People that get invested in fiction and examine fictional lore need to learn how to tell the difference between which lore is actually important to the series and which lore is an excuse for something.

If Dwarven women are capable of growing beards, but have cultural reasons not to, that is an excuse that they made not to give them beards.

If a female character can only wear skimpy clothing for some given reason, that is an excuse to sexualize her.

If an organization can only be populated men, that is often an excuse to not have to create female characters.

Its all made up. It isn’t a foundation of the universe that they can’t control. They wrote it to be like that.

Since this post is back again: you cannot explain away a doylist question (”Why did the author make it so the dwarven women not have beards?”) with a Watsonian answer (”because they have a cultural reason not to”).

A great explanation of the terms here-

Hey everyone who consumes any fictional media at all. This is so very important to understand.

I actually also think small talk has an effect of making us more human to one another. I legit think it’s harder to dismiss the perspective and worth of a person whose toast preference you know, who said something kind of funny about the drizzle once. If you only ever talk to a person in terms of e.g. politics or high stakes opinions, I think you end up with the abstracted impersonal terrain of, well, the internet

I’m pretending all the time to be, kinder, stronger, funnier, more sociable than I am. I guess we’re all like that but it just feels so inadequate.

What’s the difference?

I know it sounds flippant but… certain things are fundamentally performative.  And other things are so close as makes no difference.

Kindness is performative.  Actions are kind, and people are kind by performing those actions.  You can’t “pretend” to be kinder than you are, you can only perform kindness or not perform kindness, and choosing to perform kindness is always worthwhile, no matter how much you may second-guess your motivations.

Strength is so many things.  It takes strength to pretend a strength you don’t feel.  And the way to achieve strength is to exercise it, so long as you do it in enough moderation to not strain or break anything.  Being able to affect strength when necessary while being able to put it down again when that in turn is necessary is healthy.  Everyone starts weight training with the littlest weights.  It’s not fake or pretending to do what you gotta do in any given situation.

Funniness lives in the interlocutor, not in the speaker.  It doesn’t matter how funny you think you are (or think you are pretending to be) - that’s not how it’s measured.  At what point are you “pretending” to be a musician if the music still gets made?  And often what it’s tempting to describe in first person as “pretending” is more accurately described in the third person as “practicing” - which is of course the way you cause things to Be.

Sociability is also performative.  Pretending to be sociable is just…being sociable, despite a disinclination towards it.  It’s making an effort towards something you value.  So long as the effort is not so great that it backfires into resentment, there’s no practical difference.  

Qualities or activities or whatever are no less worthy because you have to actively choose to perform them.  If anything, the worthiness lies in the act of choosing.  It’s not “pretending” - it’s agency.

tl;dr: ain’t nothing wrong with “fake it till you make it.”  A plastic spoon* holds just as much soup as a “real” one

* I keep wanting to talk about semantic domains!  Artifacts are defined by their utility, whereas living things are defined by their identity.  So plastic forks are still forks, but plastic flowers aren’t flowers.  So there’s two pep-talk messages to take away from this: (1) for certain things, the distinction between “fake” and “real” isn’t a relevant one so long as they still get the job done, and (2) the purpose of a living thing is to be the thing that it is.  The idea of a “useless person” is as semantically nonsensical as the idea of “pretend kindness” (or fake cutlery).

I love this post. It illustrates what I think is maybe the key difference between a developing self-identity and a formed self-identity, which is, like…confidence? If you are BEING kind, consistently, if you are prioritizing that over your own comfort or fatigue or even, occasionally, your emotional inclination (because OH MY GOD FUCK THIS GUY, I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE–uuughhh, but no, I’m not gonna lash out at him, that won’t accomplish anything, and besides, he’s probably had a bad day, he’s under a lot of stress, I don’t have to be an asshole about this…), guess what? That makes you kind. That is literally what kindness is. Same for patience, same for strength, same for all of this stuff. You got it. You’re doing it. You’re not faking anything. Stop second-guessing yourself and cutting yourself down. Give yourself enough credit to look at your actions and confidently assert to yourself that you are no longer just making things up as you go. 

I firmly believe that not only should we raise the minimum wage, but we should also create a maximum wage. There is no reason in which an orthopedic surgeon, which is the highest paying doctor will make an average of $464,500 a year, while the top 10 CEOs earn well over $33 BILLION a year. If we even so much as cap their earning potential at $1 billion, which is more money than anyone should really need to live a happy fulfilling lifestyle, then it would force them to put that money toward the company or be punished. This means giving their employees better health insurance, giving them more vacations, better wages, paying for their college or their children’s education, creating more jobs, and improving the functionality of their companies. Perhaps even force them to invest in the communities they are serving. 

For those of you who are still skeptical… let me put it this way… the highest earning CEO “earned” $156,077,912 in 2014. Let’s boil this down. There’s about 52 weeks in a year. Let’s say that he works 40 hours a week. So a total of 2,080 hours a year. That’s $75,037 an hour. The median HOUSEHOLD income in the US is $50,502 per year. He’s earning 1.5 times the amount per hour than the average household makes in a year. That disparity is absurd. To put that even further into perspective, the average NEUROLOGIST earns $219,000 a year according to a 2014 statistic. Every single one of the CEOs on the 100 highest paid CEOs earn at least 93 TIMES the amount that a NEUROLOGIST makes. 

Something needs to change. People shouldn’t be starving for the sake of someone else’s greed.

https://www.racked.com/2017/5/2/15518540/met-gala-gown-design-science-technology-engineering (via thatdiabolicalfeminist)

Dan Harmon (via digital-femme)

You should share this for people in DC and close to you!!

Black Community we have to be careful. Protect our Girls! Spread this! 

IMPORTANT!!!!

Signal Boost! 

The number of notes on that post advocating to not pursue an impeachment of Trump due to Pence is actually horrifying.

1. Pence is running things anyway. Showing the public the man behind the curtain is quite crucial. Remember, when Trump offered vp to Kasich, he told him he’d be in charge of both domestic and foreign affairs.

2. Trump’s temperament is likely to have extremely negative geopolitical consequences in a way that Pence’s wouldn’t. Who do you see as more likely to engage in a ground war along with Russia? Trump already talked about invading Iraq again. And this isn’t touching the nuclear arsenal thing.

3. Pence is not popular in Congress at all. A republican who is hugely hated in Indiana does not really have a ton of political capital, especially since he tanked their economy. A lot of the reason GOP swung to Trump late is because *he* was the charismatic face that was creating this supposed populist “movement” (the marches sort of knocked the wind out of that a little). It’s Trump that is being held up, and it’s Trump specifically the neonazis are looking towards (Bannon wrote his fucking inaugural address). We need Trump, the man, to go ASAP for that reason.

Pence will be our worst president, but he’ll be survivable, he’ll have no chance at reelection, and seeing as he’s already most definitely the one driving policy (Dep of Ed pick was his, almost without question, for instance), we at least need to have that recognized so he can be held accountable.

Pence is not the “real Hitler.” Authoritarian movements prop up one person. In this case it was Trump. The MAGA hats have jack-all to do with Pence, and exceedingly little to do with policy. Which is why Trump, specifically, is the threat to our democracy.

it BLOWS MY MIND to see y’all pretend pence represents even half the danger of trump. pence is a by-the-book, lab-created tea party facebook meme republican, which is by no means good, but still entirely capable of making sure the nation doesn’t start a fucking nuclear holocaust because he’s upset about the way his thighs look in a press photo

Besides, it’s not like any of us cockroach motherfuckers are going to magically stop fighting with Pence officially in the helm. Fuck, guys, WE KNOW HE’S TERRIBLE, TOO. If anything, switching from fighting chaotic evil to lawful evil will allow us to regroup and focus instead of playing fucking whack-a-mole.

^^^^^^ 

read widely and critically

our confirmation biases are built into the internet. 

facebook’s algorithms are constructed to show you news that aligns with your political beliefs. your friends’ posts are much more likely to rise to the top if they already agree with you; if you’re on the anti-trump train you’re gonna see a lot of WaPo articles telling you that everyone hates trump. that his businesses are suffering. that republicans that endorse him are losing their re-elections.

a similar effect happens, organically, with tumblr: most people understandably don’t follow people they vigorously disagree with politically.

and you read these articles and you think: everyone hates him. everyone knows these scandals, everyone cares about these scandals. surely most of america has read these and is as sane as i am. he won’t win.

1). this creates political complacency.

there were people who stayed home or voted third party on election day because their social media feeds told them trump didn’t stand a ghost of a chance. 

but your swing-voter uncle isn’t seeing the same stuff you are in his little walled-off corner of the internet. he’s probably seeing the media blitz on clinton’s emails.

2). we don’t know how to talk to each other.

 though it’s true that–at least in polls–trump voters skewed wealthier than average, we would be unwise to ignore the huge, growing regional values disconnect that’s never been successfully bridged in the US. 

the thing is, these parts of america know very little about each other. i’ve seen each side loudly declare that the other half isn’t “real america.” and in their social circles, this seems true. 

but discounting half the population doesn’t make them stop existing. pretending that economically vulnerable trump voters don’t exist shuts down communication about a better way forward. whether you agree that these people deserve sympathy or not, you can’t efficiently argue your point if you don’t try to understand their logic. this article is a good place to start.

3). people who do this for a living are not immune.

 up until the votes were counted, huffpo’s analysts gave hillary a 98% chance of winning the election. you can read more here about what went wrong.

when nate silver of fivethirtyeight gave her chances hovering around 70-80%, this was cautious enough for a huffpo writer to try to eviscerate him for “unskewing polls in favor of trump.” the message was: trump won’t win, nobody thinks he will win, and you’re either scaremongering or an idiot for giving him even an outside chance.

and this was a common belief in left-leaning circles, especially among those who tend to get their news from a single source: a single paper, or a single facebook feed, or a single tumblr dash. political writers believed this, too.

So what can you do?

well, imo:

do not get your news from a single source. ideally, this goes for every news story you care about: read at least two articles from different publications. they’ll often have a slightly different slant. i’d recommend that the sources you choose have different political leanings. do this before you share the story.

read the whole article. often the most sensational bit will show up in the heading, especially if it’s been linked on social media. DO NOT SKIP THE ENDING, and definitely do not skip the paragraph where they try to shove in an opposing viewpoint if one exists.

check sources. literally do not reblog a thing until you have clicked a goddamn link, i swear to god

check a news aggregator that is not social media. use the news app. check google news. don’t just click through on links from tumblr and facebook, because i guarantee you aren’t getting the full story and you are not getting the same story half of america is getting

read fox news sometimes. i am so sorry. i am so, so sorry. but again: if you don’t understand what someone is thinking, you cannot change their mind.

engage in conversation. i don’t mean argument, i mean 1x1 relational work. this goes especially for white people (men, straight people, etc) who have less to fear by talking politics with trump supporters. this post is an excellent guide to effective political communication. you won’t have the energy to do this all the time, and it can be incredibly uncomfortable. but if you can, you have the potential to learn and teach a lot.

point contradictions out to your political allies. it can be uncomfortable to have an unpopular political opinion in your friend circle. but if someone is spreading misinformation (which can then be debunked by an opponent to make your side look bad) let them know! it can be private; it can be polite! but you owe it to your allies to diversity your thinking.’

the world is full of complexity, and recognizing this makes you a more effective advocate.

a great resource is realclearpolitics, which typically aggregates opposing view editorials right on top of one another, so you can easily find writers who disagree on issues.

perfect thank u

It’s so gross and hypocritical to frame food waste as a personal failing. Like, people are dying of hunger because someone forgot some leftovers at the back of their fridge and ended up throwing them away. Major chain grocery stores throw away millions of pounds of food because it’s “too much work” to donate it, and then poison it and destroy it when they throw it away to punish dumpster diving. 

Waste is not a personal failing. It’s engineered by corporations, and they profit off of obscuring that.   

Much like water waste - shaming a dripping bathroom faucet for wasting water, while hundreds of gallons get wasted in industrial settings.

Always be suspicious of micro-focused framing of environmental issues, when there’s the possibility of macro-level issues hiding behind them.

I think about this all the time. I imagine a lot of us do. (via kelsium)

“In other words, they weren’t waiting to “have it all” – they were waiting to have enough.”

(via girlwithalessonplan)

been thinking more about the sokovia accords and how… impractical they are? time for a random history lesson, but thinking back to the league of nations and how they, despite having no regulated army, had to decide unanimously whether or not they could even just send a country’s army/forces to go and help another country in need, and of course this led to decisions and crises being prolonged and left out to dry for way way longer than was necessary or helpful – basically bc nobody could decide whether or not it was a good idea to send x to y, it meant that shit just got worse and worse whilst all these powers wasted time deliberating, and the actual problem got worse. so. y’know. #teamcap

#ALSO HIGH KEY TONY BRINGING UP THE LEND LEASE BILL WASN’T AN ACCIDENT!!! #THE LEND LEASE BILL DRUG AMERICA TO THE PRECIPICE OF WWII ON THE PREDICATION THAT THE USA #WOULD OFFER MILITARY FUNDING AND EQUIPMENT TO ANY COUNTRY #WHOSE DEFENSE THE PRESIDENT DEEMED VITAL TO THE DEFENSE OF THE UNITED STATES #literally tony sits in that room with steve and reminds steve #of a time when the US was so afraid to enter a conflict #that it would throw money and equipment and power behind other countries as literal cannon fodder #and looks steve in the eye and says #essentially #he wants to let them do the same goddamn thing to the avengers #let the UN tell the Avengers where to go and what’s important #let the Accords dictate with no room for discussion at present time what conflicts and what countries and what enemies are vital #Tony Stark doesn’t understand what it’s like to lose your ability to make your own decisions because he’s never lost it #Steve Rogers has spent a lifetime having choices made for him

I damn near cracked up in the theater when Rhodey was trying to defend the accords on the basis of them coming from the United Nations. As if U.N. interventions and resolutions have never stalled out due to the veto of a single member of the security council. As if the U.N. hasn’t repeatedly failed to intervene in genocides. As if the U.N. has never been corrupt and made things worse. As if U.N. “peacekeepers” always lived up to their name, and never sexually exploited children, as if those who blew the whistle on this corruption were never punished.

If Steve has bothered to catch up on his 20th century history at all, he must have known about this shit. Add that to living through the failure of the League of Nations? Rhodey saying that this was all above board because it was from the U.N. must have sounded, at best, dangerously naive.

So Peggy Carter actually pointed out a solution of sorts:

Compromise where you can.

It does make sense to have oversight.  But what I found interesting is how Ross presented the idea of collateral damage to the Avengers, as if nothing similar has ever happened in the world before, done by any military force in any armed conflict. 

So it makes sense for the Avengers to at least be held accountable or to make some sort of reparations in situations such as Sokovia - where we all know shit went down because Tony Stark screwed up massively - or even Lagos, in which Wanda actually saved the lives of hundreds of people in the marketplace as opposed to the very regrettable loss of 11 Wakandans and an unknown number of other civilians in the office building. 

But what I find interesting is that Tony, Natasha and Rhodey never mentioned “Hey, let’s see where we can reach a compromise here because nobody wants the Avengers to be used in some political power play but we can’t just run around doing superhero shit without considering the people who might get caught in the crossfire.”

And yeah, if Rhodey called Cap “arrogant” for believing the “safest hands are still our own” - I would call him dangerously naive for believing the U.N.’s hands are safer, considering the World Security Council’s own disastrous decisions (e.g. decision to nuke New York and Project Insight). 

Also consider:  HYDRA infiltrated the US government all the way to the point where the Secretary of Defense was the head of HYDRA USA and the handler of the Winter Soldier, who was going to use him and three WMDs to engineer a massacre of twenty million people and an actual coup d’etat to overthrow the U.S. government.   What guarantee do we have that there aren’t any undiscovered HYDRA heads in other nations’ governments, especially when Zola himself admitted that HYDRA had infiltrated and nudged world events to get the planet ready to accept totalitarian rule?

So while I don’t hate #teamtony or Tony himself, this is ultimately why I am still #TeamCap. 

#also#SUDETENLAND#Steve remembers that shit#Steve watched that go down#even WITHOUT being caught up on modern history#which he 10000% is#probably more than anybody else tbh#he knows the risks in letting a council of nations make those calls#he’s not here for that shit

********** VERY IMPORTANT *************

Today is Primary Day in NY and theres already been several instances of people who are experiencing severe Voter Suppression

there are reports of:

Keep In Mind: this is the same state who’s people recently Filed An Emergency Lawsuit To Give Voting Rights Back To 3.2 Million People, after Hundreds of voters, most of them registered with the Democratic Party, are claiming their voter registration was mysteriously changed to “independent” or “no affiliation” without their consent. Making them unable to vote in the closed primary state.

DO NOT LET THEM MANIPULATE THE SYSTEM!! STAY IN LINE AND VOTE!! KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!!!

#StayWoke

Mary Shelley (via orlathewitch)

Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (via all-about-abuse)