elithien:

Winter Soldier redesign. 

This one’s for @chujo-hime because she really went out of her way to give me words of comfort when I was seriously down in regards to my art and myself as an artist. You really got me back on my feet even when you didn’t need to uwu *showers James on u as a thank u*

ademska:

reliand:

sergeantjerkbarnes:

simplydalektable:

hannahrhen:

sergeantjerkbarnes:

so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing

and the results were:

image

it’s all fanfiction

which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic

idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick

i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool

Ha! Love it!

One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. ❤

To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.

I think different fic communities develop different phrases too! You can (usually) date a mid 00s lj fic (or someone who came of age in that style) by the way questions are posed and answered in the narration, e.g. “And Patrick? Is not okay with this.” and by the way sex scenes are peppered with “and, yeah.” I remember one Frerard fic that did this so much that it became grating, but overall I loved the lj style because it sounded so much like how real people talk.

Another classic phrase: wondering how far down the _ goes. I’ve seen it mostly with freckles, but also with scars, tattoos, and on one memorable occasion, body glitter at a club. Often paired with the realization during sexy times that “yeah, the __ went all they way down.” I’ve seen this SO much in fic and never anywhere else

whoa, i remember reading lj fics with all of those phrases! i also remember a similar thing in teen wolf fics in particular – they often say “and derek was covered in dirt, which. fantastic.” like using “which” as a sentence-ender or at least like sprinkling it throughout the story in ways published books just don’t.

LINGUISTICS!!!! COMMUNITIES CREATING PHRASES AND SLANG AND SHAPING LANGUAGE IN NEW WAYS!!!!!!!

I love this. Though I don’t think of myself as fantastic writer, by any means, I know the way I write was shaped more by fanfiction and than actual novels. 

I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.

The coherency isn’t lost, it just marries itself to the reader in a different way. A way that shapes that reader/writer and I find that so beautiful. 

FASCINATING

and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?

we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?

QUESTIONS!

shocktease:

my-name-is-long:

kaayytiee:

my-name-is-long:

this is why the electoral college fucking sucks.

Without the electoral college, the determining factor of the elections would be California, Chicago and New York just because they have more people concentrated in one area. Our system is the best of the best and the people spoke. I’m hurt as well as most of America but the best thing we can do is keep an open mind, accept, and move on.

So what? Why does it matter if the majority of votes come from one area? If most of the people in the country want one person to be president, then that person should be president. Why should it matter where they’re from?

And that’s not even the reason the college was made in the first place. It was made for 2 reasons.
1. The founding fathers didn’t trust the citizens. They thought the citizens were too uneducated to make a good choice.
And 2. It’s easier to count the votes of a small group of people all in one place rather than millions across the country when there’s no cars or internet.

In today’s age, neither of those reasons are valid anymore. There is no good reason for the electoral college to exist. If the majority of people want someone as president, that person should be president.

Here is why the electoral college sucks:

Without the electoral college, every single vote would count exactly the same.  No vote anywhere in the country would be worth more than any other vote.  Now you may ask, but Raymond, isn’t it like this already?

NO.  IT FUCKING IS NOT.

Take Wyoming for example.  Wyoming has a population of 584,000 people.  They also have 3 electoral college votes. This means that each 194,667 votes is worth one electoral college vote in Wyoming.  Now let’s look at California.  California has a population of 38.8 million people and 55 electoral college votes.  This means that it takes 705,455 votes for each electoral college vote.  

A VOTE IN WYOMING IS WORTH 3.5X MORE THAN A VOTE IN CALIFORNIA.

It literally takes 3.5 times more votes to get 1 electoral vote in California than it does in Wyoming.  How tf is that fair?

Don’t come in here and tell me how it’s the best system and without it the only determining factor would be certain cities.  How does that even make sense?  Without it, a vote in New York City is worth the exact same amount as a vote in any other city, or town, regardless of population.  I personally would like my vote to count for exactly the same as anyone else.  My vote shouldn’t count as less because I live in a more densely populated city.

I’d also like to point out that getting rid of the electoral college would probably increase voter turnout and could help people feel less disenfranchised by the system.

I vote blue, but I live in a red state. So red that I thought political ads were a thing we learned about in history class that didn’t exist anymore, because I had never seen one until I left the state for college. I saw maybe two this year, and that’s not from a lack of watching TV. It’s because my state is so red that no one ever bothers to campaign in it because they know how it’ll vote.

With that said, I know a good number of people in my state who would vote democrat but don’t because they feel like their vote doesn’t matter. The state will go red regardless of what they do, so they don’t vote. I’m not suggesting these people are a majority, but they aren’t insignificant either. Having their vote count on a nationwide scale rather than a statewide scale would make them feel like their voices would be heard and would give them no excuse not to vote.

It’s like this for people in the political minority in every non-swing state. Doing away with the electoral college could easily increase citizen involvement in politics and keep people from feeling like their voice doesn’t matter.

thebigcatblog:

A 22-month-old female scaredy cat tiger appeared to get the shock of her young life when she encountered a dead leaf floating on a pool of water in the Bandhavgarh National Park, India. Clearly unusure about just what was approaching her, the partially submerged youngster’s tail shot up in the air and with teeth bared she let out her most fearsome growl – all in an effort to scare the humble leaf away.

Picture: HERMANN BREHM / NPL / Rex Features