Here's the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?

He's made up.

That's not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she's a teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.

"but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." He's an archetypal oxymoron. He's both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine's suffering, Cinderella style. He's fucked either way by being both. She doesn't know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it's too late for him!! it's too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he's Cinderella's prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.

But it doesn't work buddy, it can't work. You're just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He's so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn't understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.

"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." I'm sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.

This article is actually about a very serious problem. If you overgenerate electricity it increases the phase frequency of the power grid, and if that goes out of sync with your generators (including solar panels) it can destroy them. In the kind of way where your power grid is fucked for months. It is very very very very bad.

California started a program to make solar panels more affordable by offering very low interest rates for solar panels, to allow people to benefit from their lifetime $/energy cost that's below fossil fuels, without having to worry about the high frontloaded cost. However they did not do this for batteries. And power grid quality batteries with massive energy storage and serious charge-discharge lifetimes, are expensive.

And they did this because while solar panels are cheaper than fossil fuels per kilowatt hour of electricity over their lifetime, solar panels plus batteries are not. And California wanted a supplemented free market solution and didn't really want to think about the part that direct government intervention in the form of taxation and paying for this change would be necessary.

So everyone in California just kept adding solar panels to the grid with no disconnect mechanisms, until eventually it hit a point where at noon, solar panels generated more power than the entire grid needed. With no batteries to store the excess. This is a motherfucking power grid killer. It is a scenario where people get left in the fucking dark for months because of how badly it destroys the powergrid.

So the power grid authorities did the only thing they could do. They called up every industrial plant with heavy duty equipment and ovens they could and paid them to turn it on full blast (because using that equipment costs money in wear and tear even without the electricity cost). And in doing so, avoided disaster.

That's what this article is talking about. They are solar panel researchers criticizing a capitalist adoption strategy and promoting direct government intervention to create renewable energy. However as with most newspapers they don't get to choose the title, the editor picks the most provocative title that will get clicks.

the problem with autism is sometimes you want to do something (brave) but you need someone to gently walk you through each step so you know what will happen. and people don’t like doing that

i had to phone a taxi today, scary

every time i see this post i think of that person who posted on reddit that they wanted to go to subway for the first time but they were scared they would say the wrong thing so someone gave them step by step instructions for the entire process and what all the choices would be and when they would ask what question and i just think

someone will

someone out there will see you and say "yes. the world is scary. but let me hold your hand and show you how to do it anyways"

everyone needs that someone, and everyone can be that someone

The subreddit r/explainlikeimscared is a surprisingly good resource for this. People are always very kind and thorough from what I've seen, and I spend a decent amount of time there giving walkthroughs and answering questions when I know the process.

i cant truly explain why but i almost cried yesterday while talking to a woman who studies medieval rus goldwork embroidery, who explained that there is a very particular method that is used to do goldwork embroidery called couching that keeps the thread on the top of the fabric (compared to normal embroidery techniques, where the thread goes over and under the fabric for each stitch) to conserve the very expensive gold thread and this technique is seen historically on more or less all examples of goldwork pieces commissioned by the church, nobility, or chivalric orders from goldwork guilds. however, rural gravesites reveal that lots of people, not just the wealthy, owned a small piece or two of goldwork embroidery, usually collars or cuffs, that were made by someone they knew. these pieces were almost universally made using typical embroidery techniques, meaning they used up twice the gold thread. something about the idea of people, so long ago, saving up to make something beautiful and expensive and special for someone they love, even lacking the specialized knowledge to do it the "proper" way, is so human to me.

Every once in a while I remember that Trent doesn't know Rebecca tried to sabotage the team by bringing in Ted. And I'm just curious if we'll ever see him find out.

One of the fics I've always wanted, DESPERATELY, in this fandom where exactly this happens, because if it did?

Richmond would be over.

@themardia (my expert in all things English Premier League) has described to me what exactly would go down*, and it's kind of horrific — because what Rebecca did was not only grossly wrong and unethical, but was actually illegal. As in, girl could (probably won't, but could!) go to jail for trying to sabotage her own team.

At minimum — at BARE MINIMUM — she would be forced to sell the club and would be banned, probably for life, from ever owning another English football team. Other leagues would follow suit, because FIFA will tolerate a lot of shit but they won't tolerate someone trying to decrease the value of their leagues. She would also get sued to kingdom come by the other EPL owners (Rupert would be especially delighted by this) and lose... pretty much everything she has. She's not rich enough to protect herself from the truly rich owners who comprise the majority of the Premier League.

The club would go up for auction, basically — Rupert couldn't buy it, unless he sold West Ham in a hurry, but Edwin (or hell, Jack) probably could, assuming that its price is merely ludicrous instead of absolutely disgusting the way most EPL clubs are.

And whoever came in would look at Ted as being an agent of Rebecca's schemes — he might even be found complicit, since Rebecca told him the truth right before they got relegated. How could he prove he didn't know before then? Rebecca would try to save him, of course, but at the very least Ted would also be out on his ear, along with Beard and Roy (and it's possible they'd go after Nate, even though he's no longer at the club — there'd probably even be some vile garbage about how the only reason he got promoted was to keep the team relegated, or something. And Rupert wouldn't lift a finger to help him, I don't think). Higgins would also, of course, be out on his ear — if anything, he'd be the most likely to suffer real consequences, because a) he's not a rich and powerful person and b) I fully believe he would try to shoulder more guilt than he actually deserves for what he did. Rebecca would, again, try to save him, but what if she can't?

Some of the players would stay, depending on their contracts, but can you imagine the hit to morale if they found out their boss had sabotaged them to the extent of getting them relegated, and that their coach not only knew but never told them? I think most of the team who could leave, would leave. Which would destroy the Total Football gameplay — would destroy the very fabric of the club. No manager coming in could control the damage that would do; they'd likely get relegated the following year. Such a catastrophe tends to snowball, and Richmond might well falter the following year, too — going down to League One, something that rarely happens but considering this kind of earthquake wouldn't be impossible.

And what would that do to the fanbase? Mae's pub would probably go out of business, its status as a Richmond Pub now considered bad luck; hundreds of people who relied on Richmond's status in the Champion and Premier Leagues would lose their jobs. It would be a disaster for every single person who had anything to do with the club.

And so to imagine Trent writing that, knowing what would happen, but writing it because it was the truth and because it was wrong — and then seeing all the fallout from that? WHEW THAT WOULD BE QUITE THE STORY.

*what she described is not, of course, what I've written here, because my brain is a sieve, but I think I got the gist of it

Dead languages and maybe Wei Ying is long-lost royalty

Today I had a discussion with @pakhnokh​ regarding why Wei Wuxian didn’t know the deeper layer of meaning behind the Lan forehead band. It was a long discussion on Twitter, so I figured I should just make a post here and leave this information out for anyone who might find it useful. 

To start off: The reason why Wei Ying didn’t know the deeper layer of meaning of the Lan forehead band was in the book. But it was written in a very opaque way, in one single throw-away line. In the book, when Wei Ying had to copy the Lan rules, he specifically complained that the rules were written in seal script. 

The Useless Ye Olde’ Script

Seal script is a script that predated traditional Mandarin. It was infamous for being needlessly complex and having dozens, if not hundreds different dialects and writing methods. Some forms of seal script were entirely different languages altogether. When Qin Shi Huang united ancient China, he burned a lot of books and forced people to adopt a standard way to write, thus cementing traditional Mandarin as a singular language that is still used today, 2000 years after. A way to visualize how complex seal script was, is that there were 22 different ways to write the word ‘sword’.

That is how mind-bogglingly complex it was. And worse, it was the source of much conflict in ancient times. To explain it simply, it was supposed to be one language. But if people could not even agree on how to write the same word, then how could they agree on more important things and cease warring against each other? 

Language standardization was one of Qin Shi Huang’s greatest achievements, if not the greatest, as it laid the foundation for more peace and eventual unification in later dynasties. 

This topic was made into an Academy Award-nominated movie, Hero by Zhang Yimou in 2002. 

(the word ‘sword’ that Qin Shi Huang decided on, thus wiping out the other 20+ ways to write the same word) 

Dating Mo Dao Zu Shi in real history (or, Wei Ying might actually be long-lost royalty) 

In a very interesting turn of events, MXTX has confirmed in her latest interview in Subaru magazine, that the events of MDZS happened during Wei Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (commonly referred to as the Six Dynasties era by English-speaking historians, even though these two don’t perfectly line up).

Yes, the same Wei 魏 in Wei Ying 魏婴, Wei Wuxian 魏无羡.

So the events in MDZS took place in the era immediately after the fall of the Qin dynasty (caused by Qin Shi Huang’s death and his sons not being able to measure up). Therefore, Wei Ying’s generation is in a time after the language has standardized into a single form. 

The Lan rules, at least the first set and the meaning of the forehead band, were written about 500 years before Wei Ying’s generation, at the founding of House Lan. So that would put it squarely in the pre-Qin, pre-lingual-standardization era. 

So by Wei Ying’s time, the Lan rules were essentially written in a dead, kinda useless, and very very hard-to-read-because-it-has-some-hundred-different-dialect language. 

That’s on top of the fact that it was probably written in the highest level of 书面语 shumianyu (written language) possible. I.e. extremely condensed and truncated (with zero punctuation). 

So the Lan rules are more or less a very thick law book of a different nation written in the strictest, most condensed dead language that is in no way, shape, or form still in practical use for Wei Ying (and most other people not Lan). Do you feel like reading it? I don’t. 

And that is why Wei Ying never figured out the original meaning of the forehead band despite having copied the rules hundreds of times (first day in class, he was already punished and sentenced to copying the rules 100 times by Lan Qiren). 

Because he was just copying the words without really reading them. This was mentioned when Wei Ying asked Lan Wangji the meaning of the Lan forehead band, and Lan Wangji replied with, you have copied the rules so many times and you still don’t know?  

But isn’t Wei Ying really well-read and smart, and what about the Wen book?

1/ Wei Ying is smart and well-read. There was one throw-away line in the book that mentioned his having read all the books available to him in Lotus Pier, and that he had read all kinds of trivia (including the Thousand Sores and Hundred Holes curse that got put on Jin Zixun). But it was also stated that he favored practical things or things that interested him. Lan rules in dead, extremely hard to read language are… well… yeah…

There was never any mention in canon where he remembered specific Lan rules unless it was literally beaten into him by teenage Lan Wangji.

2/ In the novel, the Lan rules are singled out as the only materials written in seal script. The Wen books were standard issued to everyone who took part in the Wen education camp. So the chance that it was written in seal script is low to none.  

Wei Ying is not the only person who doesn’t know the meaning of the Lan forehead band

Jiang Cheng didn’t know either. Jin Ling didn’t know either. During the Wen archery competition, when Wei Ying pulled off Lan Wangji’s forehead band, he did ask Jiang Cheng what the hell was that, when Lan Wangji and other Lan members reacted like he did something shameful. Jiang Cheng replied with, how the hell would I know? Their house has so many rules. Just stop poking them. 

Jin Ling didn’t know until the other Lan teenagers told him. The only characters who know this in canon are all members of Lan house. The impression that Wei Ying is the only one who doesn’t know is 100 percent fanon. Keep in mind both Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling are clan heirs, so their education and knowledge of other houses absolutely are not low. 

In fact, the novel specifically shows that…..the rest of the cultivation world is not that clear on the actual specifics of Lan rules either. This is shown when Jin Zixun pressured Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji into drinking wine, a clear violation of Lan rules, and the rest of the cultivators in the banquet cheered him on.

 These cultivators were also heads of Houses or very high-ranking members. Many of them would have studied in Cloud Recess. So again, people who have high education… still know shit all about the actual specifics of Lan rules beyond a vague, general monk-like impression.

About the only other person aside from Wei Ying (and Lan members) who knew the specific rule that Lans do not drink in that banquet was Jin Guangyao, a character whose trademark is high intelligence and extreme social savvy (plus having roomed with Lan Xichen and taken care of him for unknown amount of time right before the Sunshot campaign)

Are there secret parts of the Lan rules?  

No. The Lan rules are public. The book is very clear on this. All Lan rules are carved into a massive stone placed at the foot of the mountain where Cloud Recess is, where anyone passing through or coming into House Lan can see it. 

This rule stone was first mentioned when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian met for the first time. Wei Ying complained that he didn’t know the rules and why are there so many things forbidden in the Lan rules? Lan Wangji replied with, rules are written on the stone. Go read it yourself. 

The second time it was mentioned in the book, was Lan Qiren’s first class. The first thing he did was complained that even with the stone and rules being in open space, nobody bothered to read. So he will read the rules now. 

The book mentioned at least two different sets of Lan rules that both need to be obeyed: 礼则篇 Lize Pian (Book of Rites) 上义篇 Shang Yi Pian (Book of Justice). Whether the rules are separated further into more sets or not is unknown. 

Why are some Lan rules better known than others? 

Because Lan rules are based on 克己復禮 Keji Fuli, a real-life Confucius asceticism that calls for the restraint/purge of one’s ego and to return to the core rites. This is also newly confirmed in MXTX’s new interview, though it has been more or less heavily suggested in the book itself, with House Lan being known as the House of Gentlemen. 

Gentlemen here is not the Western ideal of Gentlemen, but rather a Confucius ideal and set of values. Confucius is the person who created this ideal in the first place. 

So it’s not that some rules are better known, but rather the entire image of Lan House is a huge pointer as to how they live their life: with great restraint. 

middle finger - classic. tested & true. but does it really hit the point home?

a thumbs up that slowly and pointedly switches into a thumbs down without breaking eye contact - REALLY funny. instant annihilation. they’re humiliated before they can ever fully process what just happened.

easy hack if you're scared of a blank page or need word count encouragement

I have a hard time writing on that big blank document. Even if it already has paragraphs or pages of work, it still feels incredibly daunting when I first start.

I manage the page setup on Google Docs to help me out.

Not only do the words fill up the page faster, the size I use is roughly the size of a paperback. It's exciting to visualize what it could look like published.

It helps me to have visual encouragement, rather than a document that looks more like a school essay.

Here is how I set my document up in Docs under File > Page setup

I change "Paper size" from the default to "Statement size". I also change all margins from the default to .5 inches.

[call it good] writing

So this is unpopular but I’m insanely curious hence I’m using tumblr and not Twitter or Reddit lol. I’m not the biggest fan of Dany in the books and to the others who don’t like her either I wanna know why. This isn’t a hate post, I want to see if others share my opinions. Feel free to comment what you think!

I think Dany is a sympathetic character, but one who is undeniably on a “villain” trajectory. This moment

tends to be brushed aside by the fandom, but I don’t think we’re meant to allow the wonder of the birth of the dragons eclipse the fact that Dany burned someone alive to get them.

As much as we want to see Dany empowered and free, I think the author’s choice to empower her at the expense of others was deliberate. A lot of things transpire to build on this and keep it nuanced, but I’m a big “Dark Dany” believer, and as much as I sympathize with her suffering, I believe we’re meant to be horrified by some of her choices and understand that her mother of people and mother of dragons identities can’t coexist because becoming one requires the blood of the other.

The “anti burning people alive” tag (as well as the “anti daenerys targaryen” tag) have a lot of posts explaining this in more detail, and while people claim it makes us haters to say this stuff, I disagree. I think it’s just accepting what the author is doing with her which is use her as the “the villain is the hero of the other side” to his heroes, the Starks.

my thing with social media is that grown ass people are so accustomed to its shallow constant communication so ‘drifting apart’ irl happens after not really texting each other for like a month

CAPPYS DECADE CHALLENGE

It’s absolutely been forever since I made a writing challenge and I’ve been wanting more fics to read, so alas, here’s a new one for y’all.

Rules:

daily reminder that if you create it, it’s art. it doesn’t have to be perfect. it just has to have bits of you in it <3

How A Piece Of Fan Fiction Became A Full-Fledged Star Trek Movie

question:

does “slow burn” refer to the length of the story, as in word count, or to the length of time within the story? thoughts?

a lot of interesting replies on this!

i love that we and cats share pareidolia (seeing patterns where they dont exist), but instead of seeing faces in everyday objects like us, they see snakes

that computer cord? snake. string? small snake. cucumber? short fat straight snake

snake pareidolia is one of the strongest things in human minds too! people report freezing mid-stride before being consciously aware of a snake in front of them, and the same happens with coiled rope, etc. in humans and other primates. it’s even been proposed that the need to detect snakes was a factor in the development of primates’ insanely good color eyesight

have ya’ll heard about “Kinou Nani Tabeta?”

based on Yoshinaga Fumi’s manga by the same name, it’s a slice-of-life food-focused JDrama about a couple in their 40s who live together, a hairdresser by the name of Kenji Yabuki and his boyfriend Shiro Kakei who is a lawyer but also loves to cook.

it has been praised for its healthy and realistic depiction of gay domestic life, as well as what the various issues and nuances of being gay. Including:

Heteros™ that mean well

Gay Fear™

supportive straight women listening to the gays rant

well-meaning “when are you gonna get married?” parents

supportive parents!

misconceptions

especially about heteronormativity 

gay civil issues (also gay elders!!!!!!)

being out (or not) at work

trying to live your truth

and most importantly…

GAY PEOPLE BEING HAPPY

thank you for coming to my ted talk

did you know that a side effect of the covid vaccine is a heavier period?

guess who found that out by getting gettysburged yesterday?

like for real. the worst day of menstruation of my life. for people who know their menstrual cycle and haven’t gotten a vaccine yet, book it around your cycle if at all possible omg.

I got my first shot a week ago and the lead-up to my period was very strange. Normally I start getting cramps about half a day before I start bleeding, but I had that pre-period crampy feeling for three days this time followed by a pretty heavy period. I was pretty concerned until I realized it might have something to do with having just gotten the vaccine. I’m definitely pleased to see they’ve started collecting data about it.

If you have room to maneuver when scheduling your shot definitely keep your cycle in mind. 

This happened to me this week. I went to the doctor and they didn’t tell me this, so here it is for folks who might need it.