FRANCESCA ZAPPIA

Omg what fckin episode is this

if I ever tell you “lmk what you think if you read/play/watch it!” I am firmly inviting you to send me a play by play minute by minute cataloguing of your thoughts about The Thing

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.

This is an amazing resource, not only for artists, but for writers too! I love this!

{ID - tweet from @/Iron_Spike that reads, “Black Hair for Non-Black Artists: a Cheat Sheet Thread. Hi, folks! Just spur-of-the-moment decided to put together some reference for folks who want to draw/model black characters in their work, but arent confident they won’t make simple, obvious mistakes w/r/t black hair. END ID}

@creatingblackcharacters !!!

Literal opposite of planned obsolescence. I love you graceful degradation.

This is also why NASA missions usually keep going so long after schedule. They are *masters* of graceful degradation, able to keep machines limping along on minimal power and after sustaining heavy damage

The time Marie Kondo said "you can thank a a shirt you've never worn for teaching you about your taste", thereby making it NOT A WASTE literally rewired my whole brain. Acknowledge the thing and move forward, even if that means leaving the thing behind.

2026 booktok discourse: sad books are a cognitohazard (they make you sad)

The ideal book is 500 blank pages which act as a safe space that allows the reader full control over the narrative without running the risk of nonconsentually forcing their train of thought or violating their cognitive boundaries

Brb lemme go rewrite all my books to be a single page bullet point list of suggested tropes. I’d also include character archetypes but I worry that may infringe on the reader’s ability to make it up them fucking selves.