Smooth Citrus

This was not crystallized by the ocean. People. No. This is why artist credit is SO DAMN IMPORTANT THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE MISINFORMED HERE.

Alexis Arnold is an artist who creates crystallized books. Her work is amazing and beautiful, she’s made dozens of these.

This particular one was not made by her, however, it was actually created by Catherine McEver - who was inspired to try it after seeing a show of Alexis Arnold’s work. It’s literally the first picture on Google image results if you search for “crystallized books” and she posted about it on her blog showing other process shots as she made it.

So 12-foot-tall Grandma was actually a star basketball player back in the 70s for a very brief period of time– her career as a professional athlete only lasted between October and December of 1972.

The reason for this was because John Basketball, the inventor of the sport, realized that the WNBA had not yet been established, so he asked her to please sit out until the Basketball Elders got a chance to make a space in the sport for women. Grandma thought this was pretty bullshit, but she decided to leave the NBA anyway because nobody could keep up with her balling, and the sport had lost its novelty.

After she settled down in her new-but-less-exciting career as an astronaut, she met Pop-pop on the moon. It turns out that he had been a big fan of her and had recorded all her matches on U-matic, and had fallen in love with the sport.

Anyway things happened, the two fell in love and got married, and Grandma and Pop-pop had a beautiful family together. She became especially close with one of her granddaughters, Ballin’ Jessie, who inherited her propensity for basketball. The two would often dunk hoops with each other, and developed trash-talk as their love language.

Pop-pop also had an interest in the sport, but his height had made it difficult for him to keep up with the others. In fact, he had actually lost about a foot in height as a result of being compressed by Earth’s stronger gravitational pull. Despite this, Pop-pop was never really bothered by this because of his exceptional love for Grandma, who was always more than happy to lend him a helping hand. 

During Postwar occupation by Americans, Japan was experiencing massive shortages for the raw materials needed to make soy sauce nationwide, and was forced to rely on exported materials from America to make production. A single American woman named "Ms Appleton" was given total control of apportioning all American soy bean rations to companies, how much, and to who. She had no knowledge of soy sauce, allegedly.

She apparently had so much power over Japanese soy sauce production that she could singlehandedly shape its future by threatening to not give soy beans to any company, family, or factory which did not utilize her specific requirements of semichemical fermentation (reduced from chemical fermentation, since it was that abhorrent). These days, the term soy sauce is distinct from traditional shoyu, and requires distinguishment because of such a radical difference the two products are.

Here's the problem, folks:

I can find absolutely no evidence that Ms Appleton ever existed. There are no sources about this specific period in Japanese history that I'm able to definitively confirm. All of the sources which reference Ms Appleton are referencing in circles with each other; there is no listed source for any of them. Kikkoman's official English website is a veritable goldmine of information regarding this piece of history, with an entire 4 size 13 paragraphs. It not only gives me a first name, Blanche, but also tells me she worked for General Headquarters and that her policies and decisions shaped governmental policies heading into the future.

Except any variation of searching for Ms Appleton, Ms Blanche Appleton, and so on gives me absolutely no information about her ever existing. By appending keywords such as Ms Blanche Appleton+soy sauce, or Ms Blanche Appleton+GHQ, we can find the same couple of sources that are circling each other--or, in the case of the latter, only Kikkoman.

But there is NOTHING else. I'm getting pageantry from some minnesotan town; I'm getting world war 2 veteran records and obituaries when trying to follow that route; I'm getting k-12 teachers and a Titanic survivor named Charlotte. There is no fucking evidence of a Blanche Appleton to substantiate these claims.

And this is fucking massive. Because there should be way more information on her if this was the case; she was apparently powerful and influential enough during the occupation that she could singlehandedly enforce whatever arbitrary rules she wanted on the soy sauce industry and they had to comply or else have no product at all. That level of power is fucking insane. Imagine having so much raw influence over Japan that you could order them to completely renovate and change how they produce and make SOY SAUCE, literally one of if not THE most important thing in Japanese culinary history--and yet there's absolutely zero reference to this outside of like, three specific sites, and none of them have sources, or if they do, they source those sites.

What the fuck is happening here? There shouldn't be radio silence about this woman. There should be records of her policies, there should be legal documents in America which record how she apportioned out American exportation of soy beans to Japan, there should be sources talking about this woman's ability to transform Japan's soy sauce production so heavily that today only 1% of all soy sauce is made with pre-WW2 traditional techniques.

So if she's that big a deal then why does she not exist?

This is a translated page of Kikkoman's .co.jp website, with an apparent picture of Ms Appleton.

But this says that she has an apparent good knowledge of soy sauce brewing--directly contradictory to the Kikkoman.com claim that she had "no experience". And it also claims she was in charge of GHQ, which I'm going to assume is a mistranslation, but still.

I am at the point where I am genuinely considering the possibility of Blanche Appleton never having existed. There is the chance that Kikkoman invented an 'ambassador'-type person with high influence in the General Headquarters during the occupation to grant itself apparent influence/validity/power above the rest of the competition. "The woman who controls all soy materials coming into Japan visited our main factory and said she liked us :)".

It's incredibly fitting that my first act of serious investigative journalism is about soy sauce. Like, I'm a little annoyed at how on brand this is for me. Of course I'm overly invested in this weird little nitpick about soy sauce. Of course I'm making this the government's problem.

Hades: HMMM.... I DO NOT RECALL THIS NAME BOY. WHO IS THIS BOPHADES?

Zagreus: Bofa deez nuts you miserable old man!

Hades: TSCH.... SUCH DISRESPECT FROM MY OWN KIN.... THE LIKES OF WHICH I HAVE NOT SEEN SINCE UPDOG.

Zagreus: Updog? What’s updog?

Compilation of comics i made bc i love everything abt @incorrectp5 💕

You’ll find there’s a genetic link between these two species, and I don’t doubt Shrimpington has noticed this too. Heritage wise Armaldo are distant relatives of modern day species, so they do bond well with certain other Pokemon. We find they do very well with wimpod and scyther too. There’s something about their genetics that remind them of their own, and through detailed research we’ve found that they are in fact closely related to these species specifically. The lines very long, but perhaps your buddy has just found something familiar in your partners Fomantis. Not only that, They have a lot of physical similarities, so they no doubt feel parental towards them as they remind them of their own little ones.

This isn’t troublesome behaviour, they’re able to be protective and not become aggressive, and usually this species is one of the more well adjusted of the fossils once revived.

I don’t doubt that if Shrimpington met a large group of this Pokemon he would feel very much at home, or even begin to mimic their social queues once he had been with them long enough. It’d certainly be fascinating to see what they’d do with more of their family tree close at hand.