Perchance To Dream

Perchance To Dream

[bumblebeebats]

It baffles and infuriates me that Hogwarts students don’t take Latin or Greek. Accio? Literally “I summon.” Lumos? Fucking “light.” Expelliarmus? Expel weapon!! Ooooh I wonder what Levicorpus does– you Dumb Ass Bastard. You ILLITERATE. It’s called Levicorpus, it lifts someone’s body, it LEVIES your goddamn CORPUS-

[plaidadder]

Identifying

Thinking back on the whole men and writing post, and my own relationship to writing by men, I was reminded of this comment I got a while back on “Young Men Carbuncular”: “if I’ve, I insist, always preferred male protagonists and always identified myself with the male characters, it’s because nobody wrote female leads like you do back then.”

That’s something that’s true for a lot of women in my generation and before: we identified with the male protagonists because they were more like who we wanted to be and who we thought we were than whatever the author had given us as the female lead. Often that’s because we didn’t recognize, in the things that the writer assumed would be attractive or flattering, anything that we wanted to have or become. For me, the fact that all the female leads had to be beautiful was a major issue, because I couldn’t see myself that way. That was one of the things that bonded me with _Jane Eyre_ so young: she was not beautiful, and she was still the protagonist, AND she found true love (with a Truly Problematic man, but still, it was important for me to see a writer taking a plain woman’s passions seriously). 

It’s a lot better now that we have more women writing and more men who can do a halfway decent job with characterization. But for a lot of even fairly recent literary history, often the one woman (or the one important woman) was just there to Be The Girl; and the kinds of girls these guys wanted in their stories had very little to do with me.

So I eventually grew up and wrote my own women protagonists and I have to say, I love doing it. When I write fanfiction, my love for doing this is constantly in tension with my knowledge that most of the readers are there for the two boys at the center of it all. It’s a productive tension though. Gonna go try to make it produce something.

[evilwvergil]

“concept arts” FINAL FANTASY XV : ↲

[ffxv-whatiftheyhadfacebook]

Aranea for the win. 

[swingsetindecember]

tv shows with time travel organizations/bureaus/police/agencies/whatever should have a department with instead of a tech genius eating candy, it’s a harried seamstress or fashion designer who is like

“1450 italy? does it look like I have the time to dye you wool? nO. YOU’RE GOING TO THE 1980s”

and throws shoulder pads at the hapless time agent

[nonlinear-nonsubjective]

“I literally made three- THREE- 18th century corsets last week. You can wait until one of them gets back, or you can go sometime post-1920s, because if I have to sew one more god damn channel I will literally lose my mind.”

“Upper middle class?!?!? You told me upper class! FUCK YEAH THERE’S A DIFFERENCE!!!”

“How about kimoNO.”

“Look me in the eyes. I do not care what you want. This is the 1500s. You absolutely cannot wear trousers.”

“Another court gown?? Here’s a novel idea: go as a peasant for once in your life. Why do you do this to me? You’re fucking sadists that’s why.”

“Don’t mind me, I’ll just be up all night hand painting silk.”

“THE POLICY IS ONE MONTH’S ADVANCE NOTICE ON PRE-1900s WOMEN’S FASHION FOR A REASON, DEBRA.”

[fallen-gravity]

@distractibledingo is this you

[novoicetocry]

no one is going to stop me. you hear? not you.

[mimiplaysgames]

Just finished this game for the first time.

Next is Type-0, which I have never played before either. If anyone has any tips, hit me up.

[dankmemesreasonforliving]

[pearls-for-cats]

me:

[andreashettle]

adhd mode 1: I want to do this thing!!!! I’m going to do the thing!!! *5 mins later* this is so exhausting lets not do the thing, I’m done

adhd mode 2: *hyperfocus on the most irrelevant, completely unwarranted task in the world* “where did the sun go?”

adhd mode 3: *cue panic-induced motivation, typically offset by: an exam in 1 hr, a 10 pg paper due at 8AM, and other anxiety-stricken deadlines*

adhd mode 4: I want to do something but I don’t know WHAT I want to do, I want to do a million things *spend an entire day restlessly moving from task to task*

adhd mode 5: I’m READY to be PRODUCTIVE! But first, I need to get a cup of water. But wait, there’s no ice in the freezer let me make ice. Hold on, all the cups are dirty, time do the dishes lol. Hm… there’s dishes in my room let me go get them. Oh, there’s my computer let me go check Tumblr. *5 hrs later* What was I just gonna do

[npr]

Samantha Blackwell was working her way through a master’s degree at Cleveland State University when she found out she was pregnant.

“I was 25, in really good health. I had been an athlete all my life. I threw shot put for my college, so I was in my prime,” she says with a laugh.

Though it wasn’t planned, Blackwell’s pregnancy was embraced by her large and loving family and her boyfriend, who would soon become her husband. Her labor was quick, and she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

Yet just days after she was discharged, Blackwell was back in the hospital, in a medically induced coma, fighting a runaway infection that left her hovering between life and death.

“It was like ‘I fell asleep at that hospital and woke up the next day’ kind of thing,” she says. She was in a coma for more than a month.

Blackwell’s story of reaching the brink of death is one that happens much too often, say researchers.

Over the past year, NPR and ProPublica have been investigating why American mothers die in childbirth at a far higher rate than in all other developed countries.

A mother giving birth in the U.S. is about three times as likely to die as a mother in Britain and Canada.

In the course of our reporting, another disturbing statistic emerged: For every American woman who dies from childbirth, 70 nearly die. That adds up to more than 50,000 women who suffer “severe maternal morbidity” from childbirth each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A patient safety group, the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, came up with an even higher figure. After conducting an in-depth study of devastating complications in hospitals in four states, it put the nationwide number at around 80,000.

“It’s referred to as the tip of the iceberg because for every woman we lose, there are lots of other women that we come very close to losing,” says obstetrician Peter Bernstein, the director of the Maternal-Fetal Medicine division at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

But surviving can come with a cost.

For Every Woman Who Dies In Childbirth In The U.S., 70 More Come Close

Photos: Courtesy of Samantha Blackwell

[myeyesarebrighter]

Awesome, cool, good timing universe. Needed to see this today!

[bigbardafree]

the thing about being someone who’s never catcalled is that you start to wonder why like is it because im ugly???

and then you realize that youre judging your worth by whether or not you are objectifiable to a man and thats so fucked up like honestly its so fucked up 

but the worst part about the patriarchy is that it still sits at the back of your mind regardless like “nobody thinks youre pretty because they dont see you as a sex object” like somehow thats a desirable thing and it fucks me up

[emmersdrawberry]

You’re either public property or completely invisible.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

academia is just a never-ending argument where everyone gets lost in arguments about minor details until no one remembers what started it but everyone has a strong opinion 

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Like this isn’t just an observation about how academic discussions mostly go, I’m pretty sure that the beginning of all research and academia was a group of cave people and Ikag the Elder was holdering up a mushroom: “Food?”

And her sister yelling from the last row: “IKAG FOOL! IS POISON!”

and that spark lit the fire of all philosophy, science, research, etc. Especially after the mushroom was found to be neither food nor poison.

[gigglincactus]

Anonymous asked: Regis’ eye roll

[katiehavok]

Affirmations for fanfic authors

It’s okay to take a break. - We all need time to recharge, and your fans will still be there when you get back!

It’s okay to go from fandom to fandom. - Nobody is going to criticize you for following your muse, and if they do, then you know who not to associate with in the future!

It’s okay to have a niche. - If smut is where it’s at, then write smut. If you’re all about the fluff, then schmoop away. If angst is what does it for you, then invest in tissues. Nobody has the right to tell you that you should be doing something else if that isn’t what interests you!

It’s okay to be critical of your own work. - Just don’t allow yourself to become so self-deprecating that you freeze!

It’s okay to ask for help. - If you’re unsure of a trope, concept, fact or universe, reach out to your circle of friends. Chances are, they’ll be more than happy to help you because they want to see you succeed!

It’s okay to ignore criticism. - Constructive criticism is only constructive if it helps you. If someone says something that doesn’t assist or improve you in any way, then please feel free to ignore whatever nugget they are imparting, because chances are good they don’t have the best of intentions for you!

It’s okay to stop writing all together. - Your fans will miss you (and chances are good you have way more than you realize,) but sometimes, you just gotta do you!

It’s okay to write with whatever method works for you. - Long writing marathons where you bang out 12,000 words in one day? Great! Linear, dry style that means you occassionally get stuck because you can’t figure out this scene, but it’s all worth it in the end? Rad! Piecemeal work that you thread together at the end? Fabulous! As long as it works for you, there is no wrong way to write!

It’s okay to have fun. - I think this goes without saying, no? But it seems that sometimes, authors need permission. So consider this permission to wile the hell out, and enjoy the ride!

[worldcircus]

42,000 matches .

[okazilla]

when it all turned black with only a little fire on the side it looked like a hole burning into reality

[memeufacturing-deactivated20161]

a person from 150 years ago would be terrified by modern stuff . however , a duck from 150 years ago would just be all like ,still got lakes? yes ? okay cool

[elodieunderglass]

“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.”

― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)

[chatdomestique]

Reblogging again because I thought they changed the quote so I decided to look up the actual quote and it’s not fake that is very much the actual quote

[finallyhaunted]

People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work

but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)

Dead silence. Nobody cares.

[eenymeenypia]

File this under, oh you can be active for 4 hours? You can work part-time. Um no, I have to get ready for work (30 min) get to work (15 min) get home from work (15 min) feed myself all day (30 min) maintain myself, my home and my life (15 min, yeah right), which leaves 15 min for work and absolutely nothing else.

[chameleonchild]

This is so accurate, back after I’d relapsed I wanted to try and go in for one class at school so I could still stay in contact with the education system. I let slip during a meeting that I managed to drag myself to that I could manage about 4 hours of activity a week, which the teacher sprang on to mean I was being lazy for just trying to get to 1 hour class. Never matter that it was 30 minutes travel, that I would have to get washed and dressed, that I would probably still need to recover for 3 days from it. 

Far too often abled people see the things they do easily as “non activities”, they don’t realise that for many disabled people these things have to be carefully planned and measured, and sometimes they simply can’t be done.

[finallyhaunted]

reblog bc the non activities thing seems really important words

[seananmcguire]

I get X number of pain-free steps per day right now, which means that, for large conventions (like SDCC), I need to be in a mobility device.  I had someone ask if I used up my steps every day before transferring to the scooter, and look surprised and a little horrified when I said “no, I save them so I can go to the bathroom unassisted.”  Like, they had never considered that walking is involved in peeing.

[finallyhaunted]

!

[andreashettle]

Reblogging for the important point that the term “activity” may mean something very different and much broader for a disabled person with a chronic pain or fatigue related condition compared to its meaning for a non disabled person. If you’re tired enough, simply sitting up in a chair rather than lying in bed is an activity that drains energy otherwise usable for other things. A thing I knew from other people with pain and fatigue related conditions, but worth reinforcing for followers who didnt know or had forgotten.

[kateoplis]

“Boys need to be taught that it doesn’t matter if the girl next to them is in a bikini or a burqa, it’s their job to learn algebra regardless, and how she’s dressed has nothing to do with them.”

“Last Monday morning was a little colder than I expected, so I made sure that there was a warm change of clothes in my daughter’s backpack in case she wanted to change. She’d had her heart set on wearing her rainbow sun dress since the weather warmed up so I finally acquiesced and let her. Still it wasn’t too surprising to me to see her walk out of school that afternoon with her T-shirt on over the dress and her jeans on under it.

“Did you get cold, sweetheart?” I asked her.“No,” she said a little crestfallen. “I had to change because spaghetti straps are against the rules.”

I’m not surprised to see the dress code shaming come into my house. I have after all been sadly waiting for it since the ultrasound tech said, “It’s a girl.” I didn’t think, though that it would make an appearance when she was five years old.

Five. You get me? She’s five. Cut her hair and put her next to a boy with no shirt on and she is fundamentally identical. I guess you could argue that a boy would not be allowed to wear a shirt with spaghetti straps either, but the day they sell anything like that in the boys section of a Target I will happily withdraw my objections.

Have you ever stopped to think how weird a school dress code really is? I went and checked out the one for my daughter’s school district and it’s amazing in how hard it tries not to say what it actually means. There are literally no male-specific guidelines anywhere on that list. I mean prohibitions against exposing the chest or torso could hypothetically apply to boys except that they don’t. Not really. They don’t sell boys clothes that do that. There’s nothing that is marketed to boys that is in anyway comparable to a skirt or a sun dress. Essentially, a school dress code exists to prevent girls from displaying too much of their bodies because reasons.

I didn’t pick up my daughter’s dress at My First Stripperwear. It’s not repurposed fetish gear from a store for very short people. It’s a dress from a mall chain store in her size. It covers everything but her shoulders and a small section of her upper chest and back. She’s worn it to church, and in the growing heat she was looking forward to wearing it a lot because it’s light and comfortable.

You know what really grills my cheese about it? It’s not even the shirt they made her put on over her top, it’s the pants they made her wear underneath. It’s a full-length dress that she has to hold up to keep from getting wet in uncut grass. She even had a small set of shorts underneath because it was gym day. But because the top part of her dress apparently exposed the immoral sinfulness of her bare shoulders she also had to pull on jeans even though her legs remained completely covered as part of her punishment.”

“I swear to God and all his Alf pogs I really didn’t think that I would have to face that particular dragon before she even entered a numbered grade. 

Now I have this child, the one that argues scientific points about everything from the top speed of land animals in Africa to the classification of the planets with me endlessly, wordlessly accepting that a dress with spaghetti straps, something sold in every Walmart in America right now, is somehow bad. Wrong. Naughty. And most importantly that the answer is to cover up.

Make no mistake; every school dress code that is not a set uniform is about policing girls and girls alone.”

Jef Rouner: The Apparently Immoral Shoulders of My FIVE-YEAR-OLD Daughter 

[dancing-coyote]

I’m not skimming through the reblogs to see what anyone else has to say, but ISTG that if I see or get ONE comment about “BUH BUH BUH IT TEH ROOLZ!” I will SLAP someone.

1. She’s five. 2. When I was in grade school, girls wore spaghetti-strap tank tops all the time and nobody made a fuss. 3. She’s FIVE. 4. Virtually NOTHING in the “dress code” applies to BOYS, it’s all about punishing GIRLS. 5. SHE’S FUCKING FIVE YEARS OLD. HER MALE CLASSMATES ARE FIVE YEARS OLD. WHO IS “DISTRACTED” BY A FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S FUCKING SHOULDERS??? (THE KIND OF ADULTS YOU DON’T. FUCKING. WANT AROUND FIVE-YEAR-OLDS, THAT’S WHO.)