Murderbot, Good Omens, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, quilting, cooking, and opinions & stories about a lifetime in fandom... but mostly reblogging stuff I think is interesting or hilarious.
So it's national Recreational Explosives, Hand Loss and Wildfire day, and unlike 2023, there is nary a drop of rain in sight.
Despite being slapped upside the head by God, my put technically inclined neighbor has acquired TWO pallets of fireworks this year.
The state is of no help: my city police department has made it pretty clear they don't intend to respond to any fireworks calls this weekend. I've sent the pictures I took to the county tipline and received and automated email reply saying that it will take several weeks to process my case. Perhaps he will get jail time later, but this does not actually you know. Stop him from setting the neighborhood ablaze. Going up to his door the week prior and very politely asking him to move- not cancel, just relocate - his celebrations was met with calling me a "nosy bitch" and "I'll set one off in your ass!".
Sometimes God needs us to make our own miracles.
My miracle comes with several layers, and plenty of opportunities to back down without losing face. We'll see how many are needed.
The first wave has already been deployed: a psyop directed at the Visiting Mother In Law of the miscreant.
I got up at 8:30 AM this morning to make sure I'd be in the front yard of my house, casually doing yardwork with Herschel. His participation was essential.
For those of you who are new here, Herschel is the world's most charming Cardigan Welsh Crime Tube, who thinks everyone in the world is his best friend and that people come to the house to see him specifically. So at 9:04 AM when the visiting mother-in-law appeared around the corner on her daily power-walk around the block, Herschel employed his natural Corgi instinct to make friends with everyone and cheerfully tossed himself on the sidewalk in front of her, belly up for expected tummy rubs.
"OH AREN'T YOU DARLING!!" My target coos, kneeling down to pat him while he makes him like snuffling noises of glee. She is at least 70. I think her bright pink leg warmers and terrycloth headband might be original from her jazzercise days.
"I'm so sorry! Herschel you're going to trip people doing that!" I apologize, going up to greet the woman. "I'm [REDACTED], I don't think we've met..?"
"No, I'm just visiting my daughter and her family- my name is Barbara. And who is this?" She asks Herschel, whose whole back end is waggling with glee.
"This is my service dog Herschel." I explain while he rolls around on the pavement. "I just wanted him to get some time outside before the pyrotechnics start."
"Oh. Yes." Barbra grumbles and I know I've got her. "My son-in-law is planning something extravagant." She says with such disdain it practically comes out of her nose. This is a woman who loves her daughter and dearly wishes she married someone, anyone else.
"Yeah, he got rained out and sick the last two years, so I think he's compensating." I agree.
"Oh he's definitely overcompensating!" Barbra spits, then shakes her whole body like a dog. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't complain. You said he's a service dog?"
I go for it.
"Yeah! I have... Neurological problems." I say and that is technically true. "I've um. Lost a lot of things, like a sense of time, or appetite, and his job is to remind me to eat or take my meds or alerts that I'm having an episode. My personal dog-tor!" I say, patting his adorable little head, and he leans on me, equally adoring.
"Oh, is that why-?" Barbra starts to ask, gesturing at the top of her head, but stops herself.
I hadn't planned this, but yesterday I'd shaved my head to deal with the heat and now only have a quarter inch of hair, which doesn't really hide the scars from when I got run over by a minivan. They're bright red with the heat and exertion of yard work.
I decide I'm okay with lying to a stranger to prevent my house from being set ablaze.
I sort of... Crumple to the ground and drop the rake I was holding, and Herschel immediately climbs into my lap to comfort me as I start to cry.
"Oh my God." Says Barbra.
"I'm sorry!" I gasp, tears streaming down my face. I've been stressed and this is honestly very cathartic. "I'm sorry to dump on you, I'm just so scared-!"
"Oh my God. It's bad." Barbra realizes.
"D- do you know what-" a pause as Herschel tries to manually clear my nostrils like a good service dog. "-oh, Herschel... It's - do you know what an astrocytoma* is?"
*An astrocytoma is a type of brain tumor.
Barbra turns white and sits down next to me. "I'm so sorry... I- one of my friends from church had one, it was agony but she's alright now!" She tries to reassure me.
"It hurts! Everything hurts all the time!" I sob. "And- and I'm scared, so he's scared and I feel bad for hi which just makes it worse and then there's the-" I gesture at the sky. "I have surgery in a month to remove as much of it as they can and do biopsies to see if I need radiation too but..."
"-but all that noise must be Hell on you and your doggy." Barbra nods.
"It'd be fine if he went down to the lake of something but, that house's driveway is like, a hundred feet from my bedroom, I can't sleep and it TERRIFIES Herschel..." I whimper pathetically.
"Well. I may be able to do something about that." Barbra decides.
"Oh no, I don't want to intrude!" I mock-protest.
"No, we're the ones intruding dear. I'll have words with him." She growls. I get the impression she's been waiting for an excuse To Have Words With Him.
"Th-thank you. Um. It's getting hot and I'm a mess, we should probably go inside..." I mutter and Barbra very kindly helps me and Herschel to the front door and tells me she'll be by later with watermelon as we wave goodbye.
From the porch, I watch her furiously power-walk back to her daughter's house, wrench open the front door, and issue a battle cry of "HEN-RY!!!" before it slams behind her.
Now I realize that this may not have been the most honest or ethical thing to do, but I figured it's more polite and ethical than the next step, which is chemical warfare, courtesy of Bath & Body Works :)
Well, they Psyop seems to have worked! That cul-de-sac, and indeed my entire block is perfectly quiet tonight!
Unfortunately I cannot say the same of the surrounding neighborhood, so it has been necessary to deploy The Stench.
The Stench is a mixture of Odoriferous chemicals meant to be discreetly poured over a surface (preferably something hot, like a sidewalk or fence in direct sunlight) to render an area temporarily uninhabitable, Similar to spraying coyote pee on your garden to discourage the rabbits. I can't give you a full recipe because I forgot to take notes, but elements include:
Spoiled beef broth, which is both rancid and unexpectedly sour (boiled to kill bacteria)
Expired milk, the most retch-inducing ingredient for me.
Several bottles of Liquid Ass
Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce
Concentrated Dog Urine
and FOUR bottles of Bath & Body Work's Cucumber Melon, which smells light and fruity when used as a light body spray, but in concentration smells like an entire fruit cart left to rot, possibly along with the carcass of the fruitseller.
The resulting solution smells like raw sewage, a fraternity dorm fridge when the power's been out for a week, and a roadkilled skunk. It's impressively vile. Herschel wanted to roll in it so bad.
I've spent the last few hours strolling the surrounding neighborhoods until I found the source of the mortars and flying explosives that are the real hazards, ingratiating myself into the parties, and discreetly dousing the lawns and fences nearby until someone goes "OH GOD!" and gags, and the party breaks up shortly thereafter. I returned home because I ran out of The Stench, despite hiding five 2L soda bottles of it in a backpack.
I will call it a success though, because while I can hear fireworks, they're all at least a mile away from me. In total:
Fire Hazard Parties derailed: 13
Screaming: 10
Crying: 13
Vomiting: 4
Fight blaming each other for causing The Stench: 5
Called the city to complain about The Stench, on the assumption it was a sewage issue, and then waited right next to their pile of illegal fireworks, for the fire department to show up: 2.
Guy who claimed to be enjoying the smell: 1
Party was partially derailed by The Stench, and partly by the fact they actually did start a fire: 1 (every human was alright, the pyro's roof, not as much)
Stray dogs caught and returned home: 2
So next year: MORE STENCH.
Until then, I have a corgi zooted on trazadone on my feet, and we bid you goodnight.
(If you would like to support a disabled storyteller and/or fund more stench research, you can donate to my Ko-fi or pre-order my Family Lore book on Patreon)
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āAriel sold her voice for legs just because of a guyā
Meanwhile Ariel with legs;
Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you donāt get a collection like hers overnight)Ā and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.
Ursula made it more about Eric than Ariel ever did.
and i mean hell this has been talked about before in more depth than i can, but when people complain about how the ending was changed (the original fairytale does not give ariel a happy ending, she dies trying to protect the prince), i think about the fact that this was written by a gay man in the 1980s
and i think itās entirely valid (and gives her an extremely strong connection to the queer community) to change the story so she doesnāt die because of who she loves
Triton made escape a necessity. Once someone goes to the point of destroying your possessions in a violent rampage, there is no staying and sticking it out, thereās no safety. (And Ariel, even in Ursulaās lair, gave Triton more thought than he deserved at the time.) Nowhere in the ocean she could go and be safe. Everyoneās always āwhy donāt they just leave :|ā in abusive situations until the leaving is not something they find 100% worthy of approval.
Ursula made it about Eric. She didnāt have to. Ariel had to get out from under Tritonās thumb, it could have been literally anything. Ursula took advantage of a desperate victim for her own agenda. Realistic predatory behavior toward a vulnerable person.
And also
Thereās always the āEric didnāt want her until she was silent and meekā criticism - FIRST OF ALL he started out looking for a woman who wasnāt silent, and second of all what part of the carriage driving bit (or any of her other actions on land) is meek, exactly?
People above have noted the queer subtext. Now, on the subject of Ariel being willing to leave her family, aside from the baseline āthis is an abusive environment and she was not safe thereā angle I already mentioned, consider: Arielās father made it clear he would stop at nothing to crush and tear down who she was and replace it with what he wanted her to be. Now - what demographic might that resonate with? And given Ashmanās involvement, do you think that was a coincidence?
there has been scholarly discussion about the idea that the og little mermaid story, where she dies at the end, was written as a queer allegory.
so taking that into accountā¦ there is something very touching about taking this story from hans christian andersen from beyond the grave and being like āthings are different now. they get to be happy. she gets to live.ā
also in re: āEric didnāt want her until she was silent and meekā the meek partās been discussed but can we please talk about how when he first met her he thought she wasnāt the girl with the voice that he was trying to find and was disappointed, but that he slowly fell for her anyway? Heād explicitly wanted Ariel WITH her voice, but came to love her without it.
The bit about Howard Ashman being queer is finally giving me some glimmer of understanding of why the teenaged girl mermaid is named āAriel.ā Because, although the Disney movie single-handedly changed popular perception thereafter, Ariel is a boyās name. Howard Ashman absolutely knew that.
(Ariel in Shakespeareās The Tempest also has male pronouns, in case anyone was struggling to remember.)
The Little Mermaid is a far better trans allegory than Mulan. Mulan was doing a temporary job to save her father. Ariel absolutely wanted a different life in a different body in a different culture with no intent on going back.
One of my favourite GO moments is when Nina calls Crowley weird bc she really breaks the glittery 4th wall of the story and makes you realise how deeply strange they must look.
To everyone on the street there is just this extremely gay, pushy bookseller bookhoarder who probably sells something illicit or runs a backroom operation in his shop to stay in business in the middle of Soho. Then thereās his off putting emo rottweiler husband/body guard/possibly a sugar baby because his only job seems to be mogging during their thinly veiled public dom/sub play while he drives the other one around at a gazillion miles an hour in Draculas favourite hot wheel.
Feel free to reblog for other people to vote. DO NOT SEND HATE TO ANYONE FOR WHAT THEY VOTED. This is merely for fun and to see what people genuinely think.
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The 4th of July commemorates the American Revolution, an event which took place in Qing-dynasty North America during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, Gaozong
The way that most of Conan Doyleās Sherlock Holmes storiesā most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880ās, compels me.
Yup, thereās a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young womanās complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil.Ā Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again.Ā (This is why I find āSecretly a womanā or āTransā Holmes headcanons much more convincing than āsociopathā Holmes.)
I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says sheās probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going āOKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know youāre okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us toā.
The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.
This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmesā family life.Ā The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.)Ā Thereās definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors.Ā Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime.Ā And yes, so much of it is of the personal type.Ā
dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) donāt go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DONāT HAVE uhā¦.you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which youād think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just beā¦a good person who helps out people the police canāt and wonāt help. There you go. Thatās how to write a relevant modern Holmes.
One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases.Ā In the stories, Holmesā bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them.Ā Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since itās such a gimme.
There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:
Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)
Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devilās Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I donāt know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.
#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )
Letās not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman whoās being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law canāt touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.
I think itās also important to note, and complicates our ideas about what the highly patriarchal/misogynistic society of 19th century England looked like, that these stories SOLD
they were POPULAR
the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a womanās power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)
which is fascinating in light of. you know. [gestures broadly at all of Victorian gender dynamics, laws, etc.]
I feel obligated to point out that he tended to treat American women as a slightly exotic species- but in The Noble Bachelor Holmes still comes down on the womanās side, essentially saying āShe did the only thing she could do out of love, whereas you were just marrying her bank account anyway, you jerk.ā
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hey what the fuck is going on with the catholics rn???
The short, simple version is this:
Thereās a splinter group of ultra conservative (religiously and politically) āCatholicsā who have for several decades claimed that the Church has strayed from the true Catholicism since the Vatican II reforms of the mid 20th century. They have been warned about their actions by multiple popes at this point.
The breaking point this week was that they consecrated bishops within their sect after being expressly forbidden to do so by Pope Leo. Essentially this group is denying that the current pope is truly part of the succession of St Peter ā more or less theyāre saying the pope isnāt Catholic enough.
This may not seem like a huge deal from the outside, but it is essentially treasonous in terms of severity. So they have been kicked out of the Catholic church.
To be clear, Iām on the Popeās side here, which yeah came as a surprise to me as well, but this schismatic sect (SSPX) sucks really bad
I have to admit that watching all of this is really satisfying even from the outside, bc we so rarely see this specific kind of asshole face Real Consequences, but it seems to be Really Fucking Great for all of the Catholics and ex-Catholics around me.
Claire was talking about the truly bitchy little letter SSPX wrote to Leo, and it's killing me. Like, sirs, if you think the Pope is wrong on theology, uh... ? Isn't that like... ? Are you gonna nail this letter to a church door? I hear that's traditional in these circumstances.
Reminder that the current Pope is a canon lawyer, which means he has legal qualifications in the law of the Roman Catholic Church.
Whereas the SSPX lot's main areas of difference are disagreement with the whole Vatican II reforms of the 1960s. Among other things, these reforms included the Church officially releasing the Jews from any culpability in the death of Jesus and stating persecution of the Jewish people was contrary to church law (I know, what took them so long).
Meaning while it's definitely not the only reason, we can safely assume Rampant Antisemitism among the SSPX lot has much to do with the whole situation.
-The Society of St Pius X (SSPX) is founded by, basically, a Nazi. It attracts a whole lot of Nazis who, as fascists do, claim itās about Tradition and Traditional Values like the Latin Mass and not about being virulently antisemitic.
- SSPX schisms in 1988 by ordaining bishops without permission because Pope John Paul II is too liberal. If they expected to actually start a new church or get the majority of Catholics to come to them, they are disappointed.
- So disappointed in their Holy War that wasnāt, the SSPX bishops that got ordained (and were defacto excommunicated although nothing specific was said by the Vatican about that) asked for permission to return in 2009 and were allowed to.
- The popes in that time had no taste to deal with this mess, so they basically allow the sect to continue while making pleas for unity.
- As part of that unity, in 2017 Pope Francis decreed that marriages and confessionals performed by the SSPX were legal and canonical because otherwise there would be a hot mess.
- Now in 2026, SSPX decides that the time has come to test Pope Leoās resolve and announces that theyāre going to confirm their own bishops without papal permission.
- The Vatican puts out a bunch of announcements that boil down to āNo, no, think of unity.ā
SSPX: Sounds weak and woke to us. Time for Holy War II, Electric Boogaloo! What do you think of that, Chicago Bob?
Pope Chicago Bob: You pull out a knife, I pull out a gun.
At this point in time, the Vatican has announced that ANYONE who remains in or supports SSPX is excommunicated, right down to & including the laity who go to their churches. No SSPX weddings or confessions taken are blessed by God.
Now, thereās an out for people who just showed up at one of their churches for Easter & Christmas - they can just quietly go elsewhere and thatās cool. And probably laity who were deep in SSPX will do the same and keep their heads low.
But itās my understanding (via Claire Willett) that if youāre SSPX clergy who want back, you need to find a non-SSPX bishop to vouch for you, essentially be on probation for a while, and send the Pope handwritten letters of repentance and reconciliation.
The SSPX has come back with the usual āYouāre so mean, we just really truly CARE about tradition and you were So! Mean! to us, why are you so cruel?ā response of a bully facing consequences. If it was supposed to bring people flocking to their side, it hasnāt. If it was supposed to make Pope Leo even dignify it with a response, it didnāt.
And now the ultraconservative Opus Dei sect sleeps with one eye open.
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
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You know what the second I stopped saying āI wish I had a friend who-ā and started being āthe friend who-ā my life has gotten 100% more fulfilling
No legitimately. I have a tea table in my room for when friends can come over again. Most of my friends have a key to the back door in my room. I make my friends sweaters and buy things they mention they want. I send handwritten letters in the mail to my friend who lives a block away. I annotate poetry books and give them as gifts when itās not even a holiday. I keep extra gloves in my purse and jackets in my car.
Iām not trying to be like āohoho look at me Iām such a good friendā, Iām saying the second I stopped going āI wish I had friends who would invite me to tea partiesā and just. hosted the tea parties myself? I still got to do the thing. I still got to see my friends. I still got to be happy with them.
I donāt think itās about who does it, I think itās just the genuine act of caring for people, and giving a little light to the environments youāre in.
Okay. Apparently Iām not done talking about this.
Itās a lot of energy, I get that. Especially if youāre putting in all this effort, but not getting any back.
But I think thatās the reason no one does it. I mean weāre so worried weāll start doing all these things and our friends wonāt like it or wonāt be into it, so we just donāt.
Only last week my friend messaged me, asking if I wanted to go stargazing with her. When I forget about our weekly virtual tea party, another friend called me to ask if I wanted them to host it this week.
Iāve been invited on hikes and picnics and pie making competitions over zoom, and it all sort of started with me going out of my way to be āthat friendā.
I genuinely believe that the easiest answer to āhow do I get friends like that?ā Is to be one. In most cases, everyone else just follows by example, because they arenāt worried theyāll be wasting time and energy anymore.
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