I'll Never Get Into Art School With These Distractions...

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves three more, and two of those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of the two is young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

Two people meet at a bar. One thinks they’re being hit on. The other is a spy and thinks they’re meeting with a contact. Misunderstandings ensue.

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy just got Reddit!

A canyon in the North shore mountains near Vancouver, BC, Canada. [1451x2048px] [OC] - Author: Br81 on reddit

“There are two types of people you will meet in your life. One will run a finger down the index of who you are and jump straight to the parts of you that peak their interest. The other will take his or her time reading through every one of your chapters and maybe unfold corners of you that inspired them most. You will meet these two people; it is a given. It is the third that you’ll never see coming. That one person who not only finishes your sentences, but keeps the book.”

— Unknown

Fantasy Guide to Political Structures

A Horse! A Horse! My X for a Horse!

Let's be honest, fantasy authors love their kingdoms and empires. You can throw a rock in a bookshop or a library in the fantasy section and you will 99.99999% hit a fantasy book that will be set in or mention either of those structures. But what are they really? What's the difference between them all? Are there any more examples of structures that would suit your WIP better? Are you using the right terms? Let's have a closer look.

Duchy

A Duchy is a small territory ruled by a Duke/Duchess. While Duchies can be found in kingdoms, some duchies were sovereign states in their own right. Duchies are usually small by land mass but some duchies such as Burgundy were extremely powerful and influential. Independent Duchies were usually apart of a kingdom but grew so powerful that they eventually broke away to become a sovereign state in their own right. An example would be modern day Luxembourg, historic Milan and Burgundy.

Principality

A principality is territory ruled by a Prince/Princess. A principality is typically smaller than a kingdom and in some instances, can be apart of a larger kingdom or be a sovereign state. Principalities have a history of having broken away from a larger kingdom or eventually becoming apart of a kingdom. A principality within a kingdom is ruled by a Prince/Princess, usually an heir of the monarch and can be used to train them up to assume the throne in the future. Examples include Monaco, Liechtenstein and Andorra.

Kingdom

A sovereign state/country that is ruled by ruling King or a Queen. A kingdom is much larger and more powerful than a principality. Kingdoms can be feudal, meaning they are ruled in a strict hierarchy or an autocracy where the monarch rules alone with minimal input from the government or constitutional where the monarch is more of a figurehead and the government has a good chunk of control. Examples include England, Thailand and modern day Spain.

Commonwealth

A Commonwealth isn't a popular choice in fantasy but it is an interesting structure. A Commonwealth in its most basic form is a collection of states that are linked by either a shared culture or history. A Commonwealth can be a politically power or an economic power, with every state allowed to participate as much as they like. Not one state leads the others, it is all one group of equals. A Commonwealth can be a good idea for a group of nations that are more powerful together with them keeping their own independence.

Federation

A Federation is a political structure that is made up of united states or countries that are under a single government but each state is still independent and rules itself. Each state can have different laws, different cultures and economies but they all answer to the single government. Examples include the United States of America.

Republic

A Republic is a territory that is ruled by leaders and heads of state that have been elected on merit and by choice of the people. Republics are not just countries but can also be much smaller areas such as cities. Republics are democratic in nature, with the people having a say in who leads them in accordance to a constitution. There are many kinds of Republic: presidential, parliamentary, federal, theocratic, unitary. Examples of Republics include the Republic of Ireland and the city of Florence.

Protectorate

A Protectorate is a country/region/territory that is independent but relies on a larger, more powerful state for protection either in a military or diplomatic sense. A Protectorate was often used by Empires in order to maintain control over an area without annexing it. There are many reasons a larger state and the protectorate would agree to this, mainly the protectorate is much smaller meaning it is far more vulnerable to attack or it has very little power when compared to other states. A Protectorate allows the territory some power to rule itself but the larger state may feel the need or desire to interfere in the dealings of the territory. Examples of protectorates include the client kingdoms of the Roman Empire like Egypt before its annexation and Puerto Rico.

Empire

An Empire is a collection of nations that are united under one sovereign head of state or government. An Empire is formed by one nation steadily taking control of other nations, either through straight invasion and colonization or acquiring them through marriage and other less violent ways. An Empire is powerful mainly because it can drum up more resources, more influence and more military power. An Empire might impose the traditions, beliefs and culture of its principal nation - the nation that started it all - onto its colonies for better control and feeling of uniformity. Empires never last, that is something to always remember. Empires will eventually fragment due to the vast size and sometimes revolt among the conquered states. Examples of empires include the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire.

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.

Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.

Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.

The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top

You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.

Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up

You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.

Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog

Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.

If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.

You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"

Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.

Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.

We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.

Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say "I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd" and nobody gives a shit.

General Etiquette:

Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.

Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.

Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it

You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.

Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.

Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit

You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.

Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.

Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.

If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal

Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension

In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.

You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!

Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs

Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

Space is a Dusty Place!

Butterfly Nebula

When you look at pictures of space, do you know what you’re actually seeing? A lot of the time the answer is dust!

HII region seen by Chandra X-ray Observatory

Clouds of dust drift through our galaxy. Telescopes can take pictures of these clouds when stars light them up. Who knew dust could be so beautiful? But it’s more than just pretty – we can learn a lot from it, too!

Stars like our Sun are born in dust clouds. Over time, leftover dust clumps together to help form planets. That makes it a little less dusty.

At certain times of the year, a band of sun-reflecting dust from the inner Solar System appears prominently just after sunset -- or just before sunrise -- and is called zodiacal light. Credit: Ruslan Merzlyakov/astrorms

But later, objects like comets and asteroids can create new dust by breaking up into tiny rocks. In our solar system, these rocky grains are called zodiacal dust. That’s because it’s mostly visible near the constellations of the zodiac. We can see the hazy glow it creates just after sunset or shortly before dawn sometimes, like in the picture above.

Around other stars, it’s called exozodiacal dust. Try saying that five times fast! It makes it hazy there too, so it can be hard to see distant planets.

Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be really good at seeing how much of this dust is swirling around nearby stars. That will help future telescopes know the best places to look to find planets like Earth!

Roman will also see more distant objects. It will peer inside dust clouds where new stars are bursting into life. That will help our James Webb Space Telescope know where to look to find baby planets. Webb can zoom in for a more detailed look at these young worlds by seeing how they filter their host star’s light.

Roman will see huge patches of the sky – much bigger than our Hubble and Webb telescopes can see. These missions will team up to explore all kinds of cosmic mysteries!

Learn more about the exciting science Roman will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!