Things, Stuff, & Other Generalities

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:04:14 -0400

(x)

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:40:42 -0400

(x)

snowden-is-dead: whitecourtkellyrhea: Our local animal rehab center just posted pics of this owl...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:40:11 -0400

whitecourtkellyrhea:

Our local animal rehab center just posted pics of this owl who got rescued

And I really can’t with him

oh my god

What even

They tried to make me go to rehab

I said no, no, no

nayx: this is so illegal. we’re going to get in so much trouble. you cant just steal all the sand...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:33:16 -0400

nayx:

this is so illegal. we’re going to get in so much trouble. you cant just steal all the sand from the beach and replace it with bread crumbs

diamondsfuckingdroog: OKAY SO I HAVE A REALLY BAD HABIT OF...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:00:09 -0400

diamondsfuckingdroog:

OKAY SO I HAVE A REALLY BAD HABIT OF WRITING FAKE NAMES ON MY TESTS WHEN THERE ARE NAME LINES ON EVERY PAGE AND I BULLSHITTED AROUND AND WROTE STUFF LIKE THE DOCTOR AND HARRY POTTER AND I TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND MY PROFESSOR WROTE THIS NEXT TO KARKATS NAME

SHE COULDN’T POSSIBLY KNOW THIS UNLESS SHE’S READ THROUGH AT LEAST ACT 5

MY PROFESSOR IS 62 YEARS OLD AND SHE READS HOMESTUCK THIS IS THE GREATEST THING.

A+ Televison: The FostersThe official synopsis of this series...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:58:32 -0400

A+ Televison: The Fosters
The official synopsis of this series is, “a multi-ethnic family mix of foster, adopted, and biological kids are being raised by two moms.” Choice of word is important and it most certainly gives an impression. The fact that “two moms” was used instead of “lesbians” or “gay couple” is so goddamn important and tells you so much about the focus of this series. Their sexual orientations are detached from the premise of the show because it’s being said that hey, this is a norm. Two moms can be a norm just as much as two dads or a mother and father can be.

Most often you see the children of gay and lesbian couples being bullied, the parents coming to the rescue and having to explain to them that they will face these prejudices. Yet you have the opposite of that here. These children know who their parents are, they understand that there’ll be prejudice, and they don’t need to accept anything because there isn’t anything to accept; these are their mothers and that’s just as plain as saying the sky is blue.

And god, is that ever so refreshing to see.

Aonuma may consider Princess Zelda to feature in her own game, if "people have strong feelings about it"

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:55:39 -0400

Aonuma may consider Princess Zelda to feature in her own game, if "people have strong feelings about it":

ledundead:

digidiskette:

ledundead:

calumnw:

this is vitally important

This isn’t enough. Show them you have strong feelings by sending them an email here: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform/

You can also post on their facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/Nintendo

Show him your strong feelings, guys.

————

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your feedback regarding what you like to see in a new game starring Zelda.I can certainly understand your thoughts on this matter and want you to know how much we appreciate you sending them in.I also want to assure you that your comments will be added to our records and made available for other departments at the company to use as they see fit.

Sincerely,

Jack Walkley
Nintendo of America Inc.

————

I did the thing

everybody who follows me should do the thing too

Hello! Recently, Aonuma claimed that if enough people felt strongly about Zelda getting her own game, Nintendo might take that into consideration! There’s a severe lack of role models for females in the media, especially in video games. While Zelda, Peach, and Samus have all proven themselves capable and good role models, it would Zelda remains the only one of the three to have yet to star in her own game. The time is right for her to show girls everywhere how you don’t have to be a boy to be a hero, as Samus did over twenty years ago.

Thank you for your time.
Matthew Winter

————————————————————-

Hello Matthew,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your feedback regarding Zelda, and females in video games.I can certainly understand your thoughts on this matter and want you to know how much we appreciate you sending them in.I also want to assure you that your comments will be added to our records and made available for other departments at the company to use as they see fit.

Sincerely,

Jack Walkley
Nintendo of America Inc.

His reply is slightly different every time! I’m so happy that someone is actually reading these and they aren’t filtering them! Please, if you haven’t already, mail nintendo to make a push for this. I’m so proud of you all for showing your support.

rnedia: trying to argue with someone over text is like being italian and having to talk with...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:52:14 -0400

rnedia:

trying to argue with someone over text is like being italian and having to talk with handcuffs on

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:45:47 -0400

psychofactz: More Facts on Psychofacts :)

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:38:52 -0400

psychofactz:

More Facts on Psychofacts :)

ipoog: basically

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:28:37 -0400

ipoog:

basically

latentpower: awkwardsituationist: cambridge university...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:56:49 -0400

latentpower:

awkwardsituationist:

cambridge university students were asked on campus why they needed feminism. here are 60 answers. click the link for over about 600 more.

This is amazing

Photo

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:45:21 -0400

lizdexia: Hey guys. So I want to talk to you about one of the...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:36:46 -0400

lizdexia:

Hey guys. So I want to talk to you about one of the greatest heroines ever written for young adult literature, and that is A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Violet Baudelaire.

In any discussion of women in YA lit, there are basically three names that come up: Bella Swan (generally derided as weak and useless), Hermione Granger (whom everyone agrees is THE BESTEST!!!!), and Katniss Everdeen (jury’s still out on that one, but the consensus as far as I’ve seen is that feminist bloggers and Twilight haters alike super love her). Violet rarely comes up, which I think is a shame, because I would argue that she’s perhaps better written than all three of those other young women.

Note that I’m not saying she’s a better woman. This isn’t one of those posts where someone tries to empirically prove that this character is TOTALLY BETTER than that character, because I find that sort of thing dull and counterproductive. I’m not trying to pit different ladies against each other, because I’m generally against that sort of thing (though I don’t think having a preference between two female characters or real-life women makes you sexist). This is more of an exploration on how young women are treated in books geared toward tweens, and how we could all perhaps take a lesson from Daniel Handler (a male writer, interestingly enough) in this arena.

The first thing that strikes me when analyzing ASOUE from a feminist perspective is that Violet is, of course, a skilled inventor, a field in which you don’t see many fictional women. A different writer might have stuck to more “traditional” gender roles and cast Violet as the bookish wordsmith and Klaus as the science-minded inventor, but wouldn’t that have been boring, really? The boy tinkers around in his laboratory and invents things that save the day, and his sister occasionally correctly defines a word. Boring. But what’s even more interesting to me is that Violet, despite having tremendous skill in a traditionally “non-feminine” area, is never presented as The Exceptional Woman, which is perhaps my least favorite trope in fiction, one that has ruined countless characters for me (Veronica Mars, Ginny Weasley, River Song). Rather, each of the kids in the book has one particular skill that saves everyone else’s asses at least once, and even among the girls, they’re evenly split between the “feminine” (Sunny the cook, Isadora the poet) and the “masculine” (Violet the inventor, Fiona the mycologist).

Furthermore, her looks are only commented on once or twice, and always by another character — never by herself or the narrator. This is significant. Young women in literature are almost always given a thorough physical description, whether it’s fawning or, more commonly, one of those “So-and-so was hardly beautiful — in fact, she was really rather plain, with boring brown eyes and long dark hair that fell into her face” deals that contemporary authors love. Even in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, Katniss and Hermione’s appearances are mentioned quite a few times. But in ASOUE, none of the Baudelaire kids are really described in detail, aside from Klaus’s glasses (which are often a plot point) and Violet tying up her hair when she has to think. THIS IS HUGE. I don’t know if I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here, but honestly, it’s so refreshing to see a teenage girl character who isn’t defined in any way by her looks, whether beautiful or exceptionally “plain.” It simply doesn’t matter; she’s got 99 problems but a zit ain’t one. Similarly, while she and Klaus both get romantic subplots with tertiary characters, they never threaten to take over the actual plot. These kids are kind of busy trying to escape a crapton of people who want them dead, and there’s not a ton of time left over to moon over Quigley Quagmire (though I loved their little romance, don’t get me wrong!).

Furthermore, LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MORAL AMBIGUITY OF THIS CHARACTER. There are quite a few moments in the books wherein Violet and Klaus discuss whether or not their actions — causing lots of deaths, burning down the carnival and the Hotel Denouement, et cetera — mean that they’re just as bad as the people from whom they’re running. I mean, there have probably been lots of essays written about how smart these books are (come on, it’s essentially a kids’ book series about ethical relativism!) but honestly, how often in the lit world, kids’ or adults’, do you see teenage female characters struggling with these kinds of huge moral issues? Not particularly often, to my knowledge.

This obviously isn’t the most well-written little post and I’m probably going to revise it a bunch of times until it’s actually a smart piece of analysis and not just a FEELINGS GEYSER about a criminally underrated kids’ book series, but for now, I’m just going to post it and that’s that.

The end, but not really.

"It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:25:25 -0400

“

It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.

A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening.

Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily.

You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth.

You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later.

Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage.

Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything.

I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.

You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it.

Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?

We shall see.

”

- Ryan O’Connell, You’re Not Making The Most Of Your 20s (via the-curve-of-forgetting)

Photo

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:22:36 -0400

Photo

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:57:57 -0400

abbiegoth: heatherm00ch: jordanorsomething: punkrawkanarkay: ...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:53:39 -0400

abbiegoth:

heatherm00ch:

jordanorsomething:

punkrawkanarkay:

Foxes are weird. They’re like dogcats.

dogcats

STOP

I have a policy to reblog this every time it appears on my dash thank you

dduane: swiggityswagstiel: drkrislynn: humanisticscience: the...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:53:08 -0400

dduane:

swiggityswagstiel:

drkrislynn:

humanisticscience:

thejunglenook:

scienceisbeauty:

What scientists say in research papers vs. What they actually mean (via io9).

I shouldn’t be laughing this hard.

Yes. This is good.

Omg it’s like my college career staring right at me.

Hey its a chart of Spock-speak

“IT IS SAID” | You’re watching the History Channel.

fuckyeahadventuretimegifs: handgrenade2: damnnlyssa: mericanfo...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:50:41 -0400

fuckyeahadventuretimegifs:

handgrenade2:

damnnlyssa:

mericanfootball:

This is a valuable lesson

adeventute time helped me get over my last breakup no fuckin joke i shit u not

i need to just tattoo this on my brain

Painful! Just watch the show and learn for now!