i don’t know how anyone could possibly risk plagiarising on purpose like i am so god damn terrified of accidental plagiarism that every time i submit something on turnitin i can literally feel my individual arm hairs standing on end as i wait for the police to show up at my door and arrest me for writing a string of words too similar to some paper about the mating habits of hoot owls from 1965
listen. there’s nothing “boring” about ships that are stable and built on mutual trust and respect. there can be angst and drama and all those juicy bits without the characters being absolutely abysmal to each other all the damn time
concept: a TV show runs for a decent number of years. More than four. The characterizations stay consistent. The writers don’t do anything wildly inappropriate like excuse rape or abuse. No one you’ve invested hours upon hours of your life into has their story reduced to a “shocking” death scene that has no meaning beyond that shock value. The quality of the storylines don’t take a sudden, strange spiral downward. When it ends, you leave it feeling bittersweet. Sad that it’s over, but glad you got to experience it and take a journey with some people who you came to care about.
Leverage.
You are thinking of the show Leverage.
Concept: four criminals (hacker, hitter, grifter, thief) and an honest man (an ex-insurance investigator, and the mastermind of the group) band together and pull Robin Hood-esque cons on rich people and corporations who take advantage of middle and lower class people.
Run time: five seasons.
Gorgeous development of the five main characters, two women and three men. One of the women is in her forties and acknowledged as crushingly beautiful by literally everyone and brilliant with people. The other one is in her twenties and Word of God (the creators) says that she’s on the autism spectrum and she’s insanely talented and you will adore her because she is adorable. One of the men is an ex-military ‘retrieval specialist’ who low-key just wants to cook and protect his people and will honestly murder you if you hurt a kid. The resident computer genius is, direct quote, “a 24-year-old with a smartphone and a problem with authority.” Also he’s black and the racism issue is brought up when their marks are rude to him. He’s literally a tol puppy who just wants to play with his toys and his friends. The dude in charge is just flat-out brilliant and kind of an asshole and kind of a mess and it’s hard not to like him.
Anyone who tries any shit with the women pays immediately and dramatically–one dude straight gets stabbed with a fork when he comes onto the younger one (Parker), and she vaults out a window. She’s my hero. One of the men, Eliot, is an acknowledged womanizer and he treats every woman he sleeps with like a queen and is ready to fuck you up if you even kind of insult any of them. Also, he is canonically great in bed and all of the women are totally good with the one-night-stand thing. The other woman, Sophie, uses her sexuality like a finely-tuned instrument when she’s conning people, and she’s never judged for it.
All of the main characters are treated amazingly well. Parker’s backstory is acknowledged to include child abuse in foster homes, and she’s never treated as broken or crazy (the closest anyone comes is that two of the others affectionately call her crazy when she does death-defying stunts). The mastermind–Nate–got into this shit after his son was diagnosed with cancer and his very wealthy insurance refused to pay for his treatment, leading to the son’s death. His grief, and the alcoholism he fell into as a result, is handled with a grace and gentleness that breaks my heart every time. All of them have complex backstories and relationships and identities–Sophie, who uses about a billion aliases, has a whole plot about having to figure out who she is under all her fake identities.
The stories are as glorious and thrilling in the fifth season as they are in the first–in fact, I would say the fifth season might actually be the best. There are two interracial relationships canonically onscreen for quite some time (Sophie/Nate, Parker/Hardison), and Word of God states that the popular OT3 Parker/Hardison/Eliot is confirmed by the events of the final episode.
The only complaint I have about this show is that it’s not longer.
Okay so I too am Frank Castle trash and Karen Page trash and I was wondering if you have any thoughts on Frank/Karen because I don't think that was the ship I was supposed to walk away from Season 2 with and I'm really glad to know it wasn't just me.
DO I HAVE THOUGHTS YOU ASK
My thoughts range from ‘realistically, nothing can and should happen because Frank is too fucked in the head and also I think Karen would have some reservations’ to ‘wait this is Daredevil of the endless ninjas, why am I attached to realism’
So what I’d like is if there was some kind of connection, maybe at first without contact. It’s just, Karen writes articles about the Punisher and they are… not unsympathetic. And Frank reads them, and he’s very aware that she’s maybe the only person in the world who thinks of him as a person rather than only the Punisher. And to his mind that becomes the connection to his humanity he can’t quite break away from. It becomes important that Karen would be okay with what he does. He researches his targets carefully. Doesn’t take as much savage joy in killing scum. Tries to do it neatly and dispassionately. And maybe sometimes when his research turns up people or situations that are just ordinarily bad, not utter pondscum, he drops the files at the office of the Bulletin with Karen’s name on them.
She’s important to him - her opinion of him - long before he is on her radar in quite the same way, I’d like to think. But at some point she’s like… dude I’m gonna need more info on these files. Can’t communicate it to him other than a ‘citizens are invited to contact the Bulletin with more info’ line in an article. He drops a phone for her.
And then there is coffee in diners and a lot of glances and unexpected smiles and maybe down the line more than that
wayne enterprises almost certainly has clothing as one of their retail subsidiaries and i like to imagine it getting really profitable just because bruce spends so much time listening to models bitch at parties. all of their product lines have names like “It Has Real Pockets” and “Not See-Through” and “Full-Length Sleeves” and “Secret Elastic Waist”. the marketing department is like “okay obviously these are all working titles” and bruce is like “no. leave it. that is what it’s called.” and they try to talk him out of it but he owns a helicopter and you can’t argue with a man who owns a helicopter. they sell so fast. the women of gotham are well-dressed and comfortable and always have somewhere to keep their phones.
You know what, I’m moving to Gotham. I’ll start carrying a crowbar and get hella life insurance. It’s worth dealing with the occasional serial murderer for clothes with pockets.
When you say you’re the victim of abuse you are supposed to, by the common understanding, be able to bring up very specific episodes of that abuse in order to “prove its really abuse”.
But a lot of abuse just doesn’t work that way.
Sometimes they just wore you down constantly. Sometimes you couldn’t put your finger on it, but felt all of effects none-the-less. Sometimes its so plain awful that you’ve repressed it. Sometimes it was so damn insidious that you normalized it until one day years later you mention it and someone gives you a look of shock and you realize it wasn’t normal.
All of you. Any of you.
You are all just as valid as someone who wrote a whole damn memoir on the thing.
The stories coming out of this post are absolutely heartbreaking.
There’s a website where you can learn ASL on your own and it is free and the woman on there, her name is Rochelle Barlow, she runs the site and she actually is a homeschool teacher and teaches ASL. I am passing this on to you guys cause most people on here is open-minded. Well, whoever of y’all reads this will possibly ignore this but if you are a curious george like me and wants to learn ASL she’s your gal.
Rochelle has a free program called Learn ASL in 31 days, currently I am on day 10ish or 12, (idk I’m on learning my numbers currently) but I believe this site will help people that are either curious about ASL and just wants to learn, or actually is Deaf but can’t afford to going to actual class or something, or just hard of hearing.
I am truly in love with learning with Rochelle, she isn’t those interpreters that will talk while she signs, (and I’ve searched through Youtube how to sign but the person talking will distract me and I would get confused) and it is all in video which is a good thing. I found her through Youtube, that’s where she has all her videos. Just check out her site. You’ll like it.
remember when u used to go over to ur friends house and youd go down to the ‘computer room’ to the dads old shitty desktop computer and sit on the giant black leather computer chair and ur friend would show u charlie the unicorn and epic rap battles of history type stuff on youtube while thier younger siblings bugged you for a turn to use the computer
shoutout to all those folks who were about to identify with this post and then suddenly felt super old
shoutout to the computer room dwellers glued to pre-internet computers
shoutout to misspent youth wasted on Zork and Kings Quest and Commander Keen
shoutout to that friend with Wolfenstein and Leisure Suit Larry
shoutout to coupler modems and MUDs and usenet
shoutout to beige computers and particle board “computer desks” and 3.5 floppies and 5.25 floppies and color monitors
shoutout to the dawn of the information age, which you spent mostly just playing Lemmings or shouting down the hallway “DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE!”
do you ever stop and think how strange it is that we just…let people have kids? like, whenever they want? with no training?
you have to take lessons and pass a test before you can drive a car. it’s a fairly simple process but if you do it wrong, you can cause injury or even death. raising a child is, i imagine, a bit more difficult than driving a car. shouldn’t we give out Parent Licenses?
A person who works with children, I agree with all of this.
I might agree with this if I didn’t know how mysteeeeriously much harder it would be for “undesirables” to get one.
“There are people who are always in love with the sky, no matter the weather. One day you will find someone who’ll love you the same way.”—n. m., from a book in progress (via wnq-writers)
I’m working on a novel that has a very broad range of characters and I’m trying to do them all justice, so that means that I’ve been doing a lot of research–I’m white and cis, and I know that presents an inherent limitation in my experience, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to just…not do the best justice I can to my characters and the very real people they represent. To wit: I’m working with an especially prominent side character who identifies as a trans man. Because of the limitations of the universe, gender reassignment and hormone therapy are currently not available to him, and he struggles with fits of dysphoria. If you’re not comfortable, there’s absolutely no pressure, and you can pretend that you didn’t see this, but I was wondering if there was anyone would would be willing to share their experience with me so that I can craft him as best as I possibly can. I have anon turned on if you’re more comfortable that way, or you can message me privately.
It takes place entirely in an elevator of an office building.
So you see various people interact with each other at different times of the day.
Sometimes, they’re all getting along. Othertimes, they’re making out. And othertimes still, they’re throwing punches and threatening to murder one another.
You see people by themselves, doing things that they wouldn’t do otherwise.
You hear everyone complain about one character who you never see for the duration of the show, because they take the stairs.
You actually have no idea what the company does. One day, they’re talkking about balancing the budget, one day, they’re taking about how they all got food poisoning on their retreat to Tahiti, one day they’re in furry costumes, and one day, one of the characters gets a phone call where the ringtone is ‘Hail To The Chief’; they answer it, saying, “Yes, Mr. President?”
You have just enough information to go on, while also knowing nothing.
*banging my fists on a table* LET CASHIERS HAVE CHAIRS
Every time I see a cashier with a chair I’m like “I support this business”, no joke. That shit shows me that a company actually CARES about it’s employees. Quit making people stand on their feet for 8 hours straight that shit is torture.
This is so weird what countries are you all living in where I come from ALL CASHIERS HAVE CHAIRS!!! Like, really, each and everyone of them!
(Also, while it’s nice having a chair while working, trust me, after a few hours of sitting you’ll be glad to stand up every now and then. Also if there are many people and they are queueing in front and behind you, it’s actually quite uncomfortable to sit, because you’re surrounded by people who stand and look down on you.)
America, friend-o. Land of the obscure bureaucratic rulings and low minimum wage. Help us.
The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))
What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?
Endemetriosis
Vaginal Thrush
Menorrhagia
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Fibroids
Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.
Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.
Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely
uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I
have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially
difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.
Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.
Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.
Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects.
This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!
Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.
Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?
Except that’s not right at all.
Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis - and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.
Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.
And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.
Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.
Then look up PCOS and diabetes.
Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed.
Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.
I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And that’s not even unusual - that’s the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.
…wait WHAT.
I had endometriosis for 17 years before a doctor suggested my symptoms were abnormal. Everyone else said, “that sounds like a normal period to me.”
Had endo for 13 years before a doctor finally fucking listened to me. I’ve had FOUR SURGERIES since then to clear out adhesions.
It only took me like two weeks to have enough free time to post the second part of this, but HERE. And here’s Part the First.
Here
are the signs that every child learns in the fifth grade.
One. Exhaustion, coupled with crippling insomnia. (Fact: Harry
should have seen the circles under her best friend’s eyes, and the loll of her
head as she fought to focus in class.)
Two. A gleam in the eye, a silver sheen to throw
back light when struck at the right angle.
(Fact: the darker the eye, the more obscure the glint. Harry knows this, but cannot help but blame
herself for missing it.)
Three. Carelessness trending toward ruthlessness,
toward anyone not considered a personal possession. (Fact: the boy who had upset Harry had not
deserved the cracked ribs, nor the shattered nose. He certainly had not deserved the cold gaze
and mocking laugh that fell on him as he lay bleeding in the dirt.)
Four. A sudden disinterest in sleeping altogether,
and a total vanishing of the need.
(Fact: Harry had thought this enviable, in her more bitterly whimsical
moments of high school.)
Five. A crippling fear of iron, and blackened burns
on contact. (Fact: Harry has not
considered herself clever since she was fifteen, because it was only the sight
of her best friend cringing back from a wrought iron fence that made the
connection between her strange behavior and the lectures they had heard about
children stolen and replaced with something else.)
Six. Total disintegration of the mortal
glamour. (Fact: Marys had been so lovely,
standing in the sunlight, all sharp ears and sharper eyes, that Harry had
almost wept. She still hates herself a
little, that the tears in her eyes were not of grief.)
A judge has ruled in their favor to continue their lawsuit against Urban Outfitters for their gross misuse of the word Navajo to describe their shitty clothes. Urban Outfitters tried to say that there was no standing to the lawsuit because The Navajo Nation couldn’t show “injury in fact” but Judge Bruce D. Black ruled the tribe has does, and can continue its claim under the Arts and Crafts Act.
Cultural Appropriation is disgusting and to call something “Native American” when it’s not is illegal.
This is huge!!! Congratulations to the Navajo Nation!
okay but like can we talk about star trek just for one second.
because.
like.
so much tv and so many movies and so many books are all about how the future is a disaster because technology ends the world and aliens attack and humanity is awful.
and then there’s star trek. motherfucking star trek. where, yeah, shit goes wrong all the time, but technology lets us reach and grow and learn, and humanity builds itself starships and warp cores and makes contact with aliens and builds this interstellar family out of all these disparate cultures and it names its flagship Enterprise because that’s what it is, it’s this enterprise of hope and discovery, and no matter how often they all risk their necks and get in fights and end up shooting it out with the Borg or the Klingons or the Romulans or whatever, humanity still looks up at the stars and says “you know what, let’s boldly go, motherfuckers,” and that’s the kind of future I wanna see.
NASA scientists have reported that they’ve successfully tested an engine called the electromagnetic propulsion drive, or the EM Drive, in a vacuum that replicates space. The EM Drive experimental system could take humans to Mars in just 70 days without the need for rocket fuel, and it’s no exaggeration to say that this could change everything.
But before we get too excited (who are we kidding, we’re already freaking out), it’s important to note that these results haven’t been replicated or verified by peer review, so there’s a chance there’s been some kind of error. But so far, despite a thorough attempt to poke holes in the results, the engine seems to hold up.
“Be waiting out front of the HAB, Watney, we’re not fucking waiting for you to get dressed. Places to be.”
Guys. Guys. I’ve been following this story for a while now and you don’t get it. Some guy made this and was like “well hi I made a thing and it shouldn’t go but it goes.”
And the science community was like okay that… there’s no way that works.
Then they tested it theoretically and it worked.
Then NASA was like okay but technically this breaks one of Newton’s laws so even if it theoretically goes it won’t like, actually go. So they built it and tested it more and it works.
So what we have now is the scientific community slowly cautiously freaking out because this GODDAMN EM DRIVE breaks the RULES OF PHYSICS but every time we test it, it FUCKING WORKS.
How cool is this????
Every time we’ve found something “broken” that functions, it means something is wrong with our understanding of reality. The next step is to figure out what, figure out what’s true, and open up a plethora of new scientific discoveries.
Ohhhhh I LOVE it when there is something wrong with our understanding of reality shit gets donnnnne!
“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”—
god i HATE the way crime shows aggressively push the idea that only guilty people (or occasionally innocent but morally repugnant people) want lawyers when talking to the police.
it’s one of the most harmful lies on tv honestly because it encourages real people to waive their right to counsel making it vastly easier for cops to take advantage of them, lie to them, railroad them etc. regardless of your guilt or innocence, if you’re suspected of a crime, you need a lawyer.
