I like reading & stars and am not very creative

She/her and mainly here because of fanfiction. I don’t really reblog much because anxiety, but am trying to do better.

[cactusringed]

I think fanfiction as a medium is different enough from mainstream literature in the tools it offers writers that it's a shame that it's not talked about more often. And it's not me saying "fanfic is better than books xD" because that sort of mindset is a symptom of people who aren't particularly well read in either medium. I'm just speaking of like... The little things you get to do with a fanfic that you genuinely can't really do in an original story.

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

You could call it cheap or a crutch and I mean, yeah, sure, it is a little bit: the fanfic relies on previously established emotional bonds and stakes to achieve its goal, and in some cases it saves the author from having to 'properly' build up its stakes. But I think it's INTERESTING that it has that tool at its disposal. I think it's a fun thing to play with and I think these built in expectations and emotional bonds are especially why I find story driven aus in particular to be fascinating in the amount of ways you can play with them. You know??

[perfect-puppy]

[capitaobarba79]

[liebelesbe]

june is over... goodbye pride month, hello disability pride month!!

[liebelesbe]

let's all be disabled this month... together 🤝

[liebelesbe]

if you're not disabled yet: no need to worry! i can help. come closer.

[green-is-gay]

i dont WANT pride months to be over,

on the other hand...

[awakefor48hours]

I'm gonna be honest, I'm tired of Europe being seen the continent full of a long history of rich culture and white Europeans saying that America has no culture.

The indigenous people have been here for so long, cultivating so much of the ground, have so much culture and history that went into Turtle Island. Just say what you mean. The Americas don't have a long rich history of white culture.

[kayla-denker]

On top of that, nearly every culture in The Americas is far older than any European culture, by an astronomical amount. Peruvian culture and urbanization is 5,000 years old. Modern Peruvian culture and language is the direct descendant in an unbroken line from the Caral civilization. The Northern Cree maintain lineages that go back 20,000 years. Archeologcal evidence of the people that occupied the Cooper's Ferry site in Idaho 16,000 years ago directly links them to the modern Nimíipuu. On and on and on we find that modern American native cultures outdate European cultures by many millennia.

[kayla-denker]

I do have to make one small correction: there are a few cultures in Europe that are as old as many cultures in the Americas. But these Europeans are indiginous people, like the Basques and the Sami, and like the indiginous people in the Americas these european indiginous cultures are heavily oppressed by the surrounding Indo-European non-indiginous cultures which are all far younger cultures than them.

[reasonsforhope]

If you want people to hope, first show them that there is another path

So long as we live, there is always the possibility of change.

If we want people to believe in another path, we need to prove there truly is one!

[luxiomahariel]

i just discovered this gorgeous progress flag design by FlailingSpade and was inspired to build upon it

the colorblind and photosensitive friendly color scheme comes from the star of david progress flag by dykeboytism

both of these flags will be placed under the read more just in case either link ends up not working

id like to think of this as the sunrise progress flag : >

[luxiomahariel]

pixeled it :3

[ace-aussie-asshole]

THEY PUT SEX MAGIC BACK IN THE FLAG (and a secret third thing??)!!!!

[luxiomahariel]

secret third thing is killing me thank you lmao 💀

i forgot that not everyone is aware that before he passed, gilbert baker added a lavender stripe to the top of his flag that represents diversity

[uncahier]

Calvin really was the voice of his generation. His generation just doesn’t like to admit it.

[breadandm]

somebody posted this Calvin and Hobbes strip and i cannot overstate just how topical this fuckin thing is

[staticbluue]

“People should pass a test before being allowed to have kids.” “Isn’t it scary how white people have this inborn capacity for evil?” “I’ll never pass because males and females have different skull shapes.” “Autistic people have a stronger sense of justice than anyone else.” “I don’t want AMABs in my space because they’re dangerous.” “You shouldn’t have access to hormones if you dress like THAT.” “Anyone who does something that awful isn’t human.” “Some people really shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

This is eugenics. This is phrenology. THIS IS NAZI SHIT, YOU ARE A LEFTIST BUYING INTO NAZI SHIT. YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO NAZI SHIT.

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

“The United States is the worst colonial empire ever!” Do we want to Google what Belgium did in the Congo

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

Ultimately what really annoys me is that a lot of European colonial states (which STILL have colonies!) are getting like even 5 percent of a taste of their own medicine and they totally freak out. They’re very eager to be victims of colonialism but won’t reflect on their own behavior

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

The US is the worst one right now. Predominantly it's because of how we operate the CIA, so a lot of what we've done isn't even directly tied to us, but we fuck with the global stability of governments, economies, resources. We stage coups. We use medical care to spy on people in other countries with programs like USAID. We violate the Geneva conventions pretty consistently.

And yeah, Europe started it, and they fucked the world up. It's bad. We can all acknowledge that. Also, Belgium, Switzerland, and other currently "boring" European countries were some of the worst offenders. We also know that. It's required learning in high school in most places.

The US is currently the worst one, but we based our empire on the empires that came before us, and most of us know and acknowledge that. Some of us are trying to change it so that we don't do the awful shit we do, but it's a slog.

We can't do much about what Europe did, us Americans, but we can certainly be upset about the things our government is doing now.

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

See it’s the “over now, can’t do anything” part I don’t like. My other country, Spain, still has colonies! All of my Spanish family lives on stolen land! And land acknowledgments, the bare minimum, aren’t even in the conversation there!

Britain was paying reparations to slave owning families until 2015! And even the countries that didn’t directly colonize or enslave people, like Scotland, still benefited financially from those systems. You guys brag about your better social safety nets and all that, but part of the reason you guys have the wealth that can subsidize them is because you all sliced Africa into pieces. French occupation ended the year before my father was born, and you guys want to frame it as a distant memory. You are not meaningfully different from the “slavery was so long ago, why do black people complain about it” people in the US.

The real problem you guys have is not being top bitch anymore. That’s the real problem that makes America so much worse than the European Empires: culture no longer revolves around you. You don’t get to think of yourselves as the main character anymore. And that’s really the worst thing we’ve ever done to you, because you can’t cite an actual damage we’ve done to your people.

That’s my real issue: every time someone from colonial Europe talks like this, they think of themselves as the victims. And they’re not. Little Johnny here thinks his theaters being full of American movies is just as bad as the Chilean and Argentine coups, the Trail of Tears, the war in the Philippines, the overthrow of Hawai’i, and bankrupting Haiti.

That’s why I laugh at you people.

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

Wait, you’re American, that makes this really pathetic. You’ve simply inverted American exceptionalism and decided it makes you enlightened. Sometimes things aren’t about America at all.

[weemietime]

It's always a mf like this whose opinions basically boil down to "it's only colonialism when America/white people" lol. No Child Left Behind really did destroy an entire generation huh

[the-library-alcove]

"If no child can ever get ahead, then no child can be left behind!"

[captainlordauditor]

[dancinbutterfly]

Russia is the worst colonial entity. You are right.

[tainbocuailnge]

can the US empire please just fall already so we can stop having to beg americans to go beg their officials to vote against the "make everything worse for everyone in the entire world" bill that they're trying to push for like the 12th time by now. like this is just humiliating for everyone involved at this point

[mls-classics]

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

a little warm up for the day

ink: diamine oxblood

[psych-is-the-name]

[unyieldingsilence]

‎ ‎

[entities-of-posts]

The Vast

[tossawary]

I've spent years complaining about how I think it's been unreasonably difficult to purchase a Camp Half-blood t-shirt for the kids in my life who are fans of the PJO book series. Since the TV show, there have been official shirts, sure, but I think the first time I checked, they weren't actually being sold in my country? (I do not need any advice on how to acquire shirts. I have acquired the shirts, thank you.)

This rant has also extended into how I think it's kind of silly that all of these different publishers wouldn't also go the extra distance to make t-shirt and other merchandise designs for EACH individual cabin. I think fans would have gotten a real kick out of that even if individualized cabin t-shirts aren't the canonical book designs. I think it's fun. It just seems to me like this should have been an obvious merch avenue from the beginning, you know?

And recently, while talking with one of those PJO fans I bought shirts for, I extended the individualized cabin shirts rant into how I think this is also a missed opportunity beyond merchandising... I think it could have been a fun and interesting visual storytelling tool in the TV show or in the movie adaptations.

Like, logistically in-universe, going by everything else at the camp, it would be so, SO easy for a Hephaestus or Apollo or whoever kid to set up a screen-printing station or whatever. Or for the camp to acquire fabric markers in bulk or something. Decorating t-shirts is a not uncommon, classic camp activity! (Tie-dye. Someone at this camp is doing tie-dye.) I think we can also say it's reasonable that these kids might want to show off their personal style AND cabin pride however they can... and different cabins having different shirt designs is a way to do that!

For example, let's say that Annabeth's shirt says "Athena Cabin" underneath "Camp Half-blood". Maybe it has the cabin number on the back, and maybe her name "CHASE" is printed above that. To get fun with it, maybe there's an owl above the front lettering and it's all framed by olive tree branches or something. Maybe the sleeves also have little olives and leaves! Elegant style. Exact design doesn't matter.

The point narratively: campers look at Annabeth and instantly know who she is and where she belongs. Good for a visual medium. GREAT contrast against Percy when he first arrives... because Percy's shirt will be blank. No cabin name. No number. No stylistic flourishes claiming him as part of a recognized group. MAYBE someone scribbled "JOHNSON" on the back of his too-big shirt in permanent marker, because that's what they were told the name was and they don't want the kid's clothes to get mixed up with all the other unclaimed campers' clothes in the laundry.

I like the orangeness of the shirts, so I think I'd keep them all orange, but if I wanted to be EXTRA obvious about this... I'd make all the cabins have different colour shirts. Athena in gray, Apollo in yellow, Ares in red, so on and so forth. Exact colours do not matter to me EXCEPT 1) Poseidon Cabin's shirt (probably a deep sea blue) stands out sooo clearly from the crowd. As soon as Percy is claimed, he visually stands out as a lonely outsider among everyone else.

2) Hermes Cabin's colour needs to be that basic orange and all the unclaimed campers also need to be given orange shirts (though only Hermes kids actually have the cabin name and number officially on there). You can then have Luke express some wry bitterness that Hermes kids don't get their "own thing" because their cabin has to take in all the "unwanted" kids too.

Again, personally, I like the orange, but I do think changing the colours per cabin would be a valid artistic choice (I don't think they're getting around to the sequel series, so I don't think it's a concern, but you could make a point that no one wears purple). In-universe, it would be easy to tell different cabins apart during capture-the-flag games this way. From a storytelling perspective, it would easily visual mark people like Clarisse and her siblings (Percy's antagonists initially) for the audience. And I do personally think being able to easily tell characters apart is more important in a show than sticking exactly to the book.

The other advantage to this is that you can do individualized character storytelling through costume as well. Maybe different campers would choose to decorate their shirts in different ways! Maybe some of them have added embroidery or patches. Maybe there's official camp decoration (cabin name, number, and camper name), then people add on to that with bleach or fabric markers. Some people are super creative and some people keep it plain.

Maybe campers who know their parent but aren't part of the official 12 Olympians decorate their shirts anyway with their own designs. Maybe campers who hate their parent have "vandalized" their shirts somehow to reflect that. Maybe older campers will pass on their shirts to younger half-siblings. Maybe campers will have both "fancy" new shirts to wear to special events, and more raggedy and colorful "casual" shirts just to wear around.

This would also give us the opportunity to see Percy's shirts evolve in various ways over the years. Maybe his first Poseidon Cabin shirt is kept pretty plain. Maybe the next year's shirts are decorated for or by Tyson somehow, and so on. Maybe by the last year (of the story), we see that Percy actually still has his orange unclaimed camper shirts sitting in his drawers in the Poseidon Cabin, way too small for him by the time he's 16, because throwing them out felt awkward and wrong.

[byjove]

What’s really interesting about the post Disney acquisition Star Wars media is that I remember seeing (adult male) Star Wars fans complain and speculate about how Disney would sanitize the franchise into something wholesome and infantile after acquisition and it went the opposite in a lot of ways. Miserable, brutal movies. The core message of hope and strength and triumphing over fascism was thrown out of the window in many of the works, presumably because fighting the system is the exact opposite of what Disney wants its viewers to do. I kept leaning the movie theatre feeling worse until I stopped going at all. Except for Solo, which was so fucking good and no one else agreed with me.

[thememedaddy]

[the-final-sif]

So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or

Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.

[straawberries]

can ppl pls reblog this version

[us-nowhere-girls]

Well damn. I was also like wtf is this stupid slime tank and then I read the rest and my mind got blown