Free as a bird @consulting-benaddict - Tumblr Blog

more people should talk about dan reynolds

in case you dont know who that is hes the lead singer of imagine dragons and an amazingly outspoken lgbt ally who specifically focuses on trying to help lgbt youth and i never see anyone on tumblr mention him or the work he does.

dan reynolds was raised mormon and in 2012 the first major imagine dragons single “its time” was on glee, and he started receiving letters from gay fans saying that they loved him and his music but that he probably didnt accept them because he was a mormon. he says that this broke his heart and he knew he had to do something.

not only is he really vocal about lgbt support and issues (which is more than i can say about a lot of people in the spotlight like he is) he created the loveloud foundation last year which is dedicated to supporting and helping lgbt teens and educate people about the things they go through, aiming to lower the rates of suicide, mental illness, drug use, etc.

the foundation puts on the annual loveloud festival in salt lake city, and the second one happened this past july. its an all-day music event that donates all of its profit to lgbt organizations (actually good ones, not shitty fake ones) and this year they raised ONE MILLION DOLLARS in one day.

but he and the people in charge of the festival actually GIVE A SHIT. a trans woman was harassed at the festival when she tried to use the restroom, being told she was in the wrong bathroom, and the loveloud festival not only immediately acknowledged it they ENCOURAGED other people to share any unpleasant experiences they had at the festival so they could reevaluate and figure out how to do better next year.

heres his speech from this year’s loveloud:

“…i wish you could understand… i wish you could see how much we care about you, how much we love you, how much we support you, how much we stand with you. i hope that tonight, and today, you know… you know that your sexuality is pure, and its true, and its clean. i hope that you know you are needed; we need you. i dont wanna hear any more stories of youth taking their lives in utah. we must change our culture. we must change the way we see each other. i know this culture! i know these people! i was raised in this world. i know it. i understand religion. i identify with the beautiful aspects of how i was raised. i cherish many of those things today as part of my life, but one thing that will not be part of my life, ‘cause it does not align with my heart, is to tell someone how to love, and who to love. it’s the most simple concept! its the first thing we’re taught! from a young age! all my girls [he has three daughters] know it. they come out of the womb, and they know, you love. you dont tell someone how to love; you just love. let… love and let love, thats it.

i accept you, i see you, i stand with you, i fight with you. til the end, i will fight with you. i love you all.”

i think allies could learn from him and the way he talks about being gay. its not just okay, its pure. its true. its clean. its perfect. specifically addressing the way gay love and sexuality is demonized and slandered.

idk. i just love dan reynolds and i think more people need to know about what he does.

thesuccessrules

“Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you start to make more authentic decisions. Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it. Be whatever you are right now. No more hiding. You are worthy, always.”

— S.C. Lourie (via purplebuddhaquotes)

acdhw

“By the time I had finished those [The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes] I was absolutely determined it would be bad policy to do any more Holmes stores. I was still a young man and a young novelist, and I have always noticed that the ruin of every novelist who has come up has been effected by driving him into a groove. The public gets what it likes, and, insisting on getting it, makes him go on until he loses his freshness. Then the public turns round and says: ‘He has only one idea, and can only write one sort of story: The result is that the man is caned; for, by that time, he has probably himself lost the power of adapting himself to fresh conditions of work. Now, why should a man be driven into a groove and not write about what interests him? When I was interested in Holmes I wrote about Holmes, and it amused me making him get involved in new conundrums; but when I had written twenty-six stories, each involving the making of a fresh plot, I felt that it was becoming irksome this searching for plots - and if it were getting irksome to me, most certainly, I argued, it must be losing its freshness for others.”

—

ACD, interview, December 15, 1900

In a sense, ACD was struggling with being typecast. He cared about the quality of Holmes stories and wished to avoid running the character down, as it often happens nowadays, when TV-shows with an intriguing beginning are being driven towards a dismal finale after a number of seasons. I’m rather grateful that Holmes didn’t become trite.

the-name-is-stephen-strange

Strange knows

catchymemes

Ironic Moments Dump

Now it's hitting me why everyone else feels like they're on a deadline.

reservoir-of-blood

Emily Vancamp as Sharon Carter in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

project-blackbird

Here’s an example of what we call a “soft no”. Sharon turns down Steve’s offer in a way that’s meant not to insult him but never actually uses the word “no”.

Steve clearly gets the message, though, and importantly offers to leave her alone. Sharon’s comment afterwards gives him an opportunity to try again later, but he doesn’t press and respects her rejection of his company even though it’s probably hurt his feelings a bit.

Just in case you ever wonder “What would Captain America do?”; there you go.

kirstenmcduffie

never do something steve rogers wouldn’t do.

jcalvinist

Unless it’s jumping out of a plane without a parachute, you probably shouldn’t do that

giandujakiss-deactivated2021081

I just have to add - I’ve seen interviews with Marvel people where they say that this scene demonstrates that Cap’s awkward with women and doesn’t know how to ask women out on a date. And it drives me crazy, because - as the OP says - Steve behaved perfectly here. It was a very charming, nonthreatening offer, and he accepted her rejection with good grace. You can’t help but feel that to Hollywood, the fact that she said no means he asked badly - which is exactly how I’d expect Hollywood to think, namely, the idea that men should keep pressing and pushing women until they say yes

warpaintpeggy

Read this, then read it again.

smol-consulting-one

Yep i cried over trf again, yk too many fucking times yall too many times has Jim made me sob like a mess

sheriarty-zone221

Oh, I know very well how you’re feeling… I’ve watched TRF eight times, and every fucking time I cry on the whole rooftop scene, where Jim and Sherlock are talking, where Jim died, where Sherlock is talking to John on the phone… And then, of course, when John is at Sherlock’s grave and saying all these words which I will always have in my memory…

smol-consulting-one

Honestly, the John scenes never had an effect on me lol, I cried when Jim committed suicide because it hit me really hard and still does- and Sherlock’s inability to deduce what was going to happen, or even trying to stop such a brilliant mind from killing himself STILL makes me so mad especially after S4’s bullshit but alas S1 and S2 were the best

edgebug

infinity war seems a lot more unnecessary when you remember that the mcu canonically has two (2) elders of the universe who could literally wipe the floor with thanos. like huge battle, Everything is bad, suddenly the grandmaster and the collector roll up in their party bus techno music blaring and thanos is melted into a puddle instantly

edgebug

“Fuckin sweet” the collector says as he picks up the infinity gauntlet with his bare fucking hands “this is gonna look great above my big screen tv”

“who gives, uh, a shit about some shiny rocks? my trophy twink is here” calls out the grandmaster. he whisks loki away and they disappear in a puff of golden glitter to go play games across the stars

dudewiththestache

I mean. Fuck. This isn’t wrong

arcaniumagi2

wait the Grandmaster is powerful? its a Deity? I thought he;s just an alien?

edgebug

he’s, uh, kinda powerful yeah

karaka

Hes not nearly strong enough to beat thanos. That list basically just says hes stronger than a human and immortal

edgebug

“h,hey you big purple dipshit”

says the grandmaster upon 1) rearranging thanos’s matter into vapor and then 2) subjecting each particle to a blinding blast of kinetic energy and then 3) teleporting each god damn remaining particle to a different corner of the universe,

“i know you liked having a, a body, and all, but uhhhhh this is what you get if you mess with my, my beautiful boyfriend here,” he waves over the battlefield and in loki’s general direction, “and the, the rest of the planet too. there’s skee ball here. skee ball, skee ball is great. so wh-whatever”

the collector is still fawning over the pretty rocks stuck in the infinity gauntlet (which he is still holding with his bare fucking hands) but he does get back into the party bus with it, which stan lee is driving

“bye, losers,” loki says before disappearing into the ether with his sugar daddy in a puff of golden glitter. the day is saved. peter parker goes back to school. bucky gets a goddamn nap under an actual blanket. steve and tony have an adult conversation for once. the rest of the movie is character development and constructive relationship building

the mid credits scene is the collector watching sex and the city on his big screen tv with the infinity gauntlet mounted above it in a lovely shadowbox frame

the end credits scene shows the grandmaster and loki in bed cuddling. loki is fast asleep. the grandmaster’s blue makeup is smudged all over loki’s face and neck and the part of his chest that’s visible. just off screen you can hear taika waititi yelling in triumph. jeff goldblum looks directly at the camera and winks. cut to black

formosanaster

@cyancrown

cyancrown

antilla-dean

I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:

1. It will make him angry.

I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.

2. It will make him hurt you worse.

Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.

3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.

This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.

4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.

Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.

5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.

No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.

Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.

6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.

Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.

One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).

appropriately-inappropriate

AIA REPORTING FOR DUTY

okay, so!

There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.

It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”

You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:

There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.

Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked. Now you’re close-range. What do you do? You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.

You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?

Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.

If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.

Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.

If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.

No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.

If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin. The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:

You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.

What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.

The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.

Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.

If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.

It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.

Remember: if he’s coming at you, he’s ALREADY out to hurt you. Might as well give the fucker a reason to be pissed.

floranna2

How to Kick a Guy in the Balls: An Illustrated Guide

asmalltauhuey

Someone once told me that the way to train a proper knee in the groin (with appropriate aggression if you want to hurt him enough to let you go is to train and act as if you’re not aiming your knee at the groin, but aiming for somewhere much higher so that your mind knows to really ram your knee upward.

naamahdarling

A male friend of a friend of the family once generously and kindly advised me that if anyone with nuts ever got up on me without me wanting him to do so, to “grab his balls as hard as you can, squeeze, and yank away from his body until they feel like marmalade. Then run.” I have never forgotten this advice.

bluestockingt-deactivated202501

My self-defense trainer used to say: “Eyes are like grapes. Ears are like pull tabs. And if you’re going to grab some, girls - grab, pull, twist, and bring those balls home to Mama.” …I really need to embroider that on a cushion.

princefuckyouknickers

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/12/30/why-dont-men-kick-each-other-in-the-balls/

“What would street fights between guys look like—or professional fights for that matter—if one could go below the belt? For one, there’d be a lot more collapsing. Two, a lot more writhing in pain. Three, a lot less getting up. All in all, it would add up to less time looking powerful and more time looking pitiful. And it would send a clear message that men’s bodies are vulnerable.“

…

“So, men generally agree to pretend that the balls just aren’t there. The effect is that we tend to forget just how vulnerable men are to the right attack and continue to think of women as naturally more fragile.”

And:

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2017/07/31/i-argue-that-men-avoid-ball-kicking-to-protect-the-myth-of-masculinity-men-respond-in-the-most-surprising-way/

“In 2015 I wrote an essay in which I speculated about why we don’t see men kicking each other in the balls more often. We leave no stones unturned here at SocImages, folks.I argued that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it would reveal to everyone an inherent and undeniable biological weakness in every man, not just the man getting kicked. In other words, it’s a secret pact to protect the myth of masculine superiority. I expected a reaction, but I was genuinely surprised at what transpired. In public — in the comments — men debated strategy, arguing that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it’s actually a difficult blow to land or would escalate the fight. But in private — in my email inbox — men sent me hushed messages of you-are-so-right-though.“

capriceandwhimsy

I work at a job that requires me to lug around hand trucks with stacks of stuff on it held in place with a bungie cord. Like this:

One time, I messed up wrapping the cord and it whipped around and nailed me right in the ballsack. Three things happened:

1. I fell down to one knee as the most nauseating pain I have ever experienced knocked me off my feet.

2. I let out a strangled scream that wasn’t louder only because I’d had the breath knocked out of me by the pain.

3. I couldn’t walk right or stand up straight for a solid fifteen minutes. I couldn’t see straight because my eyes were tearing up so bad. I couldn’t piss right for a week.

And that was from a single accidental blow to the testicles, not repeated strikes intended to harm.

If you need to hurt a man, go for the nuts.

petermorwood

Captain William Fairbairn taught unarmed combat to UK and US Special Forces in WW2; he was apparently famous for concluding every lecture and demonstration with “and then kick/knee/punch/hit him in the testicles”. Fairbairn wrote numerous books including “Self Defence for Women and Girls”; you can guess what that might involve…

This was supposedly his finisher to dealing with any enemy, even if that enemy had been knifed, garotted, manually strangled, brained with a chair or for all I know taken to bits by hand-grenade, heavy machine-gun, aerial bombing or long-range naval artillery. It was his version of “nuke the site from orbit: it’s the only way to be sure.”

“And strike him in the cods” - what the codpiece contains - is also a standard instruction in numerous period fight manuals. It’s an effective defence, and the more effectively it’s made, the more effective its result. Strike as if driving the point of impact through the roof, or grab as if taking it home as a trophy.

Even outside the Real World, remember it for writing purposes: despite the protracted Hero/Villain fights beloved by Hollywood, anyone hit by an expert tends to stay hit (plenty of examples on YouTube). It’s not protracted or visually dramatic but it’s effective and in fiction, if properly written, doesn’t read as abbreviated or lazy but as something by someone who Knows A Thing Or Two.

When two combatants who Know A Thing Or Two go head to head with no rules but You or Me, the fight is like a Nac Mac Feegle - fast, brutal and short. A solid smack in the Ooh-mah-Tenders will do it too.

Carpe Testiculum…

fail-boat

74-year-old woman thwarts attempted murder by grabbing attacker’s testicles

Woman in her 80s stops attacker by grabbing testicles

16-year-old escapes attacker by punching him in the testicles

26-year-old woman prevents her kidnapping with a groin kick

I don't want to care because it hurts and now I'm hurting and my heart hurts. I don't want to care anymore. How can I turn this off?

knightinironarmor

full offense, but does it ever hit you in the god damn gut that tony stark, protector, knight in shining armor tony stark –

mister “i saw young americans killed by the very weapons i created to defend them and protect them,” mister “i’m trying to protect the people i put in harm’s way,” mister “i hope i can protect the one thing i can’t live without,” mister “i see a suit of armor around the world,”

the guy who answers for his most paternalistic acts (like wanting to keep pepper and wanda locked in a mansion) with “i can’t protect you out there” and “i did it to protect you,”

tony stark, whose gradually worsening mental conditions show in his progressively more backwards, desperate attempts to protect people, tony stark who’s been trying to protect people to the point of harmful consequences,

that tony stark

is the single character

in the entire mcu

who has been accused

– by friends, enemies, and civilians alike

in every movie he’s been in –

of FIGHTING ONLY FOR HIMSELF

SIMILARLY

THIS TONY STARK

tony “i shouldn’t be alive” stark, tony “i’m not the hero type” stark, mister “you deserve better,” “you’re right, i don’t deserve her,” “it’s me, you’ll think of something [to complain about],” “you’re in a relationship with me, everything will never be okay,” “i saw them all dead, felt it, because of me,”

tony stark, who shoots his reflection and views himself as a “monster” and openly resents himself during his speech about charles spencer, THIS TONY STARK

IS THE SINGLE CHARACTER WHO’S CONSISTENTLY PERCEIVED, IN-UNIVERSE AND IN A META LEVEL BY MOST OF THE FANDOM,

AS SOMEONE WHOSE EGO NEEDS TO BE PUT IN CHECK

I AM HONESTLY