Steve’s line of “I don’t think I can afford a place in Brooklyn” concerns me.
He’s Captain America and he can’t afford an apartment in Brooklyn?! Does he not get a salary? Are any of the Avengers being paid since SHIELD’s downfall? Are they all worried about making their rent each month?! Is Steve doing commencement speeches for extra cash? Is Natasha doing some spy-work on the side? Do they save the world by day and carefully plan their grocery budget at night?!?
Steve spent it all on that Gucci suit he’s wearing for the funeral scene of Civil War.
Seriously though, someone needs to write that fanfic - the Avengers and their side jobs. Natasha’s teaching women’s self-defense classes down at the local YMCA, Steve gets a job at Barnes and Noble so he can read all the books on his breaks, meanwhile:
*Clint’s Avengers communication devise buzzes*
Clint: “Tony, hang on a sec”
muffled in the background: “with pepperoni, anchovies, and extra cheese”
i once saw a scientist
on television.
and she was speaking generally
about science things
(being a scientist and knowing science things
etc.)
and, speaking generally
i am not a science
person,
and while i respect them,
i do not have much interest
in scientists
or science things.
so i went to switch the channel
at the precise moment that the presenter sitting beside the scientist asked:
what,
in your opinion,
is the most ASTOUNDING fact
about the universe
?
and this stopped me.
because it is not often that television presenters ask such interesting questions,
and the scientist was pursing her lips in a thoughtful way that made me think
i wanted to her her answer
to the interesting question.
after a pause,
she did not look directly at the
camera,
but directly at the presenter.
did you know,
she said,
that there are atoms in your body.
the presenter laughed.
of course,
he said.
what else would my body be made of?
well,
said the scientist,
and i did not need to look at the television screen to know
she was smiling.
do you know where those atoms came from?
well,
said the presenter.
and he did not say anything else.
i snickered from my place in the armchair
and the scientist smiled again.
the most ASTOUNDING fact that i have ever known,
she said,
is not a fact, specifically,
but the story of every atom on this planet.
the ones that make up the grass and the sea and the sand and the forests and the human
body.
these atoms came
from stars.
the presenter sat forward and so did i.
stars,
continued the scientist,
are mortal
like humans.
they die,
and, in their later years,
are unstable.
it pains me a little to say it, but a star’s death
is far more dramatic than a human’s.
is it? asked the presenter.
the scientist was looking at him still,
and i felt strongly as though i was listening in on a very private
conversation.
it is, the scientist nodded. the stars
i am referring to,
she said,
collapsed and exploded a very long time ago, and scattered their enriched guts across
the entire universe.
here, she paused, and her words caught in my mind in a way that made me wonder
if she was a scientist
or a poet.
their guts, she said whilst sipping from a glass of water, were splayed across every
inch
of time and space.
these guts were made of the
fundamental ingredients
of life and existence.
carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all the
rest of it.
all in the bellies of these stars that flung themselves across the universe in protest when it was their time to die.
and then? asked the presenter.
the scientist’s lips quirked upwards. and then, she said.
it all became parts of gas clouds.
ones that condense and collapse and will form our next solar systems -
billions of stars with billions of planets to orbit them.
and these planets have the ingredients of life sewed into the very fabric
of their own lives.
so, she said, smile still playing on her lips -
where do your atoms come from?
from those gas clouds, said the presenter.
no, said the scientist.
from those stars.
every atom, every molecule, every inhale and exhale and beat of your heart, is traceable
to the crucibles that cooked life itself.
and you are sitting here and so am i and so are your viewers at home,
and we’re all in the universe, aren’t we?
yes, said the presenter.
but i’ll tell you what’s even better, the scientist smiled wider.
the universe is in us. your atoms and my atoms and your camera men’s atoms came from those stars. you’re connected and relevant without even having to try. you are made of stardust and the fabric of the universe.
that is the most ASTOUNDING fact
i can tell you.
the presenter smiled and the scientist smiled wider and i smiled too,
and later i switched the channel to something less scientific
and wondered if i should feel small,
tiny and insignificant in relation to the stars that collapsed and exploded and
threw themselves everywhere.
and that is how my mother found me,
sitting on the sofa.
and she asked me what was
wrong,
and i said,
nothing. i’m just a lot smaller than stars are.
my mother is very literal woman. as such, her natural response was:
of course you’re not. don’t you see how small stars are?
that’s only from a distance,
i said.
maybe you’re looking at yourself from a distance too, she said.
and she left the room and it is years later now, but i still
think about the scientist and what she said
and my mother and what she said
and i still see the presenter on television.
and i still think that the stars are very big
but now i think,
they are in me.
so i am big too.
Fox News has no idea how to handle it because he’s Captain America and he’s literally from the 40’s like how do that handle that
He refuses to go on half of the news shows because they lie
Mostly ends up on the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and the Young Turks
Starts charities that focus on kids and the poor
Donations to veterans charities go through the roof
Treatment for PTSD in veterans suddenly gets addressed after he admits to being diagnosised with it
Steve Rogers starting a twitter specifically for linking people to horrible news stories and calling news stations out on their lies and scare tactics
Using his twitter to complain about the state of public news and how it should be a space of change and value and honesty for the American public, and how he’s so ashamed of it all
He accidentally becomes like public face for the new generation of politically savvy people
They make of shirts like WWCD “what would Cap do?”
Tony is thrilled and proud and hires of team of lawyers exclusively to handle the news stations screaming about Steve
Fox news gets slapped with so many libel fines and law suits
Going on a show and regretting it the moment an offensive question or comment comes up and decides he’s completely done and just tears the interviewer a new one. It goes viral.
The public face thing is just the start. It starts this whole new wave of people that shut down offensive shit during interviews and holding their own.
There is a short time period once he turns 35 where there is a rally cry of “Captain America for President” that he gracefully turns down.
But politicians starting courting him, trying to get him to publicly state that they support him because his influence is just so massive, and they keep getting shut down hard
Talks about growing up in the depression when people bring up financial issues - says things like “With all due respect, ma’am, what others may remember as being over 80 years ago was less then 5 ago to me. Things were supposed to get better. Those issues we thought we fixed were supposed to go away - we were supposed to work to a future where it was gone - and instead it seems to be worse then ever.”
And of course he’s a raging feminist and is absolutely appalled when Natasha tells him about rape statistics
Bruce takes a lot of time to fully educate him about the social and medical side of abortions, teaches him about the various birth defects and medical issues the mothers can face, shows him the demographic information of access and need, and Steve is horrified by that too
Then Tony walks him through gay rights and other LGBTQ issues, all of them helping him understand how sexuality can manifest differently and the difference between sex and gender identity
Steve just REAL FUCKIN DONE with everything.
Angrily stands in protest rallies and dares people to start something with peaceful protesters. Just DARES them.
Rolls his eyes at baby boomer articles about the newer generations. He’s heard that mess before. He’s done with it.
Understanding people have problems with medical bills, having been there himself.
Fucking standing up for single mothers becaUSE LIKE WHOA THAT’S HIS MOTHER YOU JUST DISSED.
Steve Rogers hating bullies. Hates that kids are actually KILLING THEMSELVES because of bullying and people are just “oh boys will be boys” about it and he’s just LIVID.
I would go into debt to read this comic. This is what Captain America should be. This is what America should be.
cries i want to embrace this post forever
Peaceful protests staying peaceful because when the cops try to start something it doesn’t matter how many of them there are, Steve’s there and he will shut them down, but more than that: Steve gets pepper sprayed. Steve gets chemical burns. Steve on shaky iphone video blind and disoriented and still using his body to protect others as the cops close in. And suddenly the heroes who stay back because they don’t want to get involved - because they shouldn’t use their powers ‘like that’ start showing up in droves.
Peter gumming up the smoke and pepper bombs before they go off. Thor becoming a one man blockade. Natasha working with organizers to help plan for escapes if things do go badly. Tony’s not only keeping Cap up to date - he’s putting considerable money behind the political candidates who will actually work to improve things, because we all know you need money to represent at the polls. They’re not there attacking the police - even if the officers are being assholes, they understand they have a job to do and often bad orders - but they will protect the protesters who have done nothing but show up.
And the more they do, the more heroes join in. Because it’s not just about using your powers against the mighty evil empire Strexx or taking down some guy calling himself the Boomerang. It’s about making sure you want to keep living in the world you keep saving.
sometimes i forget that morbid, playfully self-deprecating jokes about my mental health are not always appropriate…?? especially around neurotypical people who don’t know how to react. like there’s this awkward pause, this unspoken ‘do i laugh, or…??’, this sort of ‘…dude are u ok’ look they give. and it’s just like, it’s ok, i cope with existential dread through deadpan and/or nonsensical shitpost-esque humor. [thisisfine.jpg]
Wandering around New York City PISSED because there are all of these empty luxury apartments in a city with such a high homeless population. He just starts tearing down doors and ushering people inside (and then repairing the doors because whoops he did not think that through)
Every time a reporter tries to ask Natasha who does her hair he interrupts her snarky response with I DO
Getting dragged into tv interviews and getting weird questions he’s not really qualified to answer until finally someone asks him what he thinks the founding fathers would have to say about net neutrality and he just says “I don’t give a fuck what they’ve have to say” before this impassioned speech about freedom and information equality that everyone is too afraid to interrupt
Literally dropping everything to show up in Ferguson. Like, thanks police department for all your hard work but you can go home now because the people have spoken and they’d like you all to retire early Captain America’s got this covered
He does not tell the Avengers
He does not tell Fury
He leaves a note for Bucky but like it’s really vague “ttyl gotta go school some haters” and Bucky has no idea what that’s supposed to mean because Steve basically COLLECTS HATERS LIKE THEY’RE POKEMON
Speaking of haters remember that time in Iron Man 3 where Tony gave out his home address and basically told a terrorist to come find him? That’s not good enough for Steve. Nope. He adopts one of those army dogs with the titanium teeth and just starts jumping out of planes and knocking on doors like “hello have you accepted Steven Grant Rogers as your ass-kicking savior?” like this is a weekly occurrence. Arms dealers, the leaders of drug cartels, human traffickers, he just keeps finding things to get pissed about.
Because he doesn’t like bullies.
Like everyone in the tower sits him down and they have an intervention for him and he promises to find his chill
Starts doing Sesame Street appearances and everything seems normal
And then he disappears on a rampage and resurfaces on the news standing at the protest lines of an abortion clinic escorting women inside and covering their faces with his shield
He probably comes across Coulson at one point and he’s not even surprised he’s just like accepted the fact that nobody stays dead anymore like he’s honestly expecting to punch real hitler in the real face one of these days
controversial: dumbledore would’ve made the right decision taking the 1991-1992 house cup away from slytherin even if harry and co. hadn’t saved the school and stopped voldemort from returning to power
Can I ask why? Genuinely curious here
Slytherin students didn’t have better academic performance and they certainly didn’t have better behavior than the other houses. What they did have was a head of house who would award his own students points for almost no reason while handing out penalties to other houses like candy. If Draco Malfoy answered a question correctly in potions, he’d be awarded ten points, while Hermione giving the same answer would lose ten points for being a know-it-all.
That’s the thing, the game was rigged in Slytherin’s favor. Snape set his own house up to win, through absolutely no merit of their own, seven years in a row with no penalty. Meanwhile Dumbledore is made out to be the one who “just hands victory to his own house” after four members of his house put their lives on the line to save the school from a genocidal mass-murderer.
Gryffindor deserved the house cup because their students saved the school, but even if they didn’t, Slytherin should have had it taken away from them because they didn’t earn it.
I can’t even condemn Dumbledore for letting Slytherin believe they’d won, sit in a green-and-silver dining hall, and then changing it when he announced they’d actually lost, because after seven years of cheating, it’s not enough for them to just lose. If they’d just lost, they’d think they were cheated out of something that’s rightfully theirs. Allowing them to believe they’d just once again been handed an award they didn’t deserve, and then giving it directly to the house that actually did something to deserve it, teaches a valuable lesson.
Anyway, if we’re going to criticize Dumbledore’s abilities as a school administrator for anything, it’s how unchecked he left Snape’s treatment of his students. Even putting aside the emotional and physical abuse he inflicted on his students, there should have been some provision in place to prevent his abuse of the points system before he had a chance to hand it to his own students for ONE year, let alone seven.
There should have been a provision that the current holder of the house cup is ineligible for participation in the next year’s competition. There should be an upper limit on how many points you can take away from another house’s students, and how many points you can give to your own students. Students should be able to appeal unfair penalties to the headmaster.
Point is, Slytherin shouldn’t get an award just because their head-of-house refuses to play fair
I never thought of it like this before. Thank you so much, OP
ALL RIGHT SO HERE IS THE DEAL. I am trying to get scholarships to go to grad school. Because school is much money. I have found a scholarship that runs monthly for $5000, and all I need to do is get the most votes on a post.
Here is the post. Please, please, PLEASE vote for it, share it, etc. I really really need this. I am also willing to bribe you!
For every 250 votes I get, I will post a new part of Making Other Plans. For every 1000, I will post either a chapter of something, or another new fic.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reblog this post, repost this post, idec. We’ve got til April 30 to get as many votes as possible. I LOVE YOU GUYS AND I COULDN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU.
EDIT: i’m really sorry, but you have to create an account :/ I REALLY REALLY APPRECIATE YOU DOING IT THOUGH. I’ll try to bribe you with something EVEN BETTER.
So my physics teacher is a dick (do NOT laugh at kids who are confused in your class, just don’t, it’s not helpful, and furthermore the percentage of kids with ADHD is like somewhere between 15 and 20%, I GUARANTEE that I am not the first one he’s ever had, no matter what he says to the contrary), I have to finish a short story to be ripped apart in my fiction class (look, guys, motive matters in writing and I don’t want to hear your arguments to the contrary, please see my rant from last night), and I’m dealing with the realities of being a woman in STEM (yes I know what I’m doing, you literally just saw me ask the teacher if I was doing it right, I have a voltage generator and poor impulse control, do not fuck with me). It’s been…the longest shittiest week in a series of kinda shitty weeks and I just. I need to hear some not-shitty stories about humanity, so if you’ve got them, send me an ask.
“Bad books on writing tell you to ‘WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW’, a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.”—
When you get diagnosed or self diagnosed it is very common to start showing more and more symptoms. It isn’t that you are faking or doing it on purpose, it’s because you now don’t have to hide them and you’re expressing yourself fully in ways you though you needed to hide.
And that you’re realizing things ARE symptoms that you didn’t think were before. Don’t ever feel like it’s a placebo effect. The things you’re experiencing are very real.
tips for what to do after a really long cry because you’re probably feeling all kinds of exhausted and drained and i don’t want that for you in the slightest:
take a shower and change all of your clothes even your socks and underwear. this is the first step to everything.
pour yourself a big, cold glass of water and drink it. all of it. once you’re done, get yourself a refill. this will boost u physically and emotionally instantly please trust me.
grab a snack, something light that you don’t have to wait to prepare. i recommend a pudding cup, a piece of fruit, yogurt, a popsicle, or some crackers.
get under the covers. turn on something - tv, a movie, music, anything distracting. or consider calling a friend or talking to anyone nearby, even your sibling the next room over!!
know that you are loved. you are important. you mean more than you know right now, more than you will maybe ever know. you are worth all the stars in the sky. you deserve to feel good.
if a guy is hitting on u and he is clearly the alpha in his group of guys.. go for the third in command and undermine their whole power structure
Oh god, I used this tactic so often. Because in most cases I was trying to pull dudes for my friends, rather than myself. You figure out who their leader is, go for #3 or #4 in the group, who is generally much cuter and a bit more shy. This is why he ranks high, but not too high. You go hard on this dude. You hold his hand and smile at him. You don’t even have to go further. Dude #3 is just bewildered you brushed off #1. This makes the dude at the top antsy. It causes dissent in the ranks. Your friends can now swoop in, picking from the remaining dudes as they start to scatter in the wind. They have lost all sense of self. You have secured free drinks for the rest of the night. And whatever else your genitals desire.
Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”
Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”
Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.
Things I did not actually realize was an option
What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children. I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.
I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.
Yup, that’s way better for toddlers and younger kids. It helps when they don’t have the self-awareness, attention span, or concept of the passage of time to estimate when they’ll be ready by themselves.
Oh I meant for me. XD Saying it to myself.
WELL OKAY WHOOPS XD I should not have been overspecific, I was just thinking about teaching this stuff to the parents at my job and your reblog made me immediately think of you with Banana and the kidlets.
Another hack: when you want to get up but are stalled by your brain and frustrated – stop. Breathe. Think about what you want to do once you’re up, without thinking about getting up. Treat it like a fantasy, no pressure, just thinking about something you’d like to do in the future. Instead of thinking “I should get up” over and over, think about having a bagel for breakfast, or getting dressed in your soft green sweater. Imagine yourself doing the thing.
I find that exercise often side-steps the block and the next thing I know I’m out of bed and on my way to doing the other thing I thought about.
Works for other things too, if you’re stuck on one step and having a hard time doing it, think about the step after that. Need to do laundry and you can’t get yourself to gather up your dirty clothes in the hamper? Think instead about carrying the hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundry room. And when you get to that next step, if you get stuck again, think about the step after it – you have a hamper of dirty clothes that needs to be put in the wash, let your subconscious handle the “carry hamper to laundry room” step while you’re thinking about the “putting them in the wash” part.
YMMV of course, and this doesn’t even always work for me (particularly not when I need to do a collection of tasks in no particular order, like packing for a trip… “pack socks, pack underwear, pack toothbrush, pack pants, pack shirts” is the kind of non-linear task list where this trick doesn’t help at all), but it’s something I’ve found helpful often enough.
This is one of the most beautiful threads I’ve seen on Tumblr simply because it deals so compassionately with an issue so many of us have and can barely even articulate to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. <3
I think I get overwhelmed from the thought of all of the consequent steps, so maybe I’ll do the reverse of the advice above and try to focus on the first one.
@the-rain-monster i was just about to say something similar. that can work too sometimes. instead of going “ugh i need to eat something” for four hours, i try to focus on each step in turn.
and i mean each TINY step. just getting out of my chair has this many steps:
pause music
remove headphones
hang headphones on laptop screen
pick up laptop
leg-bend recliner footrest shut
set laptop aside
stand
and i reckon that’s why i get stuck on it; because i’m trying to treat it as one thing, while executive dysfunction is treating it as seven things, and choking on trying to skip to step seven.
concurrent with this is a method i call ‘junebugging’. which is where i go to the location of the thing i want to do, and just sort of bump around the region like a big stupid beetle until the thing somehow accidentally magically gets done. this is an attempt to leverage ADHD into an advantage; i may not have the executive function to make myself a sandwich on purpose, but if i fidget in the kitchen long enough, some kind of food is going to end up in my mouth eventually. and hell, even if i fail on that front, i will probably have achieved something, even if it’s only pouring all my loose leaf tea into decorative jars.*
@star-anise please may i give you an internet hug *hug!* because god how i wish anyone had known to do that for me when i was a kid. my childhood was one big overload, and like 99% of the huge dramatic meltdowns that made me the scapegoat/laughingstock/target of my entire elementary school were simply due to people not giving me time to process the next step, and interpreting a bluescreen as defiance/insult.
*this happened when i was trying to do dishes actually but the principle is sound
…I needed to see this thread, because one of my big dysfunctions is going to bed, of all things, so I’ll end up being up until 2 am on a daily basis doing fucking nothing because I cannot will my limbs to move from their current spot and it always ends up fucking me over.
I’m actually a little offended because if there were ever a male Strong Female Character
it’d be Nightwing
Isn’t that right Karen?
IM A LITTLE BITTER NEGL dick grayson was doing the strong female character thing IN CANON way before anyone knew who clint barton was but WHATEVER FANDOM
WHATEVER
did I mention this isn’t fanart
really printed
ACTUAL POSE IN AN ACTUAL COMIC BOOK
tits and ASS
gratuitous and inhuman
losing clothes since 1980something
yet fandom still decides that CLINT BARTON is a better male Strong Female Character than this flawless prince smh
idg why or how that snub happened but I am protesting it
WE ALL KNOW WHO THE REAL WINNER IS
and did I mention CANON because
CANON MALE STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER
CLEAR WINNER BY A LONG SHOT
DICK GRAYSON PERIOD THE END
I love Hawkeye, and the Hawkeye initiative, but this post never fails to crack me up.
Artists, what are you doing?
I
STRONGLY
AGREE
WITH
EVERYTHING.
Not to mention a villain actually says “I’d know that ass anywhere” when seeing Dick Grayson from behind.
I hate the “I didn’t disclose all my trauma immediately so it’s not real” attitude on tumblr y'all have no respect for trauma victims and their processing and I wish somebody would staple your lips together shut the fuck up
what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.
“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”
“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”
“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”
“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.
Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”
“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”
“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”
stop telling ppl to write like hemingway i promise u adverbs are not another face of the dark lord satan its ok
If writers took every bit of writing advice that was in the format ‘Don’t use X part of the English language’, all English fiction would read like Spot the dog
IMO Adverbs can be pretty nasty sometimes (”’I can’t wait!’ said Tom excitedly” is still a pretty bad sentence) but it all comes down to how you use them, and what words you put them together with.
Generally, you should try to avoid using adverbs in phrases like ‘she said happily’ or ‘he screamed loudly’. Aside from that, adverbs aren’t inheritly bad.
And ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ isn’t a bad sentence at all.
thats not really anything inherent to adverbs, it’s just redundancy. the dialogue is speaking for itself. ’“i can’t wait,” said tom excitedly’ is a bad sentence, but ’“i cant wait,” said tom flatly’ is chill. id probably throw a comma in there before ‘flatly’ for pacing but u do u
“dont use adverbs” is basically a really shitty way to verbalize “redundancy is often awkward and makes your audience feel condescended to if it’s not done well”–because lgr there are times when redundancy is okay, there are times when literally everything is okay
break the rules of literature. theyre shitty rules anyway
First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, because verbing weirds language
Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing, because no verbs
Then they for the descriptive, and I silent because verbless and nounless
“Let’s face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.”
But, no, because there are reasons for all of those seemingly weird English bits.
Like “eggplant” is called “eggplant” because the white-skinned variety (to which the name originally applied) looks very egg-like.
The “hamburger” is named after the city of Hamburg.
The name “pineapple” originally (in Middle English) applied to pine cones (ie. the fruit of pines - the word “apple” at the time often being used more generically than it is now), and because the tropical pineapple bears a strong resemblance to pine cones, the name transferred.
The “English” muffin was not invented in England, no, but it was invented by an Englishman, Samuel Bath Thomas, in New York in 1894. The name differentiates the “English-style” savoury muffin from “American” muffins which are commonly sweet.
“French fries” are not named for their country of origin (also the United States), but for their preparation. They are French-cut fried potatoes - ie. French fries.
“Sweetmeats” originally referred to candied fruits or nuts, and given that we still use the term “nutmeat” to describe the edible part of a nut and “flesh” to describe the edible part of a fruit, that makes sense.
“Sweetbread” has nothing whatsoever to do with bread, but comes from the Middle English “brede”, meaning “roasted meat”. “Sweet” refers not to being sugary, but to being rich in flavour.
Similarly, “quicksand” means not “fast sand”, but “living sand” (from the Old English “cwicu” - “alive”).
The term boxing “ring” is a holdover from the time when the “ring” would have been just that - a circle marked on the ground. The first square boxing ring did not appear until 1838. In the rules of the sport itself, there is also a ring - real or imagined - drawn within the now square arena in which the boxers meet at the beginning of each round.
The etymology of “guinea pig” is disputed, but one suggestion has been that the sounds the animals makes are similar to the grunting of a pig. Also, as with the “apple” that caused confusion in “pineapple”, “Guinea” used to be the catch-all name for any unspecified far away place. Another suggestion is that the animal was named after the sailors - the “Guinea-men” - who first brought it to England from its native South America.
As for the discrepancies between verb and noun forms, between plurals, and conjugations, these are always the result of differing word derivation.
Writers write because the meaning of the word “writer” is “one who writes”, but fingers never fing because “finger” is not a noun derived from a verb. Hammers don’t ham because the noun “hammer”, derived from the Old Norse “hamarr”, meaning “stone” and/or “tool with a stone head”, is how we derive the verb “to hammer” - ie. to use such a tool. But grocers, in a certain sense, DO “groce”, given that the word “grocer” means “one who buys and sells in gross” (from the Latin “grossarius”, meaning “wholesaler”).
“Tooth” and “teeth” is the legacy of the Old English “toð” and “teð”, whereas “booth” comes from the Old Danish “boþ”. “Goose” and “geese”, from the Old English “gōs” and “gēs”, follow the same pattern, but “moose” is an Algonquian word (Abenaki: “moz”, Ojibwe: “mooz”, Delaware: “mo:s”). “Index” is a Latin loanword, and forms its plural quite predictably by the Latin model (ex: matrix -> matrices, vertex -> vertices, helix -> helices).
One can “make amends” - which is to say, to amend what needs amending - and, case by case, can “amend” or “make an amendment”. No conflict there.
“Odds and ends” is not word, but a phrase. It is, necessarily, by its very meaning, plural, given that it refers to a collection of miscellany. A single object can’t be described in the same terms as a group.
“Teach” and “taught” go back to Old English “tæcan” and “tæhte”, but “preach” comes from Latin “predician” (“præ” + “dicare” - “to proclaim”).
“Vegetarian” comes of “vegetable” and “agrarian” - put into common use in 1847 by the Vegetarian Society in Britain.
“Humanitarian”, on the other hand, is a portmanteau of “humanity” and “Unitarian”, coined in 1794 to described a Christian philosophical position - “One who affirms the humanity of Christ but denies his pre-existence and divinity”. It didn’t take on its current meaning of “ethical benevolence” until 1838. The meaning of “philanthropist” or “one who advocates or practices human action to solve social problems” didn’t come into use until 1842.
We recite a play because the word comes from the Latin “recitare” - “to read aloud, to repeat from memory”. “Recital” is “the act of reciting”. Even this usage makes sense if you consider that the Latin “cite” comes from the Greek “cieo” - “to move, to stir, to rouse , to excite, to call upon, to summon”. Music “rouses” an emotional response. One plays at a recital for an audience one has “called upon” to listen.
The verb “to ship” is obviously a holdover from when the primary means of moving goods was by ship, but “cargo” comes from the Spanish “cargar”, meaning “to load, to burden, to impose taxes”, via the Latin “carricare” - “to load on a cart”.
“Run” (moving fast) and “run” (flowing) are homonyms with different roots in Old English: “ærnan” - “to ride, to reach, to run to, to gain by running”, and “rinnan” - “to flow, to run together”. Noses flow in the second sense, while feet run in the first. Simillarly, “to smell” has both the meaning “to emit” or “to perceive” odor. Feet, naturally, may do the former, but not the latter.
“Fat chance” is an intentionally sarcastic expression of the sentiment “slim chance” in the same way that “Yeah, right” expresses doubt - by saying the opposite.
“Wise guy” vs. “wise man” is a result of two different uses of the word “wise”. Originally, from Old English “wis”, it meant “to know, to see”. It is closely related to Old English “wit” - “knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind”. From German, we get “Witz”, meaning “joke, witticism”. So, a wise man knows, sees, and understands. A wise guy cracks jokes.
The seemingly contradictory “burn up” and “burn down” aren’t really contradictory at all, but relative. A thing which burns up is consumed by fire. A house burns down because, as it burns, it collapses.
“Fill in” and “fill out” are phrasal verbs with a difference of meaning so slight as to be largely interchangeable, but there is a difference of meaning. To use the example in the post, you fill OUT a form by filling it IN, not the other way around. That is because “fill in” means “to supply what is missing” - in the example, that would be information, but by the same token, one can “fill in” an outline to make a solid shape, and one can “fill in” for a missing person by taking his/her place. “Fill out”, on the other hand, means “to complete by supplying what is missing”, so that form we mentioned will not be filled OUT into we fill IN all the missing information.
An alarm may “go off” and it may be turned on (ie. armed), but it does not “go on”. That is because the verb “to go off” means “to become active suddenly, to trigger” (which is why bombs and guns also go off, but do not go on).
no one really needs me and that makes me really fucking sad
no listen okay nobody really needs oreos or tv or pictures of clouds: but they’re all stuff that makes the world better for existing. i think the whole western idea of “you must have worth! you must have value! you must be NEEDED!” is really poisonous. you are not for sale. you don’t need a “worth,” a “value”. you don’t NEED to be needed!!! it’s okay to just BE! a few days ago a girl thought i was out of earshot and said “omg she’s so pretty!!” and yeah i don’t need to hear that, but it made me so incredibly happy!!
plus: there’s literally no way for you to know how you’ll effect someone through your life. my friend didn’t commit suicide because a passing stranger on the train happened to say something into his phone that connected with her soul (”of course you deserve love, you are breathing, aren’t you?”) and she didn’t have the chance to thank him or ever see him again but she needed to hear that. i think we need to be in places + talk to people + overhear certain things: but they’re never the stuff we expect. in the meantime, i promise, for at least one person (that’s myself): you’re my oreos. i sure as hell would be a sad girl without you.
you don’t NEED to be needed!!! it’s okay to just BE!
I really enjoy Marvel’s Netflix shows, Claire Temple is Sick of Your Shit and Claire Temple is Concerned About Your Drinking, and I can’t wait for the third show, Claire Temple Can’t Even Give You Stitches, Please Stop Fucking With Her Career.
ok so in high school on away game days, the football players and cheerleaders would have to share busses because our school was broke as fuck so our cheer bus would always have a group of varsity footballerers in the back of it. one day my genius friend and I were discussing our feminist rage when she said “bridget you should totally throw a tampon back there and see what they do” and me being myself, stood up and hurled a one (1) tampon at the Manly Men. IT LOOKED LIKE A WAR MOVIE. THE BROS FACES WERE FILLED WITH HORROR AS THEIR BUDDY GOT SHOT. HE WENT DOWN SO DRAMATICALLY AS SCREAMS FILLED THE BUS. BOYS WERE SLINKING AS FAR AWAY FROM THE DEADLY TAMPON AS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE. ONE BRO WAS EYEING THE EMERGENCY WINDOW WITH ALL SERIOUSNESS, READY TO FREE HIMSELF FROM THE THREAT. BEING IN CHICAGO, THE BUS DRIVER PULLED OVER ASSUMING A KID ACTUALLY GOT SHOT. A GIRL HAD TO GO GET THE TAMPON SO THE GUYS WOULD STOP SHITTING THEIR PANTS AND SIT THEIR ASSES THE FUCK BACK DOWN.
I have deduced 2 things from this whole experience: 1. men are ridiculous 2. I wish I had thrown more than one tampon
TRUE STORY
When my brother was in high school, as a prank, someone stuck a pad to the front bumper of his truck. A CLEAN, UNUSED PAD.
My brother came home from high school, 17 years old, CRYING and my dad made ME go get it off his truck.
I had honestly forgotten about that until just now.
I sincerely regret never having done this during my school days.
story time (again!)
one time, in the middle of my freshman year, I was sitting in the band hall talking to a bunch of friends before school. let me preface this story by saying they were all guys (one of the hazards of being in the saxophone section–guys outnumbered the girls 6:1). Anyway, I dug around in my backpack for a tampon and slipped it into the sleeve of my sweater and was about to excuse myself to the restroom (which, if anybody has been paying attention, they would’ve known what was going on, because I’ve never been exactly subtle about things like this) but one of the guys kind of guffaws and goes “what’s in your sleeve? a tampon?” and I guess the way he rolled the word off his tongue like it was some kind of insult really bothered me, so I just pulled the brand new, still wrapped tampon out of my sleeve and went “you guessed it” and popped him across the cheek with it. I walked away to the restroom, vaguely aware of the strangled noises and sounds of disbelief and horror coming from the group of guys. They were all paying attention enough to know that I was digging in my bag for a tampon or pad, but apparently, the sight of the thing was too much for them. That group of guys couldn’t look me in the eyes for a few weeks, all because of a wrapped tampon
Yep. I’m an electrician, and we carry voltage meters with us (slang: “Wiggy”, from an old brand name of meter that just about no one uses any more). They take up too much space to put in a tool pouch, so if you don’t want to leave it in the tool box/bag, you’ll have a separate pouch on your tool belt for it. A long, narrow pouch that is convenient as hell for putting spare tampons in where they’ll stay clean and undamaged until needed.
A lot of the guys just leave their meters back in their tool boxes, which are in the gang box, which is usually some hike away from the actual work. So, “can I borrow your meter?” is something I hear a lot. And the response is always, “sure.” They always emit a high-pitched scream (somewhat similar to the tone emitted by the meter when voltage is present) when the tampons fall out when they take out the meter. “WHAT ARE *THOSE* DOING IN THERE?!!” I’ll pick one up and do my best Groucho Marx imitation (with the tampon as cigar): “Whaddya think they’re doing in there, sweetheart?” (wiggling eyebrows, “cigar” tapping). Their reaction is adorable. In almost thirty years of doing this work, I’ve yet to get a blase–“oops, didn’t mean to drop your tampons” response.
So what I’m getting from this is tampon shotguns/grenades as a weapon against overaggressive dudes in public spaces, y/y?
oh my god, what a genius idea. some dude won’t shut the fuck up, you don’t even look up from your phone as you pull a tampon out of the bag and just wave it at the motherfucker like a wizard’s wand. AWAAAAAAY.
Reminder to my fellow dudes: if you’re this freaked out by being reminded of how women work, you are not remotely ready to actually touch one of them.
I have literally made a man scream by handing him a clean, wrapped tampon. Actual screams.
When I was in college a bunch of girls thought it was awesome to freak out boys to put an unused pad on their door, and they retaliated by putting moldy bread under their door.
So the girls put a tampon under the boys’ door. The boys decided, I guess, in a logical manner, that the best thing to do was to stick an unused diva cup on the door handle. Because apparently we would find it as horrifying as they did?
After that the RA’s decided it was sexual harassment and put an end to it.
Omg it got better
We used to sneak our drugs into parties that had security by hiding them in or under maxi pad packages because security were almost always dudes.
My sister once stuck a maxi pad to her door to keep our brother from going into her room while she was away. He got mad and told my mom, who wouldn’t stop laughing, and told him if it bothered him so much than he didn’t deserve to go into her room.
listen: fight club and pulp fiction are good movies, i love them both personally, but if a guy (and you KNOW the type of guy i mean) says they are his Favorite Movies then u need to run. RUN. plan ur exist exit strategy now. if ur texting him then just make something up. “haha i gotta go now. it was nice talking to you. bye!” if you’re somewhere with him just leave. do parkour if you have to. run like the wind. get away from that man
Even David Fincher, who directed Fight Club, agrees with this:
“My daughter had a friend named Max. She told me ‘Fight Club’ is his favorite movie,” he said. “I told her never to talk to Max again.” (link)
i hope at least some of you don’t have swimming anime blacklisted, not because i want to inflict my anime on you, but because i know i always enjoy watching people have emotional meltdowns over things i’m not personally invested in when it’s like
[picture of a hat]
#fuck this #fuck this hat #my life is over #how could anyone post this #i’m done. i’m done. #gets into a submarine sinks to the deepest level of the ocean buries self in the marianis trench #hat fandom
“hat fandom” has become such a common term in my friend group to describe a fandom you’re not a part of but enjoying watching people be into that i forget not everyone knows about it
i am literally 100% sure that ultimately it was lily who asked james out like
james is matured and he’s like “okay you’re gonna ruin it all if you ask her out”
because they’re friends
honest to god friends
who actually talk and laugh and have meaningful conversations and honestly james doesn’t think he could handle it if he messed everything up
so he just kinda sits there in love with her
so in love
and lily’s over here like “i so do not love him”
“no really marlene we’re friends i don’t love him”
“okay yeah he smells really nice and i really love that thing he does with his hands when he’s thinking and it’s really really cute when he runs his fingers through his hair and have you seen the way his ass looks in those quidditch robes”
“but i do not love him”
and marlene’s like “you’re a fucking idiot”
and james decides that he has to at least try to move on so he starts dating amelia boot
and lily can’t figure out why it bothers her so much but she avoids them at literally all costs and she just can’t see them together and she sort of feels like she’s going to throw up and god fucking damn it she loves him
“don’t say i told you so marlene, you bitch”
“i soooo told you so”
but now james is with amelia and it’s too late and lily doesn’t know what to do
so she just kind of sucks it up and tries to hang out with him except it’s so hard because she really really wants to kiss him
(his lips look really soft)
but she can’t and it’s killing her and she kind of thinks amelia hates her?? or, at least, she sends her dirty looks from across the table
and james can’t figure out why amelia doesn’t like lily because everyone likes lily until one day amelia sits him down and asks him to stop talking to her
“you’re still in love with her, james, and you’ll only get over it if you stop talking to her”
james doesn’t think that’s physically possible
so they break up and sirius gives him a knowing look but james keeps quiet about the reason because the last thing he needs is for lily to find out that he still loves her
lily is ecstatic
“i think it’s kind of awful that you’re this happy about your friend breaking up with his girfriend”
“shut up mary”
but they’re at the three broomsticks a month later and it’s just the two of them and they’re waiting for the usual bunch and lily decides she’s going to do it
she has to because she can’t live like this for the rest of her life. she can’t let james potter slip away
“do you love me?”
and oh shit it comes out so wrong that was not what she wanted to say not at all she was going to invite him to get butterbeer later and oh god her cheeks are turning the color of her hair and she thinks she’s going to sink into the chair
james thinks he might be dying
“do i what?”
lily’s already fucked it up this much, she might as well keep going
“do you love me? because i do. love you, i mean.”
and then she stares at her hands and waits
and waits
and waits
and then she looks up because what is taking the asshole so long to reply?
he’s just grinning at her. smiling, as if she’s just told him he’s won a million galleons or signed to play with the chudley cannons
“yeah, yeah i reckon i’ve loved you this whole time”
“pay up, moony. i told you she’d be the one to confess first”
but can we consider that Rhodey does, in fact, outrank Steve Rogers?
now picture rhodey meeting steve and steve snapping a salute
that is all
and Rhodey would be totally serious about it until the second Steve walked out of the room and then he’d totally turn and look at Tony with crazy eyes and Tony would be like “JARVIS TOOK PICTURES FROM EVERY ANGLE YOU’RE WELCOME”
