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@lolafaiy

“The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain.”— Terry Pratchett, Soul Music (via jkirchartz)
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Instagram : krewkutz

This made me feel really happy ❤️

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vaportea

as a POC I can’t overstate how much I appreciate this, the third one especially who has this look that has lost so much hope, you can see her eyes swell in real time post transformation and it just goes to show that looking good makes us feel good

it warms my heart to see so many reblog this from me, yet unless you’re Black? (with little exceptions) I don’t think you all really get it, so let me really paint the story here.

the thing about Black hair is that it is varied, like incredibly so. some of us luck out and get what we dub “Good Hair”, hair that is normally not as tightly curled and manageable with a little to midrange amount of effort. But many MANY of us have natural hair that is tough and thick, the curls are small, sometimes very tightly wound, it makes brushing and combing damn near impossible on top of other hair care methods. short as well as braided hair isn’t always desired but for many of us we have no choice, it’s just easier to maintain it that way, it is a sentence, not a style.

keep in mind that hairstyle is a statement, especially when you’re Black, your hair says so much about you in this community in particular. we also have the fact that our standard is held against White standards of beauty, and that is a whole different conversation involving privilege, systemic racism, and internalized hatred—like bitch, this has LAYERS!

take the age into account here for all these women, but in this case I’m specifically talking about the third. now, these are all educated assumptions, but you know where those tears are from? she’s had to live with this hair her whole life! and you just KNOW she’s tried everything!—heat, curling, straightening, perms, softeners/relaxers, HUNDREDS of products that make hundreds of promises, and many of these risk taking out the natural oil and proteins in hair which is a death sentence for Black hair. she had given up hope that anything good could ever be done I’ll bet. that transformation did more than style her hair, it gave her years upon years of hope; Listen to Black folk when they tell you, it’s more than just hair.

this man is doing more than hair, he’s changing lives…I just hope he knows that.

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marypsue

Night Watch is one of Sir Terry’s most hopeless novels - and, by the same token, because of the same things, one of his most hopeful.

It’s a parody - and I use that word very loosely, because there’s really nothing funny about it - of Les Miserables. It’s about a failed revolution, and a barricade, and the people who fought and died there for nothing. Nothing changes. Politics with a capital P goes on, and even the most pure and noble of intentions only becomes food for the pit of snakes who pull the strings. The powerful remain powerful, the powerless, despite their solidarity, their desperation, their violence, their hope, remain powerless. Their little lives don’t count at all. Things continue exactly as they always have, minus a few faces in the crowd.

It is also, I think, where we see Sam Vimes at his lowest. Sure, Thud! does similar things in stripping him down, but that is under an outside influence, and he has his family to think of. He has something to fight for.

In Night Watch, though, all of that is taken away. Sam Vimes, eternal cynic, for once has Cassandraic knowledge that his cynicism is absolutely founded. He knows how this will end, and there’s no Corporal Carrot to make the world magically better around him, no Sybil and Young Sam to push through for, no city to protect. The absolute best that he can expect is to succeed, and lose that family, that future, forever. The absolute worst? He dies. Everyone he cares about here dies. And it’s all in vain.

Sam Vimes is an alcoholic. It’s something that we tend to bring up when we’re talking about how amazing he is, how much he’s overcome, but gloss over otherwise. Which is a little sad, because it’s fundamental.

Sam Vimes faced this exact dragon, years ago. Sam Vimes saw there was no way to slay it. He saw the ants eating at the heart of every hope, every effort. He saw the first man he really knew as a good and kind and just - but never passive, never weak - man die, horribly, slain for no reason but petty grudge and Politics. He saw John Keel’s garden wither and die in its bed. He saw the hope of a better, brighter Ankh-Morpork squelched, and the sacrifice of a good man wasted. He saw the world, in all of its rotting, miserable, pestilent despair, spoiling every good thing that dared show its face, its only ordering principle the slow decay of entropy.

Young Sam Vimes had no anchor. Young Sam Vimes had nothing left to turn to but the bottom of a bottle and the smelliest part of an Ankh-Morpork gutter.

Sam Vimes, as of the events of Night Watch, is back there. Not only physically temporally displaced. He has nothing. There is no reason for him to stand up, to take on the role of John Keel, to take responsibility for the barricade, to try to bring Carcer back to justice. To fight the doomed fight. There is nothing between him and finding a quiet seat at the Broken Drum, ordering himself a pint, and giving up. There is nothing between him and despair.

But he gets up anyway. He intervenes anyway. He tries to help anyway, even when he can’t believe it will make any difference. And it doesn’t, in the end.

Except that people lived who, save for the actions of John Keel, would have died. Except it quite literally meant the world to them.

And that’s where the hope is hiding, in this hopeless, bleak, despair of a book. There is no glory. There is no revolution. There is no good thing that cannot be corrupted. There is no point. Except.

The Disc turns on the ‘except’. Always has. Always will.

The hope across the whole arc of Discworld is that things can, if good people try very, very hard, go from extremely awful to only very awful, and that’s worth it.

Overall, the Discworld series is very hopeful about the grand scheme of things and the effect people, no matter how small, can have on it. But Night Watch is not about that. Night Watch is about what happens when ‘things’ don’t get better. When the grand scheme of things isn’t impacted at all, either way, by the actions of individual people. Night Watch is about what happens when the hope runs out. When the ‘worth it’ runs out. When all that’s left to do is save what little you can, because you can.

That’s why there are no monuments to the Glorious Heroes of Treacle Mine Road. In the grand scheme of things, nothing they did mattered. But they are remembered, because they need to be remembered. Because sometimes what we do does not matter.

And when that happens, all that matters is what we do.

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foone

They might put me in charge of England if I touch that thing! I'm trans, I'd last all of like three days before someone assassinates me.

...when was the last time the English assassinated one of their own rulers, the 1300s? I mean, they've usurped and overthrown each other and chopped off their heads since then, but just random assassins off the street is such a US thing

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314eater

The hardcore way to eat ramen: 1. Boil water 2. Eat block of ramen 3. Drink boiled water 4. Snort flavored powder 5. Fuck bitches

you looking for this my friend?

why is there a gif for this

ITS BACK MY FAVORITE POST ON THIS FUCKING SITE IS BACK

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funky-dealer

icant even explain why i feel this way about it but this meme, this specific version, just makes me so emotional i love it so so much. its very heartwarming. peace n love on planet earth

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abalonetea

my writing fundamentally changed forever ten years ago when i realized you could use sentence structure to control people’s heart rates. is this still forbidden knowledge or does everyone know it now

?????? *raises hand* I’ve been writing for years and don’t know this trick by these words! do tell?

Okay, so a few people have asked for me to cite the dark magics at them, and i’m super happy to share because it’s my favorite thing ever. 

so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause. 

this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.

think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.

that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.

for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.

now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing. 

the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths. 

and then, comes the biggest trick.

the hard stop.

the paragraph.

because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.

which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?

see how it makes you feel? 

how it makes you breath different? 

how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension? 

this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.

i hope these examples make sense! it’s my favorite writing trick!

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reblogged

Listen, I’ve been told that I put my characters through hell with their backstories, but I still think one of the saddest tropes is a lone wolf who is actually one of the most social, teamwork oriented people on the planet, but circumstances keep snatching that away from them. There’s no “I must keep my distance, I’ve become jaded”, it’s “maybe this time I can close the gap, please God.”

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reblogged

An Answer to the Question: What Are You? or Why Are You So Obsessed With My Genitalia??

Subtitles:

I’m an actor, I’m a writer,

More a lover than a fighter

If only ‘cause my body looks like a bunch of noodles tied together.

My muscle tone’s abysmal, I’m a dancer in the drizzle,

I’m a gotta-knock-on-wood-but-don’t-believe-in-superstition

I sprinkle Scots inside my English and mix English wi’ my Scots

God, I much prefer to sign instead of talk.

I have an accent which thickens into an indecipherable stew

Of every place I’ve ever been, every person ever talked to

I’m a boulderer with a fear of heights, a poet with a stutter

A tiny frazzled gremlin in a bedroom full of clutter

I’m a shouter for the rugby but only when Ulster’s playing

I’m a speak-so-fast-ye-cannae-tell-exactly-fit-I’m-saying

I’m a diver down the rabbit holes of history and theatre -

But the question asked was ‘what’

Of none of that you care,

What you’re really asking is:

What do I have… down there.

To which I must reply, who gives a fucking shit?

Unless you kinda fancy me, but that’s certainly not it.

I’ve just told you what I am, a hundred times or more -

Yet the only question asked: handle or a door?

Well, pronouns in the bio, your business it is no,

Beside what kind of lonely creep straight out demands to know?

Very appropriate I think to these times in the UK. Fuck t*rfs and tr*nsphobes. I’m cooler than you.

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songofsunset
Image

I was actually just up in Ohio for the solar eclipse, and did you know, I'd never seen Spring before?

I thought I had, because down here in Florida we do get some flowers and nice green leaves as the weather shifts from cool to hot, but the trees are never bare and the flowers just blend in with the rest of the trees and in comparison this Actual Spring was some sort of magical wonderland, I swear to god, I've never seen anything like it

Apple blossoms???? are so pretty???????? the subtle changes of the colors, and they take up the whole tree and they're so damn beautiful????????????????? I had never seen them before, we don't have any apple trees down here at all, but now they might be my favorite flower

I'm familiar with cherry blossoms- we do have some cherry trees- but not like this. This tree was entirely pink and stood out so much! No leaves or anything on the trees, just flowers everywhere!!! I see why people like spring and cherry blossoms so much, I think.

And idek what these are but LOOK at that!!!!!!! Life and color!!!! Spring!!!!

So yeah. I went to Ohio and I thought it was beautiful and i wanted to share that with you. Your state is wonderful!!!

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reblogged

hope is a skill

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

favourite additions

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

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wonderwyrm

I must hope.

Hope is the eye-opener.

Hope is the little spark that brings total revolution.

I will behold my hope.

I will permit it to take root in me and around me.

And when it has gone past, I will continue to seek its path.

Where the hope has been, there will be life.

And I will join others in hope.

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