um hi feel free to tell me to take a hike but. i really like your blog and your writing and i may or may not have gone 480 pages back in it and seen "In which angels are a thing that happened around 1947 and just kind of never left; also everyone is LGBT because fuck you I do what I want" and now i'm really curious--would you be willing to elaborate?
BABE I will never tell you to take a hike about my original writing, I have real shit to get done and a bunch of older asks to answer, but I’m gonna do this instead, sorry. I have many novels started and that’s one of the ones that gets an actual place where I’ll find it to work on, I love it very much. Okay, so, *clears throat* let’s do this.
So. First off, some backstory: an insane percentage of my stories are rooted in an original conversation with someone, somewhere, that goes “But it’s so stupid that this book/TV show/movie did this, because it would be so much better if they’d done that” (see also: Falls the Shadow, product of a Supernatural rage quit, Emrys Ascendant, product of a Merlin rage quit, and Polaris, product of a “please God I just want a F/F couple that lives” tirade). This one was the product of a half-dozen episodes of Dominion in very short order (which I have yet to rage-quit, by the by, and love very much in its capacity as a ridiculous lovely garbage pile) and me turning to @twistedangelsays and going “But it would be so much better if there were two angelic factions openly, one that thought humanity was past redemption and one that believed that they were still duty-bound to love and protect us.” And then I did kind of this weird magician trick and pulled a fully-formed universe and plot with main characters and ships out of thin air.
Let’s talk about the battle in the Department of Mysteries for a sec. So after the group gets split up, Harry, Hermione and Neville go one way and Ron, Ginny and Luna the other. The next time we see the latter group Ginny’s ankle is busted and Ron’s brain is addled. Luna says that the Death Eaters blew up a planet in the planetarium and hit Ron with some sort of hex.
Let’s take a moment to examine that. If the curse that hit the planet had hit any of the kids, they’d be dead. So the Death Eater probably missed, hit the planet ahead of them, injuring Ginny. But here’s the important part: the one who actually gets hit by the hex? Ron.
Why is this important? Because Ron is consistently described throughout the series as tall. Like, every time Harry sees him after the beginning of summer he’s described as having shot up. Again. On the other hand Ginny is described as “the small one” by Bellatrix Lestrange. But Ron is behind her. I don’t know if you know this but tall people can run really fast. I am not particularly fit but I am tall. And I can pour on the speed when my adrenaline’s up, which I have no doubt was the case for everyone in the Department of Mysteries. But he’s behind her.
Because he did that deliberately. He kept his body between the Death Eaters and the girls. He shielded them from their spells. Because those he cares about are more important to him than his own life.
I don’t know, I just think about this a lot.
Ron is a strategist, and has already shown a willingness to take the hit for the team and be left behind. In any group, I think that’s just his default position; take the hit, buy more time for others to escape. He’s well aware that realistically, someone is going to be hurt. In this case, Luna is creative and smart enough to come up with something out of left field to throw the enemy off. Ginny is small, but she’s an athletic powerhouse who can throw strong hexes. If it comes down to a crunch, Ron knows that the two of them can fight their way out, and he can increase their odds by at least holding off the wave behind them.
Honestly, this is such an important point.
Consistently throughout the series, Ron can be seen being taken out of the action somehow. AND IT IS NEVER BECAUSE HE IS WEAK.
Rather, it’s because Ron is a STRATEGIST, who CARES.
In Philosopher’s Stone, for example. Ron allows himself to be “taken” by the queen, because he knows that he is standing with the Boy-Who-Lived and the Brightest-Witch-Of-Her-Age and Voldy must be stopped and it’s SIMPLE to him. Ron is a strategist, like has been said. It’s a strategic decision - who cares if it puts himself in harm’s way?
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron and Harry are faced with the Grim, and what does Ron do? He pushes Harry out of Sirius’ path, in the process allowing the dog to latch onto his outstretched arm and pull him away, breaking his leg as they enter the Willow. This decision is simple too - it’s because Harry Potter means the world to Ron Weasley, and Ron would not hesitate for a moment in putting himself between Harry and danger.
RON IS A STRATEGIST, AND RON CARES.
And when it comes down to it, he never hesitates.
And don’t forget DH:
“Wait,” said Bellatrix sharply. "All except… except for the Mudblood.“
Greyback gave a grunt of pleasure. “No!” shouted Ron. “You can have me, keep me!”
“Right,” said Ron, squaring his shoulders. “So you can’t go, that’s what he wants, what he’s expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I’ll go and get it —”
Where do people who claim Ron is a coward who hides behind his friends get their bullshit from?
French Friend: well, the total cost of me going to Med school is about 406 a year -
American Friend: THOUSAND?
French Friend: Um, no. 406 Euro. It sounds a little high but it covers the cost of my textbooks, extra classes and most of my housing. How much is it for you?
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!
Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.
I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.
This doesn’t even account for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well.
But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.
Yay, mathy arguments. :)
This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.
In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het). (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.
Okay but - imagine Bones calling Jaylah sweetheart.
He’d try to take it back instantly, because he still flinches whenever he remembers the one (and only) time he called Uhura that. And he doesn’t want to be condescending, not at all - he’s a southern gentleman, dammit, and these terms of endearment just slip out sometimes.
But Jaylah stops him mid-apology, and goes “explain to me this word, Leonard Bones.”
He does - and from then on, not only does she insist he calls her sweetheart - she calls him that as well.
just a quick note in case i have any gross terfs following me
any post i make about how much i love girls or how much respect i have for girls or anything at all to do with girls - it absolutely always includes trans girls. there’s no reason why it wouldn’t. i don’t want my posts on your disgusting blogs so if you see the word ‘girls’ and don’t assume trans girls fit into that term, please get the fuck away from me and the entire earth. thanks.
one of my fav parts of stb is when the beastie boys are saving the federation and it’s badass af but then the music chills just a lil bit while Yorktown receives the jamming frequency and then the part in the song where it goes WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! hits and the entire Yorktown shield LIGHTS THE FUCK UP WITH EXPLODING BEE SHIPS AND IT’S LIKE SOME NEXT LEVEL FUCK YEAH SHIT👌💯👌✔ LIKE YES FUCK THEM UP YES!! !! ! !!!!!!!!!
I love the les mis fandom okay? I love it so much I’m younger than most people in it and I still feel welcomed and coming from more toxic fandoms this one feels like i can just breathe i love it so much
to people who want to bernie or bust: you do not protest with votes
there is no “BUT HILARY THIS” or “THEY CHEATED BERNIE THAT”
yes, its true, hilary is far from perfect and bernie got fucked so hard
but you do NOT. PROTEST. WITH. VOTES.
why??? i got one word for you
brexit
near half of the people who voted in favour of brexit did so out of protest of the EU and how heavy they were going on laws for each member country. yeah that protest vote didnt go too well did it
look, i know what corrupt voting systems feel like, i mean england has the first past the post system whose shittyness is explained right here
but listen to me right now, and listen very carefully. you do not protest with your vote. the republican party doesnt have this split, yes you have people who dont like trump but he has such a dominant lead that he doesnt have to deal with this: hes lucky for that reason. by splitting the vote you split the proportion.
look, heres what you should do
first, you vote for hilary if youre a democrat (i know youre already angry at what im saying, but hear me out)
secondly, once hilary is elected, you protest for the DNC to be held accountable for what they did to bernie and you dont shut up until shit changes
secondly, you protest against the electoral system. yes it might not change in hilary’s 4-8 years, but listen to me and listen to me right now as someone who missed out on the brexit vote by 6 months
do not protest with your vote, protest with your voice
do you ever think about your oc and you’re like “i headcanon that—” and then you stop and realize that this is YOUR character and all of your headcanons are canon and you are powerful and should be feared
I pull up at this nice ass house, I’m walking to the door as the woman pulls in her driveway so the pizza is definitely not late.
I’m all smiley and courteous and shit, she tipped me $1 on a $51 bill.
The next house I have is in a lower class neighborhood, she tips me $4.00 on a $14 bill.
rich people don’t value yr labor at all
This has ALWAYS been my experience in food service. Rich people tip like shit because they feel your job isn’t a ‘real’ job. They’re used to being serviced so they don’t appreciate hard labor. It’s so gross.
And poorer people always tip nice because…well the opposite reason.
Shout out to bi boys. You may not have a lot of positive posts for you out there but you are valid and you are good. Your bisexuality is not ‘a stepping stone to being fully gay’ you’re not a gay guy too scared to fully come out. Your bisexuality is just as real and valid as anyone else’s. You are important and you matter.
I feel like the Amis would try to get Enjolras and Grantaire together for ages but literally nothing seems to be working and the schemes get more and more elaborated and then one afternoon Gavroche goes over to where Courfeyrac is not even trying to talk to Enjolras anymore who is too busy staring at R laughing at something Joly said.
And Gavroche flops down onto a chair next to Enjolras and just goes, “You know what your problem is? You’re really just scared shitless.”
And Enjolras stares at him like ‘What did the tiny citizen just say to me?’
And Gavroche casually goes on like, “Y’know, it’s okay to be scared, it’s not a big deal –”
“I’m not scared.”
“Nah, it’s alright–”
“I’m not SCARED.”
“Really? Well, I think if triple dog dared you to go over there and kiss him right now you wouldn’t.”
And Enjolras is just like “YOU THINK? YOU THINK?! WELL I’M NOT GOING TO LET A GODDAMN TEN YEAR OLD TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” and stomps over to Grantaire and kisses him right in the middle of the Musain and when they break apart Grantaire is like, ‘What??’ and Enjolras just whispers ‘I’m not scared’ against his lips and continues kissing him.
Cue to smug Gavroche snatching the cup of hot chocolate from an absolutely shocked Courfeyrac, muttering “amateurs” under his breath.
“Hephaestus is really great. I mean, he only ever really does that one little thing of molesting his newly born sister, but other than that he’s cool.”
“Apollo’s just a sociopath, and a loser version of Zeus, really.”
“So either Helen falls in love with Paris, which she doesn’t want to do, or Aphrodite ships her off to Egypt to get a master’s degree in pharmacology.”
“Whenever Achilles had a problem, he’d just run home crying to his mom. His mom always had the same advice: stop fighting, eat, have sex with a woman. He only ever did the first thing, which is probably why he got killed.”
“Basically, Apollo got mad at a bunch of people for not having sex with him and they ended up worse off - mostly turned into plants, for some reason.”
“Cassandra turned Apollo down since she held a vow of chastity, but of course Apollo took it personally and cursed her.”
“You can always pick out Odysseus in pictures ‘cause he’s always wearing a stupid little hat.”
“The gods tend to have these conflicting powers or personality types. Ares, super feared by mortals and always bloody and angry, is basically the fool of the gods. Zeus, almighty king of the gods, is completely helpless when it comes to his libido.”
“So Brad Pitt spends nine years in the harem - you’ve all seen 300 right? I always picture Achilles as Brad Pitt now. Anyway, Brad Pitt’s in the harem, bored out of his mind for 9 years cause he’s already been trained for hero stuff at Charon’s hero academy…”
“So Orlando Bloom is just moping in his room while the Greeks are camping outside of Troy, and Hector finds him and is like, ‘Come on, Paris, this whole war is because of you!’”
“Have you all seen the Disney version of Hercules, where Hades is super evil and angry? Yeah, that’s not really right. Hades was more like the weird, basically harmless brother of Poseidon and Zeus.”
“I love this vase of the Underworld, it really shows the relationship between Hades and Persephone. I mean, Persephone’s standing there like ‘Whip that guy more! Punish him less! Stop slacking!” and Hades’ is just lounging on the chair like, “Darling, how about a roast for dinner?”
“The thing is, Oedipus tried really hard not to kill his father and marry his mother!”
birdartpoetry asked: Mister Gaiman, you’re kickass. I was just wondering, what do you think is the best way to seduce a writer? I figured your answer would be pretty spectacular.
In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.
So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying “YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night. Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in.”
And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they’re being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.
…because this seems to have come around again, here is the original.
Employees at Netflix will now have unlimited time with their newborns during the child’s first year after birth. According to a recent post on Netflix’s blog, the company is offering “unlimited” maternity and paternity leave to its employees.
The post says Netflix employees “can return part-time, full-time, or return and then go back out as needed. We’ll just keep paying them normally, eliminating the headache of switching to state or disability pay.”
listen i know nothing about les mis but i feel like all of the ABC being named “jean” or something is an incredible headcanon, partially because everyone ive known has always gotten along really well with anyone who’s shared their name. also imagine going up to someone and asking “oh hey do you know combeferre and his friends?” and them just responding, “oh yes… the jeans.”
…so, I don’t know if that was an intentional pun, but let it be known that in french ‘Jean’ and ‘gens’ are pronounced the same. Jean is, as we known, a common first name. ‘Gens’ means ‘people.’ So when you say ‘ah oui, les Jeans’ it comes out ‘oh yes, the people’ which is possibly the most Symbolic pun you could make.
The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.
I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.
Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.
I never understood why a girl is always suppose to be that ride or die chick that stays with a man and helps him build and become the man she deserves but a guy is never told to stay with a woman while she finds herself. A guy will always look for that perfect woman but we are suppose to settle for a building project?! Fuck that.
I so wholeheartedly love the generation of women coming up in this world. The realization that you are all stars of your own story and not a supporting actress in a mans is so important.
i had a moment today while watching a whiny shitlord complain about the injustice of new sci-fi media having more female leads, i suddenly felt the strangest sense of déjà vu. i couldn’t pintpoint it at first but then out of nowhere, it fucking dawned on me
This is the single greatest meme in the history of the Internet everyone can stop making memes now we don’t need any more ever again
I think I’ve already reblogged this but I don’t care it’s just pure gospel
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
alien soldier: *heavy breathing* holy shit………….HOLY SHIT DUDE DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THE AUSTRALIA UNIT
Attention mission command: the herbivorous quadruped known as “moose” is not so benign as anticipated. One alone has besieged our camp and crushed our instruments, out of no perceived sense of malice but for that with which it was born and an unfortunate desire to eat windfall fruit. Human captive insists there is no plural for this “moose” because one alone is plenty.
Attention mission command: the heat from our instruments appears to attract a highly irritable reptile. It produces a sound from its terminal end, but no attempts at communication have been successful. Its bite is deadly.
Attention mission command: we must be more thorough with our attempts to expunge life on this planet. We have encountered a small arthropod which presents like unto a creature from an artist’s nightmare, with pincers in the fore and a sting at the aft, and entirely too many eyes. They seem to possess a singular malevolence in their propensity for entering our protective wear and our sleeping units. Please advise.
Attention mission command: the canid known as “coyote” exhibits intelligence, pack-hunting behaviour, and a desire to devour our young. Please advise.
Attention mission command: we have not received word regarding our recent missives. We have discovered a creature entitled “alligator” which the human prisoners claim has the highest bite force per square plengthron of any living animal. They move a great deal faster than expected. They drag their hapless prey to a watery death and rend their limbs by use of a grisly twisting motion. Please advise urgently.
Attention mission command: THIS IS A DISTRESS SIGNAL, ALL CHANNELS RESPOND. BEARS. BEARS. THE COLOUR OF THE BEAR IS IRRELEVANT. DO NOT APPROACH. QUADRANTS 1-5 AFFECTED BY BEARS AND MOOSE AND BITING FLIES, QUADRANTS 6-17 AFFECTED BY SHARKS, AND SEA JELLIES. QUADRANTS 18-22 AFFECTED BY SNAKES, SPIDERS, COUGARS (see also, puma, panther, mountain lion, missives 14A, 292L, 652D, and 788D-G), AND SCORPIONS, QUADRANTS 23-47 AFFECTED BY BUFFALO, COYOTES, WOLVES, AND UNTOLD MANY INSECTS, QUADRANTS 48-61 AFFECTED BY SNAKES AND SHARKS, QUADRANTS 62-87 AFFECTED BY SNAKES, COUGARS, ALLIGATORS, CROCODILES, ASSORTED ARTHROPODS. ABORT ALL ACTIVITIES. ABANDON ALL HOPE. THERE ARE DEADLY AMOEBAS IN THE WATER. PIGS AND BIRDS AND WORMS FEAST ON THE FLESH OF OUR DEAD. OUR ONE SOLACE IS THAT, WHEN THE HUMAN RACE WAS EXTERMINATED, IT WAS LIKELY A SMALL MERCY TO A RACE PLAGUED BY AN INHOSPITABLE WORLD AND AN UNCARING GOD. cease transmission.
I just saw your gifset of Xander being an A+ friend to Buffy re: Willow's "advice" about Angelus and was reminded that I am eternally fuming about it, oh my God, I am so cranky about Xander at all times, do you have a rant? Because I am in the mood to listen to a rant.
when i rant it tends to get a little a lot scattered but YES I COULD because ugh xander harris. warning: possibly much repetitiveness and very little sense coming up. this got a liiiitle out of control
Just because two people aren’t romantically involved doesn’t mean they can’t be super important to one another.
Just because two people are super important to one another doesn’t mean they have to be romantically involved.
It is okay to love people deeply without wanting to be with them romantically and people should not make your friendship uncomfortable by consistently nagging you to date.
Let’s appreciate and support friendships and stop demanding people to have feelings they don’t have.
it’s really interesting that eliot in any other show would be the hardass, emotionless tough guy but he’s actually a sweetheart who looks after abused kids, mentors anyone he comes across under the age of 20, cooks to relieve stress, and sings like an angel. like good job leverage. you did a good
