'The Night Gardener' by Eric Fan

ao3 is crazy because you'll read the most gut-wrenching 200k word slowburn that leaves you sobbing into your sweater at four in the morning and the author will be applejacksmonstercock

later you find out that applecock is like a) the nicest lady in the world, b) in her late fifties and c) is a well respected senior member of a career you didn't know existed like head mop taxonomist or chief piano refurbishment factor or secretary of racehorses and suddenly a few of the comments in the longest orgy scene are even funnier.

Helene Appel Sink (With Dishes), 2024 Acrylic, oil and lacquer on linen 49.5 × 39.5 cm

It's kind of incredible just how much the Country House Murder Mystery genre is, at its roots, a reaction to WWI and the social change that sprang from it.

go on

So I've been healing up from surgery, meaning I've been catching up on my TBR pile, and my three great loves are a) middle grade anything, b) SF/F with good worldbuilding and characterization, c) murder mysteries without too much grit or grime.

In the pursuit of c), I've been playing Ace Attorney, but I've also been reading whatever Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers I can grab off Project Gutenberg. Since it's exclusively the ones in the public domain, it's their oldest stuff- pre 1924.

And the thing about all of these 20s murder mysteries is that they're incredibly haunted by The Great War, in the same way that most mysteries from the 2000s are haunted by the War on Terror or many mysteries coming out now are Haunted by COVID.

Lord Peter Wimsey has screaming dissociative PTSD flashbacks from the trenches. In Murder on the Links, Poirot is a displaced person- Belgium isn't a safe place to be an aging police inspector at the moment- the narrator has been discharged with an injury, and one of the main suspects is working as an army nurse.

And like... you can pull a couple threads through here. But if we're talking about the stereotypical Country House Murder Mystery- the two big ones are a) the end of the Old Order, and b) you always find the body and know the cause of death.

A) is pretty obvious- the death of a patriarch (or matriarch) is a microcosm of the slow decline of the British nobility. It's a way to give the sense of "Everything Your Worldview Depended On Has Fallen Apart" a face. Every dirty secret we don't speak of has come to light, all at once; every lie that supported The Way Things Are is revealed for what it really is. (Dulce et decorum est, anyone?) The local lord is dead, and no one is going to replace him. The world has irrevocably changed.

B) is something that @bespokeminutiae pointed out to me when I mentioned this- in a country house murder mystery, you always know where the body is, and you always know what happened to it. In a world where a lot of people lost loved ones in some far off place, without getting to see the body or say goodbye? That's a hugely comforting fantasy.

(Incidentally, this is why Knives Out is the best Country House Murder Mystery of the past 25 years- it understands that some themes are inherent to the genre and says something new that still engages with those themes.)

It's in my hair, in my sleep In my hands, in my teeth It's in my chair. It looks like me

[detail under cut]

Typical void sound 🖤😅

Patons 656 Wilderness Knits Patterns, 1993

Alma Haser

"I grew up with dyslexia and, on one occasion, I came home to my family and started having a conversation about cosmic surgery. My mother later corrected me, ‘Don’t you mean cosmetic surgery?’ It made sense to use this as a title, although I’m not an artist to focus on the reality but more on the unreality and non-existent things. " Alma Haser

(Source)

So many people who get periods are like “Ugh it sucks that having a menstrual cycle makes you almost die every month” like no that’s not normal you need to go to the doctor

If any of your symptoms go beyond “just like, super annoying ugh whatever” levels you should probably go see a doctor about that

You should not feel so depressed you want to die, you should not be getting mood swings so bad that you become violent, your cramps should not be so bad that you can’t get out of bed, your period should not last more than a week, you should not be losing so much blood that you feel dizzy. Go to the doctor.

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)

Endometriosis

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

Uterine Fibroids

(Cleveland Clinic & Mayo Clinic are both pretty good about using gender-neutral language in their articles).

Adding Adenomyosis here, Endometriosis’s lesser known but equally awful sister. If you have chronic pelvic pain and your periods are very painful and full of clots, get checked. Even my neighborhood gynecologist managed to diagnose me with it.

choose your pigeon ✨

Gosh I'm SO happy I can finally share these. I've decided to try making my own mystery boxes for the first time - each of them includes one out of 12 different pigeon keychains and one out of 12 different pigeon holo stickers! I absolutely LOVED working on this since observing different patterns on these birds is one of my fav things to do...you wouldn't believe the amount of random photos I'm taking of them.

I've done these for my Patreon originally - now they are available in my shop and in my con booths too!

People are way too mean to Jake Sisko about his outfits :(( his fuckass outfits are one of the best parts of the whole show. Seeing non starfleet federation citizens. Seeing futuristic fashion. Having fun with colours and patterns. Seeing his fashion sense change from a child to an adult. He has more fashion sense than any of the muted militarised "something you could find in abercrombie and fitch" ass outfits of modern trek shows. Where is your zest for life, where is your idealism? Only Quark has more drip.

Hey, hello, hi, if I could just squirm in here and-

Ah, thank you, yes, I have something to add about Jake Sisko's outfits, especially as he grew older in the series, and why it was actually really beautiful and meaningful in context of the time it was airing.

Why don’t we ever talk about the fact that leonard nimoy had to walk off set because of tooth pain and show up at his dentist dressed as spock

Also Brent Spiner broke his mandible during the filming of ‘The Game’ and had to be taken to hospital dressed as Data

Jonathan Frakes got hit with a part of his quarterstaff when it was smacked with a sword and had to go to the hospital dressed in his Q-pid Robin Hood rags.

Tracy Scoggins didn’t have to go to the hospital, but while she was filming “Destiny” in full Cardassian makeup, she “took the opportunity to walk around the lot at Paramount and scare the schoolchildren on buses. Until finally Security called the stage at DS9 and said, ‘Could ya’ll do something about keeping your aliens contained over there?’”

[source]

Robert Duncan McNeill had an episode of Voyager where his first major make-up day gave him the appearance of gnarly burns all over his face & hands and he said he then ‘gleefully skipped off to the nearest 7-11 to bask in the horrified looks as he casually shopped’. XD

I remember when Nana Visitor told us a story about going to the hospital in her Star Trek outfit (I cant remember what for) one of the interns there was freaking out until it was explained to him that it was just makeup and that her nose did not, in fact break and crumple like an accordion, and that she was there for something else.

I remember reading that Armin Shimmerman once had to race home to his family after an earthquake still in his quark makeup.

Andy Robinson also went home after that earthquake in full Garak makeup and the traffic lights weren’t working so people had to make eye contact at the intersections and he says everybody always let him go first

Gates McFadden had a ruptured appendix and when she got to the ER the doctor was like “OMG IT’S CRUSHER!!🥹” and she was like well at least I’m gonna get really well taken care of lol

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES 1.19 ⇢ tomorrow is yesterday

Favorite Character Meme: [4] - relationships

These two ❤️