Account inactive @literorrery@awoo.space

I slept half the night on a beanbag in the Observatory curled up next to @adeptomega. Then I woke up, wondered what time it was, and dashed upstairs to crawl into bed next to @ElectricKeet.

Good night. Not ready for reality. Not a people ever no.

I apparently missed something earlier while I was making Tantalos Cake. Temptation urges me to investigate, though I know better.

"Infinity is the number of hours in forever."

And here we go. The final assembly. The first cake got its top leveled; the crumbs will find their way into something. The buttercream set up a little too thick, so a little milk came to the party and loosened everybody right up for a final assembly.

This isn't devil's food. This is Temptation Incarnate. Four kinds of chocolate and just enough of everything else to hold it in shape for the camera. This is culinary edge-play on a plate.

https://awoo.space/media/bWTKyvSvJkoHEhSE5po

Here's the cakes, fresh from the oven. You might call them "devil's food," but I think we've gone pretty far past anything Old' Scratch might dare claim for their own.

Everybody needs a refractory period after this point, just to give the cakes some time to cool off, and then the last scene can begin.

https://awoo.space/media/KtJ-IFLjTGre6elVIaM

And here's what happens when everybody gets together: chocolate buttercream frosting, ready for the first team to come out of the oven together.

https://awoo.space/media/H_sajEC-GlK5ntGl6aQ

For the rest of the frosting, we're gonna cheat just a little, and use powdered sugar instead of syrup for a buttercream. It's not authentic, but neither is drinking chocolate with sugar. Xolototl with maize and cayenne, or enjoy the perversion with me.

In the meantime, here's butter, shortening, and powdered sugar getting really intimate with a paddle, prepping to meet the pareils.

https://awoo.space/media/0rOZQ4ZuxJRglooE0Dw

All that's gonna go into glass baking dishes and get some time in the hotbox together after a fresh turn, but you know what? This still isn't enough black magic.

How about frosting?

To do that, we're going to start with some high-quality chocolate pareils. Microwave, gently, to get them moving, and they melt without any extra enouragement, getting reach for their big turn. https://awoo.space/media/9mKOb9obGv1qbiXw1nY

But you know what? You folks want the old black magic. We've barely scratched the surface. We can add a few more forms of black magic to this ritual. Let's get some dark chocolate chips into the party to make this all the more riskier. And just because I believe in edge play, I asked half a cup of roasted cocoa nibs to join in. Better safeword now, if you're going to do so. https://awoo.space/media/6sL-FhZhYULzcsTG4WI

This is what happens when the folks in Studio A and Studio B get together after that, with some time in the mixmaster. You can see everybody's really getting into this. The chocolate's getting everybody interested in the party, and the dry team just gonna soak up everything the wet team can throw at them. https://awoo.space/media/J2V8Llx0OjwJrlEpvgk

Here's the chocolate with everybody in Studio B, having gotten into a high-gloss party mode. This starts a dive into debauchery that's going to end in some terrifying places. https://awoo.space/media/ojSyAiUYOunffK4lSDQ

That third player?

Chocolate.

Specifically, this is dutched cocoa, which is a special form of cocoa powder that's been treated with alkali so all the taste is available in recipes that don't use acids. We've encouraged it to get intimate with some hot water and a whisk, and you can see the shine it took on as a result.

Sadly, I didn't get a photo of that, but you can see where I've started to already stir in the team in Studio B. https://awoo.space/media/A_hnU2hKgfK1mEOTk7Q

So, here's some old black magic.

In Studio A, the flour sisters, cake and all-purpose, share a mixer with brown sugar and baking soda. In Studio B, eggs -- some whole, some yolks -- get cozy with the handwhip, some vegetable oil, and a little cream cheese. These two teams are gonna get cozy with their respective tools for a bit, before we introduce a third player to our intimate drama. https://awoo.space/media/qhWUdw8Q8My82T6wycU https://awoo.space/media/-KFkwDHyGTULBx_Fqvo

I'm in the mood for the old black magic.

Who here wants the old black magic?

Quitter http://orrery.prismaticmedia.com/2017/07/09/quitter/

Tell me about coming to terms with being a sentient satellite and communicating by gravity wave and quantum entanglement. Give me interstellar romances of artificial embodiment with snarky older machines. That premise doesn't need justification. Please give me happy amazing space stations going through incorporation shock together and leave the sublimated meatsack neotribalist violence out of it.

17776 alienates me. It's a lovely premise -- waking up the onboard computers of satellites and getting them to form family units -- that they then ruin by getting football all over it. I don't like sports and I don't like sports fandom. Jon Bois' Pretty Good usually avoids this by being about math in the presence of sports, but I just can't seem to find a comfortable separation here. It also twigs my writer brain. The US won't even exist 18000 year in the future. C'mon.

Hey, @acetone_kitten: https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/book-review-advertising-shits-head/