"This is my weird son. He can't climb for shit, but he is handsome and strong."

#cats be like#is anybody adopt that#and don't wait for an answer

I know the Star Wars extended universe treats “spice” like it’s this big scary drug, but I kind of like to imagine that it’s basically just space weed, and the only reason Han got in trouble with the Imperials over Jabba’s cargo is that he was evading import tariffs.

If we’re just looking at mentions in the original trilogy, is there evidence it’s even a drug and not something you put on bland food to make it taste like something? What if Han was just carrying a cargo of like cilantro, mint, etc, none of which grow on Tattooine and are thus highly expensive and heavily taxed commodities?

I am fully prepared to believe that the infamous Han Solo ended up in a life-or-death vendetta with the most notorious crime lord in the galaxy because somebody didn’t want to declare taxes on three thousand kilos of cilantro.

Every who pays a certain amount of attention to Star Wars knows this story already, but I was lucky enough to hear it recounted first-hand last year, so I’m gonna give it yet another retelling.

So The Husband and I were at Sci-fi Weekender (a British based annual Sci-fi and Fantasy convention) last year, and one of the guests that year was Kevin J Anderson, one of the very notable Star Wars Expanded Universe writers. During one of the events, a quiet little interview in a cafe on the event site, he fielded a question from an audience member about what it was like to write for a franchise like Star Wars which often had lots of cooks working on one broth, and he had the following to say (wording recounted as best as I can from memory):

“So in one of my stories, Han Solo, he, he travels to this asteroid planet called Kessel, which is where a lot of Spice comes from, these Spice Mines of Kessel, and I got to really describe the effects of this Spice, this terrible drug and the addiction and all this and before publication I get this call, I get this call from the lawyers, and they say “Kevin, you say in this story that Spice is a drug, you can’t say that, you can’t say that Spice is a drug”, and I say “What? What do you mean it’s not a drug, of course it’s a drug”, and they say “Han Solo used to smuggle Spice, and you cannot, let us be clear, you cannot imply that the Hero of Star Wars used to be a drug dealer”. And I just stood there, at a loss for words, and I eventually said “So what is it then?” and they said to me, very sternly, “It’s a food-additive”. Now, now obviously this is ridiculous, and I won’t back down, and they won’t back down, and none of us will back down, and the book is very close to getting pulled, which I don’t want because I worked hard on it and they don’t want because they already paid me the advance, and eventually, with this great air of superiority they say “OK Kevin, we’ll take this to the top. WE’LL TAKE THIS TO GEORGE”. And they go to all this trouble, this was a long while ago when such things were not so easy to arrange, they go to all this trouble to set up a conference call with all of them and me and with George Lucas and they say “George, Kevin is trying to say in his new book that Spice is a drug, it’s a food additive, tell him it’s not a drug, George”. And there’s this long silence on the other end of the line and eventually George says “It is a drug, though. It’s, it’s a drug, it’s a food-additive? What? Of course it a drug, it’s space heroin, what else would it be? What?” And that was then end of that.“

A group of curious preschoolers visits some beehives in Stockholm

Submit your cute pet here | Source: https://bit.ly/3qre7V4

fuck healthy female friendship i want toxic lesbian sex on every tv in the nation

People hating on Dynamite by Taio Cruz are lame nerds and I mean that genuinely. "It's a bad song" We get it, you didn't have friends in school. Now shut up and throw your hands up in the air sometime.

31st century burnouts

watching the Thing and like

it’s a mound of flesh, right? and it keeps forming eyes capable of looking at you. and the longer you look at it, the more openings appear. and at first the openings are full of what looks like legs, which move aside to reveal a flower, which unfurls to reveal a fleshy orifice studded with teeth moving towards you with great power and longing.

and it’s like, the central tragedy is that none of these men know each other on a level intimate enough to see through the imitation. when keith david turns and asks them how they’re supposed to tell if he’s an imitation or not, none of them can honestly say that they know him well enough to test how deeply it runs; he may as well be a stranger to him. when baby slut kurt russell mentions that the long johns could be anybody’s, it means that he isn’t able to tell whose they are by taking a good long whiff of the crotch and armpits. the secret weapon that could have successfully circumvented the thing was the time these men should have spent intimately exploring each other’s bodies. I have a job interview tomorrow. I need to get this out of my system now.

having by now gotten the job for which I was interviewing, I think where I was going with this was that, the constantly moving shifting expanding de-categorizing of the Thing is its own horror vehicle by virtue of the fact that every other body in that film very much wants to be its own discrete category, unknowable and untouchable to the other bodies around it. and the more you look at the Thing, the more there is of it; the more openings it has, the more eyes it will form for which to see you, the more limbs it will form for which to touch and know you. and these men do not want to touch and see and know each other. they do not want the joyous erotic sound of each other's stevie wonder albums to enter their ears. they do not want the joint that touches their lips to touch the lips of another man. the first and only horror of the Thing is its drive to touch and know and queer the coherent category that is the human body. I will be washing dishes in the back of a bakery while blasting mongolian throat singing if anyone has any further questions.

Plush Galaxy Bats // Kaleidoscope on Etsy

Indonesian fiber artist Mulyana has taken over the Fisher Museum of Art with colorful, hand-knitted and crocheted aquatic life. 

With the duality of life and death as a recurring theme, Mulyana crafts a tactile, mystical world in which fish, whales, and coral reefs coexist with sea monsters and slow states of decay. 

Read Renée Reizman’s review of Mulyana: Modular Utopia.

the fact he can cross himself and invoke the lord and it only hurts but garlic will kill him outright implies garlic is more powerful then christ

In Italy it is

Caroline Walker Bynum, The Female Body and Religious Practices in the Later Middle Ages

how to write convincing dialogue

did you know that show, not tell applies to dialogue, too? while dialogue can be used to further your narrative, it can also be used to showcase your characters. here's how:

-what is your character hiding? most people don't say things at face value. they hide what they mean within their words and tone, but in writing, you can't verbally hear the character's tone. ways to convey non-verbal tone include: contradictions between words and actions, context behind the words (ie. the scenario, character's actions and feelings), syntax (ie. fragments, repetition, awkward phrasing). also consider who the character is hiding information from: is it the reader? the characters? both?

-favorite words or phrases. does your character use a certain phrase or word a lot? do they often put their prepositions at the beginning or the end of the sentence? these are questions to ask when you're arranging the syntax of the dialogue. everyone has a specific way of talking. make sure you give each character a distinguishable voice.

-personality. this is how you can create a distinguishable voice. is your character confident? are they shy or hesitant? do they repeat the phases of others because they have nothing to add to the conversation? are they confrontational or do they beat around the bush? ask questions like these. if your character is confident, they may make bold statements and appear sure of themselves unlike shy characters who use words such as "maybe" or "should" or "think." to boil it down, think active wordage versus passive.

-observe others. don't look solely at television or other books. sit at your local coffee shop and listen in on conversations, then try and break it down. are they hiding anything? do they frequently use any words or phrases? how would you describe their personality? the better you get at breaking down conversations, the better you can create convincing ones, whether shallow, deep, or as a narrative device, because even if you use your dialogue to move your narrative along, it should still be compulsively convincing.

one way to tell if you've ticked all these boxes is if you can tell who is speaking without any tags.

happy writing! if you have any questions about how to implement any of these tips, our ask box is always open.

fun morning doodle based off a tweet on my feed this morning lol 

I don’t think y’all understand how long I stared at this photo in awe, like she literally looks otherworldly

Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to Russel Vernon Hunter, from Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters

Art by René Magritte

the "came back wrong" trope except like... they didnt. like this mad scientists wife died, and so he studied necromancy, brought her back, and she came back and it all worked. like she came back exactly the same as she was before with literally no difference. but the scientist guy is like "oh no... what have i done.... shes Different now!!!! she came back Wrong!!!!" and shes just like. chilling. reading a book. cooking dinner. shes just so so normal but in the guys mind hes like "oh shes soooo weird" but shes just normal

Peer reviewed tags from @somanyofthekids

NO its a JOKE and YOU DONT GET IT. ITS NOT THAT DEEP

While she was dead he put his memory of her on such a high pedestal that she could never live up to it alive

alternatively‚ she came back perfectly fine but he thinks she came back wrong‚ because the tragic reality is that he never actually knew his wife

im going INSANE thats MY POST.

It's your post but the journey to posting it changed it to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to you. Sorry dude.

todays yesterday