I find the concept of traditional food so fascinating. Like, take shortbread for an example because it's what I'm making today. My family has always considered shortbread one of the Necessary Christmas Biscuits (along with gingerbread; mince pies fit in the same conceptual space despite not being biscuits). We have always shaped the shortbread by rolling it into a fat log and cutting off one centimetre slices, which are pricked with a fork then baked. The recipe book I'm using asserts that Scottish shortbread often has a decorative pattern pressed into the top of it. Once I watched a British baking programme which insisted shortbread was Not Shortbread unless it was baked in a single round sliced into 8 wedges. I have never seen anyone bake shortbread this way in my life. What is traditional, if not the way my mother taught me to do it, that her mother taught her?
stuck in the time loop but i just use it as a free day off. im not even trying to get out. i am teaching myself to knit. i am crocheting. i am cooking. not even doing anything crazy. just escaping capitalism for a week. day 375 and im not sure what lesson it's trying to teach but i've taught myself to handmake lace so all is well
i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.
I think we need to get more comfortable with the idea that sometimes shitty, racist, homophobic, bigoted people are still incredibly talented.
I feel like every time I see a post addressing someone’s shitty behavior the post also takes the time to mention that they’re not even good at [x] anyway. And that’s just not always true? Equating being good at a skill as being morally good is just not necessary. Someone can be a fantastic writer, can have a beautiful singing voice, can create breathtaking artwork, and still be a horrible person.
I know part of this is probably just the instinct to dislike everything about a person when you dislike them, but I also think this mindset leads to people defending creatives way past where they should, because if bad people create bad art, then if this person creates art that I like and resonates with me, then they can’t be a bad person!
And you know. That’s just not true. Those two things are simply completely unconnected and I think it’d be healthier if we all started disconnecting them in our heads.
One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.
Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.
It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?
Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.
Ten and Donna end up on a fucked up deadly space newlyweds show despite uh. Not being newlyweds but they get almost all the questions right. They start to sweat when the final question is "what's one secret desire you have involving the other?" And Donna writes "sometimes I wish I could occasionally shrink down the doctor real small so I could carry him around in my pocket and make sure he doesn't get lost' while Ten writes "sometimes I wish I was small enough that Donna could carry me around in like a cat backpack or maybe a shirt pocket" and they look at each other like AYYYYYY because not only are they deeply drift compatible they're also fuckin weird about it 💖