These are brilliant, well-done videos that everyone who works in or would like to go into any facet of TV or movie production or book publishing, as well as anyone who lives on the planet earth, should see. The entire playlist is definitely worth a watch. In fact, you should probably just go ahead and watch all of her videos like I did.
Melinda. The Tallest Hobbit on Middle-Earth. Nothing to see here, just a college student entertaining herself with miscellaneous fandoms and writerly musings and owls.
trying to figure out how/why somebody who doesn’t follow me just “liked” my childhood drawing of Scuba Diver Harry Potter that I posted five months ago
I JUST DISCOVERED THAT WITH THE MOST RECENT TUMBLR CHANGE “LIKING” A POST MAKES IT GIVE YOU A DANCING HEART ON YOUR DASH FOR A SPLIT SECOND.
This has made up for my initial aversion to change and now I’m going to go like everything.
A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”
He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?” The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness.
The armor-plated defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.” Whoa.
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Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85% (via mchotdog)
Bam. Kids “misbehave” for actual, real, valid reasons. And have feelings.
(via amydentata)
Tagged as: #important things
*strangled cry*
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.But also YES.Because for me this is a pretty important part of the final battle. A lot of folks accused JKR of just wanting to kill people off, and Lupin and Tonks were one of the major “sins” in that category. But for me, one of the major themes of her books is vicious cycle of violence, and another is the ways ordinary people can break that cycle. It’s important that we know that Harry doesn’t stop all the pain, that he’s not the last war orphan. Just like the first War, parents and adults have to make choices, choices with consequences.Like James and Lily, Lupin and Tonks didn’t risk their lives to defeat Voldemort. They gave their lives for each other, because no one person should bear the weight of the sacrifice. They gave their lives for their son, who deserved a better world. They gave their lives for love, not for victory.I think it’s important to see the ways Voldemort’s evil creates these cycles, children taken from their parents and parents taken from their children, again and again. I think it’s an important sobering note in the victory—yes, this time Voldemort is really dead, but there’s another baby this time, another infant who will never know his beautiful, wonderful parents because of Voldemort and his message of hate and violence. Another child who will grow up wondering where he came from, what his parents were like, what would be different if they were alive.But it’s also beautiful that Teddy will have such a different experience. And his experience will not be different because Voldemort is “really gone.” His experience will be different because his grandmother will tell him about his brilliant mom. Because Harry will tell him about his wonderful dad. Because Harry will help him deal with his pain and loss, be a sympathetic ear who understands what it’s like to grow up without your parents. Because the Weasleys will welcome him as another grandchild, and he’ll grow up with Victoire to throw dirt at, and James as a little brother. His experience won’t be different because Harry won a war, it will be different because of love.That’s the whole story of Harry Potter. Sometimes we have to fight for what’s right, but what really makes life worth living and what really changes the world isn’t magic or power or moral superiority. It’s love./crying
I Don’t Like My Wife’s Books!
Carolyn Hax, 6 May 2013:
Dear Carolyn, My wife is an avid reader and enjoys a lot of different types of books. Among them are series usually geared toward teenagers, like “The Hunger Games” or “Twilight.” Before the premiere of the latest movie, she rereads the series and then goes to the midnight showing with a group of girlfriends. I am not talking about teenagers here, or even people in their 20s. We are in our 30s and both professionals. I think my wife’s interest in these books and movies is juvenile, and I don’t really understand it. I feel mildly embarrassed that she can talk (in detail!) to my nieces about these books at holiday gatherings. My wife thinks that her reading selection is her business only and that these books provide a nice relief from everyday problems. I can see her point, but on the other hand, I’m not sure why she can’t get the same thing from adult literature. Who is the odd one here, me or my wife? AnonymousDear Anonymous,
Your wife is an immature, unprofessional dolt who sadly gets along better with teenagers than with smart, classy, well-adjusted adults who rightly ascertain that literally nothing can define a person more than the fact that they occasionally read teen fiction.
There is no way any media directed at one interest group has one iota of an iota of an iota of a speck of anything remotely edifying, pleasant or distracting to offer to another interest group, which is why Harry Potter was such a flop, all kids hate Lord Of The Rings and a woman wrote The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The fact that your wife thinks she’s reading for her own pleasure rather than for yours is deeply disconcerting. The sooner this proletarian nitwit realizes that she has displeased Sir Husband, Arbiter of Taste In This Household Young Lady, the better. Gift her a nice Franzen box set, a fresh copy of Infinite Jest or the complete works of Dave Eggers, so that she may better learn to center her recreational reading around fictional middle-aged white men instead of fictional people who aren’t as important and interesting as they are.
Tagged as: #ya lit
Worth a read:
Tell me if this sounds familiar: In a world where the government is up to no good, one young woman stands poised on the brink of childhood and adulthood. She’ll have to use all her cunning and resourcefulness to tear apart the government’s Evil Plot to keep her apart from Brock or Chet or Sage, the male object of her affection, and the world as she knows it will never be the same.
Dystopian novels, especially of the YA variety, have been talked up (or down) to death at this point. Everyone from the New York Times to School Library Journal has written articles about a genre that has taken the market by storm. Whether you believe The Hunger Games started the snowball effect or whether you’re insistent that YA has been pioneering dystopian fiction since the beginning, most people have an opinion about the whys and wherefores of dystopian fiction. I’m no exception, but I’m also a grumpy lesbian with a lot of thoughts and feelings about compulsory heterosexuality and how deep our politics run…
Tagged as: #important things #ya lit
You Keep Using that Word, I Do Not Think it Means What You Think It Means
The words “psychopath” and “sociopath” get thrown around a lot today, particularly on Tumblr. With the growing fanbase of Hannibal, a show centered around a potential psychopath, I thought I’d give a quick (hopefully) overview on just what these terms mean and how to use them accurately.
[Tagging Sherlock and Hannibal fandoms in this because I keep seeing wank on my dash surrounding these terms.]
Tagged as: #psychopathy
superlockedhogwartianinthetardis:
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
A question mark walks into a bar?
Two quotation marks “Walk into” a bar.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
The bar was walked into by a passive voice.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.
THANKS FOR TEACHING ME THINGS THAT ENGLISH CLASS HAS FAILED TO ACKNOWLEDGE
