YoinkTober 2021

[Opaque]

Mirasol! Oh! Puppycat and Totoro look so cute!

Thegreyarea, Haha Sigrun did say that Reynir should be troll bait. Hope he has fun with that.

[Jitter]

Mirasol ooh what a lovely Totoro, and the other spirits. It is a wonderful movie, I should watch it again.

Grey, no, you take Reynir away from that ”cave” this instant! Or make him look like a Tiny Shelled Horse! (Wave, I managed start wondering what on earth are these, or perhaps even more accurately, why are these, until I read it’s from Botober).

Little Lalli with the Big Bun is sweetness squared!

As for mu contribution, someone’s death and decay is another’s food. To illustrate this, here are some photos of pretty mushrooms.



A lot more under the cut

Spoiler: show

Even more here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/YFkX4GC

Some of these are delicious human food too! (Disclaimer: never ever pick mushrooms you don’t know with absolute certainty to be edible)

Ps @Alkia was it you who mentioned liking goblincore? Thanks for that, because it’s big part of the reason I have started paying more attention to mushrooms. They are so cute!

[tehta]

13.10.2021 Food / 14.10.2021 Character Growth

Because of work/life insanity I have decided to double up on prompts (seems fair, as I posted twice for some of the others).
Note: my first idea for this one was to write about baby!Emil eating cakes and getting rounder. But then I had a better idea. So you're all lucky.
150 words, still Emil!

Spoiler: show

“WE WANT CAKE! WE HATE TURNIPS! WE WANT CAKE!”

“Stop that this minute, you three!” Aunt Siv’s voice was barely audible over the triplets’ shrill chant. “We do not throw tantrums in this house!”

Surprisingly, the noise stopped, replaced by a puzzled silence. “But... Emil does,” said Sune earnestly.

The nerve! Emil drew himself up. “I DO NOT--” He faltered as he noticed three pairs of five-year-old eyes, watching him in fascinated admiration. An unfamiliar sense of power fought against a familiar sense of shame; when the battle ended, all that remained was a strange, new idea.

He looked down at the horrible, cheap meal, and picked up his cutlery.

“I do not,” he repeated, spearing a wilted vegetable, “always feel in the mood for cake, myself. Sometimes, like today, I prefer proper food. Like these delicious turnips.”

His cousins grabbed their own forks.

“WE LOVE TURNIPS! WE LOVE TURNIPS!”

[tehta]

To those who commented on Lalli’s wedding outfit, with or without branches: I do sort of have a plan for what's supposed to happen next, and it does not involve tree camouflage... Let's see if it fits one of the prompts.

Jitter: My favourite part of your ‘twig disguised as tree’ vignette is Tuuri’s cleverness. And I do like the mushroom photos (are they all edible?). I have had several mushroom-related adventures around here recently, starting with my realization that the chanterelle, a mushroom I thought I could trust, has a near-doppleganger. (I can tell them apart now, at least.)

Opaque: I really enjoyed your take on the only truly canonical ship of the comic.

Wave: I have to agree, the kosher-keeping duskling is the best.

Mirasol: I don’t know puppycat, but I do know Totoro, and those disguises fit the spirits so well. It’s a very soothing picture.

Thegreyarea: At first, your picture just amused me, but then I started thinking about how Reynir doesn’t meet Lalli’s description of what a (Finnish?) mage must be like. He would try to help, wouldn’t he?

[Jitter]

Tehta no, not all of these definitely aren’t! The ones in the first picture are some sort of tiny mushrooms that remind me of fairies. But there is also the one porcini I have seen this year, and some of the ones growing along treestumps are likely one very good mushroom, or alternatively a very poisonous one (if I were picking, I have things I could check, but I was only gathering photos). But mainly the shrooms are doing the eating here

[JoB]

I have had several mushroom-related adventures around here recently, starting with my realization that the chanterelle, a mushroom I thought I could trust, has a near-doppleganger. (I can tell them apart now, at least.)

Ah, but can you tell it from the other lookalike, too?

(One is just poorly digestive and the other has actually killed Finns to introduce itself to mankind.)

[Róisín]

Thank you for putting those articles up, JoB! Good info! I teach mushroom foraging as part of general bushcraft, and it rather horrifies me how casual people are about what fungi they want to eat. I do try to teach caution and careful identification, but some people……

 I would be disinclined to eat false chanterelles at all, and being able to tell pore fungi and gilled fungi apart is really important! Taste is not enough! Someone I once knew who died of a Death Cap apparently described it as the tastiest mushroom he had ever eaten. I prefer to err on the side of caution.

Though some of the Cortinarius species do make beautiful dyes.

[tehta]

I'm actually pretty safe here in Switzerland, mushroom-wise, because there are mushroom centers where you can bring your collection to have it vetted by an expert.

And the false chanterelle I meant is the first, which is apparently quite common in my local wood. The underside of the cap is quite different though (In German, lamellen vs leisten) so I don't think I'll be bringing any to the experts...

[wavewright62]

Day 14 - Character Growth - I went to The Queen's Thief series for this one, specifically the finale.  We are introduced to Pheris, a character who happens to be the eldest son of a powerful but toxic family, kept and named as heir for spite. He is somewhat lame and has difficulty speaking, and cultivates an illusion of drooling idiocy to fly under the radar.  He is thrown into the intrigue of a foreign court, but there are those who can see beyond his facade to the shrewd operator underneath.  One tutor in particular steers him away from the hated alphabet primer he refuses to learn, and toward the library's geometry scrolls (which he admits he cannot make head or tail of), and Pheris is captivated.  It marks a turning point in Pheris' life.



For those familiar with the series, Pheris' condition is unnamed, and the wiki posits that it's cerebral palsy, but I headcanon that it's achondroplasic dwarfism. 

[Jitter]

JoB, the webcap can’t rbe mixed with the regular yellow chantarelle but we also have the funnel chantarelle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craterellus_tubaeformis which is approximately the same color and size. They can be told apart with confidence, but the problem is that the funnel chantarelle grows in large groups and sometimes some webcaps get picked along with them. Carelessness kills the mushroom eater.

The webcaps are lethal in any form, as are the white Amanita mushrooms. Those must definitely be avoided! As a general rule it’s best not to eat any white mushrooms unless you have expertise. The white Amanita is growing plentiful this year, hopefully there will be no poisonings.

But we also are in the habit of eating the fatally poisonous false morel (Finnish name is “ear mushroom)  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitra_esculenta which is delicious when prepared properly. I hope the earlier practice of selling them in the market just like that with no warnings, because “everyone knows it must be treated” has been discontinued though.

Yeah so, someone’s poison is another’s delicacy Just gotta be careful.

[thegreyarea]

Jitter, those are some lovely photos and delicious mushrooms (particularly when you don't plan to eat any of them   )

Wave, nice drawing (as usual). Pheris seems an interesting and particularly challenging character to write. How one "enters in the head" of a person with a problem like his? I suppose with a lot of research and some artistic licence...

Anyway, thanks to all that enjoyed the first episode of the crossover, and my not-at-all-worrying picture of Reynir and his desire to help.
So here's mine for character growth, where we find that even characters that may look evil or dangerous sometimes can grow into some quite different...



(and so I follow the orders suggestions of my dear friends that where (suitably) worried with Reynir   )

[Jitter]

Whew, I’m glad Reynir had wandered into a Totoro crossover!

Wave, he looks a lot like Tyrion, I assume not by accident. And I like the way you depict him getting interested in the geometry stuff!

Tehta, that was very mature of Emil! Good boy!

[Jitter]

Character Growth

Everyone was grumbling. Ok, so the news sounded bad, but surely this was just another  pandemic? The Rash would become an endemic flu and things would go back to normal. Right? Ok, an upsetting number of people had gotten sick and some had even died, but it’s not like it was the end of the world or anything!

“God, Aksel, can’t you make your grandma cool down a bit? She’s driving me crazy!”
“Sorry Sigrun, I…”
“Less chatter and more work! We need this fence up TODAY.”
“Seriously, Berit, we can’t work all the time.”
“No, you bloody well can’t work, after one of those things gets in here and you are all DEAD.”
“Aksel, does your gran really believe in the… monsters? Maybe she’s gone a bit… you know… in the head?”
“Sigrun, please…”
“Young lady, I maybe old but I’m not daft! And I definitely am not deaf! I don’t know what is out there, but I DO know it’s better to be safe than sorry. Now pick up the shovel!”

“Ok this is crazy. I refuse to dig a single hole more today!”
“Andersen, are you mutineering?”
“Calm down, dear lady, I understand you are worried but surely…”
“Don’t you “dear lady” me, young man! I was in the Legion, unlike any of you, I know what to do!”
“She was too! Trust me, you don’t want to end on the wrong side of grandma.”

“Ok you clowns, LISTEN UP. You seem determined to get yourselves killed. Anyone who wants to do that, is free to do so. Take your things and leave by nightfall. Me, my grandson, and anyone with an inkling of sense, will stay here, inside this fence which we will finish TONIGHT. You go out, you stay out. Is this understood?”
“Grandma, please, you sound crazy!”
“Hush, puppy! I will keep you safe, even if I have to drive off your whole town.”
“We don’t need to take orders from you, crazy lady! We’ll go and take our chances!” Gøran was defiant.

“So, guys, are you all going to go?” Aksel was concerned for his friends.
“Well… we don’t really think it’s right she gets to kick us out…”
“I’m not sure leaving in this weather would be a good idea…”
“I don’t want to leave my things…”
Ingrid and Gøran were looking at their feet, clearly not keen to leave the town after all.

“Sigrun? What about you? You’ve been acting like all of this was a funny joke.”
“Yeah, well… I guess your gran is right… we don’t know what is out there, but, better safe than sorry.”
“So, you are staying?” Axel was suddenly beaming.
“Yeah. I guess I’d better start taking this seriously. And there’s something here I don’t want to leave behind.” For some reason completely unfathomable to Aksel, Sigrun seemed to be blushing a little.

[wavewright62]

Nice one Jitter!  The line between heckling Sigrun L and married Sigrun L is a fun area to poke.  And sweet take-charge granny Berit - is that growth, or was it always there? We'll never know, but I'd say it worked.

thegreyarea - I don't who Tyrion is, but okay? 
It's helped that the entire book was told from Pheris' POV, so it was clear from the get-go how much he was playing everyone, and his reactions at realising certain people were not fooled in the slightest.  The fascination with the geometry was well foreshadowed from early in the narrative.  (One of the delights of the series is that the POV shifts from character to character with each book, so that the same incidents sometimes get viewed from more than one perspective.)
Also, a very fitting resolution and fit of the prompt!

[Opaque]

Ah! Shoot I almost forgot to make something for today. I guess haikus are easy. How bout Emil?
(Character growth)

A spoiled young boy
Grows from his constant hardships
Matures as a man