221 A
~ Jane Austen


Why is it such a big deal when major comic cook pairings split up? Or better yet, why can’t major comic book characters’ stories ever just end?
Something I’ve come to realize about comic books is that one of the problems with getting into them is all that complicated history and rebooting, etc. It’s the same people having their lives rehashed over and over and over and over and, well you get the picture. When new people come along, older ones are rarely, if ever, dropped. Superman has been around for 75 YEARS, Batman 74, Wonder Woman 72- and so many more just as old or close to it. Nothing ever ends, peoples lives (at least the major characters) can never have resolution. Or rather, as in the case of characters like Green Lantern and The Flash, a name can never be retired.
When it comes to romantic pairings this whole concept that is so deeply ingrained in the comic book world is even more ridiculous. One character having one “true” relationship with one person for seven decades! Superhero or no, they are people and the lack of variety and exploration in romantic attachment is just silly. I can admit that some people are truly meant for each other, hell I’m a romantic, I think true love (as I understand it) exists, but due to the never-ending aspect of a comic book character’s story I feel that it just doesn’t work, because it has to be messed with over and over. I understand being really attached to certain characters and OTPs, but when readers get up in arms about famous pairs breaking it off I just go slack-jawed and say, “Really?” Why is the idea of a superhero having a relationship that doesn’t work out, growing because of it, and then moving on to find someone new (just like it happens in the real world) so incredible and distasteful?
It’s just like when a television series goes on for WAY TOO LONG- the stories grow stale, repetitive, unimaginative and what could have been a damn good show with juicy, compelling narratives in 4 seasons, becomes tired, a joke, and loses the essence that made it wonderful in the first place at 9. I think this goes the same for comic books characters and story lines in general, besides the romance angle. There’s no true moving on and I think it’s torture on the characters. I admit that I love many superheroes and would be sad to see their stories come to an end, but I would also feel relieved and satisfied because I had a hell of a good time reading or watching their birth, growth, and conclusion/legacy. I wouldn’t have to suffer through rehashing, rebooting, regressing and all of these characters I’ve come to love and they would have resolution. Then something new would come along and I’d get caught up all over again. We do it with other mediums of storytelling, why is the comic book world so stagnant in this area? So afraid? Readers can stay involved while doing it with new material. It might be scary at first, especially for an audience so unaccustomed to resolution and endings, but we’re resilient and always hungry for more to dive in to.
When it comes to Wonder Woman, the headlines suggest that we only seem to care about three things: what she’s wearing, what her latest TV attempt is wearing, and who she is banging. Basically, it’s all about her pants.
An article that sums up a lot of my feelings about the new Wonder Woman comics while also bringing up a lot of other interesting stuff. I’m getting more and more pissed off with the writing and changes being done.

Stagecoach Mary: groundbreaking badass gunslinger.
When Stagecoach Mary wasn’t cracking rabid wolves in the fucking face with the stock of her ten-gauge or single-handedly building schoolhouses for poor Native American girls, you could find her in the saloons of Cascade drinking men under the table like the chick from Raiders of the Lost Ark and chomping on homemade cigars so potent that hardly any gunslinger in town had the stomach to handle them. You’d think maybe some folks would have tried to fuck with her, considering that she was, you know, a black woman in a society that at the time wasn’t particularly well-known for its attitudes towards racial and gender equality, but Stagecoach Mary wasn’t the sort of badass chick that was going to let people tell her what the fuck she was going to do or how she was going to do it. At a time when non-prostitute women weren’t allowed to drink at saloons, she received special permission from the Mayor to be served at any bar in the city any time she wanted, for life. Any time some asshole messed with her, she fucked him up. Like, one time a guy called her a rude name outside a saloon, so she looked at him for a second, said nothing, then grabbed a big fucking rock out of the street and clubbed him in the skull with it repeatedly until other cowboys finally restrained her. This chick gained such a reputation for being the shit out of uppity gunslingers that didn’t show her the proper respect that the Great Falls Examiner newspaper once cited this hard-drinking, quick-tempered asskicker as having “broken more noses than any other person in Montana,” and nobody ever debated the claim.
People, this woman was so incredible that the fact that she had a pet eagle rolling around the Old West with her wasn’t even the coolest thing about her.
always reblog Stagecoach Mary.
(via xdominoe)
(Source: captioningcrusader, via shappeyhappy)
(Source: mycroftses, via starfleet-incorporated)
(Source: thort0ise, via starfleet-incorporated)

The spread of the black death.
Poland
Poland, tell us your secret.
Poland is the
oldnew Madagascar.If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there.
Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.
Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it.
I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.
Damn Italy, you scary.
Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”
Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”
Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.
Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world.
WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL
When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.
Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!
(via xdominoe)