cheshirecat1003 reblogged
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Seattle Public Library is doing this awesome program called Books Unbanned that allows teens and young adults (ages 13-26) access to their collection of e-books and e-audiobooks from anywhere in the USA. All you need to do is fill out a simple form and you get their Books Unbanned card. Please share this information far and wide. I know they're not the only ones to have done this, but the more the merrier!
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
when you call your reps to ask them to pretty please stop taking away your rights, remember:
- In deep red areas you're a republican who is thinking of voting for someone else if they don't vote what you want on this specific bill because it impacts your republican ideals so very much
- In swing states you're an undecided voter who's gonna go blue if they don't vote how you like
remember to call because that way their phone is going off and their peers can hear it because their offices are close together (emails and letters don't work like that), so it can rattle them if they get high volumes. remember that you gotta make them feel like they're losing something.
Talking points I've been using in my blood red state:
- "I'm a small business owner and [example: anti-drag bill] is making me lose money!" OR "[Anti-drag bill] is going to cost us millions in taxable sales" - If you talk about how it's making you personally lose money and absolutely need to bullshit, you run a bar or do freelance photography. The intern they have on the other line does not have the resources or the know-how to check that.
- "I'm concerned that [anti abortion bill] is the government infringing on my personal rights." - Self explanatory.
- "[Anti-gay bill] goes against family values in my church." - They aren't going to call your local Pentecostal chapter to fact check this. You don't even need to be Pentecost, you just need to assert that you're part of a community and a major voting bloc.
- Remember: In smaller towns, literally every vote counts. And voters generally don't call in, so your call can carry quite the advantage.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Dear Mr Gaiman, my husband was wondering whether the Sandman's mask has anything to do with a CPAP (they look a bit alike, and sleep and dreams often go hand in hand after all). Thank you for many hours of wonderful reading and watching!
I don't think so. Commercial CPAP machine masks appear to have shown up in 1990 from what I can see online, and Sandman started in late 1988. Maybe they were inspired by the helm?
As someone who just got a CPAP last december I gotta say I love the idea of some doctor seeing Dream in his mask and that directly inspiring CPAPs.
I figured it was literally a gas mask though. Gotta filter out all that sand.
Always assumed it was a way to incorporate the gas mask aesthetic of DC’s first Sandman, who literally just used sleep gas on people so wore a mask to avoid succumbing to it, himself.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
What's the story Wishbone?
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Hello, Neil! I don't know if you're ever going to answer this because of the many messages on your inbox, but it's worth trying. I really like to write, but there's a problem that seems to be repeating itself everytime I have a new idea: i always make up great characters with depth and development arc, I know everything about their dynamic with others, their relationship arcs, the things they struggle, and all these internal things. However, i can't seem to be able to come up with the actual plot of the story to set them in. How can I deal with that?
Thanks!
Have a character that you care about want something that won't be easy to get. Have another character you care about want something else that's mutually exclusive. What happens next will probably be a plot.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
“Books are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“E-books are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Audiobooks are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Video games are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
“Subscriptions to magazines/newspapers are too expensive” -> GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!
For real, get a library card for your local public library and you will have almost unlimited access to all kinds of media for free. Libraries also often have many different kinds of classes you can take, often for free or very cheap. Oh, and don’t forget the computers and internet access you can also use for free.
In conclusion, yet a library card.
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY!!!
Don’t forget movies, internet, zoo tickets, etc. we also have fun kits for old people.
At my library you can even check out musical instruments.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Source: cassandracalin
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
“Fairy tales — the proper kind, those original Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales I recall from my Eastern European childhood, unsanitized by censorship and unsweetened by American retellings — affirm what children intuitively know to be true but are gradually taught to forget, then to dread: that the terrible and the terrific spring from the same source, and that what grants life its beauty and magic is not the absence of terror and tumult but the grace and elegance with which we navigate the gauntlet.”
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
A brief summary of how user engagement is tracked on Tumblr, for the newcomer:
- When you like or reblog a post, that counts as user engagement for the person you liked or reblogged from, and shows up in their notifications.
- If the person you liked or reblogged a post from wasn’t the original poster (i.e., you’re liking or reblogging a reblog), it also counts as user engagement for the original poster, and shows up in their notifications as well.
- This means that user engagement from your likes and reblogs can potential accrue to two different people, the original poster and the person you liked or reblogged from.
- Consequently, you cannot “steal” user engagement from someone by reblogging their post.
- This is one of the very few areas where Tumblr is actually functions more reasonably than other social media platforms.
- Note that this is only true if you use Tumblr’s built-in reblogging function. If you save someone else’s content to your local device and append it to a new post, you effectively become the original poster from that point on.
- This means that on Tumblr, “reblogging” and “reposting” are two different things; if you see someone complaining about “reposting”, this is not the same as reblogging.
- Commenting when reblogging does not affect any of this – unlike, say, Twitter, where quote-retweeting causes user engagement to accrue to the quote-retweet and not to the original tweet – and you can and should do so freely.
- However, every Tumblr user can see who exactly you reblogged a post from, which functions as a soft disincentive against making inane comments; if you make a dumb comment on a reblog, people who see your reblog may “back up” one step in the reblog chain to reblog a version of the post without your comment.
- Nobody understands tags, and there’s a fair amount of evidence that how tags work changes periodically and without warning.
- Tags are a divine mystery.
(For those going “how is this not obvious”, it’s about prior expectations, bro. On many major social media platforms, using the built-in sharing tools does divert user engagement from the original post. For example, as noted above, quote-retweeting on Twitter causes likes to accrue to the quote-retweet instead of the original tweet. This is because Twitter is hostile to human life.)
It’s really good for stuff like this to go around every once in a while! Strange as it may seem, people may in fact migrate here from Twitter or Instagram, where this stuff works differently and where there are different expectations of engagement.
DON’T FORGET - *most* Tumblr users DO NOT MIND if you engage with their OLD posts! (Apparently on Instagram they do? this baffles me.)
Many also don’t mind if you “spam” their notifications with a bunch of likes or reblogs in a row.
Tumblr has a rich culture of Very Old Posts continuing to make the reblog rounds, and people become fond of them.
Also, unlike Twitter, you can reblog the same post multiple times. Heck, you can reblog the same post every hour on the hour for days. (Please don’t.) But you do see a lot of “oh this came across my dash again, must reblog” with posts users are fond of. This is fine.
Tags ARE a divine mystery. People use the tags both for organization (inasmuch as this works, sometimes), and for added commentary. Commentary added to the tags will generally be seen by those who follow that person and see their reblog on their dash; but the OP and whoever they reblogged it from can also see the tags in the notifications.
So again – you can use the tags for commentary, and many people do. But people WILL see it. It just won’t “stick” with the post… necessarily. Tumblr also has a culture of people seeing some tags they think are relevant or clever, and reblogging a post with someone else’s tags included. So bear that in mind as well – something you put in the tags could get “pulled up” into a reblog chain by someone else, and this is generally seen as fine.
Adding on, due to current events: Tumblr both does and does not have an algorithm; in a way it’s “opt-out,” but most long-time users have opted out vehemently, and you’ll probably have a better experience if you do the same.
Go to Settings, then Dashboard, and turn off “Best Stuff First,” “Include stuff in your orbit,” and “Include Based On Your Likes.” This will get you a feed based only on people that you choose to follow, and this, arguably, is part of why Tumblr is the least hellish of many hellsites right now.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Hi!
Wait.
Hang on.
Sorry.
Bit confused here - I keep seeing posts saying things such as 'Neil Gaiman has no social media' and other words that come to a similar conclusion. However, Mr. Neil Gaiman does, in fact, have a social media. Mr. Neil Gaiman has multiple social medias. I have seen them. They are easily found on Google.
So why do you supposedly not have any social medias? And if you do not have any social medias and this is all an elaborate hoax set up by the ghost of Sir Terry Pratchett and the not-ghost of Michael Sheen in order to play an amusing trick on Mr. Neil Gaiman by convincing the world that he has a Tumblr account, along with various others on various other social medias, then please inform me. I would be most grateful.
Sincerely, a rather confused being
It's hard to explain, especially because the original post has now vanished. But I have searched the web, from lowest to highest, and found this for you, which will, I hope, explain everything.
Neil Gaiman is a treasure
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
When Twitter is trending on Twitter
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Omg this is perfect!
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
When Harry becomes the DADA professor, kids constantly ask him for an autograph, but he refuses, saying the only thing he’ll autograph is a detention slip. Eventually, though, he starts carrying around a stack of autographed pictures of Ginny, which he gives out when people ask for an autograph. It gets really popular, so he starts mixing it up with autographs from other people, mostly Ron and Hermione. But the students love it, so he adds more. Soon he’s giving out autographs from like fifty different people, including all the teachers at Hogwarts, and a bunch of other random people like Luna, Lee Jordan, Oliver Wood, etc. He even has some fairly rare ones from Krum and Fleur. It becomes a game in Hogwarts to collect all the autographs, like chocolate frog cards. Some of them are more limited edition than others, like signatures from all the ghosts (though Harry won’t reveal how he managed to get those). George starts to offer a discount at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (and a prize autograph from Peeves, who will only sign Bertie Bott’s scratch-and-sniff cards) to anyone who can prove they’ve collected the whole set. Harry provides him with up-to-date lists of autographs to check against. Every Hogsmeade weekend there’s a line of Hogwarts students in WWW’s Hogsmeade branch trying to get the discount.
At some point a seventh year comes up to Harry and asks for his autograph, but not as the Savior of the Wizarding World, but because they now have the autograph of every other Hogwarts teacher and want Professor Potter’s to go with them. Harry–trying not to tear up–agrees, but only in exchange for the student’s signature. He begins offering this deal to all departing seventh years, his autograph in exchange for theirs. He tells them it’s in case they ever get famous, so he can add it as a limited edition autograph, but really he keeps them all in a big binder just for himself, to remember all his students. (A couple times, though, when a students does become famous, he will contact them and ask if they’d like to be added to the game. So far no one has said no.)
When Teddy starts at Hogwarts he begins a black market autograph trade because he has access to a lot of the people Harry gets autographs from. Harry’s other three children proudly continue the trade when they get to Hogwarts. They’re all secretly aided by Ginny.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Are you alright??? Cause I dreamt you died and now I'm worried.
I’m definitely still alive. I checked.
I’m glad you checked!
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
the thing about people who are like “i don’t like tolkien that much, fantasy should move on and be better” is that i AGREE that fantasy has all the wrong holdovers from lotr. but when you ask those people what contemporary fantasy they think is better, they’ll say shit like name of the wind or game of thrones, and i do not relate to that…..at all?? or even, like, brandon sanderson, whose books i REALLY like. but if you’re still naming mostly white straight male authors, what is it about tolkien you wanted to leave behind exactly???
If y’all’s “moving on from Tolkien” is still centered in reading fantasy written by cishet white men, y’all are missing out.
Martha Wells, Books of the Raksura. Shapeshifting gargoyle-dragon-lizard people in a matriarchal society. About finding a new home and a new family. Really evocative world building that hints at much older civilizations in a luxuriant setting.
NK Jemisin, The Broken Earth series. Post-apocalyptic setting. People of color actively dismantling systems of oppression. People of color being justifiably angry at what has been done. People of color being powerful. A black woman as the main character and multiple queer characters. She won THREE Best Novel Hugos for this series.
NK Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy. An empire has imprisoned and enslaved multiple gods, and is using them to further their oppressive systems. The mixed race female protagonist helps them find liberation. Some polyamory and non-binary themes.
Aliette de Bodard, Dominion of the Fallen series. “Dark Gothic fantasies set in a ruined turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war.” Fallen angels, Asian dragons, Viet culture, and queer PoC in positions of power. Her website has lots of free fiction as well. Special mention to The Tea Master and the Detective, a Sherlock Holmes retelling where Sherlock is a WoC and Watson is a sentient spaceship.
Fran Wilde, The Bone Cycle. Beautiful worldbuilding, tradition, (mis)information, climate change. This series is so gorgeous I have deliberately not finished reading it yet, because I am saving the last few chapters of the final book for when I’m going through a rough patch and need something lovely to escape into.
Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass and Iron. Fairy tale heroines going “nah, fuck this nonsense, we’re making our own story”. Amal mostly writes poetry and short fiction, and all of it is beautifully lyrical. Her words are so beautiful they make me angry.
Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky. It blends several genres in one, and honestly you are better off reading it than reading any summary I could make about it.
And so many, many, many more in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres. Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher, Alyssa Wong, Ken Liu, Rebecca Roanhorse, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, Daniel José Older, RF Kuang, Nnedi Okorafor, Jeannette Ng, Ann Leckie, Ted Chiang, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ruthanna Emrys, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth Bear, Saladin Ahmed, Nisi Shawl…
If you can’t afford them, that’s okay, you have options:
- Make sure to check them out at your local library.
- Don’t want to go to the library, or don’t have a means to do so regularly? Ebooks! Overdrive/Libby is your friend–you just need to get a library card and then you can borrow ebooks through their ever-growing database. You can even recommend books to them–authors will get a sale if the library buys the book! They also have a growing audiobook supply, and you can recommend those to your library as well.
- Libby has a phone app that is perfectly functional, so if you don’t have a dedicated e-reader but own a smartphone, you can get your books that way too.
Do you prefer short fiction? So many of these authors have stuff available online, be it on their website or on zines. A brief search will supply you with more fiction by non-white-dudes than you know what to do with.
tl;dr:
Read diverse authors.
cheshirecat1003 reblogged
Noone asked for it… Yet here we are :|
Source: deviantart.com