Hello.

@readergirl1013 has been sharing bits of a Joe x Nicky AU, and the description of Lia was too cute not to draw!

The snippet in question added below with her permission (the rest is under the read more):

Standing and stepping around the desk, he said in English, “Hello and welcome to De Negen Straatjes Art Gallery. We specialize in nineteenth and twentieth century Dutch art. I’m Joe, please let me know if you have any questions or are interested in making a purchase.”

The man blinked at him, eyes the same unfathomable sea-green Joe remembered from their first, brief meeting boring into him even as his face remained blank. It took a moment before the man gave him a delayed smile - one of the smallest, tightest smiles he’d ever seen. Joe ignored the small voice in the back of his head commenting on how handsome the man was.

“Ah, yes, thank you. We are just looking.” The man nodded slightly to his toddler and explained in heavily accented English, “My miracolina loves art and wanted to come in when she saw the painting on display in the window.”

when I moved up into these mountains the first time a decade and a bit ago it was proverbial that snow would always bury us by Halloween and not retreat until MAY. That year it did exactly that. We've gone from heavy drifts to nothing that melts off by the afternoon.

in far less than my lifetime.

On my old server, there was a character named ßillyßadass.

This never failed to make me laugh, because that letter is not pronounced like B. It is a sharp S. 

Д as an aesthetic A? Дon’t be a дumbass.

И as an aesthetic N? don’t be sillи.

П as another aesthetic N? stoп it.

У as an aesthetic Y? ty bad.

Ш or Щ as an aesthetic W? nope. it’s “sh” and “shch”!

Я as an aesthetic R? surprise! it’s “ya”.

Well, according to Ezekiel 1 they might look something like this…

According to Daniel 10 something like this…

According to Isaiah 6…

In Ezekiel 10… 

Again in Ezekiel 10…

Angel: “FEAR NOT.”

Shepherds: *screaming*

Angel: “I SAID FEAR NOT.”

Shepherds: *screaming LOUDER*

God: Hey now, some of those spiders eat birds.

Jesus: …Dad…

So I’m talking with @kingofattolia​ about my reckless Obi-wan gifset and they asked me what Hogwarts House Obi-wan would be in.

Every time I’ve seen someone sorting the Star Wars Character, Obi-wan is usually always a Hufflepuff and Anakin is a Slytherin. I can understand this, Slytherin is the embodiment of ‘evil’ and ‘misguided’ while Hufflepuff is all ‘loyalty’ and ‘hard-work’. But personally, this is just too one-dimensional for me.

As @kingofattolia​ points out, Obi-wan is a ruthless bastard. He is perfectly willing to sacrifice people for the greater good, especially if he’s unable to come up with any other alternative. The pragmatism of Obi-wan’s character is something I see as very Ravenclaw or Slytherin like. 

Obi-wan is manipulative.

There’s no point denying it. He’s a manipulative bastard and he knows it. We see it in the movies, in The Clone Wars series and in the novels. He’s constantly analysing the situation and turning it to his advantage. I mean, King pointed out, Obi-wan literally manipulates Luke in ANH so that the kid will kill his dad. And he justifies it with his whole “from a certain point of view.”

Adding to that, Obi-wan plays with right and wrong so damned often. In The Clone Wars, he fakes his death, literally traumatises his padawan, simply so he can get information for the Order. It’s that sort of ruthless practicality that makes it impossible for Obi-wan to ever really be a Hufflepuff in my eyes. Because he knows, he knows, it’s going to hurt people, that people are going to suffer. And he does it anyway. 

Slytherin is a house for the cunning, for politicians, for reporters, for those who are intelligent and want to use that intelligence. For Obi-wan he uses his intelligence to become The Negotiator, to become The Strategist. Ravenclaw could give him that as well, but Slytherin is a house that uses their abilities and talents to benefit themselves and those they choose to be loyal to. Obi-wan is loyal to the Order, to the Republic, and it shows in his actions and decisions.

His seeming recklessness isn’t the same as Anakin’s though. Anakin jumps into the fray full of fire and passion and is the embodiment of a Gryffindor. All heart.

Obi-wan is willing to pick a fight but he doesn’t do it because he’s just looking for a fight. He picks a fight with Grievous on his own, surrounded by Droids, because it buys time. It gives the soldiers he can sense (hello The Force is all around you) time to get into position so they’re ready for an ambush.

He chooses the most effective method of getting the attention of Grievous. He knows the guy hates him with a passion, hates Jedi, and will snatch up any possibility to fight one. Even going so far as telling his army to stand down so he can fight Obi-wan one-on-one. And that’s something Obi-wan banked on. 

Cold, practical calculation.

The fact that he got a kick out of it is besides the point, Obi-wan gets a kick out of one-upping everyone in an argument or fight. It’s literally his arrogance that drives him to do it. And yeah, he’s arrogant. But it’s not necessarily in a bad way. He’s assured of his own abilities, of his own worth as a distraction, as a focus of someone’s attention and hatred.

So when the war is over, when he’s betrayed by someone he trusted (fuck you Anakin) and is left with pieces, he still does his duty. Honours the last thing he felt, chooses to be a Jedi and not a friend to someone who betrayed him. And the fight on Mustafar is pure Slytherin IMHO. 

Anakin betrayed him and everything Obi-wan was loyal to. That is not something anyone, least of all a Slytherin, can forgive. The pain and anger and grief from Order 66 is evident in the fight he has with Anakin/Vader. And the end is very Slytherin. It’s not a Hufflepuff response to turn away from someone you loved. It’s not really even a Gryffindor response. It’s Slytherin. It’s wanting them to suffer like you suffered and knowing you’re not a good enough person to resist giving into that want.

It seems as though people like to forget that Slytherin house is a collection of cunning, intelligent, creative, manipulative, loyal individuals in favour of giving the house all the villains and bad guys from movies.

But Slytherin house made Merlin.

humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.  

it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more. 

have a cookie.

So the only reputation he has is ‘that bastard con artist who banked 19 years of aw-shucks-wormie-ness and used it to outrageously fleece everyone who’s almost anybody.’ Vader reading the report like…damn you Kenobi did you get HONDO to raise my son??

Jabba’s reaction to Luke’s message is INFINITELY funnier if we consider the idea that ‘Skywalker’ amongst the wretched local villainy (who mostly ignore imperial and rebel propaganda) is actually synonymous with TWO things - that brat who totally messed up the podrace bookies 25 years ago, and the infamous Anchorhead Con. Jabba gets this message about ‘Jedi’ and is like LOL i think the other Skywalker tried to pull some hotshit with that too before wimping out.

Everyone openly laughs like sure you’re a Jedi and I’ve got a bargain vaporator farm I want to sell you. 

“So this fucking—SKYWALKER, dude, have you ever heard the name Skywalker? You know what it means? A FUCKING ASSHOLE, that’s what it means. Like. The first one was bad enough, this little shit named Anakin who was fuckin’ NINE YEARS OLD and he just WON THE FUCKING BOONTA EVE PODRACE and set SIXTEEN bookies out of business and if I ever meet him I’m gonna set him on fire for it—

“And then this new one, Luke? Fuckin’ nobody, raised by his aunt and uncle out in the Wastes, little aw-shucks hick farm kid, the kind you could give him a five-credit piece and a ten-credit piece and he keeps taking the fiver because it’s BIGGER, that kind of simple, and then he comes into Mos Eisley one afternoon and sells his aunt and uncle’s moisture farm, right, I’ve been out there a few times, several of us have, and it’s a nice place as far as moisture farms go, mildly profitable, and the kid is fucking happy to get like two-thirds its value, so he sells the farm, right? TO NINETEEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE! Do you have any idea how much Jabba’s finance people had to do to get that sorted out? Nineteen fucking mortgages on ONE fucking property, puts every real estate con Jabba the Hutt’s entire CLAN ever pulled and we were on the WRONG SIDE OF IT! We had every pirate and smuggler from here to Corellia laughing at us! And THEN! And THEN—!

“So he pops up via hologram message acting like a DIPLOMAT from the REPUBLIC, claiming a title and rank from an extinct, defunct, ILLEGAL order and wanting to bargain with Jabba—are you fucking kidding me, BARGAIN WITH JABBA for a smuggler who’s up to his ass in debt when he’s responsible for that farm scheme, acting like he doesn’t even fucking REMEMBER it and expects that Jabba’s forgotten it too. Like. Absolute fucking idiot, and anticipating that Jabba’s just as stupid. And he offers a pair of droids as a gift. Like, built-in-the-Republic-era, random-ass droids that he probably picked up from the Jawas that morning for a few hundred credits and a junked ‘vaporator.

“I mean, Jabba’s seething here, but hey, free droids is free droids. Whatever. He takes the droids, throws things, orders a fight to the death between two gamblers who owed him money, killed one of his dancers at some point … and then Boushh shows up with fucking Chewbacca in chains—he’s Solo’s first mate, so Jabba was all happy about that, but not happy enough to pay the full bounty—and what’s Boushh do? Pull some gonads out from somewhere after all these years, and also pull out a fucking THERMAL DETONATOR! Going to blow us all to fuck if he doesn’t get his measley fifty thousand, and, well, there’s no arguing with crazy like that. 

“So now, if you’re keeping score, Jabba’s lost an absolute SHITLOAD of money and had his bookmaking industry fucked all to hell for like three years after the stunt from Skywalker the First, got screwed out of ANOTHER shitload of money in the farm scam by Skywalker the Sequel, got all but called an idiot to his face and insulted six times over by the same dude who’s apparently scammed so many people he’s forgotten who he has and hasn’t scammed, and got threatened out of fifty thousand credits by a second-tier bounty hunter IN FRONT OF HIS ENTIRE COURT.

“And then the next morning, what the fuck? Jabba’s favorite sculpture is gone, the one with Solo as its main ingredient that Boba Fett brought him. And Boushh is gone. And Jabba’s got a brand-new dancer chained up next to him. Night duty guy tells me Boushh unfroze Solo, and the new dancer girl IS Boushh, which, okay, you’re dealing with people like that and you look like that? You definitely need a helmet, but I feel like pretending she didn’t breathe oxygen was overkill. Anyway, then Skywalker shows up. All alone, no weapons, nothing, like he really believes in this Jedi shit. Arrogant little bastard, and we’re all laying bets on how Jabba’s going to kill him.

“So he talks a little, and fwoop! goes the trapdoor, and okay, everybody who bet on “Rancor” is doing a little happy dance, but then! BUT THEN! He fucking KILLS THE RANCOR! Drops its own cage door on its head and punches right through its skull! And—fucking NOBODY bet on that, which is a damn shame because everybody else would’ve just torn the winner apart out of sheer rage at that point and we coulda used some good bloodshed then, y’know? I mean, I dunno if you’ve ever met Jabba the Hutt, but he’s the kind of boss that’ll just go off and kill you for failing him or just because he’s angry at something. Just complete fucking asshole. I mean, he was pissed enough that everybody was worried for their safety, and so somebody dying messily right then would’ve calmed him down a bit.

“So Jabba’s big mad, and he gathers Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca all together and says he’s gonna feed them to the Sarlacc, which is a nasty tentacled carnivorous plant out in the desert, so we all board the sail barge and have a nice little pleasure cruise—have you ever been to Tattoine? I’m fuckin’ kidding, it’s brutal. But hey, we get to see Skywalker executed, right? Wrong.

“Jabba offers them the chance to beg for their lives, and Solo calls him a slimy piece of worm-ridden filth, which, I mean, I could do better, y’know? If I’m about to die? Anyway, Skywalker goes up first, gets prodded to the edge, flips a salute off to who-knows-where, and does this little twist in midair, catches the fucking plank, and fucking SPRINGBOARDS himself back onboard, CATCHES HIS LIGHTSABER FROM MIDAIR where the one DROID shot it to him, and starts sending guards over the side, usually in pieces.

“So more guards rush forward to help, and there’s this huge fight, and fuckin’ BOBA FETT falls in, and while that’s going on? The fucking dancing girl has grabbed her chain and is FUCKING STRANGLING JABBA WITH IT! Like, I look over and he’s bucking and struggling and she’s pulling on that chain like anything, and then somebody hits me over the head with a bottle of Corellian brandy, and by the time I look again he’s pitched over dead! And nobody freaking bet on that!

“And then? Off they fucking go, Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca and the dancing girl and the droids and one of the guards who I played sabacc with the other night and he owes me twenty credits! And that fucking Skywalker just cost me my job, and if I see him again I’m going to burn him to cinders myself!”

The man subsides, eyeing the gigantic ebony figure in front of him who, except for a couple of momentary starts as though he might say something, has been silently listening to him all this time.

Size-wise, Darth Vader has nothing on Jabba the Hutt, but somehow, he is scarier.

Finally, the dark form speaks. “You said you could do better.” A moment’s silence, and he clarifies. “If you were about to die.” He gets the impression that whatever monster lurks behind the helmet is smiling. “You are about to die now. Because you are a criminal, and because of what you have said about my son, Luke Skywalker. You have an opportunity to do better. Use it.”

The so-condemned criminal, late of Jabba’s palace guard, lets his jaw hang open unflatteringly for a moment while his brain catches up with events. HIS SON, which means …  

“YOU’RE Anakin Skywalker’s HUSBAND?”

The steady, hissing rhythm of Darth Vader’s rebreather actually stops dead as the Dark Lord straightens up as if stabbed with an electroprod.

There are many things to keep in mind when naming the town or city in your novel:

1) Genre/Theme/Tone

It’s very important to consider the genre and theme of your story when choosing a town name. Take these names for example, each of which indicates the genre or theme of the story: King’s Landing (sounds fantastical) Cloud City (sounds futuristic) Silent Hill (sounds scary) Sweet Valley (sounds happy and upbeat) Bikini Bottom (sounds funny) Radiator Springs (sounds car-related) Halloween Town (sounds Halloween-related) Storybrooke (sounds fairytale-related) 2) Time/Place It’s also important to consider the time and place where your story takes place. For example, you wouldn’t use “Vista Gulch” as a name for a town in Victorian England. You probably wouldn’t use it for a town in modern day North Carolina, either. Vista is a Spanish word and would normally be found in places where Spanish names are common, like Spain, Central and South America, the southwest United States (including southern California), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Florida. 3) Size/Settlement Type An isolated town of 300 people probably won’t be Valley City, but a sprawling metropolis of 30 million could be called Windyville, because it could have started out as a small town and grew into a large city. 4) Geography Words like gulch, butte,and bayou tend to be regional terms. You probably wouldn’t find Berle’s Bayou in Idaho, or Windy Butte in Rhode Island. Words like mount, cape, and valley are dependent upon terrain. Most of the time, you won’t have a town named “mount” something unless there are hills or mountains nearby. You wouldn’t use “cape” unless the town was on a cape, which requires a large body of water. 5) History Is there a historical person or event that your town might be named after? The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is ironically named after its founder, Jebediah Springfield. Chattanooga, Tennessee is named after the Cherokee town that was there first. Nargothrond, in The Lord of the Rings, is an Elvish town with an Elvish name. 6) Combination of Words

person name + geographical term = Smithfield, Smith Creek

group name + geographical term = Pioneer Valley, Settlers’ Ridge

descriptive word + geographical term = Mystic Falls, Smoky Hill

person name + settlement type = Smithton, Claraville

landmark + settlement type = Bridgton, Beaconville

Word Lists: Types of Settlements

Geographical Features

Place Words

Common Suffixes

Other Descriptors

Unless those elves wore chaps and Stetsons and carried six-guns, which may or may not be a story seed for someone. It certainly throws a new light on “going into the West”… ;->

*****

Here’s a very small selection of names of villages and hamlets in England:

Appleby Magna, Appleby Parva, Atherstone, Atterton, Desford, Earl Shilton, Fenny Drayton, Glenfield, Kirby Muxloe, Kirkby Mallory, Little Wigston, Maxstoke, Newbold Verdon, Sapcote, Stanton, Stapleton, Stoke Golding and Stone.

Those are all from Leicestershire, pronounced Lestuhshuh. 

Something else to play with when creating place-names is that, for various reasons, they’re often not pronounced the same way as they’re spelt. Sometimes this can be because speakers of one language are bamboozled by the rules of another, or because the name has been worn down from years of (mis)use. 

Check out these examples:

In Ireland Cobh is Cove, Dun Laoghaire is Dunleary and Youghal is Yawl; however Drogheda can be Drawada or Drawheda or Drockeda. Up north, Ahoghill is Uhhockle and Clogher is Clawer.

In Scotland Culross is Kooruss, Culzean is Kullane and Kircudbright is Kercoobray, while in England Alcester is Olster, Bamburgh is Bamberruh, Durham is Durrum, Mousehole is Mausel, Worcester is Woostur, and so on.

These give away that people are “not from these parts” (though as Drogheda demonstrates, it can apply even to fairly local strangers), and in fiction allows accidental reveals without handing otherwise-sensible characters the Idiot Ball.

*****

Finally, check out “The Atlas of True Names”, which translates placenames from their original language. 

I was born and raised in the Fort of the Gamblers in Northern Westland, @dduane​ comes from the Bow-Wood Grove of New Fort in the Land By The Long Tidal River, and now we live in a part of Westland that’s the Country of the Spear Folk…

And yes, we do have spears, even if one’s a practice version.

gimli:

aragorn:

gandalf:

Boromir:

Elrond:

https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:

Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.

He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms

His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.

Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore

happy pride month from your neighborhood gray!! I forget that asexuality has been severely misrepresented and that a lot of people don’t actually know what it is as a result so here is an overview of what asexuality is, what it’s not, and how acephobic is represented. there is so much more to asexuality than just this. I didn’t even mention the medicalization of asexuality! 

I highly rec scretspiderlady on Twitter because she writes a lot about the ace experience and has many comprehensive threads. I also rec Yasmin Benoit, a Black aroace lingerie model who is fighting misinformation about asexuality and shedding light on racism within the asexual community. if you’re interested in more resources feel free to dm me!

EDIT: I updated the slide that refers to asexuality as “aspec” to “acespec.” The term aspec refers to the a community as a whole – both asexuals and aromantics – while acespec refers to the asexual spectrum and arospec referes to the aromantic spectrum. You can see this mirrored in the terms acephobia (experienced by aces), arophobia (experienced by aros), and aphobia (experienced by both aces and aros). Thank you to those of you who tagged this post with their correction!

It’s you friendly neighbor fanfic author here. In the light of this apparent new trend of people feeding unfinished fics to AI to get an “ending,” and some people even talking about “blanket permissions,” let me just say this:

I EXPLICITLY FORBID ANYONE TO FEED MY FICS TO AI. DUDE, THAT IS ABOUT THE LEAST RESPECTFUL THING YOU CAN DO. IF YOU DO IT, SHALL YOU BE EXCOMMUNICATED FROM YOUR FANDOM AND WALK ON LEGOS BAREFOOT TILL THE END OF DAYS.

That is my anti-permission.