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It’s like every week something weird happens.

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It’s like every week something weird happens.

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A+ example of how the media manipulates people for clicks and anger engagement.

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just cast the fire spell. dip shit

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False Bow

Over the years, the local monsters had developed unusual ways of attracting their prey. After rainstorms, two rainbows would stretch across the sky. One led to a leprechaun's gold. The other led to a vicious, man-eating troll.

Sir Eric studied the colors. "Red, blue, yellow, black! That's the false bow." He laughed. "Well, that was easy. Gold, here I come!"

A few miles away, the leprechaun sharpened its fangs.

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The Hops

A robot delivered a large crate to the starship's cocktail lounge. "It's here!" Mimi said. The Molluscan bartender gestured for Captain Eric to come over.

Eric frowned. "What's that smell?"

"I wanted to make authentic Earth beer for all the Humans, so I ordered some hops!"

"That doesn't smell like hops," he said. "It smells like a litter box."

She shrugged, a complicated gesture when you had eight arms. "It's a long journey from… um… you know, your Human planet. Humania? Humboldt? Hubert? The hops probably went potty in the crate."

He nodded. "Sure, that makes sen… Wait, it did what?" He opened the lid. "Mimi, these are called rabbits. You can't make beer with them."

She blushed. "Oh! I thought it was a weird recipe. Can you make other booze with rabbits?"

"Well, they go great with white wine sauce."

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During one semester of PE in high school I got put in a section called Team Sports. This was significantly better than a regular unit because the athletic kids were able to play and I largely got to sit and watch.

Months were devoted to what they called Pickle Ball but I’ve since learned was basically ping pong with larger than average paddles. The paddles had been through the absolute wringer, all padding had been rubbed and torn off by a relentless stream of bored adolescents like myself.

This presented me with a unique opportunity. I had a pencil, nominally used to keep score. I had a blank wooden panel. And I had large stretches of time sitting on the sidelines.

Every day I’d pick a blank paddle. I’d doodle little animals, bizarre monstrosities, and a bunch that were just a huge eye in the middle with the words “Big Brother is Watching”. What can I say; I was reading 1984 at the time.

When we finally finished with the paddles and moved on to badminton I completely forgot my dozens of illustrations.

It wasn’t until several years later that it got brought up again. I was hanging out with a friend and their younger sibling. We were listening to them lament their high school experience of the day. “But I won the Pegasus paddle, so that was cool.”

“Wait- what?”

“Yeah, most of them are just Big Brother, so they’re not exciting, but there’s only one Pegasus so we fight over it. Last week I had an elephant I really liked though.”

“You guys fight over the paddles with art on them…?”

“Yeah!”

My friend turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you make all those drawings?”

Their sibling lit up, “You made them?!”

I sat in silence as the complexity of the world and the waves we leave behind as we move through it washed over me. I contemplated how intertwined I was with the rest of existence to create such a beautiful moment.

I had made art on a whim out of boredom and it had an effect on someone else’s day, someone who through random happenstance years later was telling me about it all unknowing.

Their sibling was delighted when I drew them another pegasus on the spot and announced that they’d be the talk of PE now that they’d uncovered the mystery artist.

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Here’s a video so you can hear the water and the thrushes. I took it for you because you couldn’t be there. <3

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Mew mew mew (via)

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Absorb

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Readers, make sure you have all your favourite Ao3 fics downloaded.

Writers, make sure you have copies of all the fics you have posted on Ao3.

I don’t want to be alarming, but things could get really bad really fast. OTW shared this today on Twitter, and I'm a bit worried about it 😅

Ao3 is a non-profit organisation. If they have to start paying taxes, I have no idea what will happen.

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Character designs of the main cast from Seven Devils by Elizabeth May & Laura Lam!

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REVIEW: Seven Devils - Laura Lam and Elizabeth May

SEVEN DEVILS is out in the US today and UK on Thursday. There was so much I loved about it, I wasn’t entirely sure where to start.

Author: Laura Lam (website / twitter) and Elizabeth May (website / twitter)

UK Publisher: Gollancz

Genre: Science fiction, space opera

When Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as the heir to the galaxy’s most ruthless empire behind. But her recruitment by the Novantaen Resistance, an organization opposed to the empire’s voracious expansion, throws her right back into the…

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Reading recommendation:

Seven Devils by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam

Space opera

Feminist

5 main characters who are all women + 2 other important characters

Women of color

Wlw

Princess who faked her death and is now part of the resistance

Very intelligent hacker girl

Mechanic with a prosthetic leg

Former Soldier

Former courtesan

Trans woman

Pilot with medical knowledge

Have I mentioned space

Blasters

Space ships

Unlikely team

Romance is not the main plot (the only romance is between two women)

Friendship and trust is an important part of the book

An AI that controls nearly everyone

Space

Just a really great book

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Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.