And the winners are:

Hera — 6 Votes

Kel — 4 Votes

Hardison — 3 Votes

Neal, Sam, the droids, and the write-in option (that nobody wrote in for) — 1 Vote Each

Dyre Owed and a selection of JDQ's characters — 0 Votes

Honestly? I can't quibble too much with these results. But... I do think I love Neal more than Hardison, if a gun was aimed at my head and I had to rank them. I figure most who know how strongly I feel about the Protector of the Small quartet voted for Kel, who is everything I wanted to be, over Neal, who was my first significant and longest lasting fictional crush.

I'm surprised Sam got a vote! A happy surprise, I love him so much.

Nobody voted for Dyre. :( I'm so sorry Dyre. I reblog every fan art of you I find on this platform, but there's never as many as I would like.

Oh, good, she's still here. I was wondering if she would bother to stick around, considering she has so many experiments to run and so little time before her servos jam up. ...Goodness, it's exhausting even being that acerbic, how does she keep it up...? Ahem, it seems that GLaDOS could catch Kira and survive! Although... Aperture Science? Weren't they those ones who patented minor teleportation technology a bit ago... No, that wasn't them... Maybe Black Mesa? That feels like a joke, though... Let's get this moving along, I have a cake in the oven.

marcille asking for a relationship advice after a fight with falin and got hit by the Racial Bias Beam (the worst thing is that he identified the problem correctly)

I'm not like Mad at anyone who does this and I'm obviously not in charge of how anyone else tags shit on their own blogs, whatever, but it's always bummed me out when my sex Ed posts get reblogged and tagged with 18+, minors dni, etc. personally I actually very much want teenagers to learn about their bodies and safer sex but I guess I'm just the guy who wrote the thing.

by and large I am not an angry man but once I watched a fellow sex educator present to a room full of college students and, upon being gently challenged by one of the students who objected to them describing sex as something that happens between adults, said with very palpable disdain "I don't want to talk about kids fucking." and I was so angry about it that I made myself nauseous.

not just teens, either. every couple years I give up my Sundays for a few months to teach sex ed to 4th-6th graders, unpaid. and I don't do it because it's always fun or easy or great for my health, I do it because those are human people with changing bodies and feelings who deserve to have someone who gives a shit take the time to talk honestly with them so that they might make less painful mistakes later.

ah, this has gotten notes. now we begin a game of Is Someone Going To Call Me A Pedophile For This.

and the ironic thing is that teaching comprehensive sex ed as young as possible (to an age appropriate extent of course) is like literally the best way to keep kids safe bc it allows them to know if what’s happening to them is wrong. especially since the most likely abuser is a parent. who’s obviously not going to teach them that they deserve bodily autonomy. it sounds icky but teaching kids about sex is what lets them know if they’re being raped, and unfortunately a scarily high amount of kids are preyed upon.

If you live in the far north or south of the planet you may want to be watching for auroras for the next few days. Fyi

• The Hanged Man •

“Compared to what Falin went through? This is nothing.”

I just want to formally acknowledge to the person driving in front of me with bumper stickers reading "I'd Rather Be Slowly Consumed By Moss," "Slime Mold Is My Co-Pilot," and "Honk If You'd Rather Be Watching The Cinematic Masterpiece 'The Mummy' Starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz" that I know you have an account here and I approve of you

so since retiring, my dad has gotten into crewel, which is like freestyle embroidery with yarn, and his stuff is pretty good, he made this one which is hanging in my office at work

and lately he's taken to putting himself and his dog into the landscapes and I just think it's! so! cute!

see the little man and the little dog!!!! that's my dad!!!!

Reminder to all my fellow Americans and my Canadian homies that the northern lights will be visible tonight across most of the continent. If you're in the green zone go outside tonight

Pour one out for a real one.

Reading up on him, he was a pretty cool guy. He was one of the first people to stand up to John Money about his theories of gender development and position that intersex infants should receive surgery and never be told about it using his abuse of David Reimer as ‘proof’, asserting that Money didn’t have the evidence and standing his ground even when Money straight up started screaming at him. And then later he was proven right when he got into contact with David Reimer, not only discovering proof that Money was wrong but also how abusive and horrific Money had been. He then went on to write advocating for intersex and trans rights and to avoid unnecessary procedures on intersex people without full informed consent and that intersex people are part of natural human variation and that we deserve acceptance and not to be treated like a disorder.

A quote I really like from him: ‘Nature loves diversity, society hates it’

*most "big" artists (big on tumblr) have been left out to not skew results: (an exception was made for hozier) ** these are songs that were big on the radio in 2014 as well as being released in 2014 !!

Writing tip of the day: whenever you can, plug a plot hole with a character flaw!

Every time you realise that it makes no sense that the characters didn't do some super logical thing in the first place, figure out which character could have prevented it by simply the way they are as a person. You're not only solving the problem of the plot hole, but also the issue of writing flaws into your characters in a way that doesn't feel gratituous and contrived.

Why did the characters not use this weapon they had access to the whole time? - The character who could have told them about it wants to have control over people and had personally decided they shouldn't have it.

Why didn't that one genius character just tell everyone how to dismantle the robots? - They meant to, but being an absent-minded genius, they literally just forgot.

How did nobody notice that this little girl has been hanging out with an actual demon for seven years? - The demon made her pinky-promise not to tell anyone about it, and being naive and overly trusting, she didn't find that sketchy at all.

Why didn't the characters go to The Big Cool Guys for help in the first place? - The character who is stubborn and overly proud wanted to choose death before dishonour and didn't want to ask for help.

Every time there was a perfectly reasonable solution accessible to the characters all along, that could've resolved the whole plot in minutes, always try to find an angle where someone prevented it just by who they are as a person.

you ever see a poll and just Know that a character lost purely because their source material is less well known than the winning character's

there'll be polls that are like "bipolar swag bracket round 1: PIKACHU from POKEMON vs SQUIMBUS from SOME MANGA FROM 2003 THAT ONLY SOLD 40 COPIES"

and you'll look in the comments and it's all "vote squimbus!" and *8 paragraph essay about how squimbus canonically has bipolar* and "#squimbus sweep!" and "squimbus my beloved" and *personal story about how squimbus inspired them to get help for their bipolar disorder*

and the only comment referencing pikachu is like "i have no clue who squimbus is but i like pikachu"

so you decide "yeah sure i'll vote for squimbus why not" and you see the results and it's like

pikachu: 93%

squimbus: 7%

[image description: tags that read "i'm never getting over the david ward poll. also squimbus from my polls new character type." end image description.]