Look: Our Neanderthal Ancestors Took Care Of The Sick And Disabled So If Ur Post-apocalyptic Scenario

😂 new HC that a tatooine phone book very much exists 10000%

Boba is written in it twice because somebody wrote Bob Fett by accident once but they never removed it

BOB FETT.

Okay but what if that’s not a mistake at all. And he’s actually just some dude and suddenly people are turning up at his door either like. super pissed at him, or they’re throwing like gifts at his feet to get on his good side and he’s like. So tired of this shit?

“For the last kriffing time, my name is ROBERT. I’m not a bounty hunter?? I’m a research scientist from Bogano! I study bantha droppings. No—no—don’t you dare leave that chest of spice—come back here!!”

Me: I'm not one of those Autistics who needs noise-canceling headphones (/nm); regular noise levels don't bother me like they do some people

Also me: *puts in earplugs to vacuum* *world goes quiet* THIS IS BEAUTIFUL I'M BUYING NOISE-CANCELING HEADPHONES RIGHT NOW

Hyphens, en Dashes and em Dashes

Oh- and let’s not forget the minus sign, that thing on your keyboard that can be misused as any one of the above! 

It took me a long time to understand the differences. 

The minus sign                         (-)

The hyphen                               (-)

The en dash                              (–)

The em dash                            (—)

Visually, not much in it, is there?  

But oh what a difference the length makes! 

The minus sign is a mathematical symbol. That’s it. Don’t misuse it for anything else.

The hyphen is used to join two elements to form a compound word, like  self-restraint. Numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine should also be hyphenated when they’re spelled out. Sherlock Holmes-Watson or John Watson-Holmes (interesting to know which one wins in the battle). You should also use a hyphen in a compound modifier before a noun, as in The Crossed Keys Inn was a dog-friendly pub.

The shorter en dash  is used when describing ranges and with the meaning “to” in phrases like “Dover–Calais crossing.” It applies to ranges of numbers, such as times, page numbers, or scores (I’ll schedule you from 4:30–5:00). That said, outside of formally printed documents, it is increasingly being replaced with a hyphen, so if you miss this one, Sherlock won’t hang you for it. 

The longer em dash (—) is about as wide as the letter M (duh, now I get why it’s called this). It’s used to separate extra information or mark a break in a sentence.  An em dash is most often used to indicate a pause in a sentence. It’s stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period or semicolon. 

You can use a pair of em dashes to draw special attention to parenthetical information, as in

Sherlock—who was wearing the same purple shirt of sex—entered the room carrying his violin..

You can use a single em dash to add explanatory or amplifying information, especially when the information is surprising:

I opened the door and there she stood—Eurus, my long lost sister.

Em dashes can also signal a sudden interruption, particularly in dialogue:

“Wait! I forgot to tell you—” The door slammed shut between us and I missed whatever John was trying to say.

Interestingly, there is no firm rule about spaces around the em dash (either word—word or word — word). It’s a matter of style. Whichever style you choose, use it consistently throughout your document.

The em dash is a relatively artistic punctuation mark, compared to the more technical hyphen and en dash, both of which need to be used accurately in legal contracts, for example. 

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes.

DC (Batman)

buy the ticket, take the ride by Anonymous

Tim had always figured that if he ever woke up in Vegas sans-memory, it would be when he was older than fourteen. But there were some things he couldn’t control, and apparently whatever had happened last night that he didn’t remember was one of them.

Instead of All the Colors That I Saw by SilverSkiesAtMidnight

Dick comes around to stand fully in front of him, keeping a steadying hand on Tim’s arm. “Just because you know you’re safe intellectually doesn’t mean you always feel safe,” he says softly. “It’s okay if you don’t feel safe.”

“But it’s not okay!” Tim bursts out. “Because if I don’t feel safe, then how is Jason supposed to feel safe? He shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable just because my brain is screwed up!”

There’s a faint sound by the door, barely more than an intake of breath, and his eyes snap to the no-longer empty doorway.

Day 28 - IT’S NOT JUST IN YOUR HEAD “Good. You’re finally awake.” | nightmares | panic

Star Wars

Present by WhatisWithin

Luke sometimes forgot how scary Daddy was to other people.

It was a weird problem to have. And a stupid one too. He should remember that kind of stuff. Everyone was scared of Daddy.

(After being rescued by his father from the streets of Mos Espa, ten year old Luke adjusts to life on a Star Destroyer.)

Clone Wars

walk by faith/tell no one what you've seen by Killbothtwins

Part 1 of the massive machinery of hope

After the end of the war with the Empire, Obi-Wan wakes up in his twelve-year old body. Now all he needs to do is convince everyone he's psychic, trick his Master into taking him on before he's sent to Bandomeer, redeem a few bad guys, and try not to have a nervous breakdown. Pretty easy. It's not like the Sith are lurking on the horizon, waiting to devour the Jedi Order.

Sticker Burrs by RileeTheRiddler

Obi-Wan gets thrown back into his baby body at the exact moment his birth mother tries to drown him in a rushing river.

Instead of a Jedi, a Mandalorian fishes him out.

General Jocasta by BairnSidhe

Picture, if you will, a shiny new High General Obi-Wan who has just been given control of the GAR on the logic he's the only Jedi with war experience. Except he's never actually organized an army before, and he needs help.

Enter Co-High General Jocasta Nu, who runs the GAR like she would the Archive. Everything organized and cataloged, her precious Collection now expanded to include the entire GAR.

And well, she's a librarian....

The Sith never stood a chance.

Of Tookas and Interdimensional Wormholes by FictionalDragonMother

This is a silly fic about fluffy kitties and their war-torn counterparts who expose a great evil and somehow manage to save the Galaxy along the way. Okay, actual description time:

When the Force decides that things are starting to go down the wrong path, the mystical presence decides to shake things up. And what's the best way to flip the script? Bring in cats. Lots of cats. Cats on the Resolute, cats on the Marauder, cats running around the Jedi Temple and sitting in the seats of Jedi Council members. Is that a completely hairless cat on Chancellor Palpatine's lap? Gross. The rest of them are pretty cute though.

One of the lawyers currently prosecuting Alex Jones got interviewed on knowledge fight. He talked about how he had to watch 150+ hours of Infowars content as background for the case.

He talked about how he had to take regular breaks because he could feel himself passively absorbing information against his will.

Fic idea:

There is a hall of waiting for men in Mandos too, right? For them to wait for their loved ones before they go on together? (If I made that up it’s just the fic premise now, but isn’t this where Beren was chilling when Luthien came for him?)

Anyways Elros figures out while he’s waiting for his kids that he can use his Descendant of Luthien powers to pop over to the Elvish side and meet all the dead elvish relatives he wouldn’t get a chance to know until the breaking of the world otherwise.

He realizes most of them are either gonna be there forever cause they demonstrably Can’t Get Over Their Shit, or Valinor will end up a burning pile of rubble as they are released and forced to face their shit whilst alive.

This is a problem because Elros knows his brother craves family, and while they both accept he and his twin cannot be together forever in life or death, he expects these layabout relatives to get off their dead asses and start making up with each other, so when his brother ends up in Valinor, whenever that may be, he has a loving supportive family that isn’t dragging him in a hundred different directions.

Cue dead Elros playing life (death?) coach to a bunch of dead elves. Some of them are conscious enough it’s like having a normal conversation. Some of them are in soothing or disturbing dreamscapes, with various degrees of awareness of where they are, what they’ve done, and what has happened since they died.

Helpful sidekicks include:

- Soon to be released Glorfindel!

- Finwe, cause he’s sick of his family being idiots and sad his BFF Elwe isn’t talking to him.

- Elros’s extremely argumentative wife, who’s a little confused, but she got the spirit.

- Namo very deliberately Not Helping, because they are Breaking Rules, but who keeps giving them hints like “It would be a shame if you dragged this person’s soul by it’s metaphorical ear to talk to that person’s soul, which of course is interfering which is Bad, I hear.”

- A maia representative sent by Nienna (who thinks this is brilliant). It’s a Maia who really loves elves, and is really interested in how to get them to stop self sabotaging with their own stupidity, and yeah. It’s Gandalf.

Pervading questions:

What happened to Dior and the first set of Peredhel twins?

Where are the Feanorians? Did they really get sent to the void?

Why would anyone want to live forever dealing with this nonsense, is Elrond a martyr or just an idiot. It’s just Finwean family drama? forever?!?!Elros is very confident he made the right choice.

I’ll definitely write this outside my head >>

[ID: screenshot of tags reading, "and the fact that it was invented by a hobbit who knocked the head of an orc straight off. And the orc's name was Golfimbul." End ID]

sometimes i think about how tolkien said golf exists in middle earth and then just never mentioned it again ever

Elrond: Why do you look so happy?

Thranduil: Because it's autumn.

Elrond: Yes, and?

Thranduil: Spooktober, Peredhel, Spooktober.

Thranduil: And you know what that means? The wild giant spiders finally have a use! Free decorations!

Thranduil: *shakes Elrond violently*

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

What I find interesting about Boromir being the first of the fellowship to succumb to the ring is that it wasn't because he was evil or less pure of heart than the others, but because he didn't truly believe the ring was evil or that it answered only to Sauron, he thought he could use it make it answer to him. It was only after he tried to take it from Frodo that he realized he was wrong.