepper, coarse salt, and some chile flakes. (I used ancho and bird's-eye chile flakes here.)

These then went into the oven for about half an hour, and came out like this.

While that was going on, I got a block of ready-cooked Polish snack bacon out of the freezer.

On its home turf, this is the kind of thing that turns up (among other ways) sliced very thin on afternoon-snack plates, with cheeses and breads. But we like to score it and roast it to sweat some of the fat out, and then use it in soups and stews and so forth.

So I scored this chunk on most of its sides, browned it in a skillet, then shoved the skillet into the oven for twenty minutes or so. Here's the bacon after it was done.

While it was cooking, I made about a liter of soup stock from a couple of stock cubes. If you can get pork stock cubes, they'd be best for this, but beef works fine.

This then went into the pot and was brought up to just-boiling while the bacon and the parsnips were chopped into more or less bite-sized chunks. After that, the meat and veg were added to the pot and the whole business was left to simmer for a couple of hours while I went off to do some line editing.

Finally I turned it off and left it on the stove overnight (our kitchen is quite cool, it was in no bacteriological danger from being left out this way) and then finished its simmering time around lunchtime today.

And here it is. (...Or was. It was very nice.)

...Anyway, this is only one of potentially thousands of takes on parsnip soup. Recipes for more robust versions—based on mashed parsnips and more vegetables, or different meats—are all over the place.

Meanwhile, as regards how much damage this soup could do to your copy of Good Omens if you dropped yours in it, I'd rate this at about 5 damage points out of 10. ...Call it 5.5 if you factor in the chiles. Soups along the boiled-and-mashed-parsnip spectrum would probably inflict damage more in the 7.50-8.0 range. But your results may vary: so I'll leave you all to your own experimentation.