When you attend school you are technically in story mode but once you graduate your life turns into an open world game with just side quests here and there.
In case anyone actually wants to know the answer: it’s the plot of Cars. The difference is literally the plot of Cars.
Highways are usually two-to-four (at the widest) lane roads that meander the US landscape. Think Route 66, dinosaur statues, mom-and-pop diners, southern gothic. There are state-level and national-level highways. Some run for a 100 miles, some, like US HWY-17, run most of the East Coast:
That red line is US HWY 17. If you follow it, you will go through tiny towns. You may hit stoplights. I kid you not, you will see spinning cows on poles. Businesses exist along highways that you are encouraged to pull over and visit. They were designed to let you see America.
Yeah.
Now, interstates were made in the 50s and were made to get people from Point A to Point B. These suckers range from four lanes to eight lanes around big cities. They cut through everything. If you want to get to a business, you have to take an exit ramp and detour. They are great for getting places fast. You can still have weird experiences on them, but usually at night, when your eyes start playing tricks on you. Or there are deer.
I-95 is a massive corridor that runs from the Florida Keys to the Canadian Border. You can see the difference just looking at the maps.
As far as writing goes:
If you want quirky character development inside the car, you’re looking for an interstate. The majority of Americans take interstates to go on road trips.
If you want mysterious and/or supernatural hijinks, you’re looking for a highway. They are weird, weird places, and they’re surprisingly easy to wind up on if you leave the interstate.
(Even in America, no one’s really sure what a freeway is. Just ignore it.)
isn’t a freeway a highway that doesn’t have stoplights
the only thing I know is that SoCal has freeways, but I still can’t understand what all these are after a year living there lmao
I thought freeway was just a weird way to say highway like how some people say roundabout instead of rotary
Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”
Even though I thought my first Creative Writing professor was kind of a douche, he made a good point about this. One of our first assignments was to write in this eerie, otherworldly style (we were mimicking a specific author whose name escapes me), so we had to write about eerie otherworldly things happening. It’s no exaggeration to say that more than half the class had a “big reveal” where we find out that the story’s strange events and themes are all in the mind of some person in an insane asylum, or someone having a drug trip.
My professor said something like, “you just successfully wrote a world that feels separate from our own, but got frightened last minute and shoe-horned in normalcy. You showed that you were afraid to commit to something different and interesting.” Though I’m typically a contrarian and a piece of garbage, I am inclined to agree with my professor. I feel like people who write coma theories and the like are afraid to accept that the world of the story is separate from our own. They like everything wrapped up in this crazy little realism box where nothing out of the ordinary happens in fiction.
you win the Best Addition to a Post prize
Thank you :)
This pretty well hits the nail on the head as to why I generally hate coma/dream theories and people who think they’re so fucking deep for coming up with it. In my book it’s LAZY, plain and simple.
I think the only times I can think of where “It was all a dream” really works are in pieces like Over the Garden Wall, Ink, Coraline, and Mirrormask. In all of those, the characters ‘wake up’ again in their ‘normal’ world, but there’s a very strong implication that the dream world is as real, if not more so, than the ‘real’ world, and the things they did in the dream world had a very direct impact on the waking world– not in an “I’m gonna be a better person” sense, but literally who lives and who dies at the end of the story.
Notably, in most of those, it’s stated flat-out within the first couple of minutes that the character in question is dreaming. It’s not a big reveal, it’s a fundamental detail of the setting.
If you’re gonna do a dreamworld, actually commit to doing a dreamworld.
you know i hate tumblrs “i hope they do something problematic” shit so much? its not only with people like thomas sanders or john mulaney or that comic guy with the bike, but with whole ass shows and projects? like nobody ever said b99 is cop propaganda. nobody was saying that until one single person mentioned it and suddenly its the worst show you could watch because of one aspect of their show, while ignoring the shows diversity and political stances.
same happened to dream daddy, like you cant deny that that game was groundbreaking for the lgbt society, but suddlenly some people started shit like ‘uhhh but 5 years ago the game grumps made transphobic jokes’ and ‘you know that joesph is actually a satanist, right?’ and suddenly no one talked about the game anymore?
everytime someone tries their fucking best to be inclusive, diverse etc. people are digging through everything they can find just to justify that they dont like it? overwatch recently hosted a huge event to raise money for breast cancer research in association with the BCRF and without even doing one second of research people accused them of working with the susan g. komen foundation (which wasnt true) and tried to boycott a fucking charity event?
what im saying is, dont let tumblr ruin everything you love because they are bitter
PETA: They’d rather spend their money on publicity campaigns than on the animals in their care. PETA killed 73.8% of the animals in their care in 2015 (x)
FCKH8: Is a for-profit company that exploits oppressed groups for money. They’re also wildly uninformed, and spread misogyny, cissexism and bi/panphobia, as well as stealing their posts/designs (x)
Autism Speaks: They spend most of their money on researching a way to eliminate autism, heighten the stigma against autism and don’t have a single autistic person on their board (x)
Please support other, better charities, and feel free to add any others you can think of to this.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure: CEO makes insane amounts of money, they deny a lot of requests for wigs/help with treatment/etc., and have attempted to sue other charities that use the color pink as part of their anti-breast cancer campaign. ( xxx )
The Salvation Army: They promote the hatred of LGBT+ people, work with fundamentalist Christian groups to support conservative politics and rip off and exploit workers. ( xxx )
Wounded Warrior: They take money that should be spent on veterans and blow it on huge opulent parties for the company bigwigs. 26 million in 2014 alone wasted! ( xxx )
^ Important reminder to NOT waste any money donating to these groups
Reblogging because of the added info about Wounded Warrior.
A good way to know if a nonprofit you’re donating to is allocating their money in the right way is to check out their Charity Navigator rating: http://www.charitynavigator.org
New poll data suggests that the majority of Canadians would be willing to work longer hours in order to work a four-day week.
A recent study conducted by Angus Reid determined that 68 per cent of Canadians across all age groups would prefer to work four 10-hour shifts a week than five eight-hour shifts.
On the topic of being obsessed with introspection and “self discovery”, i recently read something by Viktor Frankl which I feel fits the whole following of astrology/mbti/personal discovery etc very well. He said that, because life has become void of meaning for many, because there is an “existential vacuum”, we compensate by “psycho-analyzing” ourselves, sharing our psychological problems and insights with others, discussing them, etc (and he predicted this development in the 40s!). An existential vacuum leads to an obsession with the own psyche that can be the cause of neuroses and its pseudo-therapy. Self-reflection can in itself be the root of many problems. I had a talk with someone about how phases of self-reflection and lots of journaling are often the least mentally stable and happy ones. When we feel good, we do not feel the need to conduct some sort of self-therapy. Viktor Frankl also came up with the concept of using a paradoxical intention for healing neuroses. A patient with insomnia, for example, cannot sleep because they so rigidly and obsessively try to sleep, which hinders them from relaxing into an unconscious state. So a paradoxical intention would be “for a change, why don’t you try to not sleep tonight, and just relax and think about something nice?” - which then makes them fall asleep quickly. Maybe by setting the paradoxical intention “i will not try to figure myself out and heal myself” many of the problems which were simply rooted in obsessing over yourself will take care of themselves.
I often get the urge to mimic weird sounds I hear, like some kind of enormous, annoying bird. This is not a good thing to do while working in a customer service capacity where people bring their children.
I should clarify that this is Very Bad because I do it without thinking, because it’s kind of fun, but often the noises are young children whining or adults making compulsive verbal tics. Mimicking these sounds seems like mockery and could be deeply offensive if someone heard me.
homestuck is probably the best example of satire backfiring.
the trolls were conceived as mockeries of different types of people you see online, and quadrants were conceived as a mockery of the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify their ships.
and guess what? nobody knew they were being made fun of, and then Homestuck’s fanbase got flooded by the people the trolls were designed to make fun of. fandom culture as a whole was irreparably damaged because of it.
boy some people are coming out swinging on this post with the “hey op why do you hate kids” shit
you know homestuck started in 2009, right
that was nine years ago. i was 15. i was one of the homestuck kids.
the homestuck fandom was bad. it conducted itself badly.
hussie made a set of characters as exaggerations of the way people conduct themselves poorly online. people that act like those characters identified with them, didn’t realize they were being made fun of, and joined the fandom. the fandom started to perpetuate the rude, obnoxious behavior that hussie initially set out to make fun of.
i know this because i was there! i saw it happen from the inside because i was one of the kids that did this!
you don’t get to retroactively say that the homestuck fandom wasn’t bad and that i just hate kids. i was in the homestuck fandom. i was one of the kids. captainsnoop is a Problem Sleuth url. i was on hussie’s train when i was 14, one year before Homestuck started. i know what i’m talking about.
So it’s definitely going to have a 3 week long boss battle in it
there’s gonna be a puzzle in-game that requires you to keep your console on while you write a letter to Hideo Kojima personally thanking him for making the game before you can move on, which only happens after you receive a letter with a confirmation code
They say a gun cant kill someone itself. Well. Neither can e.coli infected romaine lettuce, but instead of encouraging increased consumption, they removed the lettuce from society and the company responsible ended their harvest.
Seen in the comments: “Except food isn’t a right!”
Your periodic reminder that in people who have been subject to threats and punishment for having emotional responses or ‘inappropriate’ facial expressions, panic attacks look different.
They may look like the person has become calmer and less involved, dismissive, even. Some people become intensely subservient and silent. Some become catatonic.
Panic doesn’t always involve screaming, crying, and obvious signs of distress. It involves an extreme form of the person’s fear response – which can be altered by circumstance, ability, and what they’ve learnt to fear.
Which is to say, it’s not your place to decide someone isn’t having a panic attack, when they’ve told you that’s what’s happening.
Yes, absolutely this. I get quiet and withdrawn when I’m having a panic attack. A quiet panic attack is still a panic attack.
Essential components of any fantasy rolepaying group:
The player who brings exactly the same swishy elf character to every table; 50% chance of wizard, 50% chance of bard, 100% chance of banging a dragon before the campaign is done.
The player who favours dwarves because they’re uncomfortable with speaking in character and dwarves aren’t expected to have personalities.
The player who thinks they’re cleverly subverting expectations by playing their halfling as a bloodthirsty, sexually promiscuous drug fiend, unaware that - thanks to players like them - literally 80% of all halfling player characters are like that.
The player who designs their character purely for novelty value - like, this time they’re a giant telepathic praying mantis, or whatever - yet inexplicably manages to have the deepest character arc out of anyone.
The player whose character’s stats honestly don’t matter because their real contribution to the party is being the only adult in the room.
More:
The perennial orc player who you’re pretty sure is using the game as a group therapy session to work through some sort of identity issue.
The player whose rogue’s complicated backstory and sinister secret
agenda never actually end up being relevant in play because they also
kept it a secret from the GM.
The player with a penchant for Lawful Goodish warrior types who thinks they’re the adult in the room, but really they just have a talent for making irresponsibly dangerous plans sound reasonable - even to themselves.
The player who insists on taking the most complicated race/class combo
the GM will allow, then later discovers that the reason they can’t hit
for shit is because they’re been rolling their attacks on a d12 all
night.
The player who rolls druids because they are a straight up furry.
Every time I see this the point “the player whose characters stats honestly don’t matter because their real contribution to the party is being the only adult in the room” hits me like a fucking brick. That’s it, that’s my every character, the one who isn’t allowed to do dumb things because that has been covered neatly by everyone else in the party!
The premise of minimum wage, when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a home and support a family. That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.
The fact people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people that ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home and a family, is disgusting.
Also if a livable wage breaks the system then the system deserves to be broken.
People just want abuse victims that are soft and kind and gentle, the kind of victims who validate their beliefs that “everything happens for a reason”. It doesn’t occur to these people that abuse actually damages people, that it could turn victims bitter and resentful rather than into poster-children for resilience and inner-strength. Victims don’t just exist to pay homage to your worldview that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” as if abuse could ever be a positive or an experience to be grateful for.
The City of Hamilton has forced a local anarchist group to remove the circle A anarchy symbol from its headquarters, saying it is “hate material” similar to the swastika.
City officials say they’re taking direction from Hamilton police on the issue, but police say that’s not the case.
Whatever its origins, the move is a “very controversial interpretation of hate speech,” said Margaret Kohn, a professor of political science and expert in urban social justice issues at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.
“This seems like a constitutional lawsuit waiting to happen,” she said.
Generally, Kohn said, for a symbol to be considered hate speech, it has to somehow target an identifiable group.
“That seems to not be the case with the anarchist symbol,” she said.
