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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

what was your original fandom. like not the one you first started with on tumblr. the first bit of media that you made content for

The first that I read obsessively: Sailor Moon

The first that I tried to write: HP

Some of the best writing advice I ever got was if you’re stuck on a scene or a line, the problem is actually about 10 lines back and that’s saved me from writer’s block so many times.

I feel like I need an elaborate explanation

Often times, I find myself stuck on what a character should say next or what should happen in a scene to connect A to B or so on. When this happens, I fall into the trap of writing and rewriting the same few lines over and over, and becoming more and more dissatisfied every time until I give up. 

But problem is almost never actually whatever line I’m trying to write at the moment; the issue is the stuff leading up to the line. Maybe there are structural issues with the set up, maybe I wrote a bit of dialogue that was out of character leading to a discussion that doesn’t make sense, maybe I’m missing a vital piece of exposition or expositing too much. It could be a lot of things, but the important part of the advice is to look back and be willing to consider changes to something earlier in the work (even if you’re really attached to like a piece of dialogue or a particular sentence or something) instead of trying to find a way to force out a scene that’s not working.

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining!

…… This is an amazing bit of advice. I keep having to pause for just that.

@chatonne-rousse

Yes! This is a very normal part of my process. It’s now a matter of routine! When I write myself into a wall, I go back to the beginning of the scene - read the whole thing and identify either a) the last prt that feels right, or b) any place where the scene seems like it could have gone differently.

maria_grishina80

Ariduka55  -  http://ariduka.deviantart.com  -  https://twitter.com/13033303  -  http://ariduka55.tumblr.com

why do grooms get one boring black jacket and brides get the most jawdropping gowns ever like when i get married i want pearls and lace and a train is that too much to ask??

Hnn could you imagine.. a suit embroidered with baroque pearls… a LACE CAPE gently floating behind the groom… a fuckin sword..

oh my god…. your m i n d…. the wedding industry is quaking 

Meanwhile in Scotland…

YO, there are SO MANY great groom outfits around the world where he is dressed all in silk, lace, gold, pearls and glitter, with capes and scarves, hats and stitchery and I find it so sad that most of these countries switch over to “suit”. Like, look at these handsome boys!

India

Sudan

China (traditional)

Nigeria

Indonesia

Mongolia

Ghana

Ethiopia

Poland

Romania

Russia (1)

Russia (2)

*shakes fist at sky*

damn you western marriage culture

may I add

Norway

japan 

japan the hard core traditional wedding costume

Turkey

Hungary

Navajo

maori (new zealand)

Fiji

Tonga

Damn

Cockatoo socializing with veterinary staff. 

Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era.

so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell

EDIT: I still can’t believe this took off like it did this is crazy??? Just wanted to let people know that there are indeed errors in the transcription and this is indeed not a very good recording (I threw this together in like 30 minutes at 1 in the morning,) but I’m working with the music department at my college to get the transcription more accurate!

in the meantime enjoy this fantastic choral arrangement by wellmanicuredman i’m in love

Paul Davey  -  http://mattahan.tumblr.com  -  https://www.instagram.com/mattahan  -  http://www.mattahan.com  -  https://twitter.com/Mattahan  -  https://www.patreon.com/mattahan  -  https://society6.com/mattahan

Portage Daily Democrat, Wisconsin, July 19, 1910

Henri Matisse - Reader on a Black Background (1939) Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

African Style by Erielle Matuala Parfaite

its fun to draw cats when you dont know cat anatomy 

how is it that neither of them have ever actually been married to geralt and yet there’s no way to describe this interaction besides the ex-wife and the current husband running into each other at a school function or exchanging the child for a holiday in the taco bell parking lot

Simmie Knox American, born 1935

Vote, c. 1995-1998

Oil on linen 36 x 48 in.

In 2002, Simmie Knox became the first African-American artist commissioned to paint an official U.S. presidential portrait.

This painting by Knox depicts Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker, two of the artist’s personal heroes. Both women were American civil rights activists associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the foremost organizations of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Hamer was born into a family of sharecroppers. In 1961, she underwent a hysterectomy without her consent as part of Mississippi’s eugenic steralization crusade. These operations were often referred to as “Mississippi appendectomies” as doctors would frequently sterilize the patient while they were anesthetized for a different procedure entirely, such as an appendectomy. Hamer went on to organize voter registration drives in Mississippi for Black citizens at a time when the consequences of such an act could range from loss of employment to lynching. In 1964 and 1965, she ran for Congress.

Baker was raised listening to anecdotes about her grandmother’s enslavement. She graduated as valedictorian of her class at Shaw University in 1927. During her long career of activism, she worked alongside the likes of W. E. B. DuBois and Martin Luther King, Jr. Baker had close ties to the NAACP and, like Hamer, was active in voter registration drives in the south in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s.

Tina Turner. Music Legend by  Mary Bassett

“Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything… whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.” – Tina Turner

Illustrated front cover and illustrations by Anne Merriman Peck taken from ‘A Treasury of Flower Stories’ by Inez N. McFee.

Published 1921 by T.Y. Crowell.

The Library of Congress

archive.org

Anne Merriman Peck (1884-1976) was a writer, illustrator and artist. She worked in New York and was published in Harper’s Magazine.

Honest question: Why do pop culture references work and get a laugh in things like Shrek, but in others they just come across as just being lame and forced? What makes a pop culture reference work? 

I think the thing with references in general is that they need to either a) work on their own even if someone DOESN’T understand the source material and/or (preferably and) b) are brief enough that someone who doesn’t understand them most likely won’t notice them, instead of stopping the story shut in its tracks for a minute so you can wink at the viewer and say “geddit? eh? eh?”… metaporically speaking.

Example: in Shrek 2, Shrek sees an old poster in Fiona’s old room in the castle.

When I was a kid, I genuinely didn’t recognize that this was supposed to be Justin Timberlake, because I wasn’t that up on celebrity stuff (and he already wore a full beard at this point). But I still smiled, because even if you DON’T recognize the celeb it still is a solid joke even without that, narrative is still easy to recongize that Fiona as a tween had a crush on some male celebrity, and it ties into character development of Shrek feeling insecure because he’s not human - so it fullfills point a).

And in addition to that: that shot? It lasts for THREE SECONDS. It’s a quiet scene (except for music), noone makes any mention of that poster, there’s no dialog or callback or anything. If you don’t get it, you miss absolutely nothing. So it fulfills point b) at the same time.

True, and even the longer references (like the scene in Shrek 2 where Fairy Godmother sings “I need a hero” and you get that whole Godzilla Cookie bit) don’t actually impede the story, because there’s still stuff going on. Most of the time, when a reference falls flat, it’s because the movie stops in its tracks or doesn’t advance the plot, which tends to get on the nerves of viewers :P

another example: in Meet The Robinson’s, when Wilbur says his dad looks like Tom Selleck and we’re given this picture for a fraction of a second among a bunch of pictures of goofy cartoon characters:

now as a kid this was hilarious bc come on, thats not a cartoon character, thats just a man!!! and it’s absurd and only there for a second. and then i learned later that his dad is actually voiced by Tom Selleck and GOD THATS HILARIOUS

pop culture references usually just fall somewhere on a spectrum from “funny” to “obnoxious,” with “boring” smack dab in the middle