I didn't ask if it made sense to keep going. I said I'm going to kick your twisted evil ass.

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@marbleglove
I didn't ask if it made sense to keep going. I said I'm going to kick your twisted evil ass.

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I had a very important call but my cat had to make himself Known
PATREON
NEW FISH JUST DROPPED
I KNOW that playing God is morally wrong, but holy HELL, it looks fun.
Why is it playing God? We arenât violating any natural laws. God set the parameters of the universe to allow these things. Thereâs nothing wrong with it, thereâs no hubris in learning more about how to manipulate the universe around us.
We made a whole-ass fish.
The reason this was accidental BTW is because they used paddlefish eggs as a negative control group for a breeding experiment on sturgeons because the scientists, quite naturally, assumed that they were SO unrelated it would be genetically impossible for them to mate. Like. I cannot stress enough to you how these creatures last related ancestors were
140 MILLION YEARS BACK.
If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?
This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.
This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.
And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.
Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.
THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.
THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE
It sort of goes against the rules of genetics a bit.
Oh i forgot to add
THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.
To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.
BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.
the scientists literally had to do the tests AGAIN just to be like "okay this is real right. This is actually like, not a fluke, this works right" and it worked again. They just Can!
So for those who don't know what the original fishes look like, this is an American Paddlefish:
And this is a Russian Sturgeon:
So honestly, saying the hybrid is "weird looking" is a bit fort de cafĂŠ when you see its parents. I think the sturddlefish looks cute.
"these creatures last related ancestors were 140 million years back"
(glances at fish)
Yeah that's exactly what I thought you'd look like, you Mesozoic fuck
#Holding a red squirrel in my left hand and a blue whale in my right desperately hoping to make a purple squale (via @dykepuffs)
placental mammals (eutheria) diverged from marsupials around 100 million years ago. whales and squirrels (rodents at least), being both placental animals, would have diverged at or after that time, meaning sturgeon and paddlefish still have 40 million years more separation.
before the sturddlefish, a purple squale would have seemed more likely- and since that's ridiculous and obviously no one would think that's possible except as a joke, that should speak to HOW impossible this situation seemed, and why they thought obviously this will be perfectly fine. If you took squirrel eggs (the gamete) and tried to use whale sperm to fertilize them, you could reasonably expect that to not work. That should be a good control. The eggs would definitely not actually be fertilized, and even if sperm somehow made it into the egg and some kind of development started, you would expect them to not make it to term and definitely not make a whole ass new animal that's perfectly fine actually.
And yet there is a purple squale in your fish tank, in fact there's like 100 of them and everyone is saying you played god but this was not what should have gone down, this was never the plan. This isn't you playing god, you think, this is god having a laugh at your expense.
Iâm kinda surprised that nalbinding isnât as popular as crochet and knitting tbh because it has an even lower barrier of entry tools wise and unlike crochet and knitting it makes fabric that you can cut.
I guess itâs because itâs slower or something.
Nalbinding aka needle binding is when you use yarn and a big sewing needle to make fabric btw
It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.
Some people even make rugs.
I feel like part of it might be casual people are generally aware of the existence of crochet and knitting, even if they donât know very much about either, but have never heard of nalbinding
Yeah I hadnât heard of it until recently and I ordered a big bone needle for myself to try it out and that should be arriving soon.
I was surprised that Iâd never heard of it though. Itâs older than knitting and crocheting and even though itâs been done all over the world itâs super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so Iâm surprised Iâve never heard of it.
It seems like the sort of thing that would be popular even if not as popular as crocheting and knitting, considering the low barrier of entry.
You also donât need a bunch of different sized needles for nalbinding or whatever. The size of the stitch is controlled either completely freehand or by pulling it against one of your fingers. Most people who have a lot of nalbinding needles seem to either have tried out wood, bone, and metal ones to see which kind they liked or they enjoy carving wood or bone and like making their own needles as an extra hobby.
Itâs also a lot easier to freehand and adjust as you go than crochet or knitting and you mostly go by inches instead of rows and number of stitches so a large number of accessories like stitch markers or whatever isnât really necessary.
Maybe the lack of accessories also makes it unpopular idk. People do like collecting things in their nests.
I've been wanting to do so, I cannot find anyone who can teach me, and any books I can find on it are Ass in the Visual Learning department. Otherwise I'd be making the hell outta some nalbinded fabric
I found this channel by a nice man who makes up close tutorials
I create videos on YouTube to learn people how to needlebind using two fingers and your thumb. Needlebinding helps people to relax, relieve
I thought this would be kind of a niche post to make but I was quickly reminded that Iâm on tumblr, the website full of gay people with one billion hobbies.
So my bone needle actually came this evening (yay!) and Iâve started trying this for real. It clicks in my brain way easier than crochet does. Iâve gotta work up the muscle memory but I think I can do this.
The downside as a beginner is that undoing mistakes is more time consuming than with knitting or crochet. Youâve gotta like sew your mistakes out backwards. Disadvantages of making a really sturdy fabric I guess.
I like the feel of this bone needle though and donât think Iâll be trying the wooden or metal ones.
Also I think Iâm gonna have to get good at doing Russian joining if I decide to get good at nalbinding because I donât have wool yarn and the ends wonât felt together if itâs not at least 50% wool. A small price to pay for using big bone needle though.
Anyways curse of new fiber craft be upon ye.
Miss Manners is adding denouncing political correctness to her list of conversational prefaces from which no good ever follows. When people announce that they plan to abandon the rules of civilized discourse, they should be taken seriously. The response should be "Well, if you are in favor of being offensive, I'd rather not hear more."
Judith Martin, Minding Miss Manners In an Era of Fake Etiquette

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this sounds like a party to me
im so fucking stubborn
michael what the fuck.
no its one of my fancy pencils :)
the end cap comes off :)
oh lard
my son he is sick he has every disease
we are nearing peak deviancy
happy back-to-school day
im so clever that its sickening
if i breathe wrong i'll lose him
it got too small for the clip. luckily i realized this eraser has the perfect holes
at what point does this stop being a pencil
Tags via @mik-mania
One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.
Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.
There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!
the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."
bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.
I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what âhookup cultureâ actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call âcruising cultureâ. His response was âhow is that different from dating?â and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: âThatâs ridiculous! You canât expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, sheâs not a prostitute, you canât buy her.â Now obviously thereâs like⌠a lot to unpack there, but I think itâs pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!
Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she âwouldnât put it in those termsâ she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasnât at least on the very immanent horizon was ânuts, honestly.â I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was âOf course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.â
And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how âAunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the weekâ didnât just mean âAunt Terri had a full dance cardâ but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, âwell, fooling around with, I donât know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doorsâ), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.
America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.
There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?
I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!
Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.
A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.
Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...
I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.
Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar
The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come
Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.
DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.
I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. Itâs about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.
Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm
Can't believe no one's mentioned Consider the Fork yet, which is about how environment/resources shape our ways of eating, which shapes both our culture and our concepts of politeness. So interesting, really recommend!
Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World by Jennifer Potter
It isn't so much about edible plants as it is about decorative ones, but I think it fits the theme of this growing list enough for me to add it.
Seven Flowers and
How They Shaped Our World by
Jennifer Potter
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
A Brief History of Vice by Robert Evans is a good one about psychoactive substances.
Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White âbut Californian. And an old man.â in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.
âWhen he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.â
âAww. They were checking on him!â I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought âMaybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands theyâre gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, theyâd be like âWell, thatâs very sad but he IS food now.â So what youâd need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh thatâs what the dwarves were doing! Youâve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.â
oh that's what the dwarves were doing

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Wei Weaving is a Chinese artist
How would you describe a dragon to someone who has never seen a dragon?
"Horse but make it a lizard and give it bat wings and horns"
didnt know how to interpret "make it a lizard" so i wrote lizard and drew an arrow pointing to the horse so people know its a lizard. Also didn't know what bat horns were so I gave it a horned bat nose
"A body like a big cat but completely covered in scales, the head of a crocodile with the horns of an ibex, and the wings of a bat on its back"
On it boss o7, ive mashed all these animals together and threw scales all over it. This the dragon you saw?
"Take a lizard, extend the neck. Add a pair of bat wings to the back. Add horns and sharp teeth."
Seems like we're onto somethin' boss! Though idk how it'd be so fearsome bein such a small thing.
"Big-ass lizard with wings" "big lizard" "Giant lizard" "Big fucking lizard"
don't seem too special?
"Imagine a winged alligator that was 70 feet tall and aware of its existence"
i dont know if this is a dragon but it could definitely be some kind of god
"Dinosaur with wings and horns?"
Dunno which dino you were talkin about so i just picked a random one. Stegosauus :}
"Big snake with legs and horns that can breathe fire"
Ah. Hm.
"A dragon is like a tree, in that it's a made up category for a broadly similar type of mythological creature that has no relationship to other dragons, but you know a dragon when you see one the way you know a tree when you see one."
this is literally exactly like medieval bestiaries. a description which was game-of-telephoned out of an ancient account from somebody who might have seen the animal in question, being misinterpreted by an artist who has not seen it
Eugene Quilt Show
These are all done with a longarm machine, with different different colors for the thread.
Teachers have tried this and are amazed when their classes donât go feral like in the book. Itâs almost as if the book was supposed to be satire and not a treaty on the nature of humanity.
thereâs a timeskip
THEREâS A TIMESKIP
THEREâS A TIMESKIP
THEREâS A TIMESKIP
after losing control of the signal fire thereâs a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyoneâs hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and theyâre still just kind of chilling!!!!
IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH
AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because
THEREâS AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING
AND A PILOTâS CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA
BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM
HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -
IT DIDNâT HAPPEN THAT WAY IN LORD OF THE FLIES EITHER YOU JUST HAVENâT READ IT SINCE HIGH SCHOOL IF EVER AND DONâT REMEMBER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE GODDAMN BOOK
#tbf the dude wrote it to be a dick
yes. yes he did. iâm also gonna direct you to the real life âlord of the fliesâ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until theyâd cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. hereâs a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.
i read about this in rutger bregmanâs human kind, a book i cannot recommend highly enough, but if you donât want to go and read a whole book about the inherent goodness of humanity (which again, you really should) then the relevant excerpt can be found here.
Hey @phillipfancypants I am intrigued, go ahead and lay out your argument
@lizluvscupcakes @hallsofdarkness @shitposting-hobbits-to-gallifrey
the results are in
Okay so basically this all started in 10th grade when my English teacher (idk if this context is needed but she grew up in Yugoslavia in the â80s before moving to the US as a teen and she has a VERY thick accent. Sheâs about 6â4â and has huge black hair that sticks out all around her head. Sheâs the human embodiment of a corvid bird. Truly such a fascinating person) anyway she was talking about Lord of the Flies in class and mentioned that a few years ago some students of hers tried to convince her that the book couldnât have taken place during WWII and that she didnât believe them because âthere have been no atomic bombs except during World War Twoâ and an atomic bomb is referenced as the inciting factor for why the boys were flying over a deserted island in the first place.
But the thing is, if you actually look at all the throwaway historical context details in the book, there is no logical way that it could have taken place in WWII. I realized that all clues point towards an alternate timeline where the Cold War turned hot. About halfway through the book I started bookmarking any scrap of information related the time period and it was getting to the point where each chapter took me twice as long to read because I would continually need to check various articles and Wikipedia pages to cross reference.
Eventually, I ended up writing a 5 -page paper picking the book apart for details which you can read here but Iâll also give you the individual points (a mixture of historical details and borderline headcanon):
Early on in the book, the boys mention that there are probably maps in âthe Queenâs libraryâ that show where they areâthis was one of the first things that stuck out to me, as Elizabeth II didnât become Queen until 1952, and WWII ended in 1945
Ralph mentions watching something on television at home. His dad, although a naval officer, would almost certainly not be able to afford a TV in 1945, BUT televisions were already popularized around the time of Lizzy 2âs coronation (or at the very earliest the 1948 London Olympics) and itâs believable that Ralph could have had one at home. Thereâs also some mentions around space travel/putting a man on Mars that would make more sense during the Cold War
I found Piggyâs character to be very interesting. For one thing, heâs introduced  as being fat due to his Aunt owning a candy store (his parents are both dead). If you know anything about the sugar ration during WWII, youâd know that candy stores would have been non-operational and Piggy would probably not have had access to an excess of sweets.
Continuing with Piggy, Iâd place his distinctive accent as either London Cockney or London Estuary. If Piggy was from London, he would have been evacuated to the British countryside via train (the same evacuations in which the Pevensies stay with their uncle in Narnia) long before the dropping of the atomic bombs. Hereâs where the headcanon comes in: Iâd be willing to bet that Piggy was evacuated to the countryside as a baby during WWII and both his parents were among the 27,000 killed in the London Blitz, hence why he now lives with his aunt. By assuming the years leading up to the book are peacetime instead of wartime, thereâs no issue around the candy store.
And finally, the most compelling argument imoâŚWHY WOULD BRITISH BOYS BE EVACUATED AFTER VE DAY??? In the book, itâs very clear that the LOTF boys are being evacuated from their boarding school after an atomic bomb was dropped. Victory in Europe was May 8th, 1945. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. In what world would British boys be evacuated by a plane traveling over tropical airspace (historically child evacuations in the UK were domestic and carried out by train) to protect them from a bomb dropped in Japan four months after the end of the war in Europe?? The only plausible explanation would be that the USSR dropped a bomb on an Allied power and the boys are being evacuated from Briton all together to avoid nuclear fallout and/or future bombings.
Final note, at one point the boys consider building a new plane and decide against the idea because they âmight get shot down by the Redsâ even though the soviets were literally allies with Britain during WWII. Do you know when they most certainly werenât allies? The Cold War.
Anyway, I end up giving her this essay which she reads and then promptly says âthese are all very interesting points, but there was STILL no nuclear bomb besides the ones dropped on Japan in World War 2â and Iâm like âYes!! I know this!! And Iâm saying itâs an alternate future!!â But she never really seemed to understand what I was saying.
Anyway a few weeks ago I was at my job (Iâve been working IT some summers at my high school after I graduated) and I ran into her and she says âI was going through my desk and I found that essay you wrote on LOTF! I read it again and it was a really good argument piece, especially for a 10th grader.â
So of course I ask her âoh really? Well, were you finally convinced?â
And she basically says âit was goodâŚbut no :) <3â
And I have simply not known peace since.
For a craft exercise, I read a BUNCH of romcoms recently, and condensed a bunch of notes on each into a set of observations coming at the genre as a fantasy author. Would y'all be interested in me sharing that here?
Okay, SO. A brief disclaimer: I will not be naming titles or saying what a specific book did wrong, because at the end of the day, I know how much work it was regardless and there's also a non-zero chance I will sit next to that author on a panel someday. Now let's get into it!
Most of these novels introduced the love interest not just in the first chapter, not just in the first scene, but on page one. And it's smart, because the point is that these two people fall in love, so you're jumping right into the thick of things.
The romcoms that made me laugh the hardest utilized physical comedy the best. I love banter. I love banter. But it can't carry a romcom on its own.
Publishing meta gets publishing money. Books about booksellers, editors, publicists, etc sure seem to get above-average in-house support. Which is not to imply that it's undeserved! Just that it's landing with its targeted readers.
The (usually) contemporary setting means the reader's holding less setting-specific info in their head. This frees up some RAM, as it were, for things I would have to approach very carefully in fantasy, such as dropping a flashback smack in the middle of a scene, or nonlinear storytelling.
Compelling chemistry involves the traits the love interests uniquely bring out in each other. E.g. a stoic person's hidden sense of humor, or a pushover's ability to stand up for something. It's also key that they like these traits on some level, and tied to the person they want to be.
Negative character traits can be greatly mitigated by self-awareness. E.g. It's one thing if someone is consistently and needlessly blunt to the point of rudeness, and acts like that's not a problem; it's another if, internally, they are unhappily aware they're driving people away but don't know how to be any other way.
Escalation. The obvious choice is predictable (some may say boring), but the unexpected choice can feel over-engineered and inorganic. I feel like the balance here is to take the obvious choice and push it further. E.g. Horrible ex shows up at the bakery the narrator just started! Obvious choice is to kick him out. Engineered choice would be having him slip on fresh-waxed floors and land in a vat of custard that just happened to be the right size and sitting in the middle of the bakery. Hm. The escalated version is to have the narrator tell him to get out, and when he balks, start throwing day-olds until he goes. Another example: Our two jerks are going on their first date. An obvious complication: Someone's ex is also on a date at the same place. An over-engineered complication: The ex insists they leave, and when they don't, they go to the manager and try to have our jerks kicked out because their daddy owns the restaurant, and also they have the jerks' car towed. An escalated complication: The ex insists on sharing a table with the jerks, and it's clear they still have feelings.
Related: There's a lot of mileage to be had from people/things progressing a funny and covert goal while the non-narrator scene partner is distracted. E.g. a dog slowly stealing off its owner's plate while the owner is flirting and/or arguing with the narrator.
A lot of books used interstitials for flavor, like emails, transcripts, etc. These can also be used to do some heavy expository lifting by letting you set expectationsâthink an open mic night flyer that can convey the venue's vibe, or directions to a corn maze that get increasingly sketchy.
We all love competence porn. If we can see what a character is good at, we'll want to see it again. If we can see them be very, very good at it, but thwarted at the last momentâby their own character flaw, for maximum impactâthen we will be desperate to see them pull it off in the future. IMHO the more you, the author, want the reader to like a character, the sooner we should see their competence.
RELATED: If a love interest is meant to be a snob, it is non-negotiable that we have to see their competence, in action, on the page. There was one romcom I bounced off like a basketball, and this was a major part of why. I'm altering occupations here, but in a nutshell:
Narrator, a pastry chef with struggling career, idolizes a famous and award-winning baker
Turns out the baker can't make pastries worth a damn because he thinks sweets are frivolous, but the bakery needs to expand its offerings, so she gets brought in to help him
He tells her what she does is meaningless, and she doesn't know how to do real baking, and overall is wildly condescending, but the narrator puts up with it because she idolizes him
We see many awards he's won as a baker, and many high-level professional connections he has
We never see him bake. And we never see her eat something he baked. Our narrator tells us he's just that good and we have to accept it.
Y'all, I was so mad. Give us a crumb, please.
12. Most books tackled a sense of loneliness or isolation in at least the narrator, and sometimes the love interest as well. Even if they had active social lives, there was a gap that only the love interest sees, and only they can fill.
13. There were really interesting uses of sensory and signature details to make a character stand out and/or stand in for physical intimacy early on. E.g. a character slowly rubbing a thumb over the chip in a mug's rimâto me, that gesture is close enough to evoke running a thumb over someone's bottom lip, and the chip gives it sensory oomph. Other characters would have a recurring signature nickname, appearance detail, or gesture; bonus if it had actual character significance.
14. On a slightly more downer note... I found one thing a bit unsettling. I'm threading a needle here, because no, fiction is not supposed to be a moral lecture, yes, there is room for all types of fantasies and explorations in romance. But I found it a tad grim how many books were specifically fantasies of enormous men and itty bitty women. How most of the heroes are supposed to be flawed but romantic, attractive, respectful... and yet in the physical intimacy scenes, a lot of the language falls back on evoking domination, possession, and control by a man. He "claims" lips, he "brands" with his touch, he's "marking [narrator] as his own." And none of it is an actual D/s relationship, it's all quite vanilla. I may just be too ace for that to sound appealing?
It does go hand-in-hand with an interesting recurring bias against cities, where they're scary places that people leave after their dreams are crushed, and find real happiness in a "sweet, traditional life" in a small town. With 80% of the US population living in urban areas, the framing of small towns as keepers of tradition was similarly dissonant to me.
All in all, it was a great study for character work, sensuality, and executing straightforward plots well. Highly recommend y'all pick up a romcom or several and take notes yourself!

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I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was