I have a thought about ‘kill your darlings.’ There seems to be a general notion out there in the ether that the phrase means, ‘Hunt down every sentence or image you really love and cut it down like a pernicious weed.’ That, my dears, is bullshit.
In my opinion, what it really means is, ‘If you’re rewriting a whole scene just so that a paragraph or conversation you’re in love with will work, and it still kind of doesn’t, maybe it doesn’t really belong in this story and you should print it out and put it in a lovely, decorative folder labelled DARLINGS to read on those days when you hate every sentence you’re writing.’
HERE ARE THE STEPS: 1 - TAKE YOUR OLDEST FANDOM you know the one, that first thing you made art or wrote fic for, where you made all those really weird over the top OCs because you didn’t know any better 2 - TAKE YOUR NEWEST FANDOM yeah, that thing that you love and can’t stop thinking about right now 3- SMASH THEM TOGETHER like freakin’ conceptual play-doh 4 - MAKE SOMETHIN’ OUT OF IT make fic! art! a song! whatever!
HERE ARE THE RULES:
1- HAVE FUN WITH IT 2- THERE ARE NO RULES THIS IS CROSSOVER TOWN AND WE’VE STOPPED THE CAR IS GONE YOUR ROOM IS BOOKED AT THE OLD-TIMEY NERD MOTEL IT’S TIME TO DO SOMETHING STUPID
In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.
Headcanon that the Ravenclaw door allows entry to those who willingly and humbly admit that they do not know the answer or that their answer is wrong, because having an open mind and awareness of the limits of your intellect is proof of wisdom.
Supplementary headcanon that there are a lot of good answers, because the door opens for good reasoning, good arguments, and the way your mind hacks away at the problem, not the actual answer itself.
Tertiary headcanon that the door will no longer open for puns, no matter how clever.
Quaternary headcanon that at least once a year, there’s an unsolveable riddle to force all the Ravenclaws to humble themselves and admit they don’t know everything.
thor is always running into little kids who are thrilled to meet him - he doesn’t really understand the concept of signing autographs, but he starts carrying asgardian toys around in his pockets to give to kids he meets (much to shield’s chagrin - how are we supposed to keep alien tech under control when the god of thunder is giving out magnetic propulsion toys to five-year-olds?)
but one day, he meets this girl who’s nine, maybe ten, and she runs up to him all misty-eyed and immediately asks him if he knows jane foster
and her mother’s embarrassed because “honey, that’s thor, aren’t you excited to see thor?” but the girl just explains that she wants to be a scientist when she grows up, and that jane foster is the astrophysicist (she pronounces the word carefully, as if she’s been practicing) who found out how the rainbow bridge worked - isn’t that so cool? she read about it in kids discover and they watched a documentary in school and dr. foster was in it and it made her think that maybe because she likes planets so much she could be a scientist, too
and thor smiles broadly and tells her that wanting to be a scientist is a noble dream, and he says “if your mother would be willing, i could introduce you”
and that’s how jane foster ends up with a tiny science geek in pigtails trailing around behind her in her lab, asking how everything works. jane can’t really comprehend the fact that a kid would want to meet her, but she likes explaining things and she looks at this girl and can’t help seeing herself. thor is just fucking delighted because to him the idea of jane being a child’s hero makes perfect sense, why wouldn’t it? she’s jane
and years later the girl grows up to be an astrophysicist or an astronaut or an aerospace engineer and she never forgets the time that dr. jane foster knelt down beside her and said, don’t let anybody stop you from chasing the stars, if that’s what you want
jane foster inspiring girls in science, y/y
I’m really glad that one of my most popular posts on this site is one that I’m genuinely happy with
If trees are so rare in the Wasteland that Nux completely doesn’t have a name for one, not even a made up name…
Toast keeps chewing on a toothpick I mean, can we just. It’s made of wood, I presume?
I mean, she’s basically chewing on the wasteland equivalent of gold.
Just.
I mean also: white cloth? In the Wasteland? White???
Miller might as well have dressed them in diamonds.
And by this I mean I want a Transporter AU or maybe a mafia AU and that I see all these family aus, but I never see addressed the fact that these girls come from wealth and they’re returning to wealth.
I was on the bus thinking about Harry Potter tonight and I remembered the part where the Dementors all show up at the Quidditch game, and I remembered how they were all looking up at Harry, and I wondered why they would all be staring at him, and then I realized that it’s because he has two souls in him.
On this note, wouldn’t that also be a reason why Harry would have had a more negative reaction than his friends (even Ginny)? He was hearing his mother’s voice as she was protecting him, which in itself was his worst memory. but the Dementors were also forcing the piece of Voldemort to relive its worst memory as well… The memory of being ripped apart by the curse that backfired. No wonder Harry passed out so often.
I literally never thought about that.
omg…
HOLY
Oh FUCKING HELL, you just made me realize that it wasn’t Harry’s memory that was his father telling Lily to take Harry and run, and it wasn’t Harry’s memory of Lily screaming.
Here I was, just eating a cup of applesauce under the 14-year-long assumption that the reason a small infant was able to remember something was because this was a fictional world of magic, but no, now this entirely reasonable and somewhat less terrifying bubble has burst and I’m never going to recapture that innocence.
“Gun rights groups are going to march with loaded weapons and then stage a fake mass shooting. Got it? Good.
The groups, Come and Take It Texas and DontComply.com, are planning a demonstration at the University of Texas in Austin to protest gun-free zones. “We’ll use fake blood,” said spokesman Matthew Short.
Let me reiterate: Gun rights activists are planning, a mere week after the San Bernardino shooting, to stage a fake mass shooting at a major public university campus to showcase their displeasure with the idea of gun-free zones.”—
im serious about that “stop saving things for special occasions” bit tho like. even if u aren’t in your 20s. thats for everyone. its one of the most useful things ive learned lately
stop! just stop. eat the special snack. drink the expensive hippie tea. use the incense or the bath bomb or whatever you paid way too much for because you were feeling really bad and retail therapy makes u feel alive
when we save things for special occasions/rainy days it contributes to us feeling like A.) our day to day existence is lackluster and B.) you have to be feeling a certain level of Bad, or have to reach a certain level of Socially Accepted Achievement, to enjoy things
just give yourself stuff. there are definitely sometimes reasons to withhold things from yourself - as motivation, if it’s something you consciously want to use sparingly, etc - but at least for me half the time it just turns into self-flagellation and also cool things and cool experiences and nice treats just collect dust while i wait for some fabled day when i convince myself i finally Deserve it
just fuckin give yourself stuff dude. life’s so mindblowingly short
my grandmother died having only used her china like twice in her life. during the year or so before her death, she was starting to package up and give things of hers to her kids, and gave mom the china while sighing “oh i wish i had used the china more!” and mom tried so hard to convince her to just keep it, then, and eat corny dogs off it if she wanted. she insisted she couldn’t possibly, you need a special reason to use the fine china.
when nana died, we used her fine china as our everyday dishes for years. i was 18 when she died, and never really stopped having that in the back of my head.
now, when i hear myself say “i wish i had a reason to wear/do/eat/use X!” i hear nana regretting never really using her china. and let me tell you a thing:
spaghettios taste great when eaten from fine china.
it’s strange how “i want bernie to win but i know he won’t beat hillary” has become a default saying for so many bernie supporters who don’t want to “throw their vote away”
i feel like this is only true because people keep saying it and perpetuating this self-fulfilling prophecy
also if you’re not voting for the person you want to win, you’re still literally throwing your vote away
Dudes the primaries are coming????? If you vote for Bernie at primaries he stands a good fucking chance???? Why give up before the race has even begun?????
In the course of my rewatch-all-5-seasons-of-Leverage binge over the past few months, I’ve realized that my favorite long-running gag is Eliot choosing the wrong thing to get mad about.
Sophie accuses him of sleeping around with waitresses and stewardesses? “FIRST OF ALL, THEY’RE CALLED FLIGHT ATTENDANTS”
Hardison denies stealing Eliot’s sandwich and says “you probably ate it yourself and forgot about it?” “OH, MY SANDWICH IS FORGETTABLE????“ [launches into insanely detailed cooking techniques of what, to be fair, does sound like a bonkers delicious sandwich]
Hardison announces that he’s bought a brewery in Portland where they can hide out slash take cases slash brew their own beer? Everyone else is like “why the eff did we have to move to this new town with no warning” and Eliot is LIVID that Hardison is underestimating how hard food and beer pairings are. “THE BREWPUB MENU IS THE HARDEST KIND OF MENU TO DESIGN!”
I literally never get tired of it. I could watch Christian Kane get offended at implausibly bizarre perceived insults ALL DAY.
You know what though, like, to me what’s glorious about Elliot is that, to me, he’s always choosing the RIGHT thing to get mad about.
1) ignoring the sex shaming because he’s not gonna dignify that with a response but standing up for how the women choose to identify themselves.
2) attacking the most obvious lie because it has been established that Hardison appreciates the Elliot!food (a squeeze of lemon) and how dare Hardison not only lie so obviously but also choose to call into question all of Hardison’s appreciation of what Elliot had made in the past. I mean he might as well have called Elliot himself forgettable, which is a LOW BLOW, especially for a man who recognizes and makes an attempt to remember what makes things distinct.
3) Everyone else is being upset that the team is together (in a new location) but Elliot has already accepted that the team is together. And is going to be in it, for better or worse.
In sickness and in health; and through bad beer and difficult to pair foods.
‘Til his dying day.
(But that doesn’t mean he’d not gonna have old-married-couple fights about the details.)
I’m laughing my head off. “There should have been a warning.”
The warning is that it’s a retelling of the fucking Illiad. Honest to God, a story involving one of the most famous same-sex love affairs in the history of literature and there should have been a warning?
“Leonard Nimoy, who played the most famous TV scientist of all time, Mr. Spock, came from an arts and theater background and in real life is nothing like his character. Yet he told me that because Mr. Spock and “Star Trek” have inspired so many young viewers to become scientists, researchers who meet him are always desperate to give him lab tours and explain the projects they’re pursuing in peer-to-peer terms. Mr. Nimoy nods sagely and intones to each one, ‘Well, it certainly looks like you’re headed in the right direction.’”—NYT (via gq)
