#its my personal chicken soup for the soul

[willothewispwisteriadawn]

I'm intrigued by your comparison of tsh, the great gatsby, and heathers, would you care to share some points?

Golly gee! I’m glad you asked, Anon!

(Obvious major spoilers for the three of these things. Also, I’m using the 1988 film for Heathers. I like the musical, but I like the movie a bit more, and it better suits my points here. There are a few differences in tone between film and musical especially regarding J.D.)

(This talks about triggering topics seen in each of these stories.)

/Opening/

All three of these stories provide critical looks at certain communities, and all of them focus on at least one character whose goal is to reach a particular worldly ideal, to achieve a certain aesthetic lifestyle. Gatsby goes about this in a very reflective and melancholy way. Heathers uses humor and satire. The Secret History uses elements of both.

I really like Joseph Campbell and Thomas C. Foster who analyze character archetypes and tropes. Their points are not that this is necessarily copying or unoriginal but that human storytellers often get attracted to the same concerns, ideals, and concepts— we end up revisiting frameworks such as the hero’s journey or the “vampire” archetype for characters. But what is enriching is the author’s own way of commenting on these things. If we look at, say, Henry, Gatsby, and J.D, they are all wildly different people but the same character type. So let’s go though how the stories are all saying the same thing but exploring it differently.

/Great Gatsby vs Secret History/

Let’s start with TGG and TSH. Richard mentions early on that he identifies with Gatsby, and that this is his favorite novel. I’ve seen a few people question this because Richard is much closer to Nick Carraway. And, from a POV perspective, he is. They’re both outsiders attracted to the mystique of another character. And they’re just neutral enough that different characters can approach them about things. But Richard seeing himself as Jay Gatsby is also accurate, because Gatsby has a similar internal struggle to Richard himself. Richard’s flaws and goals are exactly Gatsby’s. Both men resent the lives they were born into, viewing them as dull and not a reflection of how they see their own identities. They take matters into their own hands to achieve their ideal regardless of the methods. They both become liars who slowly work at making their lies more truthful. Richard finds himself attracted to the Greek class, and particularly awestruck by Henry, because Henry is a Gatsby-type too. And it’s more Henry who functions as Gatsby in a POV way. Henry does what he must to achieve his desired Hellenistic lifestyle, just as Gatsby chases after the American dream.

The stories also make similar points about the effect of this behavior on other people, particularly women. A big reoccurring topic of TGG is carelessness. It’s seen through the symbolism of cars. The characters are reckless with their vehicles. Cars are stylish and exciting, but also linked to violence. We see this general concept with Julian who is careless with his teaching methods. Him leaving at the end, with dead and broken people in his dust, reminds me of Daisy and Tom at the end of Gatsby, and Nick saying: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up people and things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” Julian does something similar.

Obviously, Camilla and Daisy fill similar roles. They’re women who aesthetically match the lifestyle the male characters want. Daisy is a stunning American socialite. Camilla is a pretty classics student who plays the roles of big name Greek ladies (notably Clytemnestra) in the class’s readings. Gatsby, Henry, and Richard seem to have varying levels of love for these women. But the idea is the same: “In order to fully complete my own self-transformation, I need to have a woman emblematic of my ideals.” Even Charles fits into this because his views of Camilla get twisted by his toxic and Romanesque concept of what it means to be a male head of household. Both Camilla and Daisy are aware of their own lack of agency. Daisy’s famous line saying the best thing a girl can be is “a pretty little fool” isn’t meant to be taken as the author’s own opinion, it’s Daisy saying she wishes her daughter will be too stupid to realize what an awful situation she’s been born into due to her gender. Camilla and Daisy know that they eventually just need make a plan and go with the man that will make their life easiest. For Daisy, that ends up being Tom. For Camilla, it’s Henry.

As a side note, I saw someone drawing Gatsby comparisons from TSH, mentioning that Charles is Tom. I do understand the connection made here (Charles becomes an antagonistic figure for Henry, and they fight over a woman), but it seemed slightly off to me, and I realized it’s because I view Charles way more like George Wilson. Wilson is incredibly impacted by the immorality going on around him, and views the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg as a constant reminder that God is watching them all. In the end, he has a mental breakdown, victimizes his wife Myrtle and then loses her. Wilson and Charles come to the same conclusion at the end: which is to attack and kill Gatsby/Henry with a firearm. There are obvious differences. For example, Wilson is wrong that Gatbsy killed Myrtle (that was Daisy) and wrong that Gatsby cheated with her (that was Tom). But the backbone is there: a man is haunted by the existence of objective morality. He then concludes that he must violently seize control and kill the one he sees as responsible for his misfortunes.

/Heathers vs. Secret History/

While Gatsby focuses on a desire to be part of an American upper class and TSH focuses on a desire to be part of an erudite class, Heathers focuses on what I’m going to call teenage politics. Jocks, mean girls, bad boys, etc. The cliques of high school. Veronica is a member of the popular girl group at school and is mistreated by her clique. What she craves is to be part of what J.D. represents. He’s a mysterious outsider who is intimidating but also recites poetry and likes Bach. The way he’s introduced is very “Hey look at this guy. He’s not shallow like the Heathers, Kurt, and Ram. He’s layered.” Veronica very much falls into the trap of believing a damaged, edgy boy is somehow deeper than everyone else. She wants to be dangerous and above the other high school cliques. Veronica is exactly like Richard because she knows J.D. is excessively violent the day she meets him when he threatens the football players with a gun, but she believes there’s something cool and beautiful in that. She sees that his opinions are more cultured than her friends, but doesn’t stop to analyze what kind of person would fire blanks at people during school. Well, surprise, it turns out the bad boy is… well, literally just an awful person. There’s no hidden heart of gold like in the movies. Heather Chandler was terrible, but her death shows that people like J.D. are worse.

The situation with Bunny and Henry is similar. Both protagonists go along with the killing (I say this because Veronica was kind of sucked into it more than a premeditated accomplice like Richard), because they were abused by the victim and want to avoid jail time. But it’s also noteworthy that that victim represents a type of person who is opposite of the protagonist’s ideal. Bunny is an uncultured slob; Richard wants sleek intellectualism. Heather Chandler is a shallow mean girl; Veronica wants cool people of substance. Both protagonists eventually realize that the person they’ve partnered with is the bigger threat.

Heathers and TSH also unfold similarly. Both the Hampden and the Sherwood (Westerburg) communities react to the murder in a way that is absurdly off-the-mark. The Sherwood community mistakes Heather’s death as a suicide then proceeds to project deep feelings onto her and rationalize her rude behavior (sometimes in hysterical ways), because tortured souls are deep. They hold all these suicide prevention spectacles that the viewer can see are not really about preventing suicide at all. They’re about showing that people are feeling things; they paint Westerburg High as a place full of psychologically complex people. Bunny’s death gets mistaken as drug usage and similar circuses ensue. There are people projecting onto Bunny because he died young. The whole section in TSH where they do the national drug trivia competition to raise awareness, and Hampden College dominated was HILARIOUS in its irony, and I though, “This is so the tone of Heathers” when I read it.

The way the stories handle the “idealism” character is similar too. Henry and J.D. come across as so wise and above worldly nonsense at the start. You’re distracted by their language and finer tastes. Then, you see that they’re clever when they are able to get away with murder. But the story starts to show you that they’re actually quite one-note in ways. Henry and J.D. both become almost embarrassing to watch, because you start to see how horribly unaware they are. Henry is focused on what book to bring to his FBI meeting—as if that matters—and he seriously thinks the psychic lady might catch them. J.D. starts to come across as so silly because you see how often he speaks in trite little poetic statements that are stupid in context, but that he clearly thinks sound good (“People will look at Westerburg and say there’s a school that self destructed not because society didn’t care, but because that school WAS society. Pretty deep, huh?”). Both Henry and J.D. meet their downfalls because they’re after random, insubstantial “profound” things. Henry goes out with a suicide tied to a tender kiss with a woman, to prove that he could become the perfect Hellenistic figure Julian wasn’t. J.D.’s suicide was a similar thing: a message to Veronica about how complex and world-rejecting he is. (This is a part that differs in the musical. J.D. is actually self sacrificial there. I respect that the musical had to make J.D. softer to accommodate his songs, but the film character’s actions stick more firmly to the point of the story).

Heathers is more of a comedy than TSH is, but they both poke fun then take steps back. Bunny’s funeral is a complete clown show, but there are moments of genuine sadness. Richard acknowledges how evil the thing he did was. There’s a funeral in Heathers where Veronica and J.D. are giggling because they know the things being said about their victim are stupid. Then Veronica catches sight of a crying little girl and stops, shocked by the sudden reality of what she’s done.

Both stories also comment on group mentality. The Hampden community and Westerburg community are prone to ridiculous conclusions and nonsensical actions because of how quickly stupid ideas get latched onto. The Greek class murders Bunny because they’re all downplaying each others’ best traits and drawing out the worst. I listened to an interview with Tartt where she points this out and states that nobody in the class would have become a murder on his or her own. There’s a well-written scene in Heathers where Heather McNamara attempts suicide because she’s depressed but also influenced by what she thinks were her friends’ suicide. Veronica stops her and says “If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you do it?” McNamara gives a very honest and defeated, “Probably.” Both stories explore how people can and often do go against rational judgment due to the infields of the group.

/Tying it all together/

At their core, these stories are all doing the same thing: they’re showing how easily humans can be influenced by romantic ideals, and how easily they lose control of their moral judgment. The works all show that people can so dearly love the aesthetic of a person and what he or she represents that they create an illusion that masks the person’s flaws. Gatsby goes about this in a very respectful, dignified way. Heathers is full of dark humor and moments that are meant to be shocking and hilarious rather than realistic. The Secret History does a bit of both. It’s not as formal as Gatsby but not as outwardly making fun of itself and all is characters as Heathers is. It’s also partially satire but not at the level of Heathers. Heathers is literally making fun of its own genre (teen romance films). It presents itself as a cliche movie then just swerves violently into insanity and a tone that mocks all its character archetypes. TSH and Gatsby are both much more up front. As a result, there are some scenes in TSH that strike me as very Gatsby (scenes where Richard is being more reflective and philosophical) but there are also scenes that are so wild they seem to be working how moments from Heathers did.

Back to archetypes and tropes: While these stories have the same skeleton (a character facing reality after being caught up in romantic ideals), they explore things differently due to different social constructs and narrators of different backgrounds. We have an 30-year-old upper class man whom everyone treats as a secret-keeper. We have a new adult who desperately wants to put his lackluster and abusive childhood behind him. Then we have a teen girl who lacks a perspective outside the drama of high school. These narrators have personality differences and varying levels of culpability in the violence, with Richard having the most since he was a knowing participant in a murder. Veronica is next because she was part of a murder. She stuck with J.D. longer than she should have, and she covered things up, but she was also repeatedly tricked into killing when she didn’t want to. Nick rocked the boat but wasn’t a direct part of any death. It’s Veronica whotakes back the most control at the end. She lights her cigarette on the explosion that killed J.D. (which, wow, metal). She tells J.D. she wants “cool guys” out of her life then goes to get new friends and move past what happened, as arguably unrealistic as that is. Richard ends up with the least control, because he CAN’T move on; the events of the story have permanently damaged his psyche. These endings lean into different concepts: Heathers lets the protagonist triumph and embrace her lesson. TSH focuses on how immorality has lasting effects on the soul. TGG ends by showing pity for people like Gatsby.

This is the same for J.D., Gatsby, and Henry. They’re very different kinds of people which provides variation to the concept they represent. TGG doesn’t present Gatsby as evil, just tragic and wrong. He did hurt others with his shady dealings, but he’s painted as a man who still has his soul. J.D. and Henry actually have pretty intense evil in them and a clear lack of concern for human life. Nick and Richard still hold love for Gatsby and Henry, even after all that happened. Veronica completely denounces J.D.

I mentioned this in the previous post, but I just love stories like this. I love characters who get these kinds of reality checks, and I love characters who have such strong passions that they have to struggle with. All three of these stories are sharply crafted and oh so clever. They’re each so unique in the presentation of these similar ideas that none of them feel like a discount version of another. Their methods of story-telling are different, and their focuses, allusions, settings, tones, and motifs vary as well.

Wow, this is not even all I had to talk about. I could genuinely write a 40 page paper on this.

[fuckingrecipes]

How does one actually build a useful repository of recipes for different cuisines? Like, I have the Silver Spoon which is a pretty good cross section of Italian cooking. I know more than enough variations of the typical french mother sauces to get the principles without a need for a recipe. I know from various Euro cuisines particular flavors that pair well I could build a dish around (like, I could make a goat cheese and caramelized onion soup without the need of someone telling me a recipe). I don't have any such data sets for other cuisines, and you know the recipe website world is a hell scape.

Tried and true method is: Cook often, try new things, and save it if you like it.

Get a blank notebook (or a 3-ring binder) and collect recipes yourself as you try them. You can write recipes in by hand, or print them off & punch for the 3-ring binder.

Go to restaurants which serve food you want to explore, and take a picture of the food, record the name of it on the menu, and note some of the ingredients that you can identify in it.

If you live in a small town with not many places that serve 'foreign' food nearby, get off google. Use DuckDuckGo or Brave as a search engine. They have very few ads and the search algorithm prefers when you get to the point in your recipe blog, rather than dicking around with your life story.

Do a little tour on your world map. Focus on countries, search for food from that country, then search for specific kinds of food from that country. Search for things like "Authentic Turkish Stewed Chicken" "Traditional Brazillian Goat Recipe" "Hong Kong Street Food Recipe" "Collection of Taiwan Recipes" "25 amazing Korean dishes" "10 best Cajun Soul Food Recipes" "Dominican Republic Cuisine Recipes"

Go watch cooking tiktoks that aren't european-centric; go out of your way to find them.

Go down a list of spices and pick one you've never tried before. Look up where it's traditionally used, and try to find some dishes that use that spice!

Go to your Local Library and dig into their cookbook section. Every library has one! Look for cookbooks focused on cuisines you don't know yet, and try those recipes!

If you're cool spending money on this, go to Half Price Books or other book-reselling stores where you can find cook books at really low prices. Again, explore the cuisines you're not familiar with.

If you have grocery stores for other cultures near you, go into their grocery! Check out what spices have a shitload of different brands on display, and pick one at random. Seek out a recipe that uses that new spice you just bought.

And remember: Write that shit down!

You can always have a little guide at the front or back of your recipe collection that explains different spice blends, or explains key sauces, or anything else!

You can keep a little guide on how roasting spices changes them, and your experiments with that.

You can keep a list of bread recipes, or cooking hacks like how to make really good naan without a woodfire grill.

---

Personally, I'm forgetful. I forget sites exist, forget logins, and lose passwords all the time. I have about a hundred recipe collections across about as many websites, and I know where like, 3 of them are right now. Many of those websites have gone down, and my lists are lost forever.

The book of recipe & food-tips collection I've kept & used the longest - my Food Grimoire - is a physical item that I can misplace in my house but never truly lose. It can't have its server crash or website maintenance suddenly be abandoned and blip out of existence.

[mariacallous]

Offal, aka organ meats, are about to make a comeback. Yes, I predict that brains, livers, spleens, tongues and testicles will feature heavily on the menus of Israel’s (and the diaspora’s Jewish/Israeli-style) hottest eateries by this time next year — if they aren’t already. Why? Because young chefs are increasingly inspired by traditional Jewish dishes, driving a return-to-roots style of cooking. And these old-school classics are notably innard-heavy.

Offal is an oxymoron; it’s both a poor-person food, which is why it was so popular in the shtetl, and a celebratory food, eaten on Shabbat and festivals. Many Sephardic cultures consider it a delicacy. Read on and decide for yourself.

Let’s start with an old Ashkenazi classic: chopped liver. While for me, it will always be in style, many of my contemporaries don’t feel the same. Luckily, young Jewish chefs have already set their sights on it, and may well have the power to convert millennial diners. Take Anthony Rose’s recipe in “The Last Schmaltz,” which sears the livers, then deglazes the pan with arak before blending, serving the chopped liver with thyme-scented caramelized onions.

Another well-known offal dish is the Jerusalem mixed grill. Made with chicken giblets and lamb parts, and seasoned with onion, garlic, black pepper, cumin, turmeric and coriander, this classic street food is believed to have originated sometime between 1960-1970 at one of two (now feuding) restaurants in Jerusalem’s Machaneh Yehuda Market. While the Jerusalem grill is far younger than most Jewish offal dishes, it originated in a similar way: Butchers had a surplus of unwanted offal so they sold it off cheaply, then some savvy chefs turned the offal into a desirable dish. The mixed grill was one of the first offal dishes to receive multiple modern makeovers. At his restaurant Rovi, Yotam Ottolenghi adds baharat onions and pickles, while Michael Solomonov included a Jerusalem grill-Southern dirty rice hybrid in “Israeli Soul.“

Of course, this is not the first dish based around grilled offal; Tunisian Jews liked to throw a selection of lamb or veal innards onto the grill, which they called mechoui d’abats, and Baghdadi Jews sought a similar smokiness, which they achieved by cooking chicken livers on the tandoor.

Roman Jews preferred their offal battered and fried, rather than grilled. Few know that their famed carciofi alla giudia (deep-fried artichokes) was often served alongside fried sweetbreads, livers, and — most notably — brains. North Africa’s Sephardi communities loved their brains, too, commonly serving them in an omelet called a meguina or menina on festive occasions. Meir Adoni referenced this love in his brain fricassee — a North African-French fusion dish of veal brains inside a croissant with harissa and preserved lemon — at his New York restaurant Nur.

Offal was also commonly used to add a depth of flavor to a soup or stew. Yemenite Jews — one of the few communities who continue to cook traditional offal dishes — make a soup with bulls’ penis and cows’ udders, while Eastern European Jews, particularly of Polish descent, continue to add kishke  — a sausage made of stuffed beef intestine — to their weekly Shabbat cholent. A slow-cooked stew called akod is one of the better-known dishes of Tunisian Jewish cuisine, where tripe flavored with cumin, garlic, harissa and tomato paste is the star of the show. Moroccan Jews eat a similar dish on Passover, which ditches the tomato paste but adds liver, heart, and beef dumplings.

Admittedly, there are some offal-based dishes that may find it trickier to stage a comeback. Ptcha – an aspic that reached its height of popularity in shtetl-era Ashkenazi communities — is arguably top of the list. However, it’s not without hope; ptcha was actually born in Turkey in the 14th century as a peasant soup made with lamb’s feet, served hot. This, I’d wager, is a more palatable gateway (it’s basically bone broth) to the Eastern European version, which opts for calves’ feet and allows the soup to cool and set into a jelly, thanks to the gelatin in the hooves.

It only takes one dish to change your view of offal from weird and unappetizing to tasty and versatile. If livers, brains and tripe were good enough for our ancestors, not to mention famed chefs, who are we to turn up our noses? Happy eating!

[hms-no-fun]

a little late asking you a question but do you have some favourite books to share? and why they are your favourite? like such as how did they influence your way of thinking, your relationship with art, your way of writing, &c.

i've gotten a few asks about books/writing that influenced me and this is the most open-ended one, so, congratulations on winning that lottery anon.

the book that most recently affected me is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. it's about a representative from an intergalactic alliance of worlds embedding within and learning about the culture of a previously uncontacted civilization, to try to get them to join. but really, it's about observing the sociological particulars of a human culture where everyone is functionally intersex, and sort of swap male/female gender roles during the time period when they're (for lack of the term actually used in the book that i can't remember) "in heat". it's an astonishing work of science fiction that is every bit as good as its reputation suggests. i had a hard time getting into the first 20-30 pages, but once it really digs into the particulars of "shifgrethor" (this culture's all-important sense of decorum and near-invisible communication that the protagonist struggles to understand til the end) i was hooked. i love fictional social systems. i'm a homestuck, i can't help it. there's a profound materialism in how Le Guin observes this culture into being that unlocked something in me. i'll be thinking about the journey across the ice for the rest of my life.

i was also very inspired by This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, perhaps the most pure distillation of the feminine desire to hatefuck your rival into an ascendant beacon of cosmic revolution yet put to the page. much of how they write about time travel has made it into godfeels, not to mention the wildly extravagant and brief but numerous visions of absolutely batshit speculative alt-history tableau. i mean, the way they talk about Atlantis as this sort of annoying constant of the timeline, sometimes real and sometimes fake depending on the strand, definitely casts a shadow over the metaphysics explored in Chapter 8.

the other book i always recommend alongside Time War, because i read them at the same time while i was in the middle of production on Chapter 8 in 2021, is There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. anyone who's read it or knows about it can immediately spot the gargantuan influences it's had on Silverbark's narrative in Chapter 8 and especially in Double Album. if you're not aware, Antimemetics Division is a standalone SCP novel about a branch of the Foundation dedicated to studying & intercepting the phenomenon of antimemes, ideas & entities that defy our ability to remember them in various ways. think The Silence in Matt Smith's second season of Doctor Who, or the Void Fish in the Balance arc of The Adventure Zone. i'm not an SCP person at all, i think i've read maybe half a dozen other SCP entries, so i'm not totally full of it when i say this book stands very tall on its own two legs. i very much intend to take a closer look at it in detail down the road because i think, whether intentional or not, the main "villain" of Antimemetics Division operates as a very handy analogue for the socio/psycho-logical effects of the profit motive on individuals & on society at large. also: Marion Wheeler is so fucking good. i did not know she existed when i came up with Silverbark but you bet your ass it's an influence now.

a non-fiction book that's had an outsized influence on me is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. i always feel self conscious about bringing this one up because it sounds like a self-help book or some kind of Chicken Soup for the Soul ass grifter textbook. that absolutely could not be farther from reality. ZAMM was written in the 60s and it's a semi-autobiographical philosophy of metaphysics text by a professor of rhetoric who some years ago underwent electroshock therapy after a destructive manic phase. it follows Pirsig on a motorcycle trip across the American west with his son and some college friends, as he tries to uncover the ideas that drove his past self (who he characterizes as a different person that he calls Phaedrus) off the wall. those ideas concern the nature of "quality" and how we perceive it. as in, why should we Know that a good painting is "good" within seconds of examining it, in the same manner that we know a stove is hot almost before we've even touched it? he digs deep into how we conceptualize the split between objectivity and subjectivity, and posits that understanding Quality requires a substantial re-evaluation of our base assumptions about human perception. of course there's SO much more to it than that, it's a beautiful and strange book that succeeds in part because its philosophy is deeply couched within the metaphor of a road trip, making it a lot more accessible than an otherwise straightforward metaphysics text. i read it in an honor's philosophy class full of incurious Christians at age 22, and that was absolutely the perfect time for it.

another non-fiction entry would be Acceptable Men by communist labor agitator Noel Ignatiev. it's a memoir about his time working at Gary Steel Works in the 70s, at the time the largest steel works factory in the world. it relates in very simple terms how racism sabotaged the USAmerican labor movement through anecdotes from his workplace. it's important, i think, for those of us dreaming of & pushing for a more equitable world to stare long and hard at struggles past and not lose their most valuable lessons in our desire to simply have it be true that unions are good. they are good but they're not everything, and in fact they're just as capable of systemic dysfunction and capitulation to capitalist white supremacy as any other organization of human beings.

what else? i started reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant and much enjoyed its early pages, but holy shit that's one long book in a series of long books. people are telling me to read Exordia so i might give that a shot. i've got Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt as well as May Leitz's Girlflesh on my desk, just waiting for the day i'm psychologically prepared to be ravaged by transfem body horror. i keep picking away at China Mieville's October, i'm sure one of these days i'll just sit down and power through it. of course i recommend everyone check out Lenin's State and Revolution, great book from the original poster, absolutely still relevant more than a hundred years later. and much easier to read than you might expect! no one ever talks about how entertaining he is as a writer, unless you hang out with communists in which case you're probably sick of us never shutting up about it.

i hope there's some good stuff in there, and not too much that i've written about before. i really need to make myself read more, but then again who doesn't?

[definitelynotshouting]

context: ik most of my asks are pretty disorganized, stream of consciousness type of thing but GEEZ this got out of hand. you know that thing cats do when they bring you a dead mouse and *they're* super proud of it and you're just like dude.. why /lh

i usually put whatever my immediate thoughts are after reading the chapter and this time i thought it might be fun to write it out before. can you tell im running on five hours of sleep?? lmk if this made any coherent sense because even i dont understand it!!

so last chapter ripped my heartt out and stomped on it. i am LIVING for the way this whole thing was written, gorgeous prose as always <3. i was very curious as to wether Mumbo would question Grian but i think him NOT doing that was SO in character, and i adore it. I feel like w/ some fics (my own writing included) Scar is the ONLY one Grian relies on for support (in ANY area), and whenever Mumbo is even in the picture, he's just kinda "there", he doesn't check up on Grian or broach the topic of whatever is currently plaguing our little bird guy (basically, he's not involved in Grian's life despite being "his best friend"). And the way you characterized him was just So Real?? I would wager a guess (correct me if im wrong ofc) that part of it is that he just DOESNT know, (because Grian is oh so good at telling half truths and privately justifying his self sabotage) but a part of it is also him being lowkey willfully ignorant. he doesnt WANT Grian to be sick (mentally or otherwise) but definetly knows that SOMETHING is up. he really WANTS to help fix whatever is going on (evident by the gold farm) but he doesnt know what Grian needs or how to help him.

i have been OBSESSING over how Grian saying goodnight to Mumbo was ACTUALLY his goodbye to him but Mumbo DOESNT KNOW AND ITS EATING ME ALIVE. (also thought it was super interesting how Grian sort of took Mumbo leaving to sleep as "permission" to do the deed)

side ish note: how tf does Grian even plan to do that?? ik he's got the spider eyes and i *think* he's planning to turn the healing potions into weakness potions but like?? how is he going to do that??? i would assume that the gang would be watching the potions AS they were brewing, and even if they weren't, healing potions and weakness potions are.... vastly different colors. (unless im mixing them up with something else). also aren't they going to walk in on him prepping or already being in the middle of it and just save him like last time? the team as a whole has done a pretty good job on keeping an eye on Grian (from just a "this person can't walk" standpoint) so far. is he waiting for a chance when everyone is busy or does he plan to use MORE weakness potions to make it stronger or quicker?? im interested to see if he's even going to follow The Plan, because up until this point he's been pretty careful with trying to make plans and sneak around EXCEPT for the spider eyes basement adventure, which makes me wonder is he'll get more frantic/desperate as the appointed time draws closer.

Real talk though, Mumbo (and everyone else) is going to be beating himself up over not noticing when stuff goes down (which i would assume would be next chapter, but idk). Also, the fact that Grian asked him to stay means A LOT. To me (and idk if this is what you meant to convey) that signals that a part of him WANTS to stay. theres a part of him that wants to continue to experience the comfort and joy he gets from his friends, but he feels like he's only going to continue to hurt them, so to him this is the ONLY option to keep them safe. also the majority of his existence is just misery and pain so thats probably not helping. (PLUS the whole slew of mental health issues, this is not purely self sacrificial).

anyway, i LOVED this chapter as always, it was like chicken noodle soup for my overworked little soul and i savored every bit of it!! (also, no need to apologize for not having enough spoons!! i dont have any chronic illnesses but i know that shit sucks. this is a particularly long ask for me so dont feel compelled to answer everything in it, or answer right away. hope ur doing well <3)

-🐛

BUG ANONNNN THIS COMMENT IS SO SWEET AND I LOVED READING IT OMGGGG

you hit the nail exactly on the head for where im going with mumbo's characterization-- there is 100% a level of willful ignorance there. Ive always felt like mumbo is the kind of guy who has a thing about avoidance-- he feels very much like a character who will absolutely do his best to ignore things that hes decided arent his business (right up until he stops LMFAO) and part of that in hunger au is him being so anxious for grian to get better that he stops looking at the red flags grian is aggressively waving around. It'll work out!! He's sure of it!! Grian even directly said he's trying to get better!! And i think if he looked at that for longer than it takes for him to flinch away from the entire subject, he would see how much of a bald lie that is.

But he doesnt, because thats a LOT to deal with, and hes never really??? Seen this side of Grian before??? Not the way Pearl and Scar have. Theres a lot of intricacy there that i feel im skimming over but like Mumbo is very much keeping his own sanity in mind here too and thats another painful factor to the whole situation. Idk i have lots of thoughts about it and about the choice here to depict Mumbo giving in to that willful ignorance, and how its going to affect his and Grian's relationship in the future of the fic

(Quick tw for frank discussions of suicide below)

You've also completely nailed the subtext i was getting at with Grian asking Mumbo to stay-- smth ive always felt is a bit underrepresented in narratives like these are how at its most base core, suicide and suicidal ideation are often about needing something to fundamentally change in your life. It takes a LOT of both hopelessness and sheer willpower to actively try and overcome your body's instinctive will to survive. That instinct is baked into our very cells; when someone commits, it means their hopelessness for meaningful change to happen in their lives was so strong it overpowered everything else. And that is something deeply, deeply tragic, and also something i really wanted to respectfully highlight in this portrayal-- how bad things are when you spiral that far. Grian is starving to death. He wasnt lying about maybe having a week to live-- the intermittent feeding has kept him alive longer than anticipated, but its like trying to wall off an avalanche; theres only so much you can do in the face of all that :( and that hopelessness, in combination with how guilty he feels for what he did to his friends, has manifested in him feeling like his only recourse is to kill himself... but at the same time, that instinct to survive and KEEP SURVIVING is still blaring in his veins, and that manifests as him asking Mumbo to stay. Its a bit paradoxical, but its meant to really show how bad his mental state is, that he is willfully ignoring all the frantic signals his body is screaming at him to try and stay alive rn 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Also, with the potions-- without revealing too much about how this is going to happen, Grian is planning on making fermented spider eyes and using them to turn the healing potions into harming potions, which he'll then drink in the in-between to make sure he dies immediately. Now.. i know how this is gonna go, and i know the exact mechanics around how this is gonna shake out, but smth to keep in mind is hes not thinking logically anymore, he has FULLY capitulated to his own storm of emotional wreckage. So yes there are DEFINITELY some questions to be asked about how hes gonna try and get this done, but in all honesty they mostly boil down to "sheer opportunity" which you'll see a bit more of in the next chapter >:] but yeah its meant to be a bit illogical skdbwkdjskd since he just isnt thinking coherently anymore at this point :(

Bug anon thank u for my entire life this comment was so sweet and so wonderful to receive, i really love it when my writing is analyzed like this and seen and understood!!! Its amazing its such a wonderful feeling to have your work be seen like this and its something i very much do not take for granted :]]]❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ tysm for the ask i am seriously treasuring it SO MUCH rn (and also thank you for the well-wishes!! Im doing my best to stay silly out here HEHE)❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[servitudeofsadness]

relapse & restriction

CONTENT WARNINGS: EATING DISORDERS, RESTRICTED EATING, TRIGGERING DISCUSSIONS OF FOOD

Remember food is fuel and fuel is absolutely necessary for your body to stay alive. Don’t let silly beauty standards dictate your eating and your life. If you are easily triggered by discussions of disordered eating and negative perceptions of food, please do not read the following prose. eat & stay hydrated! <3

…

i.

“she has malnutrition,” my home doctor says as she checks my wrists and prescribes me on sugar fluids and nutrient pills. i have not been eating for a week. it is code for eating disorder.

mum looks on. ”is it treatable?”

“yes.” time ticks on and my brother waits outside.

i am starved out of my soul. deep hollowed eyes, violet-knuckled bruises, and devoid of thought. one week.

ii.

my one week low-calorie morninglunchdinnersnackfest! guaranteed to loose more than 20kg! foodspo/mealspo thread!! <33:

one medium-sized fried egg? ~ 78 cals!

1 cup matcha protein almond latte? ~ 60 cals!

1 saltine cracker? ~ 10 cals!

½ cup of tomato soup? ~ 105 cals!

⅓ slice of white bread? ~ 22 cals!

⅓ roasted chicken drumstick? ~ 33 cals!

½ cup white rice? ~ 121 cals!

4 oz air-fried salmon? ~ 194 cals!

½ gluten-free medium-sized oatmeal chocolate chip cookie? ~ 33 cals!

diet coke? ~ 0 cals!

do the math and tell me if it’s less than 1000 cals!! <3

remember kids, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels !! <3

iii.

if beauty standards are a person, and the purge is real.

they are the first i’ll tear the door down to

on account of falsifying the determiners of beautiful:

skinny legs tutorial!! look, brandy melville carries a one size fits all??

do you fit in? “bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back!!”

try this A4 paper thin waist challenge!! see how fat you are??

noo why is th1nsp0 content banned on twitter??

tumblr?? tiktok?? join edtwt!! though, pro-recovery dni!!

(i was in scout camp when i dizzied, circus of purple visions

collapsed with blood soaking my undergarments and

half awoke to blankets that weighed heavier than me on my near dead body;

i still feel the bland slick of porridge forced down my throat.

proana girlies?? mitigating censors in the prospect of

pursuing an early death. ed tumblr diaries of all hedonistic thoughts.)

these are fruits you should avoid as it induces sugar euphoria!!

clean girl aesthetic!! kale smoothies will help you lose weight!!

i walked 20000 steps today to achieve a thigh gap!!

body-checking disguised as ootd and grwm tiktoks

sketchbook detailing rampages of eating disorder content

the striking thump of my collarbones and my wobbly knees

a 2 hour loop subliminal messaging “i am so skinny“ “i am 44.4 kg” “ i am thin—“

SHUSH! SHUT UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

this is existing in a society that curbed the living in me,

to strive for an empty heartbeat and rotten-tinged bones for legs

low calorie food still eaten in moderation

the constant desire to clasp my wrist in assurance of how skinny i am

clumsy rhetoric spilled in between sips and spits

of my no calorie pungent pomegranate mineral water

you should skip your lunch too and snacks except

water and maybe some yogurt-zero

starvation is never salvation

thin is glazed over with honey

And so easily fractured with bones

hunger. starving. eat. EAT. EAT!

on december 18 2018, i started recovery

i have relapses, days of unintended calorie deficits;

but i am healing unlearning,

trying, escaping, living ~

…

“you are embarrassed about your blood, its redness, the way it is just coming out of you with no concern for anyone’s feelings. You are … embarrassed to be alive.”

- Carmen Maria Machando

—————

is 90’s thinness coming back? - Mina Le

please stop romanticizing eating disorders on tiktok - Sarah Hawkinson

tiktok is bad for women, actually - Jordon Theresa

The Evolution of Pro Anorexia - Of Herbs and Altars

i lost weight to fit into Brandy Melville - Letao Chen

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” - Kate Moss

Are you a femcel? - Roisin Lanigan

bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back - Adriana Diaz

[cdyssey]

Trust Me, Pt. 1/2

Summary: Melissa had to put someone down as her emergency contact.

CW: Car Accident; Medical Procedures; Hospitalization

A/N: Pt. 1 of my gift for @straperine​ for the Secret Santa exchange! Michael, ily!! I wrote more in the AO3 A/N, but the gist is that I adore you, and I’m so glad that we’re friends!

AO3 Link | Part Two

“Last time I trusted someone else to shuffle, I lost a kidney.” - Melissa Schemmenti

It’s a perfectly normal Saturday night.

Standing barefoot in her kitchen, listening to an old Sam Cooke vinyl on her grandmother’s still-functioning record player, Barbara hums to herself as she cards her fingers through her recipe box, looking for her poppyseed chicken recipe. Taylor is coming over for dinner tomorrow evening with her new boyfriend—a young gentleman named Marcus, who apparently works on Wall Street.

Barbara hates that.

Just a little.

Thinks she knows the type from the books she’s read and the movies she’s seen. 

Tie-wearing, cocaine-snorting, fast-talking hooligans.  

Mm. 

When she told Gerald of her suspicions during one of their occasional calls a week or so ago, he only laughed and said that she should give the boul a chance. Her ex-husband had caught a glimpse of him once on a FaceTime chat with Taylor and said that he seemed nice enough. A little bit of an egghead, maybe, but that’s only to be expected from a broker. When she told Melissa the exact same thing in the teacher’s lounge the next day—(dissatisfied with that perfectly reasonable answer)—to her chagrin, her best friend only doubled over in laughter too, briefly holding on to her shoulder for support. 

“God, Barb,” she shook her head, her green eyes twinkling with amusement, “I do love the way you see the world, hon.”

So, with these humbling reactions in mind, she grudgingly supposes she’s going to give Mr. Marcus Wall Street a singular shot. 

He had better not waste it either.

She eventually finds the recipe, props it up against a half-empty bottle of Merlot, and starts rooting around her kitchen to ensure that she has everything. She’ll need to go to the store and grab the chicken, definitely… a box of Ritz Crackers for the crust too… and maybe a few other necessities besides. 

More TV dinners to neatly stack in her freezer. (It’s hard to cook for precisely one person.) Another half-pint of milk. (That she won’t be able to drink by herself anyway.) A fresh bottle of wine that she will slowly and methodically desiccate to its dregs throughout two weeks, allowing herself a singular half-glass when the home she has lived in for twenty-one years feels like a total stranger. 

(So quiet. It used to never be quiet in the Howard residence. Once filled with the pealing laughter of her two beautiful girls. Once filled with the ambient noise of Gerald flicking on the TV after a long day at work. Once filled with their shared laughter as they gossiped together about some neighbor or another. But this had been well before the disagreements had begun. They never had fights, her and Gerald. Just polite disagreements in slightly raised voices. And she’d go to school the next day, attempting to plaster on a beatific smile that would crumble as soon as Melissa saw her, clocking her on the spot, seeing her. Oh, how naked she was beneath that verdant gaze, so exposed, like the carefully layered outfits that she meticulously put together disguised absolutely nothing. And the younger teacher would rush to her in an instant, dropping everything, and in the embrace of her friend’s arms, Barbara would finally let the mask drop too—if only for a few seconds, a minute at most, her face buried against the crook of that warm neck like it was her own personal Bible.)

As Sam Cooke’s soulful voice continues to warble through her empty kitchen, she harmonizes with him as she makes her grocery list.

And idly pours herself a half-glass of Merlot.

It’s a perfectly normal Saturday night.

After she heats up a bowl of leftover tomato soup for herself, she settles in her favorite recliner in the living room and prepares to watch Jeopardy!, which’ll be on in about ten minutes.

She tries to call Melissa twice to see if she wants to get on the phone and watch it together—as they sometimes do these days—but to no avail. She gets hit by Melissa’s vaguely threatening voicemail twice.

“Melissa.” A slight pause, wary, like her dear friend thinks that even giving her first name might backfire on her. “Schemmenti. If ya need me, you know where to find me. If you’re tryin’ to sell me somethin’, don’t.”

She leaves a message on the second call, just a general no worries if you’re busy.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

And so, Barbara eats dinner in silence too, occasionally calling out the answers to clues. Hamlet. The Grand Canyon. Ghosts. Jennifer Coolidge, though the correct answer is actually Jennifer Hudson, which seems incorrect to Barbara but alright. 

She gets tired of doing that by Double Jeopardy, though, and sits the rest of the program in silence, idly stirring the dregs of her soup. The grandfather clock in the corner slowly drags her into seven, the toll echoing solemnly through the darkened room.

Melissa never calls her back.

And it’s fine, of course.

She’s well-aware her friend has a life of her own… but Barbara admittedly likes it—much more than she rationally should—when the two of them share their evenings together, even when it’s just over the phone.

Melissa’s been her saving grace in all of these endless months since the divorce, coming over on so many weekends—and now that school’s out for the summer, much more often than that. They’ve chatted and cut-up and talked about new art projects they want to try with their kids in the fall, shoulders lightly brushing, their curving hips, their thighs. Melissa has unfailingly cooked for her, always lamenting the deplorable state of Barbara’s fridge or else complaining about her depleted spice cabinet. 

Perpetually making sure that she has enough to eat.

She made the tomato soup that Barbara is currently picking at, having popped over for dinner just two nights ago with a foot-long baguette, a bunch of vegetables, and assorted spices that she dragged from her own kitchen.

“You gotta know I love you, hon,” Melissa had huffed as she dropped her haul onto the pristine island in Barbara’s kitchen. “I haven’t cooked for someone this much since Joe.”

At first, Barbara had easily smiled at the fact that she was loved by Melissa, warmth radiating through her chest and all the way down to her perfectly manicured fingertips, but then, she had been less pleased by the casual comparison to Melissa’s idiotic ex-husband, blinking in a manner that she hoped wasn’t too revealing.

“Joseph was hardly as good-looking as I am, though, right?” She had asked, trying to play it all off as a joke.

Of course it was a joke to her.

This jealousy that she was pretending to affect.

Melissa only chuckled, though, and lightly swatted her on the ass with a dish towel, which did something unpleasantly delightful to her insides too.

“Damn straight,” she winked, and Barbara hasn’t been able to let go of the moment since. She rubs the emptiness on her ring finger almost subconsciously, as though she can still feel where it had cuffed her.

(The inlaid diamonds had almost been as heavy as her guilt.)

She gets Final Jeopardy right.

Derrida.

It’s a perfectly normal Saturday night.

After taking her makeup off, showering, and slipping into her favorite silky pajama set, she finally crawls into the king-sized bed that she had once shared with Gerald and tries to settle her mind by reading. She and the ladies at her Bible Club have been making their way through a pretty hefty devotional lately—(in-between a little light gossiping about Brother Carlton Sanders’ possible mistress, of course)—and Barbara tries to stay on top of the weekly readings as much as she can with her busy schedule.

But tonight, the words of God are falling on glassy eyes. She can only get through a few pages before she’s distracted, disconcerted, discontent—staring at the empty space next to her, gently biting her tongue between her teeth.

It’s been eleven months since she and Gerald divorced, their thirty-seven year marriage ending as it had so beautifully begun—with a moment of quiet intimacy. They laced their hands together in their attorney’s office and both quietly shed tears at what they were about to do.

She almost changed her mind then, right as her shaking pen was poised above the dotted line with her name neatly printed beneath it.

Almost conceded to everything that would be required of her to not let him go.

Almost gave that crucial piece of herself away.

Here, take it—I can’t do this.

I don’t know how to be alone.

I don’t know how to be without you.

But Gerald, still holding her other hand, squeezed it and silently reminded her it was okay.

They had done everything right in a desperate attempt to preserve their marriage.

They had talked to their dear pastor first, Brother Hank, who told them that God knew the plans He had for them, plans for them to prosper and not be harmed, plans for them to have hope and a future.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your future is together,” he had added kindly, peering between both of them with keen eyes. He had known them for well over twenty years now and had been their friend through most of them.

It was time, he implicitly said without ever saying the words, but neither Barbara nor Gerald had been ready to hear it then, both stubborn to the last.

They had gone to at least five months worth of couple’s counseling after that, Gerald an unstoppable force and Barbara an immovable object on the subject of her husband’s possible transfer. He was an excellent welder, and his company wanted to send him down to New Orleans to work on the cruise ships that docked and departed from the Big Easy. The pay was handsome—far more money than Barbara had ever seen in her entirety of a career as an public school educator—but the emotional toil was steep. 

Gerald wanted to move back to Louisiana—where she’d been raised and where they had initially met when he temporarily located there for a job. It clearly made more sense than him traveling back-and-forth between contracts, but Barbara had been adamant about staying in Philadelphia. She was too old to start anew at a different elementary school in a now foreign place. And she didn’t want to leave Abbott, having invested nearly half of her life there, with so much more left to give yet. 

Ava surely needed her. Though the once thoroughly incompetent principal had grown leaps and bounds over the past few years of her tenure, she still relied upon Barbara for some help with the budget and other administrative duties.

Her young mentees too—Janine, Jacob, and Gregory—all coming into their own as fine, young teachers, of course… but still, whenever they encountered some hard problem or another, they unfailingly continued to consult Barbara. They called her their work mom and she fondly (if a little exasperatedly) claimed them as her own.

And then there was the problem, the possibility, and the exquisite pain of surely losing Melissa Schemmenti.

Melissa—her dear, sweet Mel—independent and self-sufficient, bold and thoroughly capable and so full of life… probably didn’t need her.

But Barbara did.

Barbara needed her best friend.

She would never admit it aloud—not even to herself, much less to Gerald—but even the mere thought of parting with Melissa fueled an almost ungodly amount of her hesitation. She had been inseparable from the younger woman for nearly as long as she had been teaching at Abbott, then new to Philadelphia, lacking a community and a context beyond her nuclear family and the Baptist church they went to every Sunday.

But then there had been Melissa, whom she had instantly clicked with despite the thousands of differences between them: their ages, their upbringings, their overall demeanors and almost every last habit in-between. But before three months had passed since Mel had become a teacher at the school, the two of them had already claimed the round table closest to the fridge in the teacher’s lounge as their own.

A South Philly native, born and raised, Melissa took her under her wing and made her feel at ease in the city, something that even her husband hadn’t been able to accomplish. She would never forget this initial kindness, even though she has long since striven to repay it. 

She would always remember that Melissa had been the first person who made her feel at home.  

But there was something about this particular truth that felt like it was unsavory—a confession of sin weighing upon her otherwise stainless soul. 

So they argued about thousands of different things.

But never once about Melissa.

She wouldn’t dare probe that tender wound for Gerald to see, somehow finding it much more tenable to let it fester beneath her carefully buttoned shirt and become an abscess, a maw, dark and desolate, devouring her from the inside out.

It gnawed on her that her husband of three decades had to beg her to leave, but she innately knew that her friend of nearly the same amount of time didn’t have to so much as lift a finger to convince her to stay.

What was wrong with her?

How had her kind and loving marriage arrived at this terminal end?

(And what, pray tell, had her relationship with Melissa become in all the intervening years?)

(Friend was starting to feel insufficient, lacking the gravitas to encapsulate the fact that the two women had spent nearly thirty years together, teaching side-by-side in the unchanging hallways of Abbott Elementary. Partner felt closer—maybe comfortable even—but partner was dangerous too, laden with some of the same connotations that encircled the diamond encrusted band on her fourth finger.)

(So friend would have to fit. She would make it fit, damn it. She was Barbara Howard, by God, and if anyone could maneuver a square through a circular hole, it was surely her.)

“You could retire.” If Gerald had brought this suggestion up once, he had done it a hundred times. “My salary would finally be more than enough to support us, Barb, and you wouldn’t have to work anymore! You could finally have time for all the hobbies you’ve wanted to do!”

Barbara had intimately known that he was just trying to be considerate when he made remarks such as these, but it had simply devastated her, with each occasion, to know that he had thoroughly misunderstood her life’s project. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life pursuing hobbies; she wanted to be in Classroom 1A, teaching the next generation how to read.

Their marital counselor, a kindly lady named Mrs. Russell, emphasized honest communication, encouraging them to voice their wants, needs, and fears to each other—something which they increasingly found they could only do with her in the room, and even then, in front of the counselor and God Himself, Barbara could not be completely vulnerable.

“We’ve raised our daughters here,” she once said, deflecting.

“And our daughters are grown now,” Gerald replied gently—always gentle, her Ger. She loved that about him. Sitting across from him in a hard-backed chair, she had never hated that trait of his more, how it cast the weakness of her protestations in clear and ungainly light.

“But what about your family?” She grasped at straws. “Your stepfather?”

“My brother can finally step up to the plate to help with him, and we can always come back to visit.”

“Taylor’s only an hour or so away from us now.”

“Taylor can fly out to see us anytime she wants to.”

“Gerald,” she had only pleaded at the end, during the last fifteen minutes of their final appointment with the marriage counselor. Their careful budgeting wouldn’t allow them another, not if they wanted to make next month’s mortgage payment on time. “I’m not finished yet.”

Finished.

Barbara Howard used all her words very carefully, and this particular verb was no different. On her desperate tongue, it implied an end, a conclusion, a vital depletion.

She’d be passively destroyed, hollowed out, chipped away piece-by-sordid-piece, weathered with the patina of time until nothing was left but the ruins of herself still standing miraculously tall. She’d be the pillar of salt, perpetually looking back at the homeland she had made for herself as she slowly eroded to the grains.

I’m not finished yet.  

And I’d be finished if I went to New Orleans.

If I retired in a city I was unfamiliar with.

A ghost well before my time.

She begged him with her eyes, with the tears that were traitorously starting to leak from them, to read between the lines, to understand the magnitude of what she was still incapable of fully saying.

Gerald digested it quietly, agony straining every weathered line in his face. He stared at the ground and sat like a man carved from stone for what felt like minutes, hours, days—forever in a microscopic moment.

“Me neither, Barb,” he eventually croaked, finally looking up at her, with desolation in the darks of his eyes, and she knew at once that he wasn’t talking about leaving Philadelphia.

His own ghosthood was staying in it.

“I’m not finished either.”

Together, they had arrived at an untenable conclusion.

The only one that remained.

It was time.

They had been married for thirty-seven years, in love for perhaps forty.

Even still.

It was over. 

Finished.

It was an amicable split, a no-fault divorce, and the two of them have done everything in their power to remain on good terms with each other since then—not just for their girls’ sakes, but very much for their own. Their one irreconcilable difference has done nothing to change the fact that they still care for each other deeply, that they will always have thirty-seven wonderful years between them, that they will always be family. They chat on the phone at least once a month and send texts even more often than that. She forwards him mail all the way in Louisiana. He sends her pictures of weird birds he sees when he’s out on a job. She usually smiles and responds, LOL.  

Barbara most definitely isn’t in love with him anymore—the entire year they had spent fighting and ten months of separation besides has firmly put the nail in that coffin—but admittedly, she does miss him from time-to-time all the same. 

The companionship he offered. 

The safety.

The peace.

She places her devotional on top of her blanket-covered lap and stares off into the middle distance for what feels like an hour, though when she checks her phone, it’s only been three minutes. Her lockscreen is a selfie of her and Melissa from when they had gone on a road trip together this past spring.

It’d been the younger woman’s unsubtle way of saying, Hon, I’m dragging your mopey ass outta the house if it kills me.

Melissa’s chin is nestled against Barbara’s shoulder in the unsteadily taken picture, the sun glinting off the scarlet vividness of her hair, and Barbara herself is smiling down at her friend, visible affection in her eyes.

Love.

She is smiling even now, at this very minute, always heartened by the reminder that she exists at the same time as Melissa Schemmenti.

Oh, how she adores this woman.

It vaguely bothers her, though, that Melissa hasn’t returned her call or even sent a text to show that she's received it. It’s a bit unusual for her; she’s always been fairly quick about replying to Barbara…

She supposes that she’s just being a little clingy, though. 

Mel had mentioned something about going out this weekend after all. She likes to frequent bars occasionally and shoot pool with strangers.

Sometimes, she even takes them home.

Barbara crinkles her nose at the thought, distantly irritated by the image of Melissa swapping spit with some man who always ends up resembling Joseph in her head or trading lipstick with some woman who is devastatingly beautiful.

The women Melissa dates are always devastatingly beautiful.

That crucial fact always makes Barbara feel some type of way. She can deal with the Joseph substitutes—the slobs, the drunkards, the sleazes. After all, using Joseph as the paradigm and the example, she knows they’ll never last.

She cannot say the same of her own gender.

Indeed, she cannot say anything at all about the way that she has to repress an inexplicable urge to compete with Melissa’s inamoratas for her attention.

Even though she knows she maybe shouldn’t, Barbara wings one last text her friend’s way.

Girlfriend, call me back in the morning!

Let’s grab brunch.

Perhaps they can go to Over Easy—that breakfast café up the road from Melissa’s house—and inappropriately sip mimosas at eleven in the morning and share a stack of waffles as they talk about their week. And perhaps, like the last time they did as much, Barbara will have the opportunity to reach over and thumb away the little bit of whipped cream that somehow gets on Melissa’s cherry-red nose…

It'd been so lovely, sharing that domestic intimacy with her.

It doesn't strike her as odd at all that she wants to do it all over again.

It’s a perfectly normal Saturday night.

And then, Barbara’s phone rings precisely six minutes after midnight, startling her upright in that big, empty bed. 

Groaning, moaning, fumbling a little in the coagulated darkness, she flicks the latch on her bedside lamp and snatches her phone up from where it had been laying facedown on her devotional.

Her first thought, seeing the unregistered number, is that it’s just another one of those damn robocalls, interrupting what had been a very good sleep, but the area code seems to suggest that it’s local.

She tentatively decides to answer—perhaps solely to chew the midnight caller out—pulling the phone up to her ear.

“Hello?” She asks crossly. 

“Hello, yes,” comes a tired voice—gruff but not necessarily unkind. Clinical, practiced even. This person is a professional. “Is this… Barbara Howard?”

He says her name like he’s reading it from a document, and sudden terror carves through her like a knife. 

“Yes, this is she,” Barbara grips her phone so tightly that her arthritic wrist starts to ache. “May I ask whom I’m speaking to?”

All of the sleepiness has been sieved from her in an instant, shed like a decaying skin. She palms her stomach, suddenly and completely nauseous. 

“My name is Dr. Alex McGill, and I’m in charge of the emergency room at St. Vincent’s tonight,” the voice identifies itself, nearly doing her in right then and there. St. Vincent’s. The hospital about twenty minutes away. She’d given birth to Gina there, and the association immediately makes her think of her girls, even though one is certainly in New York and the other is all the way in California. But then she comes to her senses—remembers that it’s highly likely that she’s still listed on Gerald's medical forms—and that terrifies her just as powerfully. “I’m calling to inform you about—”

“Who is it?” She interrupts sharply, incapable of enduring polite decorum, not now, not when every muscle in her body is clenched with unbearable anxiety. 

There is only one type of phone call that this can possibly be.

A short pause.

And in that infinitesimal moment, that tenth of a second before the entirety of her world is irrevocably shaken at its foundation, Barbara suddenly realizes the awful answer before Dr. Alex McGill ever articulates it.

“I’m calling because you’re listed as Melissa Schemmenti’s emergency contact,” he says, so gently, but even still, Barbara lets out a strangled cry that she barely registers as coming from herself. “A driver in a truck rear ended her around eleven this evening and caused her to skid off the road.”

The proclamation is simply ruinous.

And its hypotheticals violently assault her, seizing across her mind’s eye in a whirl of vicious colors.

Melissa in a pool of crimson blood.

Melissa slumped over against the wheel, turning blue.

Melissa, cold, laid out beneath a white sheet.

They force Barbara Howard on her knees, these horrible visions, these phantasmagorias; she feels the cold metal of their possibility against her goosebump knotted skin. She waits for the inevitable pull of the trigger.

Melissa! She wants to yell. She wants to scream. She wants to shake the world with her primal grief and tear it all asunder until someone, anyone, feels an ounce of the horror that is currently rearranging her central nervous system.

Melissa.

Please, God. Not now, not yet—not ever. 

“Is she—“ She can’t quite get out, choked and choking.

“She’s still alive,” Dr. McGill quickly assures her, his voice steady where hers is not. “She’s in surgery now with one of St. Vincent’s finest.”

And Barbara, holding the phone against her ear like it’s a lifeline, begins to weep with visceral relief.

She’s alive.

The doctor tries to console her further, she thinks—perhaps even giving her specifics—but she barely registers that he's speaking; her head only has room enough for one recurring refrain.

She's alive.

She's alive.

She's alive.

[starsscarmyceiling]

Hello! I notice that you are a voracious Merrical shipper! This is a thing we share in common. I'm looking to write a few Merrin/Cal drabbles or shorts. I like to think I'm pretty alright at that part, but not so alright at coming up with initial ideas. Would you care to drop me some prompts you might have rattling around in your brain? I consider my strengths to be romance, fluff, hurt/comfort emotional type stuff. Space Chicken Soup for the Soul or something. Anything that allows me to say something about them as a romantic couple. Thanks!

I MEAN…what gave me away?? LOLOL of courseeeeeee I am a voracious shipper of our fav space ginger jedi and space goth best girl!! I am honored you’d reach out to me for such a thing anon. I do feel like I always just have fic ideas banging around in my head like a bunch of loose not approved space trash, so I would be happy to help! Now, did you want canonverse or AU prompts? Well I am here to give you both like the feral Merrical that I am. (also space chicken soup for the soul I cackled)

I hope you love tropes!

Haha some of these are just a few sentences and some of them are whoops Katie got a little carried away and already wrote out half the fic for you in the most unhinged, blathering manner you’ve ever seen so prepare yourself for that (it’s actually a lot of them so…🙃)

Canonverse:

Canon Compliant:

Alright, who doesn’t love a sexy spy intel fic? Yeah, pretty stereotypical plot, buy HEY listen. Okay, typical gathering intel mission at some cantina somewheres (and they are not together in my mind because of course that makes it more fun). Maybe there’s a drink or two…oh hey maybe even some dancing to appear nondescript…and wow hey they are at just the right place to complete the mission but OH—what is this the people they’re spying on are actually coming right for them WHAT SHOULD THEY DO TO DISTRACT—um come on is this even a question?? I personally think it would be more unexpected and satisfying if Cal were to be the one to initiate it.

Because of course he’s wanted to do this, kiss her like this, feel her like this. He’s kind of surprised he’s held out this long, and he’s nervous, feeling like he’s made a mistake because she’s not responsive, so he’s already formulating his extreme apology once they are in the clear—

He feels her fingertips slowly touch at the skin on his neck as her lips respond to his. The way in which it escalates caused Cal to forget what its intended purpose was because his brain blanked out as her body pressed to his, arms snaking around his neck now as it only seemed natural to wrap his around her… you know, something like that

UM, SPARRING??? Xcuse is there anything better?? A Jedi and a Nightsister can you imagine? It starts off innocent enough, but then hey Bogano is hot—perhaps Cal takes off his shirt, they get competitive trying to one up each other, Merrin takes off her shirt idk and of course there’s gots to be banter banter banter sethy sethy banter sethy, we’re all watching like YO these two want to SMOOSH their FACES TOGETHER RIGHT??? They have a moment, an impasse if you will, where they are very close or are actually just pressed up against one another, or hey maybe even one falls on top of the other—I’m not picky.

They realize they’ve gotten too carried away or crossed a line 🥵—blush blush or lingering lewks—but then they get a hold of themselves. Because hey, that’s a normal thing to do, right? Just have this sexually charged sparring session and brush up against your bud in the process?? I mean, we’ve all been there…

They’re both embarrassed, trying to scurry away to preserve their dignity…Merrin walks away first and then Cal like grunts with his hands in the air like wtfff why didn’t I kiss her??

~Later~ Cal’s beating himself up in his cot, tossing and turning on just how much Merrin means to him because it was weird and awkward for them at dinner and was he really imagining everything that’d built between them?

Cal just can’t let this go and gets up to confront her about it, and he gets up to find her in the hallway walking towards his room, and—he sees her face and automatically deflates because there’s conflict on her face. They again awkwardly kind of be like saying at the same time I’m sorry about that oof whoops I didn’t mean that unless maybe—okay well GNIGHT—

Cal goes back to bed, sits on his bed and sighs, knowing he biffed it again—almost starts spiraling disassociating, and then shakes his head like man wtf am I doing go to her—so he gets up again—he goes up to her door, hyping himself up, but then like two seconds later, Merrin opens it, and they are shocked, they stare, Cal goes in for it—pulls away—they stare—they both go in for it and hehe idk wtf do you think happens after that???????????//

Um, I am envisioning a dynamic where like, there has been some flirtsing between them, but nothing that has really committed to the bit, you know? And then they go on either a mission or go like to a marketplace (somewhere public) wherein one notices how much the other is getting checked out, and they are like ooof wow everyone in this Cantina is seeing how hot they are how could I even have a shot??? Well let me tell YOU babes…you do. you have a shot. You have the most shots. Just…shoot your shot. I feel like there should def be some unintentional swagger going on and the other is like wow why are they being so hot rn…THAT is rude.

They get home…there’s an awkward feeling where they don’t know how to act around them…and the other is like um tf is up with you??? And it’s like they forgot how to be a person around them…what?? What is hUmAN iNteRaCtIon???? Would you I—how do I—*wheezes* Okay the more I write this out the more fun I think it would be for Merrin to be getting all flustered about this (esp because she is usually the one that is seen to be more composed). It’s up to you but come on there is much room for Cal busting out that charm he doesn’t even realize he has and Merrin is just 🥵 swoon. Also him taking off his shirt for no reason or looking hawt while doing Jedi shit. Then she just snaps. We love to see it. Just think about it. I know you are. Please write this shit for us I beg of you.

I also like the thought of Cal looking for something in the mantis, and he accidentally picks up one of Merrin’s things without thinking about it and sees an echo from her. It actually isn’t sad. It’s a happy one, which for some reason seems to only make it worse. He doesn’t exactly know how to address it with her and starts to feel awkward around her. Sometimes he really resents the fact that people’s private moments are just projected into his head. They are tasked to do something together on another planet, where she eventually confronts him on why he is acting weird. He tries to play it off with some lame excuse and she sees right through him and stalks off.

He sighs, setting out to find her, where she is at like an outside café or hell somewhere super secluded. Cal sits down with her without a word. They are silent for a bit, but then he tells her of a happy memory that he has of him and Jaro and their battalion, or maybe something from the temple.

She is happy he’s shared something intimate with her, but then she questions where this is coming from. Then he is pulling something out of his poncho, dropping it into her lap. There are profuse apologies coming from him and tells her what he saw. It was a complete accident. Upon seeing the object, she tells Cal it’s fine she knew he didn’t do it on purpose, but there still seems to be something bothering her.

Cal says how sometimes it’s easy to forget there were better times before this, and thinking about those memories now almost makes them feel tainted.

Merrin tells him that she thought she’d never have another happy memory again. But then she tells him of the first good one she made with him. He smiles, feeling bashful. Merrin says knowing that I still can be happy makes me feel like my past wasn’t for nothing. And I have you to thank for that. They decide they should be getting back and stand…one of them starts to hesitate, and the other notices, asking what is wrong…but then the former approaches them and perhaps they kith I mean of course they kith this is a fanfic after all I mean what else are we doing here.

Who doesn’t love a mission where Cal has taken too long (with Saw or the partisans or whatever), and Merrin is really starting to worry that something bad has happened to him. She can’t feel him through the force and she has devolved into a nervous wreck (up to you what the state of their relationship is at this point). Cere and Greez do their best to try and distract or comfort her. she feels her heart rip apart in her chest because she just cannot go through this again—she’s already lost her sisters and almost lost him too. Him being gone and uncertain of his fate is making her face how she truly feels about him, which makes it only worse.

She is trying to distract herself with practicing her magicks, menial tasks, meditation, sparring techniques that Cal has taught her—which just makes her think of him just like everything eventually does.

And just when she thought she truly was going to lose her mind, resorting to shutting out these feelings she’s only just realized, she feels him, something that is only a flicker compared to how bright he normally feels—and she’s running, she can teleport, but she just wants to chase this feeling of where he is—because if she doesn’t she is just simply going to lose her mind—

There he is, at the top of the ramp, and there is this moment where they meet eyes (and wow our boy could certainly be injured, which could explain why she didn’t feel him before), and they are running towards each other—and wow what a beautiful reunion of DON’T EVER SCARE ME LIKE THAT AGAIN and such things. Could have a debriefing session looking over the sunset of Bogano where ✨feelings✨ are discussed. If they aren’t together certainly someone shoving their face into the other for the first time, or if they already are def have the L word thrown around…also there has to be a ‘coming back to you was like coming home’ moment because yes. Should be full of fun timez.

Canon Divergent:

I love love looooove the idea of Merrin has been able to get off Dathomir and becomes a bounty hunter (and Ventress is alive and thriving and living her best life OF COURSE), and perhaps they sometimes work together (it is my own personal HC that these two are aunt and niece together but I digress). And guess who are the most wanted beezies in the galaxy??? JEDI. And there’s a redheaded Jedi going around causing a lot of trouble.

Merrin is on a planet and happens to find him in a Cantina. He fits the description with his build and his hair, despite the hood he is trying to conceal himself with. Perhaps most people would miss him, but not this Nightsister. She follows him to somewhere secluded, and he of course senses her and is like um why are you following me…you know the answer to that, she says. He knows he’s discovered and so don’t we have a FUN Jedi Nightsister brawl. Both catches one another off guard with their abilities…but of course we know who has to get the upper hand if this fic is going to progress.

Cal is captured…there are some fun moments in captivity where Cal is like please don’t do this…do you really want to give the Empire what they want, and she is just like fuming Jedi are liars and selfish thieves bit. Could go a few different directions from here. I like the thought of another group ambushing them, and Cal offers to help and she is like no you are my prisoner and he is like girl would you rather die? So she reluctantly says FINE Jedi—he ends up accidentally touching something of hers in the midst and feels an echo that you know, reveals some sad shit and she is like WTF ARE YOU DOING WE NEED TO GET A MOVE ON IT BUDDY—

They end up having to crash land anyway—perhaps onto an uninhibited planet or one with a small population…Cal saves Merrin, and when she wakes up and realizes what he has done and she is almost resentful. Why would he do such a thing. She takes her anger out on him. And he just takes it all. And it makes her even more angry that he isn’t even reacting to it like he was before.

Eventually when she is done, he tells her that the Jedi weren’t the monsters she was told they were. Perhaps he even busts out the object he touched before and tosses it to her. He apologizes and explains what happened on the ship before he stands, explaining everything that needs to be fixed on the ship.

He’s walking away, but he pauses, idk if you want to bust out the ‘I know what it’s like to lose everything’ line here but I don’t think it would be a bad place. Or at least something to that degree. And you know what progresses after that…(psst, it’s their relationship) Holy shit the more I’ve gotten into this the more I need it please someone write this I may die without it!

(OR—another direction you can go with it is that they are both captured by WHOMSTever and they have to work together to escape…I mean who could truly stop a Jedi and a Nighsister reluctantly working together? I truly pity the fool)

Clone Wars AU where Cal and Jaro are assigned to try and recruit the Nightsisters to try and get the upper hand in the war with Dooku (lol I wouldn’t say exactly a Dark Disciple route but that’s up to you). Merrin is voluntold (the opposite of volunteered) by Mother Talzin to try and become allies with the Jedi (they could have their own shady Nightsister ulterior motive going on as well), and Merrin reluctantly goes with the Jedi. And oooooooOoOooo wow the shenanigans that can ensue from that. (Merrin also has to try really hard not to lose her shit over leaving Dathomir for the first time in her life). I’d imagine a lot of frustrations from both parties. The clones mercilessly make fun of Cal and his Nightsister gf (but they also have to tell him what’s up). He thinks she’s unreasonably obtuse and rude, and she thinks he’s frustratingly smug/arrogant. Merrin could prove to be a definite asset in battle. Cal probably thinks it’s hawt 😳 OH NO SHE’S HOT SEE LOOK HOW WE GOT HERE WE LIKE TO HAVE FUN HERE.

Now suddenly she’s mysterious and complex, and he’s frustrated that he wants to know more. He’s actually the sweetest person she’s ever seen and she’s angry about it. She constantly has to check in with her sisters and it’s getting harder and harder to go behind his back or deny that she maybe might not hate him anymore she maybe even may want to smooch him WOAH who knows. They bond over feeling used in this war. Come on. You got it from here right?

AUs:

Modern:

Idk why this has been in my head but like—(I imagine them as good friends with insane chemistry, well, they always have insane chemistry but you know what I mean), and they are at a party, probably drinking involved, because that could give you some like beer pong shenanigans if you so choose. They have a good fun time, maybe there’s a moment where either one of them (depending on who’s POV you are using) thinks it’s gonna happen. Merrin smiles in just the right way, or Cal says something dorky and adorable like he does, and I mean…they’re in a fanfic, so of course they get INTERRUPTED—

They may either be too tried or too drunk to leave, and they end up both on the couch, and hey at the time it seemed like a perfectly normal thing for them to just fall asleep like that. Cal probably still tries to respect Merrin’s boundaries and though her face is like literal centimeters from his, he tries his best to give her space and awkwardly contorts his body so he is still not touching her. But Merrin still rests her head on his arm anyway, and both of them feel that warmth and rush throughout their bodies because maybe perhaps also Cal tucks her Merrin’s hair behind her ear just before they fall asleep—

AND IN THE MORNING, they’re closer now, both of them in that haze of awakening, their lips are ever so barely touching, BUT THEN—they spring apart. Their eyes are wild on each other and within this space, seconds tick by as the gravity of that sinks in before they give each other one last heated look and then they are just macking on each other let’s GOOOOOOOO

My goodest frond @arosesee (who thought of this and the next three ideas) actually just came up with this one, and I LOVE it. A direct quote from her, “Mom Merrin subbing for Dad Kestis at a PTA meeting I would DIE,” and I mean basically. And I am not even someone who normally goes for fics with kids, but omg I would go feral for this one. Can you imagine? Cal is friends with all the moms and they are just smitten with him, and they are always like so when do we get to meet your wife?

And he’s like lol y’all ain’t ready for that smoke…but then hey Cal gets sick or something and so his goth wife has to step in and demand why they aren’t disciplining her children more I mean do they know who their father is??? And the moms just had no idea what Merrin was about, so they are just a bit surprised. UGH, I would be obsessed. Obsessed.

A stranded island survivor metrical fic could be fun. AHHHHH omg can you imagine all the arguing and the bickering and the 👀 —back to bickering again

“Oooooorrr a one-shot meet cute tourist trap with Merrin working the cash register and Cal the campy decked out tourist tripping over himself cause he doesn't want to be inconsiderate but ohmygod she's so pretty

He like TOTALLY drops his wallet (probably drops it twice)”

He’s like there for a thing—like maybe a family thing with Cere and Greez and it just turns into them constantly running into each other (um should the wallet dropping bit be throughout uh yeah I think so and at the end SHE picks it up akakakakakkakk), and finally she eyes him, sighing, and invites him to the hotel bar or a local spot, basically just yanking him along and Cal is just like okAYYYY 😍

“Ooooh one more idea, both of them are college RAs for the same dorm building, and it's super awkward but FINE during the meeting but then they have to plan weekly socials for the baby freshmen TOGRTHRr and like it's fine like so totally fine”....Narrator: it was not fine

This one was suggested by my boo @galacticsirensong: “Listen I want a carnival AU now with Cal going on the ferris wheel alone cuz his date stood him up. He bought allllll these tickets and doesn’t wanna waste them. So he decides to hop on the ride but the carnie operator is like yelling into the crowd STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP!  ANYONE WANNA GO FOR A RIDE WITH THIS GINGER? WE GOT A LONELY GINGER, LADIES!! ANY TAKERS??

Merrin is like at her aunt’s palm reading tent nearby (see this is where I continue to push forward that Asajj is Merrin’s aunt agenda leave me alone). She overhears the ruckus and notices  Cal is completely mortified. So she just squeezes through the narrow gaps of people, goes up the steps, takes a ticket from Cal and hands it to the operator without a word.”

Cal barely has time to register her before she sits down and starts moving, and he like clears throat um--

Merrin’s just like I hate this ride operator he’s always trying to embarrass people like that so I am doing this out of spite

Then they kind of notice one another may be cute and well Cal’s stumbling over his words like he do, and Merrin pretends not to be flustered by it because she is into that shit, and once the ride is over....Merrin’s just like well let’s spend the rest of these tickets

Because you know, out of spite for Cal being stood up

AND THAT’S IT

Harry Potter:

Either them being students or teachers. But Cal is a NERD happy go lucky Hufflepuff and Merrin is a typical broody Slytherin. Perhaps they have to work together either on curriculum or a class project, and neither are really that happy about it. I could see Cal trying to be overly positive about the situation just to be able to get through this because she is such an edgelord, and Merrin could take it as him being insincere or fake. (IF they are students, you can play around with Merrin rolling her eyes at Cal being a teacher’s pet, but then at the same time she is a total know it all LOL).

(ALSO could Cal still have his psychometry powers I know this an AU but come on it’s a crossover we do what we want who is to say an Earth wizard can’t do such a thing)

They could come from tragic pasts that they are very reluctant to share…but somehow they manage to start…getting along? Lol I love the thought of them rolling their eyes at the other houses like omfg Ravenclaws are such know it alls or the Gryffindors are such bruts. Maybe there’s Quidditch involved…only adding to the rivalry. But that is for YOU to decide, isn’t it???

Old West:

Sorry I am on some Red Dead Redemption shit but I simply cannot help myself but to shove all of my favorite things together alright. (@namesonboats I am looking at chuuu 🤠) Cal is apart of some kind of roaming squad (IF you chose a band of outlaws I wouldn’t be opposed), and they are in this one town for a bit. He starts to go to a general store where a Russian aunt and niece run it, and a lot of people just assume Merrin doesn’t even speak any English and dismiss her a lot of the time. But maybe he’s seen her at one of the saloons or tending to one of her horses and thinks that there’s more to her than what she is presenting to the world (and lol she is prettyyyy 😍)

He goes into the store with Greez one day, and he ends up asking Merrin something, and Greez is like lol why do you bother she isn’t going to answer you. Cal is like pssssh this girl is trolling all of you I just know it. Merrin looks at him like he’s grown a second head, and then Asajj comes out and starts to put on the charm and Merrin just yeets right out of there.

Perhaps Cal was wrong. Maybe she didn’t understand him, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t want to get to know her. So he just continues to go to the store anyway and keeps talking to her all the time (We all know the boy can ramble let’s go). Maybe he even runs into her at other parts of town, or even on the outskirts where she’s taken her horse out, and he happens upon her while he’s on his. She does some target practice with a pistol and he’s impressed. He wished he at least knew her name.

There’s a Russian woman in their group, and Cal asks her about a few Russian phrases, to which she complies, but then asks why. Cal is all SUPER red and is just like LOL NO REASON K THX BYEEEE!

Cal goes into the shop, tries out a phrase or two, attempts a hello and asks her how she is doing. He feels like he is making a fool of himself, but then he swears out of the corner of his eye he sees her smirk. He asks her name in Russian, and she sighs…so Cal assumes he’s asked her wrong he clearly couldn’t remember it right and looks at the ground. “Merrin,” she says. His heart races. Asajj comes out and interrupts them OF COURSE.

The gang wants to move on soon, but Cal isn’t ready to let go. It seems silly because practically every interaction they’ve had have been one sided conversations, but he still goes to the store nonetheless and tells her they are going to be leaving. She looks at him poignantly, and he still just doesn’t know if she’s pretending or really doesn’t understand. He dips his cowboy hat to her and tells her it was nice meetin’ ya milady dasvidaniya.

Merrin shouldn’t be disappointed in the American man who came into her shop all the time to annoy her, really it doesn’t matter. How could it? He was really just a nuisance more than anything else, that Calvin ‘Cal’ Kestis.

But, he was truly the only person that she could recall in what feels like a lifetime that looked her in her eyes, talked to her like a person, even if it was at annoying constancy. And GD he even learned some Russian just for her...but she tries to just forget about that handsome, redheaded cowboy all the same.

Merrin is tasked to travel to a few towns over to pick up a delivery for the store, and after the long journey wherein she is going to have to spend the night anyway, so she decides to go to one of the saloons. She rolls her eyes as she sips at her whiskey because more than one man has approached her and thought she was a hooker.

A brawl breaks out and she rolls her eyes harder. Stupid men. All of them were just children.

But then this man comes in the middle of it and tries to break it up. His voice sounds familiar, but she thinks he’s hearing things. She tries to tune it out, but notices he gets punched anyway, and his hat flies off. Yeah, no there was no denying that red hair. She wants to leave, but she can’t; she’s stuck on her stool. Once the fight finally ceases, Cal is with that small man he came into the store with sometimes as he retrieves his hat. He talks with the short man, and she thinks he’s going to leave, and he is just going to be lost to her again, but then he seems to stay for another drink, probably wanting to nurse that black eye he’s no doubt going to get.

He sits at one of the stools and downs a drink. Oh lordt should she go up to him now? After everything she’s lost, it seemed ridiculous to do such a thing, but she finds her feet moving of her own volition. Oh GOD what is she even going to say.

“That is quite the punch you took,” she says, sitting down next to him, “I probably have something in my supplies that could help with that.”

Cal whips his head to her and quickly voices her name, which she was certain he was going to forget. And he seemed most certainly shocked that yes she does indeed know English and has this whole time.

There’s smiles all around as he offers to buy her a drink and she accepts. But she also has to make fun of how terrible his Russian was.

Lol was that enough of the plot for you. AND I MEAN GD I’VE DONE IT AGAIN—

Treasure Hunters:

SHUT UP NO I AM NOT JUST THINKING OF ALL MY FAV VIDEO GAMES THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH UNCHARTED GET THAT THOUGHT OUT OF YOUR HEAD. Cal and Greez are a typical team that also work a lot with Cere.

For this new job, they have to go to Russia for like whatever treasure is there, and Cere has recruited a new member, a surly woman named Merrin that was apparently an expert in Russian history and treasure and all of that (maybe even chemistry or something too because our girl is SMORT). But she is mean and yeah maybe he thinks it’s a little hot but that is besides the point. Why is she even here him and Greez have always gotten along just fine. Do they have to steal something from a Russian big wig crime boss, yeah most probably. Merrin looks WAY too sethy 🥵 in her dress as she tries to distract the men Cal needs to get around…they get caught of course and wooo, calamity ensues.

They get to the location, and whenever they have to make camp, she is always off by herself, even when Cere invites her to sit with them.

Come on this is also a PERFECT opportunity for Cal to show off some parkour skills. And Merrin doesn’t notice them. No, she doesn’t notice them at all she is adamantly not looking—dammit, she looked.

They get deeper and deeper into this job. Cal opens up about how he was an orphan and Greez took him in when they are checking out one of the rooms in this abandoned site. He doesn’t really know why he’s telling her this, but he’s just caught her sad face too many times for him to not think about what was going on in her head. But she’s made it clear she’s only here for the job and doesn’t really care about any of them, so this whole venture was useless anyway.

They still bicker, oH LORDT do they fight about everything. Cere and Greez just assume they are going to bone if they haven’t already. Cal gets all defensive when Greez asks about it like NO…where did you even GET that from omG.

They find the underground area they’ve been trying to get to…and of COURSE the gang gets separated. Cal and Merrin end up in a room they can’t find their way out of. They are STUCK. WtF Cal is stuck with this grump and Merrin is stuck with this way too enthused arrogant asshole—

They try all their options and argue the whole time. They don’t know how long they’ve been stuck in here, but Cal still insists she has the last of the water. And she insists he has the last protein bar. Maybe there was only one bed roll you never know....

Merrin doesn’t know why, but she opens up to him about how she got into all of this. Her mother, that is how her parents met in this deathtrap of an industry, was always fascinated in this treasure in particular. In some sort of stupid way, she thought she was honoring her…it sounds stupid now.

It doesn’t sound stupid, Cal declares.

And look at that they have to WoRk ToGEtHeR to get out and there haaas to be close proximity and touching for that to happen. Come on now I know you have it in you. SOOOOO, yeah that was that one.

Was that enough?? I am so freaking sorry that I pretty much wrote out like almost all the plot to like…most of these. I would start with an idea and before I knew it—I was several paragraphs deep and what is my life. No excuses…I have no way to defend myself…don’t look at me

ANYONE out there, please, if any of these ideas inspire you, take them and roll with it! You in no way are obligated to follow my outlines directly. Take it, make it your own, or follow my plot, IDC, as long as we are getting some more Merrical content out there! Hell, you could even do a combination, a continuation, whatever you want! I was having a pretty shitty week, so this was honestly a fun distraction for me to put together. I can’t believe I went this insane...but actually no I am not.

And if anyone has any more ideas, don’t be shy! Comment on this post, DM me, or write into my ask box. I would love to get your thoughts out there for all of us to see! I am like so thrilled about the amount of Merricals coming out from the woodwork. YESSS, these space nerds just belong together no matter the universe! So I really hope this helped you anon! Would love to add to this list with all y’alls ideas!

Also, if any of you wanted to bounce these ideas or any other ideas you had, also please don’t hesitate to reach out! I am always here to have a fic sesh, believe you me.

Alright, well.. I’ve rambled long enough for the next 500 years, I’ll just…see myself out.

And I am just going to tag some of my Merrical peeps (and ones I know that are around even if we haven't talked before) if you guys are at all interested in writing or contributing! 🥰

@namesonboats @believe-in-alderaan @misfitz-7 @myfaenwy @starryjediknight @dolcid @wayfaringjedi @separatist-apologist @mistressorinoco

[reasoningdaily]

Jessica B. Harris's Guide to Black Culinary History | Bon Appétit

Jessica B. Harris, Dawn Davis

Bahia, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Martha’s Vineyard, and Paris are the places she’s called home. Erudite, wickedly funny, and droll describe her personality. Who are we talking about?

None other than the culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, Ph.D.—founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, a professional society championing women in culinary fields, an award-winning journalist, podcaster, and author of over a dozen deeply researched books and too many articles to count. (If you’re looking for something that goes down like butter, check out her memoir, My Soul Looks Back, filled with tales about her adventures in New York’s Greenwich Village with friends James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.)

As the foremost expert on the foodways of the African diaspora, there’s no better (or wittier) guide to Black culinary traditions. Here, she shares with us a few of the dishes, books, and ingredients she finds essential to unpacking this long, rich, and ever-evolving history. —Dawn Davis, editor in chief

Photo by Suzi Pratt

Try the Homestyle Favorites

Chef Edouardo Jordan’s JuneBaby restaurant in Seattle is an edible praise song to the genius of African American cooks. The menu offers classic dishes like fried chicken and greens along with specials—like chitlins and Momma Jordan’s oxtails—not usually tasted outside of home kitchens.

Tour the Archives

Toni Tipton-Martin’s The Jemima Code reclaims and celebrates the heritage of Black America’s controversial “aunt” by documenting 200 years of African American cookbooks from her personal collection. Familiar figures such as Edna Lewis show up alongside unexpected personalities such as activist Bobby Seale and singer Mahalia Jackson in this must-own compendium.

Photo by Emma Fishman

Eat Like an Icon

The late New Orleans chef Leah Chase served Gumbo z’Herbes once a year on Holy Thursday. The dense green meaty gumbo is essential to the rich culinary history of the area’s Creoles de couleur. It’s still served annually at Dooky Chase’s, her iconic family restaurant.

Photo Courtesy Cuisine Noir/Ilaria Sponda

Required Reading

Two invaluable resources for those who want to deepen their knowledge: Black Culinary History and Cuisine Noir. Both websites preserve and promote the past and present contributions of chefs of color throughout the African diaspora.

For The Bucket List

The food of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos in northeastern Brazil is a linchpin between the food of western Africa and that of the Western Hemisphere. To taste a fish stew called a moqueca or nibble on an acarajé, a street food bean fritter, is to understand the connections.

Photo by Mike Lorrig

More Okra, Please

Okra, which originated on the African continent, is a love/hate vegetable. Its detractors hate the “slime” and the lovers delight in the way it thickens a soup or stew and its crunch when blanched. Get recipes, history, and gardening tips, in The Whole Okra by Chris Smith.

Photo from Vintage Postcards From the African World: In the Dignity of Their Work and the Joy of Their Play by Jessica B Harris,, University Press of Mississippi

Share Knowledge

You can find incredible images of African Americans and food on vintage postcards in my latest book, Vintage Postcards from the African World. They not only present the faces of ancestors but also tell amazing, often harrowing, stories of survival and triumph over adversity.

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrilbe Fic Ideas #54: Like Water For Chocolate, but Hannibal

One of my biggest pet peeves are online recipes where the author feels compelled to write 25k words on their first Christmas alone in NYC and how that taught them to appreciate their mother's home cooking before telling me what ingredients I need and what to do with them.

That being said, Like Water For Chocolate remains one of my favorite books. Essentially a novel using the sharing of relevant family recipes as vehicle for the narrative... it struck me hard as I was scrolling through my dash that it would be perfect say to write a Hannibal fic.

Or: What if Hannibal was told through the medium of monthly gourmet recipes on a food blog?

Just imagine it:

I don't really have much for this plot bunny, but Hannibal keeping a high-class gourmet food blog on top of everything else seems in keeping with both his love of food and need to be the center of everyone's attention.

Perhaps it starts as a mostly anonymous blog - though certain Baltimore foodies recognize the kitchen in the pictures and know better than to say anything - that contains a brief history of the food or its key ingredient before diving into the recipe. Supremely knowledgeable, supremely elegant, it is a staple of certain circles.

But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the content begins to change. It's still high-quality, still elegant... but the introductory sections start becoming more lengthy and more personal throughout the course of S1 and S2 of the show.

Fans begin to notice that their favorite food blogger appears smitten with his friend, Will, going so far as to dedicate an installment of his blog to what amounts to fancy chicken soup when his dear friend is ill and a few brave souls begin to ship them together, but all this is only on the periphery - Hannibal rarely answers comments on his blog unless it is a polite request for clarity of his instructions.

Perhaps the fic follows canon exactly, with untraceable updates being posted after the Fall, teasing the police with the details of months-old murders and delighting fans with both delicious recipes and details of the passionate, self-destructive, all-consuming love Hannibal and Will share. Perhaps things veer off slightly for a fluffier (for Hannibal) ending helped along by comments from one or two dedicated fans.

The point is that I think it would be a brilliant way to work Hannibal two love languages - food and murder - into a fic, and if I knew anything about gourmet cooking I might be tempted.

Bonuses include: 1) At least 10% of the fans thinking the insertion of dear Will into the blog is a kind of performance art designed to draw in more viewers. At least half of those think the murder, cannibalism, and imprisonment which comes later are just more performance art; 2) Beverly stumbling across the website during S1 when being forced to cook for visiting family, being utterly delighted by the UST, and cackling as she shows all the juiciest bits to Will; and 3) The most beautiful, complex, delicious, gourmet recipes from around the world included as a key component - even driving force - behind the drama of our murder husbands.

And that's it really. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you do anything with it.

More Terrible Fic Ideas

[malfromtheblue]

EXCUSSEEE ME, BEAUTIFUL!!

if that last post was about me imma be upset. why are you punching walls? nah, im dumb asf because i always thought you just got into fights, thats why your knuckles are always fucked up??

And if your ex calls and you feel sick, call me overrr!! i cant make tea for shit, but I can cook up some good ass chicken noodle soup (really just ramen but they're basically the same thing) and if you cant eat we can binge watch Loki season 1-2! Or just talk, ofc

And idc if ppl think you're weird or sick!! I think you're a pretty boy with a different mentality. And i love you!! *kisses and hugs*

And if you're talking about another girl then we're gonna fight because why you talkin to other girls?? 😭✋

*twerks cutely*

... well, to be fair, i didn't make that post expecting you to actually read it. but i guess i should've known, with your adorable little nosy self.

i punch walls when you're gone because other coping skills don't do shit. as awful as it sounds, i take the emotional and mental pain that i experience when you're gone and turn it into physical pain. a distraction, you could call it? and dont do that. dont call yourself dumb, my love, you couldn't have known, i never told you. and you were polite not to ask our first few days together, as i feel you would have been freaked out by the answer.

i will most definitely call you over if im sick. or if i miss you. you should move in. that'd make everything easier, dont ya think? you practically live here anyways, so that shouldn't be much of a change.

mm... you're so bloody cute, you know that? how dare you wrap me around your finger tighter than i already am, hm? i would LOVE to watch Loki with you whether im sick or not, but im glad ill get princess treatment, then.

this last part, took me a second to comprehend. after reading this over about 45 times, i have come to the conclusion that you don't mind me being as i am? and you think im pretty?!

my love, you cant just go around telling a sickly obsessed person you love them. especially if you're the one they're obsessed with.

Say it again.

but i love you more. i love you with my flesh, bone, body, soul, and mind.

and i think its been obvious that you're My Perfect Addiction. now, get some rest. its late.

~ Mal 🍵

[transgenderer]

a mountain goats song i am mystified by:

two cans clear chicken broth two white onions one bulb garlic

boil, boil. boil, boil.

and the screams of delight from the pool outside the splashing sounds the coffee heating up on the stove the sky outside. the color of pure fresh milk. boil, boil. boil, boil.

and the phone ringing, and me picking it up and watching myself do so in the quiet room in the june evening and your voice on the other end and the impossibility of your voice on the other end and the impossible echo. inside.

boil, boil. boil, boil.

john's only made one comment about this song, that it's about death. and in this live show he adds the line "and the impossibility of your voice being on the other end again". so i think its about...getting a call from a dead person? theres also an added line about the slap of the childrens feet on the pavement outside. my first thought was hotel cuz of the pool and kids, but they dont usually have stoves. so maybe the characters children? and its at home? and its about idk, domesticity after death

but of course, the big question is the soup? which is yknow, maybe just domesticity. but why is it the focus. maybe the release of steam is like the release of the soul from the body? idk im grasping for straws. idgi

[aimmyarrowshigh]

16 & 29 for ao3 wrapped? 😊

16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

I'm boring and tag very generically but like, utility-focused, so my most common tag is Drabble, followed by Canon Compliant, Canon Character of Color, Alternate Universe, and Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence. The first like, "fun" tag that comes up with over 100 uses is Polyamory, but I PERSONALLY FEEL like I use "Food As A Metaphor For Love" and "Grief/Mourning" an awful lot.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Oh, damn. Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhh. That's a really good question. I don't often have lines that I feel like are like, particularly great on their own? There are beats I've written or drabbles I've written that I think have a good rhythm because of a line in them and how it plays with the other lines, but I very rarely have a "star line." And I think that because most of what I write IS a singular beat, I just either like it as a whole piece or I don't, yk?

This is a really good question. It's making me think about my writing in a way I normally don't.

I think maybe my favorite line of Five Times Captain America Fucked A USO Girl... is:

"“Ain’t you blue,” Lois teases. She bends over the back of Steve’s abandoned chair, butt high and round and framed in those soft pink garters, a perfect pinup gal. Steve bites his lips at the way her nipples match the silk like they came as a set."

My favorite line of Not In the Answer But the Question is either:

"Yeasty challah and tangy rye. Hot, fresh bagels. Charred onion and garlic. Bright vinegar on the half-sour pickles. Roasting beef dripping fat that sizzles on the bottom of the huge, hot ovens. Earthy barley and mushrooms. The iron-rich blood scent of liver. Schmaltz. Chicken soup with fat matzoh balls. Briny salmon and whitefish and sable. Herring smothered in biting raw onions. Caviar that scents of the sea. The sugary fake chocolate of egg creams and phosphates. The strange herbal fizz of celery soda. Peppery pastrami and salty corned beef, roasted chickens and blistered skirt steak. Cinnamon babka. Raspberry jam rugelach."

or

“Sure I am,” Bucky says. “Steve, ain’t no words for anything that I am that aren’t drenched in blood and the poison of people who hate me for being alive.”

My favorite line in Gee, I Hope You're Ready For A Fic About Death is:

No one is ever ready to deal with the idea of death, Beetlejuice has found. Well, almost no one. Occasionally there’s a stray lama or emo who gets it, is ready to sail through the Netherworld to—whatever is on its other side. But Dalais and Dark’ness Dementia Raven-Ways aside, Beetlejuice has never, not ever, met a soul who could deal with the idea that everything dies.

What about my kids? My cat? My cactus? What about rock’n’roll? The video star? Print journalism?

Everything. Dies.

And my favorite line in A Smile On Your Immortal Face is:

“Don’t I get to choose what I deserve?”

“No,” Nellie says simply. “You’re a woman.”

A dragonfly buzzes jewel-like over the water.

“That isn’t fair,” says Samantha. “I didn’t ask to be. I wanted to stay a girl. An American girl, the freest creature in all history.”

[birdbrainweekly]

Research blog until GSA: Day 10 of 25

Ha....Ha, is it day 10 already?

Save my soul...

My significant other last night got home from work with a fever, he woke up and was still sick, so I made him soup this morning, got to work at 10am and worked my butt off handpicking (Which I don't know if I have mentioned this but when handpicking you frequently accidentally stab yourself with tweezers really often). at around 11? 11:30 I don't know, I ran into my advisor who said the ominous words "Oh, I was about to send you an email, but maybe its better to say it to you in person."

Honestly, I was so tired I couldn't even begin to feel the instant dread before he, probably realizing how anxiety inducing what he just said was, told me the content of what he wanted to talk to me about.

It was a good meeting, I coerced him into looking at my thin section, to which he found cordierite which I have never seen before in my life and so I wrote off as "weird feldspar, idk", which threw off all my perplex models and has set me back, because I need to try to stabilize cordierite with rutile?! RIP, I am hoping the adjustment of ferric/ferrous iron ratio will stabilize rutile at lower pressures, otherwise I really couldn't tell you.

In other news, the mass spec is still broken and will stay broken into the foreseeable future according to the grad student who worked on it all day yesterday. Honestly.... I am choosing to ignore the words, and push forward with columns and handpicking... and making my graphs... and perplex modeling...

Anyway, I left at five after sitting through a seminar and working on a new graph, then running to the clean lab for the last time of the day.

Stopped at publix to buy some stuff to make chicken noodle soup for my still ill SO and found 'chicken backs', a waste cut of meat they were selling for cheap and made literally the richest chicken broth ever? If he isn't cured don't even know what to say, It was probably the best chicken soup I've ever made, and I make a mean soup.

I will probably work on perplex a little longer tonight before calling it a night and kinda hoping I wake up sick though? An excuse to no longer deny myself looking up different native plants and what moths and butterflies they host (listen, I literally love moths so much they are fluffy puppies, I just discovered the existence of the southern flannel moth and I wish to pet the furrbidden fluff.) I am still new to the south and learned like 4 days ago passionfruit is native to here? And am really sad I don't see it everywhere because I would totally grow it everywhere if I didn't live in an apartment.

anyway here is a picture of "weird feldspar, idk"

[3milesup]

the chicken soup for the soul books had a very strong impact on my life. god i believe i had never cried so much and so hard over anything i read, before or after... but the story that impressed me the most wasn't one of those, it was the one about the message that had found its place on the wall of my girl room for a long time, and that has been etched in my mind ever since, and i've thought about it constantly through the years: practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. only i never quite knew how.

now, i am the most introverted introvert you'll ever find when it comes to my thoughts and feelings, but i can get very random with strangers. and having to do with a lot of people daily, i often find myself getting random when i sense a person that won't mind. if they have a good scent, a beautiful dress, a lovely necklace that looks like a string of licorice candies, i tell them. i ask what their instant camera is because i have one myself, i ask if their padawan-like braid has anything to do with star wars and the triskelion tattoo with teen wolf...

the other day a passenger walked up to my counter and while i was looking at her passport she said triumphantly "i remember you! you said to me something in my language the other day" and i couldn't believe my eyes but yes, i did and it was about a couple of months ago. i told her "thank you, bye" at gate, which are two of very few words i know (we are from neighbouring countries, both far from home) but i always say them if i have the occasion because i love the surprised smiles it draws... and when i saw that lady the other day, i realized my silly can leave a print and i feel like crying because i realize that might be it.

and in a job where so many seem to have forgotten what a simple kindness is, it makes me all the happier. i might be just the girl that puts the tag on your suitcase but if a passenger remembers me maybe i am doing something right...

...sorry for my 2am ramblings while getting ready for work xd but i get all feely sometimes because mine is a job no person in their right mind wants to do anymore (lost 10 colleagues in a year). for plenty of good reasons. but i love it because it gives me the chance to be kind. as cheesy as that. to be the change i want to see in the world, however tiny. it costs literally nothing.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a pretty quiet week in the Fahrni household and at work. I’d say we’re in a steady state at both. Of course it won’t stay that way for long so I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.

Our granddaughter is with us this weekend so let’s see how much writing I’ll get done. 😁

I’ve saved so many interesting links this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report

J. Michael Luttig, a widely consulted former federal judge, is among those harshly condemning the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to give presidents a layer of legal immunity, meaning protection from prosecution, for certain actions taken in office.

Our Supreme Court has done democracy a big disservice. The immunity they’ve granted Presidents basically gives them carte blanche to commit crimes as part of holding the office.

They’re evil idiots.

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

The real Christina Warren hasn’t been writing these new posts on the zombie TUAW, however. The site’s new owners have stolen her identity, replaced her photo with an AI-generated one, and have been publishing what appear to be AI-generated articles under her byline.

Here’s someone using “AI” in an unethical way. Taking someone else’s work, running it through an LLM to change it, and republishing it under the authors name — with a different author picture — is disgusting.

Victoria Namkung • The Guardian

Whenever Cassie Yoshikawa drives through the Central Valley on the former US Highway 99, she looks for the century-old landmark that symbolizes the midpoint of California: the Palm and the Pine.

You’d think being a lifelong Californian I’d have known about this. I recall passing them but I had no idea they represented the center of California. They’re an official unofficial marker. Folks just did it. Pretty nifty.

Of course they’re going to be ripped out for highway expansion. Goodness knows we need more cars on the road.

Noor Al-Sibai • Futurism

Elon Musk is a man with many brands — but for electric vehicle shoppers, his personal brand has become increasingly toxic.

That’s right, folks are not buying Teslas because Space Karen is such a dick.

I’ve given up on The Musk Files. The man is just so toxic and disgusting his crimes against humanity are too many to enumerate.

Janko Roettgers • Lowpass

This is it for Redbox: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox’s corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets.

Wow. BluRay and DVD renters are out of luck it seems. Before streaming became ubiquitous we’d rent from Redbox about once a week. We had one at our local grocery store. It was easy and cheap.

There’s a bit of irony in this whole thing. I’ve gone back purchasing BluRay + digital download movies. We use the digital version all the time but have that BluRay backup should the license for the digital copy be revoked.

Dalia Faheid, Monica Garrett and Brandon Miller • CNN

Death Valley sets a new daily record with a searing 128 degrees as West Coast heat wave drags on

Poor California, poor planet. If this keeps up how long will it be before California can no longer produce the fruits and vegetables that feed the world? That’s not hyperbole. California’s San Joaquin Valley really is the breadbasket of the world.

Patrick Wyatt • Code of Honor

I’ve been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts about writing more reliable game code.

Don’t look at the date this article was published. Yes, it’s from 2012. 😄

You know I love a good discussion about code architecture, especially when presented in the form of an actual product. Not just some sample code to illustrate the point. He links off to another post discussing a linked list implementation and it’s great reading.

Chris Medland • racer

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in his last British Grand Prix for Mercedes is “like a little fairytale,” according to team principal Toto Wolff.

It’s really nice to see Lewis Hamilton pick up a win in his final season the Mercedes.

Manton Reece

Everyone who has implemented ActivityPub from scratch knows that there are implementation-specific quirks that trip up developers, making compatibility between apps more difficult. Some of these issues are being clarified by the Social Web Community Group. Test suites will help too. Micro.blog has had ActivityPub support for years and we’re still finding edge cases.

So many folks are climbing on the ActivityPub bandwagon and that’s a good thing. Providing more integration with other services and allowing those to be displayed in native clients without changing formats is wonderful.

As much as I’d like to finish writing, my granddaughter is up so I’m gonna hit the publish button now and hang out with her. 😃

Steven Beschloss

The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983.

Skye Jacobs • TechSpot

Big Tech needs to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify AI hardware expenditure

Sarah Kuta • Smithsonian Magazine

While visiting his parents’ recently renovated house in Europe, a man spotted something unusual in one of the floor tiles. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be part of a human jawbone—and it still had a few teeth.

Spire Motorsports

Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Corey LaJoie in 2025.

Felix Salmon • Axios

The Slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement: Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least-prepared group for when they stop earning.

John Stoehr • Raw Story

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country

Drew Magary • SFGATE

But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.