this evening's activity has been making a honey cake inspired by the latest chapter of @hypnotisedfireflies story, where Joel and Tess try wedding cake flavours. I read it this morning, finished my classes, and dragged my partner to the shops on the way home for ingredients.
cake notes: somehow needs more honey, despite having almost 400g of honey in the cake you see above. this may be because I didn't use the really nice honey, but that is like £10 a jar and I don't have the budget to recipe test with that. recipe testing is also potentially a generous statement here given I just winged it. and then had to go to the shops again because I forgot icing sugar the first time. oops.
Just be a rock.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
damn imagine thinking the only way people have worth is if they never do anything unhealthy. panic must never drink, exercise daily, and always have the correct micronutrients. consider: people are worthy of respect irrelevant of what they eat, and you are a dick.
it’s cool and sexy to be fat and like food
Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)
40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)
Excellent basic crochet video series
Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)
Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)
How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)
Another drawing character faces video
Literally my favorite art pose hack
Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??
Introduction to flying small aircrafts
French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding
Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)
Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)
Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)
Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:
Calculus 1 (full semester class)
Learn basic statistics (free textbook)
Introduction to college physics (free textbook)
Introduction to accounting (free textbook)
Learn a language:
Ancient Greek
Latin
Spanish
German
Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)
French
Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)
So I’ve read a lot of different fics and wanted to clarify the different terms I’ve seen applied to Yusuf. I’ll reference what is cannon, but more importantly I want to clarify that these terms are not synonyms. Not all Mediterranean/middle-eastern brown Arabic-speakers are the same.
Saracen: This is a historical term no longer used, but it was widespread in Europe during the period when Joe and Nicky are supposed to have met. It came to be used in place of “muslim” or “pagan” to describe someone. So, when you have Nicky call Joe “Saracen” you are both showing the narrow-mindedness of medieval Europe and only committing yourself to the fact that Joe practices Islam. However, this is more akin to a cultural slur than something Joe would every apply to himself. It’s not an ethnicity to Joe, it’s an insult. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saracen
Maghrebhi: This references a region of Northwest Africa called “the Magreb” (“the west” in Arabic) and is similar to saying something like “Eastern European” to describe oneself. The real actor, Marwan Kenzari, is the son of Tunisian immigrants and this ethnicity term is one that he might use for himself. I believe this is accurate to cannon as well. This is historically accurate as well, an identity label that existed at the time. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb
Moor: This is the European counterpart to Magrebhi which was later expanded to cover Arabs as well. This is something that Nicky might call Joe without meaning to insult, but not something that Joe would call himself. I haven’t seen this one pop up yet, but I figured that I would add it. The historical term was actually Mauri which is fun to spell. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors
Berber or Amazigh/Imazighen (plural) : Berber is both largely anachronistic and could be considered offensive. The region of Northwest Africa did not come to be commonly known are the Barbary coast until the 1500s CE. Furthermore, the term originates from the Greek for “Barbarian”…as in calling the inhabitants of the area barbarians as a name. It is understandably confusing as the term “Berber” is totally normalized in historical sources in English. The name originating within this language group to describe the people is romanized as “Amazigh” (singular) but appears to be anachronistic. It would be better to reference a specific tribal group or region like “Numidian” (reference to a 200 BCE indigenous empire) for an ethnicity. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Coast, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numidians
Arab/Arabian: This one gets me mad. The Maghreb was conquered by the Arabic empire. Arab originally referred to the Arabian peninsula which is thousands of miles away. Calling Joe “Arab” is like calling Booker “Roman” (but Gualle was controlled by the Roman Empire, so the French are Roman). Modern usage has blended the ethnicity across the former Islamic Empires because of conquest and the eventual ethnic blending. If you are going to refer to him this way, be reflective about it: it’s the result of the eradication of indigenous cultures. What gets me the most upset is realizing it’s probably just uniformed white writers thinking “speaks Arabic and is from a region I consider desert” but it’s very annoying. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs
Seljuk: This derives from the Seljuq dynasty and references Turkish-Persian (modern Turkey, Iran, and the surrounding areas) people. The Seljuk Turks never occupied the Maghreb, though it is the correct time period. Maybe Joe is fighting with the Seljuk Turks, but he is not one. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuq_dynasty
TL;DR: some of the identity terms I’ve seen thrown around are either plain wrong or could be considered offensive. There’s a big difference in using the language of the inhabitants of a place and the language of foreigners to describe someone’s ethnicity and we as a fandom can do better. Also, the whole fandom is looking up Ligurian and Italian for Nicky, so let’s do better for Joe…
laurie: let’s play two truths, one lie! i’ll go first. i wear your ring, i have four buttons on my jacket, and amy and i got married on our way back from europe.
jo: try to make it harder, plea-
amy, from the distance: he has five buttons
jo: you did WHAT
winona ryder's character in stranger things has never been wrong even once and every time the fucking gravity turns off or whatever she says "hey thats weird right" and everyone in a 10 mile radius is like "woah category five woman moment incoming"
it snowed here last weekend (we made two snowmen and a snow dalek) and leia discovered snow for the first time! the front door was open so she wandered out to see what was going on, immediately got cold, and then saw that everything was white, panicked, and ran back inside. in conclusion, leia is not a fan.
Cats and snow don’t mix
yes I'm normal about star wars what ever do you mean
Cody and Obi-Wan are such parents—
they mean so much to me ;-;
el, she / her welcome to my brain dumping ground, expect varying and frequent dumps of a large variety of fandoms, including some fics I'm working on and most likely plenty of cat photos
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