At the annual Houston RenFest we’d always get one or two furries that walk around and every time the general reaction from the medieval roleplayers is akin to  “BEASTS? BEASTS THAT WALK LIKE MAN? FOUL!” 

Last time I went a furry volunteered for an impromptu conversion/exorcism and a guy dressed as a monk gathered a bunch of people and using a Gatorade bottle performed an entire catholic christening while reading off the instructions on his Ipad. When the furry was fully “converted” he removed the head of his costume and everyone in the crowd pretended to freak out and say shit like “GlORY BE HE IS SAVED” “CHRIST HAS BROKEN HIS CURSE”

That’s the best crap i’ve heard in months

have I mentioned that i’m fucking in love with humankind

Bark Backpack Pattern // Whymsi Row

hot take: 

Gloin is the sexiest dwarf by dwarf standards.

Kili is the sexiest dwarf by elf standards.

Thorin is the sexiest dwarf by human standards

& Bombur is the sexiest dwarf by hobbit standards

#ITS TRUE AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT #(ALSO THORIN AND KILI BEING ‘UGLY’ BY DWARF STANDARDS IS AMUSING CONTENT)

further take: Kili is straight-up ugly by dwarf standards. Thorin is like, the dwarf equivalent of Benedict Cumberbatch. Some dwarves think he’s an absolutely dreamboat, others think he is super weird looking, there’s very little middle ground.

omg now i’m like. what does this make frodo by hobbit standards

by hobbit standards, I’m afraid Frodo is probably. not conventionally attractive at all.

Frodo is the sexiest hobbit by elf standards

@femmefaramir this is some fucking galaxy brain level tags and im crying out of sheer horror

Every day, against my will, the LOTR fandom makes posts.

the “cannibalism is inherently sexual and about love and so hot” crowd somehow turns out to be very put off when a rap song has the word pussy in it

“shake that ass bitch” on a trap beat seems to be just a little too much for blogger who spends 7 hours of their day writing omegaverse fanfic porn

“be gay do crimes” chanter suddenly very upset reading lyrics on genius dot com about someone making and dealing drugs

this post is about antiblack racism and specifically how nonblack users like the ones mentioned above have a racial bias and are ok with sexuality and talk of violence until it’s coming from a black person, the subconscious idea that black people are uniquely perverse or aggressive is what’s being mocked here, if ur reblogging this and saying anything like “me” ur missing the point, this behavior isn’t funny or cute or quirky, its just one of the many ways nonblacks show how they dehumanize us while being perfectly fine with doing the same actions that they dislike seeing a black person do bc of not seeing us as equally human

In my opinion, Bill Watterson deserves way more credit as one of the great paleoartists.

He did not need to go this hard, but he did, and he has my everlasting respect for that.

How could you leave out this???

Also I recall in the foreward of one of his big Calvin and Hobbes collection volumes, he wrote a bit about how his knowledge and portrayal of dinosaurs shifted over time as he wrote the comic. Watterson's early dinosaurs were very stereotypical reptilian monsters inspired by the dinosaurs he loved in his childhood:

As he continued work on the comic he researched further into modern dinosaur science of the time, which just so happened to be the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance in the 1980s and 90s. Dinosaurs were being reenvisioned as active, warm blooded, successful animals, and Watterson made an amazing effort to include accurate anatomy and scientific understanding where he absolutely could have just stuck to what he was familiar with. Instead, he created incredibly vivid and real-feeling depictions that absolutely belong alongside the works of other revolutionary palaeoartists of the 80s and 90s like Mark Hallett, Greg Paul and John Gurche.

thinking about the paris review anne carson interview

i'm using an open source online textbook (ancient greek for everyone) as part of my "get better at latin and greek" summer project and so far it's a pretty solid textbook but the thing it does that makes it really, really useful is it tells you what the stem is for each word and then explain why that stem transforms/changes.

like for example for "τιθημι" it says that the stem is "θη," but in the present tense it's reduplicated, but you can't reduplicate an aspirated consonant like θ so you use a τ instead. and when explaining third declension nouns it explains that the masculine/feminine nominative ending is -ς, and in words where the stem ends in a consonant it will often either remove the stem's final consonant (παιδ- -> παιδς -> παις) or the -ς will drop (δαιμων- -> δαιμωνς -> δαιμων). these are just a couple examples but so far these explanations are making it much much clearer how we get all the irregularities that i was originally told i just had to memorize with little rhyme or reason behind it. greek makes a lot more sense this way.

so anyway i recommend this to anyone who's looking to learn/improve at greek!

Genuinely 90% of historical fiction would be so much better if more writers could get more comfortable with the fact that to create a good story set in a different time period you do actually have to give the characters beliefs & values which reflect that time period

Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than "Sorry I'm not interested." No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I'm not interested. Don't answer their questions. Don't give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.

When we bought our car, I told Sean to let me handle it. I walked in and said "We have X for a down payment and cannot pay more than Y in monthly payments." My Y number had some leeway, but I didn't mention that.

First thing the sales guy did after I laid down the rules was turn to Sean and go, "What's your number?" And Sean said. "Oh, no, you negotiate with Gayle."

So, strike one for the sales guy. Could not divide and conquer us by implying THE MAN would not surprised at what I laid down.

Sales guy then had to confer with his manager and left us at his desk for several minutes. I have a vague recollection (this was 16 years ago) of Sean and I amusing ourselves doing bits about the other people there to look at cars. I am sure we did not give off the stressed or nervous energy they were hoping for.

Guy comes back. His first offer is fifty dollars a month more than I told him we could pay. I looked at him and said "I gave you our upper limit."

"Well, but what's another 50 bucks a month?"

"Something I can't afford."

He didn't know what to do with my open and unashamed admittal that I had a budget because my money was finite.

He went back to talk to the manager again.

It took two more rounds of "I told you what I can afford" before he finally came back 20 bucks under what I'd stated as my max.

The trick to resisting high-stress sales tactics is doing the math at home, knowing exactly what you can afford, and then walking into the room and stating that number minus 15%. Then refusing to budge from that number. Never, ever, meet then where they want. Always meet them where you want. Because at the end of the day, you can walk away and go somewhere else and say "I told the people at Z what my terms were, and they refused to work with me. Here are my terms. Meet them, and you make a sale today."

I Swear I Thought of This Months Ago: Different Doctors in Midnight

The thing with Midnight is that shit goes wrong because it's a companion-lite episode. The two people the Midnight Entity singled out to possess where the two people traveling alone. They were easy to isolate from the group. If the Doctor's not traveling alone here, and there's this human who came in with him just going along with whatever he's doing, it's going to seem less suspicious. So, what would happen to any Doctor in Midnight is based more on their companions than the Doctor. Donna took the day off of adventuring to enjoy the spa. Not all companions would do that. First Doctor: He may get on everyone's nerves, but he's going to have a granddaughter with him and people will judge him less harshly because he has a family. You've got a couple with their teenage son there. They see an old grandpa with a granddaughter the same age as their son, they're going to see him as someone like them. As for the granddaughters, Susan wouldn't want to leave her grandfather and Vicki canonically is more interested in adventures than relaxation. I'm less sure about Dodo, because nobody is sure about Dodo. She's a wild card.

Second Doctor: A group of people in a small space menaced by a monster? Might as well be a base under siege. He's in his element here. He also tends to be better at understanding human nature than most Doctors, so even if he was alone, he might not end up quite so isolated. And he wouldn't be alone. Out of a combination of loyalty and discomfort with spa environments, Jamie would definitely be with him.

Third Doctor: Following the Doctor around on his adventures is literally what Jo was hired to do. She'll be the one telling everyone that the Doctor is an expert on basically everything and she trusts him so they should too. If they try to throw him out she'll try to either take his place or go with him and nobody will want to hurt her. Nobody wants to hurt Jo. Even the Master didn't want to hurt Jo.

Fourth Doctor: When Four shows up somewhere, being weird, acting like he owns the place, and having way too much fun in a crisis, people tend to sort of roll with it. It's a superpower he has. But, if we want to turn the superpower off, we've sort of got three eras to consider. Sarah Jane would probably follow the Doctor, since she's still a holdover from Three's "companions are literally the Doctor's assistants" era. Leela would not understand the appeal of a spa and would threaten people into listening to the Doctor. As for Romana...Okay, we've got another Time Lord. I actually don't know. She'll probably go with him and might have slightly more luck with the locals.

Fifth Doctor: Really depends on the TARDIS team. Tegan's going to take the goddamn spa day and will talk Nyssa into going with her if she's around. If it's just Nyssa, she'll go with the Doctor and everyone loves Nyssa, so everything will be fine. Turlough is going to enjoy a pleasant day off. He can relax, do a bit of sketching, and not have to deal with yet another traumatic incident. Adric would not understand the idea of a spa, call it stupid, get into a fight with Tegan, and if he wasn't going with the Doctor before this, the Doctor would insist purely to separate the two and restore order. Adric has no social skills, so he wouldn't exactly make the Doctor look better, but like with One and his various granddaughter companions, the family on the train would be more comfortable with a family man.

Sixth Doctor: The classic Doctors have done well so far but Six is probably fucked. Peri would probably like a day off from him and the violent shit that happens around him. Mel might try to get him to stay at the spa for health purposes. I don't know the EU well, but Evelyn might have a chance of coming along and getting him to behave, but no promises for anyone else.

Seventh Doctor: Of course Ace is there. Yet another Doctor passes as a family man and it's easy.

Eighth Doctor: I don't know the EU well and Eight is the Whoops All EU Doctor, but he seems to pick up companions that would follow him around here, being all human and convincing the humans not to bully him. But, considering Eight's luck, they'd probably try to throw him out of the train anyway and he'd end up traumatized again.

Ninth Doctor: Might actually consider just spending the day at the spa, but if he gets bored and goes on an adventure, Rose probably gonna follow him. The day is saved with the Power of Love or something.

Eleventh Doctor: Amy wants to go with the Doctor despite Rory's protests. There's a lot of bickering but they get out fine.

Twelfth Doctor: Clara is his carer who cares so he doesn't have to, so preventing Midnight incidents is sort of what she's there for. For Bill, this would be an educational experience. Twelve gets on everybody's nerves a bit, and he gives a speech about how stupid everyone's being, which doesn't actually help, and he'll probably end up getting punched in the face, but not thrown out of the train.

Thirteenth Doctor: She tells her companions to just enjoy themselves and wanders off alone. If they insist on following her, and Yaz probably would, we're fine. If she successfully ditches her companions, she's in trouble. She'll openly admit to being socially awkward, but I'm not sure if that would actually help in this situation.

Fourteenth Doctor: He's retired. He's probably staying with Donna. If not, everything mainly goes the same as it does with Ten, but it feels more cruel.

Fifteenth Doctor: Ruby would go with him and he's actually pretty good with people anyway. I'm guessing the Fourteen remembered being Ten and regenerated into someone unlikely to be thrown out of a train on a death planet just in case.

ok ace and seven would pass as a little family really well at first but once people started getting riled up shed be like "if you dont sit down and shut up over there im gonna come SMACK YOU" and it would only escalate the tension and then seven would start losing his temper with everybody and get shouty and be like "you narrow minded little humans cant even have your tour bus break down without trying to burn each other at the stake" and it would go down SO much worse than ten in the actual episode. they would get so much closer to getting thrown out to die than ten did.

tbh if this was a big finish seven story i think they would actually toss seven out and then somebody would drag him back in having survived only getting mostly boiled alive and then hed just be charred and dying for the rest of the story. i could write this tbh

Main complaints about Clara are "she's cruel, manipulative, and self rightous," "she's a Mary Sue," "she's the most specialist girl in the whole wide universe." You are literally just describing the Doctor

"I hate how American media will just make up a European nation rather than do any research, so I'm going to get back at them by writing a story set in a fake American state" like, do you have the slightest idea how much American media is set in a geographically impossible fictional small town located in no particular state and characterised entirely by some guy from Los Angeles' collection of half-remembered stereotypes about the American Midwest? They've already got the "lazily inventing fictional parts of America" bit locked down.

No, if you want to play the Uno reverse card on American media, what you need to do isn't to make up a fake state: you specifically need to wilfully misrepresent southern California.

bug appreciation post lol -aloe

requests are open!

they were made for eachother

they call me byecurious yhe way im always a little interested in leaving👋

81 BCE. To meet the needs of Rome's growing empire, the dictator Sulla has expanded the roster of offices. The full list now reads as follows:

Ordinary magistrates

Extraordinary magistrates

Religious Offices

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