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evilelitest2 · 4 years ago

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The 40K fandom filling with alt-righters was predictable because GW won't stop rimming the Imperium at the expense of everyone else, original themes included, but how was Warhammer Fantasy going down the same way?

Its a lot more obvious with 40K because its basically been playing footsie with the Alt Right for decades now by openly embracing Neo Nazi symbolizing and imagery (its more complicated than that but i’m bitter). Warhammer fantasy doesn’t do that, it does draw on Germanic imagery but its more Holy Roman Empire than fascist/Imperial Germany. But it still has some narratives which appeal to fascists, even though the setting was 100% not designed to appeal to fascists (in fact a lot of the fluff is anti fascist). So its not deliberate but here are some default assumptions (I actually wrote a paper on this)

1) The lack of positive Emotions. Warhammer fantasy is a parody and is designed as a dark comedy, and lets admit that a lot of its fluff is very funny. But one of the problems with creating a setting where everything sucks and everybody is a bastard, is that it actually encourages the sort of nihilistic understanding of humanity which Neo Fascism (opposed to classic fascism) relies on so much. This is a world where diplomacy doesn’t work, kindness is foolish, and decency is unrewarded, all that matters is cruel war. And as a cynic myself, I can appreciate the joke they are going for, but the longer that joke goes on, the more it makes caring about humanity seem foolish. This also combines with the hatred of cute stuff (see also Doom). The Entire world view is very adolescent boy, which is about the emotional state of fascism.

2) For all of the games cynicism, it has a soft spot towards the glory of war. The world is shitty, incompetent, stupid, cruel, unjust and random, but Warhammer Fantasy tends to depict war as the only transcendental and glorious experience. This is most exemplified with the Chaos Warriors, who come off as rather noble despite being a faction whose entire existence is defined by war. Warhammer fantasy mocks many things but never war

3) It very much buys into the “Warrior Culture” myth (Seen also Conan), where some cultures are defined macho and violent opposed to softer and more civilized cultures. The Northern cultures near the Chaos wastes get this a lot. These cultures have a very “noble savage” way of writing, especially regarding the Viking/mongol based ones.

4) The background of the Empire of Man still buys into the conservative perspective of “Things were great in the past, but society steadily fell”. It actually takes this further because it attributes the fall to decadence, hedonism, and sexual immorality. I was just reading Historian and conservative shithead Niels Ferguston, who wrote

“the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.” and that sort of view about what causes civilizations to fall fits into the Warhammer understanding of history. In fact if you go unto fascit forums, they often describe the Queer movement, especially trans activism, as Slaanesh worshipers

5) While Warhammer fantasy is not overtly sexist and I don’t think any of the writers have actual problems with women (though Games workshop is run by Satan) but the way female characters, especially female sexuality are depicted in the series is...telling. the Dark Elves and Slaanesh worshipers have a very “Sex, especially kinky sex is evil” feel. Now I don’t think the writers of Warhammer fantasy actually have a reactionary view towards sex and aren’t trying to make a fascist point, but I think that narrative supports the fascist narrative that decadence spiritually damages society. The genre is super male coded very strongly and tends to buy into macho notions of aethetic (which Warhammer 40k will take much further)

6) Because warhammer draws so much on real world societies, even by the standards of fantasy, its depiction of those societies is super telling. The Holy Roman Empire as presented in Warhammer is actually both less complicated and less international than its real world counterpart. Notably, the real holy Roman Empire actually controlled Spain and through it the New World, meaning it was by far the most ethnically diverse state in the world during the time of the Reformation. Because its drawing its influence from the Holy Roman Empire rather than more fantastical element (which I will grant gives setting a distinct Aesthetic which I mostly like) it contributes to the warped understanding of “Medievalism” which the Far Right takes advantage of. This is a problem with most fantasy and Warhamer is not alone here, but a lot of people’s default understanding of the Medieval/early modern Era is shaped more via fantasy than by an actual understanding of the era. Notable the intellectual, cultural, artistic...really any non military part of history. Which unfortunately is how a lot of people view the pre modern world, as just military history, which lends itself to conservatism.

7) Its Euro Centric as fuck. That is normal for most fantasy but because Warhammer is so balatant about its real life inspiration, the absence is notable. You have Fantasy France and Fantasy Holy Roman Empire, but you are missing the North African states, the Caliphate, and probalby most important of all, the Ottoman Empire, the greatest Rival to the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire had a century long series of wars/rivarlys/hatefucking relationship which is just absent. There is mention of a China based nation (Cathay really?) and some sort of Muslim power (Arabay) which the setting doesn’t care about and nobody ever visits. The new World exists, but the native Americans have been replaced by Dark Elves and Lizard People. You are even loss most of the real like ethnic diversity, their are new Jews and the Romani are confined to the Romania inspired vampire setting and basically exist as Bram Stoker people who dabble in dark magic. And the ogres (one of my favorite factions btw) have a very oriental visual design, which would be fine if there were actual asians in the setting. All of the non human races except the Chaos dwarves tend to look white or entirely alien which compounds this problem

8) The notion of cults. The Witch Hunters in Warhammer Fantasy play much the same role as the Inquisition who targeted Protestants, “Witches” (and in Spain at least) Muslims and Jews. Basically the inquisition was just an exercise in cruelty that just targeted entirely innocent people. In the Warhammer world, Daemon cults are real and the brutal methods of the inquisitions are largely justified, they kill a lot of innocents but they also destroy a lot of cults. This one is something I’m kinda mixed on, because the presence of evil cults dedicated the forces of hell is fun and it is a great plot for adventure, but it has the unintended side effect of making the notion of secret societies dedicated to profane rites seem less silly. Look at how Alt Rightists talk about the supposed leaders of the left, its language that is used to describe the cults in warhammer, I mean the Pizzagate conspiracy theory/Qanon conspiracy theory feel like people talking about Slaanesh and Tzeentch cults

9) Finally, the cynical nature of the setting, combined with its pro war narrative creates a world view where the world is corrupt, cruel, and unfair, the vast majority of people are ignorant morons and the nobles are decadent have weird sexual kinks. the only things holding the forces of hell at bay are the thuggish sadistic cruel soldiers who regularly indulge in torture and murder of civilians, and it is with these people you must trust. Its a brutal world where the only appropriate response is more brutality, which in addition to being ahistorical (the Early modern period was more than just war) but fits the fascist world view. The world is terrible and the only thing you can have faith in is a bunch of German war criminals with a fetish for eagles and skulls. Anybody trying to challenge that world view is either a Daemon Cultist or a naive idiot who is going to be taken over by a Daemon cultist.

(very Wagner)

Again, Warhammer Fantasy is not deliberate fascists, in fact there is a LOT in the material which rejects fascism but there is a lot of thoughtless assumptions that confirms their world view.

Also I never played/read Age of Sigmar so i don’t know if this carries over

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nullanythorm-ao3 · 4 years ago

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Just Some Random Fanfic Concepts

So I was going to wait and see if anyone else was interested in me posting up some of my general fanfic ideas. However, I’m bored and struggling to work with the CiM update I’m working on right now. So I’m just going to do it? Also, a heads up to look out for another post coming later, because I want to share some of my Variro YouTube playlist, too. BUT FIRST, story ideas. You’ll get some working titles for the ones I HAVE working titles for, but otherwise I’m just winging it cuz there are a lot of them. These are in no particular order. Things being higher or lower on the list doesn’t mean they’re more or less likely to be worked on.

#1 - A continuation for Land or Sea (title pending)

So a little background on this one. I got the idea for this one at the same time as I got the idea for Trust is Something Earned. I put which one I worked on first up to a vote on the Tangled Amino.

It’s a mermaid(merman/boy??)!Varian AU that centers on the idea: What if, in Queen for a Day, instead of coming up with a solution that created the amber when interacting with the rocks, Varian creates a different one and winds up getting himself turned into a mermaid instead?

It’ll feature 4 OCs: two created by me, and two created by a friend. The perspective will shift between Varian and an OC that belongs to a friend of mine named Charlotte, Varian’s childhood friend and love interest.

Without spoiling too much, it takes place primarily during the events of season 2 (and maybe stretches into season 3). It switches perspective between Varian, who’s sent to live in the ocean after the accident and becomes friends with an adventurous merboy named Caspian who helps him rediscover his passion for science and alchemy, and Charlotte, who’s left behind in Corona and is trying to rediscover her sense of self and direction after losing her best and only friend. Charlotte’s perspective will help show how the premise changes events in Corona, while Varian’s is wholly original.

The other OCs that will be involved in the story will be my OC Adrian Claire, who followers of TiSE will know, and my friend’s OC Henry.

#2 - Stitched Together (originated from Ragdoll)

Okay so the original premise for this was for it to be a Variro story. The focus was Hiro living a double life: a college student in San Fransokyo who realized the existence of the several magical realms that ran parallel to his home after discovering he had magical blood passed down from his mother (maybe even throwing in superhero and making it a triple life - poor Hiro). He finds what’s known in the multi-realm as a living doll - a doll that gained a soul either through devotion and affection of a previous owner and desire to become more human, or having a human soul literally shoved into it.

Varian, his doll, is the latter. Due to crimes against his home realm of Corona and his own uncontrollable magical talent, they forced him into having his soul magically “stitched” into a rag doll, until Hiro’s magical talent allowed him to awaken. However, because of his nature as a living doll, Varian now depends on and is subservient to Hiro, but the two soon grow a bond much closer than expected.

Now, after working on the lore and world of the story, I’ve grown its scope a little. Rather than simply being a crossover with Tangled and Big Hero 6, I want Stitched Together to be a bigger-scale crossover, including How To Train Your Dragon and the Tales of Arcadia series as well.

It’s going to be Hiccup/Hiro/Varian, along with Jim/Claire from ToA being close friends with the trio. They’re all going to be young wizards from different realms, with different magic specialties studying in Arcanum, the central realm that connects all magically advanced realms. Other characters from each series will show up as well! You’ll see a bit of all of them, it’s a pretty enormous project.

#3 - Maybe some Hogwarts Shenanigans?

I’d really like to do a short, maybe 7-chapter story on the Hogwarts Headcanons for the OT3 I did a while back. The big issue is I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on posting Harry Potter/Hogwarts content after the whole J.K. Rowling thing.

It’d be a chapter focusing on each year the three spend at Hogwarts together, some key moments through the years, and things like that. Just a small, random story about some kids at Hogwarts having fun.

Might do it, might not, we’ll see.

#4 - Time Travel Variro Fic (title pending)

This is another one sort of meant to run alongside season 2 of TTS, and maybe s3. It also replaces the S3 of BH6 the series. Just cuz.

Basically Varian escapes after being put in prison, and decides the best way to save his dad is prevent the amber from capturing him all together. Vindictive, feral little villain raccoon decides that if he can’t have his happy ending, he won’t let Raps have hers and plans to make a time machine so he can go back and prevent Eugene from rescuing Raps.

Unfortunately, a slight user error and hiccup in his plans (namely the fact that Ruddiger doesn’t appreciate being left alone and hops in the machine with him and all the noise and flashing lights of a steampunk-medieval time machine spook him) causes him to catapult into the future instead.

Meanwhile, Hiro’s dealing with his friends moving on to find work, his own internship at KreiTech while attending school, and being fifteen and struggling with hormones and his sexuality finally starting to rear its ugly head after being dormant for 15 years of being in an ongoing relationship with SCIENCE (aka he’s seeing guys, thinking ‘he’s cute/handsome’, and he’s PANICKING). Then, as he’s on his way home from internship one day, a random af raccoon tugs at his pants leg until he finds a boy in weird clothes unconscious in an alley somewhere

Varian, after being woken up, and unsure if he should bring up that he’s from the past or not, makes up a fake story about running away from a small town. Hiro, feeling there’s something more but empathetic to Varian’s story, invites him to stay with him at the Lucky Cat and introduces him to Cass.

Varian is stand-offish at first, absorbed in his “pet project”, as he calls it around Hiro. Basically, the machine didn’t time travel with him, he’s stuck, and is determined to get home and continue his plan. Hiro, however, is drawn in by the mysterious boy and tries to reach out to him and open him up.

Varian catches on to modern technology and science pretty darn quickly. He’s a smart boy. He also stays holed up in Hiro’s lab or the room they allowed him to borrow reading all day. Until finally Hiro cracks him out of his shell, he starts attending SFIT, and meets the rest of the BH6 crew.

There’s more to the story than this but that’s all I’m saying for now. Lots of drama, tension, etc, and just a fun time as boys discover their sexualities, learn where they can call home, and all that good stuff.

#5 - In Someone Else’s Shoes (Time Travel Team Awesome Fic!)

So this one is kind of meant to work in tandem with the Variro fic. While the Variro fic explores Varian failing in his plan and getting catapulted into the future, this fic shows the results of what would happen if the time travel worked.

It centers around Team Awesome! Varian travels back to the past, and tells Eugene that he dies if he hides in the tower. He convinces him that he’s his partner in his future, by knowing his name and stroking his ego a bit. But inform him that the crown will lead to nothing but trouble and his death (conveniently leaving out the part where he meets the love of his life and gets brought back from the dead because of a magical healing flower).

The alteration to the timeline erases the former Varian’s existence and overwrites the Varian of the new timeline with his memories - giving him the memories of both the former and current timeline. He wakes up in bed at the palace, being woken up by his personal attendant Flynn (Eugene, who only allows Varian to call him by his proper name when they’re alone) and told to get ready for his coronation as crown prince. It turns out, in this timeline, because Eugene and Rapunzel weren’t there to stop him from his running water experiments, the devastation on Old Corona caused the death of his dad and several others. Since he was the son of an old friend, and they longed for their missing princess, Frederic and Arianna take him in as their son, and monitor his scientific hobby to prevent him from causing more trouble.

Of course, this won’t do. He confides the truth to Eugene, that he was trying to save his dad by returning to the past (but again, keeping out key elements), and the two decide to work together to rebuild the time machine and alter the past without the catastrophic results.

Won’t spoil too much, there are some wild twists and turns here. But it’s one I’m really looking forward to, again!

#6 - Maybe some Percy Jackson/Camp Half-Blood shenanigans

I’d just really like to make some Camp Half-Blood AU stuff. It’d be more a series of one-shots, or just a story that jumps around in time in the course of it.

Crossover with Tangled, Big Hero 6, Tales of Arcadia, and How to Train Your Dragon with a focus on (as usual) Hiccup/Hiro/Varian.

Not going to say too much about it though, because I want to do an AU Headcanons post with some details on this one! I have lots of ideas.Some you might expect, some you might not.

#7 - Hercules Inspired Variro Fic (Title pending!)

So this one is wild. Basically, after the events of BH6 s1, Obake escapes. He stays on the run, escaping to Germany, and finds a young boy of genius on par with Hiro, but in the field of Chemistry, and takes him under his wing.

Varian is distraught after his father, who’d contracted an incurable disease, falls comatose. The government does nothing to help him, even though he has friends that hold political power, and Obake uses that to lure him into becoming his protege.

The pair lie low for a while, wreaking a little havoc in Germany while Varian looks for a cure for his father. The boy dabbles in all manner of fields while trying to help his dad, and before long finds out that the last component he needs is in America, in San Fransokyo.

Varian, now in his early 20s (which means Hiro is too!), Varian travels to America. He’s currently working as a villain under Obake while daylighting as the head of a German medical research company.

He meets Hiro by chance. He flirts a little, but tries his best to keep his distance while trying to achieve his goals. Unfortunately, Obake notices how flustered Hiro gets around Varian, and has Varian continue flirting with and pursuing him as a form of distraction, and confides in him about Big Hero 6 and their identities. Varian is against it at first, but goes along with his mentor.

Varian continues flirting with Hiro, gets in with the group as a friend, and begins distracting Hiro and sabotaging Big Hero 6 while working on a plan to steal the last component he needs for his cure - a solution being stored under high security at KreiTech - where Hiro works, partnered with Krei.

It’s Hercules inspired so there’s a bit more to it, but that’s all you need to know for now!

#8 - Phantom Thief Varian! (Title Pending)

Similar to the time travel one, this one KIND of links with the Hercules-inspired one. It’s not necessarily meant to link narratively or thematically, like the two time travel fics, but it has some similarities.

Namely the fact that Varian came to America after forming a company to research a cure for his terminally ill father. Whether or not Quirin is comatose in this one, I don’t know.

But it’s hard for a small company to get the influence or money Varian would need for his research. So, he steals valuables and rare compounds and materials to fund his research and keep him going, under the name “der Waschbär”, which Google Translate tells me means “the Raccoon” so I’m rolling with it.

He meets Varian in a business meeting with KreiTech, or one of those fancy business parties or something along those lines. They become infatuated with each other pretty quickly (as adults that are more sexually aware, I always picture these two precocious kids being pretty flirtatious when attracted to someone so they just kind of click pretty quickly).

It’s basically the story of Varian, the charming phantom thief who worms his way into Hiro’s life, and Hiro, the superhero aiding the cops in his capture. All while being completely oblivious to each other’s identities and flirting/pursuing each other constantly on the side xD I just like phantom thief stories okay?

#9 - POKEMON!!!!!

Yeah, I still want to do something with these pokemon headcanons

I’m still not entirely sure what kind of pokemon thing I’d want to do. Similarly to the other ones centered around my headcanon posts, it would probably be something I write in short bursts or one-shots and such.

I’m not sure if I want to do something focusing solely on Corona as a region and the Tangled Characters, or continuing the Hiccup/Hiro/Varian that the headcanons focus on.

#10 - The VTuber AU

Yes, I’m doing this! I’ve fallen neck-deep into the VTuber pit, and I love the idea of a VTuber Varian. I feel like his avatar is probably a combined effort between him and Rapunzel, who would probably be the artist behind his character. He’s probably an independent VTuber, streaming on his own with his own model - either because he was genuinely curious about the boom and wanted to try it, or due to the influence of his friends (whether a bet or something along those lines).

As stated in a previous post, I feel like his vtuber character is super steampunk, and probably raccoon-temed. There are a lot of VTubers that use the animal-ear look after all. His VTubing character is super chaotic, and tends to fly solo when streaming.

Hiro is a pretty big gamer himself, but never got big into VTubers. He felt it was just a fad attached to regular streamers, and never really got into watching other people play games, so vtubers make it even weirder really.

He was looking for help getting past a certain point in a hard game, though, and in his search came across Varian(in the fic, his VTuber identity will have a separate name! I just haven’t htought of one yet) streaming the game, and stuck around to see what he did in that part, and wound up staying because he was chaotic and fun to watch. Before long, he realized he was watching clips from previous streams and catching his streams regularly. The others start teasing him about it.

Meanwhile, Varian, who’s recently joined in with the group after having started SFIT the year or semester after Varian (maybe Year, since Hiro can be watching it while the others graduate and start looking for work, since he doesn’t really have any other friends in SFIT so he just kind of falls into it to pass time)

Still dunno how he figures out Varian is a VTuber, and whether it’s before or after they start planning though. I just rcreated this one it has work to do.

Anyway that’s about it. There’s probably a few smaller ones I put off to the side of my brain for the time being that didn’t get added here. I forget which ones I start planning a lot and I almost never write them down, I just plan them in my brain as I go and the ones that stick are just keepers. Hope you like these though! Curious to see what everyone things and which of the ideas the, like, 20 of you that follow me like.

#fanfiction #concepts #fanfic ideas #TTS #Tangled #Big Hero 6 #How To Train Yoru Dragon #Tales of Arcadia

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sam7sparks7 · 2 years ago

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Doing this for meeeee! 💖

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?) - I'd say they should pick any which suits their preferences, everyone has different taste

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits? - kissing, men crying, short & sweet, established relationship, happy ending, yup these 5 tags contain a big aspect of how I write

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics? - I gravitate towards characters crying to come to terms with their negative emotions and I feel like I am good at writing small human details

4. What detail in Loving You Is The Antidote [Joyeux N��el] are you really proud of? - a line about cultural identities and jewellery

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about Don't You Shy Away [SidGeno]? Answer it now! - anything about the process, I spent a lot of time working on the details of the world the fic is based in, I used common tropes but changed them to fit, though I did mention them in the story a bit

6. What’s one fact about the universe of You Can Have It All [Joyeux Nöel] that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself? - vampires and other supernatural beings grow and age the same as humans, basically being a monster is being a human plus special requirements like blood or animal transformations

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of? - all of them I'd say 😄

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)? - all my fics have a song assigned to them, and I can use any song I vibe with or hyperfixate on, so I'd say it's up to personal preference again

9. How do you find new fic to read? - via tropes and then tags filtering

10. How do you decide what to write? - the ideas seize hold of me and refuse to leave

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is? - I am partial to whoever is my favorite and my favorite changes over time, so I'd say equal opportunity

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you? - lots of kink stuff

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore? - I might get tired of a trope for a bit but I don't dislike any to not read them

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer? - no, I read everything my friends write plus everything in my fav tropes

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written? - Long Live The Car Crash Hearts [Kappy/Willy modern au]

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)? - magic realism

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it? - Jennifer's Body AU for hrpf

18. If you wrote a sequel to But Because Of You I Might Think Twice [Neville/Ron ficlet], what would it involve? - more cat shenanigans

19. If you wrote a spin-off of Dance Me To The Wedding Now [MattDrai, cursed, medieval], what would it involve? - Brady and Taryn's adventures of ruling a kingdom and looking for their brother

20. If you wrote a prequel to But We Go Where We Want To [Matthew talks to Sidney], what would it involve? - how Matthew realized his feelings for Leon leading him to 'kidnap' Sidney

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in A Million Lights Behind You [Kylux modern au], what would it be? - short heartwarming convo between Kylo and Leia

22. Who is your favorite character in I Will Not Be Late [MattDrai Oilers trade au] and why? - Connor cause he is such a good wingman but kinda stupid about it too

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to? - soooo many of them, my WIPs are briming with them

24. Are there any easter eggs in You Would Never Sing Along [MattDrai royalty au], and if so, what are they? - yes, it's Fall Out Boy lyrics

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write? - I just look up anything I am stuck on, don't have any proper research source

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue? - I can do both (now this is an easter egg XD)

27. How long did it take to write Setting In A Honeymoon [McDrai Vegas ASG wedding]? Describe the process. - 4 months, the process was all about educating myself on German wedding customs and how to mesh them with Americo-Canadian wedding customs

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who? - my beloved friend who is my rock in the hrpf fandom, other times I may ask the person I gift the fic to read it before in case they might request any changes and also cause comments on Google docs are godsent for a writer's happiness

29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for Let 'Em Wonder How We Got This Far [LarkSki short]? Explain your choices if you want! - Still Into You by Paramore is the theme of the fic. This was a random pick that fit perfectly, courtesy of my fandom Bae

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter? - Yes, it was a makeout session with grinding involved and I have yet to gain confidence from that experience, but I am gonna toe the line more boldly now

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write? - 500 - 3000 words

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read? - anything upto 30k can get a click without thinking if the tags and summary are compelling

33. If you write chaptered fics, what’s your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read? - don't write in chapters

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life? - the depression lol

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life? - everything other than the emotions the characters feel

36. Do you visualize what you read/write? - what I read no, what I write yes

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it? - It Just Takes Some Time [Juuse Saros/Tristan Jarry ficlet], I think it's pretty funny

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful? - How You Thrill Me [MattDrai or rather McEichel] first fic that got so many kudos I was floored and Wegen Dir [MattDrai abo] it's my most read fic and I find it unbelievable at times, the love

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who? - definitely must be, but I don't know

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person? - only reread them when I have forgotten about them, और I loved them very much and it's been a few months, otherwise one and done

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.” - none

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason? - anytime someone quotes my story back at me I take SS

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written? - SidGeno Halloween ficlet on the prompt 'stop swearing, the monsters are looking at us weirdly'

44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts? - depends

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic? - dialogues, kissing and paragraph breaks

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write? - phone, no

47. If A Promise To Be True [Stucky Winter themed] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes. - black boots with sparkle details

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it? - Michigan's In The Rearview by @cardiaccaps, yes, rereading it for the third time

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it! - anything my WIP wheel gives me

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about! - I love doing these ask games where I disregard the 'ask' rule

questions for fic writers

a collection of questions i, as a writer, would love to be asked !!!

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

6. What’s one fact about the universe of [insert fic] that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

9. How do you find new fic to read?

10. How do you decide what to write?

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

19. If you wrote a spin-off of [insert fic], what would it involve?

20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in [insert fic], what would it be?

22. Who is your favorite character in [insert fic] and why?

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue?

27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for [insert fic]? Explain your choices if you want!

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read?

33. If you write chaptered fics, what’s your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read?

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

36. Do you visualize what you read/write?

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written?

44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

#don't ask cause i am already telling

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haunting-kind-of-high · 6 years ago

Text

Vampire!Roman headcanons

So, this is part of my Being Human AU, based on the awesome show Being Human. This one focusses mainly on Roman and a bit on his relationships with the others.

This turned out much longer than I originally intended oml

Warnings: Mentions of blood, death, the plague, that's it, I think

He was bitten when he was around 20

It happened at night, when Roman was alone in his chambers

It’s a miracle the intruder snuck into his room, but it’s a vampire we’re talking about so what’s more miraculous?

After that, he just… disappeared

He travelled across England at first

But there were too many memories, and after a few decades it got painful

So many people died

And then the Plague came and even more people died

He just had to get out

So he did

And he travelled the world after that, watching how society changes

He would stay somewhere for a while and then leave if staying got too risky

Either because he went a little too far with his blood-drinking needs, or because too many people close to him had died

Sometimes he’d leave if all his friends were dead, and staying around just hurt him too much

He was in Rome when the Renaissance started and he still loves every memory he made there

Seeing the world changing like that… it was fantastic

Loves ancient mythologies

He probably knew a lot of famous painters let’s be real

I also really like the thought of him knowing Hal (an awesome vampire in the show who’s cool)

Maybe he was the one who recruited Hal? I’m not sure if it fits in the show’s canon though

He has at least heard of him because every vampire has

Roman is a hella gay vamp

Goes to pride every year he’s able to

Is so happy pride exists because he needed that when he was a young 100 vamp

Rome was probably one of the best periods of his life and he never wanted to leave

But after a while, when everyone he knew was dead and he couldn’t stand to be there for much longer

So he continued his travels

He travelled through Europe and Asia

Somewhere in the 1880s/1890s he briefly joined the Old Ones

The Old Ones are a group of vampires who are… well… pretty old

They’re also super powerful, immune to religious symbols, and they’ve got more cool perks

But Roman wasn’t too fond of their way of living, so he left them and returned to England in 1915 to fight in the war

After the war, he went to America

He didn’t want to stay in England anymore

Too many painful memories

That was when he decided he wanted to stop drinking blood

Or try at least, because it is fucking hard

And he started to remember the people he killed and he couldn’t stop thinking about it and he hated it, but he hated blood more, even though he needed it so much

At first, he went to New York first and travelled a bit

He met Logan in 2011

It was in Michigan somewhere

He saved Logan from being beaten up by asshole vampires but that’s a story for another day

They weren’t super close at first, but Roman helped Logan find his way in the supernatural world, Logan helped Roman find his way in the modern world, and they grew pretty close

Logan tried to help Roman with his resolution to stop drinking blood but he didn’t know how to help

Roman appreciated the help though

After a pretty bad relapse, Roman decided he had to move and Logan insisted on going along, even though Roman protested this

But Logan didn’t give up so they moved in together

They moved to Florida

Once they moved into their house, he really had to get used to Patton being around, but he warmed up to the ghost pretty quickly

It was strange, though

He has a lot of nightmares

About the night he was turned into a vampire, about the people he killed, about the wars he fought

It’s not unusual for him to wake up in the middle of the night, convinced he is in the middle of a war, or back in medieval England

At first, Patton tried his best to comfort Roman. He didn’t need to sleep anyways

But it was difficult because Patton had no idea what it was like, and Roman hardly told anything about his nightmares

Roman liked having someone around at night, though

When Virgil moved in, he grew more open about his dreams

He wasn’t planning on it, but he plans on spending the rest of his life with Virgil and he can’t exactly hide his nightmares for all of eternity

And once he does, he’s glad he opened up to Virgil

Virge seems to know exactly what to do to help him out and his presence is a comfort

Sometimes, Roman will wake up thinking he is in the middle ages and he will be disoriented for a while, before Virgil reminds him that it’s 2018 and everything is fine

Roman is so intrigued by modern technology

I mean, phones can fit entire portraits in them, and it takes just a few seconds to make?

You can contact someone on the other side of the world in mere seconds?

Witchcraft, that’s got to be it

Smartphones don’t always work well for him, because his touch is pretty cold but that doesn’t stop him

Huge space geek

Believed the moon landing was fake for a little over 50 years, though

He just couldn’t believe that something was out there and that people can walk on that something

Still in denial about it

But Logan knows

In fact, he was the one who told Roman it was real

He still teases Ro about it every now and again

But yeah space geek Ro

Can't believe there are things out there other than small dots of light

Gets defensive when people make flat Earth memes because he believed that for ages

“I mean, it’s not that unbelievable, right? You can’t see that it’s round, what else are we supposed to believe? How were we supposed to know it was round?”

Every time he brings it up, the others reassure him that it's a joke and it's not meant to ridicule him or whatever

Still forgets the concept of round Earth sometimes

Same with the heliocentric model

"You can see the sun moving! How can it move across the sky if it isn't actually moving? It doesn’t make any sense!"

He has had a lot of discussions about this with Logan

Still doesn’t understand it

Loves Candy Crush

“It is so colourful and cute! How does one come up with this ingenious design?”

The others don’t tell him that there are tons of other games like it

He texts like parents

You know, using correct grammar, lots of emojis

I’m looking forwards to the movie *tons of emojis but for some reason I couldn't get them to work*.

He used to start every text he sent with a “hello (…),” or something similar and he used to end them with a signature thing

But the other convinced him that everyone knew it was him sending the texts and that it was only more effort for him

So he stopped that

The emojis and correct grammar still stand tho

Ok.

Virgil and Patton still haven’t convinced him to give up the ‘Ok.’

It’s agony

He is adorably naïve when it comes to spam and phishing mails

He’s lucky the others are there to stop him from clicking the damn link

“But it says right here that I still have to pay-”

“That’s a lie, darling, they just want your money.”

“But-”

“Just delete the mail.”

Always goes to Logan when he has a problem with technology

Constantly mixes up the slang he learned across the ages

“Don’t flip your wig, Lo! Everything is going to be fine.”

“I had a gas tonight, guys.”

But no one knows what it means

The fifties slang are his favourite. They’re just so fun.

He also uses medieval words a lot, as that is what he grew up with

Keeps calling water Adam’s ale

One time Logan got hurt and he requested an ‘acopon’

No one knew what he meant and it took him ages to explain because he couldn’t come up with the modern equivalent of the word (which would be a plaster)

Sometimes he’ll be stuck in like medieval language for an entire day and no one will understand what he’s saying

Like, it sounds kind of familiar, but not familiar enough to be sure of the meaning

It’s really frustrating to all of them

Also misuses modern slang a lot

“Would you look at the weather outside? It is so bright, and not a single cloud! How wonderfully lit!”

“I… I’m not sure lit means what you think it does, buddy.”

It is hilarious

When he starts dating Virgil, he finds out about Vine and because Virgil loves vines so much, he starts watching them too so he can understand the references and surprise Virge by making references himself

But he gets them wrong a lot too

One day, Logan and Patton are talking in the kitchen

Roman just looks at them and turns to Virgil with a

“And they were roommates”

Virgil almost chokes on his drink

“Oh my god, they were roommates”

Roman’s favourite vine is the croissant one

“I could have dropped my croissant” becomes his thing

It’s cute, but it starts getting annoying when he says it to everything

The others just let him be, he is a 700-year old dork, he needs this

He is upset he doesn’t show up on camera, because otherwise, he’d be all over vine

He had so many great ideas for vines

He has definitely seen some of his old stuff in museums

“Oh my goodness, my old sword!”

For a 700+-year old vampire, he doesn’t know when to chill

But he just gets excited when he sees his stuff

At one point in his life, he has definitely seen an old portrait of him in a museum

And someone definitely saw him looking at it

And they definitely saw the resemblance

And they definitely told Roman about it

He just nodded and told the person that his friends told him about it too

Wishes he could just steal the portrait because it makes him look so good and handsome

He thought about it, but quickly realized that telling staff of the museum that “he wants this portrait because it is him” would sound just a tad… weird

He’s really upset about it

Gets really nostalgic a lot

He has experienced so many things and seen so many amazing things

Met so many people

He misses them a lot

It just hurts to know that you’ll outlive most people you will meet in your life

He has always tried not to get too attached to people because they’re going to die anyways

But somewhere along the way, he let this attitude go

One way or another, he always grew to like a few people

He likes to tell his friends about what he remembers of his travels and experiences

Especially Logan, cause that man is a fucking history nerd

Roman loves Logan so much, because he’s so smart

They have the best conversations

A lot of them are about some event in history, or about modern-day society, cause that still confuses Roman

Loves cartoons

They’re just so cute and so amazing and sweet

He and Patton watch a lot of them together

As a ghost, Patton doesn’t need to sleep, so sometimes they will stay up until four am binge-watching some cartoon

Virgil and Logan try to tell them to stop – especially Roman

But it doesn’t work

Roman is very protective over Logan, because he is the only mortal of their group

Of course, he and Virgil can still die, but there’s a smaller risk of it happening

Patton is already dead

But Logan can still die

And Roman wants to keep Logan around as long as possible

So every time something even remotely dangerous happens around Logan, Roman is there to safe him.

Can’t have their favourite werewolf die

He is scared to lose Logan, but he knows it is inevitable

He just wished it would be different

Roman has quite a few of vampire contacts – they need to work together in order to avoid being discovered, after all

I mean it would be weird to have a passport that says you were born in 1296

So there are vampires to take care of that

Roman knows quite a lot of them personally and they always question his scent

It’s blood-like, as it is supposed to be, but there is a hint of dog

Roman mostly says that it’s because he has a dog, but there are a few people who know he doesn’t have a dog

There’s one or two who know about Logan and they don’t understand him

Why would a vampire be friends with a werewolf? That is unheard of

Roman is also friends with a few vampires who like to organize dog fights

Where a werewolf – during full moon – is caged with a human, who has a knife. At the end of the night, just one survives

And Roman lives in constant fear that one day, they will go after Logan for their sick forms of entertainment

Roman has seen a few dog fights when he was younger, and it is absolutely horrible

He doesn’t want Logan to have to go through that

And then there’s the risk of Logan dying, which makes it even worse

He thought about asking them to not capture Logan, but he feared that they would do it on purpose, just to spite him

So Roman thought of a system

If Logan was ever out and vampires came up to him, he would call Roman, but not say anything

Roman is in his emergency contacts, so that works well

And if Roman heard what was going on, he would track Logan’s phone to see where he was going – taking a few wooden stakes with him – and save his friend

There’s no way he would allow them to put Logan through something as horrible as a dog fight

Sometimes, the age difference between him and Virgil is quite… difficult

They’re both from different generations, obviously, and their experiences are just totally different

They try their best to understand the other, but it’s difficult sometimes

Virgil doesn’t know what it’s like to fight in a war, to see your best friends dying, to wander the earth, knowing that you will never die. He doesn’t know what it’s like to see half your city dying to the Plague

Virgil tries

But he just doesn’t understand

But it’s fine, because Roman loves him and they will have an eternity together to understand each other

He really loves Virgil a lot dude

On multiple occasions, he’s written Virgil a super romantic love letter

You know, one of those extra ones

Super extra

Lots of “my love”, “my darling”, lots of romance

But it’s cute

Virgil has kept every one of those letters

Roman listens to classical music a lot

But he also sort of likes rock

Nothing too heavy though

He can handle most genres though, but rock and classical music are some of his faves

Tries to headbang

But he can’t do it

Virgil says it’s because he’s to old for that crap

Roman doesn’t believe him

He’s young at heart how dare Virgil

Yeah Roman is v cute

#sanders sides #sanders sides headcanon #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #mercy's hc

30 notes · View notes

wineanddinosaur · 4 years ago

Text

Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky, Wine, Coffee, and Beer

Praying. Contemplating. Spending time in silence. Monks live a simple life, one some of us can be hard-pressed to relate to.

Think your life bears no parallels to these men of God? Think again — and thank them for some of your favorite beverages. Centuries after they first began making alcoholic beverages and caffeinated brews, modern monks are making ancient feel new again with fresh takes on whisky, wine, coffee and beer.

The shift many distilleries have made during the global pandemic, producing hand sanitizer instead of spirits, is coming full circle. Back in 1494, when the earliest written reference to what’s now known as whiskey — apparently made by Friar John Cor — was recorded in the Scottish king’s tax record, monasteries were producing the stuff as a health tonic for the sick. Monks wrote long lists of its health-giving properties during the 15th century, including the “miraculous things” it could do if you rubbed it on your hands. Human nature being what it is, some monk must have said “Let’s taste it” along the way — and from there, they started perfecting it.

Perfecting what’s known as Scotch whisky today is exactly what Andrew McKenzie Smith, founder of Lindores Abbey Distillery, has set out to do. He’s not a monk, but he resides on the farm where the first whisky-making monks lived. When his great-grandfather first bought the land, the family was “blissfully unaware” of the connection back to 1494, says Smith. Then, they started receiving emails from whisky groups asking why a place with such history was, with no disrespect, “a falling down old farm,” Smith explains. He agreed, and that’s what sparked him to lead a fundraising effort to return “the spiritual home of Scotch whisky” to its roots and open a new distillery there.

“With the weight of that history behind me, raising about 10 million pounds [about $13 million] wasn’t that difficult, purely because of where we were,” Smith says.

All the stars aligned to make it happen. This December, Lindores Abbey Distillery’s first Scotch whisky will be released to its members (and next summer to the public). It’s been selling its base spirit, aqua vitae, which was first made at Lindores Abbey centuries ago, since it opened in 2017. Smith likes to think the taste is remarkably similar to that which was first made here in 1494.

“We’re growing barley in the same fields the monks tended, we’re using the same water, and we’re under the same sunshine,” says Smith. “As close as possible, we’re reliving what Friar John Cor did back in 1494.”

During the pandemic, Lindores Abbey Distillery made and gave away hand sanitizer to a nearby village. It also donated extra distiller’s yeast, which would have gone to waste when distilling was halted, to village bakeries. “You had all this bread,” says former chef Smith, “that smelled slightly of alcohol.” But it was delicious, nonetheless, he says.

Holy Wine You Can’t Get Outside of Cannes

While Smith is reading history books to fine-tune his recipe and replicate the original Scottish monks’ spirits, the monks of Lérins Abbey on Saint-Honorat island in the south of France need not look further than their own ancestors. The 21 monks who today make up the Cistercian Congregation of the Immaculate Conception are still very much involved in the monastic tradition of making wine that’s spanned more than 16 centuries.

Across the Abbey’s 8-hectare (about 20 acres) wine estate, the monks grow grapes such as Chardonnay and Viognier to produce four white wines, and Syrah and Mourvedre for three different reds. Production is around 35,000 bottles a year, according to Dominique Vion‚ head sommelier at La Palme d’Or at Hotel Martinez, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Cannes (just two minutes away by boat, Vion says).

Vion first tasted wines from Lérins Abbey early in his career as a sommelier about 20 years ago. He loved them immediately, which is why they’re still on the menu at La Palme d’Or. “The wines are good compositions, complex in their youth and rich, which [gives] great aging potential to the vintages,” he says.

While the technology has evolved (for instance, the winery now has modern equipment, employs organic farming techniques, and works with a civilian oenologist), the monks remain active in their work in the vineyard, and the wines retain their exclusivity and a keen sense of place. Take-away sales from the restaurant are not allowed, but you can buy the bottles at a few merchants in Cannes, as well as from the Abbey directly. The first Friday of every month, they offer an excursion that takes guests via boat from Cannes to Saint-Honorat for a 15-minute vineyard tour, followed by a tasting of several wines. Seasonally, guests can also enjoy lunch on the island at the monks’ La Tonnelle restaurant.

Old World Meets New World in Northern California

Across the pond, at New Clairvaux Vineyard in tiny Vina, Calif., Aimée Sunseri is also enlisting the help of monks. As a fifth-generation winemaker, she’s been the head winemaker here for 17 years but works closely with the vineyard manager, Brother Luis Cortez, who’s part of The Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux. The 16 monks who live here happily cultivate the vineyard, handle the harvesting, and crush the grapes used to make everything from Tempranillo to Sauvignon Blanc wines.

“We try to be as involved as we possibly can because manual labor is a key Cistercian principal — a spiritual source of empowerment and glorification for God,” says Brother Luis. They worship by participating and collaborating in creation, and making wine is part of that divine collaboration, he adds.

Though they follow many of the same principles of winemaking developed by the Cistercians during medieval times, they’re also bringing in fresh perspective (another Cistercian principle: bringing new ideas to new lands). Sunseri says it’s the first vineyard in the United States to plant two Greek varietals, Assyrtiko and Moschofilero. The pandemic has also forced them to get creative, including moving their tasting room outside.

Brother Luis, who says he starts each day in prayer and communion with a sip of New Clairvaux’s Angelica, says the change has been a positive one for customers, who appreciate being outside and hearing the birds while tasting their wines. “We’ve always embraced that tranquil environment, but it’s amplified with us being forced to be outside,” he says. “[Being outdoors] is a huge part of our life here, so this is a beautiful thing that came out of struggles of the pandemic.”

Yes, Monks Are Even Making Coffee

As legend goes, according to the National Coffee Association, it was a goat herder in Ethiopia who first discovered the power of coffee, noticing his goats were too energetic to sleep after eating beans from a particular tree. He shared his findings with a local monastery, where the monks then made a drink from the berries — the first known coffee — to keep them alert through long hours of evening prayer.

You better believe monks are keeping this tradition alive today, and none are more enthusiastic about it than the modern Carmelite Monks, a Roman Catholic community residing in northwestern Wyoming. They pay homage to monks’ history with coffee by roasting and selling their own beans as a means of supporting themselves, a business that began back in 2007.

The monastery claims that 85 percent of orders are from repeat customers, which is why they’ve expanded their offerings through Mystic Monks Coffee beyond the original bagged beans. They offer coffee-of-the-month subscriptions (in flavors like chocolate cherry, butterscotch cream, and Snickering Monk Candy Bar), as well as single-serve pods called Monk-Shots, loose-leaf tea, and unique double-handled mugs, representative of the Carmelite tradition of drinking coffee with both hands in celebration of the harvest.

Supporting the Monastery with Traditional Trappist Beer

Of course, beer is perhaps the best-known lifeline among enterprising monks. But beyond Belgium and the Trappist breweries throughout Europe, there’s one right here in the States. After making and selling jams and jellies for more than 60 years to support their community, the monks of Saint Joseph’s Abbey outside Spencer, Mass., began to realize that to stay on the property with 50 monks, they’d need an alternative source of income. That’s where beer came into the picture. When it came time to decide whether to take the plunge, “we had the greatest majority vote for anything we ever did,” recalls Father Isaac Keeley.

In case you’re wondering, monks do drink beer (though they don’t eat meat). But before they had their own brewery, the monastery would enjoy alcohol only sparingly, at big feasts or holidays, says Father Isaac. Once he got into researching beer — in particular, after enjoying a tall glass of St. Bernardus at a local tavern — he realized what they’d been missing. “I scandalize some beer aficionados, but that was the day I discovered beer can really be a lot more than the ‘Clydesdales beer,’” he says.

The monks enlisted the help of a few local brewers — as well as a monk who trained at a Trappist brewery in Belgium — to help them build a process and brewery that would align with the traditional Trappist rules. The first brew they released, Spencer Trappist Ale, was inspired by patersbier (Latin for “father’s beer”). Normally, this style has a low alcohol content around 4.5 percent, but Father Isaac says he knew that if they wanted to sell any to the public, they’d need a higher alcohol content. The result was a 6.5 percent beer that he describes as having a hue “the color of sunrise at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod on the third Monday of September.”

Needless to say, he’s learned a lot about beer since growing from a “helper” on the project to director of Spencer Brewery. He’s also had to get creative during Covid-19 when sales of draft beer came to a screeching halt, he says. The upside is that for the first half of 2020, packaged-beer sales were slightly ahead of the same period last year, and they’re continuing to bring in revenue for the monastery by contracting out their brewery space, currently larger than they need, to other local brewers.

The monastery itself is still closed at press time, but Father Isaac is already brainstorming how he can expand when things begin to normalize. “It’s a crazy journey for a contemplative monk to be doing this,” he says, “but it’s stretched me so much.”

The article Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky, Wine, Coffee, and Beer appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/monks-making-whisky-wine-coffee-beer/

0 notes

johnboothus · 4 years ago

Text

Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky Wine Coffee and Beer

Praying. Contemplating. Spending time in silence. Monks live a simple life, one some of us can be hard-pressed to relate to.

“With the weight of that history behind me, raising about 10 million pounds [about $13 million] wasn’t that difficult, purely because of where we were,” Smith says.

Holy Wine You Can’t Get Outside of Cannes

Old World Meets New World in Northern California

Yes, Monks Are Even Making Coffee

Supporting the Monastery with Traditional Trappist Beer

The article Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky, Wine, Coffee, and Beer appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/monks-making-whisky-wine-coffee-beer/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/monks-are-making-and-inspiring-your-whisky-wine-coffee-and-beer

0 notes

isaiahrippinus · 4 years ago

Text

Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky, Wine, Coffee, and Beer

Praying. Contemplating. Spending time in silence. Monks live a simple life, one some of us can be hard-pressed to relate to.

“With the weight of that history behind me, raising about 10 million pounds [about $13 million] wasn’t that difficult, purely because of where we were,” Smith says.

Holy Wine You Can’t Get Outside of Cannes

Old World Meets New World in Northern California

Yes, Monks Are Even Making Coffee

Supporting the Monastery with Traditional Trappist Beer

The article Monks Are Making (and Inspiring) Your Whisky, Wine, Coffee, and Beer appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/monks-making-whisky-wine-coffee-beer/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/628792057154174976

0 notes

ntrending · 7 years ago

Text

Twitter is killing its terrible Mac app. Here are your options for replacing it

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/twitter-is-killing-its-terrible-mac-app-here-are-your-options-for-replacing-it/

Twitter is killing its terrible Mac app. Here are your options for replacing it

I have been using Twitter’s terrible Mac app since I bought my first MacBook Pro back in 2011. In that time, it has regularly crashed, soaked up my computer’s resources, sent me sporadic notifications, and generally sucked. Despite its many shortcomings, the Twitter for Mac app has been my window into the roiling, chaotic sea of the internet. On March 18, however, that window will officially close when Twitter will revoke its support. I will miss it deeply, and unironically.

This leaves me, and others like me, in a quandary. How are we supposed to keep up with the endless stream of questionable political opinions, nonsensical jokes, and the very occasional redeeming bit of cultural miscellany now? I have spent the last couple weeks trying out a few alternative ways to interact with Twitter, taking suggestions from social media experts, Twitter itself, and a collection of how-to articles of varying quality on the subject.

If you’re in a similar situation, here are your options as well as some of my impressions.

TWITTER RECOMMENDS

Use the Twitter.com web page

This is Twitter’s official suggestion for navigating around the service, so this is what I tried first. I immediately hit a roadblock in how difficult it is to manage multiple accounts at once through a browser. Between my personal accounts, work accounts, and joke accounts where I pretend to be sarcastic inanimate objects, logging in and out it takes up a lot of time.

The web also doesn’t scroll tweets into your stream in real time. It builds up a huge stockpile of updates under a “See new Tweets” button and then unfurls them like a medieval scroll filled with pictures of my friends’ lunches and news about smartphones. That saves computing and connection resources, but the format defers the instant gratification that the Mac app offered with its constant waterfall of content.

There are some advantages to the browser approach. It’s much more reliable than the app and it shows me all kinds of information on the same page rather than different tabs. I no longer have to switch tabs to see the collection of random strangers Twitter thinks I should follow for some reason.

My main complaint, however, is how easy it is to lose track of the tab in which Twitter now lives. I’m probably worse than most when it comes to keeping too many tabs open, but at the end of each day, I’d find myself closing half-a-dozen Twitter windows because it was easier to open a new one than find the other.

It’s ultimately a fine option if you’re a basic user or someone with far better organizational skills than my own.

Grade: C

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS RECOMMEND

Tweet Deck

I have used Tweet Deck in the past and it has a lot going for it. It’s easy to manage multiple accounts, even if you regularly do things like scheduling posts. You can customize the columns containing specific types of content you see whenever you navigate to the TweetDeck window, and you’d be hard-pressed to find something that can cram so much social media information all on one page.

But, while that’s one of its strengths, it might also be its biggest weakness. To look at a TweetDeck page is to stare down a giant wall of text, Twitter names, and some small photos and videos. Look at it quickly and you’d swear it’s homework.

This is a great option if you use Twitter professionally, or you want something that looks really tedious and intimidating so you can keep it on your computer at your job and people might think you’re doing actual work when they pass by and spy on your monitor.

Grade: B-

Hoot Suite

If Twitter is just a small part of your social media ambitions, then you’ll probably appreciate Hootsuite’s ability to manage accounts from a variety of networks like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. The interface uses a series of columns a lot like TweetDeck, only there are even more options to look at, choose from, and often ignore.

If you sign up for a free account, you can control up to three different platforms, but if you want more than that, you’ll have to move up to a professional plan, which allows for 10. It has a lot of useful advanced features, like a “composer” module, which allows you to preview what your finished posts will look once they’re published.

There’s no doubt that moving to Hootsuite adds utility, but it also loses all of the simplicity in the Twitter for Mac app. It’s like comparing the bare-bones dashboard of a classic car with the screen-laden cockpit of a modern electric car, like the one Elon Musk shot into space.

Grade: B+

THE APP STORE RECOMMENDS

Tweetbot

Unlike Hootsuite, Tweetbot is a stand-alone app that you can buy from the App Store. The first downside is that it costs $10 to get the desktop app. That’s not a lot of money, but a big part of Twitter’s appeal is that it’s a free way to shout every single opinion and thought you have at everyone willing to listen. If you want the mobile version of Tweetbot, it’s going to cost you another $5.

Once you get past the initial cost, Tweetbot has a lot going for it. It has been around since 2012, and it gets regular updates, which is a good sign for its longevity. You can manage multiple accounts and there’s no hard-sell to try and get you to upgrade to a more advanced account, since you already paid for the software.

The interface is very reminiscent of Twitter for Mac, which is one of its biggest strengths as far as I’m concerned. You can set it up to look like a simple stream in a single column with icons on the left hand side for navigating between sections.

The real downside here is that it almost feels like paying $15 total for an experience I already had.

Grade: B

Twitterrific 5 At $7.99, this stand-alone app is slightly cheaper than Tweetbot, especially when you consider that the Twitterrific mobile version is free.

The interface has some intuitive features that make it easier to understand at a glance, which includes the ability to switch between light and dark backgrounds depending on the time of day. It’s really easy to mute words, people, or hashtags as well, which is an increasingly important part of using Twitter in 2018 without losing your mind.

It’s not all twitterrific, though. The stream previews images and media in cropped versions, so you have to click through in order to see the whole picture or video, whereas Tweetbot shows you the whole thing within its interface. If you like tracking your activity throughout the day, the mobile app has a handy view called Today view, which the desktop version lacks.

Overall, it’s reliable, versatile and easy to use.

Grade: B

I RECOMMEND

Just use Twitter on your phone

Once Twitter for Mac ceases operating, I have decided to make Twitter a smartphone-only activity. The temptation to open a desktop version is strong, but I have a feeling it will wane down the road. In the short experiments I’ve done, relegating Twitter time to my mobile devices provides far fewer distractions and applies a lot more productive guilt—when I’m working, staring at my phone still feels a little wrong.

The app is everything I originally loved about Twitter in the first place. The updates scroll automatically and the single column allows me to concentrate on post without lots of stuff to distract me. Twitter feels like a treat now—like a box of little (sometimes angry) presents I get to unwrap at various points during the day. It’s no longer just another box on my desktop for me to do work on.

If you’re currently using a desktop client, view this as an opportunity to try a smartphone-only Twitter lifestyle.

Grade: A

Written By Stan Horaczek

#Technology

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