I'll try to be short cause I have little time but:

1.In Les Mis, Hugo is very interested in mirrors, it's the single most consistent pattern in the novel

2. The Battle of Waterloo is a mirror of the June Rebellion in the narrative

3. The idea that civilization naturally tends toward progress is an idea espoused by Combeferre, amd in real life most progressives at the time. Rather famously, with Karl Marx. Tho he had his own idea of progress.

4. That relates directly with this:

5. The barricade relates also directly with Waterloo, both the strategy and the events regarding the Haie-Sainte and Hougomont. With the rain and also the matter of the reinforcements. And the matter of the extra cruelty of the prussians and of the french national guard.

6. This, plus many other small reasons, leads me to believe that the English soldiers are the mirrors of the revolutionaries in this section. Napoleon is a mirror to the king (and also to the contemporary Napoleon III in the meta-narrative).

7. This means that the whole point of this section is to explain that the era of tyranny is over, the worship of Napoleon III is anti-natural and more than anything to urge the french to understand that their spirit will not be hurt by the death of their dictator. It's a very interesting and peculiar approach to this story.

I don't know about "favorite," but I've recently been making cream of wheat with cocoa powder (1/2 tsp per serving), and adding a healthy scoop of peanut butter when done. Also homemade cranberry sauce, when I have that, but we're currently out and I don't know if I can find frozen cranberries right now.

Told my daughter I'm gonna start calling it "peanut butter-jelly sandwich soup."

Butternut squash soup, with cream or coconut milk if you need extra calories.

Potato cheese soup.

Split pea, black bean, or lentil soup pureed and strained through a fine sieve. Thin them with broth while they're cooking so that they're still quite liquid after pureeing. (If you eat meat, try simmering some smoked pork neck bones or turkey wings in the soup and taking them out before pureeing; they'll add a little fat and a lot of flavor.)

Cream of just about anything--saute a couple cups of some vegetable that you like in some butter with onions until soft, cover it with chicken or vegetable broth and simmer very gently until it's soft, blitz with an immersion blender until it's completely blended, and then whisk in heavy cream and heat just barely to a simmer. This works with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, celery, etc.

I am probably sharing a resource that everyone else already knew about, but I just found this book:

and holy shit this is going to save me so much time looking through Google Books to find what contexts a certain word is being used in. It has a list at the beginning of all the works it cites from, and it goes back to the Middle Ages. Also it cites from Voltaire 😌✨

reblog this and tag with a food you no longer have access to (closed restaurant, state you moved away from, ex’s mom’s cooking, etc) that will haunt you until your dying day, mine are the spicy chicken sandwich on the employee menu at the fine dining restaurant I was a prep cook at, and the onion bagel from the kosher place down the street from my house when I lived in the city

Reblog with the star wars character(s) based on your last meal or snack

I regret to tell you it’s just Pepperoni Pizza. Is that a valid Star Wars name?

maybe go with Pipperoni Pezza?

kitty car 🐱

PUBLIC COMMENTS ARE OPEN FOR GENDER IDENTIFIERS ON US PASSPORTS

Right now, you can submit a comment for consideration on the proposed changes to US Passport law that will include requiring a change from "Gender" to "Sex" on all passports and require that people identify with their sex assigned at birth.

THIS IS THE LAW THAT WOULD BAN TRANS PEOPLE FROM UPDATING THEIR IDENTIFICATION

Please take a moment to click through and submit a comment. This kind of thing is fast, easy, and is one of the many ways to show your support of the trans community to the people that need to know how many of us there are.

the comment period closes March 17, 2025.

“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”

No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.

Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.

Les Mis Shipping Showdown: Round of 16

Learn how to steal this poll here!

turnchetta art by @emmfairy (i can’t believe i found actual authentic 2013 turnchetta art on my second tag crawl. this is an historical artefact to me!!!!)

courfeyrac/marius art by @fluentisonus

Les Amis as Reasons to Vote Turnchetta

Enjolras: it's what his friends asked him to do, and since it takes zero (0) effort and will make them happy, he does it

Combeferre: tbh he just wants to see where this goes

Courfeyrac: Courfeyrac doesn't want to be monogamous

Feuilly: International Women's Day was a couple of days ago

Jean Prouvaire: the Romance of two mirror souls — one named only in credits, the other appearing only off-page

Bahorel: a little lady back home called The Bit

Jolllly: simps for Musichetta

Laigle: Hey, two men can live and be monk ordinate brothers and fuck together without it being a romantic relationship!

Grantaire: Turnchetta is beastly! Turnchetta should be eliminated! Look at the fandom: they are weak of will and cowardly of heart. Show them Katara, and I will show you discourse. The fall of Hands cripples, the denial of the horn of Husbands drives deathly daggers. No, nothing but sweet nothings for the Les Mis fandom. Yes, this fandom, they love sweet things: if they have a write-in, they will submit "vanilla" — I have tasted the oysters of these masses, and they wreak of Bath and Body Works. Hold the "hurt" in their comfort, sprinkle cinnamon over their coffee shop AU — even the smut has whipped topping. Canon compliance is a drink too bitter for most to stomach. Not even I, strong Grantaire of the dark magic, can survive AUs set post-barricade. Consider Harris, consider Hillary, consider Sasha encountering Barbie: no woman will ever be enough. Two? It is decimals multiplied by decimals, and we know the Les Mis fandom's famous aversion to the rational and irrational alike. A rational fandom would vote Courfius, two characters who have spoken and interacted in canon. Who am I? Shall I chase the sweet aromas of friends to lovers? The easy way is at my fingertips, it is true — ah, but I have always been that daring drinker of dreams, and besides, a woman who is nice to me is not a woman I much like at all. All said: I Abstain! *wakes from drunken stupor exactly long enough to vote Turnchetta for one last troll before getting shot or something, idk*

What is the plural of penis?

Penes -- because snakes have hemipenes, so 1 is a penis, 2 are penes.

This. "Penises" is also correct in English, but the Latin is penes.

The Latin plural of clitoris, however, is clitorides.

Masterclass in darning

This is quantum physics in theory (incomprehensible unless you're a hardore math simp) but in practice it is Black Magic (you have to sell your soul and sabity in order to perform it).

btw @ everyone who can't wrap their heads around this, here's a longer video going into more detail about prepping the damaged area and mending/darning technique with actual explanations!

rb with this more detailed method which will make a more lasting mend.

more people need to give themselves permission to write and draw pornography

it is virtuous and necessary that you write, draw, and distribute pornography

can we start with not conflating "erotic/sexual art or writing" with pornography

no lmao

Okay okay I've got one I think will be fun!!

Spin this wheel of like 160ish fandoms of varying levels of popularity.

Extra points for telling me all about your thoughts in the tags :D

Women want one thing and it's quite obvious, A large affordable interconnected North American Rail Network

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

NOT

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

This is different from the third person!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

This never happens with weak verbs:

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

‘Thou’ is used for

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

If you want a book series where the formal you and thee/thine/thou is used super accurately (and to an emotionally devastating effect in certain parts), I cannot recommend the Goblin Emperor and its sequel series The Cemeteries of Ámalo strongly enough.

@fremedon suuuuper good explanations, thank you so much! I’m curious if this is a hobby/special interest or if you do this professionally? Love your explanations.

Question, though, for you and OP. Does that mean that in “ye olde speech” that I/Me/Mine and You/Yours were interchangeable and Thee/Thou were used in both and Thine/Mine were the only differentiations?

Little confused on the layout of those in the examples. I appreciate any response on this <3

Sorry, I missed this when you first posted it! And I'm not quite sure what you're asking? None of these forms were interchangeable. They all meant different things; which form was used depended entirely on the meaning being expressed (and, in one instance which I'll get to, on the sound of adjacent words).

Let me try to lay the paradigms out a little more clearly. Does this help?

Every pronoun in this set encodes the following information:

In addition, some pronouns encode other information. The third person singular has different forms for different genders. The possessive has a dependent form and an independent form.

The dependent form is used when followed by a noun:

The independent form is used when not followed by a noun:

(The first and second person dependent possessives my and thy have variants mine and thine, which are used before a noun beginning with a vowel: mine eyes, thine age. This is identical in sound and spelling to the independent form.)

Does this answer your question?

If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.