ThePrettiestOne

atopfourthwall:

philsandifer:

abdullahqutbedden:

This is Andy Khouri he’s the former editor of Comics Alliance (the Kotaku of comics sites) and he’s now working as an editor at DC Comics because again the comics industry is in the shitter right now and they are trying to pander to SJW’s and feminists not realizing that SJW’s and feminists don’t really give two shits about comics and just want to complain about stuff because that’s all they know how to do.

You know what’s funny about this whole thing? Comics Alliance used to be very anti DC back in 2011 when the first issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws came out they trashed that first issue and it’s writer Scott Lobdell (even going so far as to publish a hit piece on him calling him a misogynist and sexist because of the way he depicted Starfire) so I don’t understand why anyone from DC would look at this fucking site and decide to hire someone from there to work as an editor. 

Call me crazy but if I was someone who worked at DC and I saw someone trashing the stuff we were publishing I would ignore those people and try to not make contact with them because they’re a massive liability to the business. I wouldn’t bend over and hire someone who worked there to please the “progressives” because those people aren’t the main target demographic. 

This is why I want to make it into the comic business to give people like myself who actually care about good writing and storytelling an alternative to this bullshit. We as comic fans deserve better than having our hobby be run by idiots who constantly defend con artists like Anita Sarkeesian and her ilk. 

I kinda wish ComicGate was a thing because shit like this needs to fucking stop. But that’s the problem with the world that we live in companies are too scared of being called sexist, racist and homophobic that they have bow down and kiss “progressive” ass just to stay relevant in the media. 

Well, you know, first of all, excellent job succinctly illustrating why you’re never going to work at DC.

Let’s look a bit further at Red Hood and the Outlaws #1. Not the issue itself - good lord, why would we subject anyone to rereading that piece of turgid shit. But rather, at the New 52 branding that DC is winding down this month. You know - the whole “let’s blow up the entire line and start from scratch with loads of advertising to see if we can revive our slowly dying sales numbers” initiative that DC undertook.

Because here’s the thing about the comic business you’re so eager to join in: it’s dying. Its sales are an insignificant fraction of what they were when comics were a major cultural force, and its audience is a slowly aging pool of white men. It’s a losing proposition. Kids don’t buy comics. Teenagers don’t buy comics. Virtually nobody buys comics but people who have been buying comics for decades.

And that’s what the New 52 was an attempt to correct. It was an attempt to shed most of the theorized reasons why comics weren’t drawing new readers and create something that would bring in new readers who loved superhero movies and would try superhero comics.

It didn’t. It momentarily re-energized the slowly dying base, then quickly declined to the same set of sad sack long-time readers. DC ran loads of marketing surveys around the New 52, and this was the overwhelming response.

Mind you, that didn’t stop them. For four years they nobly tried to make it work. And they didn’t care that they were accused of being sexist, racist, and homophobic. No, no - they mocked the fans who complained about it. Literally. They went to cons and made fun of the fans who asked about female representation. They doubled down on their idea of bringing in a new audience of twenty-something men with comics like Red Hood and the Outlaws, and then they tripled down on it. They tried and tried again.

And for their trouble? In July of 2011, before any of the New 52 material launched, DC pulled $6.74 million for their line. In January of 2015, they pulled $6.6 million. Oh, but get this - the comics industry as a whole grew in that time. July 2011 had $20.29 million for the top 300 comics. January 2015 had $26.87 million. DC has managed to shrink their share of a growing pie. 

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, where a non-white editor in chief who came up via the Vertigo line back in the days when it was pulling in scads of new readers has been overseeing a publishing slate with a focus on diversity?

In July of 2011, $10.05 million. In December 2014? $10.65 million. (I went back a month for Marvel because their January 2015 numbers were ridiculously good due to Star Wars #1 - like, $15 million good.) And those numbers are ignoring digital, where it’s an established fact that books like Ms. Marvel do insanely good business. (Did you know, btw, that when you factor in digital Ms. Marvel outsells Uncanny X-Men? It’s true!)

So, shocker of shockers, after three and a half years of their Big Relaunch continuing the slow bleeding it was designed to avoid while Marvel scoops up a bigger piece of a growing pie and companies like Image ($0.77 million to $1.92 million over the same period) are similarly gobbling up market share by actually growing the dying industry, DC has changed direction. And made the smart move of hiring people who correctly identified what they were doing wrong three-and-a-half years ago instead of taking a self-defeating stance of blacklisting any critic who does their job and calls out what they see as lousy work.

So, you know. Good luck getting into an industry where what you want and what you value has proven itself repeatedly to be the path to the industry’s collapse, and what you hate is the only thing that’s looked like a future for the industry in over a decade. I’m sure you’re gonna do great. Especially now that you’ve written an angry screed about one of the editors at DC. Hope they’re nicer about that than you want them to be!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Beautifully done, philsandifer. Beautifully done. ^_^

And all my best to Andy Khouri!

caitlinisactuallyawritersname:

Just a friendly reminder:

Anon hate is never, ever okay.

The popular bloggers, the well-known writers, the “Big Name Fans”…are also human beings with difficult, demanding, sometimes painful personal lives.

Even if you don’t like their ship or what they put on their dash. Still a person behind that blog.

Sending unkind messages via anon in order to fulfill some monkey-brain need to take someone “popular” down a peg? Makes you a hurtful asshole. Full stop.

bookoisseur:

kiricallaghan:

persisting:

birdsy-purplefishes:

youranimeprince:

Crow babies are important

those are literally not fucking crow babies goddammit how many times do i have to tell you fuckers those are rail chicks

Crows build nests. Their young are helpless and not very fluffy. They can’t walk when they’re tiny like these are doing.

These are baby crows:

this is 10000% a completely unnecessarily nasty response, jesus god. you’re screaming at a sixteen year old kid on the internet for making a completely innocent and harmless mistake (one that google images also makes) i guess because you feel the need to prove you are the MOST BIRDEST? i don’t know. tumblr, you do this shit a lot, turning what should be a gentle and friendly correction about unimportant stuff into a bellowing tirade about how you can’t belieeeeeve someone could be so stupid as to not know the difference between altricial and precocial birds. it’s fucked up. stop fucking doing it.

i know it’s easy to get frustrated by misinformation touted as fact on tumblr, but shit like this is not life or death. it’s not social justice. youranimeprince isn’t in some position to forever destroy the nesting habits of corvids. they are sixteen, and they wanted to look at some cute fluffy baby animals. have like a fraction of a SMIDGEON of compassion for how upsetting it is to innocently post something cute and inoffensive and return to find people furious at you.

if you want those misinformed tumblr kids to stop being so misinformed, then fucking educate them kindly. if you feel that you can’t be kind, then honestly fuck off and let one of us be the adult instead.

^This. So much this.

We need to be kind in our corrections. We need to make it OKAY to be wrong. If you are the teacher (literal or metaphorical) who makes a student feel like an idiot, eventually everyone will stop raising their hands and learning will stop. 

It is OKAY to make mistakes. It is okay to be wrong. Encourage, do not condemn.

MOST BIRDEST THOUGH.

^TTTTTTHHHHIIIISSSSSSSSSSSS
"if you feel that you can’t be kind, then honestly fuck off and let one of us be the adult instead."

Comic for March 1st, 2015.

shannonhale:

I’ve been doing school visits as part of my tour for PRINCESS ACADEMY: The Forgotten Sisters. All have been terrific—great kids, great librarians. But something happened at one I want to talk about. I’m not going to name the school or location because I don’t think it’s a problem with just one school; it’s just one example of a much wider problem.

This was a small-ish school, and I spoke to the 3-8 grades. It wasn’t until I was partway into my presentation that I realized that the back rows of the older grades were all girls.

Later a teacher told me, “The administration only gave permission to the middle school girls to leave class for your assembly. I have a boy student who is a huge fan of SPIRIT ANIMALS. I got special permission for him to come, but he was too embarrassed.”

"Because the administration had already shown that they believed my presentation would only be for girls?"

"Yes," she said.

I tried not to explode in front of the children.

Let’s be clear: I do not talk about “girl” stuff. I do not talk about body parts. I do not do a “Your Menstrual Cycle and You!” presentation. I talk about books and writing, reading, rejections and moving through them, how to come up with story ideas. But because I’m a woman, because some of my books have pictures of girls on the cover, because some of my books have “princess” in the title, I’m stamped as “for girls only.” However, the male writers who have boys on their covers speak to the entire school.

This has happened a few times before. I don’t believe it’s ever happened in an elementary school—just middle school or high school.

I remember one middle school 2-3 years ago that I was going to visit while on tour. I heard in advance that they planned to pull the girls out of class for my assembly but not the boys. I’d dealt with that in the past and didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating the myth that women only have things of interest to say to girls while men’s voices are universally important.  I told the publicist that this was something I wasn’t comfortable with and to please ask them to invite the boys as well as girls. I thought it was taken care of. When I got there, the administration told me with shrugs that they’d heard I didn’t want a segregated audience but that’s just how it was going to be. Should I have refused? Embarrassed the bookstore, let down the girls who had been looking forward to my visit? I did the presentation. But I felt sick to my stomach. Later I asked what other authors had visited. They’d had a male writer. For his assembly, both boys and girls had been invited.

I think most people reading this will agree that leaving the boys behind is wrong. And yet—when giving books to boys, how often do we offer ones that have girls as protagonists? (Princesses even!) And if we do, do we qualify it: “Even though it’s about a girl, I think you’ll like it.” Even though. We’re telling them subtly, if not explicitly, that books about girls aren’t for them. Even if a boy would never, ever like any book about any girl (highly unlikely) if we don’t at least offer some, we’re reinforcing the ideology.

I heard it a hundred times with Hunger Games: “Boys, even though this is about a girl, you’ll like it!” Even though. I never heard a single time, “Girls, even though Harry Potter is about a boy, you’ll like it!”

The belief that boys won’t like books with female protagonists, that they will refuse to read them, the shaming that happens (from peers, parents, teachers, often right in front of me) when they do, the idea that girls should read about and understand boys but that boys don’t have to read about girls, that boys aren’t expected to understand and empathize with the female population of the world….this belief directly leads to rape culture. To a culture that tells boys and men, it doesn’t matter how the girl feels, what she wants. You don’t have to wonder. She is here to please you. She is here to do what you want. No one expects you to have to empathize with girls and women. As far as you need be concerned, they have no interior life.

At this recent school visit, near the end I left time for questions. Not one student had a question. In 12 years and 200-300 presentations, I’ve never had that happen. So I filled in the last 5 minutes reading them the first few chapters of The Princess in Black, showing them slides of the illustrations. BTW I’ve never met a boy who didn’t like this book.

After the presentation, I signed books for the students who had pre-ordered my books (all girls), but one 3rd grade boy hung around.

"Did you want to ask her a question?" a teacher asked.

"Yes," he said nervously, "but not now. I’ll wait till everyone is gone."

Once the other students were gone, three adults still remained. He was still clearly uncomfortable that we weren’t alone but his question was also clearly important to him. So he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Do you have a copy of the black princess book?”

It broke my heart that he felt he had to whisper the question.

He wanted to read the rest of the book so badly and yet was so afraid what others would think of him. If he read a “girl” book. A book about a princess. Even a monster-fighting superhero ninja princess. He wasn’t born ashamed. We made him ashamed. Ashamed to be interested in a book about a girl. About a princess—the most “girlie” of girls.

I wish I’d had a copy of The Princess in Black to give him right then. The bookstore told him they were going to donate a copy to his library. I hope he’s brave enough to check it out. I hope he keeps reading. I hope he changes his own story. I hope all of us can change this story. I’m really rooting for a happy ending.

youngaspie:

artismspectrum:

kuzlalala:

This is for those who don’t understand what executive function is. Even I know what it is after reading this and I can relate to this so much, especially in organization, impulse, and self-monitoring!

It doesn’t mention autism, but I know autistic people tend to be poor at executive functioning.

This is a great illustration of how complex executive functioning really is. “Executive functioning” isn’t just one trait, it’s a whole series of things (some of which aren’t even included here!) Executive functioning is more than just stereotypical “forgot my homework” ADHD cliches; it affects everything from prioritizing the steps involved in running errands to the flow and structure of conversation. And most people have more deficits in some areas than in others, so no two people with EF problems will be exactly alike.

Such a great example of EFD.

“the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works”

-









- credit to rorus raz (via agoodcartoon)

retrogradeworks:

cheshiretiffy:

patchouli-rolling:

rreggaeska:

nourrice:

im literally sobbing tf delete this

oh man wtf

FUCKING KILL ME IT’S TOO EARLY FOR THIS SHIT

OMG WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO PEOPLE

Oh fuck you people.

Swedish photographer and retoucher Erik Johansson delves into optical illusions and the surreal in his visually striking digitally manipulated photography. Johansson builds each image from many photographs, which he typically takes in multiple locations after meticulous scouting and planning. He then assembles the photos into the final image, a process he likens to putting a puzzle together. Prints of his work are available for purchase online.

photos by Erik Johansson

via PetaPixel

Photographer and dancer Mickael Jou photographs himself leaping and levitating through everyday life in his wonderful ongoing 365-photo project. He photographs himself in mid-leap with the aid of a remote and tripod. The Berlin-based artist has been recording the images around Europe for the past three years. He estimates it will take another three years to complete the project.

photos by Mickael Jou

via Daily Mail Online

talk-nerdy-to-me-thyla:

Wow I never knew this

“I almost thanked you for
teaching me something about survival
back there,
but then I remembered
that the ocean never
handed me the gift of swimming.
I gave it to myself.”

- Y.Z, what I forgot to remember

catastrophicmisfit:

catastrophicmisfit:

I was alone in the art room and had the thought “I wonder how many stools I can get over my head”
Long story short i got stuck and the class walked in to me pathetically trying to wriggle out without being knocked over

stop reblogging this

Just a few months before his death in 2003, the wonderfully eloquent Fred Rogers recorded a message to all of the children, most of whom are now adults, who grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in its original form. The message that he conveys is kind, loving, proud and poignant all at the same time, the way it always was when we were children.

I’m just so proud of all of you who have grown up with us. And I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead. But I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger, I like you just the way you are.

Thank you Mister Rogers. We will always like you just the way you are too.

Fred Rogers, who died on this day 12 years ago, recorded this video message for those who grew up watching his… http://t.co/DJVmc03pT2

— Fred Rogers Company (@FredRogersCo) February 27, 2015

shaggyshan:

3dmat:

Once again, spite concurs all.

I KNEW it! (fricken space wizards…)

Before and After Photos of Cats Growing Up (photos via bored panda)

Previously: Cats Using Dogs as Pillows, Puppies That Look Like Teddy Bears

Chat logs show how 4chan users created #GamerGate controversy:

This story is a few months old, but it serves as a reminder of how the entire horrible thing was created and perpetuated. This was never about anything other than harassing and attacking people.

"A set of IRC logs released Saturday appear to show that a handful of 4chan users were ultimately behind #GamerGate, the supposedly grass-roots movement aimed at exposing ethical lapses in gaming journalism. The logs show a small group of users orchestrating a ‘hashtag campaign’ to perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics in gaming journalism."

Remember, if you’re on the same side as Adam Baldwin, you’re on the wrong side.

“Potential 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) inexplicably told a conservative audience on Friday that President Barack Obama lacked a military strategy to confront ISIS because he feared upsetting Iran, a country that has actually committed itself to defeating the terrorist group.
 
Speaking before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, Rubio told radio and TV host Sean Hannity that “if we wanted to defeat them militarily, we could do it. [Obama] doesn’t want to upset Iran.”
 
Referring to the United States’ ongoing negotiations with Iran to contain that country’s nuclear program, Rubio continued, “In [Obama’s] mind, this deal with Iran is going to be the Obamacare of the second term, and he doesn’t want them sending military to the region because they think the region belongs to them.”
 
There’s just one problem: Iran has been fighting ISIS just like the United States and has publicly urged America to take a larger role in the operation. Obama has even sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggesting anti-ISIS cooperation.”

-

Marco Rubio Tries To Lecture Obama On ISIS, Commits Epic Error.

This jackass is a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence

Video: Tonight Show Hashtags: #EmailFail

ppaction:

Hint for politicians: If you are this clueless about female anatomy, you really shouldn’t be trying to legislate it. 

badmadwolf:

snailchimera:

on storify

IF ANYONE IS WONDERING WHY I LOVE ursulavernon

THIS IS WHY

Oh, wow, I remember this! Do you know, I had no idea how it ended when I started it?

The United States imprisons more people than any other country. This is true whether you measure by percentage of the population or by sheer, raw numbers. If the phrase mass incarceration applies anywhere, it applies in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

It wasn’t always this way. Rates of incarceration began rising as a result of President Reagan’s “war on drugs” in the ’80s (marijuana, for example), whereby the number of people imprisoned for non-violent crimes began climbing at an alarming rate. Today, about one-in-31 adults are in prison. his is a human rights crisis for the people that are incarcerated, but its impact also echoes through the job sector, communities, families, and the hearts of children. One-in-28 school-age children — 2.7 million — have a parent in prison.

In a new book, Children of the Prison Boom, sociologists Christopher Wildeman and Sara Wakefield describe the impact of parental imprisonment on children: an increase in poverty, homelessness, depression, anxiety, learning disorders, behavioral problems, and interpersonal aggression. Some argue that taking parents who have committed a crime out of the family might be good for children, but the data is in. It’s not.

Parental incarceration is now included in research on Adverse Childhood Experiences and it’s particular contours include shame and stigma alongside the trauma. It has become such a large problem that Sesame Street is incorporating in their Little Children, Big Challenges series and has a webpage devoted to the issue. Try not to cry as a cast member sings “you’re not alone” and children talk about what it feels like to have a parent in prison:

Wildeman and Wakefield, alongside another sociologist who researches the issue, Kristin Turney, are interviewed for a story about the problem at The Nation. They argue that even if we start to remedy mass incarceration — something we’re not doing — we will still have to deal with the consequences. They are, Wildeman and Wakefield say, “a lost generation now coming of age.”

The subtitle of their book, Mass Incarceration and the Future of Inequality, points to how that lost generation might exacerbate the already deep race and class differences in America. At The Nation, Katy Reckdahl writes:

One in four black children born in 1990 saw their father head off to prison before they turned 14… For white children of the same age, the risk is one in thirty. For black children whose fathers didn’t finish high school, the odds are even greater: more than 50 percent have dads who were locked up by the time they turned 14…

Even well-educated black families are disproportionately affected by the incarceration boom. Wakefield and Wildeman found that black children with college-educated fathers are twice as likely to see them incarcerated as the children of white high-school dropouts.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, Jim Crow hung like a weight around the shoulders of the parents of black and brown children. After Jim Crow, the GI Bill and residential redlining strangled their chances to build wealth that they could pass down. The mass incarceration boom is just another in a long history of state policies that target black and brown people — and their children — severely inhibiting their life chances.

Hat tip Citings and Sightings. Cross-posted at A Nerd’s Guide to New Orleans.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

ilikeyourstuffs:

4amhauntings:

Some “scary” animals would like you to have a better day. 

meaningful.

POC: Hey you know that racial slur that your people made up to dehumanize mine?
White person: I know of it
POC: Don't say it any more
White person: Well you are fucking racist for telling me I can't say a racial slur and you are oppressing me by denying my rights to speak freely

smaug—chan:

Australian newscasting at its finest.

In case you missed it, thanks to our patreon subscribers, old comics are now getting voteys! If we raise a bit more, I'll increase the rate to 2 a day!