Why were we allowed to read Animorphs as kids, anyway?

dr-jekyl: thejakeformerlyknownasprince: It’s a question I see come up in this fandom again and again: How the heck did Animorphs books make it into school libraries and book fairs across the country to be marketed to eight-year-olds when they feature drug addiction, body dysmorphia, suicide, imperialism, PTSD, racism, sexism, body horror, grey-and-black morality, slavery, torture, major…

baskerville-leviathan:

Have I ever mentioned that this man is a genius? No?

thesallowbeldam: kiriamaya: eshusplayground: enchainrain: pisshets: enchainrain: pisshets: Why does criticizing shitty opinions somehow mean that you “can’t handle different opinions than your own” and you’re “attacking free speech”? like criticism /is/ free speech, it’s the exercise of it what the fuck is the deal with that? It’s part of Stormfront’s forum invasion instructions, if I…

24 Invaluable Skills To Learn For Free Online This Year

the-more-u-know: Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general.  1. Become awesome at Excel. Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the…

Tsukishima: Could you be any more annoying? Hinata: Yes.

kaleidoscopesworld:

Working on some andreil fanart…..these boys might actually kill me

Like-

Really

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: x0twod: aliasgareth: fyi, if you are looking for a particular post in your blog and only remember a certain word or phrase, you can always do this: yoururl.tumblr.com/search/keyword you’ve saved many lives also if you want to cross-search your tags, try /search/tagone+tagtwo it has helped me find so many things

Researchers have found a major problem with ‘The Little Mermaid’ and other Disney movies

animatedamerican:

dduane:

And this is where it gets interesting:

Disney princess research is still in its preliminary stages, but a
few weeks ago, Fought and Eisenhauer gave a preview during the nation’s
largest conference of linguists. Their goal is to use data to shed light
on how the male and female characters in these films talk differently.
They started by counting how often the characters spoke. That’s when
they hit upon a surprising irony.

In the classic three Disney
princess films, women speak as much as, or more than the men. “Snow
White” is about 50-50. “Cinderella” is 60-40. And in “Sleeping Beauty,”
women deliver a whopping 71 percent of the dialogue. Though these were
films created over 50 years ago, they give ample opportunity for women
to have their voices heard.

By contrast, all of the princess
movies from 1989-1999 — Disney’s “Renaissance” era — are startlingly
male-dominated. Men speak 68 percent of the time in “The Little
Mermaid”; 71 percent of the time in “Beauty and the Beast”; 90 percent
of the time in “Aladdin”; 76 percent of the time in “Pocahontas”; and 77
percent of the time in “Mulan” (Mulan herself was counted as a woman,
even when she was impersonating a man).

I’m on the fence about calling Aladdin one of the “princess movies” given that its princess is not its protagonist, but the rest of this is on point.

Ariel’s animal friends are both boys, she has no mother (and her sisters have about five lines total), she never develops any female acquaintances or allies on land, and she’s literally silenced for the second half of the film  – and her movie has the highest percentage for the era of female vs. male dialogue.  That … that just gets more disturbing the longer I think about it.

Researchers have found a major problem with ‘The Little Mermaid’ and other Disney movies

Write every single day.

It’s one of the most common pieces of writing advice and it’s wildly off base. I get it: The idea is to stay on your grind no matter what, don’t get discouraged, don’t slow down even when the muse isn’t cooperating and non-writing life tugs at your sleeve. In this convoluted, simplified version of the truly complex nature of creativity, missing a day is tantamount to giving up, the gateway drug to joining the masses of non-writing slouches.

Nonsense.

Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.

Every writer has their rhythm. It seems basic, but clearly it must be said: There is no one way. Finding our path through the complex landscape of craft, process, and different versions of success is a deeply personal, often painful journey. It is a very real example of making the road by walking. Mentors and fellow travelers can point you towards new possibilities, challenge you and expand your imagination, but no one can tell you how to manage your writing process. I’ve been writing steadily since 2009 and I’m still figuring mine out. I probably will be for the rest of my life. It’s a growing, organic, frustrating, inspiring, messy adventure, and it’s all mine.

Two years ago, while I was finishing Half-Resurrection Blues and Shadowshaper, I was also in grad school, editing Long Hidden, working full time on a 911 ambulance, and teaching a group of teenage girls. And those are the things that go easily on paper. I was also being a boyfriend, son, friend, god brother, mentor, and living, breathing, loving, healing human being. None of which can be simply given up because I’d taken on the responsibility of writing.

You can be damn sure I wasn’t writing every day.

…

On my off days, I’d get up as early as I did when I had to be clock in somewhere. I’d get my ass into the chair by nine or ten and try to knock out my first thousand words by lunch. Some days, I didn’t. Other days, I’d get all two thousand done by eleven AM.
And on other days, I didn’t write a single word. Yes, it’s true. Why? Sometimes, it’s because I was busy being alive. Other times, it’s because the story I was working on simply wasn’t ready to be written yet. As writer1 Nastassian Brandon puts it: “if you’re writing for the sake of writing and not listening to the moments when your mind and body call out for you to take a break, walk away and then return to the drawing board with new eyes, you’re doing yourself a disservice.” And that’s it exactly. I’ve spent many anxious, fidgety hours in front of the blank screen, doing nothing but being mad at myself. Finally I figured out that brainstorming is part of writing too, and it doesn’t thrive when the brain and body are constricted. So I take walks, and in walking, the story flows, the ideas stop cowering in the corners of my mind, shoved to the side by the shame of not writing.

Tied up in this mandate to write every day is the question of who is and isn’t a writer. The same institutions and writing gurus that demand you adhere to a schedule that isn’t yours will insist on delineating what makes a real writer. At my MFA graduation, the speaker informed us that we were all writers now and I just shook my head. We’d been writers, all of us, long before we set foot in those hallowed halls. We’re writers because we write. No MFA, no book contract, no blurb or byline changes that.

So if writing every day is how you keep your rhythm tight, by all means, rock on. If it’s not, then please don’t fall prey to the chorus of “should bes” and “If onlys.” Particularly for writers who aren’t straight, cis, able-bodied, white men, shame and the sense that we don’t belong, don’t deserve to sit at this table, have our voices heard, can permeate the process. Nothing will hinder a writer more than this. Anaïs Nin called shame the lie someone told you about yourself. Don’t let a lie jack up your flow.

We read a lot about different writers’ eccentric processes – but what about those crucial moments before we put pen to paper? For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns it being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.

I put my hands on the keyboard and begin.

Daniel José Older, Writing Begins With Forgiveness: Why One of the Most Common Pieces of Writing Advice Is Wrong
(via sbeebn)

@shadowwriter-a

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@halleluyang

(via reyissimo)

fantastic advice from a fantastic dude

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just-shower-thoughts: Having regrets lets you know what kind of person you want to be