every drop of ink is a ghost

July is ending and I’ve lost the hope in who I was meant to become 

Where it Begins, Erica Jong 

internet shaquille’s basics but especially:

making rice

making scrambled eggs

making oatmeal

levels of cooking meat

using & storing vegetables with recipes in the description (this one has a bit of Sassiness directed at people who dont like vegetables but the content is solid)

food safety + a recipe to demonstrate

how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)

cooking techniques playlist

how to cut x

basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:

freezer meals,

weeknight meals,

kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &

kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)

basic knife skills

picking the right pan for each recipe

j. kenji lopez-alt’s tips and tricks playlist

egg recipes

a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles

and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:

j. kenji lopez-alt (various)

marion’s kitchen (southeast & east asian, western/asian fusion)

maangchi (korean)

future neighbor (mostly korean)

the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have “specialty” ingredients)

family recipes playlist by made with lau (chinese)

not another cooking show (various)

cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)

you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)

how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)

internet shaquille (various)

babish culinary universe (various)

i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick. 

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The Basics

How The Mafia Works

A Primer on Organized Crime for Writers

Mafia versus mafia

United States Acts Against Organized Crime

Legislative Frameworks & Policing Measures

New Mafia versus Old Mafia

Models of Organized Crime

Historical Origins

Criminal Psychology of The Mafia

Timeline of Organized Crime

Every time I wrote your name, I lied. Every time I wrote your name, it was the truth.

kurdish: “my story went to other homes, god bless the mothers and fathers of its listeners” (Çîroka min çû diyaran, rehmet li dê û bavê guhdaran.)

greek: “and they lived well, and we lived better” (και ζήσανε αυτοί καλά και εμείς καλύτερα)

afrikaans: “whistle whistle, the story is done” (fluit fluit, die storie is uit)

goemai: “my tale has finished, (it) has returned to go (and) come home.” (tamtis noe lat / dok ba muaan yi wa)

amharic: “return my story and feed me bread” (ተረቴን መልሱ አፌን በዳቦ አብሱ::)

bengali: “my story ends and the spinach is eaten by the goat” (aamaar kothati furolo; Notey gaachhti murolo) *means something is irreversibly ended because goats eats herbs from the root

norwegian: “snip snap snout, the tale is finished” (snipp snapp snute, så er eventyret ute”

polish: “and i was there [at the wedding] too, and drank mead and wine.” (a ja tam byłem, miód i wino piłem.)

georgian: “disaster there, feast here… bran there, flour here…” (ჭირი – იქა, ლხინი – აქა, ქატო – იქა, ფქვილი – აქა)

hungarian: “this is the end, run away with it” (itt a vége, fuss el véle)

some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don’t know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt— 

— Ocean Vuong, from “My Father Writes From Prison”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

I close my eyes. I only hear the ocean.

— Reinaldo Arenas, Farewell to the Sea: A Novel of Cuba

— Adonis, from “Candlelight”, Selected Poems

— Pablo Neruda, from “Here I Love You”, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

(…) the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.

— Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Theo van Gogh, November, 1876

— Mary Oliver, from “Swimming, One Day in August”, Red Bird

— Lorna Knowles Blake, from “Sketches of Lorca”

— Derrick Brown, from “Le Monde Du Silence”, Strange Light

And I saw the abyss embrace our days, the abyss through whose cracks I heard the sounds of the nearby sea,

— Adonis, from “Candlelight”, Selected Poems

Then, as if breathing, the sea swelled beneath us. If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.

— Ocean Vuong, from “Immigrant Haibun”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

— Saddiq Dzukogi, from “A Pond of Alcohol”

Of the surviving members of Cas's garrison, we have: 1. Anna, who fell; 2. Uriel, who secretly worked with Lucifer, 3. Cas, who, you know, and 4. Balthazar, who jumped at the chance to toss his heavenly duties aside for sex and booze.

Contrast that with two angels that keep it together (Hester and Inias)?

That's a lot of rebellion for a group of angels, given that everyone tells us over and over they don't really rebel. So what gives? If there was that level of disobedience in the ranks of Heaven, it would have imploded long before the first episode.

So the theory is that the reason you have so many problem angels is that this garrison was where they put the misfit toys. The angels that didn't fit. Safely under the supervision of Zachariah.

And IF we adopt that assumption, it leads to the further conclusion that this garrison wasn't chosen to take Hell because they were such great fighters, they were chosen because they were expendable. They were canon fodder. It was a win-win for Heaven. Get rid of the problem angels or achieve the goal. The garrison thought it a great honor, while their superiors sent them in because they didn't care if they lived or died.

And the worst part is that Cas would have died with a smile on his face, believing he sacrificed his life to further the goals of Heaven.

And that's another thing. People talk about Cas reducing his worth to his utility. But it's not some low self-worth thing. It's not him undervaluing himself or misunderstanding what the Winchesters think of him. It's because that's what he has been told for millennia - that his purpose is to serve Heaven - and now that he has put his faith in the Winchesters, it's to serve them, even through sacrifice.

Ok, so here's the fun bit without textual support. What if the plan was to have the entire garrison die all along so Michael could stroll in, smite some demons, make a big deal and have the righteous man immediately be impressed with his power and grateful for being saved. Oh, he wasn't going to get his hands dirty, but once the way was clear, Michael could retrieve his sword with the confidence that he would be so grateful that he would immediately consent.

I was thinking about the Xianle Trio and how their friendship is so fascinating to me because there wasn’t a time when it was perfect. Arguably there wasn’t even a time when it was healthy. Yet these are still people who cared about each other for hundreds of years, however reluctantly. Mu Qing and Feng Xin are even the only martial gods who share territory without one of them being wiped out.

So, this is an examination of their friendship at the earliest point we see it, before Xie Lian ascended.

*

Xie Lian sees Feng Xin and Mu Qing like, as he puts it, fine jades among rocks. A lot of what he sees in them actually seems to be their potential to ascend as martial gods, he sees the same thing in Hong Hong-er. He knows they’re special, but he also knows that he’s more special. He doesn’t see them as just servants, and he definitely doesn’t see Mu Qing as a charity case, but like the sacred swords he’s so enamoured with collecting he sees them as something he can have. Or like fine horses, perhaps, they have so much potential and he wants to be the one to train them.

He does love them, and he cares about their feelings, but he takes them for granted because he doesn’t yet know that friendship is something that can be lost. So he doesn’t really think about how he thinks about them, because they’ll always be there and it will always be like this.

Xie Lian also has what seems to be a genuine personality clash with Mu Qing, when it comes to not understanding how humiliated Mu Qing is to be rescued and protected by him. At the time he doesn’t know how it feels to need that, but even once he does, I don’t think Xie Lian ever really stops hoping to be saved. Mu Qing feels like no one who had to help him could respect him, but even when he needs help we don’t ever see Xie Lian feel that way.

*

Feng Xin is here to protect his Prince. This is the job he was given, it’s what he’s for, and he approaches it in the same stolid way he later approaches having worshippers. Just as he tries to answer his worshippers prayers even when they’ve got the wrong end of the stick (he is not really about giving people sons but he will try) he tries to be whatever Xie Lian needs him to be. As a bodyguard he’s technically there to protect Xie Lian from danger but, before the war, this doesn’t come up much and he mostly seems to try to protect Xie Lian from bad publicity.

Feng Xin’s Prince is good, brave, kind and powerful. He is also silly, naive and scatterbrained, full of deep philosophical thoughts but prone to forgetting to put his shoes on. His easygoing personality means Feng Xin can scold and herd him without much pushback, so he does, keeping him presentable and not giving the people anything to gossip about.

Mu Qing, unfortunately, seems to be exactly the kind of person Feng Xin wants to protect Xie Lian from. Someone who takes advantage of his kindness while sneering at him behind his back. When Feng Xin learns that Xie Lian’s bad start with the other students at Taicang was due to covering for Mu Qing, it only reinforces this impression, and also the impression that Mu Qing is a hypocrite for complaining about Xie Lian getting hurt to protect random people. Feng Xin breaks his own arm rather than let Xie Lian take on that punishment for him, so the fact that Mu Qing has been protected by Xie Lian is something he feels justified in holding against him.

*

Mu Qing feels like they look down on him, not without justification. He’s the latecomer to the trio and the lowest born, and Feng Xin’s rigid ideas about the world mean he definitely does look down on him. Xie Lian’s arrogance is more casual, if he examines his own beliefs he’d say he doesn’t see being a servant as worse than anything else, but he talks about protecting “the common people” without including himself in that group and the fact that he doesn’t notice that kind of thing drives Mu Qing up the wall.

Mu Qing wants to be friends with Xie Lian and isn’t sure how he ever could be when he’s not sure Xie Lian takes him seriously and when their relationship began with Xie Lian doing him a favour. Yet it’s that favour that draws him to Xie Lian as well, as Xie Lian’s easy kindnesses to people who aren’t used to kindness often do. Xie Lian saw his distress and cared about it when he was just a random servant and now he’s not just a random servant, but he’s still a servant. What he does for Xie Lian is his job and he’s far less at peace with that than Feng Xin is, because how does that give him a way to do anything out of friendship? Everything he does is just expected.

On top of this I think he’s even more scared for Xie Lian than Feng Xin is, very aware that his kindness could be taken advantage of and far more aware of how his certainty that he can help everyone is setting him up for disaster. Feng Xin sees Mu Qing as the one taking advantage, though, so anytime Mu Qing tries to talk some sense into his Prince he gets interrupted by Feng Xin trying to protect his Prince from him. Mu Qing is smart and cynical and far more socially aware than the other two, but they won’t listen to him, and it only adds to his sense of being an outsider because Feng Xin is allowed to scold Xie Lian.

*