We have an update 

there’s more!

Pieter Hanson’s original tweet 

donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

donate to Make-A-Wish

Force people to look at your cats and suggest they donate to charity: This guy is using his 15 minutes correctly

A City of Ruby and Rain.

If that wasn’t super YA sounding, I would use it.

A DOGPARK OF OPALS AND HEAT

a shopping centre of emeralds and cold

A Cousin’s House of Pearls and Cold Sun

A Rite Aid of Garnet and Cloudy

A Grandma’s of Sapphire and Night

A Work of Ruby and Dawn - @femmedplume yours is my favorite LOL

A Taphouse of Peridot and Misty Drizzle.

Reblog this post with the third gif in the gif search of your favorite movie

Oh. My. God. How have I never seen this before?! 🔥🔥🔥

Holy shit. Are we getting a new suit next season? Because it should be this. 👆

I made a generator so you too can find your futuristic unisex sci-fi name.

I am going to change my name IRL to Rat Parabola.

Sky Proxima. Not bad!

just call me Taz Tesla

Chai Romulus … Wow. I am Roman flavored tea, possibly with pointy ears.

Tex Collision

Lee Nebulae

Quark Nucleon. What The Fuck.

Ion Palladium

Clue Nebulae

Theory Naobium,

Aster Antares. 

Nova Nebulae

Cipher Kerberos

Mantis Vignere

Rumor Halley

El Ganymede

VACCINATE YOUR FUCKING KIDS

i know this isn’t my first time reblogging this post to this blog, and it probably won’t be the last. Stay educated.

Also, immunocompromised members of society (including a number of my family members and friends) don’t deserve to have their lives threatened because of antivaxxers and their “right” to believe lies.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is one of my favorite movies

I mean like

How could it not be

every single moment is pure gold

its hilarious 

and finally, one of my favorites

What??????

How Authors Get Paid

This is pretty simple. Authors get paid when you buy their books. If you don’t buy their books, they don’t get paid. They get paid a percentage of the price you pay for their books. If you buy highly discounted books (from amazon or B&N or Scholastic book fairs), they get paid a lot less. If you borrow a book from the library, they got paid for that one time (in the US), but at least they got that. If you read a book from a pirated site, they don’t get paid.

The problem I see is that most people don’t understand this very simple equation. They think that authors get paid by publishers just to be authors. Hint: we don’t. Authors don’t get paid to do book tours. Unless people buy their books. Authors don’t get paid by the government to be authors. Authors don’t get paid by Hollywood for their books unless they get a pittance if they’re actually given an option (1% of authors get books optioned, 1% of those get made into movies). If an author gets a movie made, they still make very little of that money, except for if books are purchased. If an author wins an award, most of the time, they make no money from that directly, only if more books are sold.

Are you starting to understand what my point is here?

Yes, some authors make money on the side doing school visits for children. A lot of them don’t even make that, especially in Utah, where local publishers are using school visits as a promotional opportunity and have nearly eliminated the market for paid visits from authors who AREN’T trying to push books on kids. (Yes, I have strong feelings about this.)

Yes, these days authors make money sometimes by being youtube celebrities (I can count on one hand the number of authors doing this). Yes, authors sometimes make money through Patreon, though this is pretty new and we’re still figuring it out. Think about this for a minute. Authors have to hustle to make money because actually writing books doesn’t pay them very much. What? Yeah, even NYT best-selling authors are not making enough to pay mortgages sometimes.

Lots of authors are offered lots of opportunities to write for “promotion.” We do need to promote ourselves if we’re going to stay in the game and keep getting contracts for new books. But promotion is pennies. I’m not trying to complain about my chosen profession. This part of it sucks, but there are other wonderful parts, clearly, or I wouldn’t stay. But if you want to help me out and thank me for any of my writing you’ve gotten to read for free, it’s really simple. Buy one of my books. And while you’re at it, buy a book from another author you love.

Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.

Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in.

“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”

The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.

“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”

“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”

The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”

Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”

“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”

Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.

“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”

“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?” 

The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.

A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer. 

“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”

“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”

“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.

And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.

Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.

“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”

“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”

“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.

“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”

“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”

And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god.

Sora found the temple with the bones within it, the roof falling in upon them.

“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation.

“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.”

Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.

“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”

“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.

“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.”

Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.

“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.

“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.

“What?” the god asked.

Sora carefully lifted the skull onto the cloth. “You are the god of Arepo.”

Generations passed. The village recovered from its tragedies—homes rebuilt, gardens re-planted, wounds healed. The old man who once lived on the hill and spoke to stone and rubble had long since been forgotten, but the temple stood in his name. Most believed it to empty, as the god who resided there long ago had fallen silent. Yet, any who passed the decaying shrine felt an ache in their hearts, as though mourning for a lost friend. The cold that seeped from the temple entrance laid their spirits low, and warded off any potential visitors, save for the rare and especially oblivious children who would leave tiny clusters of pink and white flowers that they picked from the surrounding meadow.

The god sat in his peaceful home, staring out at the distant road, to pedestrians, workhorses, and carriages, raining leaves that swirled around bustling feet. How long had it been? The world had progressed without him, for he knew there was no help to be given. The world must be a cruel place, that even the useful gods have abandoned, if farms can flood, harvests can run barren, and homes can burn, he thought.

He had come to understand that humans are senseless creatures, who would pray to a god that cannot grant wishes or bless upon them good fortune. Who would maintain a temple and bring offerings with nothing in return. Who would share their company and meditate with such a fruitless deity. Who would bury a stranger without the hope for profit. What bizarre, futile kindness they had wasted on him. What wonderful, foolish, virtuous, hopeless creatures, humans were.

So he painted the sunset with yellow leaves, enticed the worms to dance in their soil, flourished the boundary between forest and field with blossoms and berries, christened the air with a biting cold before winter came, ripened the apples with crisp, red freckles to break under sinking teeth, and a dozen other nothings, in memory of the man who once praised the god’s work on his dying breath.

“Hello, God of Every Humble Beauty in the World,” called a familiar voice.

The squinting corners of the god’s eyes wept down onto curled lips. “Arepo,” he whispered, for his voice was hoarse from its hundred-year mutism.

“I am the god of devotion, of small kindnesses, of unbreakable bonds. I am the god of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust,” Arepo avowed, soothing the other with every word.

“That’s wonderful, Arepo,” he responded between tears, “I’m so happy for you—such a powerful figure will certainly need a grand temple. Will you leave to the city to gather more worshippers? You’ll be adored by all.”

“No,” Arepo smiled.

“Farther than that, to the capitol, then? Thank you for visiting here before your departure.”

“No, I will not go there, either,” Arepo shook his head and chuckled.

“Farther still? What ambitious goals, you must have. There is no doubt in my mind that you will succeed, though,” the elder god continued.

“Actually,” interrupted Arepo, “I’d like to stay here, if you’ll have me.”

The other god was struck speechless. “…. Why would you want to live here?”

“I am the god of unbreakable bonds and everlasting friendships. And you are the god of Arepo.”

I reblogged this once with the first story. Now the story has grown and I’m crying. This is gorgeous, guys. This is what dreams are made of.

This is amazing!

“Listen” @emilybett @stephenamell @cw_arrow @arrowwriters @arrowprodoffice #arrow #lordmesaart #clipstudiopaintex

Then again, Good Omens is just Black Books fanfiction and there’s no denying it.

Not just fanfiction, but the special magic kind of fanfiction you can only make happen when you write it over a decade before the thing that it’s fanfiction of exists. That’s what makes it so special.

An experiment:

Reblog if, at some point in your educational life, you have gotten in trouble for reading a book that ‘wasn’t assigned to you’ or reading ahead in a book you were given in class or reading under your desk

So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.

Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.

“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”

One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,

“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”

Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.

The comments and responses on this post are amazing

I’m c r y i n g

Oh my godddd

Paddy’s Day PSA

Okay lads, tomorrow’s the big day and I made a post about this years ago but I have more to say and I understand that paddy’s day is really big in America so I figured this post would be encouraging advice.

☘️ First and foremost, it’s Paddy, not Patty, pronounce those d’s and you’ll sound more authentic.

☘️ Don’t use this holiday as an excuse to drink yourself blind. The stereotype of Irish people being drunks comes for centuries of oppression, Irish laborers being paid in alcohol or given their wages in the local pub so they would spend their money there and remain poor and controllable by their bosses. This is one of those things where, although problematic, Irish people will drink a lot on this holiday but will find it a bit offensive when other countries use the holiday as an excuse without knowing why.

☘️ To elaborate on the last point, educate yourself, know why this holiday is important to us because it’s so much more than St. Patrick, it’s the most popular day of the year to celebrate our independence as a people and as a culture and I’m sure that you would actually enjoy the celebrations so much more if you understood the importance.

☘️ This isn’t a day that you have to prove or justify your reason for celebrating. No one cares if you’re 17% irish, we’re all well aware of the Irish emigration to America and we know that most people celebrating have Irish ancestry but you don’t need to say it to every Tom, Dick and Harry just for the novelty of the holiday.

☘️ Most importantly - have the craic, go mad, have a great time because that’s what the holiday is about, BUT be safe. Most of my advice will go unheeded and there will be dodgy drunks out there - watch your drink, don’t drink too much, there’s not much fun in the holiday if you’re putting yourself in dangerous circumstances!

☘️☘️☘️Lá fhéile Padraig gach duine!!☘️☘️☘️