concept: a TV show with a dark, tragic, fucked-up beginning that steadily gets happier and lighter and more hopeful as the seasons go on, the narrative arc premised on healing and growth instead of a “gritty” downspiral, the challenges faced in each season finale leaving the characters in a progressively better place. nobody queer dies, and the worst things we ever see after season 1 all happen in flashbacks to events preceding the now.
I would love to see this.
Leverage, my darlings. You’re talking about Leverage.
I’ve seen a lot of remixes around, especially for Laurens, so I thought I’d join the club and try my hand at “The World was Wide Enough” set in the skirmish at the Combahee River in SC. This is based off of the speculation I’ve seen where the reason Laurens was so reckless in battle could have been because he was depressed and suicidal. There are references to the Laurens/Hamilton correspondence, like Laurens’ pet name for Hamilton.
-
Ensemble: one two three four five six seven eight nine…
WHENEVER YOU SEE THIS POST ON YOUR DASH, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WRITE ONE SENTENCE FOR YOUR CURRENT PROJECT.
Just one sentence. Stop blogging for one minute and write a single sentence. It could be dialogue, it could be a nice description of scenery, it could be a metaphor, I don’t care. The point is, do it. Then, when you finish, you can get back to blogging.
If this gets viral, you might just have your novel finished by next Tuesday.
Goddamn it, it’s back.
If it stays back, I might manage to finish a third story this year. Jesus.
I swear, this is now my only writing motivation.
BACK AGAIN??? Sigh.
Okay, sorry if anyone gets sick of this, but it’s the best way for me to get myself to write.
it’s amazing how frozone’s wife didn’t even show her face in the incredibles and had like the smallest role ever yet somehow succeeded in delivering the best lines in animation history
I HOPE THOMAS JEFFERSON IS HAVING A BAD FOURTH OF JULY IN HELL
Fuck you he was hella cool, Hancock was the fuck face
THOMAS JEFFERSON OWNED SLAVES, SOME OF WHOM WERE HIS OWN CHILDREN WHO HE FATHERED BY MOLESTING A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SLAVE WHEN HE WAS IN HIS FORTIES, AND WHEN HE WAS CALLED UPON TO EXPLAIN THE HYPOCRISY OF WRITING “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL” WHILE KEEPING HUMAN BEINGS AS SLAVES, HE REASONED THAT THIS DIDN’T APPLY TO SLAVES BECAUSE HE BELIEVED BLACK PEOPLE WERE SUBHUMAN ANYWAY. HE OWNED HUNDREDS OF SLAVES WHOSE LIVES AND FREEDOM HE STOLE SO HE WOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY THE WORKERS IN FORCED LABOR CAMP HE OWNED AND OPERATED. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BENEVOLENT SLAVE MASTER. THIS IS A MATTER OF HISTORICAL RECORD, NOT A MATTER OF OPINION. IF THERE IS A HELL, THOMAS JEFFERSON DESERVES TO BE THERE.
“Until she convinces me otherwise, I assume that her emotional reaction to a situation is disproportionate to my opinion of what level of emotional reaction the situation calls for. Basically, if she’s on eight, I assume the situation is really a six.”—
I cannot think of a man with whom I have ever shared negative feelings who did not make it obvious, however hard he might’ve tried to hide it, that he is going through this mental process.
And
yes, if you’re a man reading this and thinking, “Oh no, but she’s told
me her negative feelings and I’ve responded by asking her questions
about why she feels that way, does she mean me???” Yes, I mean you. I
mean all of you. I am calling all of you out for this right now. No, I
don’t want to have a private conversation about it, because I’m done
with that emotional labor. If this describes you and you’re still in my
life as a friend or partner, assume that I have accepted this sort of
microinvalidation as the cost of doing business. But my acceptance of
reality doesn’t make it any more *acceptable*.
I just learned this today from my mom (who learned it from NPR) but I looked it up and it is legit. If you see an animal, other than a dog, which is covered in porcupine quills, stay away. It is almost certainly rabid.
Dogs are naturally curious and have a knack for getting into trouble. But otherwise, nature’s wild animals know to stay away from porcupines. The only animals willing to attack a porcupine are either martens (which have a specific technique) or rabid animals that are already in the throws of rabies madness. According to the vet on this month’s ‘Pets and Vets’ on NPR, every animal she saw (other than dogs) brought in with porcupine quills also had rabies.
So when you see that cute raccoon, clearly in distress, covered in porcupine quills, stay away and call animal control. It is not in distress because it is covered in quills, it is in distress because it is rabid and that is why it approached a porcupine in the first place.
Rabies is incurable. Please don’t let your good heartedness lead to you getting a fatal illness.
This is important but I would like to add that rabies is curable/preventable if you seek treatment before the onset of symptoms. It’s best to avoid contact in the first place, so don’t take that to mean “oh it’s okay to approach this probably-rabid dog,” but if a wild/stray animal should bite you in spite of your best efforts, disinfect the wound and seek a rabies vaccination ASAP!!
One time I used my retail voice on a coworker and she was like, “Don’t use your customer voice on me, I know you’re dead inside like the rest of us, it’s just frightening and weird”
The other day I asked for a table for two in my customer voice and the waitress squinted at me and I cleared my throat and said “Sorry, still in service mode” and she dropped hers and we swapped stories about our day and my boyfriend was like “You two just became two entirely different people in like .5 seconds…”
I can be bitching up a blue streak about a customer-from-hell while the store is empty, and when the phone rings swap over to my retail voice practically in mid-sentence. I even have managers and salespeople from other stores in the chain fooled into thinking I’m infinitely friendly and helpful, and my manager’s husband thinks I’m one of the most professional people in the store. One assistant manager’s daughter dubbed me Perky-Pants because she mostly dealt with me over the phone, and was shocked to the core when I dropped an F-bomb at her graduation picnic.
The acting required in the service industry is beyond the pale. My cousin freaked out when she came to see me at work because I was all smiling and nice while helping someone who was asking inane questions and who basically forced me to walk them to the product and put it in their fucking hand but I was nice as pie until I turned around to walk away and my demeanor changed back to normal and I muttered “what a fucking moron” under my breath as I got back to my cousin. She just looked at me shocked and said “no wonder you’re so exhausted when you get home.”
this is actually referred to as emotional labor in criminology, and is considered one of the hardest forms of labor
The art of bullshit is strong in the service industry
hey, i'm thinking of watching leverage- can you, like, explain it to me
Imagine if Robin Hood was in the 21st century except instead of King John it’s major corporations and instead of Robin Hood it’s an alcoholic ex-insurance cop lying to himself about being a good man and so hardbitten noir you practically choke on the cigarette smoke
oh and instead of the Merry Men you’ve got a hacker with a heart of gold who once drained the Icelandic bank for his grandmother’s medical bills, a self-loathing hitter who likes to pretend he’s an island when in actuality all he wants is someone to ask him to stay, and a thief who doesn’t melt or soften so much as find her footing, her home, and people who love her.
(also, spoilers, they are all married)
………..and Maid Marian is actually a grifter par excellence, femme fatale in the grand noir tradition, who is selfish and kind and the closest thing to a functional adult in the group, which is sort of terrifying, except for all the parts where it is amazing
It’s coming out in the news today that a teacher raped their 13-year old student. That’s the truth of it.
But since the teacher is a woman, the media’s reporting it as “Engaged
in a sexual relationship” and dudes all over the internet are
congratulating the kid on getting laid. Some even express jealousy.
To reiterate: He is 13. He is under the age of consent. By textbook
definition, this is sexual assault, because he legally cannot consent.
It bears repeating.
You may have heard the term “Rape Culture”.
It refers to a society that implicitly and indirectly cultivates the
mentalities that result both in sexual assault happening and its not
being punished properly when it happens.
In other words: This.
This is Rape Culture.
It’s the idea that men and boys cannot be victims. It is the idea that
there are circumstances when minors can consent to adults regarding sex.
It is romanticizing something that is irrefutably assault.
It is disgusting. It is wrong. And it is shameful.
Absolutely everyone that thinks this is a laughing matter is an embarrassment.
I’ve already seen posts on facebook about how people are impressed that he can “get laid with that haircut” He didn’t “get laid” he was targeted and assaulted by a pedophile.
Women talk about rape and men shoot them down with “WHAT ABOUT MALE VICTIMS”, yet when there is an actual male victim? They’re CONGRATULATING him while it’s women stepping forward to say that this poor boy was absolutely 100% raped. So what is it, MRA types? What about the male victims?
You get a membership to a tiny rundown gym as a present from your eccentric uncle. It takes some time, but you begin to grow suspicious: Is every member here a…super hero?
Okay but if I was writing this I would drag out this person’s investigation to the last possible minute and be like NOPE, SUPERVILLAINS.
“My eldest daughter, Suldana, is in love with another woman. She is eighteen and she spends her days working at our kiosk selling milk and eggs, and at night she sneaks out and goes down to the beach to see her lover. She crawls back into bed at dawn, smelling of sea and salt and perfume. Suldana is beautiful and she wraps this beauty around herself like a shawl of stars. When she smiles her dimples deepen and you can’t help but be charmed. When she walks down the street men stare and whistle and ache. But they cannot have her. Every day marriage proposals arrive with offers of high dowries but I wave them away. We never talk about these things like mothers and daughters should; but I respect her privacy and I allow her to live.”—Diriye Osman, “Fairytales For Lost Children.” (via mamma-wolf)
Nurse:
"Sorry your boyfriend couldn't wait for you in the waiting room, it makes women feel uncomfortable."
Me:
"He wasn't my boyfriend and I don't see how it would make them uncomfortable, but that's my opinion. He was here for moral support. I understood, and so does he."
Nurse:
"So he's your...."
Me:
"Friend."
Nurse:
(During the question asking) "How many sexual partners have you had?"
Me:
"11."
Nurse:
"How old were you when you first became sexually active?"
Me:
"....Loaded question but....14, I guess."
Nurse:
"You're sexually active, then."
Me:
"Well....I guess...but..."
Nurse:
"How many times have you been pregnant?"
Me:
"Uh. 0."
Nurse:
"O...kayy...-Checks 'condoms' as my preferred use of birth control-"
do you ever look at Successful™ people your age and feel like you’re just floating your way thru life like a very bewildered and directionless bumblebee
Hold up - you mean there are people who watch Fight Club and don’t realise that Tyler Durden is meant to be full of shit?
I mean, his doctrine of radical individualism is a sham that ultimately reduces his followers to faceless conformity. This isn’t deep metatextual wankery - it’s the literal text of the film.
How do you see the film and not get that?
My ex didn’t get this. He loves Tyler durden. I’ve never seen fight club so I DIDN’T KNOW.
Yeah, in the film he’s a total con-man. His grand speeches sound good if you don’t think about them too deeply, but they’re not meant to be insightful - they’re meant to be a snake-oil salesman’s patter, calculated to bamboozle dumb, angry young men into doing his bidding.
Trouble is, they’re sufficiently well-written that apparently they work on the dumb, angry young men in the audience, too.
I’ve actually written about this academically! There’s a really specific genre I call bro cinema that includes fight club, all of kubricks work, some Scorsese, and Tarantino (all of which I love TBH.) These directors don’t explicitly condemn toxic masculinity and instead trust the audience to have COMMON SENSE and realize that Alex from A Clockwork Orange or Tyler Durden or Travis Bickle are horrific misogynists. But without the film telling the audience how to feel about these characters, men misinterpret the objectivity as glorification. Fight Club is about how shitty masculinity is, but it’s been warped by men grasping for justification for their misogyny
I JUST REALIZED that this is why I love Fight Club but I hate that my dad loves Fight Club
shipping isn’t activism but let’s not underestimate the literally transformative power of oceans of happy life-affirming queer stories being available online free of charge to any terrified and confused kid who would like to be a little less terrified and confused
I spent thirty plus years thinking I was broken, and then fanfiction introduced me to the concept of asexuality in a way I could relate to. Don’t tell me this stuff isn’t valuable.
I went to a talk at my grad school where a professor of sexuality and queer studies found that gay fanfiction INCREASED sex positivity in LGBTQ+ teens.
Aka, reading fanfiction helped them feel better about their sexualities.
the stereotype that women talk more than men is infinitely amusing to me because men are literally incapable of shutting the fuck up
i hope this post gets popular enough that i hurt a man’s feelings
It’s not a stereotype it’s a proven fact you femanazi piece of shit.
lmao there it is
You wanna talk proven facts? This shit’s been done, son: researcher Dale Spencer in Australia used audio and video tape to independently evaluate who talked the most in mixed-gender university classroom discussions. Regardless of the gender ratio of the students, whether the instructor was deliberately trying to encourage female participation or not, men always talked more—whether the metric was minutes of talking or number of words spoken.
Moreover, men literally have no clue how much they talk. When Spencer asked students to evaluate their perception of who talked more in a given discussion, women were pretty accurate; but men perceived the discussion as being “equal” when women talked only 15% of the time, and the discussion as being dominated by women if they talked only 30% of the time.
Spencer’s conclusion, if I may parahprase: you only think we talk too much because you’d rather we were silent.
Darling, dear, love. Hamilton/Laurens Literally anything during the revolutionary era Perhaps even just how they got together. /Please/, for me? <3
Anything for you, Laurens.
Soooo…I know you wanted fluff…we’re not doing that. I don’t actually know if Laurens was in
Washington’s camp for this, but we’re going to assume history is flexible
because extensive googling did not produce an actual date or shit for this
battle (besides ‘between September 1777 and June 1778’), which was hardly a
battle at all. Also technically Lee sent
a letter but whatever, we’re doing Some Shit with history anyway, might as well
go hard.
to see our glory
The
message from Lee was greeted by a long beat of silence.
“My
sympathies, Your Excellency,” Lee said, doing a poor job of imitating poise as
his shirtsleeves dripped steadily on the ground. The word simper
drifted through John’s mind at the sound of Lee’s voice.
“Yes,”
General Washington said flatly, both hands braced on the table that had been
serving duty as a tactical map minutes before.
John couldn’t bring himself to look away from where the general’s little
finger had pushed aside the marker of a British fort, one that he and Alexander
had been bickering over not a day past.
“Thank you for informing me, Major General. You are dismissed.”
Lee
left, and the tent was deathly silent, the general still standing over the
table with his head down, John still fixed in place where he stood near the far
corner of the table, the handful of other men in the tent stony.
“Gentlemen,”
General Washington said, his voice perfectly controlled. “Please send for the Marquis, he will want to
know. If my aides would stay, it would
be appreciated. The rest of you are
dismissed.”
Something that a lot of people don’t realize is that abusers are capable of being nice. Yes, abusers can do acts of kindness. These acts of kindness do not mean that they aren’t abusive. They’re still abusers.
If your parents constantly tell you that you’re worthless, but provide you with everything you want, they’re still abusive.
If your boyfriend screams at you whenever you do something he doesn’t like, but cuddles you and calls you beautiful, he’s still abusive.
If your friend threatens to never talk to you again when you try to talk to other people, but is always there for you when you need them, they’re still abusive.
Acts of kindness do not make up for their abuse. This is a method that abusers use to keep you attached to them and make you less likely to leave them. You are not a bad person for leaving someone if they cause constant harm to you. Their kindness does not outweigh the harm and pain they caused you. Their kindness does not justify their abuse. Abusers can do good things for their victims and still be abusers.
Abuse is *never* justifiable.
The idea that abusers are cartoon bad guys who are constantly terrible needs to die. Nobody would form an attachment to an abuser or find it difficult to leave one if they behaved badly all the time.
And here’s the other thing: that popular misconception about abusers as cartoon bad guys with no redeeming qualities is ACTIVELY USED BY ABUSERS TO GASLIGHT THEIR VICTIMS. I’m not even kidding. The last conversation I had with my father, I was literally listing off incidents where his behavior had been abusive, and he came back with “but I took you kids to Europe when you were 16, how many kids get to do that? You had your own car at 16, traveled abroad, I paid for that nice house with the pool and the waterfall, sent you on trips” etc. He literally actually cited his good moments as if it were a reasonable “balance” for the abusive shit and therefore I should just be okay with it. Because that’s what people seem to think.
And I still doubt myself because of it! I still ask myself am I sure it was abuse, am I sure it really *counted*? My dad did love me, to the fullest extent that he’s capable of it, and he showed it in the ways he was capable of…but he was also abusive, and those things can coexist in the same person, same relationship, at the same time. Not acknowledging that supports abusers and disempowers victims.
Contractions function almost identically to the full two-word phrase, but are only appropriate in some places in a sentence. It’s one of the weird quirks of this language we’ve.
This post needs some kind of warning sign.
I did not see that coming.
Some people say the English language is confusing. To which I say… It’s.
gluten is not bad for you if you’re not allergic/don’t have celiac disease
superfoods aren’t real, they’re just healthy things with maybe some nicer levels of certain vitamins
vaccines do not cause autism or really anything else and the chemicals present in them that typically scare you are in such minute amounts that they do precisely fuck-all in your body (we’re talking scales of one part per million)
you cannot do a cleanse or diet to “rid your body of toxins,” your kidneys and liver have that covered
GMO foods will not kill you; most genetic crop modification just makes our crops hardier and produce more food (and genetic modification doesn’t inject more chemicals into your food, it’s just minor altering of DNA that is made of the exact same stuff your DNA is made from)
if you feed your cat a vegan diet I will personally come to your home with the skull of a long-dead predator, point out the shape of its jaw and teeth as indicators of predatory feeding habits, and then beat you with it
as a biochem major i get so salty when people give me shit for supporting GMOs like we’re not creatiNG CANCER CAUSING ALIEN CROPS it’s literally hey let’s splice this gene from this plant into another plant to give it properties of first plant
literally one of my favorite romance tropes of all time is character a is a really notorious gang leader/well known feared ruler of some kind etc and no one dares cross them or talk back to them etc because they won’t make it out alive but character b can literally get away with saying whatever they want and everyone knows it’s because they have character a wrapped around their finger and character a is gentle with character b and everyone wouldn’t dare laying a finger on character b because then character a would literally chop their head off
bonus points if character a is normally extremely serious (aka no sense of humor) but when character b makes a joke or a witty comeback they will actually smile and even laugh sometimes and all the other characters are just like ???????
“bless your heart” is NOT a sign of goodwill that person wants you dead and buried, preferably while they watch from the comfort of their porch rockers
bless your heart is literally the shadiest, most condescending thing a southerner can say
It’s the Fourth, there are fireworks going outside, I’m watching Liberty’s Kids (honestly fuck everybody, I love this show), and I’m feeling rather patriotic, so if anyone wanted to request a Hamilton fic, now would be an opportune moment.
July 3rd, 11:59 P.M.: This country is a festering cesspool
of corruption, ignorance, and violence. Every achievement is built on
the backs of millions of dead. The Founding Fathers-
July 4th, 12:00 A.M.:
July 5th, 12:00 A.M.: -would shake their heads in shame if they could see the state of this nation.
They are setting off fireworks in the city. OBVIOUSLY, because it’s the Fourth, I get it, I’m patriotic for 24 hours a year too guys. But they’re setting them off IN THE CITY. Like. In the STREETS.
ISN’T THIS A FUCKING FIRE HAZARD????
LET ME CLARIFY.
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT SOME FUCKING FIRECRACKERS HERE.
I AM TALKING ABOUT FULL-SCALE FIREWORKS SHOWS WITH PROFESSIONAL-GRADE FIREWORKS THAT ARE HAPPENING TOO LOW FOR ME TO SEE FROM THE FOURTH FLOOR OF A BUILDING ON TOP OF AN EXTREMELY TALL HILL.
Jesus, at least there’s three hospitals and a nursing school in town in case shit goes awry.
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
You really want a human.
you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back
holy shit that’f b amazing.
also imagine an alien being like
‘I THINK A HUMAN IMPRINTED ON ME THEY KEEP HANGING AROUND ME’
But imagine aliens that only form social bonds under very specific circumstances having to deal with humans though:
Like, they will bond with a group, and if they move they just bond with a new group while still talking to their old group. They will bond with other species. They encourage their children to practice bonding with inanimate objects. They can have more than one mate in their lifetime. Sometimes they have more than one mate simultaneously. Once they bond with you they’ll start trying to bring other humans they are bonded with to bond with you.
If you stand around them long enough they’ll probably just wander over and try to pat you, this is how they bond with other species. You may have accidentally bonded with a human without knowing it.
“Help the human in our party bonded with a grafknap and now they want to bring it with us”
“I don’t see what the problem is.”
“We’ve already got like five of them, and then there’s the orlaps and vanghus.”
“krrrk sor krrkr going thr krrk -bula spike krrk”
“Companion Mar, how do you sustain these high levels of interpersonal relation?” “Uh… hanging out, I guess.” “Hanging out of what, exactly?” “Sorry, that’s a human phrase used to describe spending leisure time in the general proximity of others for entertainment.” “But we are very far from your past companions, and yet you have continued to express interpersonal relation to them, in spite of the lack of proximity.” “Oh, well, I comm them now and then.” “Interesting. So you posit that physical proximity and verbal communication are key to this relational anomaly?” “I mean that’s part of it.” “… great Glarbnack, you’re doing it right now, aren’t you?” “Oh, come on, Kursp, we’ve been friends for ages, you know that!” “No! Stop! I can’t believe you would - oh, Glarb, what’s the word? - vefriendle me without even asking me first!” “Befriend. The word is befriend, Kursp.” “Ugh, humans! Well I know I can’t stop you but at least try not to emote all over the place.” “Sure thing, buddy.” [Enraged squeaking]
OMG THIS ONE IS FANTABULOUS
Humans.
Will.
Pet.
Anything.
Ok but what happens when humans are brought aboard an alien spacecraft to travel to the far side of the galaxy, and the ship stops to refuel on Planet Kro’Chenpotyl 6, and there are warnings all over the place to PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THE SPACE STATION and the humans are just like “why?” and the aliens are all “Captain Steve, have you never encountered a Horgler before?” “no, whats a horgler?” “They are very dangerous, Captain. Please do not leave the space station as they roam freely and we do not wish to communicate with your superiors anything about injuries to you or your crew.”
and then two hours later Captain Steve has a giant Horgler in tow and everyone else is just “!!!!!!!!” and Steve is just “yeah, this is my new pet. his name is Fluffy.”
it keeps getting better
This makes us sound so badass.
And then there’s the one group:
“Now Max,”
“Yes?”
“Do not touch the natives.”
“But why?”
“Because they’re poisonous.”
A few hours later, Max is in Sick Bay, mumbling “worth it” over and over.
They are setting off fireworks in the city. OBVIOUSLY, because it’s the Fourth, I get it, I’m patriotic for 24 hours a year too guys. But they’re setting them off IN THE CITY. Like. In the STREETS.
