Empty Houses

Fun fact: back in 2012, on this very blog, I made a post about American Girl dolls I’d like to see. One included a Black girl growing up during the civil rights movement and listening to Motown music. So yes, I’d love to take credit for Melody. But her actual creation goes back to a tweet someone made that I can’t find a link to right now. AG and the civil rights/motown era is SUCH a natural match, it’s kind of baffling it took until 2016 for Melody to finally come out. Being that she was a part of the “BeForever” line, it’s beyond infuriating that she only got two books.

THE GOOD NEWS IS BeForever was kind of a disaster for AG and they’ve done away with the brand. Claudie was released with Meet Claudie and her next book is Travels with Claudie so she definitely looks like she’s returning to the six book format. I doubt that the other girls released under the BeForever line (Nanea, Maryellen and Courtney) will get their full six books, which makes me so angry. I mean, given that Nanea is kind of specific to JUST pearl harbor, I can sooort of understand her having just two (even though I DEFINITELY think she should have gotten six. Hawaiian history and culture deserve a full six books). Given that Courtney is in the 80s, and a lot of what was controversial in the 80s is still controversial today, I can see how AG would be very very very hesitant to seriously dig into 80s history and politics, although six books in which Ronald Reagan and The Moral Majority are the bad guys would fucking rule. But for Maryellen and Melody it is bullshit of the highest order that they only got 2 books, especially when you consider that Maryellen’s big story is super bland bullshit about her struggling to stand out in her big family and not so much about confronting the sexist and racist cultural bullshit of the 50s. BUT she gets massive bonus points for covering the Salk vaccine (a major turning-point in history that doesn’t get NEARLY the amount of love and attention it deserves) and for having an amazing collection.

Melody being only two books is unforgivable. COMPLETELY UNFORGIVABLE. You cannot fit the enormity of civil rights and Motown and the 60s in general into just two books. All that being said, however, the two books they gave her seem to do a massive job with the tiny bit of space they were given. First of all, the advisory board for Melody is STACKED. Secondly, the trailer for Melody: Love Has to Win is the shit of Ron DeSantis’s nightmares:

A LITTLE BLACK GIRL REFUSING THE SAY THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE AND SAYING THAT AMERICA IS UNJUST?! That’s the sound of millions of pearls being clutched all across the nation. I’m honestly shocked Moms for Liberty weren’t burning Melody’s books in the streets. I am hereby a Melody stan now and forever. I still SINCERELY hope she gets a re-release with her full six books and a much bigger collection. Because for real Melody may be my new favorite doll (although that could change depending on what kind of collection Claudie gets).

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While I'm also fond of a lot of what G.K. Chesterton wrote, I'm a little surprised and disappointed by the fact that in your many mentions of and tributes to him you have not drawn attention to his frequently reactionary and frankly antisemitic views, nor the influence he had on his nephew A.K. Chesterton - who would grow up to be a member of the BUF and later co-found the National Front. I know many members of your family were murdered in the holocaust, and while I don't think his writing should be dismissed entirely by any means, I do find it odd that you've been such a champion of his without any caveat. Perhaps you expect readers to work out his views themselves, which is an understandable though optimistic view of people. I write this not as admonishment but out of genuine curiosity.

Also, when's the leather jacket coming back?

And I, for my part, am not actually surprised and disappointed that in your obviously extensive readings of what I've said and written about Chesterton you've somehow missed the bits where I talked and wrote about both his antisemitism and his racism, because the world is big and nobody can be expected to read everything or even Google to keep up. But I've talked and written about it -- for example, here on Tumblr in this very blog. Chesterton was a big person and he contained multitudes: that doesn't mean that he gets a Free Pass for the small-minded and disappointing and sometimes creepy bits of the writing, but it means that I'm more interested in the bits where he was better than that.

The leather jacket will come back when my hair is either white or mostly gone and when I look like an old guy who doesn't care what people think and is wearing his leather jacket because he loves it, and not like a gentleman in late middle age wearing a leather jacket because he misguidedly thinks it might make him look younger.

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Pride’s Teeth

In the manga, Pride’s teeth are always drawn as squares throughout his appearances,

right up until the panel where he eats Gluttony.

After this his teeth permanently change to being pointed.

The only time his teeth are shown again as squares is in a chapter dividing page, for which Gluttony is present,

and in a 4koma while he’s eating Gluttony. Again, his teeth change once he’s eaten him.

I have a headcanon about why this change happened but I won’t go into it here. It’s just something neat that I wish the anime had kept consistent.

Image credit @every-pride (me)…because I didn’t feel like re-cropping the panels. :3

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Q:  What is it about this particular generation’s diversity and point of view that’s different from previous generations of space opera? Martha Wells: Older science fiction, especially way back towards the 50s and 60s, anticipated these big technological changes in these far future empires and these faster-than-light ships, but they didn’t think about changes in society. And you see these older works where everybody’s in a little nuclear family and the gender roles are so stratified and stilted and everybody’s smoking. There’s just no anticipation of changes in society, not even little things like that.

And I think we’re kind of in a generation where people are imagining changes in society, how society will be different, what it might look like, and how relationships would be different and how relationships would be changed by technology and the ability to upload your consciousness or relating to a machine intelligence and all these other different things … That’s one reason why I think space opera’s gotten a lot more exciting.

- Author Event: Martha Wells In Conversation with John Scalzi, on YouTube

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to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

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these are actually hella fucking cute y'all

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?

6: do you keep plants?

7: do you name your plants?

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?

12: what’s your favorite planet?

13: what’s something that made you smile today?

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?

20: what’s your favorite eye color?

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.

22: are you a morning person?

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into?

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?

28: sunrise or sunset?

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.

33: what’s your fave pastry?

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?

38: tell us about your pet peeves!

39: what color do you wear the most?

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you?

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?

50: what’s an odd thing you collect?

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?

56: what are some things you find endearing in people?

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?

59: what’s your favorite myth?

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?

64: what color is the sky where you are right now?

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with?

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?

68: what’s winter like where you live?

69: what are your favorite board games?

70: have you ever used a ouija board?

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it?

73: what are some of your worst habits?

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.

75: tell us about your pets!

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?

77: pink or yellow lemonade?

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.

82: are/were you good in school?

83: what’s some of your favorite album art?

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?

86: do you like concept albums? which ones?

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?

89: are you close to your parents?

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?

95: what are your plans for this weekend?

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?

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All you need in life is a color picker willing to expose you to the unbounded madness we call color vision.

me, absolutely clueless: "I want a color just like this one, but in red" color picker: Fuck you think you are, a Mantis Shrimp? Don't talk to me again until you can afford a wide gamut monitor.

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Fake-tanuki soup or Fake tanuki-soup?

連濁（れんだく; en: rendaku）is a phonological rule in japanese that makes the first voiceless consonant of a word change into a voiced consonant when used in a compound word. For example, おり ＋ かみ → おりがみ (ori + kami → origami) ("fold" + "paper" → "paperfolding") - the /k/ sound in かみ becomes a /g/ sound (which is the voiced version of a /k/ sound) by adding a voicing mark -> が.

What’s interesting about 連濁 is that native speakers can use it subconsciously as a sort of “order of operations” system for unfamiliar words, like PEMDAS or BIDMAS in maths. A classic example of this is the にせたぬきじる problem[1]. Native speakers can immediately and with confidence tell the difference in meaning between two compound words they have never heard before, despite the only difference being the voicing of a single consonant. Take the three words 偽 (にせ, meaning “fake” or “imitation”), たぬき (tanuki, the Japanese racoon dog), and 汁 (しる, meaning “soup” or “broth”). They can be combined into the following compound words: にせたぬきじる and にせだぬきじる (note the voicing mark, or dakuten, on the latter). Keep in mind, these two words do not exist in ordinary japanese - they’ve been created as part of a linguistics experiment.

You might think the meaning would be ambiguous in those compound words: is it (imitation tanuki)+soup or imitation+(tanuki soup)? Let’s imagine we’re referring to the former. First, we combine にせ＋たぬき. There’s a rule that rendaku can’t occur if there’s already a voicing mark in the second component of the compound, but we’re safe here - たぬき has no voicing mark. Therefore, it becomes にせだぬき. Then, we combine にせだぬき＋しる. Again, しる has no voicing mark in it, so we’re safe to add it in, and we get にせだぬきじる.

Conversely, let’s say we were referring to fake “tanuki-soup”. First we combine たぬき＋しる. This combines safely to たぬきじる. Then we combine にせ＋たぬきじる. But wait, the second component does already have a voicing mark, on じ! So we can’t add one to た. Therefore we end up with にせたぬきじる.

That’s a lot of thinking and linguistic hoops to jump through to make up 2 words, but here’s the thing: Japanese native speakers who have never heard these words before can instinctively deduce the difference in meaning with startling accuracy. They correctly determine the meaning of にせだぬきじる as “a broth made from imitation tanuki” and にせたぬきじる as “a fake version of a dish called ‘tanuki soup’”. Even more surprising is the research findings of Shigeto Kawahara, which show that children as young as 9 years old can consistently deduce the difference as well[2]. I think this shows how incredibly powerful the subconscious mind is at learning linguistic rules, and how bad the conscious mind is at learning them!

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