The prince of the far, far away land wanted to marry the princess, but she rejected him. As a punishment the princess was sent to a lair of a dragon so that it would kill her. But as soon as the dragon and the princess saw each other they fell madly in love and lived happily ever after. The end!
(via queen0fcups)
PATRICK KANE
BECAUSE IT’S THE CUP
(Source: youtube.com, via grim-lupine)
THE CORNER OF THE ROUND TABLE: michaonthemoon: yaoibutts: I love how potato in French is pomme de…
I love how potato in French is pomme de terre, which pretty much means “earth apple.”
like what stupid frenchman saw this:
and said “zis petite légume looks like a, how you say, APPLE! hmmm… but it grows in ze earth… HON HON HON! MAIS OUI! C’EST UNE POMME DE TERRE!”
j’adore comment ananas se dit pineapple en anglais, ce qui veut littéralement dire “pomme de pin”, genre quel type anglais a vu ça:
et s’est dit : “ow cette étrange big fruit ressemble à une, how do you say, POMME! hmmm… mais plutôt une pomme qui pousse dans les pins… HU HU HU! OH YES, IT’S A PINEAPPLE!”
(z’avez vu, on peut le faire aussi… hon hon hon!)
(via ninjaboots)
Before and after …
I get all the time “HRT was miracle on you”. Well, let me tell you that’s not the case. HRT is like 30%. The rest is :
1. A good diet : I went from 220 lb 1 year before HRT to 138 lb when I was in my 3rd month HRT (I’m 5.97 ft height). That means running a lot, no sugar, no alcohol, no smoking and for me, no meat !
2. I started to think like a woman all the time. No more I’m not there yet … I was a woman from day 1 of my HRT. Didn’t cared about people thinking I was walking a little bit feminine or what a hell happened to “his” voice. I started to act like ME without restriction. No one bothered me or anything … and I was right to do that cause I was happier.
3. I started to prepare my wardrobe… I started to search and find my style.
4. I started to learn make-up (Youtube was my friend. Search “Wayne Goss - Makeup artist”. I learned a lot from him). I started by ordering cheap makeup : search elf (or eyeslipsface ) on google.
5. I trained my voice everyday without exception. I recorded myself at least once a day and I started to search any information about that (youtube is your friend)
6. I was patient and waited to be more feminine before going full-time (it was in my 5th month). I was depressed a lot because of my HRT and I didn’t wanted to have more to deal with … so I went full-time only when I felt I was ready.
If you feel that you’re not there yet it means that you have to do more :-) Don’t be harsh with yourself but do the right things … and stick to the plan :-)
Big hugs everyone and have a smooth and happy transition.
Congratulations Emma! You’re an inspiration to us all. :)
(via wewalktogetherforever)
Numbers stations are mysterious shortwave radio channels of indiscernible origin that exist in countries all across the world and have been reported since World War 1. They are identifiable by the unusual contents of their broadcasts: seemingly random sequences of numbers, words, letters, tunes, and Morse code, usually spoken by artificially generated voices of women and children.
The most common theory regarding the purpose of these bizarre stations is that they’re used by governments the world over to secretly transmit encrypted commands and messages to spies. That said, even though numbers stations have been discovered all over the globe and in any number of different languages, no government has ever officially acknowledged their existence. While the espionage theory is a logical one, with no official confirmation of their purpose the jury is still out.
One particularly odd station, UVB-76, has existed since the late 1970s and has broadcast a simple, repetitive buzzing tone 24 hours a day ever since. On very rare occasions, however, listeners have reported a Russian voice interrupting the buzz to read out sequences of numbers and words, always in a consistent format — this happened once in 1997, once in 2002, once in 2006, 56 times in 2010, and 14 in 2011. As with all numbers stations, its true purpose is and will probably remain unknown, but the increase in frequency of whatever it’s doing is certainly odd.
You can listen to well over 100 recordings of numbers stations for free on archive.org but be forewarned that they’re all kind of, well, eerie. They feel like something you shouldn’t be listening to, which stands to reason since apparently you’re not supposed to know they exist.
Petition for this to be in a Doctor Who episode
(Source: horrorfixxx, via gallifreyan-gallimaufry)
Well, okay. There are legitimate reasons to be wary of a move by large, wealthy entities to offer a service like this.
Fan fiction is a discourse; it is one of many ways the meta-community of fandom talks about stuff. It is an ongoing conversation fueled on an economy of attention. The introduction of an economy of actual dollars could, if very successful, disrupt fandom in a way that is bad for people who like the way it currently functions.
Not every—indeed, not even most—fan writers have ambitions of being paid. Those that do can participate in a long and glorious tradition of graduation to the ranks of original authors who were once fan writers, by retooling their fan works or simply employing the experience they’ve gained as a fan writer to create original books. This path has the virtue of being functionally no different from any other path to authorhood—you write a book, a publisher buys it and publishes it. There’s no separate caste of “fan writer” where they get to offer you bad terms and less money. You’re a professional writer, or you aren’t.
The creation of a special sanctioned class of official fanfic could potentially disrupt and homogenize the almost unbelievably vibrant discourse that fan culture currently enjoys—but I don’t think that’s going to happen, because why would anyone eat preprocessed, rules-complient pabulum when Ferran Adria’s making deconstructed masterpieces around the corner and giving them away for free. So there’s that.
However, it could potentially exert a downward pressure on authors who make some or all of their living doing work-for-hire, which is a shitty enough business as it is. Kindle Worlds seems to basically be work-for-hire, minus the cash up front, with really terrible terms. It’s damned near spec work. And spec work is evil.
Finally, it creates a class of sanctioned fanfiction, which seems to imply a class of unsanction fanfiction. And while the OTW is well-equipped to defend the rights of fanfiction writers to keep writing, if it turns out there’s real money to be made here, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Disney, say, decides you have to write Avengers fic their way or not at all, and decides to lobby for copyright reform to back this assertion up. I mean, that’s admittedly a pretty dystopic projection, but still.
posted by Sokka shot first at 9:39 on May 22
The metafilter post on the Kindle Worlds nonsense is really good, not that I expected anything less.
(via vengerturtle)
westeros’s celebs read mean tweets (ps: all tweets are real)
I think I’m going to have to declare Melisandre the winner
(Source: brienneoftarth, via mydearfriendtoto)
Amazon Debuts ‘Kindle Worlds,’ Where Your Gossip Girl Fan Fiction Can Earn You Cash Sometimes a writer creates a universe so compelling that others feel the need to join and help flesh out that world with their own tribute fiction. And sometimes you make something crappy like Gossip…What in the hell! Damn, this makes me hella uncomfortable. I’m torn between deleting all my online fanfiction or… hoping that this madness passes. This is so not a good idea.
People would be stealing shit left and right. Hell, they do that now and fanfiction is for free. Let’s not get into the authors who are going to be fucking pissed at this as well they should be because they won’t be getting any of that money based off of their characters.
Lawd.
I’m not here for this at all. I need people to profit from their own creativity, not just jumping off of someone else’s.
the biggest problem with this is that, even if you do decide to sell your fanfic through them, you won’t get much protection. once you publish - according to the details of this program - they own it. they can republish it in an anthology or in another country/language, and you won’t see an additional dime.
furthermore, the owner of the original universe and characters can take your idea and turn it into a film/book/tv show/etc and not have to compensate you at all. it’s typical Amazon bait-and-switch. on the surface, it seems alluring, but you have to read the fine print. the only way property rights’ owners would agree to this is if Amazon promised them a deal they couldn’t refuse. “you’ll get a cut of the profits AND have an endless pool of story ideas that you don’t have to pay for!” the fanfic writer will get screwed. twice.
fanfiction isn’t new. hell, the Star Trek novels are basically authorized fanfiction. at least there, the authors are properly credited and compensated. this sounds like a really, really bad idea.
I know, right. This will not end well. *headdesk*
(via vengerturtle)
Amazon is working with WB to publish (read: sell) fanfiction from the Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries ‘verses. And they said that more “worlds” will be announced soon.
Basically, fanfic writers will be able to sell their fics - formatted for Kindle - via Amazon, and the restrictions are not as massive as you’d think!
No crossovers.
No excessive product placement for non-show brands.
No porn.
But here’s the thing about porn! Amazon says they don’t allow porn to be sold on their site, so as long as your fic content is no more explicit than anything that’s on Amazon’s site today (see: 50 Shades and anything in the erotica category) then it won’t run afoul of Amazon’s content restrictions - and if they say it does, then the Internet will stand behind you as if you were a Nutella fan barred from celebrating its wonderful tastiness.
HOWEVER, each World Licensor will be providing “Content Guidelines” for their specific ‘verse - and I can’t find those anywhere. THAT might make a significant impact on what types of fanfic one can and cannot sell, but until we’ve had a chance to look through them, we can’t determine the specifics.
I don’t think it’s realistic to be concerned that the existence of Kindle Worlds will mean that tv show/film/book creators will stamp out freely given fics. At this point, Kindle Worlds will only accept things over 5000 words, anyway, and the longstanding laches issue that protects fics posted elsewhere and given away will still hold.
However, it does mean that people who write in the fandoms covered by Kindle Worlds and sell ebooks of those stories outside of the Kindle license may find themselves dealing with cease & desist letters. But there was always a chance they would because of the commercial aspect of that action.
Also, this will leave fandom with a lot of questions on issues other than legality be on fan-created gift culture, commissions, fundraising for charity, or even the ability of pro writers to write in other universes>
Does this further “legitimize” fan creativity (which I think has long been a pretty legit hobby), will it just create an additional outlet for story distribution, and what other fandoms will WB add?
I wouldn’t be shocked if they bring Tomorrow People into this as the show launches in the fall, but what about things that are ending their runs like Nikita, or shows with massive fanbases and almost a decade of fan creativity, like the behemoth that is Supernatural?
Oh, and here’t the royalty-related info:
- Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to the rights holder for the World (we call them World Licensors) and to the Fic Author. Fic Author’s standard royalty rate for works of at least 10,000 words will be 35% of net revenue.
- In addition, with the launch of Kindle Worlds, Amazon Publishing will pilot an experimental new program for particularly short works (between 5,000 and 10,000 words). For these short stories—typically priced under one dollar—Amazon will pay the royalties for the World Licensor and will pay authors a digital royalty of 20% of net revenue. The lower royalty for these shorter works is due to significantly higher fixed costs per digital copy (for example, credit-card fees) when prices for the entire class of content will likely be under one dollar.
These have always bothered me, in some obvious ways and some not-so-obvious ways. I’ve been reluctant to post them until now. I’m not sure why.
Berlinde de Bruyckere - We are All Flesh (2004-12)
“An unsettling, reconfigured concept of the body, helpless and contorted, takes center stage in Bruyckere’s faceless sculptures. Abject deformation is turned into beauty as if the artist were trying to wrest a shape from abstract form.”
(via kaihire)
holmesiandeduction: mazarin221b: ivyblossom:
The Amazing Velvet Mace’s Genius Diagram about why some fanfiction stories are crazy popular while others, which may be technically better, are not so popular.
The original post is here, and I think it should be considered pan-fandom required reading. I bow to her genius. Everyone study this diagram and internalize it.
(writerkho: This can also apply to regular books as well. Not just fanfiction.)
This is interesting! Though I feel like I have to make a point about people having no taste: they don’t.
Two Chicago professors writing in ancient Egyptian and Hittite.
Professor Theo van den Hout writes a letter in Hittite cuneiform, while Prof W. Raymond Johnson copies out part of the Egyptian Book of the Dead in cursive hieroglyphs.
(via soyonscruels)
YO HOLD ON.
IT GETS BETTER.
This mummy, found in the Altai mountains of Siberia, is actually that of a young woman who died at about the age of twenty-five; she is thought to have been a member of the Pazyryk tribe.
She was buried with six horses and two similarly-tattooed men (the horned griffon that decorates her shoulder also appears on the man buried closest to her, covering most of his right side), possibly escorts. She was also wearing a horse-hair wig, silk, and elaborate boots, which is all a level of ceremony that would have likely only been accorded to a woman of high rank. You didn’t get inked like this unless you were very important, and had worked your way up to that importance.
…Hence, of course, the references to her by researchers as ‘The Ukok Princess,’ although due to the lack of weapons in her grave they have concluded that the woman was in fact a healer or a storyteller.
And now I’m all consumed with curiosity: Who was she? What amazing things did she accomplish? Why these symbols, and what did they mean? Who were the two men alongside her?
The most informative article about it can be found here, although I would completely eat up any other information you guys could find.
(via vengerturtle)
