as a general rule if you see some “cool trick” on the internet that involves combining chlorine of any form (including bleach or tablets) with anything else, you shouldn’t do it because they are almost definitely trying to seriously hurt or kill people who don’t know any better. things like mixing bleach with other “household cleaning supplies” are especially huge red flags–it sounds harmless, but the chemicals in these things react to create extremely toxic gas, or worse
stuff like that almost universally comes from places like 4chan where it’s fun and cool to misinform people in the most dangerous possible ways, and it’s nothing short of evil that people use something as incredible as the internet to literally kill strangers for no reason
you would not believe the amount of responses i’ve gotten to this post that amount to “if they’re dumb enough to follow those instructions they deserve to die” and even “it’s hilarious when idiots do this"
y'all know that these are real living people right? that there are very real people, including minors, including young children and teenagers, that are being harmed by this. this isn’t a hypothetical. this isn’t fun and games. if your response to this shit is “they deserved it”, or “who cares about idiots who do this”, you are completely lacking in any kind of human compassion and i’d appreciate it if you kept your hateful comments to yourself. i’m sick of reading them.
NO ONE deserves to be hospitalized or literally be killed because some jackass on the internet thought it’d be fun to anonymously hurt strangers on purpose. when someone is given dangerous instructions to create toxic gas under the guise of a fun harmless experiment and decides to try it, it’s not their fault for being tricked–it’s absolutely the fault of the people giving them that information. it’s completely malicious intent on their part and the fact that so many of y'all find that behavior excusable in any way is disgusting
literally thousands of people are accidentally exposed to chlorine gas every year (over 6000 in 2014), and even chlorine gas exposures as low as 3ppm can cause “extreme irritation of the eyes and respiratory tract”. concentrations above 30 ppm are a lot more severe and can result in hospitalization, and above that there’s a risk for permanent lifelong respiratory damage, and potentially death. it’s uncertain exactly how concentrated the chlorine gas created from tricks like the ones i mentioned would be, but many of them do include directions like “blowing on it to increase the reaction”, which means victims will have their face very close to the solution and inhaling it directly–which is very very bad.
it’s especially bad because minors who are exposed to this shit are both more likely to fall for it (because they do not have the life experience to know better) and more likely to suffer severe damage due to their physiology.
i made this post as a warning and to help people who didn’t know not to mix these things. i have had multiple people–even adults–thank me for this post because they hadn’t learned this yet. i’m glad that it’s gotten that information out there. but the amount of people condemning me and mocking me for daring to giving a shit about other living breathing human beings is completely abhorrent and i’m sick of it
so yeah. don’t mix household cleaners together. don’t mix bleach with literally anything that isn’t just water. don’t follow directions that ever tell you to use these things, because there are absolutely terrible people on the internet and you deserve to be safe.
Percy’s neutral expression is a natural brooding look that he gets from Poseidon
That when he does smile it’s crooked and makes him look like a trouble maker
When he talks it’s usually very sarcastic and/or impertinent
His inner monologue is actually very negative and while we, as the readers, take it as a joke he’s usually pretty pessimistic for a good portion of the time
That when he’s fighting his expression is fierce and is hard to tell whether he is the good guy or not
That Leo Valdez equated Percy’s angry expression to the feeling he gets when Jason is about to shoot lightning. Let me repeat - just the look on Percy’s face when he’s angry was considered on par to Jason controlling flipping lightning
That he’s very very vindictive and loyal only to those he considers his friends and once you lose his trust it is nearly impossible to earn back
That while he had the curse of achilles, he laughed crazily while he was single handedly destroying hordes of monsters
He made an entire volcano erupt, awakened a giant, and almost wiped out the northwest of the united states
He tortured a godess just so she would feel his misery
That he’s actually very manipulative and it made Annabeth step back for a moment and reevaluate her perception of him
That while his dark side came to it’s peak in house of hades and wasn’t mentioned in blood of olympus, there was no confirmation that it suddenly and completely disappeared after they left Tartarus.
Has been the child of the prophecy twice.
He manipulated Bob to kill his own brother by simply convincing him that they were friends and that is what friends did for each other
He was physically abused by his step father
That with absolutely no training at all he killed the minotaur with it’s own horn at the mere age of twelve
He wins a good majority of his fights by simply outsmarting his opponent
He has scared not only Annabeth but his friends and peers on more than one occasion with his attitude and powers
That he’s considered extremely powerful for a demigod and for a child of the big three and makes the gods slightly nervous
That when he’s upset his powers act to mimic his emotions without him even trying
Has been offered immortality
That he is actually really sorta intimidating without trying
That we need to stop reducing Percy’s character to a happy-go-lucky comic relief goofball that doesn’t know his left foot from right because he is so much more than that
Everyone looks at Percy like the stereotypical hero that loves everything and puppies and rainbows but he’s actually very dark and quite scary and that’s why all the Dark!Percy AU’s aren’t really that far from the real Percy, he’s just on a different team.
Also, anyone who places Percy into anything but Slytherin is very wrong. #7 on this list is practically proclaiming his belonging to the house of the snakes.
Marry me
If anyone ever tells me that they just ‘don’t see’ Percy being like that (i.e. dark and scary), I just ask them one thing: “What do you think Percy would’ve done if Annabeth was taken instead of him, by Hera?”
Answers range from “Tear Olympus to the ground with his bare hands.”, “Snap Zeus’ neck and yell a lot.”, “Find where she is in a matter of days and never help the gods again, ever.”, and “Probably torture Hera in his basement until she tells him what she did to his Wise Girl.”
You can almost see the burning realization in their eyes that they finally recognize that he’s a terrifying soldier who’ll brutally murder people, gods, and monsters, if need be.
I 100% believe that monsters are somewhat, if not extremely, scared of Perseus Jackson. They probably tell ghost stories about him at night. The more intelligent ones probably decide not to attack him if they sense his aura in the area, because they want to live. He’s probably known to them as the new Hercules or whatever, known for never losing a fight against a monster, and defeating Kronos (they probably aren’t aware of Luke’s sacrifice I think).
And if you don’t think that part of the reason Zeus hates/hated Percy, was because he didn’t like how powerful this son of Poseidon was, then I recommend you go reread the series. If you haven’t noticed that the gods render Percy in just a little higher light than other demigods (he’s allowed to say pretty much whatever he wants, like stuff that would make them try to murder anyone else within seconds), you should know, that they know he’s dangerous.
I firmly believe that the gods call him their ‘weapon’ at strategy meetings (especially Athena, who doesn’t want to personify the sea scum dating her favorite daughter), the wild card pick. They have to value him, and I’d bet you anything that Poseidon’s ‘check-ins’ had an underlying tone of making sure that Percy wasn’t resentful towards the gods ever again, after having the whole Luke fiasco.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some minor gods were stationed to randomly make sure that Annabeth wasn’t going to get hurt too badly, or kidnapped, when she was out on her own, because nobody wanted Percy to destroy a few countries over her.
There has to be a darkness in any human being who’s gone through what Percy has, and the fact that he can still joke around, and laugh and kiss his girlfriend at the end of the day, makes him all that much more scarier. I’d appreciate it if the fandom would start to realize these things, and I would’ve really appreciated it if Rick Riordan had but it’s too late for that now.
(Sorry for the long post anyone not in the HoO or PJO fandom.)
whenever I feel bad about having a weird name I remind myself that C.S. Lewis’ middle name was Staples
When I was a kid, one of my family members quoted the first line of Dawn Treader—“There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it"—and I said, “Brave words from a man whose name was Clive Staples Lewis,” and my mom lost it.
Arnold is still playing the terminator at 70, Stallone is still Rambo at 65, so why do we need a new Xena: Warrior Princess? Lucy Lawless is only in her 40s, ffs.
Reminded of people saying Katee Sackhoff, Katheryn Winnick, and Anna Torv are “too old” to play Carol Danvers becase they’re >35.
RDJ is 50, assholes.
Okay, this is the sixth time this has crossed my dash and I could no longer resist:
Carol Danvers is a Colonel in the United States Air Force. The average age of USAF officers, full-stop, is 35*, and only 14% of all USAF officers are younger than 26*. The average age of a Colonel is 49.** Even if we assume they’re introducing an earlier-career Carol, a Lieutenant Colonel averages 45** and a Major 39**, so technically just about every actress I’ve seen suggested is more than a decade too young for the role.***
Not that that’s out of the ordinary for women on screen, who are routinely cast as younger than is even remotely feasible for their stated professions, particularly in military stories (unless you count Star Trek, though since a) the human lifespan in the Federation is drastically longer than ours and b) THAT IS A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET IN THE DISTANT SOCIALIST UTOPIAN FUTURE it’s probably not super-relevant; the closest-to-reality portrayal - Stargate won awards for its faithful representation of the USAF - I can actually think of right now is Sam Carter, who makes Major at ~32, Lieutenant Colonel at 36 and full-bird Colonel at 39, BUT THEN AGAIN she is part of a super-rarefied secret program and one of the four smartest people on the planet so adjust for sanity.****
Anyway tl;dr: Hollywood’s ageist/sexist casting double standards are ridiculous and offensive and bad for verisimilitude which is something you’d think an industry founded on convincingly portraying the fictional would care more about, Dear Hollywood, Katee Sackhoff and Katheryn Winnick are great but I would prefer it if you cast a more mature lady as Carol Danvers, please and thank you, obviously I would prefer Amanda Tapping because then you could cast Claudia Black as Jessica Drew and I would EXPIRE FROM JOY but I can learn to live with disappointment.
**These particular statistics are from 1997, but I cannot imagine age ranges have changed as much as gender distribution; someone feel free to correct me. As I understand it, mostly promotions are based on years of service, so they’re unlikely to have changed much above Captain. Consider, too, that USAF officers generally have a shit-ton of advanced education in addition to military training. 60.8% of officers have advanced or professional degrees and 48.6%* have master’s degrees and anybody hoping to make Colonel one day is all but required to have a master’s degree (or equivalent). So assuming you’re being sensible and getting that out of the way up-front while maybe the USAF will pay for it, that’s - start at age 18, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree - your average starting age for active, post-degrees service would be 22-24 depending on what combo of education/training you go with. PROBABLY NOT A LOT OF 25-YEAR-OLD CAPTAINS IS WHAT I’M SAYING.
***All of this is, of course, irrelevant if they do something unpardonably stupid like write out Carol’s military backstory, in which case of course I will burn down the fucking world and salt the earth.
****I will not pretend that the overwhelming majority of my casual knowledge of American military ranks does not come from Stargate or my over-researching because I was writing Stargate fic at the time. Whatever.*****
*****I am so sorry about all the confusing asterisks. My footnotes aren’t even funny like Pratchett’s.
P.P.S. HOW DARE ANYONE EVEN SUGGEST RECASTING LUCY LAWLESS SHE IS THE FLAWLESS AND ETERNAL WARRIOR PRINCESS OF MY HEART AND IF YOU THINK IT’S HARD TO GET PROMOTED ABOVE THE ZONE AS A LADY IN THE REAL WORLD IMAGINE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO BUILD A TERRIFYING REPUTATION CONQUERING SWATHES OF GREECE IN AN ERA BEFORE COMPUTERS OR AIR TRAVEL FIGHT ME OH WAIT NEVER MIND XENA WILL TAKE CARE OF THAT FOR ME
With rumours circulating re: Brie Larson (who is 26) being considered for Captain Marvel, I see it’s time to post this again, because honestly, the research is done and I don’t want to go and do it again.
The thing is, I know they’re going to do it. They’re going to cast someone who is younger than I am to play a character who by all rights, in accordance with her experiences, should be nearly a decade my senior. Even if they write us up a Carol who is a decade earlier in her career than in comics canon (not that that’s any better), 26 is still too young to play a Major, or a Lieutenant-Colonel, or even, IMHO, a Captain, anywhere near convincingly.
I have a problem with the possibility that this suggests, that they’re writing a Carol who is over a decade younger than the majority of our current cast of white male superheroes, rather than their contemporary. I have a problem with the likelihood that this will mean that her rank will be inferior to the characters that have a rank. Honestly, I have a problem with Carol Danvers calling anyone Sir (especially Captain America), which is partly my thing but honestly is mostly in keeping with her character. And I have a real, serious problem with the outside possibility of them ignoring/wiping out her decades of military service.
I won’t lie: I will watch this movie. Probably more than once, because let’s be real: I’d just be too pathetically grateful that they’d made it at all to do anything else. But I will also criticize the fuck out of anything that disrespects Carol’s history and what she represents.
I mean… if they ever actually make it. I try not to pay too much attention to “updates” on “progress” any more. It’s just too frustrating.
Sometimes I stare at the computer screen when the words don’t want to come and I think, “Fuck, who am I kidding? This is terrible writing, and this story is shit, and no one cares, anyway.“ And I close the window and go do something else.
But every now and then I get an amazing, heartfelt, beautiful comment from someone who loved something I wrote, and it reminds me that, at least for that one person, I did write something worthwhile. And so I open the window again and I write one sentence, and then another, and then I start to find my way again.
So on behalf of all fanfic writers everywhere, I want to say thank you, thank you so much, to all of the readers who take the time to leave a comment and tell us that something we wrote mattered to you, that it brightened your day or made you laugh or cry or get horny or whatever.
Please don’t think we’re ever bothered by your comment, or that we don’t want to hear it, or that what you have to say isn’t important enough. It means so, so much. And on some days, it’s what keeps us going.
