I like how Bethesda manages to be more progressive than most of the games industry by doing as little work as possible.
Unnamed npcs like bandits are randomly assembled from the available body features, which inadvertently leads to more balanced gender and race representation, because every physical attribute has an equal chance to be chosen. In Skyrim, marriageable npcs are marriageable no matter what the player is, because having a single “marriageable” box to tick when coding npcs is easier than having to check for multiple variables like race and gender in the player.
No one in any bethesda game will treat you any differently or even speak differently other than “he” or “she”, and even then a lot of dialogue uses “they” or your characters titles rather than your pronouns to save dialogue lines.
It is literally less work to just represent everybody equally. The next time a game dev tries to say they don’t have the resources to include more diverse representation, you push that shit back at them because that shit is bullshit.
“St. Louis, Mo., Dec 14.– Ruling that male attire was not unbecoming to Mrs. Mary Bertha Schmidt, alias ‘Mister Schmidt,’ judge Hogan, in police court here, refused to fine the young woman who for two years posed as a man and who ‘married’ her cousin, Anna Assade, last October.
‘I think you look very nice,’ said the court. Mrs. Schmidt was clad in her neatly pressed trousers and pinchback coat. She explained she had adopted the garments because she could earn $80 a month as a man and $6 a week as a woman.
‘If a woman can earn $4 a day by reason of wearing trousers, I say wear ‘em,’ said the court, and ‘Mister Schmidt’ walked out of court with a smile on ‘his’ face.”
my favorite side effect warning is for antidepressants
pros: you won’t want to kill yourself
cons: you might want to kill yourself
Back when I was in a psychiatric hospital, and was offered antidepressants, my mother had declined them due to that apparent side effect. So the staff actually explained about this effect antidepressants have, that give reason to that warning. When first taking antidepressants they raise up your energy first. So that you have the energy to do the tasks you might have avoided doing due to your depression. Because of this those who were already suicidal, now have the energy to go do so. Which is the ones this warning is given for. It’s not that a side effect of antidepressants magically makes you want to kill yourself, it’s the energy it gives those who were already struggling with suicidal issues, to actually attempt the act.
Very informative…
Wow. I’m so glad you explained that. Now I understand
My high school choir/psych teacher actually told is about this. She also said if you have a suicidal friend who starts seeming like they might be getting better because they have more energy, that’s the time to be cautious because that’s when they may still be suicidal but they’ll actually have the energy to go through with it
THIS. a thousand times THIS. I had it explained to me in my AP psychology class in high school. super fucking important.
College psych classes say the same thing. Suicidal people are at the most risk as they begin to come out of their depression because of rises in energy/motivation. And if they have bipolar depression and get mixed state episodes (not terribly common, but it’s getting both depressed and manic at the same time,) that’s also a really risky time, for similar reasons.
In ancient Rome, pants were considered effeminate. Only dirty barbarians wore pants. A good Roman male was expected to keep a breeze on his privates at all times. Also, women couldn’t wear togas. If you saw a woman wearing a toga, it meant she was a prostitute.
History side of tumblr: verify please?
*Bursts through the door*
You rang?
I should probably clarify I mean trousers, not underpants, for all you folks of the British persuasion out there. Romans didn’t have undies as we do, but they did have loincloths. Generally they just let it all hang out, though. Wearing leg wraps or thick loincloths was a sign of old age or weakness. Think of high school boys today who wear shorts in winter to prove their toughness; it was the same for Romans.
Trousers were despised in ancient Rome because they were worn by barbarian Germanic tribespeople. In iconography that depicts Germans, they are shown with wild hair, long beards and pants to distinguish them from the good, civilised, neatly-shaven toga-wearing Romans.
Just look at those filthy barbarians. In trousers! So unlike us masculine Roman men.
#judgingyou
Wearing pants in Rome was a big no-no. A good Roman citizen simply wouldn’t wear pants, and they were banned from the Senate, Forum and Circus, so any Gallo-Germanic representative from the provinces had to change into Roman dress before he would be admitted.
Slaves and non-citizens still wore them, but freeborn Romans attached enormous prejudice to trousers. Inevitably, however, they became popular among lower classes until, in the lead up to the sack of Rome by the Goths, strong anti-Germanic sentiment against barbarian invaders led to Emperor Honorius banning pants in Rome. That’s right, trousers were banned. (Codex Theodosianus 14.10.2-3, tr. C. Pharr, “The Theodosian Code,” p. 415)
This site here should give you a quick run down on the basics of Roman dress. Togas were for men, and women wore long flowy dresses called stola that covered everything down to their feet. There’s a hilarious poem by Ovid where he talks about getting off on seeing a girl’s ankles; that’s how modestly they dressed (Amores, Book 3, Elegy II). The stola also came with a headscarf attached. Women were expected to cover their hair when they went out, which means dress standards for women were not unlike the dress codes of some Muslim countries today. Wearing the stola with the headscarf up says “back off boys. I’m a respectable Roman lady. Go find someone else to annoy.”
can’t touch dis
Prostitutes, of course, need to send out the opposite message, and the simplest way to do that was by cross-dressing. If a Roman man walked down the street and saw a group of girls wearing men’s clothing and scandalously showing off their legs, he’d know instantly they were lupae, she-wolves; what we might call ‘ladies of the night’. In law, prostitutes actually came to be denied the privilege of the stola so that at all times they would be marked as meretrices. Prostitutes were also known to cut their hair short and dye them fantastic colours to further advertise their availability. This site should give you further information; it’s got some great quotes from source texts too.
Four years earlier, in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed.
Five years before that, in 1963, Medgar Evers was shot and killed.
Eight years before that, in 1955, a young Black man named Emmett Till was tortured, then shot and killed.
These events, and numerous others with frightening similarity, happened in a line, and in the early years of the first decade to reap the social benefits of the Civil Rights Movement, Marvel Comics gives the fans (and the world) a Black male superhero whose primary superhuman aspect… is that he’s bulletproof.
Not flight, or super speed, or a power ring.
The superhuman ability of being impervious to bullets.
Superheroes. Action heroes. Fantasy heroes.
Power fantasies.
Is there any doubt the power fantasy of the Black man in the years following multiple assassinations of his leaders and children by way of the gun would be superhuman resistance to bullets?
In American society, the Black man has come a long way from the terrors of the past handful of centuries, only to crash right into the terrors of the 21st century. Some of those terrors being the same exact ones their grandparents had to face and survive — or not.
There are Black men who are wealthy, powerful, formidable and/or dangerous. They can affect change undreamt of by their parents, and their parents’ parents. Their children will be able to change the world in ways we can intuit and others we can barely begin to try and predict.
But a bullet can rip through their flesh and their future with no effort whatsoever.
And so we look at Luke Cage, a man who gets shot on a regular basis, whose body language is such that he is expecting to be shot at, prepared for the impact — because he knows he can take it.
And maybe, in the subconscious of the uni-mind of Marvel Comics, is the understanding that Luke Cage may unfortunately always be a relevant fantasy idea for the Black man.
2012 – Trayvon Martin is shot and killed.
2013 – Jonathan Ferrell is shot and killed.
2014 – Michael Brown is shot and killed.
2015/2016 – Luke Cage premieres on Netflix.
I look forward to seeing if the Luke Cage of that show will have a true understanding of his power and what he symbolizes.
Final papers are busy killing me right now and I am all of the anxiety, so please talk to me about what a Leverage Hogwarts AU would be like.
OH MAN OKAY.
So I know we all have thoughts and feelings and whatnot about the characters as they appear in the show, but lets focus on their 11 year old versions because I think they’d be slightly different.
THE CREW:
Parker is a half-blood orphan, and a Slytherin through and through. Her ambition is to be the greatest curse breaker to ever walk the earth. Why would she steal from Muggles when magic is such a great challenge? She’ll learn bravery and loyalty and a love of learning and knowledge for its own sake later on down the line. Right now though it flat out doesn’t occur to her to be afraid, she’s never had people of her very own so loyalty is a nebulous concept, and learning is awesome when it gets her where she wants to go. The hat barely touches Parker’s head before barking out her House. McGonagall, who spent three weeks trying to track the young scamp down in order to deliver her letter, breathes a sigh of relief and shoots Snape a look of sheer gloating triumph.
Eliot is a pureblood, and a Gryffindor, but that tends to surprise the people who get to know him well as an adult. He values bravery and the defense of the innocent and his head is full of stories of heroes and valor and he has so much faith. He is bright the way that the young idealists always are before the world gets its grubby paws on them. The shiny wears off in Auror training, when he gets to see how the wizarding world really works. After that, bravery doesn’t hold the same value for him anymore, and nor do ideals. He makes his world a little smaller, a little easier, and focuses on people instead. Once he finds them, he makes himself both sword and shield. Gryffindor is the house of his youth, but Hufflepuff is his “final form” so to speak.
Hardison is a Muggle-born who spends the intervening weeks between getting his books and getting on that dang train absolutely devouring every word. He wants to know it all, he wants to see everything, he is absolutely enamored with his new world from the word ‘go.’ It’s absolutely no surprise to him when the hat pronounces him a RAVENCLAW! “Age of the geek, baby,” he says to himself as he struts to his seat at his new table.
Nathan is an absolute hatstall as an 11 year old, a halfblood who never thought he’d get to go to Hogwarts - never dared to dream he’d follow in his witch mother’s footsteps. He’s brave, inquisitive, hard-working, and he’s not entirely sure what he wants to do but he’s going to be the very best. He discusses his options with the hat for several minutes (who better to learn about the houses from than a hat that sat on all the Founders’ heads?), alternating between advocating for a house he might fit in and playing devil’s advocate to the hats suggestions. Eventually, amused when it realizes what the child is playing at, the hat settles on Ravenclaw: a solid foundation of knowledge will be necessary for Nathan on his path, whatever he decides it will be.
Sophie has many names and many faces. She leaves behind the girl she was and guards that information more dearly than her own life. On any given day, she might say she was a student at Beauxbaton, Durmstrang, Salem, Hogwarts, or any of the hundreds of magical institutions that dot the planet. Her favorite color is yellow, and that might be indicative, or it might not. The truth is a matter of perspective.
Recurring Characters:
Tara Cole - Hufflepuff
Maggie Collins - Ravenclaw
Archie Leach - Gryffindor
James Sterling - Slytherin
Colin “Chaos” Mason - Ravenclaw
The setting:
Former Unspeakable Nate Ford and his band of cohorts act as modern-day Robin Hoods, pulling elaborate scams targeted against the greedy and the corrupt of magical society. Nate was inspired to begin his con business when the Ministry refused to allow research into the magic that could have saved his son’s life.
Hitter - Eliot Spencer was an elite Hit Wizard until a mission went seriously wrong, now he’s a wand for hire with a reputation for getting the job done by any means necessary.
Hacker - There’s not a language Hardison doesn’t speak, a runic script he can’t decipher. He combines his expertise with wards, rituals, arithmancy, and Muggle tech to break the systems in ways nobody sees coming.
Thief - there’s not a curse Parker can’t break, no system she can’t slip through. By hook, crook, or transfiguration, she’ll get in and out with the goods.
Grifter - Sophie can become anyone she needs to be, and that’s before she taps into her metamorphmagus abilities.
Mastermind - Nate knows how to bring them all together. The consummate jack of all trades, and a master of knowing exactly how to put the right people in the right position to get the job done.
“I thought I was just going to do Hamilton for fun; I didn’t realize that I was stepping into a historic piece of theater. I mean, President Obama came to the fifth preview of the show– we hadn’t even opened yet! We had heard three days before that he was going to be in the audience, and everyone received an email saying, “Please show up to Hamilton as though it was airport security.” We were on lockdown until the president got there. When he came backstage, he said, “A lot of people make really great things and they never get recognized. You guys should really enjoy that you’ve made something great and it’s being embraced from the very beginning.” He shook everyone’s hand. We were in awed silence. The only two times that someone of note has come backstage and it’s been that silent was for Obama… and Beyoncé, who came with Jay Z. Everyone rushed to meet her, so I was like, “Okay, I probably won’t get to shake her hand, but as long as I can, like, breathe the same air, it’s fine.” And then she looked at me and said, “Were you the king? You were f–––ing incredible!” She told me she was going to steal my walk, and did an impersonation of the walk I do when I enter the stage. And then she looked me up and down and said, “I saw everything.” That’s when the ground opened up and I fell into my grave and died. A tombstone went up and it said, “Cause of Death: Beyoncé.””—Jonathan Groff for EW’s Best & Worst issue of 2015: This was the year that… “I played the king in front of the president– and Queen B” (via jgroffdaily)
My family ranted to me last night about how they think Donald Trump is the only responsible person trying to run for president and they think “everyone supports him”.
I want to prove them wrong.
This really means nothing if no one votes tho, So please, VOTE if you can.
I try to avoid political posts as a rule, but this man is a truly abhorrent human being.
i work as a barista & people tell me all the time that The Drinks Got Gender. Thats A Lady Coffee, people try to say
its fucking bean water
can’t believe i can’t just reply to this but: maybe they’re actually telling you that this coffee has an important status. Lady Coffee
oh shit i was in the presence of bean water royalty oh fuck i must have looked like such a rube. such a fool.
what the fuck does this post mean ive been trying to decipher its hieroglyphic encrypted message but i cant
“From a deconstructionist stand point, I have to disagree with a large portion of the customers that I, a humble barista tend to each day. The assertion that certain coffee drinks are more suitable for one gender or another is folly. For as we know: 1. gender is a social construct, & 2. coffee of any type is simply hot water strained through roasted beans, & has no greater affect on either culturally assigned sex.”
“What ho, kind friend! Is it not unfortunate that I cannot simply reply to this post, & most reblog it? What a farce, this blue website! Ah, but I digress: what if perhaps your customers were not asserting not the suitability of the drink for a given gender, but rather indicating some matter of status? Perhaps the coffee is possessing of a high rank in society. This is of course my purely grammatical viewpoint on the subject.”
“Oh, damnation! This does in fact seem much more likely than my own ludicrous assumptions, & I was no doubt in the presence of roasted bean royalty! Some emissary from foreign soil! Curses! What a country bumpkin I’ve made myself out to be!!”
“Six people find out why making deals with gods is a bad fucking idea”
“Child attempts to save various gods and humanity from ancient evil; ancient evil is only somewhat impressed”
“Bond girl becomes too gay to function.”
A schizophrenic prophet and her LGBT friends sacrifice Straight Larry to zombies
a gay bunny flies around after the only city in the world blows up
You have my attention
Angry smol elf teams up with grumpy tall elf to fight aforementioned grumpy tall elf and bring him to justice for crimes against humanity.
Ohh, so many!
“A mage and a cat-boy walk a lost star home.”
“Man with amnesia looks to regain memories with the help of a sarcastic scarf.”
“A group of disappointments try to become less so.”
“Two plants try to save the world.”
“Why am I doing this, I don’t even want to be a princess, I hate you all!”
“A group of gay adults with powers decide to destroy oppressive government.”
“A halfling teenager, her werewolf girlfriend, and their pack protects their town.”
“The fates reborn decide it’s time to fuck up Olympus.”
“Everyone is unreliable,” or “A diverse group of young adults and their parents have their lives fucked up by a serial killer and each other.”
“Dealing with grief by fucking your teacher is so not a good idea”
In which a collection of assorted and diverse magical beings come to terms with the fact that politics will fuck you up; also everyone is LGBT because curiosity>medieval hangups after a few hundred years.
Or if that’s not your taste: 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.
OR: In which cities are sentient and like to fuck with their citizens; also everyone is LGBT because LITERALLY WHY NOT.
do you think after Ron and Hermione got out of the trapdoor and raised the alarm and were being patched up in the hospital wing
do you think they were given the most royal proud mama smackdown by McGonagall like “ how DARE you infiltrate a death maze you are ELEVEN and miss granger how on earth did you solve my chessboard i”
and hermione interjected like “oh professor it wasn’t me. i’m useless at chess. it was ron.”
and McGonagall turned to look at Ron Weasley in total amazement at this 11 yr old kid who had been pretty ordinary in all her classes but had apparently beaten her in death chess and he just shrugged like “rookie mistakes, professor. you made some rookie mistakes.”
i support girls anger. i support girls who yell. i support girls who get called bitches and cunts at parties because they’ll swear at guys who won’t leave them alone. i support girls who don’t believe in second chances and cut off people who hurt them. i support girls who say no the first time and flip you off if you ask them again. i support girls who will never allow themselves to be pushovers and constantly get shit for it. you’re fucking incredible.
dude u cant be for real ….yes bc you *need* to especially for certain food…its like heating a skillet before using it….. if not ur food will be all fuckd up and cook unevenly and i jus…t i cant…. i mean….. i used to work in a kitchen and am a waitress now and i… i cant believe ppl r reblogging this….unless they are 13 years old and have never cooked or baked before.
Look at your wrist, see the blueish veins? The blood flowing through them contains hemoglobin, a protein that has four iron atoms incorporated into its structure. Iron is only naturally produced in one place, it can only be forged in the core of dying stars.
Every time you look at your veins, remember that you are built from, and kept alive by, pieces of stardust.
This is actually a thing, to the very best of my knowledge! Iron might not be only produced in the heart of a star on its way to going supernova (I would need someone with, y’know, actual degrees to say that for certain), but that’s certainly a major source! The way stars work is through fusion, or taking two atoms of an element (or different element) in an environment of massive heat and pressure and joining them to create a new element. Fusion gives off massively more energy than fission, which we’re more familiar with and can actually do ourselves with elements like uranium, but the hiccup in fusion is that there’s a point at which the energy gain is no longer high enough to offset the density of the atom created. So, fusion works GREAT on things like hydrogen or helium, which are both very small and therefore easily fused to give massive energy yields–this is why the biggest stars tend to burn very hot (not an absolute rule), because they have so much of these smaller elements available. These enormous stars–the sort of stars that die with a bang (nova/supernova) rather than a whimper (petering out)–burn hot and build up enormous pressure in their core, so the deeper you go the bigger the elements are.
Iron is the turning point, the point where you stop getting energy from fission and start getting it from fusion instead. As you work up toward iron from hydrogen on the periodic table, you get less and less energy from fusion, and as you get further from iron, into the higher numbers, you get steadily more energy from fission until you reach what we recognize as the radioactive elements, which break up easily enough to be practically applied for energy gain. Iron, however, is basically neutral: it won’t give energy either way, and managing either one would require a massive energy output. So, suppose you have a really huge star, a giant of some kind, and it’s been burning away happily for time immemorial (I don’t really have the time to go get data for star lifespans, I’m supposed to be studying for my organic chemistry final), fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium and so on and so forth. And now it’s reaching the end of its life and the elements it’s creating are getting up to the teens and twenties, and it fuses two oxygens into an iron atom. That’s the cutoff: the star has now started to die. The dense iron building up at the core of the star causes it to collapse inward, building pressure, and when the pressure inside gets too much…boom. Supernova.
So yeah. Iron is the element that kills stars, and it’s the element that keeps us alive. It’s…it’s pretty damn cool.
“1/4? Really? Who writes a measure of ¼. WHY would you write a measure of ¼?” “Because fuck you that’s why.”
“I will literally trade you my sandwich for that practice room.” “Dude you should eat your lunch.” “I won’t be able to eat it if my teacher decapitates me for not practicing JUST TAKE IT.”
“I always wanted to look inside the percussion room. It’s like Narnia, but noisier.”
“Satan created piccolos to punish the trumpets for their pride.”
“I’m thinking about dropping music history.” “But why, don’t you need that class?” “Yes but half of it is non-music majors and two people were having a discussion about why there were hashtags at the beginning of the music.”
“So my teacher convinced me to take the History of Rock and Roll over the Summer but it was an online course and he found the webcam filters and inevitably the first unit ended up being taught by a talking dinosaur on my webcam. This man teaches college theory.”
“SHH. Don’t say the theory teacher’s name. He’s like Beetlejuice. If you say it three times he’ll appear behind you and fuck your shit up.”
“I found out Mozart had a butt fetish and I’m never going to be able to stop calling him Mozfart.”
“If I see a drink within 100 feet of that Steinway I will track you down and beat you with my harpsichord.”
Man I hate it when people use the pronoun “you” as a singular pronoun in an informal setting. “You” is plural, unless thou dost speak to an unfamiliar person. The correct singular second person pronoun is “thou” in most cases. Grammar never changes. Pronouns must always stay one way until the end of time. Learn thy proper English. *sigh* Kids these days.
If thou this mistake shouldst make on thine own blog, then know, villain, that thou art a dirty descriptivist, and no friend of mine. Ne'er should language itself alter, it doth remain fixèd as such, untouch’d by change. Wouldst thou, vile descriptivist, that we forget the heritage of our great tongue? Nay, say I. Thou art but a dickhead who sayest so.
stynt ðy clappe! beoð ðo writerris be wetleas knafen. ðy langag o engelond diffoulened be, ille usenid bi sclaundrous novelri.
i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because:
i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live
most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person
im not a pissbaby
my white friends that have reblogged this give me life
4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP
If ur white and like this post I fux with u
^absolutely
5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.
i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this
apparently some guy named mark was trying to tell my mom he needed to speak with my dad about any financial transactions my mom was making because he was the man of the house and she did not take kindly to his implying that my dad was the primary breadwinner/person in charge in our family so
Just look at those filthy barbarians. In trousers! So unlike us masculine Roman men.
#judgingyou
can’t touch dis
