Random and Uninspired

silvarbelle: karethdreams: forgetting-the-day: btprincessgirl:...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:03:41 -0400

karethdreams:

forgetting-the-day:

btprincessgirl:

herrmedic:

lollipocalypse:

sublimesublemon:

These are… actually pretty inspiring.

Cool.

Forever reblog.

“you are never taller than when you stand up for yourself”

thats just awesome

“You’re the result of 4 billion years of evolutionary success; F***ING ACT LIKE IT.”

My fave right there.

“You are never taller than when you stand up for yourself” My all time favorite.

“A solid foundation” That is a good way to think of it.

I need these on shirts, on posters, on every surface everywhere I go. =D

xpltvdeleted: I fully appreciate that nothing can even begin to...

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:31:52 -0400

xpltvdeleted:

I fully appreciate that nothing can even begin to make up for the devastation and scores of lives lost in Oklahoma, but sometimes there are stories that beggar belief and give hope where it seems like there is none.

This, for example, an old lady who has survived the tornado but lost her dog before finding her dog mid-interview, is just too much.

lickypickystickyme: src

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:23:42 -0400

lickypickystickyme:

src

“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley â A Dribble of Ink

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:19:20 -0400

“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley â A Dribble of Ink:

eschergirls:

I often tell people that I’m the biggest self-aware misogynist I know.

I was writing a scene last night between a woman general and the man she helped put on the throne. I started writing in some romantic tension, and realized how lazy that was. There are other kinds of tension.

I made a passing reference to sexual slavery, which I had to cut. I nearly had him use a gendered slur against her. I growled at the screen. He wanted to help save her child… no. Her brother? Ok. She was going to betray him. OK. He had some wives who died… ug. No. Close advisors? Friends? Maybe somebody just… left him?

Even writing about societies where there is very little sexual violence, or no sexual violence against women, I find myself writing in the same tired tropes and motivations. “Well, this is a bad guy, and I need something traumatic to happen to this heroine, so I’ll have him rape her.” That was an actual thing I did in the first draft of my first book, which features a violent society where women outnumber men 25-1. Because, of course, it’s What You Do.

I actually watched a TV show recently that was supposedly about this traumatic experience a young girl went through, but was, in fact, simply tossed in so that the two male characters in the show could fight over it, and argue about which of them was at fault because of what happened to her. It was the most flagrant erasure of a female character and her experiences that I’d seen in some time. She’s literally in the room with them while they fight about it, revealing all these character things about them while she sort of fades into the background.

We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.

But this is our narrative: two men fighting loudly in a room, and a woman snuffling in a corner.

This is a really interesting article about the way media, fiction and narratives repeated in society shape the way we see and assume reality to be, specifically (in this case) about how narratives about women being victims, or supporting men, but not being fighters or soldiers create the idea that women never did that, and it’s only a modern new thing that we think they could, when in fact that’s not true at all.

Also, specifically relevant to this blog are the parts about how that affects us when we create stories ourselves, and can end up adding to this narrative consciously and subconsciously. It’s the same with how women are depicted in illustrated fiction. I honestly don’t think a lot of the boobs and butt poses, or women in bikini armor, are drawn by people consciously thinking sexist thoughts, I think they’re just doing What You Do. This is a female character, this is just the pose we’re used to seeing women in. We don’t think twice about drawing her like that, because it’s just how we’ve become conditioned to seeing women pose in the medium. Same with stuff like this. It’s how we’re used to seeing female armor, and when we think “female warrior”, our imagination just instinctively runs in the direction of what we’re used to seeing. It’s just What You Do with female armor, and female characters, and female poses.

Since starting Escher Girls, I’ve gotten quite a lot of mail from people telling me that they never realized just how often they put their female characters in boobs and butt poses, or gave them bikini armor, just because that’s how they saw women drawn in video games and comics and never thought twice about it. It’s just what seemed “right” to them, and that they’re now a lot more conscious of it and try to have more variety in the way they depict women, and often in ways that make more sense to the story. :)

I think it’s just important to catch ourselves sometimes and think are we creating something because this fits what we’re doing, and this makes sense, or are we just doing What You Do? (This applies to all sorts of tropes and stereotypes too.)

"To take the most obvious first: I found myself thinking as I wrote, “These poor adults are never..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:10:15 -0400

“

To take the most obvious first: I found myself thinking as I wrote, “These poor adults are never going to understand this; I must explain it to them twice more and then remind them again later in different terms.” Now this is something I never have to think when I write for younger readers. Children are used to making an effort to understand. They are asked for this effort every hour of every school day, and though they may not make the effort willingly, they at least expect it. In addition, nearly everyone between the ages of nine and fifteen is amazingly good at solving puzzles and following complicated plots - this being the happy results of many hours spent at computer games and watching television. I can rely on this. I can make my plots for them as complex as I please, and yet I know I never have to explain them more than once (or twice at the very most). And here I was, writing for people of fifteen and over, assuming that the people who read, say, Fire and Hemlock last year have now given up using their brains.

This is back-to-front to what one usually assumes, if one only looks on the surface, but I found it went much deeper than that. At first I thought it was my own assumption, based on personal experiences. Once when I was doing a signing, a mother came in with her nine-year-old son and berated me for making The Homeward Bounders so difficult. So I turned to the boy to ask him what he didn’t understand. “Oh, don’t listen to her,” he said. “I understood everything. It was just her that didn’t.” It was clear to both of us that his poor mother had given up using her brain when she read. Likewise, a schoolmaster who was supposed to be interviewing me for a magazine explained to me that he had tried to read Charmed Life and couldn’t understand a word, which meant, he said, that it was much too difficult for children. So he didn’t interview me. He was making the surface assumption that children need things easy. But since I have never come across a child that didn’t understand Charmed Life, it occurred to me that he was making the assumption about himself. But it was a hidden one, and when I came to write for adults, I realized that it was something all adults assumed. I grew tender of their brains and kept explaining.

This makes an absurd situation. Here we have books for children, which a host of adults dismiss as puerile, overeasy, and are no such thing; and there we have books for adults, who might be supposed to need something more advanced and difficult, which we have to write as if the readers were simpleminded.

”

- Diana Wynne Jones, “Two Kinds of Writing?” (via delirious-bitter-gardens)

sungodphoebus: ohgoditsafurry: foervraengd: Okay so I...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:00:34 -0400

sungodphoebus:

ohgoditsafurry:

foervraengd:

Okay so I followed this video about foreshortening and…

Sycra. I love you so much for making this video.

YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING SHITTING ME

guys

GUYS

SHIT

SHIT GUYS

marielikestodraw: walkers-and-mutts: OMG, look at this...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:26:00 -0400

marielikestodraw:

walkers-and-mutts:

OMG, look at this Jennifer Lawrence trasformation!

holy crap O__O

“ I think everybody had a seat in the captain’s chair. ”

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:51:06 -0400

“ I think everybody had a seat in the captain’s chair. ”

wildhyaena: I can’t get over how adorable Jake is. LOOK AT HOW...

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:42:11 -0400

wildhyaena:

I can’t get over how adorable Jake is. LOOK AT HOW FRIGGIN ADORABLY CUTE HE IS WHEN HE GETS A BATH.

I couldn’t find a share button on Facebook for all of these, so all photos are copyright Bryan Hawn and whoever took them.

maplerains: I SHAT MYSELF SO HARD WHEN I FIRST SAW...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:04:41 -0400

maplerains:

I SHAT MYSELF SO HARD WHEN I FIRST SAW THIS

APPARENTLY SULFUR HEXAFLORIDE TURNS YOU INTO SATAN

I AM JUST LYING HERE LAUGHING AND MY DOG IS STARING AT ME SHES SO SCARED

SCIENTIFIC HAHAHAHAHA

and then nobody ever needed voice filters again

I’M DYING LAUGHING DFSLKJWLJDSFLKJEWLFKJSDFDSF

xekstrin: leradny: sarsaparillia: okay legitimate question time because APPARENTLY MOST OF MY...

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:53:12 -0400

xekstrin:

leradny:

sarsaparillia:

okay legitimate question time because APPARENTLY MOST OF MY FRIENDS HAVEN’T READ IT BUT which of you fuckers (if any) have read The Lioness Quarter by Tamora Pierce?

*raises hand*

RAISES BOTH HANDS

deadlyjohnson: FACTS ABOUT THINGS: TUMBLR WAS GETTING TOO EXPENSIVE. THEIR OPTIONS WERE TO EITHER...

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:36:19 -0400

deadlyjohnson:

FACTS ABOUT THINGS:

TUMBLR WAS GETTING TOO EXPENSIVE. THEIR OPTIONS WERE TO EITHER SELL IT OR SHUT IT DOWN.

YAHOO SAYS THEY’RE GOING TO LET IT RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT BUSINESS. IN THEORY, NOTHING WILL CHANGE EXCEPT FOR WHO’S LEGALLY OWNING IT.

NOW EVERYONE CALM DOWN.

mark-gaytits: Some resources for those writing medieval-type stories: list of medieval jobs more...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:05:55 -0400

mark-gaytits:

Some resources for those writing medieval-type stories:

list of medieval jobs

more medieval jobs

lords of the manor

ladies of the manor

medieval ladies

medieval weapons

medieval names

more medieval names

guide to medieval terms

more medieval terms

how to write sword-fight scenes

armor

theartofanimation: NozokiDAVIS

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:48:50 -0400

theartofanimation:

NozokiDAVIS

Reblog this if you love nine

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:44:41 -0400

A few weeks back a guy at my lunch table was talking about doctor who, and i couldn’t help but listen. His exact words were “No one even likes nine”

Now i don’t even watch doctor who, but i know for a fact that isn’t true at all!

soraka-the-starchild: didney-worl-no-uta: admiralrainbow: riry...

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:55:01 -0400

soraka-the-starchild:

didney-worl-no-uta:

admiralrainbow:

rirygoesrawr:

cyanide-poisoning:

Men Experiencing Labor Pains

With their wives supporting them.

HAHAHHAHAHA TOO GOOD

I bet a kick in the balls would feel real good right about then.

“Men can handle anything”

“Women exaggerate everything”

And then they realized just how wrong they were

“”Roaaaar! Stop smiling!”

I freaking laughed my ass off from that!

thinkingingallifreyan: potterhead360: evilkitten42: My prediction for Doctor Who is that it will...

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:49:58 -0400

thinkingingallifreyan:

potterhead360:

evilkitten42:

My prediction for Doctor Who is that it will be super emotional and then:

D: “My name is John Smith”

C: “What?”

D: “John Smith!”

C: “But that’s your fake name”

D: “No my fake name is John Smith!”

C: “Which is what you just said!”

D: “No it isn’t! I said John Smith!”

And it turns out the TARDIS won’t translate his name properly because it’s her job to stop him doing stupid shit like that

hahahaha

I like it.

98 year old dobri dobrev, a man who lost his hearing in the...

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:02:44 -0400

98 year old dobri dobrev, a man who lost his hearing in the second world war, walks 10 kilometers from his village in his homemade clothes and leather shoes to the city of sofia, where he spends the day begging for money.

though a well recognized fixture around several of the city’s chruches, known for his prostrations of thanks to all donors, it was only recently discovered that he has donated every penny he has collected — over 40,000 euros — towards the restoration of decaying bulgarian monasteries and churches and the utility bills of orphanages, living entirely off his monthly state pension of 80 euros and the kindness of others.

theblueboxonbakerstreet: curiousgeorgiana: theladyofthorns: ...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:55:18 -0400

theblueboxonbakerstreet:

curiousgeorgiana:

theladyofthorns:

#a man is regretting giving the power of life and death to a vengeful 11-year old #a man should have expected this to go badly

#a man did not think this through

#a man looks at his life #a man looks at his choices

briannacherrygarcia: monstrousmimi: briannacherrygarcia: Moar...

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:25:07 -0400

briannacherrygarcia:

monstrousmimi:

briannacherrygarcia:

Moar baby photos of Elizabeth Daisy!

So sadly Jenny did not win the photo contest on Parents Weekly, BUT you guys all rocked so hard voting for her that she won second place and was elevated to the next week’s voting. It will still get her a bit of prize money which Jenny could really use right now to help support herself and her kids.

Please VOTE for baby Liz!

Seriously, it takes just a few seconds to help out a mom!

I’ll gladly vote for a mom in need and her lovely child.

Good luck Elizabeth and Jenny!

Oh dear, she fell to second place. I WILL NOT LET THIS STAND.

Take 3 seconds to vote for Liz guys? You can all vote more than once!