Well Seeing This Reminded Me Of A Similarity Between Mabel And Stanford. Neither One Wanted To Be Rescued.

I think I just spent like 2? Maybe more hours reading this. If you don't like essays or A series of unfortunate events, I would recommend not reading this. However if you do like both, and would like to read an essay about A Series of Unfortunate Events, then continue

What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean? Hermaphroditic Gender, Predatory Sexuality, and Promiscuous Allusion in Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket’s "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

by Tison Pugh

In many ways, Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket depicts a setting amenable to female agency and empowerment throughout his A Series of Unfortunate Events.1 The chief protagonist, Violet Baudelaire, moves freely in traditionally masculine fields, and other characters—both male and female—appear remarkably unhampered by stereotypical gender roles and expectations. Roberta Seelinger Trites defines a feminist children’s novel as one “in which the main character is empowered regardless of gender. A key concept here is ‘regardless’: in a feminist children’s novel, the child’s sex does not provide a permanent obstacle to her development” (4).2 From Trites’s perspective, Violet’s freedom from traditional gender roles enables the entire series to take on a feminist cast because such a paradigm of gendered equality is taken as the normative structure of the society depicted in the thirteen novels of the series.

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Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

Best lines from the Finale

(mostly out of context of course)

“Hey! Even in a sack I still look better than you!”

“Larry King’s disembodied wax head wants num-nums.”

“I listen to a lot of AM radio so I knew what this meant–the end of the world.”

“We’ll meet again. Don’t know where, don’t know when. Oh, I know we’ll meet again some, sunny day.”

“You know that couch is made from living human skin?”

 “What’s an “anime”?”

“These scribbles are a bunch of cockamamie balderdash! Excuse my French.”

“I keep accidentally flexing through my sweater.”

“Your hyperflamable merchandise is the only thing keepin’ me going.”

“I have butchered millions on countless moons.”

“He’s been forcing me to do cute dances in this cage for all eternity. I’m so tired of being cute!”

“This experience will forever scar Tad Strange.”

“I’ve tried forgettin’. Maybe I should try forgiving.”

“No, a prophecy. Although it would be a pretty fun game of hopscotch.”

“Destiny hoodie.”

“Hey Achilles! Nice work with the heel!”

“Do the one thing no one in our family has ever done–Touch the hillbilly.”

 “I’ve never held hands this long and I’m very uncomfortable.”

“Grammar, Stanley.”

“I know that hurts because I’ve accidentally done it to myself–multiple times!”

“I’ve got some children I need to make into corpses!”

“Like Grunkle Stan always says, when one door closes choose a nearby wall and bash it in with brute force.”

“I think I’m gonna kill one of ‘em now just for the heck of it!”

“Hey, look at me. Turn around and look at me you one-eyed demon! You’re a real wiseguy, but you made one fatal mistake: you messed with my family.”

“Guess I was good for something after all.”

“He saved the world. He saved me.”

“Hey, just cuz I have amnesia don’t go tryin’ to give yourself a raise, Soos.”

“He told us a lot about being a business man in the '80s and seemed happy when we pretended to listen.”

“Robbie, would you be a dear and get us the sawed-off shotgun?”

“Zap! Zap! We’re mad with power! And love!” 

“You’re only going to have one pony now.”

“Wa–oh! Woo! I’m bustin’ a move on this skatin’ board!”

“You know, on my first day here, if you had asked me what I wanted, I would have said adventure, mystery, true friends. But looking here at all of you I realize that every wish came true. I have everything I wanted.”

“If I had only one wish it would be to shrink all of you with the shrink ray and bring you home with us in my pocket!”

“I now officially declare you technically teenagers. Welcome to angst and acne forever.”

“I don’t just want someone to come with me Stanley, I want it to be you. Will you give me a second chance?”

“Like, this mermaid. It’s not just a dead fish butt sewn to a monkey carcass. It’s a marvelous creature that makes us believe that anything is possible.”

“You’re Mr. Mystery now, Soos. Try not to burn the place down.”

“I hate my dumb heart for making me feel things.”

“Kids, you knuckleheads were nothin’ but a nuisance and I’m glad to be rid of ya.”

 “If you’ve ever taken a road trip through the Pacific northwest, you’ve probably seen a bumper sticker for a place called Gravity Falls. It’s not on any maps, and most people have never heard of it. Some people think it’s a myth. But if you’re curious, don’t wait. Take a trip. Find it. It’s out there somewhere in the woods. Waiting.” 

Get boxed stupid idiots

The pros of making your own alcohol:

-It’s fun

-You can make whatever you want

Cons:

-Expensive hobby to get into

-Not all ideas are good ideas

-Waste alcohol/fermentation biproducts

Like I like yeast as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to eat the fermentation sediments. I don’t like Marmite, so I don’t want to eat the DIY marmite. Anyways, the end result of this is a… product I’ve dubbed the “Sewer Brew” named in honor of Dwarf Fortress

It’s all the sediment and a small amount of mead, mixed with sediment from a ginger wine batch. It’s somehow still fermenting, so I have to regularly crack the lid, and it smells like straight alcohol.

I have no idea what to do with it. I don’t even know why I collected it in a jar in the first place.

Just a reblog for anyone who might have missed it. Also a shout-out to Iceguppie who’d helped proofread this.

Dimension 52

Disclaimer: This story is primarily designed as a story of Ford during his dimensional travels. It features him crossing over to other universes with those being the following (In no order whatsoever): Rick and Morty, Adventure Time, and Steven Universe. This list will probably expand, and might involve travel to AU’s.

Chapter 1:

Author’s notes:

This story takes place directly after Stanley and Stanford’s fight in 1982, where Ford is pushed through the portal. So as such, the story starts as Ford gets pulled through. Thank you for reading.

Keep reading

Dimension 52

Disclaimer: This story is primarily designed as a story of Ford during his dimensional travels. It features him crossing over to other universes with those being the following (In no order whatsoever): Rick and Morty, Adventure Time, and Steven Universe. This list will probably expand, and might involve travel to AU’s.

Chapter 1:

Author’s notes:

This story takes place directly after Stanley and Stanford’s fight in 1982, where Ford is pushed through the portal. So as such, the story starts as Ford gets pulled through. Thank you for reading.

“STANLEY DO SOMETHING!”

These are going to be my last words, Ford thought as he was pulled into the portal. In his blind panic, he’d thrown Journal 1 at his brother in a vain attempt to get help. Stanford closed his eyes and braced for the horrors of the nightmare realm.

It was pitch black, and Ford couldn’t hear a thing. “Is this what death feels like?”

The only thing Ford heard was his own question. Then he realized his eyes were shut. As he opened them a rather non-nightmare realm looked back at him. He was standing in a lightly wooded forest more or less alone.

“Wait I thought the portal was linked to the nightmare realm. Unless…”

Ford’s brain immediately snapped back to the fight with his brother. When he and Stanley had been fighting they must have not only activated the portal, they must have also damaged it, changing the destination from the nightmare realm to … well wherever he was. He’d need to take a closer look at his surroundings to figure out where he was and if there was any immediate danger. The flora and fauna he saw was fairly familiar. This could possibly be earth, but these weren’t the pine trees and redwoods of Gravity Falls. Still, it was vaguely North American. In fact he wasn’t even sure if some of these plants were native to his dimension. Regardless of where he was now though, he wouldn’t last long unless he could find some shelter. Then maybe he could think up a way to get out of here. Or perhaps Stanley might reactivate the portal. Though if Stanley reactivated the Portal, he’d be even angrier at him than he already was for putting him in this mess.

It’d been three days already. Ford had created himself a decent shelter and managed to find some edible food nearby. He’d been fairly lucky in that this dimension he’d crashed into had been very similar to his own, and assuming the stars and climate here were similar enough too, he was somewhere on the eastern side of the North America in the early spring. Ford had been waiting to see if a portal opened up somewhere nearby in the event that his brother attempted to rescue him. His daily routine was to get up and explore the surrounding area for survival resources as well as a possible portal back home. He repeated this day after day, noting a mark in a new journal he’d started with. He’d made an estimate of the time of a day on this planet, and indeed, it seemed to be an earth, having a 24-hour cycle.

Ford had been waiting around his little shelter at this point for five weeks now. He’d come to the conclusion that if Stanley hadn’t tried to rescue him by now, that his brother would have just given up. So Ford grabbed the survival gear he’d made and headed east in the hope of finding some form of civilization. After all this is Earth, in a period in which very familiar life existed as well.

After two weeks of searching and walking, Ford stumbled into a small town in what he discovered was more-or-less Virginia. Of course the native inhabitants called their state a different name, but Ford just called it Virginia-1. The town was fairly similar in size to the Gravity Falls that Ford had left and seemed just like any other southeastern town he’d visited. He mainly kept to himself, as he attempted to integrate himself into the town life and possibly find a place to stay. After a few cultural disputes and such Ford just stuck to the junkyard. Ford had found that he’d actually preferred being an outcast here, since it gave him more time for writing. He’d also been searching through the different piles of junk for anything he could use to cobble together a device to track dimensional anomalies, which could help him to get home. Ford soon succeeded, having used some wiring, electronics, and some of his own parts and such that had come through the portal with him.

It’d been about four months since Ford had initially found himself stranded here, and now he had what he believed to be a way out. He was finally ready to leave Dimension 1 and come home. He set off, and after another two weeks of searching he found himself face to face with a dimensional rift. Well, there was only one thing to do now. Ford took a breath and stepped through.

[Chapter 2]

I made my first mod for dwarf fortress, which adds asbestos that is weavable into cloth and i got this lovely comment

the idea that they didn’t make frequent pit stops at random dingy alien trucker bars to play late-night sessions of monsters & mana on their long road trip back to earth? ……………preposterous.