Saw this tweet and had to collect Ryan Gosling’s best PR quotes for Barbie

Hey uh brand new addition

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However, we may need to do some work to optimize our shiny new Cloudflare setup -- we'll keep you updated on any issues or downtime.

July 11, 2023 - 16:35 UTC

Ruby Bridges is 68. This is not ancient history. Not even close.

I know Ruby. She's a really nice person. The idea that they would try and write what she did as a girl out of history is shocking to me on so many levels, the simplest of which is just, but don't they know how lovely she is?

i had three fic ideas.  wrote one.  i still have three fic ideas.  this is not how math is supposed to work.

can this post please back up it’s too close to home

I had five ideas, I wrote two, now I have seven

Listen. They’re called “plot bunnies” for a reason, and it’s not just because they hop around all over your brain demanding attention.

🎶99 fanfic ideas on my blog

99 fanfic ideas~

Take one down, pass it around

137 fanfic ideas on my blog🎶

this post walked into my house and kicked in my ribs

For anyone who ever asked me where ideas come from. They creep in and breed when you’re making something else.

Okay, let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a prose translation of the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was wonderfully charming and lyrical and perfect for use in a high school, and so a clever English teacher (as one did in the 70s) made a scan of the book for her students, saved it as a pdf, and printed copies off for her students every year. In true teacher tradition, she shared the file with her colleagues, and so for many years the students of the high school all studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the same (very badly scanned) version of this wonderful prose translation.

In time, a new teacher became head of the English Department, and while he agreed that the prose translation was very wonderful he felt that the quality of the scan was much less so. Also in true teacher tradition, he then spent hours typing up the scan into a word processor, with a few typos here and there and a few places where he was genuinely just guessing wildly at what the scan actually said. This completed word document was much cleaner and easier for the students to read, and so of course he shared it with his colleagues, including his very new wide-eyed faculty member who was teaching British Literature for the first time (this was me).

As teachers sometimes do, he moved on for greener (ie, better paying) pastures, leaving behind the word document, but not the original pdf scan. This of course meant that as I was attempting to verify whether a weird word was a typo or a genuine artifact of the original translation, I had no other version to compare it to. Being a good card-holding gen zillenial I of course turned to google, making good use of the super secret plagiarism-checking teacher technique “Quotation Marks”, with an astonishing result:

By which I mean literally one result.

For my purposes, this was precisely what I needed: a very clean and crisp scan that allowed me to make corrections to my typed edition: a happily ever after, amen.

But beware, for deep within my soul a terrible Monster was stirring. Bane of procrastinators everywhere, my Curiosity had found a likely looking rabbit hole. See, this wonderfully clear and crisp scan was lacking in two rather important pieces of identifying information: the title of the book from which the scan was taken, and the name of the translator. The only identifying features were the section title “Precursors” (and no, that is not the title of the book, believe me I looked) and this little leaf-like motif by the page numbers:

(Remember the leaf. This will be important later.)

We shall not dwell at length on the hours of internet research that ensued—how the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, grading abandoned in shadows half-lit by the the blue glow of the computer screen—how google search after search racked up, until an email warning of “unusual activity on your account” flashed into momentary existence before being consigned immediately and with some prejudice to the digital void—how one third of the way through a “comprehensive but not exhaustive” list of Sir Gawain translators despair crept in until I was left in utter darkness, screen black and eyes staring dully at the wall.

Above all, let us not admit to the fact that such an afternoon occurred not once, not twice, but three times.

Suffice to say, many hours had been spent in fruitless pursuit before a new thought crept in: if this book was so mysterious, so obscure as to defeat the modern search engine, perhaps the answer lay not in the technologies of today, but the wisdom of the past. Fingers trembling, I pulled up the last blast email that had been sent to current and former faculty and staff, and began to compose an email to the timeless and indomitable woman who had taught English to me when I was a student, and who had, after nearly fifty years, retired from teaching just before I returned to my alma mater.

After staring at the email for approximately five or so minutes, I winced, pressed send, and let my plea sail out into the void. I cannot adequately describe for you the instinctive reverence I possess towards this teacher; suffice to say that Ms English was and is a woman of remarkable character, as much a legend as an institution as a woman of flesh and blood whose enduring influence inspired countless students. There is not a student taught by Ms. English who does not have a story to tell about her, and her decline in her last years of teaching and eventual retirement in the face of COVID was the end of an era. She still remembers me, and every couple months one of her contemporaries and dear friends who still works as a guidance counsellor stops me in the hall to tell me that Ms. English says hello and that she is thrilled that I am teaching here—thrilled that I am teaching honors students—thrilled that I am now teaching the AP students. “Tell her I said hello back,” I always say, and smile.

Ms. English is a legend, and one does not expect legends to respond to you immediately. Who knows when a woman of her generation would next think to check her email? Who knows if she would remember?

The day after I sent the email I got this response:

My friends, I was shaken. I was stunned. Imagine asking God a question and he turns to you and says, “Hold on one moment, let me check with my predecessor.”

The idea that even Ms. English had inherited this mysterious translation had never even occurred to me as a possibility, not when Ms. English had been a faculty member since the early days of the school. How wonderful, I thought to myself. What a great thing, that this translation is so obscure and mysterious that it defeats even Ms. English.

A few days later, Ms. English emailed me again:

(I had, in fact searched through both the English office and the Annex—a dark, weirdly shaped concrete storage area containing a great deal of dust and many aging copies of various books—a few days prior. I had no luck, sadly.)

At last, though, I had a title and a description! I returned to my internet search, only to find to my dismay that there was no book that exactly matched the title. I found THE BRITISH TRADITION: POETRY, PROSE, AND DRAMA (which was not black and the table of contents I found did not include Sir Gawain) and THE ENGLISH TRADITION, a super early edition of the Prentice Hall textbooks we use today, which did have a black cover but there were absolutely zero images I could find of the table of contents or the interior and so I had no way of determining if it was the correct book short of laying out an unfortunate amount of cold hard cash for a potential dead end.

So I sighed, and relinquished my dreams of solving the mystery. Perhaps someday 30 years from now, I thought, I’ll be wandering through one of those mysterious bookshops filled with out of print books and I’ll pick up a book and there will be the translation, found out last!

So I sighed, and told the whole story to my colleagues for a laugh. I sent screenshots of Ms. English’s emails to my siblings who were also taught by her. I told the story to my Dad over dinner as my Great Adventure of the Week.

…my friends. I come by my rabbit-hole curiosity honestly, but my Dad is of a different generation of computer literacy and knows a few Deep Secrets that I have never learned. He asked me the title that Ms. English gave me, pulled up some mysterious catalogue site, and within ten minutes found a title card. There are apparently two copies available in libraries worldwide, one in Philadelphia and the other in British Columbia. I said, “sure, Dad,” and went upstairs. He texted me a link. Rolling my eyes, I opened it and looked at the description.

Huh, I thought. Four volumes, just like Ms. English said. I wonder…

Armed with a slightly different title and a publisher, I looked up “The English Tradition: Fiction macmillan” and the first entry is an eBay sale that had picture of the interior and LO AND BEHOLD:

THE LEAF. LOOK AT THE LEAF.

My dad found it! He found the book!!

Except for one teensy tiny problem which is that the cover of the book is uh a very bright green and not at all black like Ms. English said. Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity, because The English Tradition: Poetry does have a black cover, although it is the fiction volume which contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

And so having found the book at last, I have decided to purchase it for the sum of $8, that ever after the origins of this translation may once more be known.

In this year of 2022 this adventure took place, as this post bears witness, the end, amen.

fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d

I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty

I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.

Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials--it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.

When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.

Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I'd hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.

See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he'd send in response to letters from very young citizens...and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.

So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:

Loving this post, not least because it reminded me of this email and attachment that my kid's 5th grade teacher sent us last November.

Context: we are Canadian, our provincial government is currently conservative and the CUPE strike was for teachers and support staff at an adjacent school board that didn't affect my kid's school but was talked about with them in the current events/being active in your community sense.

This is the email I opened:

and this was the attachment:

I haven't thought about this for months, so thank you for inadvertently reminding me it existed so I could lose my shit laughing about it all over again!

i saw a really cool butterfly expert man on PBS and was so in awe of him and his butterfly knowledge i tracked down the episode online to see how to spell his name and found his twitter and followed him, only for the next day to awaken to him having read not only my webcomic, but also my livetweets saying how i wanted to marry the butterfly man. he said he was flattered. anyway the moral of the story is please don’t underestimate how far down your twitter a bored entomologist will scroll, and also the internet was a mistake.

Note how she states that it was more difficult to get permits to do this shit than actually coordinate the drones.

Companies will want to do more of this, but environmental/wildlife laws make it difficult. So, they'll lobby to weaken them. Be vigilant. This woman accidentally said the quiet part loud. They won't let that happen again - this is our only warning

Found on twitter, going to adopt this now

Writer friends, tell me how many WIPs and how many UFOs you have. I have 2 WIPs and [redacted] UFOs (jk it’s around 16 across my three main fandoms)

going one step further... another yarn craft term that writers should put into use is frogging. If you don’t like the project, but the yarn is good, you can frog it (take it apart) and reuse it for another project.

I think a lot of writers don’t give themselves credit for how many of their ufos have actually been frogged, ie that particular project has been abandoned, but the concept, characters, or setting has been taken and reused on a new project.

Almost all of my abandoned fanfics have been frogged. You’ll find the pieces of them in my original work

my favourite thing about frogging and why it’s called that is because you… rip it rip it (ribbit ribbit)

But! yes! I wholeheartedly concur. I keep “line graveyards” for works that I keep frogging and they wind up being so useful later.

I’ve always heard you call it frogging because when you realize it’s necessary you say “oh, FROG it.”

Anyway as a crocheter—or as we sometimes jokingly call ourselves, a hooker—I think fic writers should also get comfortable with the idea of “the stash.”

See, sometimes you spot a yarn, and it’s PERFECT. Perfect for what? ……stop asking questions, it’s perfect. So you buy it, and you take it home. Maybe you never make it into anything but a ball, but you look at it sometimes and get ideas, and you make those. Or you look at it when you’re working on something else and it inspires you. That’s your stash. There’s literally a joke “she who dies with the most yarn wins” about having a stash.

So take pictures you think are fantastic. Stash ‘em. Prompt lists you like? Stash ‘em. A book you read that was kind of lackluster but had one line that punched your gut and stole your heart, soul, and breath away? Type that line in a document, or write it in a paper file if you like those, and stash it.

Build your stash.

They who die with the most plot bunnies win.

Hey. Gentiles. Listen up for a sec.

When September and October are nearing and you’re planning an event: google “Rosh Hashanah *year*” and *Yom Kippur *year*” and then, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t plan your event on those days. In fact, don’t plan any events starting sundown the night before. Those are the three most important days of the Jewish calendar, and, once again, I cannot stress enough how much this little bit of forethought and kindness will make every Jew you know cry tears of joy.

in 2023, the night before Rosh Hashanah is Thursday evening, September 14.

Rosh Hashanah ends Sunday evening, September 17.

calendar date

in 2023, the night before Yom Kippur is Saturday evening, September 23.

Yom Kippur ends Monday evening, September 25.

calendar date

The Enchantress in Barbie Fairytopia is literally useless istg

Like, during the first movie she's out of commission because Laverna used her love for her against her. Kind of a dumb mistake tbh, like, she just drank whatever she gave her, but at least I get that she genuinely wanted to believe she could reconcile with her sister, and I can't really find it in myself to fault her too much for that

During the second movie I feel like it was mostly Elina being dumb for not alerting anyone and dealing with it herself, so like, the Enchantress didn't know about the situation (still weird that Azura seemed to know about it, actually), and even if she did, by the point she would've arrived it probably would have been too late

But during the third movie she's literally RIGHT THERE next to Laverna and she just does NOTHING, like, she immediately caves to her demands as if she doesn't know that Laverna just straight up doesn't hold up her end of deals. Literally the same sort of hostage situation happened in Mermaidia with Max (who was operating under Laverna's orders) and it ended the exact same way, like??? She just doesn't seem bothered whatsoever at any point, and I feel like maybe you're supposed to read it as her trusting Elina and the other apprentices or whatever but... Like, fucking c'mon, dude! The sensible thing would've been to blast her and be done with it until she returns again in a week!!

Barbie Girls: Nori and Elina

side note! Noriko is deaf, she has a cochlear implant but doesn’t wear it often because she’s always in the water or in a boat, she has just finished signing “courage” to Elina here 

you know what gets me?

In Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia there is a point where Bibble eats a berry that makes him sing opera. The song that he is singing is the Queen of the Night Aria from The Magic Flute. (Der Hölle Rache, if you want to get up my ass. Or Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen if you really want to be a stickler.) It is one of the most recognizable arias in existence so it does not surprise me that it was used.

What gets me is that the Fungus start having this big emotional reaction to the singing. That's also not the part I have an issue with. My issue stems from the fact that they are leaning on each other saying that they love each other and stuff while this is being sung and it's just...my guy...that song is about a mother (the Queen of the night) telling her daughter to kill this kind man that is the Queen's rival. (not gonna go into who Sarastro is. it's a long opera.) If her daughter does not do it then she will curse and disown her.

This is like the mother of rage songs and y'all are reacting like you are Tamino seeing Pamina for the first time!

fairies created from ai, using my face

Come on Barbie lets go party Support me on Patreon

#1262: “Re-watching Fairytopia, I noticed that Elina almost always seemed to have her arms slightly parted outward when she walked. Because of this I came up with a headcanon that a fairy’s body needed the weight of their wings on their back to properly balance themselves. Because of this, Elina was forced to always have her arms spread out as she walked, to compensate the lack of wing weight.”

Wait i noticed this last time I watched too! Really interesting theory!

Wait i noticed this

last time I watched too! Really

interesting theory!

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Probablemente

Elina es un hada y para ella cuenta como discapacidad el no tener alas. Si bien pudo adaptarse a su entorno en la Pradera, su cuerpo debió aprender a equilibrarse de manera diferente a las otras hadas.

(Eso y que la Emperatriz debió haber preguntado antes de darle el collar a Elina en lugar de forzar un par de alas)

There are many benefits to being Barbie's cousin

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE CONTEXT HERE

So for those who don't know some merch sources establish Barbie's full name is Barbara Rogers. And Shaggy's full name is Norville Rogers. So some people started to joke some years ago they could be related and we wouldn't know, and little by little the joke turned into an AU or a headcanon for some people

I was today years old when I learned that Barbie has a full name

According to Mattel it's Barbara Millicent Roberts (not Rogers)

But regardless, they could still be cousins just with different last names

(for example, I don't share a last name with any of my cousins because both of my parents had sisters who subsequently took on their husbands' last names)

But regardless, they

could still be cousins just with

different last names

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

even with those four numbers there are countless possible combinations good luck with figuring out which one is the right one you punk

*straightens calculator*

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

n!/(n-4)! possible orders. As ‘n’ is 4 (number of digits available). 4!/0! which becomes 4x3x2x1/1 which simplifies to 24. That means that there are 24 possible combinations of codes. This would take you about two or three minutes to input all possible codes.

Unless an alarm goes off if you don’t get it right in 3 tries

*straightens calculator again*

Kick the fucking door in

well ‘technically’ the code is most likley 1970. statistically, a majority of people, when told to choose a 4 digit code will choose their birth year. and this key pad is obviously a few years old to put it nicely, thats most likley it. 

some sherlock holmes shit just went down over here

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

Sherlock out.

woah.

it got better

and this is why the sherlock fandom could either rule the world or end it….

Close, but not quite, I think. People will almost always choose a number they can remember. What’s memorable about 0791? Try 0719 - a birthday, 19th of July. That is more likely.

Those deductions are great and all, but unnecessary.

The light is green.

The door is already open.

And that’s why we have a John Watson.

This is “top 10 favorite posts” level.

Omg, it’s actually on my dash! This post is like a fossil!

Idk if I’ve rebloged this before, but I’ll reblog this legend again

Smithsonian? I’ve found the quintessential Tumblr and Sherlock fandom post. Yes. I would consider it definitive.

Ahh it’s back.

Legend of a post. 10/10 recommend reblogging.

this post is on my dash I feel HONORED

THE POST OF LEGENDS HAS RESURFACED ON MY DASH

I’VE ONLY EVER SEEN THIS IN SCREENSHOTS OMG

On your dash? I dig for gold like this,,, by looking at my mutual pages.

I’ve only seen this on Pinterest!

*gasp* THE SACRED TEXTS!

:O

THIS IS A LEGENDARY POST I HAVE BEEN GRACED BY IT’S APPEARANCE!!!

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

yesssss

Why did Tumblr stop doing stuff like this, it’s genuinely fascinating, and cute that we include our favorite media in things we do

Well. Since you asked. I was on tumblr as this post was being built in 2013. The height of superwholock. Which has, since then, been declared peak cringe. So people picked new fandoms to openly love in earnest. Which were also eventually declared cringe. Eventually the youth decided to cut out the middleman, and declared loving anything in earnest to be fully cringe. So it has been a really long time since the day to day users of tumblr have let any fandom create anything nearing the cultural phenomenon that was superwholock. And it is exactly those cultural phenomena that are needed to create posts like this.

So. What happened? Cringe culture happened.

Try and imagine what would happen if this post wasn’t the “sacred texts” only ever seen in screen shots and in pinterest. Try and imagine any current pop culture detective media fandom creating this post today. They’d be slaughtered for being cringe by the time (in this case) Sherlock was mentined.

But because this post is 10 years old and completely broke containment, it’s celebrated when it graces our dashes.

I blazed a small fandom event announcement.  Because I was genuinely excited to be part of a Big Bang for a wonderful movie.  One of the first responses I got was “Why would you blaze this?” Because of genuine excitement. Because I wanted to celebrate the friends I’d met in the fandom To spread joy to people who might also like the content but hadn’t seen it yet.   The fact that that was genuinely not realized made me sad.  I love thing, I celebrate thing.   I’m too old for cringe.  Cringe is dead.  Love what you love.  Enjoy the small things in life, it’s too short to do otherwise.

CRINGE CULTURE DIED AND WE KILLED IT.

CRINGE CULTURE DIED AND

WE KILLED IT.SPREAD THE LOVE FOR

YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Brawl Buddies

So this is just a fun one

When Danny becomes the ghost king at 18 other ghost kinda stop fighting him seriously. They like him as king and so while they will have a friendly spat with him every now and then no one really fights him anymore.

And Danny finds this strangely frustrating!!

It’s a ghost’s nature to fight!! Now he not only has to deal with everything that involves being king but he can’t get a good fight for the death of him!!

This frustration leads him to taking a ‘vacation’ in Gotham. Hoping to find at least one super-powerful person he can have a good show down with.

Turns out he didn’t have to look far as the first time he meet his new neighbour the guy immediately started throwing hands. This lead to a brawl that drifted threw both of their apartments, all the floors of their building, including the roof and out onto the street. Danny isn’t even mad when the guy calms down, stops fighting and starts apologising for randomly attacking him. He just shrugs of the apology and complements the guy on his strength and gushes on about how fun that was!! And how that was the best fight he’s had in years!! And if the guy even wants to throw down again they definitely should.

Jason meanwhile is confused as fuck by his new neighbour. He took one look at the guy and immediately flew into level 11 pit rage and somehow this guy fucking survived that?! Plus invited him to fight again????

At first he was just gonna ignore his weird neighbour and do his best to avoid him but a few days later he noticed that the pit was actually silent after the fight. Not just quite like it gets some times but fully silent for days. It wasn’t until it started to come back up did he noticed it was gone.

Deciding to get some answers he knocks on the weird guys door but as soon as he opens it Jason just can’t help but start swinging. After the fight he’s to exhausted to ask the guy questions and in the days following he just rides the high of a pit free life.

Over time he just stops questions it. It kinda just becomes routine. He stops avoiding Danny, he learnt his name after the 4th brawl, but never really talks to him. They just kinda exchange pleasantries when they pass each other in the hall most times. Then when the pit starts acting up again he goes over to Danny’s and the two of them duke it out.

Several months later Dick comes over for a surprise visit only to find his brother trying to kill some random guy??? Then when he did the rational thing and got in between them to stop the fight both of them turned and started yelling at him!!!!! Like he was the bad guy!!!! Then they just went back to fighting!!!!

Then when Jason’s eyes finally stopped glowing the two just started acting like best buds?????? Like Jason did not just throw this guy out a 2nd story window?????? Like the guy didn’t just beat Jason with a 2x4 he found in the alley?????????

What is going on????????

I really hate that pixel art is becoming associated with NFTs, pixel art rules

Maybe I should just make the opposite of an NFT, like I dunno, just a cute pixel art goblin anyone can right click+save for free and keep it forever and now it's theirs

You can put a hat on it too if you like

I’m totally on board. I’d like to propose a name for him: Nifty the Goblin. 

I love it, I'll try to whip something up when I'm feeling inspired