Okay, so he’s got a girly face, and he wears tights and some high boots. Sure.
But check out that noble steed. That’s one ready-to-kick-ass-and-take-names steed.
While other princesses just run away and leave nothing, Philip gets AN INVITE TO HER HOUSE. He gets a song, a dance, and a first date.
He comes home, just to tell his dad he’s not going to marry the princess because he’s in love.
No. Other. Reason. He rides in and is just like, “I met the girl I’m going to marry. Now I’ve got a birthday party to be at. Bye Dad.”
Now how much do you think his dad weighs? That short fat little man? Probably pretty heavy.Not a problem for Prince Philip.
And then he gets jumped by goblins, both hands tied behind his back
But that’s not enough to stop Prince Philip.Oh no.
He breaks his hands free and starts chuckinggoblins.
Look at that face. That face. The “BITCH JUST YOU WAIT” face. He may be tied down by a dozen goblins but he’s not gonna take no shit from this witch.
In fact, he’s so strong, she ends up keeping him chained to the wall, but he still fights back.
Now when he finally does get free–
He’s ready to go into battle UNARMED. He don’t need no shield or sword, he’s going to go punch Maleficent’s face in with his fist. If Flora didn’t stop him, he probably would have, too.
Backed up against a cliff edge, nowhere to go. Fighting off goblins. But there’s so many and just one Philip.
NBD I’LL JUST JUMP AND SLIDE DOWN THE ROCK PILE IN MY SKIN-TIGHT TIGHTS.
Gate closing?
who gives a fuck? certainly not prince philip.
Lighting hitting rocks around me?
NBD BRO
Giant forest of thorns?
Bitch, get out of my way. I’ve got a princess to save.
I’ll never not be amused by the fact that I can drop the words “crucifix nail nipples” into a conversation and some of you who have been with me since the livejournal days will join me in the flashbacks, screaming and crying all the way.
I require context. Because this is a very interesting start of a story, and now I need the rest of it. Could I get a link, or a summary, or something? Pretty please?
All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.
The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.
Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.
Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.
Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.
If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.
So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at
his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t
stop”
This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.
When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.
A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.
And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.
Sorry to bring this searing back into your lives fam, but I feel it’s worth noting that people are tagging this as an “ancient relic” of tumblr text posts and how they’re so happy they see this every year and like guys, I hate to tell you this, but uh, this post is only six months old. I posted in on March 3rd 2016.
It only seems like years because every time you see it you age five years.
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
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
“We should be free of the threat of the ‘moose’ here on our new floating accommodation”
*humans start sniggering*
“… they can swim, can’t they”
*humans start laughing louder*
….
*mid-winter*
‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED! K’T'SURKIK WENT OUTSIDE AND A MOUND OF SNOW ROSE UP AND ATE HIM’
“What is this ‘wolverine’ you speak of?”
Tell me the story of the unpleasantly surprised alien invaders and their captive human remnant, getting more smug the more the aliens fail at basic scouting…
I know we’re all talking the big smash-‘em-up type animals, but what about the little ones? Are aliens prepared for spiders? Mosquitoes? Fleas? Ticks? Even humans get sick or die from some of those, who knows what the fuck they’d do to an unprepared alien.
Nobody expects the mosquitoes
Radio: “We seem to have located a colony-based life form. Primary scans seem to indicate that their dwelling consists mainly of wax and a calorically high substance suitable for our consumption. Since food reserves are minimal due the nature of this mission, we’ve elected to attempt harvest. Requesting that alpha base interrogate the captives as to the nature of this find.”
there’s a lot of people pushing back against “write what you know” as advice for aspiring authors and i would like to speak up in its defence for a moment because i just finished reading a mystery book where the murder weapon was a vicious fighting dog, and in the scene where it was finally revealed we found out that a) the person who had stolen it and was using it to kill people it had been keeping it secret from the police by locking it in his car boot, b) it was an irish wolfhound, c) once freed, it attacked the hardboiled detective across the yard instead of the gormless idiot who had been repeatedly stuffing it in a car boot, and d) its way of attacking the detective in this very dramatic finale was via mighty swipes of its sharp claws, which slashed through his skin like knives
i don’t think this author has seen a dog in his life. i think he might have confused them with lions? write what you know: if you’re writing an animal, be fairly confident that you could point to one in a small child’s pop-up book
hey so i think tumblr maybe ate my ask or it went to you when you were in the middle of moving/conferencing, but i find myself kept awake at night by a pressing question: What (whom) did Jaylah eat all those years she was living in the wrecked spaceship by herself?
Her house tries its best to feed her, but the foodbox is missing a piece.
Sometimes after eating, with the ugly ache still in her belly, Jaylah will thumb through the foodbox settings, just to see what she could have eaten, on some other world, in some other time. The options light up in dull orange: taquitos. Caesar salad. Pizza of pepperoni.
“What is taquitos,” she asks her house, carefully, in its tongue. Her house tells her it is meat in rolled dough, fried in oil. It has been a long time since Jaylah has eaten dough. No nuts grow here, to grind to flour. No axeroot powder to leaven it, should she find some.
“Give me taquitos,” Jaylah says wistfully, and listens to the gears of her house whir and grind, trying to obey an order it is too damaged to fulfill.
“What is the meat,” she asks her house, when she tires of the sound of it trying and failing her.
The house tells her it comes from a cow.
“What is a cow,” Jaylah asks.
The house tells her it is an alien animal which lives on a world far away, bred for milk and slaughter. On her world, no beast lives for slaughter alone. The custom strikes her as barbaric.
The fist in Jaylah’s belly tightens, and for weeks she dreams of cows, their big eyes, their funny spots, their slow, fat bodies, designed for violence.
*
For a year, she survives on these things:
Whistling leaves, boiled down to soft coils in pale green water.
Salt sucked straight from mountain rocks.
She finds a strange artifact in the house, a box full of many thin leaves, covered in markings. The house says it is a book, but Jaylah knows books, and they are not these things to be held in the hand, to smell of dust and distantly of plants. She eats the pages of the book, one yellowed leaf at a time, and has the house tell her of its provenance: Around The World In Eighty Days, by Jules Verne. A story of an incredible voyage, to a primitive species.
There are fish in the river, when she dares go to the river. It is hard to make herself do it, though, and she is too rigid with fear to stay for long, so often her catches are small and scant, hardly worth the risk.
The yellow beetles, ground into paste. They are more palatable if she can wait and let them dry into powder, but often she is too hungry, and licks the yellow slick right off the pestle.
Thin-winged lizards, dumb enough to fly into her traps. They are mere mouthfuls the size of her first, full of bones, and stink of sulfur, but meat is meat. Jaylah plugs her nose to cook them, and tries not to breathe while eating. She spits the sucked-clean bones into a pile, and boils them the next day for broth.
A bee who falls from the sky, body and ship too badly damaged to fly home to Krall. She drags the bee two terrifying miles to her house, flinching at shadows, but no one comes to collect it. Under the shelter of her house’s cloak, she separates the meat from the metal, and tries to tell herself that the waste should go in the ground. But her belly hurts, and the meat is not soured, and there are only the beetles to eat that night.
*
There are other flesh-eaters Jaylah knows of, besides the men of Krall, who do not eat the meat of others but devour them whole, body and spirit both. She has had to avoid ending up in the cookpots of fellow survivors more than once. Jaylah is not like these people. Jaylah is smarter, stronger, better protected. She has not forgotten her father, her planet, herself. Yes, she is eating the meat of a dead man, wrapped in the leaf of a dead book to mimic the dough she does not have, but Jaylah did not kill this man to eat. It’s a distinction she feels is important.
She brings the rest of her meal to the captain’s seat, and puts her legs up on the arm of the chair. The meat is delicious, lean and good.
“Tell me again about cows, house,” she orders, rejuvenated despite herself, the animal pleasure of being fed making her dumb body glad. “Tell me what food can be had of cows.”
The house obediently recites the byproducts which should be available in its foodbox: butter, hamburger, steak, stew, half-and-half, cream, milkshake.
“I don’t know what is a milkshake,” Jaylah says, although she does–the house has explained before, that it is ice cream made soft, to be drunk through a straw. That ice cream is milk made cold, made sweet, and milk flows from a mother cow to her calf, a willing gift.
The house tells her about milkshakes again, and tells her to program 987 into the replicator should she wish one.
“You can’t give it to me,” Jaylah says, and takes a savage bite of her meat. “So no. I don’t wish one.”
The house sighs itself into perfect silence, until the only sound is Jaylah herself, chewing, swallowing.
“Play me some music, house,” she says hoarsely, and the house gives her beats and shouting.
*
Ten days after eating Krall’s man, Jaylah cannibalizes the fallen bee’s secondary systems–nothing that could help her fly, or reinforce the shields. Just the air temperature and the sound in the pod. She finds a little metal construct that lights up a connection in the back of her mind, although she has never seen it before.
The part slots perfectly into her house’s foodbox.
Her hands shake too badly to install the part that day. She ends up leaving the work undone for a full week, until the next time she finds a lizard in her trap. It isn’t yet dead, when she comes for it, only one wing broken, the wound reeking of sulfur. It mewls in pain when she reaches for it, and Jaylah finds herself crying wildly over the poor stupid lizard, crying harder than she did for her own father.
She can’t let it go–it would only end up food for someone else, unable to fly.
She splints the lizard’s wing–a reckless, foolish indulgence. She fixes the foodbox, and feeds the ill-tempered hissing thing little crumbs of taquitos, little saucers of milk.
*
When the lizard is healed, Jaylah grabs it up in her hands, and carries it to the roof of her house. It bites the pad of her thumb, drawing blood.
“Fuck you too, lizard,” Jaylah tells it, and throws the small thing into the sky. The lizard wavers briefly in the air, testing its wounded wing, and then lets out a joyful trill and soars over the cliff, leaving the protection of Jaylah’s house for the uncertain freedom of the dark.
Jaylah stands there looking over the cliff for a long time, sick with envy over the little lizard’s escape.
“I am leaving this place,” she swears to herself, and although she has eaten well for weeks, she feels a familiar twist her gut, the hollow ache of hunger.
Re: Erik--Thank you :) That was very helpful as someone not super familiar with the canon. It's so interesting how relevant the Charles vs. Erik poles can be. They should be the new angel and devil on my shoulders :P
Hey, I’m glad you liked it! I’ve basically been waiting to have an appropriate forum to ramble about the X-Men since always, it was a lot of fun to write. And of course Erik is just such a train wreck of a person, I love poking around in the moral and psychological implications of his situation. …I’m weird, just go with it.
if you ever try to befriend me and you expect to be in frequent contact with me i am so sorry. i do that with maybe two people and even then i often go days or weeks without saying anything before talking daily for a while.
the point is if we dont talk that doesnt mean i dont like u and think about u a lot im just terrible at maintaining close relationships
James Tiberius “sunk all his points into improvised weaponry and bluff” Kirk, space bard.
Commander “charisma is a dump stat” Spock, space wizard
Lieutenant “wait, can we use supplemental materials for this?” Sulu, space duelist
Lieutenant Nyota“lockpick and detect trap are literally always useful skills guys come on” Uhura, space theif
Lieutenant Commander Montgomery “definitely going to blow the party up with that flask of Greek fire” Scott, space alchemist.
Ensign Pavel “Does not know how to tank” Chekov, Barbarian
And finally, to round out the party, Leonard “I can’t believe not a single one of you motherfuckers took a single rank in healing, I should pick rogue just to spite you,” McCoy, space cleric.
don’t have anything in common with me anymore, and are bored by the things i post
feel obligated by whatever personal reason you may have to keep following me, even if literally any of those above things apply
this applies to mutuals as well. your dash should be your happy place, so no hard feelings and i wish you the best in life
I’m adding here that I don’t actually check my followers list ever - I only ever check the number if I’ve had a rash of new follows - so if you’ve got any anxiety about offending me, don’t worry, because I literally won’t see. Your dash is your safe and happy spot, and if my content doesn’t jive with what you want to see…that’s fine with me.
sometimes u go on google searching for a reference image and you just find something that is totally not what you are looking for but is better than anything u could have ever dreamed
Can you say more about why you consider Erik to be broken/a monster?
Yes I can. Now, first and foremost: I really like the character of Erik Lensherr/Magneto/Max Eisenhardt/Magnus/other stuff (I’m going to go with Erik since that’s the name he usually uses), I’ve really liked his character in a writerly ‘look how interesting this shit is’ since I was a tiny wee critter who had mostly only read the weird 60′s comics with the ridiculous costumes and over-the-top dialog and batshit plotlines. I was raised Jewish until I converted and part of my family is Romani, so the Holocaust-survivor-decides-he’s-done-with-humanity thing rang pretty true because I was raised to have immense respect and grief for the event in question. So…like…none of this reflects on that, and in fact I’d say most of this is why I like his character so much. Also I’m a comics nerd at heart, so this may be pretty hit/miss on movie canon.
All right, so, here’s the thing about Erik as a truly broken person. Ever since I was little, Magneto struck me as a deeply, thoroughly traumatized individual, which, obviously, is true. He survived the Holocaust as a child, which…like, that is enough to really fuck someone up, on a permanent and severe level. In addition to the prejudice and prosecution related to his Jewish faith/heritage (have I covered my aggravation with the movies not dealing with that? it’s real), he’s been dealt a pretty awful hand on the subject of being a mutant, and been persecuted for that up to and including the murder of his wife and daughter. So…like…he is a seriously traumatized person, it’s just totally beyond debate. He has been treated as inhuman, as less than human, for almost his entire life–is it any wonder that he started making the declaration himself that he’s not human? (Let’s be real, the division between ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘homo superior’ is almost certainly a lot blurrier than Erik makes it out to be.) I’d say no, it’s actually pretty textbook psychology, it’s real, that’s part of the reason he’s such a compelling character.
And the other thing about Erik is that he’s scared. He is clearly terrified of humanity, no matter how much he might grandstand about how superior he is and how tiny they are to him. He is an animal in a trap, that’s how he sees himself, and he reacts like one. He lashes out, he tries to hurt humanity before they can hurt him. I’m of the opinion that quite a few supervillains exist out of terror, but Magneto is probably the best example I’ve ever encountered.
Like, is his trauma and terror at all an excuse for the shit he pulls? No. It’s a cool motive, but he still makes regular and alarmingly effective attempts at mass murder. People break, it’s what we do, and what dictates who we are is where we go from there, how we deal with the experience of being broken. And that’s where Erik gets really interesting.
Because listen, just. Listen. Hear me out here.
Erik Lensherr is not good at being a villain and I will tell you why. I don’t mean that as “poor misunderstood baby just doesn’t know how to deal” or anything, like, look, Magneto has tried to commit genocide more than once, I have no illusions. I like his character, but…um, he knows what he’s doing. When I say he’s not good at being a villain, I mean exactly that. Monstrous, yes, Magneto is excellent at being monstrous, anyone who has a reputation for indiscriminate murder is a monster. Cruel, dangerous, antagonistic–yeah.
But when Magneto believes he’s killed a mutant child, Kitty Pyde, with his own hands, he unravels spectacularly. She’s an X-Man who was trying to stop him, who has shown readiness to die or kill him if it’s necessary to save lives and protect her teammates, and let me tell you something: someone who was good at being a villain would have dropped her body and carried on with his rampage. There are plenty of excellent villains who face the X-Men, whether because they’re too far gone to have a conscience (Dark Phoenix arc) or because they never had one to begin with (Apocalypse arc) or because they’re aliens (like…this is a theme), and they move right the fuck on from killing people. But Erik sends a massive jolt of electricity through Kitty and believes he’s killed her–a thirteen-year-old girl, not much older than his daughter, who was trying to save her friends–and he comes fucking unglued. Like. Storm finds him holding Kitty and crying. That…that’s not the act of a villain.
Another good example would be the fact that, more than once, Erik has been presented with a golden opportunity to just…do nothing and let Charles Xavier die. Like, he would be completely able to say “Sorry, I have to go grocery shopping” (presumably he has to go grocery shopping) and not have to lift a finger to have Charles, the primary hindrance to his plans, out of his hair. And yet he doesn’t. Erik is a deeply, deeply fucked up man, and sincerely monstrous (see previous re: attempted genocide), but he needs a Villainy for Dummies book. I’m sure the Marvel multiverse has a few going cheap.
Aaaaand yeah. Those are my feelings about Erik Lensherr/Magneto as a villain, as a monster, and as a man.
Ghostbusters made $46 million on their opening weekend.
You know who else made $46 million opening weekend? Jurassic Park.
Women aren’t the problem. They’re the solution.
keep reblogging this, straight white men can’t accept the fact an all-female cast of comedians made a successful movie
You may like the movie but do no not come here and lie to me that this movie was a financial it. Because as far as I’m concerned. It wasn’t.
Like many in our country, you seem to have an aversion to math. Luckily, I’m a producer. So let me explain something to you.
The new Ghostbusters cost $144 million to make. That was their budget. (It was actually green-lit for $154 million, but they came in under budget – always good for a studio whose concern is upfront costs, especially Sony who is trying to slash the cost of new films, and especially good for the viability of getting a sequel or franchise made. Wink wink.)
For it to be a financial hit, it would have to not just make all that money back, but go into profit. Simple enough principle.
As of August 2, Ghostbusters has grossed $109.6 million in America, and $51.7 million in other territories.
109.6 million + 51.7 million = a worldwide total of $161.3 million.
They made their money back. They’ve gone into profit. It’s a hit. Not a colossal hit, but a hit. (And this is without video on demand, streaming, DVD or Blu-Ray sales, and other options factored in, which will only keep the profits rolling.) It took them less than a month to get there, and on top of that, they came in so hot from the start that there will likely be a new franchise built from it.
And even if the initial post is totally wrong about its figures, as many of the notes point out, its basic point is still intact: it was a hit, on a par with many classic movie blockbusters like Jurassic Park.
I will close with what has frequently become my catchphrase on Facebook in the current political climate: “You don’t have to like it. You just have to DEAL WITH IT.”
I tried to argue that Ophelia resonated because Shakespeare had made an extraordinary discovery in writing her, though I had trouble articulating the nature of that discovery. I didn’t want to admit that it could be something as simple as recognizing that emotionally unstable teenage girls are human beings. …
When Ophelia appears onstage in Act IV, scene V, singing little songs and handing out imaginary flowers, she temporarily upsets the entire power dynamic of the Elsinore court. When I picture that scene, I always imagine Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Horatio sharing a stunned look, all of them thinking the same thing: “We fucked up. We fucked up bad.” It might be the only moment of group self-awareness in the whole play. Not even the grossest old Victorian dinosaur of a critic tries to pretend that Ophelia is making a big deal out of nothing. Her madness and death is plainly the direct result of the alternating tyranny and neglect of the men in her life. She’s proof that adolescent girls don’t just go out of their minds for the fun of it. They’re driven there by people in their lives who should have known better.
reblog if you’ve ever written a fanfic just to spite the existence of another fanfic somebody else wrote
Funny story. Robin McKinley once wrote an entire book like that. Her novel was The Blue Sword, and it was in response to the horror that is The Sheik by Edith Hull (trigger warnings for rape, stockholm syndrome, and virulent racism). McKinley stated that it took her about 6 months to draft The Blue Sword, which was at that point the fastest she had ever written a novel.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that fury can’t sustain you through a giant artistic fuck you.
I have heard that “Lord of the Flies” was written in response to a book with some English public school boys getting stranded and having just a jolly very civilized time. I feel much better about that book knowing it’s supposed to be not a indictment of human nature but a commentary on English public school boys.
That book was The Coral Island, FWIW. It’s basically about rich English boys getting stranded on an island and having a jolly good time while fending off cannibalism and rape from “savages”. William Golding read the book repeatedly as a boy, but disagreed with it as an adult, and apparently stated that the Lord of the Flies grew out of the “rotted compost” of his memories of the text.
The other things The Coral Island inspired were Peter Pan and Treasure Island, which just goes to show sometimes the fanfic outlives the original.
you don’t even need any factual backup to headcanon a character as autistic tbh. they don’t need to have whatever you consider to be “common autistic traits”. if an autistic person wants to headcanon a character as autistic because they identify with that character, or because it makes them feel good, or for whatever reason, let them.
I’ve seen allistic people reblogging this post and that actually makes me really happy. thank you for listening to autistic voices stay tolerant and stay lovely
Ghostbusters feels like a love letter written to all the girls out there who wondered why Arwen couldn’t go to Mordor, who cheered when Éowyn pulled off that helmet. It’s a love letter to all of us who gaped as Claire Dearing ran in heels through the entirety of Jurassic World, imagining the blood pumping out of her feet as she did. It’s a love letter to those of us who watched with raised eyebrows as Gamora’s fighting skills in Guardians of the Galaxy seemed to fluctuate depending on how good they wanted Peter Quill to look. It’s a love letter to we who watched The Avengers and asked why on earth Black Widow was wearing wedges. It’s a love letter to fans who watch bitterly as Jupiter Ascending is called plotless nonsense, while Kingsman is “boyish fun” and getting a sequel. This movie is a love letter to all of us who watched and wished we could see ourselves as the point man, the wise guy, the demolitions expert, anything but the goddamn lone squadette who inevitably ends up making out with the lead male even though they spent the movie sniping at each other.
In a shocking turn of events which surprises exactly no one, I have Feelings About Ghostbusters.
It was pretty great watching girls make raunchy jokes and kick ass while not looking like walking advertisements for their own cootches, while having a hot boy secretary in need of rescuing who’s only there to be eye-candy. Thank you, people who made this movie. It was everything I didn’t know I wanted.
Plus, AMEN about Jupiter Ascending vs. Kingsman. That is ON POINT.
This is pretty much my feelings about everything. (Also: HOLTZMANNNNN)
It’s a love letter to fans who watch bitterly as Jupiter Ascending is called plotless nonsense, while Kingsman is “boyish fun” and getting a sequel.
Person without ADHD:
I know ADHD is not a real disorder because I read an edgy article about it online. The only symptoms of ADHD are hyperactivity, distractability, and forgetfulness, which everyone deals with.
Me:
*constant pacing and bouncing, no concept of time, often forgets to eat and sleep, poor impulse control, loses everything, has panic attacks because of sensory overload, unpredictable mood swings, strong urge to touch everything I see, forgets topic of conversation mid-sentence, gets so invested in trivial things that I literally cannot hear people talking to me, sometimes physically cannot stop talking, etc*
Same person:
WHAT THE FCUK IS WRONG WITH YOU
Me:
I have ADHD
Same person:
..about it online. The only symptoms of ADHD are hyperactivity, distractability, and forgetfulness, which everyone deals with.
I know many of you artists - whether you draw, write, or compose - are frustrated that your original work, especially your dream projects, aren’t getting the responses you were hoping for.
I feel the same way.
But some of you express your frustrations completely destructively and blame the world for not giving you the spotlight.
When you do that, you’re blaming your problems for existing rather than adjusting and compromising to solve them. You’re making excuses for your mistakes. You’re demanding the world to change but you are not willing to change with it.
This is the perfect mindset to NEVER succeed in anything, ever.
You need to accept some basic truths of art before you can go any further:
Your art should teach you as much as or more than it teaches others: If you claim your art opens horizons and widens minds, yours should be the first priority. You cannot speak without listening. You are not a righteous prophet enlightening the heathens with the true word. You are one humble person and your art is one humble person’s story.
There are no new stories, but there are always new storytellers. That amazing idea you have that nobody’s ever thought of before? Someone has. But nobody has told the story your way, or drawn the character your way, or sung the song your way. Art is not about being new. It is about being you.
Popular art is all about the beholder. All these shows and games with so much fan art? They got to that level because they command a personal investment from and serve the viewer - they have worlds their fans want to be part of, and your canon will be swept aside along the way. You the artist are not a god or a wise sage. You are a guide and a footman. To be an artist is to be humanity’s servant, not its lord - and there’s no shame in that.
Most of your fans are not artists or art critics. While there will be a good number of them in your fanbase, the vast majority are not going to be super-open-minded creative thinkers who value every single opinion, outlook, and story just because it’s done technically well. They will be ordinary people with ordinary, selfish interests, and they will care about your content more than your talent. You have to balance what you want to draw with what everyone wants to see.
But the most important part of being an artist or really a person at all is to understand this:
Nobody owes you success.
Nobody is under any obligation to pay anything you produce a second glance or support or promote it in any way.
Nobody is spiting or robbing you by not giving you a like or a reblog or a follow.
Every single gesture of appreciation you receive from someone is a courtesy - a gift that you earn, not a right you’re entitled to.
It is not the job of your audience to love your work. It is your job to make it lovable. And just because you are working really hard does not mean you are working in the right direction.
I know that thousands upon thousands of artists put hours or months or years into a project and feel like they get nothing in return. Sometimes it is not how hard you’re working but what you’re working for that is the problem.
Sometimes you need to slow down and think, “Do I have to have this just so? What would the kind of person interested in my work be looking for, and where can I address it? Am I maybe taking myself and my work a little too seriously?”
And a lot of artists don’t realize that as an amateur, you are the sole proprietor - you are your art. Whether people like you determines whether they like your art.
And that’s why when you blame everybody else and post ungrateful, catty garbage like this:
… you don’t subsequently become the next Toby Fox.
The simple fact is that people will pay you attention if they think your offering + your hassle are worth their attention.
You need to create a world that someone other than you will have fun in and you need to be a good host to everyone who visits.
You need a world that will welcome your fans with open arms.
You need to build a world people can live & play in.
And you and your world need to appreciate your fans just for showing up.
Because this is exactly what the big fish do.
because they spread your work around to more people without shanking you on credit and who gets the likes
because they make your work show up sooner & more often on searches and are simply a nice gesture
because they take time out and pay good money to listen to your story and make you from a pauper into a prince
because if you appreciate no one, no one will appreciate you, nor should they
This resonates with me in a big way. I used to get really fucked up when I spent 10 hours on something and a dumbass sketch I did in 15 minutes outstripped it in exposure but… you know what I grew up… that’s cool
I appreciate the likes
I appreciate the reblogs
I appreciate you just hanging out here with me having a cool time
Like, do I sometimes wish that my original writing got more attention? Sure, everyone does. But like, shit, I got 200 notes on a Star Trek AU, those are still people liking my writing, it’s fine if my original stuff gets six notes, I appreciate all of y’all who leave me nice comments in the tags and shit.
What about a Star Trek AU, but with Les Mis characters
Aaaaaay, hell yeah, I fucking live for Star Trek AU’s.
All right, so I’m
going to take this to mean that one AU where the fair ship Revolution is out on her five-year mission under the command of Captain
Lamarque, a steely-eyed woman with a reputation for even-handed care of her crew
whether they support her or not. Her
first officer, Commander Enjolras is a communications specialist, beyond his
command training, and everyone who knew him before his commission jokes that he
chose it because he always wore bright red anyway. Those jokes are mostly made by his two
closest friends from the Academy, both of whom went out of their way to get
assigned to the same ship—Combeferre, the youngest out of the three doctors on
board (and half-Betazoid who will cut you
if you ask about his species’ “sensuous nature”), and Courfeyrac, the ship’s
counselor (technically a non-com, but still part of the crew).
when i was a freshman in college i was so nervous about the first day of school and i got to all of my classes half an hour early but now it’s my first day as a senior and i didn’t know when my first class was until an hour after i got to campus and i also wore my shirt inside out all day without noticing and i think that says a lot about the person college has made me
Just wait until grad school. I’ve showed up at the library still drunk and still in my pajamas like at least twice this year.
okay so i think i’ve told you guys this before but my coworker is a lesbian ex nun and for some reason i never asked how she met her wife but today is one of my last days so i asked her and holy shit you guys it’s like a fanfic they met in the convent and decided to escape together im screaming
okay sorry for the wait we were gushing about our fun home tickets like gay nerds but okay so they were ROOMMATES IN THE CONVENT!! what kind of fanfic shit… but anyway so it’s like a dorm room and a curtain is down the middle that separates the roommates from each other. and also i guess in the convent once you’re in your room you’re not allowed to talk? so they would pass each other notes under the curtain and like when lights-out happened at night and the head nun lady went to bed they would sit at the curtain with a spiral notebook and have conversations by just passing the notebook back and forth. so they did this for a few months but they were miserable in the convent and decided that enough is enough so they ran away together and my coworker’s now-wife like left first and then my coworker waited a day and snuck out and they met up at the closest gas station and then a month later they moved in together and they’ve been together ever since like 22 years and honestly if there is a better example of ‘it gets better’ idk what it is
“if you want to adopt kids at an older age, that’s just lazy and you’ll miss the important developmental years. you won’t be able to connect.” okay but consider this:
1. I will not be able to handle a baby, but I will definitely be able to manage and guide an older child
2. no diapers. hallelujah
3. As a foster child gets older, their chance of adoption plummets. Adopting an older child gives a late break to someone who would have otherwise had to age out of the system
4. my plans for adoption are none of your concern
Holy shit people actually say that? Inviting a kid in need to be part of your family is ‘lazy’?
Being there for the ‘developmental years’ is so important not having it is a dealbreaker?
‘You won’t be able to connect’ with another human being unless you’re there for their formative years, imprinting on them?
…people who make that argument should probably do a LOT of soulsearching before they consider getting a toy baby adopting a younger child.
I had a sociology professor once and both he and his wife were registered social workers (in addition to him teaching), and after a couple of years married, they started talking about adopting a child. They’d seen the system up close, they knew how hard it was for some kids to get adopted. So when they sat down to start the fostering process, they told the agency to give them their toughest, most difficult case. If anyone could handle a kid who’d been labeled a “problem child”, it was these two people.
The agency paired them up with a 12 year old girl – the oldest they had, far, far too old to be considered for adoption typically. This girl’s birth parents had had drug problems, she’d been in and out of a couple dozen foster homes, no one able to handle her, she ran away frequently and had diagnosed behavioral problems, she was surly and defiant. When she first met them, she was clammed up tight, snarky, unwilling to trust them or anyone – and really, who could blame her?
But these two adults poured every bit of their compassion and training into this one child, into getting to know her, earning her trust by listening to her and treating her like a person who mattered. And slowly, slowly, she came around. Slowly, they built a relationship with her, and she came out of her shell. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but having these two adults who were utterly unwilling to give up on her, or see her as the problem, let them work through each issue as it arose, and slowly they started to see this other side of her personality emerge. She joked around, she grinned often, she got excited about sports games and yelled at the tv with her foster father, she was making friends at her new school and doing better in her studies.
One day they sat her down and told her they loved her and they wanted her to legally, officially be part of their family. But they thought she deserved a say, too. If she just wanted to be fostered for the next five, six years, they could do that too. But they wanted to adopt her, they wanted to keep her for always. Did she want them? Yes, she said. Yes, I want to keep you, too.
My professor came into class one day with a grin that just would not go away, bouncing on his toes. We all wanted to know what was up. The adoption was finalized today, he told us. Today I have a daughter! And he showed us pictures of his brand new 12 year old daughter hugged between he and his wife, the three of them grinning at the camera. I’ve been her dad for awhile, he told us, but today it’s official, today we’re finally really a family.
I heard that story in the spring of 2001, when I was 20. This girl just 8 years younger than me, the age of my younger siblings, this girl who everyone had given up on. But these two people, they knew they had enough love and training to handle whatever was thrown their way, these people stayed true to the commitment of being parents, didn’t give up when the going got tough, proved slowly and methodically that they loved her, that she could trust them.
That girl must be in her late 20s now. She’s had parents for more than a decade and a half. She hasn’t had to face this scary century alone. She has parents who went with her to her freshman orientation for college, I’m certain of it. If she’s gotten married, I know her father walked her down the aisle, that same grin splitting his face, the same grin as when he announced that he had a daughter, the same grin he wore every time he talked about her. If she’s had kids, her kids have the best grandparents.
They are a family of choice built on commitment and trust and love. You can’t tell me that isn’t bonding, you cannot tell me that it’s lazy, that that was somehow easier or less worthwhile than diapers.
