I’ve been giving this writing advice to a lot of my friends lately so I’ll do a mumbling post about it here.
You gotta play dolls with your characters.
Slap them in AUs, make silly fanfiction, make “what if?” senarios. You gotta recreate the feeling of taking your toys out as a kid and improv-ing a story on the spot. You’ll get a sense of what makes them who they are outside of their main storyline.
Take a piece of yourself, expand and explore upon it. Create characters and storylines that are love letters to those you’ve cared most about. Take that little ball of hate and/or despair and give yourself a little therapy lesson.
Be bored! Be frustrated! Be unsatisfied! “Someone should make a story about ___” YOU should make that story! If you aren’t satisfied with the media you see, make for yourself the story you DO want to see! Don’t worry about how others will view it. For right now, for right at the beginning, the only way you’re gonna make progress is if you’re having a bit of fun.
The lack of agreement across brands on what “extra firm tofu” is is, in fact, very high on my list of unimportant problems.
Several years back “extra firm” still had high water content and needed to be diligently pressed and pan fried with care if you wanted to achieve crispy.
And then I guess tofu had a moment and brands got scared of losing people to trial-and-error and started manufacturing extra-firm tofu you could use to break a window and escape a house fire with.
And the more Americanized brands went that direction while the traditional brands said “no that’s fucking stupid we’re not changing anything” and SOME brands said “what if we do like the middle of that?”
Buying tofu is now in fact a vibe-check game of assessing a brand’s packaging and gauging what YOU think they mean by “extra firm”
It’s actually worse in fact because you need to play the vibe-check game twice on account of the recipe will inevitably call for some kind of “extra firm” and you need to know ITS vibes.
Asking you to grate the tofu on a cheese grater and bake it? Westernized. You want that red brick tofu. You want Whole Foods amount of extra firm or SUPER firm because if that thing has any amount of moisture left in it it’ll disintegrate like Tubby Custard on the grater.
Tofu scrambled eggs? You want the OG extra firm. You want it to hold its form but still have that softness and give unless your goal is to imitate sad dining hall scrambled eggs.
Many such difficulties in today’s tofu landscape
They should be printing the tofu’s mechanical properties like it’s a structural material.
Shaking your hand shaking your hand shaking your hand???????
These are the random extra/super firm tofus in my fridge and the labels are based on my own experience with them. Completely in alignment with this trick hello????????????
theo van gogh was the one who suggested that his older brother vincent start seriously painting. as soon as theo was gainfully employed he gave vincent around 15% of his own yearly salary for art supplies, lodging, and food. about 2/3rds of vincent’s surviving letters were to theo (including vincent’s earliest and last letters), all of which were found stored in theo’s desk. theo’s child, vincent willem, was born on january 31st, 1890, and vincent was so delighted by his nephew that he painted almond blossoms for him. vincent shot himself half a year later on july 29th, 1890. theo’s distress at his brother’s death worsened his syphilis symptoms and he died half a year after his brother on january 25th, 1891 (four days before vincent willem’s first birthday). theo was reburied next to vincent in auvers-sur-oise at the request of theo’s wife johanna.
Almond Blossoms, 1890, Vincent van Gogh
And that love lived on Theo’s wife, Johanna, who was the one who pushed for the preservation of Vincent’s paintings. Johanna who made sure that her husband’s beloved brother would not be forgotten. Johanna who fought tooth and nail so that Theo and Vincent would never be forgotten. Johanna who carried the family legacy, who made sure that the works of Vincent would be kept in her possession. And then Vincent Willem, named for a uncle so loved, carried this legacy and founded the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.
The van Gogh family history is deeply interwoven with love. It was the love of a brother that gave a young man the courage to paint and the resources to do so. It was the love of a woman for her husband and her husband’s beloved brother that made that story known. And it was the love of a nephew, who was so deeply loved even if for such a short time, that made it possible for the world to know Vincent van Gogh.
Sam / he+they / FL / Leo / Vicious / Killer / Youth of... twenty-seven / Icon and header by prim-moth / Hi! My name is Sam and tarot cards hate me. Content here varies based on whatever I'm interested in for whatever amount of time. Enjoy!
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