This is a Money Cat. Reblog this before New Year's and she will visit to bring you good fortune for 2024

Excalibur (1981)

the "came back wrong" trope except like... they didnt. like this mad scientists wife died, and so he studied necromancy, brought her back, and she came back and it all worked. like she came back exactly the same as she was before with literally no difference. but the scientist guy is like "oh no... what have i done.... shes Different now!!!! she came back Wrong!!!!" and shes just like. chilling. reading a book. cooking dinner. shes just so so normal but in the guys mind hes like "oh shes soooo weird" but shes just normal

Peer reviewed tags from @somanyofthekids

NO its a JOKE and YOU DONT GET IT. ITS NOT THAT DEEP

While she was dead he put his memory of her on such a high pedestal that she could never live up to it alive

alternatively‚ she came back perfectly fine but he thinks she came back wrong‚ because the tragic reality is that he never actually knew his wife

im going INSANE thats MY POST.

It's your post but the journey to posting it changed it to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to you. Sorry dude.

ID: tags that read # she came back regular, #but his journey to resurrecting her changed him to such a degree that even his closest intimacies are now foreign to him, #sorry dude. END ID

Because men.

Alt: [tweet from @makeyefretpod - meme image of girl shouting into boy’s ear at a festival] OK SO THERE’S THIS GIANT SPACE TURTLE AND FOUR ELEPHANTS AND A WORLD SHAPED LIKE A DISC BUT THAT’S NOT SUPER RELEVANT ‘CAUSE IT’S ACTUALLY A HUGE AMAZING SERIES THAT CELEBRATES AND PARODIES ALL KINDS OF GENRES AND DEATH IS JUST THE LOVELIEST ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION

Skills Writers Gain From Reading

We’ve all heard the old line of encouragement—reading makes you a better writer.

But how exactly does that work?

These are a few skills you’ll gain from reading with the viewpoint of a writer, not just a reader.

You’ll Flex Your Critical Thinking Skills

Reading made up events and imaginary people might not seem like critical thinking, but you’ll use your brain in more ways than one. While you’re sifting through a book, you’re also:

All of these skills are part of the drafting and writing process too. Grab a book or two—you’ll need these abilities to bring your stories to life.

You’ll Practice Your Grammar and Spelling

Whether you feel a secret thrill at finding a typo in a published novel or second-hand embarrassment for the people who made it happen, you automatically practice your grammar skills by spotting them.

You’re also reading words over and over again, which makes them easier to recall when you’re trying to spell them.

You’ll Discover New Writing Styles You Like or Dislike

You might also find that some writers vary their sentence structures in ways you like or dislike. The long, stretching sentences within a historical fantasy novel could draw you for the long haul. Maybe you prefer the short, conversational sentences that weave between longer ones in a comedic book.

Word choice is also a significant factor in enjoying a writer’s voice/style. Some writers will challenge you to keep a dictionary nearby at all times. Others will use modern slang or colloquialisms that might take you out of the story—or make it feel more real to you.

As you get used to the styles you prefer, your writing may naturally shadow those styles when you’re writing a story after putting the book down. That’s okay! Experimenting with style or tone isn’t plagiarism and doesn’t make you a bad writer. It’s another step in the journey of defining who you are as a creative wordsmith.

You’ll Learn New Ways to Describe Things

Imagine two writers describing a character walking across the street. One writer might focus on how the character feels, what they’re thinking, or what that moment in time means to them by writing in first-person POV. The other could write about the weather, the city, the cars passing by, or what another person thinks of the protagonist through third-person omniscient POV.

It’s always good to challenge how you might write a scene by reading how others do it. You’ll return to your work or start a story with a new perspective on standby.

You’ll Analyze the Plot

When you fall in love with a novel, it’s natural to think about the plot even after you finish the book. You’re likely reminiscing about the great plot points like two future best friends meeting at a pizza shop after stepping forward for the same order—they shared first and last names! Maybe you loved how each minor conflict built into a war between nations or how a character slowly lost their mind and sought revenge.

You’ll know what works and what doesn’t work about the plot structure based on how a novel grips you or not. Your brain will take note about the many things you feel and store it for instinct later. While you’re plotting that traditional mountain-shaped plot line, your creative side will find inspiration to drop conflict or positive moments that enrich your story.

You’ll Fall in Love With Characters

We’ve all written a good character and we’ve all written a bad one. Do you remember the first time you read a morally gray character? It likely blew your mind and made you want to write one too.

Falling in love with characters is like practice for writers. You won’t want to make the exact same character in all of your future stories (unless you only want to write fan fiction, and if that’s the case—enjoy every moment of it!), so you’ll use them as inspiration just like people in real life.

You’ll Improve Your Concentration

Not to sound like a cliche, but social media companies literally create their apps to monetize the brain’s ability to crave stimulation. Scrolling and swiping has likely had an effect on how long you can concentrate. I know it has for mine!

Even if you’re not on social media, things like the pressure to multitask and juggling responsibilities can wear on your focus too. If you miss those moments in your childhood or teenage years when you would spend an entire afternoon or weekend with a book, you don’t have to be sad for long.

Reading any length of a book can improve your concentration. Set a timer and read for five minutes. Next time, read for six. Slowly expand your time for reading (while there aren’t other distractions around, like notifications on your Kindle or your phone screen lighting up nearby).

As you read in longer stretches, you’ll write in longer stretches too. Your brain will feel more at rest with the one quiet activity you choose to do. Did I mention that makes editing way easier too?

-----

The next time you feel guilty for reading something instead of writing, remember that you’re also sharpening these skills! Reading is an invaluable way to get better at writing. All you have to do is pick up a book.

There is nothing better you can do for your writing than to read

It gets better…

(Source for the curious: “Four Battlegrounds” by Paul Scharre, a book about AI competition)

The larch

I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say

reblog if attacking fascism is really the hill you want to die on

this is literally like one of the most justified and honorable hills you could die on??? lol??

I mean, if we do it right, the idea is to make sure the fascists are the ones dying.

This guy standing around yelling at the allied power soldiers in the trenches of WWII asking if this is the hill they really want to die on

Some of us live on on that hill.

Tbh I'm kinda surprised at the "cultural Christian" discourse. Like is it that hard to accept that maybe spending your whole life in a Christian nation may have affected your worldview somewhat

I think the problem is that that's not how the notion gets used, or at least, that's never how I've seen it used.

It's usually used, in my experience, to deny that atheists with any Christian heritage, even if they've been atheists all their lives, are meaningfully different from Christians. The argument often implicitly goes "there are atheist Jews who are still Jews, there are atheist Muslims who still identify as Muslims, therefore atheists of a Christian background are really just Christians". This ignores, of course, all the atheists of Jewish or Muslim background who don't identify as Jews or Muslims, who actually identify as "atheists" full stop. But cultural Christianity is often used as a cudgel in the repertoire of people who are interested in painting atheism-full-stop as something inherently bad, inherently a product of privilege, and so on. As a result, the term is often used in a nonsensical way and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many.

I do think the OP is correct as stated—growing up in an ambiently Christian culture does carry with it certain ideological baggage that, if not consciously rejected, may potentially take root. The thing is, insofar as this affects atheists, especially those with a Christian family background many generations back but no actual life history as a Christian... it stands to reason that it likewise affects Muslims, Jews, and so on who grow up in the US. Which is in fact probably true, but I imagine this fact would draw the ire of many people who use the term.

But the reality is that most of the time, on tumblr at least, calling someone "culturally Christian" is a way of saying "even if you have rejected Christianity, in fact even if you have never been Christian and your parents have never been Christian, if your family was Christian at any point in the past then you still count as a Christian to me". It is sensible that this would ruffle the feathers of atheists.

yeah like, the term gets applied very broadly and very inappropriately on tumblr from what ive seen. like ive even seen people argue that atheists of jewish and muslim backgrounds in america are "culturally christian" because the usa is a christian country, which i dont think i need to explain why it's incredibly offensive and also nonsensical. i mean, china is an atheist country, but nobody's going to argue that christians, jews, and muslims in china are "culturally atheist", and yet people do that for atheists living in the usa. its just a really unfair double standard that i dont think people using the term on tumblr are realizing theyre doing

yeah, it’s a bit silly how much of this site has taken “being an atheist doesn’t make you ontologically incapable of holding Christian/conservative values” and ran with it so far that they’re just as hostile to atheism as Christian hegemony is

God yeah. The decontextualization treadmill works faster when it comes to internet religious conversations but it seems like for this term specifically it got turned up to 11 and I wonder why that is.

As a GenX CIS woman, I've been calling myself 'culturally Christian' for about 40 years. For me it means, I put up the Christmas tree, I eat the peeps, I listen to the carols and say "Merry Christmas" without believing a damn bit of it. YMMV. But, you know, I don't really care what other people think. I think this whole gatekeeping mindset is endemic and a manifestation of the language of the conservative populace influencing the more liberal. Again, my opinion.

welp. i was THISCLOSE to posting an adolescent “i hate everything” post… and then i saw this.

Literally just let this play 8 times in a row and my smile never faltered even once 😁

This healed me….

Joy. :)

ALWAYS a reblog!

this blog is operated by a council of tonsured middle-aged monks in brown robes who vote on all content that is posted

brother theodorous finds your blog to be highly heretical and he is seeing to it that you will be blocked upon the convening of our next session

Absolutely not a new observation but i love that the toki pona word for animal, "soweli," is written like this

fuck man that sure is

i showed this post to my boyfriend last time i saw it (because hes a linguistics nerd in general and a toki pona nerd in specific) and i am delighted to inform everyone that all the words for various types of animals are little fuckin dudes

The most frustrating part of being trans is that you can't win.

My uni has quite a few all-gender washrooms. (Specifically all-gender, cis people are absolutely encouraged to use them). And despite the fact that there are womens washrooms everywhere on campus as well, I've had cis women treat me with borderline disgust when I use the all-gender bathroom. I've had people tell me that "sure, its all genders, but when a cis man uses it its just weird".

And like. Thats the point! Even IF a cishet man using a washroom he is specifically allowed in was weird. Even then. You have to understand that no trans or nonbinary person can safely use an all-genders washroom if using it means they are either trans or female.

Like to be very clear- I am a cis-passing trans man. There are so many reasons I feel more comfortable in a non-gendered washroom. Even if I was cis I woild likely want to, because I am gnc and don't always feel safe in purely male spaces. And even if I was the cissest, hetesst, most gender conforming man on the planet, I might still want to use it because its closer to my classes.

And really, this all comes back to this deeply transmisoginistic idea that Men Are A Threat to Women in Womens Washrooms,, which. If I have to explain to you why this is purely a propagandistic falsehood I really think you need to do a gender 101 course.

Gender neutral washrooms cannot be "women Lite washrooms". In order to protect trans people, at all stages of coming out and transition and of all presentations, for the love of god stop dictating who can use all-gender washrooms.

Seriously. I am so tired of everybody getting their panties in a twist about bathrooms. I am a CIS het woman of a Certain Age and I do not give a good goddamn who I share a bathroom with as long as they don't piss on the floor, wash their hands, and put trash in the goddamned can.

@kedreeva

Can confirm I'm super high and this is an angel

@elodieunderglass

I’ve been obsessed with this for like 20 straight hours now

So if anyone is curious this is more or less true. (Except he didn’t say ‘effeminate boys’ he said the six-letter f word, because of course.)   https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/16/what-orson-welles-really-thought-about-ernest-hemingway

But the funny thing is, this happened when Orson Welles was 22 (before he made any of his films) so this dumb-ass piece of shit:

decided to get into it with this 38 year old established American writer and war veteran:

Like, dude. He really was just like that.

Orson Wells was fully convinced he could fight god and nothing that ever happened in his life could’ve convinced him otherwise

I mean, it’s good that Orson was on the right side of history most of the time (see his work as an anti-racism activist for example) because the world would probably be a lot worse if he put his energies into something negative.

Like how he got his acting debut when he was in Ireland, when he walked into a theatre with no experience and told the people holding the audition that he was a famous actor from America… and since they had no way to check this, they decided it must be true, so he got the gig.