'Tis I, The Useless Bi

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
dragonsareawesome123
magpie-murder

okay we need to have an intervention.

i've noticed that people don't leave the same kind of unhinged compliments under fanfics that visual artists usually receive (eg, "i want to eat your art"), so i've come up with a list that you need to start employing when your friends send you their WIPs and when your favorites update on ao3 but you're having a hard time commenting something that sounds intelligent and you still want to support them

  • "you're like if [famos author] (eg, Victor Hugo if the fic is angst) was into [fandom]"
  • "well THIS has been added to my pre-sleep daydream schedule"
  • "this fic invaded my mind and consumed my brain like a spore"
  • "I'M LOSING SLEEP OVER THIS ONE, FOLKS"
  • "yOu'Ve AlReAdY lEfT kUdOs HeRe"
  • "this fic has me scratching at my yellow wallpaper, it's so good"
  • "this fic has me checking under my floorboards for the heart of a kind man i murdered, it's so good"
  • "i'm making my parents read this"
  • "i know only one chapter is out so far, but i'm going to print this out, staple it together, and put it on my bookshelf next to the canon material"
  • "this fic gave me another mental illness"
  • (you can only do this one once) "i made an ao3 account specifically to bookmark this"
  • "i'm going to print this out so i can eat the words on the paper"

and a couple that are just nice (without the feral nature):

  • "i made a custom playlist to listen to while i read this fic"
  • "this fic reminds me of [song]"
  • "i really liked the part where [x], it really stuck with me"
  • "i really liked this line, [quote the line,] it was so well-written!"
  • artists: draw fanart of the fic!! it doesn't matter if you think your art skills are good and it doesnt matter if it's just a sketch!! let the author see it!!
  • make a moodboard!! for the fic!! let the author see it!!
zephuckyr
lillyofthewoods

Love that they put “a sense of impending doom” as one of the symptoms of a heart attack, like girl, that’s just how it is to be alive these days, you’re gonna have to be more specific

undeadhousewife

This made me chuckle but after scrolling away I felt the need to come back to it.

Because as someone who has felt this I can not stress how different it actually is from anxiety. Which is saying a lot because I have a massive anxiety disorder.

I've only felt this twice in my life - once when I was going into kidney failure due to an infection and again when my body was going into shock due to dehydration and malnourishment due to GI issues - and I can not stress how much it saved my life. It's hard to even put it into words. It's not like a panic attack, or anxiety. It is a horrific gut turning feeling of absolute dread.

Especially if you have anxiety you'll know the difference honestly. It's so much worse. It's every cell in your body and your brain screaming that there's something horribly wrong in a way you've never felt. It's your brain screaming out that you are going to die in a way no panic attack has ever done before.

I can not stress how important it is to get yourself to the ER if you feel this way. Especially if your having other physical symptoms.

naamahdarling

This is amazing and incredibly helpful, oh my god. Thank you.

headspace-hotel

Thanks billion-year-old survival engine within us that is more fundamental than the soul

timeandspacelord
only-tiktoks

weaselle

not a salt or a pepper, but a secret third thing

petermorwood

TL;DR - The third thing was Sugar. Not mustard, not paprika, not dried herbs, not something lost in the mists of time.

It was sugar, and there's historical proof.

*****

ETA: I'd put about 70% of this post together before @dduane said "Have you seen this?"

"This" was from @jesters-armed, in first with my notions about The Fifth Element Third Condiment, and even a mention that the posts were "...a bit long(ish)".

Ahem.

Yes they were, with no change here. You have been warned. :->

Well, okay, there's one change. The pix in this post are new and, combined with the illustrations in older posts, go even further towards confirming that what I once called a theory, I now regard as Fact.

*****

Here are a couple of 19th-century table caddies, proper name "cruet sets". Take a look at the labels. They answer the "what was it?" question asked by that TikTok in a single word.

Sugar.

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Not just in English, Spanish too.

Azucar.

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Even without labels to tell them apart and even when the containers were of matched size and shape, sugar-casters always had larger holes than pepper-shakers.

Sometimes not much larger, as here...

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...but usually, like those below and above, more than big enough to ensure no confusion between sugar and pepper.

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A container of similar shape with no holes, as in the set above, held mustard.

Mustard was never a shaker seasoning; it didn't work that way. Its spiciness doesn't activate until the dry "mustard flour" was mixed with water, vinegar, beer or wine and left to stand for several minutes.

This produced a runny-to-stiff paste which was at first transferred from pot to plate on the point of a knife, but soon got its own dedicated spoon.

There's a slot in this mustard-pot's side for a spoon, and the set pictured above may also have such a slot, unfortunately facing away from the camera.

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A matched spoon became part of any mustard-pot set...

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...and was such a uniform size that "mustard-spoon" was a recipe measurement along with dessert-spoon, tea-spoon, salt-spoon and even cayenne-spoon. (I've posted about cayenne as a table condiment elsewhere).

*****

Where's the salt-shaker in those sets?

When sets like those were in common use, salt-shakers weren't.

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So how did people use salt if it wasn't in a shaker?

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance salt was put out in ornate dishes called a Salt which were often spectacular works of art.

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This was placed at the top end of the table where important people sat; those seated further down were "below the salt".

Later, and still nowadays in formal settings, salt went into smaller dishes - salt-cellars - which like mustard had their own spoons. These were set on the table between two or four guests.

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They took salt with the spoon, and instead of sprinkling it all over, they made a little heap of salt on the side of their plate and added pinches as required with finger and thumb.

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The same side-of-plate thing is done with mustard.

English mustard is extremely pungent *, far more so than the Grey Poupon which TikTok Guy slurps so casually off his finger. A little can go a long way, too much can be overpowering, and slathering it over an entire plateful of food can make that food inedible.

(* I'm aware Chinese and Russian mustards are even hotter; they're not relevant here.)

I once had the educational (okay, also entertaining) experience of watching a friend from the USA putting Colman's English on their hot-dog as if it was French's Yellow, then taking a bite. Even then they were lucky, because mustard is hottest when made fresh and the shop-bought from a jar was much weaker than it might have been.

"Made mustard" of the kind which went onto Regency, Victorian and Edwardian tables packs quite a punch, and dishes of that period was far from bland; it took two world wars and their associated rationing to give British food its rep for being dull.

Here's an example of how mustard is used.

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Even though it's from a jar and feeble by comparison with fresh-made, it's likely that most of this will remain untouched when the meal is over.

Jeremiah Colman, founder of Britain's best-known mustard company, was only half-joking when he claimed that the firm's excellent sales record, and his own fortune, came from not from mustard eaten but from what was left on plates.

Whether on the plate or on the food, mustard for table use never came out of a shaker.

*****

The TikTok cites Bill Bryson, an American writer who, though living in the UK and presumably familiar with local grocery shops, failed to connect the proper name of the shaker ("caster" - TikTok Guy uses the name himself) with a grade of sugar sold by Irish / UK shops right now.

Here are the three standard grades - coarse, medium and fine. Note what the middle grade is called.

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""Caster" has become a single-word description for "fine-grain quick-melting fast-mixing general-purpose cooking-and-baking sugar" but is a literal description both of how it was used ("cast" as a verb) and the container ("caster") it was in.

*****

TikTok Guy mentions the "expense and effort" of using sugar.

Expense:

From the Middle Ages up to the early 1600s sugar was indeed expensive and only for the rich.

Good Queen Bess's teeth were in an appalling state because of her sugar consumption, and less-wealthy people sometimes blackened their (healthy) teeth, to suggest they too could afford enough sugar to cause rich-people tooth decay.

However, increased use of slave labour on sugar plantations meant the end product became more and more affordable, and by the mid-1700s sugar was no longer "a luxurious delicacy". It became a household staple, enough that in 1833 politician William Cobbett ranted about how overindulgence in sugary tea had sapped the vitality of the English working class.

His remedy was home-brewed beer, and lots of it (!)

Effort:

TikTok Guy uses the word as if it's something out of the ordinary, and seems unaware of how much physical labour - from preparing and cooking food to fetching water to washing dishes to tending the fire or range - went on every single day in a pre-modern-gadgets kitchen.

For instance, before electrical ease or hand-cranked convenience, whipping cream to thickness or beating egg-whites stiff enough for meringues meant thrashing away with a bundle of twigs "until it be enough", however long that took.

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By comparison, breaking down a sugar-loaf was quick and easy, especially since there was a tool for the purpose called "sugar nips".

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There's a set in one of the TikTok photos, though TikTok Guy didn't comment on them. He may not have known what they were.

Once nipped off, sugar chunks were reduced to the required texture with a pestle-and-mortar, exactly as was done with every other crushable ingredient in that period kitchen.

This and everything else wasn't effort in the way TikTok Guy thinks; it was just - especially if a mortar was involved - The Daily Grind.

*****

Conclusion:

I've posted about sugar casters before, and the first time (six years ago) was amusingly cautious:

So that third container was IMO for sugar.

Since then, backed with increasing amounts of hard visual proof as shown here and elsewhere, I've gone from caution to Certainty.

The "mystery" third container in table cruets was for SUGAR, with enough historical evidence in the form of specifically labelled and shaped containers to confirm it beyond doubt.

*****

And they all sprinkled happily ever after.

The End.

dammitradar
candyspider: “destructionofsanctum: “benthicpressure: “handageddon: “ohlivish: “” HEY WAIT A MINUTE!! Wasnt there a post like that? Like someone liveblogged being attacked and they just played possum because they felt awkward?? Or maybe they...
ohlivish

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handageddon

HEY WAIT A MINUTE!! Wasnt there a post like that? Like someone liveblogged being attacked and they just played possum because they felt awkward?? Or maybe they pretended to drown in someone’s pool just to be a dick and didn’t know when to stop until they were hidden in a closet. Or something

Am I making sense to anyone?

benthicpressure

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destructionofsanctum

You are my hero for finding this

candyspider

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an-ungraceful-swan
scribefindegil

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction

I find there is a 50/50 chance of this situation being:

a) Wow, I'm really glad you noticed that! I spent ages considering the implications and how it ties into the themes. Please let me talk to you for three hours straight about my thought process.

or

b) Erm... that thing... yeah... that was definitely a deliberate thing... I absolutely meant for that thing to be there honest

naphaven
bumblebeerror

My very unpopular opinion apparently:

Straight cis perisex able-bodied neurotypical people using aids designed for disabled people (I.e weighted blankets, grabby claw, sock holder, etc), going to therapists occasionally to keep up their mental health, using fidget toys, choosing to call their bf/gf their partner, using pronouns besides the ones associated with their gender just because they like it, and doing a million other small things that make us fitting in and being accepted a little bit easier is in fact exactly the type of support these communities need, and will ultimately help us so much more than gatekeeping ever fuckin will

gaybybirth
radical-agriculture

it’s gardening season! please don’t plant lettuces/greens directly into the ground in an urban area or close to a building without getting a soil test. the risk of lead poisoning is very high. if you can’t afford a soil test and you must plant into the ground, try to grow something where you will only be eating the fruit and not the leaves & stems (i.e. tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) bc there’s less of a chance that heavy metals will migrate to the fruit tissues. better yet, build a raised bed or plant in pots!

thecringeandwincefactory

Wow, I had no idea - thank you.

glittzysunflowermaze
willowcrowned

Maybe it’s just because I’m Jewish but I do truly believe that life gets ten times better when you learn to complain cheerfully

willowcrowned

I think a part of it is that it lets you acknowledge that something sucks, which is actually really good in a culture that wants us to pretend that everything is fine and we’re soldiering through all the time. Like, no, my grocery bag breaking and spilling all over the floor is not fine. I’ve had a long day and I’m really upset and on the verge of tears because I can’t handle one more thing and pretending like it’s fine only means breaking down later.

But if you let yourself complain, if you let yourself swear terribly and creatively, and you stare down at the bruised vegetables like they’ve personally disappointed you, and you make yourself smile because this is really just so, so stupid, you feel a little better. There’s a power to acknowledging that something sucks and making yourself feel better anyways. There’s a power to going “and THEN my bag broke, and it’s like—seriously? my day was bad enough” and doing it with a smile.

You shouldn’t have to pretend things are fine when they aren’t. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to smile through things that make you feel terrible. But if you can make yourself laugh by staring down at some strawberries that have decided to revolt, and give them a lecture on why they’re just terrible, really, and that makes you smile—then maybe that’s a good thing.