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I just got this joke. Granted, the last time I actually sat down and watched the whole movie was when I was 14, but for my entire life I thought it was a “you two are not good looking people” joke. I just realized it’s a “that’s obviously a dude in drag, but I don’t care about who you love when it comes to love” joke.
My god am I a fucking idiot.
She fucking throws glitter. How much more obvious does it get.
THE FUCKING EPIPHANY.
Apparently, in the Norwegian version she actually says “Brave of you to come out of the closet.”
OH MY GOD
(via opilione)
Magpie Princess: the millennial problem: →
two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s brakes have been ripped out mid-trip, the thief yelling,…
The BBC Has Ruined My Life: Weighing in on Amazon's Kindle Worlds →
By and large, I think AmazonWorlds is a shitty, exploitative way for Amazon and Alloy Entertainment to make money off desperate writers.
That said: I write fanfic. A lot of it, almost exclusively. Further, I’ll put my writing against a lot of stuff that gets published—hell, come to that, I’ve BEEN published, if we want to count publication as some sort of writer-cred, which is a sketchy idea anyway. I’ve seen several people today going off on the idea solely out of a sense of horror that OMG SOMEONE WILL GET PAID FOR WRITING FANFIC. These people, as a general rule, have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to fanfiction. Is a lot of it shit? Oh hell yes. Sturgeon’s Law applies to fanfic every bit as much as it applies to the bestseller list.
That said, there are writers writing fanfic who create milieus, settings, conflicts, arcs, and characters so fantastic it makes me want to pull my face off. I would be happy to give you a list of recommendations if you don’t believe me. I’ve read everything from modern-day thrillers to horror to science-fiction to historical romance—all of it fanfic, and all of it better than your average bestseller. So if you think fanfic is all teenaged girls and sexually frustrated women writing self-insert Mary Sue porn so they can write about having sex with Captain Kirk or the Doctor, you couldn’t be further from the mark. (Is that out there? Yup. It’s a tiny minority, see above re: Sturgeon’s Law.)
More than anything else, I am really really bothered by the dismissal of fanfic writers as “not real writers”. A lot of us work every bit as hard as a professional. I personally have written about 125,000 words so far this year, about two-thirds of that fanfic. I have a group of people who edit my stories, which goes beyond just grammatical edits to making suggestions to actually improve the story and the characters. A lot of us don’t get paid to write purely because we don’t choose to do so.
Then again, a lot of us DO get paid to write. You might be surprised to find out which relatively famous authors read and write fanfic. We are passionate about what we do and about the stories we tell. Fanfiction is a place where people who may not have a voice elsewhere (women, teenagers, outsiders in general) can interact with media that means a lot to us, can talk back. We deconstruct, we take things apart and put them back together again. We dissect sexuality and gender roles—and yeah, a lot of times that means we’re writing about sex. We are providing for ourselves what the stories the mainstream is giving us are not providing, and frankly, we’re having a lot of fun doing it.
I’m having a really difficult time figuring out why people are so threatened by Amazon Worlds specifically, and fanfiction in general. Writing and publishing is not a zero-sum game. It’s not like every person who’s willing to pay for somebody’s Vampire Diaries Amazon Worlds piece is one less person who would buy your books. Even assuming that same person would be interested in your books, people have been known to buy more than one book in a lifetime.
One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Jenkins, a pretty prominent academic who writes a lot about what he calls ‘participatory culture’: “Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.”
Here are some other folks who say more intelligent things about fanfic than me: Lev Grossman, in Time magazine, The Boy Who Lived Forever, and here’s a link to havingbeenbreathedout here on Tumblr on the evils of paying for fanfic:
“Yeah, paying for fanfic is a bad habit, man. I have to admit, I’ve been really irresponsible that way. My first fanfic purchase was probably the omnibus Collected Works of Mark Twain that I saved my allowance for at age ten, full as it is of medieval religious RPF (Joan of Arc, King Arthur). That’s not counting, of course, the Elizabethan fanfic that my parents, being Shakespeare buffs, purchased for me before I had any money of my own. Coincidentally my favorite Shakespeare was also medieval RPF (Richard III), though I was partial, as well, to his Holinshed fic (Macbeth) and his Plutarch fic (Antony and Cleopatra). On the other hand, I found his Ovid fic Romeo & Juliet massively overrated, although there was some good dancing in the 1950s fanvid AU West Side Story.”
Fanfiction has been around since people started telling stories to each other. It’s as valid an expression of human creativity as people who bake using recipes, who knit using patterns, who sit around on their back porch and play other people’s songs on their guitar. And just the same way those people are actual no-scare-quotes-needed bakers, knitters, and musicians, fanfic writers are just that: writers.
(via tehchou)
Since the dawn of man (or, perhaps capitalism), workers and management have disagreed on the impact of raising wages. For workers making less than $10 an hour, a few extra bucks a week can make a huge difference in terms of quality of life. Management, on the other hand, predictably suggests that raising wages kills jobs and inhibits hiring and man hours.
Despite the perception that minimum wage jobs are often held by teenage workers entering the job market, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicate that 49 percent of minimum wage workers are adult women, many of whom have children.
With this as the backdrop, the National Employment Law Center (NELP) has published a list of the 50 U.S. companies who have the most low wage workers. While not all of these companies pay the exact minimum wage they all pay very close to the wage floor. As you can see by the list, the companies listed also share a common trait of being massive, successful companies making major profits. Perhaps their universally low labor costs have something to do with that trend?
As expected, America’s largest employer, Wal-Mart, tops the list. NELP’s study looks into the genetic makeup of this dishonorable mention, and notes the majority (66 percent) of low‐wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations where top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million.
The 50 largest employers of low‐wage workers have largely recovered from the recession and most are in strong financial positions: 92 percent were profitable last year; 78 percent have been profitable for the last three years; 75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession; 73 percent have higher cash holdings; and 63 percent have higher operating margins(a measure of profitability).
$174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.
The largest companies in America have, for the most part, recovered from the recession while their workers are still feeling its entire effects. It is safe to say that we should soundly reject the argument that raising the minimum wage would harm large corporations. They don’t know harm well enough to claim it.
Via Making Change At Walmart: “According to a 2011 report (PDF), if Walmart started paying a $12/hour minimum wage, its workers currently earning less than $9 per hour could each earn $3,250 to $6,500 more per year before taxes. If Walmart were to pass this cost directly to shoppers, the average consumer would need to pay only 46 cents more per shopping trip, or $12.50 per year.”
Walmart could pay all of their employees a living wage (or close to it, at least) without losing a dime. Oh, and it would help out the federal budget a bit: roughly 80% of Walmart employees are on food stamps because they’re paid so little. Walmart is taking advantage of government-funded social programs to make up for what they choose not to pay their employees.
Obama and Pelosi need to bring back the minimum wage increase proposals, stat.
(via irkdesu)
Whenever anyone argues against marriage equality because of their religious views as a Christian I just want to hit them over the head repeatedly with a Bible whilst yelling
ADULTERY ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
LYING ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
DIVORCE ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
DISRESPECTING YOUR PARENTS ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
WORKING ON THE SABBATH ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
WORSHIPPING OTHER GODS ISN’T ILLEGAL!!
THE LAW DOES NOT FOLLOW THE BIBLE!!!!!
(via opilione)
Unfuck Your Habitat: Is paperwork taking over your life? →
That was rhetorical. Of course it is.
OH MY GOD THE PILES OF MAIL. You have ‘em. I have ‘em. They’re OUT OF CONTROL. We’re dealing with them, folks. We’re dealing with them. Those of you with paper shredders, fire ‘em up. No shredder? Get a box or shopping bag at the ready. Sort, file, shred,…
Incarceration in the United States.
Just so we’re clear on this numbers-in-the-states thing, lower numbers are bad.
WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR: The Situation of Andrew "weev" Auernheimer →
via a friend who just visited him in prison.
Andrew is currently serving 3.5 years for revealing a security flaw by AT&T. He has been in administrative segregation for twenty days as punishment for using his payphone calls to post to Soundcloud, and for sending pre-written…
a pack of “nice guys” should be called a fedoration
I have never reblogged something so fast before in my life.
(via shinga-tumblr)
Laurie Penny’s Saudade
There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast
The best minds of my generation consumed by craving, furious half naked starving-
Who ripped tights and dripping make up smoked alone in bedsits bare mattresses waiting for transfiguration.
Who ran half dressed out of department stores yelling that we didn’t want to be good and beautiful
Who glowing high and hopeful were the last to leave the gig our skin crackling with lust and sweat and pure music
Who wrote poetry on each other’s arms and cared more about fucking than being fuckable
Who worked until our backs stiffened and our limbs sang with the memory of misbehaviour that was what it was to be a woman
Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault
Who swallowed bosses’ patronizing side-eyes stole away from violent broken boys in the middle of the night and vowed never again to try to fix the world one man at a time
Who slammed down the tray of drinks and tore off our aprons and aching smiles and went scowling out into the streets looking for change
Who stripped in dark rooms for strangers’ anodyne dollars because we wanted education and were told we were traitors
Who sat faces upturned to the glow of the network searching searching for strangers who would call us pretty
Who bared our breasts to hidden cameras and fought and fought and fought to be human
Who waited in grim hallways with synth-pop crackling over the speaker system for the doctor to call us clutching fistfuls of pamphlets calling us sluts whores murderers
Who crossed continents alone with knapsacks full of books bare limbs clear-eyed vision running running from the homes that held our mothers down
Who filled notebooks with gibberish philosophy and scraps of stories and cameras to prove we were there keeping our novels and the name of out children close to our hearts
Who were told all our lives that we were too loud too tisky too fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much too and refused to take up less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be tame
Who would never be still. Who would never shut up. Who were punished for it and spat and snarled and they shook the bars of our cages until they snapped and they called us wild and crazy and we laughed with mouths open hearts open hands open and would never not ever be tame.
Sara, I’m with you in hospital, in the narroe rooms where you have put off your veil to count your ribs through your T-shirt, short hair and secrets and quiet defiance crying together that we don’t know how to be perfect-
Lara, I’m with you in mandatory art therapy, where we draw pictures of weeping cocks and are told we are not making progress-
Lila, I’m with you in a north London bathdroom, watchhing unreal maggots crawl in the cuts in your arms and listening to your girlfriend drunk and raging through the wall-
Andy, I’m with you in Bethnal Green where you love ambitious angry women with heart brain pen fingers tongue and you have a line from Nietzche tattooed over your cunt-
Adele, I’m with you in the student occupation, with your lipstick and cloche hat and teenage lisp drawling that there’s not enough fucking in this revolution and we must take action-
Kay, I’m with you on the night bus, half drunk and high dragging bright-eyed boys home to our bed, where we watch them worn out sleeping and whisper that we will never be married-
Katie, I’m with you in Zuccotti Park, where a broken heart is less important than a broken laptop is less important than a broken future and we watch the cops beating kids bloody on the pavement for daring to ask for more-
Tara, I’m with you in Islington where you have thrown all your pretty dresses out of the window and flushed your medication so you can write and write-
Alex, I’m with you and a bottle of Scotch at two in the morning when you tell me that no man will make us live for ever and we must seduce the city the country the world-
We are always hungry.
There are more of us than you think.
Laurie Penny’s Saudade, from Fifty Shades of Feminism (via mollycrabapple)
So good.
(via neil-gaiman)(via amandapalmer)
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the millennial problem:
two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles...
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Whenever anyone argues against marriage equality because of their...
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Is paperwork taking over your life?
That was rhetorical. Of course it is.
OH MY GOD THE PILES OF...
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“
Laurie Penny’s Saudade
There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-heeled shoes to...
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He’s just not that kind of doctor. ;)
this might be my... -
Hey new followers!
In addition to writing, I also reblog art and...