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yellowocaballero · 4 months

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Omg hi Ms. Yellow Caballero big fan of your work <3 For real though, I'm really excited that your sharing the Weekenders, it was a joy to read and I'm bongocat-ing now that others also get the privilege to read it as well.

Referencing your tags, would you please elaborate of ableism in fandom and, like you said, how fandom treats characters with unpalatable disabilities?

Hi Ms. Bud Lite I'm a big fan of you <3

TL;DR A fear of writing characters of highly marginalized identities shields you from criticism and discomfort, but it's actively stigmatizing to people of these identities and as a writer you really need to get over yourself and write The Icky People.

I guess I'll come out swinging on this one and say that fandom doesn't like severe mental illness. (As a note, when I say severe mental illness (SMI) I mean illnesses such as psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, personality disorders, etc)

Obviously, nobody likes people w/SMI. It's just insanely egregious in fandom to me, since fanfic writers absolutely love writing characters or HC characters with depression, anxiety, or a specific variety of PTSD That Isn't Scary. People actively reject any character HCs for a SMI. When people write a character with SMI, they nicely downplay it, ignore it, substitute it for a disorder they like better, or rewrite it. It's completely untolerated, in both headcanons and in fanfiction, and every time I bring it up I always get the most interesting reasons why somebody couldn't possibly acknowledge a character's SMI in their writing. I've heard all of these:

"I don't know enough about the disorder to write it accurately." Do research.

"I'm not X, so I can't really depict it." You probably aren't a cis white man, but you depict those guys just fine.

"It feels insulting to the character." There is no shame in having a SMI.

"I can't understand what it's like, so it's better to be cautious and avoid giving characters stigmatized identities." There are LOTS of experiences that you'll never understand because you've never had them - you just don't want to write anything you're uncomfortable with. People with SMI make you uncomfortable, and you don't want to write anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, or think of a comfort character in an uncomfortable way. SMIs are marginalized differently than solely depression/anxiety/The Nice PTSD, and by refusing to write them you're actively contributing to the stigma.

I think (?) I've spoken in the past about how I believe that the rigorous external and internal policing of writing people of marginalized identities is actively harmful towards efforts to increase diversity of experience and background in fiction. A lot of fanfiction writers are just terrified to write people who they can't directly relate with, because they're worried 'they'll get it wrong' and be Big Cancelled. I think this is negative enough when it prevents people from going outside of their comfort zone, but on a macro level I think this results in people refusing to write characters of marginalized identities as all. It's an insidious thought process, and it's reflected in people's unwillingness to diversity their writing or acknowledge canon diversity.

'Well, I don't understand what it's like to be Black, so I don't want to write Black people'. 'I want to project on this character, so I only want to write them with mental illnesses and identities I have'. 'If I write a marginalized character incorrectly people will yell at me, so I won't write a marginalized character who's marginalized differently than me at all'. Can you imagine writing a lesbian character with a boyfriend because 'you feel uncomfortable writing lesbian experiences'? It's blatantly homophobic. But people do that with disability and race/ethnicity ALL THE TIME.

People with SMI notice that you feel uncomfortable with them. It's obvious. They notice when a character has a SMI + anxiety, and you only write their anxiety. They notice when a character displays symptoms of a SMI in canon, but you write it out. And POC notice when the characters of color are written out. I know we all like to project on the blorbos and relate to them, and in the joys of your own head do whatever, but as a writer if you only stick to identities you're comfortable with you are actively being a worse writer. Which to me is the REAL sin lmfao.

#my asks #thanks for enabling me lizzy if i didn't get this out i would have just vagued for the rest of time #even just beyond all of this on a more subtle lvl. HC people with SMI cowards. just do it. its good for you.#the two times me/a close friend have proposed on a fandom server "hey I read X as having a SUD/being on the schizophrenic spectrum'#there was actual fascinating pushback and rejection #people got MAD.#'blorbo wouldn't be an alcoholic he's not a bad person :(' fuck off #i dont use the word often but its ableism and you can be mentally ill and still ableist #if you dont feel educated enough on something to write it then do research #and while research wont give you everything it's a start #if you feel like you can only write people just like you then frankly? skill issue #i mentioned that the last fic was a bit of a spite fic - well #it was scientifically fascinating how the majority of a fandom wrote/acknowledged a character as depressed and anxious #but actively got incredibly defensive when someone suggested that the psychotic character may have had a psychotic disorder #it was so blatant. very annoying. anyway.

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bonefall · 3 months

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are amphibians like newts and frogs considered aquatic? i know crustaceans & mollusks would be

Yes they are! Generally, the more time it spends on land, the closer it will be to 5 calories than 4. The estimate was actually based on frogs and tadpoles, I had to make an educated guess.

My best source was a feeding chart from a reptile food website which sells whole small prey for consumption by snakes. It perfectly lists out the values of dozens of small animals, but no fish. So I took a note of the 4 calorie estimate, observed that an adult frog increases in calories compared to tadpoles (bucking the trend with the others on the list where younger animals are worth more caloric value) and went on to do more research

I couldn't find a source that broke down WHOLE prey caloric value like the chart, so I ended up comparing caloric value between rabbit fillets, chicken fillets, and fish fillets on human-centric nutrition websites. My hypothesis was mostly consistent, even with more species added. Fish (perch, flounder, pike) < Wild Mammal (rabbit, squirrel) < Poultry (chicken, turkey, quail). There was overlap between "classes", certain fish getting over the 100 hump, but generally there was a trend I boiled down into 4/5/6

This is consistent with how a lot of fish meat is actually water. In fact, cats quench a lot of their thirst from the food they eat. I also learned some very interesting stuff about the fat distribution in fish which is going to blow a bit of a hole in some of my Clan culture stuff lmaoooo, but I'll furiously swim across that obliterated bridge when I get there

But funfact! Fish oil is rendered fish fats and it is the form that unsaturated fat takes, whereas lard is what saturated fats become. I need to do more research into this topic to understand what kind of difference it would make in a wild cat's diet.

There was one big bucked trend though: salmonid meat was WAAAAY higher in fat and calories. Like, absurdly high. Like 150 cal trout fillet vs 110 cal of rabbit fillet vs 88 cal of perch fillet.

I do not know why that is. My guess is that maybe it's because they were taking the number from farmed salmonids? Maybe it's because they're particularly fatty fish? Perhaps this is just the raw power of salmon slammin'.

Anyway, at one point I was trying to estimate exact caloric value per popular prey species, but decided I didn't have the "backing" to get so exact with the numbers since I was doing estimates with the fish. I'll do the work if it comes down to it, but for now, 4/5/6 is a quick, easy guideline you can use for just about any WC project.

#I was planning for Bb!RiverClan to be the guys who didn't cook much #Being quite snooty about it and insisting it's good for you #But it turns out they're actually at the highest risk of getting worms for that #Maybe I'll keep it for the irony because that sounds VERY funny #Cleric in the corner SOBBING because Waterpool just caught tapeworms for the 4th time #Willowpelt over in TC like ''I ALWAYS KNEW THEIR GLOSSY COATS WERE TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!!''#No wonder her daughter Sorrel has a thing about worms lmaoo #I need to do more research but what I've come across here is that. Like. Actually?#A fish-only diet might cause a lot of really specific and pretty serious problems in RC #Another is that fish have so many micronutrients that some of the sites I visited were warning about some of those 'overdose' side effects.#The carp example was just the most interesting #I guess I had been assuming a lot based on the conception of fish as being 'the healthy meat'#Clan culture #Nutrition guide #Bone babble

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tea-time-terrier · 23 hours

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Forever lacking in nice project photos but look!!!

This 1000lb TV was abandoned at the dumpster and given a questionable makeover that now fits creatures inside.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Older TVs with CRT monitors can hold charges well after they are unplugged + the vacuum in the tube can cause an implosion (explosion of glass) if mishandled.

#it's a little small for pig but the new roomates are all smaller than her so we're good #I did not realize gutting an old tv had so many dangers but fortunately I researched it before tackling it #it isn't as nice as I was hoping but I'm short on time and can redo it later #turnpike #maybe one day I'll have a tag for projects

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northern-passage · 11 months

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i've been thinking a lot about the word "representation" and what it means and how it's changed over the last few years, particularly when it comes to the writing/publishing landscape but also in movies and tv shows… and i really don't like it anymore. to be clear, of course i think it's important to have diversity in your work, i'm not saying i hate the concept of representation. but i do really dislike the way it's used now, and i really just hate the word itself

in a broader sense it's just become a marketing tool. i'm not impressed by any publisher or author who just describes their book by listing all of the minorities/identities the characters represent as if that should be enough. it feels very gross, very exploitative and disingenuous. it also really bothers me because it's always marginalized identities- which i understand Why, but it feels very othering to me (and again. Very exploitative as an advertisement). you would never list out "cishet able-bodied white man" as a character description to pat yourself on the back over. so why do it to everyone else? why insinuate that one is the "default" and the other one is "special"? (and when i say this i'm mainly talking about advertisements/marketing. i understand why people would specify about characters in descriptions with the plot, but i don't like to see an ad that's just "this book has gay people!" with nothing else)

which then leads me to my other point, which is that a lot of people treat "representation" as if it's "too hard." like "oh i don't know enough to write about that, i don't have that experience, etc" which is a fair way to feel! however… it's weird that people only say this about writing trans characters or characters of color. i'm writing a story right now with a character who is really into motorcycles. i personally do not know that much about motorcycles, so i researched what parts are what & what different kinds of models there are & what basic bike care looks like. i guarantee Most people will have to google something at some point in their writing process. so what's the problem? it also, again, feels very othering when authors treat certain groups of people as "impossible" to write, "too hard" to understand. they are just.. people. you write them as a person. and then you figure out the rest later.

and i think part of the refusal or fear to write something outside of your experience is because of the way representation is treated as So Special. these characters are So Special that they aren't allowed to be anything other than "representation." they're Not allowed to be characters with complex emotions and interesting motivations, they have to just be Trans or Gay or Disabled or whatever. they're not allowed to be people. which means, at the end of the day, we loop right back around to where we were at the start….

there is bad representation. there are depictions of certain marginalized people that are harmful and that are damaging, i'm not trying to minimize that or argue against it at all, in fact we should all be mindful of that while writing and reading. but i also think it's possible to swing too far in the opposite direction as well and put certain groups of people on a pedestal and not allow them to do anything at all but be Perfect Representation, if that makes sense.

#anyways. is this anything #sorry i dont have anything insightful to say at the end here i just wanted to ramble #especially abt the way ppl market books now it like. genuinely disgusts me #cannot imagine marketing tnp in that way. my characters are many things AND they are trans. and their transness #is not just a flashy feature for attracting attention #also i do understand the fear of 'getting it wrong' but that's why you have beta readers or even actual sensitivity readers #that's why you ask for feedback. especially in this space like... people will give it #that's what makes sharing your process and early draft in this community so rewarding #and there's also just the reality that no matter what you do some people will Not like it 🤷#and ime a lot of ppl look at representation very individualistically #as in it's only good representation if it represents Me #which sucks. and you're never going to please those people #ANYWAYS also to be clear this is not a vague or meant to be targeted at any one person please don't be fucking weird #this is just some thots i've had recently esp since ive seen the representation conversation pop up quite a few times #and since i've been doing research for characters in my other project #personal

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sideblogforweirdshit · 9 months

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Whump Reference Post for Fingernail Removal Torture

Hi whump writers of Tumblr! I recently made a little introduction post in which I said I’d be making reference posts. This is one I already had typed up, because for some reason this was the first thing I thought of.

There are no images attached, but I’m putting the rest of the post under a readmore since the majority of the content is semi-graphic written description of the how-to’s and wherefore’s and such of fingernail removal torture.

To be clear: I will be going into as much depth as I possibly can without using images. The content of this post will be purely academic. There will be no artistic liberties taken. This post is meant to be as accurate to (and descriptive of) a real-life situation as possible.

I hope some part of this post eventually winds up being a helpful resource for someone!

1) Not as painful as it’s made out to be

-It's painful, but definitely not to the extent it’s shown in movies or whatnot. A lot of the "pain" comes from the shock factor of seeing your body without something it’s always had, as well as the inherent "wrongness" that comes with experiencing a part of your body being removed.

2) There is very very thin film of skin between the fingernail and the finger.

-If one is careful in removing the fingernail by peeling it back slowly, one can preserve this thin piece of skin. -If one pulls the fingernail back quickly and without taking care, this thin film will rip, and the nail will pull away with bits of flesh attached.

3) The flesh under the nail will be vertically striated.

-If one uses the peel-back method, and is careful to not let the thin film of skin between the nail and the flesh rip, the skin/flesh underneath the nail will be as visibly striated as the fingernail itself. If you look closely at your fingernail right now, you’ll see that there are many tiny grooves from the tip of your nail to the base. This is true for all human fingernails. If the nail is peeled back with sufficient care, those striations will be echoed on the skin underneath the nail.

4) The “peel entirely off” method versus the "peel back and then stop" method versus the "pull out entirely" method.

-The “peel entirely off” method is how I will refer to the method of grasping firmly the tip of the fingernail in some sort of vice (usually pliers) and then peeling it backwards, moving the pliers from the nail at the tip of the finger towards the hand itself. Using this method, the nail will remain firmly grasped in the pliers the entire time. The movement of the pliers only stops when the base of the nail is ripped entirely out of the finger. This will necessarily result in ripping out a fair bit of skin past the cuticles, as the technical base of the nail (aka “nail matrix”) is generally around half a centimeter hand-wards past the cuticles (and follows the curve of the nail, so is deeper than the cuticles as well). Due to the nature of skin, I would expect a tear reminiscent of an extremely deep hangnail that goes from the base of the cuticles to at least halfway between the first and second knuckle (and at most goes to the second knuckle). In this case, it is not guaranteed that the nail will grow back. There is a chance it’ll come back, but there is also a chance that the nail matrix is permanently damaged and will not be able to grow a new nail. Since every human is different, there’s not an exact science to determining where a person’s nail matrix is before it’s ripped out. A (very) general rule of thumb is to follow the curve of the existing fingernail, and draw a point on that curve before it hits bone. Obviously, this is extremely subjective.

-The “peel back and then stop” method is how I will refer to what is essentially the previous method, but one stops before the nail-ripping goes past the cuticle and snips off the peeled part, leaving a milimeter or so of fingernail existing on the nailbed. In this case, it is assured that the nail matrix is undisturbed, and the fingernail will grow back. This is the method I will assume is taken for the future steps

-The “pull out entirely” method is how I will refer to the situation where one grasps the protruding part of the nail firmly, and applies force away from the hand and in the direction the finger points. In this case, there’s a large chance that the nail will rip. This depends largely on the care taken with the pulling object (pliers, usually) to grab the nail exactly parallel with the sides of the pliers. If any part of the pliers digs into the nail at a singular location, this will create a point at which pressure will build up, and the nail will likely rip at this location. The strength of the individual’s nails also affects the ripping. The individual’s nail strength can vary based on nourishment as well as on a general person-to-person basis. Personally, I do not recommend this method.

-If one wants to make the removal definitely permanent, there’s the possibility of peeling it back all the way down and out, and then chemically burning where one assumes the nail matrix is. (Some serious irl hikers do this to their toenails on purpose, to reduce the chances of getting ingrown toenails from being laced into hiking boots for days on end.) Removing the nail permanently will obviously reduce the opportunity to peel it off again, but will give a permanent Horrific Aspect to the victim.

5) For the first three days, the exposed flesh will be painful.

-The entire tip of the finger will be a constant deep and throbbing pain. Any deviation from this norm will be an increase in pain, never a decrease (save medication or an ice-bath-for-full-minutes immersion to the point of numbness).

-Any contact with the exposed nailbed will increase the pain. Knocking the exposed flesh against anything, even extremely gently, will result in a visible bright red welt under the thin layer of skin (bright red on light skin only! on darker skin, the welt will still be visible, but will show as a dark red-brown). It is a visual similar to an extremely tiny, non-protruding blood blister. Knocking the nailbed against something less gently will result in fully scraping off that delicate outer layer of skin.

-Using the finger for anything will be painful (though not unbearably so), and it may even be painful to bend the finger at all.

-Any moisture on the exposed flesh (including anything from regular water to antibiotic ointment) will hurt a lot. This will intensify the throbbing at least twofold across the entire nailbed, and will also result in an amount of stinging as if one had just realized one had been stung by a bee.

6) For treatment and healing thereof (if quick healing is desired)

For those first three days, any bandaid application is inadvisable -The exposed flesh will be so tender and vulnerable that any bandaid (even the non-stick kind) will stick to the exposed flesh and rip it upon removal. I can only assume this is in part due to the curvature of the finger, which means that any wrapping-around type bandaid will inherently put pressure on the nailbed, resulting in sticking.

-To promote healing, the first three days should be without any sort of covering on the wound.

After the first three days, a scab will form. -At this point, the pain will be much less. it might be uncomfortable to bump the nailbed into objects, but it will not be the same pain as in the first three days.

-The wound will also be much less sensitive to moisture.

-When the scab starts to crack (usually a vertical crack), one should apply antibiotic ointment and a bandaid. At this point in the proess, it is desired for the scab to remain as consistently moist as possibly. This will help the scab fall off when it is ready to do so.

-At this point, the finger can be used normally (within reason) without much (if any) pain.

After two or three days with the bandaid covering, the scab will start to fall off.

-One may expedite this process if one is careful.

-At this point, the skin on the nailbed is sensitive to the touch, but not to the point of pain.

-There will be some dry, loose skin around the edges of the nailbed.

-The previously visible striation will no longer be there.

-Pressure on the exposed nailbed will not be necessarily painful, but it will feel decidedly Odd. Though not painful, It will be an extremely sensitive area.

-The nailbed will be a delicate pinkish color.

Around a week after the initial scab falls off, there will appear to be another scab. It will be a relatively thin layer of dry, dead skin.

-If the nail is allowed to grow normally, it is likely that it will cover this second scab before it has the chance to fall off.

-If the stub of the fingernail is trimmed routinely, it is possible for the scab to fall off, leaving only relatively smooth unblemished skin where the nailbed is. This skin will be roughly the same color and texture as the skin on the tip of the finger.

7) The rate at which fingernails grow back is extremely slow

-The average growth rate is about 3.5 milimeters per month. There are several factors that can cause this to vary:

-Fingernails on the dominant hand grow back faster than the nails on the non-dominant hand.

-Fingernails grow back faster than toenails.

-Nails grow back faster in warm weather than in cold weather.

-Depending on the nail and the aforementioned conditions, one can expect a total regrowth time of anywhere from three to six months (or more).

8) Life Without Fingernails

-Fingernails affect a large part of our everyday lives. We mostly use them when we’re manipulating objects with our hands, and we use them to scratch. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s a lot. It’s hard to explain just how weird it is to not have fingernails to someone who’s never experienced it, but here goes:

-Fingernails are the Hard Backs used to brace our fingers against a hard shell when we manipulate something with our hands. If you pinch your fingers together right now, you’ll see a white band along the top of your fingernail. This is where the pressure from the pinching goes; it’s braced against your nail.

-Picking something up without fingernails feels extremely odd the first few hundred times you do it. It takes a long time to get used to it.

-Writing is even worse. Without the hard shell backing your fingers, the pencil tends to slip out of your grip more often. If you usually have long enough fingernails that you balance your pen/pencil on them, you’re extremely likely to have the pencil completely slip out of your grip multiple times a sentence.

-You don’t realize how much you unconsciously scratch itchy parts of your body until you no longer have the ability to do so. If you’re only missing a few nails, you have to consciously adjust your hand so that you can scratch with the existing ones. If you’re missing all of them, you have to actively find an external object to alleviate the itch.

Some places on the body one can scratch with their teeth, but for most places, one needs to either find an “itch stick,” or rub that part of their body on something scratchy. A lot of clothing is scratchy enough to work for this. One needs to learn how to vary the pressure so that one can alleviate the itch without tearing through the skin or scratching themselves.

Pros:

-Body horror

Fingernail removal is a more mentally significant mutilation than cuts or burns, if only because it draws on the "that was there and now it's not" aspect of body horror.

-Can be inflicted more than once

Since fingernails grow back, they can be removed again and again and again. Though it may take some time for the nails to regrow, it isn't even close to the type of permanent that’s chopping off a finger or a toe.

-Helplessness

Since it takes a few days for the nailbeds to heal enough to be able to use one's fingers, a complete removal of all fingernails will take away one's ability to use their hands. Even after this initial period of extreme sensitivity, the lack of fingernails is something most people aren’t prepared for. The previous section explaining how fingernails affect daily life is significant here.

Cons:

-Can’t repeat often.

Once a fingernail is off, it's not coming back for at least three months (likely longer). It doesn't have the relatively quick reset time that burns or cuts do.

-Relatively short amount of time in pain

All of the pain is in the first few days. It is inconvenient afterwards, but there is little to no pain at this time.

-Amount of care needed

One needs to be relatively careful inflicting this. Fingernails are not as resilient as you'd think, and the likelihood of them ripping before you can finish ripping them off is fairly large if you're not being careful.

If you have a short-tempered or impatient whumper, this might not be their particular wheelhouse.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d say that the effectiveness depends entirely on the desired result. The time it takes for the fingernails to regrow versus the amount of time in which the subject is in pain is not a very productive ratio, so if you’d want your whumper doing a particular torture regularly, I wouldn’t recommend this.

However, if the whumper’s goal is to appeal to the body horror aspect without permanent damage, this is a great option. The fact that it takes nails so long to regrow gives the victim a sense of horrified freakishness. It also has the added benefit of reducing the victim’s maneuverability far after the fact.

The semi-visible nature of this method of torture can be effective if one wishes to horrify characters outside the whumper/whumpee relationship. You don’t immediately look at other people’s hands when you meet them, and as such it might take a while for outside characters to notice the lack of fingernails (especially if they’re past the three day mark). But once they notice, it will be hard to look away.

#whump #whump writing #whumpblr #whump community #whump reference post #this is the post i already had typed up i hope it passes muster #i tried to be as exhaustive as possibly because i KNOW there's so many details one needs when writing a thing #investigative journalism but with injuries that's us here at sbfws #ummm i don't know what to tag this #if y'all want a trigger warning tag for this stuff please let me know?#or if y'all want to be added to a tag list also please let me know??#also also please feel free to make specific post requests if y'all want?#i don't know how timely my responses to them will be but i will FOR SURE try to get to them as soon as i can #just like #if you're a whump writer who fuckin hates having to do research into different types of injuries hit me up!#(especially the weird injuries)#(fingernails are all fine and good but i thrive on the Weird Stuff There's Barely Any Research On you know)#(I really like researching weird niche stuff)#(you'll be doing me a favor if you give me something Decidedly Odd to fixate on)#nail gore #nail whump #hand whump

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trentcrimminallybeautiful · 6 days

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i think the diamond dogs should play improv games just bc it would amuse me, an ex theater kid, specifically

#ted and beard ofc are reading each others minds #trent is shockingly good at it but only when he forgets to be self conscious #also see: he does both best and worst with ted (best when he's not being self conscious #worst when somehow the prompt gets too touchy or 'romantic' bc Crush Crush Crush Brain Panic)#(please the image of ted in character hugging him or something and trent just. red. brain crashed. no longer improving just frozen. barely #manages to recover and even then it was not subtle. unclear if ted is a) genuinely oblivious b) teasing him and thinks trent knows that #c) something else(??) )#roy is too stiff most of the time but if he gets really into it he gets REALLY into it.#best way to get this result is to involve phoebe or another child #higgins did community theater at some point and is the one teaching them all the games. beard also seems to have done intense research #but higgins is the one with EXPERIENCE #not that i think beard and ted couldn't have done an improv duo in college or something but in this scenario they did not #nate surprisingly is pretty good at it once he gets into it like it takes him a second but #then he's like. really getting into it and he's very quick on his feet #new way to go mad with power (affectionate): the rush you get when you make the perfect snap back comedic line/acting choice #also while trent is so good paired with so many of them i think he and nate would be a hilarious duo. they're SO funny.#they complement each other well and are both quick & clever #esp if it's about a mutual interest (although one of them taking the lead on something else like nate and music while the other plays off t #em is also good) but like #please i just had the iamge of them basically doing a bit where they're like. those mean old gay muppets in the theater?#like trent and nate improv duoing as some bitchy reviewers just going back and forth and it's so FAST and SO funny #beard records it and posts it somewhere and it goes viral.#god don't even get me started on the idea of some sort of official richmond social media/the gang posting random clips on social media #bc the ideas i have are so funny.#also largely trent centric but what do you want from me okay i'm just a little slut.

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y2kbugs-moved · 11 months

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Pavitr: *Makes a comment about how annoying it is that people say "chai tea" when it literally just means "tea tea"*

Fandom, somehow: OMG Chai tea must be his favorite thing!

(Disclaimer: I am white.)

#pavitr prabhakar #across the spiderverse #this isn tthe first time fandom has done a thing like this #bro he probably drinks chai like any normal indian kid its not that special #and i guess he'd consider chai latte to be an american invention and not really indian? but i don't think he'd mind if it tastes good #There is masala chai but I guarantee you that's NOT what starbucks chai latte is #its funny cause miles makes a similar joke about atms and no one makes him obsessed with them #i dont think this is spoilers cause its in the trailer #FEEL LIKE I HAD TO ADD DISCLAIMER #this is based on what my desi friends say!! and also research ofc

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crossbackpoke-check · 2 months

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it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

#OFFICIAL FIC ANNOUNCEMENT 🗣️🗣️🗣️‼️‼️‼️ i wish i had pretty fic graphics but alas i have No Skill and also. so much work i should be doing bu #HI SHE’S HERE i would love to say this is a complete surprise drop except i have Anxiety & i needed to ask you guys about it beforehand #in my defense i started writing this in like. january far before any tragedy occurred #because square asked about my tags on their dewey2 art and she spawned like. a million more thoughts about it #including the part where i got absolutely kicked in the face with the lightning vision of those two lines.#like those two lines are the first actual lines of the fic i wrote ajdhkwdiowdjiw ANYWAY please be nice to me i know i am always like #‘this is not the first real fic i ever thought i’d post’ and if i had a nickel i’d have three but this is the first pwp i’ve ever posted #and it’s 8k and it’s not a fic for an exchange (although technically i did very much write this for the dewey^2 hivemind so.)#i have SO many things to say i have so many comments on this doc also i couldn’t pick a title for the LONGEST time and i finally decided on #this one but the full quote was too long:#all the rest of what i want with you that scares me shitless #so. i was angling SO hard to make a yung gravy lyric as a title bc i saw the video of him at a wild game but i couldn’t find a good one #and instead y’all got a very sentimental title l m a o.#liv in the replies #shout out to the extended universe this lives in and also my unhinged comments in the docs.#if you liked fun fuck a baby in him friday i’ll be here all week i promise i am the exact same in the comments as i am in the tags 🫡#the NUMBER of times i wrote something in this by pulling it out of my ass and then actually went back and did the research & was RIGHT is.#far too high. also the amount of coincidental things that dropped while i was writing this (yung gravy song about pregnancy AFTER i wheeze #laughed myself into a yung gravy title the athletic player poll confirming my restaurant & bar choices from googling ‘st. paul good bars’…)#also if anybody got advice on formatting for these little announcements. help. this is different from my miro/luka one &i’m still not happy

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hand-face-chan · 5 months

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I'm only halfway though Hbomberguy's new video and I dont know if this is a universal experience but my main horrified takeaway from hbomb's plagiarism video so far is that one of my highschools TAUGHT AN ENTIRE CLASS OF 13 YEAR OLDS TO PLAGIARISE. LIKE, ON PURPOSE.

I ended up moving to a much better highschool, but my first highschool essentially taught us to "write" essays by reading what someone else had written and then write what they said again but putting it "into your own words". Which in practice was teaching us to change, for example, "the works of Shakespeare were regarded by many as the first popular art form" to "Shakespeare's plays have been said by some to be the first example of popular media". One teacher actually told us that the process of writing an essay was "saying what the people you've researched have said, in a way where it sounds like you said it".

Like. The tactics that actual plagiarists use to hide the fact that they were stealing. An actual teacher tried to teach me to do that.

#hbomberguy #im so glad i left that school early the next year. it definitely would have gotten worse.#i literally didnt learn what a bibliography was until grade 9 because of how shit my first highschool was.#at the same time if a student wrote a paper that was 'too good' even if it was orginal theyd accuse them of stealing without proof #like i wrote a completely original paper and got the note 'this is very good - did you write it all yourself?'#fuck you man. yes i did. despite you trying to teach me to do the opposite #they accused me of getting my parents to write it for me. i had to show them everything i researched and my dad lost it at them #this was also the same school where they took every kid with a disability out of maths regardless of if they were good at maths or not #and taught them shapes like they were fucking three years old #i remember hanging out in the maths with all the other autistic kids and prentending to have never seen a triangle before for a joke #and while thats really bad and abelist. the non-disabled kids were still being taught addition and division like they were 8 and not 12 #the whole thing was a massive fuck up shit fest. it took the year 7 maths teacher leaving for us to all get the same maths class #and we STILL werent being taught to an age appropriate level because we missed so much grade 7 maths it had to be caught up in grade 8 #i would burn it down but its not a highschool anymore lol

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hysterical-cats · 7 months

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this ^ lil black swoopy in silli/jemi's bib is actually incredibly important and its a crime that they dont include it more often

#cats the musical #cats musical #jemima cats #jemima #sillabub #sillabub cats #the heart shaped white spot on her arm is also incredibly important but this aint about her rn #if theres one thing im good at its focusing on uber specific and tiny details on cats costumes #im so opinionated on cats costumes its kind of an issue #through my extensive research #(looking through the wiki galleries)#ive determined that sillabubs are usually the ones who get the swoopy #the only jemi i found with the swoopy was our bestie zurich #god if i had time i would make costume designs for every cat as a passion project #maybe over winter break

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e-adlirez · 19 days

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Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr

So this sequel... exists :D

Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D

So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?

Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.

Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.

Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?

Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur

Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.

Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D

Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.

Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']

With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.

(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)

Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--

The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--

So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.

The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)

With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:

Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--

Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.

Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking

Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.

So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.

So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)

The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.

While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D

The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:

Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.

One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.

The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE

With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.

Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.

The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!

Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D

Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.

Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j

Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE

So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D

Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE

The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.

Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!

Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?

In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.

The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.

So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.

For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.

So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.

As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.

Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.

Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.

Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L

The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD

Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that

And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j

And that's the book :D

... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo

The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.

Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see

I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.

ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE

Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.

So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.

The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.

Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/

Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.

Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.

Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.

Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).

The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.

In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!

Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.

Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".

The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.

Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.

Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--

Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha

#geronimo stilton #thea sisters #thea stilton #book review #book rambles #book rant #thank you ishmeow for making the gottems for me :D #you came in clutch while my ipad is still dieded thank you bestie <3 #in the book it's just the lip balm but ishmeow decided to go all-out with the gottem gag and i can't be more grateful lmao #same goes with the gemstone in aurora's gottem (it's just the fake tiara plus fake gem) but hey the more salt the merrier :D #book 2 luke is so jarringly different from his other depictions but at the same time #he does not in fact touch grass and he does crack an evil cackle at least once a book so #i dunno how i feel about it . .#on one hand it adds to him not touching grass #but on the other hand it doesn't connect with his “this villain is supposed to make you shnit your pants at how intimidating he is”#he's intimidating because of his connections his ability to basically spy on the entire world and control everything from his base #and y'know he can tell his goons to do whatever and they'll literally wreak havoc to fulfill said requests #he was so intimidating in concept that they had to nerf him with incompetent goons lmao #after doing last minute research i am deeply concerned for the girls' wallets and their mental and physical health :D #like good god i thought a ten hour flight was unbearable and made your body stiff but holy damn #i'm not complaining too much about the timeline tho because this is hilarious and makes the girls look so neurodivergent #“what do you mean we flew a total of 64 hours by plane feels like it's only been a day to m--”#*dies*

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