it sure has been a million years since i’ve been on tumblr huh. can’t guarantee i’ll be posting again frequently or at all but uh. hi folks!!

Kisses for She-Ra (x, x, x)

u cant tell me adora didnt give catra ear scratches

twitter | ig

Catra: Prince of the Gays 🗣

nothing really bad can happen as long we have each other.

if the authors didnt want me to sympathize with the evil woman then why did they make her so hot?

Help me find a favorite OB fic?

Hi folks!

I was hoping for some help from folks in the Orphan Black fandom, especially those of you who read fanfiction on Archive of Our Own.

I’ve been looking for one of my favorite fics of all time, and found that it’s no longer on Ao3. Here’s all the info I could find about it:

A Question of Upbringing (AU)

by oddgirlout

Summary: Delphine Cormier is a beloved French teacher at a posh New England boarding school whose life largely consists of teaching, coaching fencing, and following the rules.  An email from Headmaster Rachel Duncan sends her into a tailspin as she is assigned to mentor creative writing teacher Cosima Niehaus, a wildly unprofessional new staff member who also happens to be Rachel's niece.  As Delphine spends more time with her absurd new charge she finds herself opening up and sharing more than she ever has before; but some secrets are difficult to share while others are lost in translation.

I haven’t had any luck finding/contacting the author, so I figured I would ask folks on here.

1) If the fic was pulled from the site to be published, I would love to know what it’s called and where I can find it so I can buy the story. If somebody could point me in the right direction, that would be great!

2) If not, and if somebody has a copy of it (PDF, EPUB, any format), please let me know! If you’re willing to send me a copy I would really appreciate it. I’d be happy to do a drawing commission or something in return.

I know this is kind of an odd post and question, but the story is one of my absolute favorites and something that really inspired me as a writer. If nobody has it or is able to share it, no worries!

But feel free to send me a message if you are able to share the story or point me towards it! Thanks, all! :)

thats how they get you. by being sneaky bastards.

Ser Obvious! Please tell us why knights with guns is such a surprisingly good combination to behold!

Knights with guns is a real historical thing and, well, if you want a serious answer it’s probably because actual Medieval war history is not well-known or well-represented in pop-culture. 

That’s one of the reasons why I find real Medieval arms and armor so cool, especially when placed in a fantasy setting. It’s because most writers of fantasy settings are copying what the previous generations of writers described, and the previous generation was describing what they saw from the generation before them, and none of them were doing any research, resulting in a long line of distorted and warped representations of “Medieval” warfare. Because of this, when a writer or artist actually does the research, it improves the coolness factor not only because you know that more work was put into the piece of media you’re experiencing, but also because that historically accurate stuff you’re seeing is new. Since it’s rare to see historically accurate arms and armor in fiction, the historically accurate arms and armor make the work feel creative and original compared to its peers, even though technically it’s just copying something that really exists in a museum somewhere. 

And knights with guns is a pretty extreme example of that. It’s one thing to have historically accurate 15th century armor in your fiction 

but pop culture teaches us that the handheld gun is a very recent thing that, once invented, brought about the end of the knight in shining armor because bullets can pierce plate armor and that’s why U.S. Marines aren’t out there in 60-pound suits of steel, but history and technology arn’t ever that straightforward. People don’t immediately give some traditional thing up just because a new invention has made it useless(look at how many armies still marched slowly in formation during WWI despite the spread of machinegun and mortar technology), and even if people did immediately give up the old ways as soon as something new came along, plate armor sticking around despite the popularization of handheld gun technology is not even an example of that. If you want to put guns in your story, don’t think that it automatically removes plate armor because plate armor is now useless(hell, most writers keep every character in full plate armor even though they write swords cutting straight through it, effectively making it useless extra weight in the world of their story.).

Plate armor doesn’t become useless just because a bullet can pierce it. If that were true, it would have been useless the same decade it was invented(the mid-14th century), because at that time, English longbow arrows and crossbow bolts were said to be piercing it too, or at least hitting with such force that it badly concussed the wearer inside the armor. But that hardly makes armor useless. Arrows, crossbow bolts, spears, etc. were piercing chainmaille before plate armor was invented and they still wore that. 

Here is a metaphor:

Your objective is to cross a rainy parking lot without getting wet, and you have the option of taking or leaving your umbrella. Thinking that plate armor disappears as soon as guns are introduced to the setting is like saying that the umbrella is useless because it won’t protect you from a firehose. When you’re standing twenty feet from an English longbowman who has practiced so rigorously for twenty years that his left arm is visibly deformed, NOTHING can protect you, 

but when you’re two-hundred yards away being pelted by arrows falling from the sky at an angle, you want as much armor coverage as you can get, even if it wouldn’t protect you from a canon. Even just a really thick shirt is better than nothing in that case, because even that could block a few arrows, or at least stop them from going into your body as deep as they would otherwise. 

You can’t just cut through plate armor with a sword either. It’s too solid and swords are too light. That doesn’t mean an unarmored man can’t kill an armored man with a sword–he still can if he gets it threw the viewport or caves the helmet in with the butt of the sword–but it’s a hell of a lot harder for him to win than his opponent because the targets he has to hit on his opponent’s body are a lot smaller; and that’s what armor is all about: It will never make you completely invulnerable, but it makes your weak point a whole lot smaller than your opponent’s. For virtually any weapon, an unarmored man’s whole body is a weak point. 

And even then, the evidence is in favor of the fact that plate armor wasn’t even just one of those things that stuck around because of tradition after guns became widespread. In fact, they were using handheld guns for as long as they were using plate armor. 

(A handheld gun from the 14th century.)

Until pretty recently in the lifespan of guns as a technology, plate armor could stop bullets. Guns didn’t bring an end to plate armor because they were just too powerful for it, it was because rulers realized that guns were just so much easier and cheaper to use than fully-armored knights. You could train someone to use a gun faster than you could train someone to use a bow, and for a whole lot less money. A wagonload of gold could buy you one fully-armored horseman, or one-thousand lightly-armored handgunners. Even though the knight could probably 1v1 all of them in a row, he can’t stand up to a whole army at one time(oversimplified but you get the point). Thus, heavy armor gradually gave-way to large formations of musketmen firing in volleys. 

But that still means there was a several-century period of time were plate armor and guns were frequently found on the same battlefield. 

In conclusion: Knights holding guns is cool not only because you’re combining two things together that are already cool on their own, but also because in real life knights used guns, yet you never see it in movies or video games because nobody does any research, so in the rare cases when you do see it it’s something new and fresh and original. 

Dungeons and Dragons: A new generation.

i’m starting to remember how music literally saved my life in college. i never should have stopped playing

Keep reading

can never relax at work or at home and i cant talk about it or stop thinking about it and i feel like my brain is about to snap

just wanna like...bang my head against the wall until i fall asleep

Some real life whales in the style of Dishonored Whales!

 Humpback Whale

 Narwhal

 Bowhead Whale

 Killer Whale

 Sperm Whale

@sardonicsorcerer

I found a TTS voice that was perfect for an audio version of this post.

“I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car. Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters. Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?” Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.””

— Isaac Asimov