Convenient marker to Sumi

I have to say that Bug(5) is a splendidly capable deputy. Upon hearing that I did not have the time to start seedlings, and was stressin’, Bug industriously sorted, potted, seeded, labeled, and watered 20 entire pots. By themselves.

Today’s school run chaos featured:

- Dr Glass, a long covid haver, was not on scene.

- bear(7) excused themselves with a Formal Letter, which was accepted.

- bug(4) however demanded to go to school, as they have a phonics test and are planning to surpass their fiancé on it

- mouse(1.5) after doing some strategic nonverbal squeaking and begging, was presented with a highly desirable used butter knife, adorned with Nutella residue, in a fit of absentmindedness by myself. Normally, house policy is that Mouse is not armed, but I was distracted and their squeaking was so confident that it just sort of happened. Mouse then carefully licked the knife clean and secreted it in a very clever place for later.

- the very clever place was down the neck of their sleepsuit/footie pajamas, so it slid down into their foot; upon being taken down after breakfast, they tried to subtly retrieve it and ALMOST got away with it.

P.S. I have a sore thourt

Thank you"

mouse, an exceedingly small and mischievous person who is simply called Mousey instead of their actual name, commits myriad domestic crimes that cannot be predicted, and for which they usually escape accountability by having great charm.

mouse has put pet chickens in buckets of water. mouse industriously digs up earthworms to eat ON PURPOSE. At any given moment mouse IS putting a loaf of bread into the washing machine and turning it on. Mouse can open the liquor cabinet and, knowing they are being naughty, frequently does so when they think they are unobserved, simply to gloat over their access to the whiskey, stroking the bottles gently and evilly, and then locking the cupboard again and creeping off. mouse does it all so quietly and with such shining innocence that their nursery carers, the same nursery carers who saw through the bullshit of Bear and Bug, hand the criminal mouse over with a bewildered apologetic expression, explaining that they do not KNOW at one point on a Tuesday morning mouse learned to pick locks. Or HOW mouse almost caught a squirrel. Or apologising because mouse managed to do X with Y, X being an improbable verb and Y being furniture.

Separate post because this topic is a little tangential to that, but I think it does a great job of unearthing one of our very well-hidden internal biases, which goes as follows:

Good people don't need to be taught.

A good person (in this case, a good child) shouldn't need to be told to be gracious and grateful when given a gift. A good child should just know that a holiday tradition of gift-giving is a social performance to strengthen family bonds and that personal preference or genuine reactions are secondary to that performance. A good child should just know how to value gifts, how to express thanks, how to praise and compliment. No caretakers in their lives should need to put any effort into instructing or modeling these things.

Good people should just know how to be good. If they were really Ontologically Good, their inherent goodness would simply intuitively guide them to correct behaviors. If they can't do that on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.

.

.

...Which all sounds very reasonable and obvious, and surely a mistake that only fundie christian families would make! Except that people in the social justice sphere also do this all the time. It's not anybody's job to educate you. You should know this already. If you were a Good Person, you wouldn't need to be taught. You would simply intuit the correct philosophies and gravitate to them according to your superior internal moral compass.

If you were a Good Person, you would already know that everything you were taught by your family and/or background was wrong. You should have rejected it already. You should have cut off your family, your heritage, everything about your childhood and upbringing that was Bad and Wrong. You should have known it was all a lie.

If you were a Good Person, you should be able to find the correct way yourself. You should be able to seek out the proper educational resources, and distinguish them from bad advice leading you astray, and make sense of them all according to your own internal moral code.

If you were a Good Person, you would have found your way by the proper, ascetic, official channels, not by reading a comic or watching anime. You shouldn't need entertainment or art to guide you. You should just know.

Present Practice something that didn’t come easy to me either (in keeping with the topic of the post.) it was something I thought about after realising how hurt I was that my child never said goodnight to me. I would say goodnight I love you so much and do all these things and have this whole special story and they’d just complain, until I realized I had to explain about how you’re supposed to say goodnight and extra points for I love you.

I’ve realized Present Practice has recurred in my writing, indicating that it’s near the top of my mind in terms of important things I can give to the world, and once I figure out what I’m doing with this story this it’s OVER for you guys you’re getting TOLD, you’re getting kissed on the forehead:

This was where he did the only thing so far that he was proud of in this day. He did not start shouting, even though his temper was going something like What the fuck, kids, but worse. He stopped, took a minute, and remembered he'd had this whole thing where he'd wanted his kids to love him. He rubbed his nose, said, "Remind me," and his daemon reminded him: "What do we want them to actually do?"

And he said, "The bare minimum fucking acknowledgement would be nice."

And Bee said, "Have we explained that to them? Do they know?"

Which I believe is worth working on because of the very hard-won long-practiced belief that it is easier to share a lesson if you do it through a little story. An anecdote about my kids or my life or a little fanfiction. Which is exactly what you just said

“Can I have some demon hunter noodles? I’ll eat them NARF NNARF NARF.”

Their sire dutifully bought some pot noodles, the kind you prepare by adding boiling water, and Mouse snarfled the whole pot up as a post-nursery snack this afternoon. As Mouse maintains their general microscopic mousiness by subsisting on tiny little nibbles of improbable things, we were pleased.

This evening, Bear, aged 9, dreamily unpacked the grocery order and discovered several instant porridge pots. “Waheyyyyyy,” they said, and several airy thoughts collided. “Eyy,” they said, percolating, “are we taking these to Wales?”

“Oh, well done, Bear.” I was impressed. Bear had successfully pieced together “yearly camping trip to place we go to, constantly” and “the expensive porridge they usually only get while camping.”

Bear, attention sharpening as they looked at this wealth, asked: “all of them? Can I have one now?”

“I guess. Not the gluten-free ones. They’re really expensive and harder to get. Actually, I only got so many because these weird ones were on super-discount.”

Bear usually has a song on the go. They sang a song about Wales Porridge as they boiled the kettle for sneaky post-dinner porridge.

“Calcifer sings a song like that,” I said vaguely, “but only in the book.”

Mouse came in and saw the proceedings. Eyes round, they hooted. “DEMON PORRIDGE,” they said.

“Well, more of a familiar,” I thought out loud.

“It’s only because we always have it,” Bear said.

“Demon HUNTER porridge,” Mouse said. “THREE MINUTES. NARF NARF NARF.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “Oh yeah. It is.”

Discussing this is not particularly bad infosec due to the completely boring and unhelpful answer! Bear and Bug are based on little custom songs we’d sing them as children. I hope this email tells you nothing!

They weren’t chosen, they were just rhymes.

And Mouse is what we call Mouse. If you could see them when they were born, the only name that would come is Mouse. Not a wee sleekit cowrin timorous beastie! No, a Mouse is a slightly hazardous and frankly irritating small creature that gets by largely on charm and good manners, more than it deserves because of its highly irritating qualities, and knows it full well. Like countless heroic mice of myth and legend, they have always had the energy of a small person about to strap a sword to their hip and do something cheekily dashing. They have a real name, but it’s interchangeable. Mouse is actually genuinely mostly called Mouse. This will not help you in the least. Some people are mice.

Tonight Mouse kindly assisted with tending a sibling who has a cough. All of the siblings like it when their siblings get sick, as they can sanctimoniously nurse them. I asked Mouse what the sibling needed for the perfect tuck-in. Mouse lovingly fixed a bottle of water, carried a teddy up to the top bunk, tucked the sibling into the blankets, set their sleep mask on the top of thejr forehead, stroked their hair from their brow, kissed them sweetly. “Close you eyes, Bear,” Mouse said, “you’ll be better in the morning. I look after you.”

Then Mouse pulled back Bear’s sleep mask on its elastic, and snapped it quite hard against their eyes.

It did not precisely hurt Bear, the sleep mask being soft, but startled them significantly. The lights had gone off in a loud snap, and Bear does not always piece evidence together instantly. They sat up in bed hooting in surprise and distress. “MOUSEY,” they shrieked, blind and with no idea what was happening, but knowing it was a Mouse Problem.

“That’s how you close you eyes,” Mouse said, beatifically.

Tired of scrolling back and forth to quote your favorite lines in a 10k word chapter? Stop the madness. ✋

The AO3 Quoted Comment Tool is a Chrome extension that lets you leave "inline" style comments (think Wattpad style) that automatically format into a beautiful blockquote comment at the end. Here’s how to set it up!

🛠️ Step 1: Installation

Head over to the Chrome Web Store and search for AO3 Quoted Comment Tool.

Or click HERE.🔗

Click Add to Chrome.

Pro-Tip: If you’re on Firefox, look for the "AO3 Inline Comment Companion"—it’s a similar vibe!

⚙️ Step 2: The Best Setting

For the smoothest experience, you’ll want to make sure your AO3 preferences are set to "Chapter by Chapter" rather than "Entire Work." This keeps the extension from getting overwhelmed on those 200k-word behemoths.

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Once the extension is active, you’ll notice a new quote icon 💬 next to every paragraph on AO3.

Find a line that makes you scream/cry/throw your phone.

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⭐ Step 4: Generating the Mega-Comment

Finished the chapter? Now for the magic.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to the standard AO3 comment box.

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Click it. The extension will automatically dump all your quotes into the box, perfectly formatted with tags, followed by your reactions.

Add any closing thoughts and hit Comment!

Pro-Tip: If you quoted a long paragraph, but you only meant a word or a line that just hit. You can edit the quote to reflect that before sending the comment.

📢 Disclaimer

Just a heads up: I am not the developer of this extension! I’m just a chronic fic reader who found this tool and realised it changed my life, so I had to share. Important Tech Stuff: > * 💻 This is a Desktop/PC-only extension (Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium browsers).

📱 Sadly, it won't work on the mobile AO3 site or any apps because mobile browsers don't support Chrome extensions.

Hi! I'm not technically back from the dead. I don't think. But I was made aware by the lovely @furekami that I never posted my contributions to the ORV scenario zine! There's another one somewhere around here. I'll find it. In the mean time, please enjoy.