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@beloved-monarch

remember that time that all the unova gym leaders gathered to take down team plasma with their pokemon and brycen opted for hand to hand combat instead

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hate being the generation that remembers no ads on YouTube & the annoyance when we first saw 1 ad every 10 videos, then 1 every 5 videos, then on every video, then multiple ads within a single video, only for YouTube to market paying for Premium™️ to ‘get rid of ads!’ which weren’t even there at the start

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Out of Touch

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It's so important to remember that tumblr is bad. Has been bad. And will likely remain bad for the foreseeable future. And that is vital to our survival. If Tumblr was a good website that worked, it would get turned into a corporate hellscape like every other site. It's so important that Tumblr is broken and poorly run and impossible to effectively navigate. It's all that's keeping us safe.

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Been working in pest control for 3 months now and i can confidently say that nobody on earth seems to understand that sometimes You Will See A Bugs and that's Normal if you live literally anywhere with oxygen

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y’all want some cool, muslim-made, modest fashion ideas for your hijabi characters?

absolutely nobody asked but here, have them anyway (all via the Islamic Fashion Institute):

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So I've seen a huge misunderstanding of the rating tags in AO3 as of late, mainly when it comes to the difference between E and M rated fics. Just yesterday, I've came across a graphic sex scene in an M rated fic. That's really concerning.

To sum things up, it's the difference between an R-rated movie and an X-rated movies...

"M" rated fics are like American R-rated movies. These contain hard core cursing (like tons of f bombs and ones worse than that), smoking, under aged drinking, drug use, mature subject matter, graphic violence and milder/not super descriptive spicy scenes. Think things like Deadpool, Prey, and Joker are good comparisons.

"E" rated fics are NC-17/X-rated movies. They are rated that way because they have explicated sex scenes that show everything. That's literally it.

Please for the love of god, rate your fics properly! There are a lot of sexual adverse people out there that don't want to read an "M" rated fic and come across a super explicit sex scene. There would be a lot of people disappointed and angry at you if an "E" rated fic has zero spice. It's better to rate your fic too high than too low.

This has been a PSA.

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Jason & Friends

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I can handle people blazing their nudes but I draw the line at Christian preachers

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Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

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I think it's so funny how we bred JOBS into dogs. I have two shih tzus and they were bred to be lap dogs. All they care about is looking cute and cuddling with people. Meanwhile my grandma has a border collie and that dog needs to feel so useful all the time, he acts like he will pass away if he doesn't have a job to do constantly

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sometimes you just gotta read something and say “i literally don’t care” aloud and move on

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Concerning Juliet’s age

I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Juliet’s age. Juliet is 13 - more precisely, she’s just on the cusp of turning 14. Though it’s not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her - perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Juliet’s age by saying “that was normal back then” or “that’s just how it was.” This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.

In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their father’s permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papa’s consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the father’s goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.

In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parents’ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose - but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. They’re still a kid, we think to ourselves - why would their parents agree to this?

This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Juliet’s clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.

Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Juliet’s suitor Paris that “my will to her consent is but a part.” He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the lady’s consent was of CRITICAL importance. It’s why so many of Shakespeare’s plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?

Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a woman’s health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy - sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girl’s health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result - was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.

In Shakespeare’s plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J - Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.

Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent - all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she weren’t so young.

When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juilet’s consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the prince’s favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Juliet’s marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didn’t ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathers’ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England - basically everyone non-aristocratic - the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.

tl;dr:

Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?

A. Hell no!

Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?

A. Not without dad’s consent - Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.

Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?

A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girl’s consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.

Q. How should we explain Juliet’s age in modern terms?

A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl who’s close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? We’d say she’s still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that she’d be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd - she’s still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.

Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?

A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over - Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason. 

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Elephant gets a new leg

(via)

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how y’all feelin

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This.