Tastes Like Key Lime Gogurt

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

A seriously injured Canadian checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice for the sole reason of 'saving on medical bills' (we don't have those).

A South Korean man reflects on his high school prom as a major formative event in his life (prom isn't a thing outside of america, and definitely not in South Korea).

A professional hockey player in the NHL was described as scoring an average of 60 goals per game (the world record for most goals scored by an entire NHL team in one game was 21 goals from the Montreal Canadiens). That same fic also at one point had the main characters show up to a game late, and were met with their very distressed teammates informing them that they were barely holding on, it was the third period and they were only up by fourteen points (kids hockey usually stops counting goals once a team is up by ten, because at that point it's a brutally one sided massacre). Only way any of that fucking madness made sense was if the author was trying to apply football scoring rules to hockey.

Jewish characters being mentioned as 'observing the sabbath' on Sundays (jewish shabbat starts at sunset on friday and ends on saturday at sunset).

Non-American characters mentioning 21 as the legal drinking age (it's 18-20 literally everywhere else).

Characters having to go through customs and border security while travelling between two countries in the EU (not a thing).

Characters in Japan that are canonically speaking exclusively Japanese having a big conversation about what pronouns people should use for them (gendered pronouns are first person in japanese, so the character wouldn't have to tell anyone how to refer to them).

A fic from the mid 00's where the author truly, genuinely believed that Christmas and 'Kurisumasu' were two completely different holidays celebrated in Japan.

Ok I put this on FB but it can't hurt to put here too. We need help with Fantine!

Dog location: Northeast Georgia, just outside metro Atlanta and near the NC/TN/SC borders. TL;DR: Really sweet stray dog has ringworm; current foster is immune compromised; need someone to help by housing her for the duration of her treatment. Only need a short-term foster (approximately a month is the estimate for ringworm treatment? up to six weeks, I guess) and we can help find a permanent placement for her when her treatment is complete.

Details: Fantine is a stray dog we have been fostering for about the last month, she has a wonderful temperament (very sweet and trusting with people, quite resilient, friendly to all the dogs she has met) and is about a year and a half old. She has had all her vaccines and flea/tick/heartworm treatment and was spayed almost three weeks ago. and is healing up from it really well.

She's also ringworm positive, and I have some serious immune-related health conditions. The vet who diagnosed her was worried about her staying in the house with me even though she has been in quarantined in the laundry room and we are being very cautious about biosecurity.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri, commonly known as the chameleon semi-slug, and an unidentified species of semi-slug from the genus Sheldonia

The term "semi-slug" is used to describe an intermediate stage of evolution that occurs as snails evolve into slugs. Nearly 1,000 different species of semi-slug are currently known to exist, and these bizarre little creatures can be found on at least four continents.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri and Varadia amboliensis

Each species of semi-slug is technically still classified as a snail, but its shell is noticeably reduced, becoming smaller and more internalized as the species evolves. A semi-slug officially becomes a regular-slug once its shell is no longer visible at all.

As this article explains:

If life were simple, there would be snails and slugs. Snails carry their homes on their backs; slugs are naked and embarrassed. But life isn’t simple, so of course there’s secret option #3 – the semi-slug, a bizarre creature that sits exactly between the snail and the slug.

Above: genus Satiella and genus Euaustenia

This article describes the distinction between a snail, a slug, and a semi-slug:

In contrast to snails, which have an external shell large enough to accommodate the body, or slugs, in which the shell is completely internal or absent, semi-slugs have an external shell, but the shell is too small to accommodate the animal’s entire body.

Above: Megaustenia siamensis

The evolutionary process that causes the shell to recede is known as limacization, and it's especially common in moist, low-calcium environments where a snail's shell may be more of a burden than a benefit:

Terrestrial slugs are not a monophyletic group, but a case of convergent evolution in which the slug form evolved from different lineages of land snails that gradually lost their shell through a process called limacization. Limacization resulted in adaptive radiation in land snail lineages, as slugs became adapted to diverse moist and protected spaces, such as crevices in rocks and wood debris. The loss of the shell also allowed for more movement and less calcium dependence, making slugs more successful as pests.

Above: Gaeotis nigrolineata, also known as the Puerto Rican semi-slug, has a neon green shell that is almost completely internalized, but the shell is clearly visible through the semi-slug's translucent body

Some semi-slugs have shells that are still opaque and largely visible, with a patch of flesh covering only the outer edges of the shell, while others have shells that are more significantly reduced, transparent, and/or concealed.

Above: Ibycus rachelae, commonly known as the green-shelled semi-slug, and a species of semi-slug from the genus Durgella

This topic was mentioned in my previous post about Ibycus rachelae, but I wanted to write a more detailed post about semi-slugs, because they're just so fascinating and weird.

Above: a black-and-white semi-slug from subfamily Sheldoniinae

Above: Fastosarion brazieri again, but this one is especially spiky for some reason

Sources & More Info:

Australian Geographic: Meet the Semi-Slug, a Snail without a Home

Carnegie Museum of Natural History: What's So Good about Being a Slug?

Frontiers: Terrestrial Slugs in Neotropical Agroecosystems (PDF)

iNaturalist: Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, & 12

The Shell-Makers: Introducing Molluscs: On Becoming Sluggish

Land Snails and Slugs of Sabah and Labuan, Malaysia: Semi-Slugs

So that’s why a bunch of parents rubbed jalapeño juice on their elbows

the scene: Wrigley Field, Chicago.

the players: Me, a novelist and unpaid intern for a coffee company that gives all its profit to charity.

A Nice teacher named I think Claire

An older gentleman with hate in his heart

the precise circumstance: It's the eighth inning. The Chicago Cubs are losing 17-1. For those of you who don't watch baseball, a 17-1 game is not competitive. The game is over. They only continue playing because major league baseball has not yet adopted a Mercy Rule.

the event: The nice teacher named I think Claire stops me as I am returning to my seat from having visited the restroom. She says that she is a big fan of mine, and that she really loves my books, and asks if she can have a picture. I say of course. It is a genuine delight to meet Claire at this noncompetitive baseball game mostly notable for the pounding heat of Chicago summer.

And then the older gentleman with hate in his heart leaps up and shouts, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU'RE IN MY SIGHT LINE."

Apparently, Claire and I are blocking his view of one pitch of this blowout baseball game. I apologize to the man and explain that we're just taking a quick picture, and then he says something that I can't repeat on tumblr*, and then we take the picture and the encounter ends.

DO NOT BE LIKE THIS OLDER MAN WITH HATE IN HIS HEART. ALLOW PEOPLE TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS WITH UNPAID INTERNS DURING NONCOMPETITIVE MOMENTS IN NONCOMPETITIVE SPORTING EVENTS.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

@ellieandmiaandlily So my read tends to be that strength - whether physical or otherwise - is typically far more to do with things like aetheric density and one's ability to channel determination and willpower into akasa than with things like size and muscle mass. There's plenty of suggestions peppered throughout the game to suggest that aether is directly responsible - or at least heavily involved - in making people able to move about and do things in general, and that running critically low leaves one exhausted and struggling to move about on one's own, as well as several mentions that one of the most common ways of replenishing one's aether is simply to consume and digest food.

side note: one might hypothesise that life on Etheirys utilises aetheric energy rather than chemical energy like ATP to power itself; this in turn suggests that the cells of etheiryan organisms might lack the mitochondria so common to eukaryotes on Earth, as they might simply have no need for them. Either that, or they might have an equivalent but rather different structure that provides the cell with the ability to draw on and utilise the body's aetheric reserves to power itself rather than needing to convert glucose to ATP as is the case with terrestrial life.

From this perspective, there is absolutely nothing to prevent a Lalafell or, say, a Miqo'te of unusually short stature, from being every bit as physically strong as the largest and mightiest of Hrothgar or Roegadyn - and exceptional individuals in particular are clearly not really held back all that much by petty little details like physical limitations.

side note: of course, by being a fictional world, the setting inevitably also operates at least partially on fictional logic - much like how Roger Rabbit could easily escape his handcuffs "but only when it was funny", I'd argue the physical strength of a character in XIV has far more to do with whether said strength is narratively or thematically appropriate, or simply whether "it would be funny" or not, than it does any physical properties of said character

This is not to say that size and/or muscle mass serves no purpose within the setting - there's clearly still a degree of general correlation between physical strength and factors like size and muscle mass, but it's clearly quite diffuse, and might possibly be more as a signifier of people who deliberately train themselves to get stronger. It is entirely possible that some people might find it easier to mobilise their inner strength into physical strength simply by growing and using their muscles, while others might have an easier time shuffling their aether around more directly - that at the end of the day, it might be as simple as just being different strategies of utilising your own aetheric reserves, or even a degree of bolstering your own confidence and belief in yourself. Considering the presence of forces such as akasa in particular, I'd argue it's entirely consistent with the setting that simply convincing yourself of your own strength - believing that you are physically strong - might actually make you physically stronger simply through that conviction alone. And I mean, why not? Why shouldn't it make sense for a person who feels more confident in, and secure in, themselves and who they are might also be more capable of utilising their body to its limits, if not beyond? Much like how the setting recognises the power of hope and friendship, it also very much recognises the power of being confident in yourself - it's not even subtext so much as just straight up text.

I sell seashells on your seashore.

Somebody on Twitter pointed out that the Big Finish companion Hex is canonically from the year 2021, so when he occasionally abbreviates the word "suspicious" to "sus," it's probably an Among Us reference.

School For Dragon Babies (1884) + Seminary For More Advanced Dragon Babies (1892)