The taste of pudding transports me into the body of an Eton schoolboy in Victorian England who is on home for the holidays and is likely going to develop some very English vices regarding thin birch sticks by the time I come of age and inherit my father’s business after taking a rather antiquated Grand Tour across Europe with some of my closest schoolmates, one of whom will die tragically after a night of drunken debauchery in Venice and I will continue to write frustrated homoerotic letters to him long after his death that my wife endeavors to destroy to preserve the family honor after I waste away and die from a broken heart after my favorite son dies in the Great War.
What would it take for someone to sell you three “magic beans” for $10 at a farmer’s market?
Specifically, what kind of person would you buy magic beans from? You have no way of knowing if the beans are actually magical – they probably aren’t. But just how colorful a character would a magic bean salesman have to be before you willingly spent $10 for the experience of buying magic beans from an eccentric stranger?
I wouldn’t buy $10 magic beans from a young man with an undercut and suspenders with sailor tattooes on his forearms. He might be a nice guy – maybe I’d be friends with him. But I would not spend $10 for the experience of purchasing magic beans from him, unless they were actual real magic beans and he could prove that.
I might buy $10 magic beans from a small child in a wizard costume. It depends. Maybe if they’re really committed to the role – then I’m purchasing the privilege of interacting with them.
I might but $10 magic beans from an incredibly sexy, mysterious lady with long opera gloves and glittering eyes, but probably not – I might give her money just for smiling at me but I don’t think she’d really have the right vibe for selling magic beans. Potions, yes. Not beans.
I’d probably buy magic beans from a wild-haired, cheerful witch in overalls and mud boots, but that wouldn’t really be about the beans, it’d be about finding excuses to talk to her.
I’d absolutely buy magic beans from a toothless old person dressed entirely in hot pink or chartreuse who answered my questions with rambling non-sequiturs and told me long, scandalous, scientifically impossible stories about how things used to be.
I would buy three magic beans from the white haired woman who sits on the back of her pickup with dozens of jars of jelly laid out on a table in the abandoned fair ground. She doesn’t sell jelly; she sells potted plants. If you compliment her on her wooden sandals though, she will give you a jar of jelly. She asks if my children are twins every week, and is disappointed they aren’t twins every week. I would buy three magic beans for $10 from her.
On another note, I have traded a crocheted snowflake for ten acorns with a small, barefoot, blonde child in a white dress I encountered in the woods. Two of the acorns sprouted on the way home and I now have them growing in pots.
dude at some point the signs for the goblin market and the farmer’s market in your town got switched but your fae are too polite to say anything when you keep coming back
I used to get so mad when other counselors would tell the campers that the fruit trees around us were poisonous, or that they were all sprayed with dangerous chemicals. They weren’t! They were Himalayan blackberries. Salmonberries. Thimbleberries. Raspberries. Oregon grape. Cherries. Apples. Pears. All good, delicious stuff!
I know some of them did it out of ignorance, and probably really did believe that the fruit was inedible, or were too afraid to say “I don’t know”. But others did it because they wished to keep kids on-task for activities so that they weren’t distracted by ripe berries. You fools! Nothing is worth that—nothing! I can promise you that no camp activity was of more worth or value or general life enhancement than allowing children to find delight and appreciation in nature. No game or ceremony or arbitrary rule can offer more joy or freedom than plucking a wild fruit off the bush, knowing it is good to eat.
Sure, you can make it on time to lunch if you tell a child that a salmonberry will kill them. But you’re lying—you’re teaching them to view wild things as innately hostile and foreign, when you ought to be teaching them how to identify plants, how to be cautious, and how to see themselves as part of the world. Let them be late to activities! Let them hop fences if no one’s around to complain! Let them be distracted and juice-stained and sticky! Let them be sweet-seeking animals, and, if you really want to be responsible, just make sure they wash the fruit before eating it. When are they going to have another, better chance…?
Yes! This!
Teach the kids about the local plants. What is edible and what is dangerous! If you don’t know, let the kids know that. They can smell the rote answer as just placating them.
I like haunted houses in theory BUT I have no idea how to react when the actors speak to you. They ask me a question and I just… answer it…
The scariest part of a haunted house is the unscripted social interaction.
Scary nurse in a creepy voice: “Do you have an appointment to see the doctor?”
Me: “Uh. Do you accept walk-ins?”
Scary farmer: “I like to kill people!”
My friend, brightly: “I like to die!”
Zombie : “AARRRGH”
Me : “Do you get dental insurance?”
Zombie : “TEETH!!”
This happened to me.
Scary prison dude: HELLO
Me: Nice to meet you!
Him: (pause) No it’s noooooot
My worst horror house experience was when I couldn’t find the (rather obvious) exit and the guy chasing me with a chainsaw stopped, sighed and pointed me to the exit, saying “please scream as loud as you can when you run out there” and just left. I disappointed the horror house chainsaw dude and I will never get over that
Guy: They are all my friends.. (motioning to hanging corpses; then grabs a noose) Will you be my friend? Me: Sure totally, you made me a friendship necklace? Oh my god your so sweet? Guy: … Yes.. Please, let me.. I cant I cant just go (laughing).
– Got to walk a second time through–
Same guy: My friends -wailing- Me: I came back I just really wanted to be friends so bad Guy: (laughing more) Please, Im not allowed to laugh.
I went to a Haunted House and literally befriended every actor there.
Specifically, I remember;
There were zombies walking around in the waiting room. I said “Hi!” and he gave me a high five. Every time he passed from then on, I got a high five.
Near the end, there were these twin little girls. “Come play with us.” They said. “Okay!” I said. “Forever.” They said. “Oh, sorry, can’t do that. I’m busy.”
I could hear them giggling.
Guy playing Freddie Kruger: Remember, you are all my children!
Me: thanks dad
A small chorus of teenagers: thanks dad
I went to a haunted corn maze once. Someone ran at me with a chainsaw. I just stared at him. He hung his head and walked away. I left.
The Real Horror Is The People We Dissapointed Along The Way
IM CRYING
When I was like three my parents took me on a haunted train ride and my sister was freaking out but I was like?? Oh neat
And an actor in costume as a vampire or whatever came down and was like “how do you do little one” all looming and creepy or whatever and i brightly answered “very well thank you!!” And tried to shake his hand bc my mother raised me with MANNERS
I remember once at universal studios I was overstimulated and ready to go home but my family didn’t want to leave so I was just standing in the middle of everything trying not to cry and the beetlejuice dude came up to me and growled and wiggled his fingers in my face so I just did the same thing to him and walked away
Tyrant king Gilgamesh oppresses his subjects enough that they pray to the gods to stop him. The gods create Enkidu, a furry with a sense of justice, to be Gilgamesh’s opponent and teach him humility. Enkidu gets laid and goes off to fight Gilgamesh, loses, but impresses the king enough that he decides they should be Best Friends Forever. (“YOU’RE buff, and I’M buff… with our powers combined, we could be DOUBLE BUFF!!!”)
Gilgamesh and his new furry boyfriend traipse around having adventures, being ludicrously buff, killing monsters for fun, and pissing off gods. The goddess Ishtar tries to seduce Gilgamesh, but he rebuffs her because she’s notoriously a terrible girlfriend, so she sends another monster after him and he and Enkidu rip it apart. Gilgamesh throws part of its ass at her and the gods decide Enkidu should die as vengeance.
Gilgamesh is devastated at the loss of his furry boyfriend and mourns over the body for a full week, until a maggot falls out of its nose. He’s so traumatized by this and the entire concept of death that he embarks on an Epic Quest to find the secret to immortality. At this point the plot starts to get confusing and big chunks of it are missing, but he has more adventures, meets some surprisingly friendly scorpion people, hears all about how terrible the afterlife is, etc. He maybe dies and gets buried eventually? It’s unclear.
It’s thousands of years old real person incomplete fanfic.
Gilgamesh: “Utnapishtim! Tell me the secret to immortality!”
Utnapishtim: “Okay, well, first you must overcome sleep—”
Gilgamesh: [already snoring]
The best part is that when Gil falls asleep, Utnapishtim’s wife makes a loaf of bread for each day he’s asleep and just, lays them out like a glutenous calendar. So when Gilgamesh wakes up and tries to claim that he closed his eyes for a few seconds, Utnapishtim dramatically gestures to the bread, the oldest of which is already covered in mold, as if to say, you have slept for this much bread.
I also like when a snake steals Gilgamesh’s weed.
My fanfic for the missing tablets: Gil and Enkidu team up with Darmok and Jalad to rescue Dathon and Picard on El-Adrel
I’ve compiled all current space emperor updates into one large Google Doc, which you can read here. I’ll continue updating this link and possibly go back and make minor edits as I see fit. I’m not sure how to format it so you can easily skip from chapter to chapter from the outline, but I’ll work on that! The most recent update is chapter nine.
OK now I figured out how to make chapters. If you go to “View”, find the dropdown menu, and select “Show document outline” it all shows up as clickable chapter sections.
