jssangel

[jssangel]

Surprise!

[jssangel]

Why are agriculture classes the first time I've learned extremely basic info about nutrition and how digestion works. Why isn't this stuff in health textbooks or any easily accessible resource about healthy eating.

[jssangel]

Genius.

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves three more, and two of those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of the two is young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

[jssangel]

Nailed it

[jssangel]

But what if you’re dealing in ancient copper?

good times

[jssangel]

I know I’ve featured this scene on the Nazi Punch of the Day, but this version seemed particularly timely given the ongoing attacks on education.

[jssangel]

@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.

[jssangel]

Are you sure you counted the fish correctly?

Math is really tiring, im so glad i finally get to relax and do some knitting and crochet and i oh god oh my what the fuck

[jssangel]

Believe in people and they will often live up to your belief.

Reread Warrior's Apprentice for the first time in ages, fresh off of Shards of Honor and Barrayar, and see parallels between Miles-Arde and Cordelia-Bothari.

When Cordelia is a prisoner of war about to be tortured, she projects onto Bothari as a form of control over the situation, repeating There are two victims in this room, to herself mentally, and telling Bothari out loud, "I believe that the tormented are very close to God. I'm sorry, Sergeant."

Which is when he recognizes her, and is able to mentally supplant Aral Vorkosigan's Rules For Prisoners over Ges Vorrutyer's rules, first refusing to hurt her, and then stopping Ges from doing so.

Bothari's actions in that moment could theoretically happen even if Cordelia said nothing, if he simply looked at her face and Aral's rules kicked in. And Piotr, at Aral's request, making him a Vorkosigan armsman puts him in place plot-wise to do things.

But Cordelia reaching out to him, speaking, empathizing, is what forms the connection between them, leading to Bothari picking Cordelia as His Person To Make Rules. Their senses of identity & personal destinies are intertwined after that.

Almost two decades later, we get Miles & Arde. Miles is a teenager with a lot of cultural & personal baggage that make flunking out of the Imperial Military Academy entrance exams The End Of The World. He's wrapped his entire identity up in getting in & excelling.

When Miles fails the exam, when that path is barred to him, he has no back-up plan. Nothing. He refuses to consider anything. Full on depression spiral, worsened by his grandfather dying. The space adventure starts because Miles wants to help & impress Elena, but if they'd done that a couple years earlier he wouldn't have shattered his imagined future yet, and probably wouldn't have latched onto Arde.

Arde Mayhew is a Jump Ship Pilot. He has implants in his brain to do this work, he & other jump pilots can never truly describe their experiences to non-pilots. His class of ship is being decommissioned, his ship just got sold to a scrapper, he's medically ineligible for updated implants. We meet him holed up in the decommissioned ship refusing to come out, with no plan, just despair.

Miles feels like his entire world is over. Arde's actually is.

Miles empathizes. Miles projects. Miles cannot change the universe to get back his dream, but he can throw himself into finding a solution for Arde. He shoves himself into the situation, digging himself a deeper & deeper hole, never truly considering backing out until they are all literally in an active war zone multiple wormhole jumps away from home.

And one of the first things he does, to protect Arde from arrest, is swear him in as an armsman.

Arde, for his part, is befuddled by Miles' involvement, but latches on too. Miles gives him the chance to keep his calling, and Arde, in turn, risks that very calling ramming his ship into a hostile vessel to protect Miles. During the course of the book, Arde is slowly reshaping his identity from solely a jump pilot to jump pilot & Miles' Armsman.

Our original misfit Vorkosigan armsman is right there judging both of them for it. Arde doesn't understand Barrayar at all. Bothari is extremely pissed about the entire situation; swearing in outsider Arde is only eclipsed by Miles swearing in military deserter Baz Jesek. Bothari eventually comes around on Arde, thanks to the ship-ramming and Arde's reasoning for it, but never on Baz.

Naismiths: insane levels of projection, insane levels of resulting loyalty.

[jssangel]

I wonder what he said.

Also. Middle aged.

i think a lot of people forget that anthony mackie is an almost 50 year old black man from the south, who still lives in the south and spends a lot of his time with other southern black men his age.

i’m not saying he should be praised for his bare minimum views, but when he speaks on topics like gender norms, sexuality, and race he’s not going to speak like a 21 year old women’s and gender studies major.

the whole “he could have worded it better” crowd never were and are never going to be anthony mackie fans and that’s fine. it’s totally understandable to not want to hear what you would consider to be “dog whistles” or triggering rhetoric. but to constantly be like, “ah he’s disappointing me” is sort of insane because i’m not sure what else you expected from him??

maybe it’s just bc i actually speak to southern middle aged black men on a regular basis, but i really can’t imagine him speaking on these topics in any other manner

[jssangel]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[jssangel]

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.

[jssangel]

[jssangel]

Thinking about the Leverage crew in the Good Place afterlife.

Accountants would cry trying to tally their points. They’ve encountered people who did bad things for good reasons before, but the scale the Leverage team operated on is new. The personal improvement of all the Leverage crew over the course of their life is huge, but the number of people they’ve hurt (the system doesn’t allow for “but they deserved it”; and it’s really hard to measure “they would have hurt more people if we hadn’t stopped them”, although the accountants still have to try to factor it in).

Glenn and some friends would lobby for Nate to be made an honorary demon because they want his help designing tests. Also, he’s really hard to test because he keeps figuring it out.

Vicky would keep sending Sophie through the same test–meeting a promising new thief–and insist the goal was for Sophie not to train the thief but instead discourage them from pursuing a life of crime, but really Vicky is just taking notes on all of Sophie’s acting tips.

Shawn puts bad people in a situation to do bad things and Eliot close enough to see. Either the bad people won’t do bad things and thus improve, Eliot will find a way to stop them without beating them up and thus improve, or Eliot will beat them up. Shawn calls it “economical and enjoyable!”

They create a neighborhood where Hardison has opportunities to fix a corrupt government or business, but he keeps using his normal methods, and “refusing to work with corrupt and unethical people on their terms” and “stops bad people from hurting innocents” count as positive points even as his methods rack up the negative points. He also hacks the Bad Place. Changing your own score is negative points. Changing other people’s scores to spare them suffering is positive.

Parker’s case keeps getting handed to different architects. The architects keep succumbing to the temptation to try and build a security system she can’t beat rather than teach her not to steal.

At some point, Nate has figured out he’s in a simulation and refused to cooperate unless he speaks to whoever is in charge (“You need my help to keep this from happening again”), Sophie has earned Vicky’s trust and convinced Vicky to show off her other work, Eliot has learned to tell the demons and real people and simulations apart and followed a demon to the exit, Hardison has hacked his way out, and Parker found an air vent that leads out of the testing room, and the five meet up again, ready to break out of the Bad Place.

Shawn develops empathy for Chidi’s stomach aches.

[jssangel]

[jssangel]

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Tumblr staff: ten options is enough for polls, right? No one needs more than that on a regular basis. The average tumblr user: Hey guys which element of the periodic table do you think is the most fuckable?

[jssangel]

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.