jane-of-almost-all-trades
she/her || I’m a writer, I swear || and a huge fangirl || also a language learner and a nerd in general and a lot of other things
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Latest Posts by jane-of-almost-all-trades
For evidence that Terry Pratchett understood humanity on a deep and fundamental level, look no further than the breed history of Dalmatians, because that shit is straight out of Discworld.
i feel like sometimes i dog on the movies a little bit for omitting so much important information or changing things a little too much but honestly there are a couple changes that i do like and appreciate- for example arwen. she only appears for like six pages in all three books and has a couple lines speaking with aragorn. i like that in the movie they changed her to be the person that rescues frodo after weathertop, because tbh having glorfindel pull up for 1 scene and then never be mentioned again would be extremely confusing for someone who doesn't know much about the legendarium. they also changed her personality to be more headstrong plus her mini-plot of arguing with elrond about choosing mortality just provides so much more depth to her and elrond. its just nice to have a third female character other than galadriel and eowyn who actually does something
hey boss i can't come in today it's a sunny day and there's a lovely breeze coming in through my window, yeah it's rustling the branches of the tree outside that's finally bloomed so it's pretty serious
Esmerelda Weatherwax is literature's greatest Witch. And it is not even a little close.
What other Witch could so shrewdly bend the very story she was in to her will? To take the tropes and clichés and to weaponize them against those who were wrong in defense of those who could not defend themselves?
What other Witch, when faced with the Good Fairy Godmother, would rip the story from her very fingers and set things to right?
What other Witch, under vampiric assault, could turn the famous bite around and, instead of becoming a vampire herself, through force of sheer will Weatherwax the vampire? What does that even mean?
What other Witch could give a child a gift so powerful it would override narrative convention and let the long lost prince refuse to take his rightful crown in favor of pursuing his dreams?
Indeed, what other Witch would resist the crown when it fell into her lap?
There have been untold millions of Witches in literature, but not a one of them could sit demurely at a social gathering, doing absolutely nothing, and drive everyone around her to near insanity through sheer nervousness?
No one else could be so proficient at both Magic and People that she would barely need or want to use the former because of how effective and predictable the latter could be.
And all of this, ALL of this, while going against her own narrative nature as 'The Bad Witch'. To resist your own role in the story so completely that you transcend expectations and settle into legend as one of the ultimate forces of righteousness on the Disc? That requires more power, more cunning, and more skill than any, every other Witch. Combined.
And she did it by knowing people. By watching them and knowing things and by understanding, better than their own mothers, how to talk to everyone and precisely pass along knowledge. How to command respect, even if they don't like you very much. How to be indispensable, while dispensing with the pleasantries.
She didn't do it alone, but she wouldn't admit that within earshot of Gytha or any of her numerous brood (So, she would never admit it). She benefitted by her associations with Nanny Ogg, with Magrat, with Agnes, with Tiffany, with Ridcully (allegedly), and even with Death.
Who else would earn time for her candle to flicker in the wind, and a warning by the Grim Reaper himself, for the right she had done in the world.
Right. Not good. Not nice. Right.
She was the vessel Pratchett poured his every indignant thought at the inherent injustice in the world into, and she brandished those white hot notions against every part of the stories that tried to make her into something she did not want to be.
Esmerelda Weatherwax is literature's greatest Witch. What more could possibly be said?
smoke break at an event at the patricians palace, with the golem inspector, the duke of ankh, the arch chancellor of unseen university, and the king of the golden river
The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.
In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.
But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.
"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?
"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.
Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?
It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.
May the 4th truly is a blessed day in the Nerdom calendar:
May the 4th be with you.
Reichenbach Falls Day.
The second day in the yearly celebration of Dracula.
I wonder, how many other days have such a level of importance in so many fandoms? Surely there must be others?
Big werwolf girlfriend and small vampire girlfriend 🥰
Sally x Angua cause I miss them
*grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you* don’t EVER say it’s so over. it’s not over. There’s hope. It’s not over for the flowers that get paved over because they grow through the cracks in the concrete, stronger than ever. It’s not over for the moths on a soot-blackened tree because they will grow black wings and evade predators faster than ever. It’s not over for the tree that gets chopped down because it will survive off nutrients from its root neighbors and keep holding on. It’s not over because it’s hard. There’s hope. There’s hope. There’s hope.
Today would have been his 77th birthday, so
Hogfather A’tuin Pyramids Ponder Ynci’s helmet
Brutha Igor Rincewind Thud! Hex Death Ankh-Morpork Yeti
Terry Pratchett!
No matter how bad I am at getting my thoughts out of my head and onto a page, any “AI” will be incomparably worse. I don’t need to tell you why.
a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted
their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"
"Every writer"?
come on
you know how people say soup is round and so it's messed up to put it in a square tupperware? that's how I feel every time I see a square watch
People are so stupid about snakes. If there's a little black racer chilling outside just leave it alone, you don't have to kill it, it's probably dealing with all your pests for you, jesus christ
I hate when I get clickbaited by physical mail. The envelope says “NOTICE: IMPORTANT INFORMATION” and then I open it and it’s like “Sign up for HelloFresh :)”
The city I’m currently in has so many crows, I can’t love them enough🖤 And the birds and squirrels in the parks of my own city are also so, so adorable. Urban animals spark joy!
take the shame out of enjoying urban animals. nothing wrong with watching sparrow/starlings/pigeons; you’re still going birdwatching. check out the antics of the squirrels; rats are super entertaining if you’re out at night. they’re all good creatures man
The most typical of the typical days in a writer’s (my) life
"it's all in your head" correct! unfortunately I am also in there
someone explain the jewish holidays to me like i'm 5 years old
Someone from a rural area: I grew up here, I know every path, every tree in these woods
Me: Wow, that’s so cool! I grew up in a city, I can’t even imagine being able to do that
Them: Hey, knowing all the streets in your neighbourhood is cool, too!
Me:
Me: *crosses the street to get to the shadowy side* *gets lost*
Nanny Ogg and Moist von Lipwig
Characters that never met but would get along like a house on fire
Welcome to Los Pollos Hermanos, where something delicious is always cooking!
love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded
There's nothing wrong with Irene/Sherlock. It's just as valid and just as "canon" as your dumb Johnlock shit. Johnlock stans are annoying as fuck.
This asks feels like I made a time travel into tumblr 2014… so where to start?
First all: I am absolutely not against people shipping Irene and Sherlock. What i AM angry about is that we have 2025 and with every new adaptation announced Irene is once again the love interest. A woman who never met Sherlock face to face, a woman who is only featured in ONE story out of 56 stories and 4 books. A woman who is happily married and ran away with the man she loved. A woman who is now Irene Norton.
Where is the same energy for Sherlock x Voilet, or Sherlock x Kitty? Both women who knew Sherlock personal, btw. Instead of Irene who never meet him without a disguise.
Aren’t Irene fans mad that with every new adaptation announced Irene is yet again a love interest? Aren’t Irene fans mad that Irene never gets her true story told? A story where she outsmarted Sherlock? A story where she didn’t needed Sherlock? A story where she found happiness and was her own hero?
If you ask the Dracula fandom, all of them are certainly mad that Mina always gets paired up with Dracula, even though she is happily married to Jonathan. Where is the same energy within the ACD fandom?
Also why are johnlock fans mad? Well John and Sherlock were also never a couple in the OG books, that’s correct, but in contrast to Irene and Sherlock they lived together for years, and solved 60 crimes together.
But somehow we live in 2025 (!) and producers still find it more logical to pair up Sherlock with a woman he meet four times (three times he was in a disguise, one time she was), he was her best man at her wedding to the man she loved… he helped her to elope with the man she loved…. Instead of idk… let him fall in love with the man he shared his live with
Idc if you ship Sherlock with Molly, Irene, violet, kitty… but I am so frustrated by the sexism and homophobia.
Hope that cleared it up
Do you guys ever think about how Vetinari believes that all people are inherently evil, but then he does things like:
Giving people others would deem irredeemable second chances (Lipwig, the other thief too, he even regretted the death of Lupine Wonse, the guy who summoned a dragon and tried to kill him); spends time with ppl who see only the good in everything (Carrot, Leonard); treats and values ppl like individuals and actually cares about them (that scene in Jingo where he tells Vimes that it’s good that people didn’t get killed in the war).
So I thought,
What if he doesn’t want to believe that everyone is evil. What if he had arrived to that conclusion just from his actual life experience with the assassins and guild leaders, because that’s all he had seen other people do. But he tries to spend time with good people and give criminals second chances because he wants to be proven wrong. To be proven that his philosophy is actually wrong and “there is some good in the world and it’s worth fighting for.”