Books and Ghosts

Watching my mutual aid groups go "okay everyone please start growing potatoes so we'll survive under people intent on destroying everything and everyone we love" gives me a new appreciation for both my Irish ancestors, and why potatoes and gardeners hold such a big role in LOTR.

WWII food shortages, victory gardens to mitigate that...they weren't just tasty, they sustained life and gave hope

Thinking about the riff off the seeds quote, "they tried to bury us, they didn't realize we were potatoes".

Thinking about every human before us who cultivated and grew and shared these plants that nourish us and selected thousands of individual varieties adapted for every climate

Thinking about the fact it really does just take a chunk of potato with an eye on it, dirt, time, work, and water, to feed people

Thinking about this pretty comprehensive potato growing guide from the Farmer's Almanac

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

this image is so endearing to me,, like,,

Happy Birthday Big Bill!

funny you should mention that

*through gritted teeth* every day i choose to be kind *barely restraining myself from violence* i choose to have compassion *tamping down the vicious bloodlust inside me* i choose to care and to be kind and to love

Every Terry Pratchett protagonist

It’s funny to me that I’ve met people named Grace, Faith, Patience and Chastity. It is so funny that Puritan names have survived so long and are still so popular if you take a step back and think about it. She’s getting Starbucks today and accusing a townsperson of witchcraft tomorrow.

AND DESTINY, I’ve met so many Destinys.

Nobody even chooses the COOL Puritan names like Punishment, Humiliation, Refuge, Relief, Obedience. And it’s always girls getting Puritan names nowadays. When am I going to see a baby boy named Submit To His Will.

Thats the name of an ex-fundamentalist kinky gay if ever I heard one

kinky evil former Puritan vampire

i found out i had a quaker cousin from the 1600s named Wrestling. as in, from the torah, Jacob’s wrestling with an angel. She also had a brother named Repentance and one of her sisters was named Fear.

Absolutely losing my mind over Love, Patience, Fear, Wrestling and fucking Jonathan

nothing scarier than being a fan of a fic and then becoming mutuals with the author. like hi shakespeare. big fan of your fake dating au

Behold, a dragon.

the collection is almost complete

This is as far as I have as well. I love the illustrations.

Read in January

Read in February

Read in March

I went to a farm yesterday and this little guy wants to leave the hive and become a writer.

— Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake

Still Can...

Beautiful. The composition. Colors. The lamp. The fact that the photographer managed to make the moon look GOOD (not all cameras and photographers can achieve that).

Absolutely spectacular. Ultraluminary. Yes.

You know how Degas did studies of ballerinas? This is… kind of like that!

(On Twitter / Instagram ayyyyy)

Artist name Alice X. Zhang (thank you to the poster above for the links! I’m just putting Alice’s name here again in case folks don’t click on the links).

https://www.instagram.com/alicexz

I genuinely love how much Jod sucks as a person and tbh, I hope they don't do a "redemption" moment for him.

He could've killed Fern but he didn't, he prompted her multiple times to yield and despite getting more agitated each time, he didn't actually physically harm her. He could've stomped on the little rat thing from SM-33's eye socket (he had just executed Brutus with a point blank shot to the head in front of the kids and cut off 33's head with the lightsaber), but he didn't squash that little creature, just pushed him aside with his boot. So he's not like, cartoonishly, puppy-kicking evil. But he is a bad person.

And I LOVE THAT about him.

We’ve become so conditioned by Star Wars in particular (Din Djarin, Hunter from TBB) and also media generally (Joel in The Last of Us) to expect the hardened, grumpy, sometimes genuinely shitty guy to ultimately have a soft spot for the kid(s) at heart, to come around and eventually side with them. And I think that’s what has made Jod so compelling for me, because despite everyone in this show is warning the kids (and therefore, the audience) “this guy sucks and he WILL betray you,” I think we (or at least I) keep expecting on some level that he will have this transformation or show his “true” colors and come around. Especially after episode 4 where he buys the eopies back and “saves” the kids, then saves them again from SM-33’s programmed kill response.

But no. He sucks. He genuinely fucking sucks as a person, and he does betray anyone and everyone the moment it becomes most advantageous to him. He is a fucking pirate, through and through (affectionate).

I think it’s pretty ballsy of Disney to have allowed the creation of a semi-main character who breaks this mold and genuinely fucking sucks as a person and is allowed to stay sucky. I hope they don’t fix him in the finale, I like him broken. It’s a change of pace, it’s fun to watch, and not everyone can or should get a redemption arc, certainly not in a season 1 of something because then there are fewer places to go re: character growth.

(And don’t even get me started on the arrested development he has going on- in so many ways, he’s just as childish as the literal children if not more so, and I find that fascinating.)