Yes, This Seems Like A It Would Be A Popular Destination If Time Travel Was Real.

Weird but I like it

“Sir, World of Warcraft subscriptions just jumped by 2.3 billion” “Billion with a ‘B’? Where did they come from?” “Well, all the new traffic is routed through the Deep Space Array. It appears we’ve made first contact. Or, at least Thrall has…”

you’re not the dumbest person I know.

But you better hope he doesn’t die.

Here’s a story about changelings: 

Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. 

She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.

Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. 

“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. 

Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.

“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”

“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”

“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”

Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.

“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”

“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”

Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.

“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”

Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.

She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.

“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.

Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”

Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.  

They all live happily ever after.

*

Here’s another story: 

Keep reading

I am sure this does not apply to me. I'm just saving this for ahh ..... reasons

Why did my nose just grow

Do autistic kids "grow out" of their autism? Why does it sometimes seem like there are so few autistic adults?

For Autism Acceptance Month, I covered this topic in this comic to help explain this disconnect! YouTube | TikTok | Instagram | Twitter

One of the funny things about LotR is that almost every people in it professes to disbelieve in the supernatural, but because they live in a fantasy world their baseline for "natural" is so jacked up. The Rohirrim are like, yeah, there's a wizard in this tower and ancient tradition that we have no reason to doubt says this mountain is full of ghosts, but walking trees? Short people? I don't think so. Galadriel is like, "Listen I heard you describe what I do as magic and look I just gotta clear some things up, okay." Gondorians are like, yeah, of course the Enemy has spectres of men who lived long ago and never died and can now fly above us and incapacitate us with just their voices. This is just a fact of life, okay? But shut up about this magic weed that makes comatose people better. That's an old wives' tale. Royalty? Press X to doubt.

The people group in Tolkien's work who seem most receptive to magic and least restricted by their own notions of what it can do actually seem to be the hobbits. And they use it to avoid meeting people they don't want to talk to

Any one want to suggest how we perspective writers can minimize this debate while still utilizing this trope? It's good character developing drama (in Little Woman [haven't wanted to watch GOT]) but I wouldn't want the drama to divide the fandom and continue after the book (or other media)

In the endless discussion of female gender presentation in fiction pop culture, I've noticed a slight trend.

When a fictional tomboy and girly girl are portrayed as foils to each other – especially if they're sisters – the majority of fans will claim that the girly girl is "privileged" while the tomboy is the underdog. But a decent number of other fans will backlash against this idea and claim that the tomboy is the real "privileged" one.

I've definitely seen this in discussions of Little Women's Jo and Amy, and if I'm not mistaken, it's common in discussions of Arya and Sansa in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones too.

This is the gist of the debate:

Fans of the tomboy see the girly girl receive the social rewards that are won by performing femininity and ladylike manners, while the tomboy is socially punished and shamed for not being ladylike. They empathize with the tomboy's jealousy of the girly girl, and they resent the girly girl for it, viewing her as the one who has all the luck and gets all the love and respect.

The counterargument is that the tomboy actually receives more love and respect than the girly girl does. If not from society in general, then from family members and friends, especially male ones. They adore the tomboy and find her boyishness and wildness endearing, whereas they judge and ridicule the girly girl for her "silly," "vain" feminine tastes, even if they love her too. They don't give her as much attention or understanding as they give the tomboy, which must be very hard for her, and which the tomboy fails to appreciate.

It's an interesting debate, because there's always truth on both sides.

In a pre-20th century setting, and maybe today too, there is no "privileged" gender presentation for girls. Tomboyishness might be seen as endearing in a child or a teenager, but even among the people who love the tomboy the most, there's an understanding that can only be temporary; as a woman, she'll need to be "tamed" and learn to perform femininity. Meanwhile, girly girls are mocked as "silly," "vain," "prissy," etc., but it's also understood that they're behaving exactly the way they're supposed to behave. Young men in period settings might have more friendships with tomboys, but it's the girly girls whom they usually favor romantically. Both forms of gender presentation are punished in some way or other. Misogyny makes it a no-win situation.

The claim that girly girl characters get less attention from their families than their tomboy sisters is probably subjective, though. I'll let individual readers decide whether or not they think Ned Stark neglects Sansa, the March parents favor Jo over Amy, etc.

We also tend to see the claim from fans of the girly girl character that the author is biased in the tomboy's favor. But that's another issue for another post.

In a world of superpowered people, your own ability to keep all insects 30cm away as a force field made you mediocre at best, until one day, as you are about to sign your lease with the director of your bank’s branch, you both cant seem to be able to shake hands.

Thank you I find this really helpful as a new user

A guide for new tumblr users:

1) This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. 

2) What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. 

3) The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us. 

4) The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. 

5) The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

6) The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

7) The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.