leedle leedle leedle

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Mon, 20 May 2013 17:01:04 -0400

nickelbackthatassup: when I was six I threw a tantrum because I wanted a slushie from 711 and I...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:53:58 -0400

when I was six I threw a tantrum because I wanted a slushie from 711 and I remember my dad said “I will never buy you a slushie” AND LITERALLY RIGHT NOW HE CAME IN THE CAR WITH A SLUSHIE AND I WAS LIKE WHY DIDNT YOU GET ME ONE AND HE LOOKED ME DEAD IN THE EYE AND SAID “REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE SIX”

heart like the fourth of july: kennedyclintonkat: metatron walks into a random office in heaven and...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:46:09 -0400

heart like the fourth of july: kennedyclintonkat: metatron walks into a random office in heaven and...:

kennedyclintonkat:

metatron walks into a random office in heaven and sees a dozen desks situated in a half-circle facing the door. it’s odd, though, because the large leather swivel chairs all have their backs situated to him.
“hello?” he calls out, hesitantly.

as one, the chairs swirl…

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Sun, 19 May 2013 23:22:36 -0400

"“My God, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them?” That uncomfortable feeling was spreading..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:46:03 -0400

“

“My God, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them?” That uncomfortable feeling was spreading over me again. “What about them?”

“The color,” he breathed. “When you stand in the light. They’re amazing… like molten gold. I could paint those…” He reached toward me but then pulled back. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

”

- (via glitteringspark)

Got a paper due? Tips for lazy writers!

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:31:41 -0400

morejoyful:

In light of this post that’s been going around, I thought I’d share some paper-writing tips that are useful for when you’re feeling lazy or uninspired, or you’ve got writer’s block, or you procrastinated too much and just don’t have the time to write ten whole pages on agency and causality in Anna Karenina, or whatever. They won’t get the job done quite as quickly as a cut-and-paste operation will, but on the other hand, you won’t get expelled for doing any of these things either.

1. Use JSTOR. JSTOR can be a real lifesaver when you are doing last minute source-hunting. JSTOR is basically an online database of articles from reputable academic journals about almost any topic imaginable. Basically, if you are writing about a topic or book that is relatively popular or well-known, JSTOR alone can provide you enough sources to write a twenty-page paper. If you are a college student, your institution should provide you with JSTOR access. If you are a high school student, make friends with a college student!

2. Use book reviews. If you are using an academic book as one of your sources but can’t be bothered to actually read it, read the reviews instead. Academic reviews are usually three pages long at most (many are not even a page) and offer not only a helpful and concise summary of the contents of the book, but also a sense of how the book fits into conversations that have happened or are happening in the scholarship of its field… and, of course, what the reviewer, an academic and often a professor, thought of it. Book reviews are like SparkNotes for grad students. JSTOR is the best place to get good reviews from reputable journals and scholars.

Nota bene: do not plagiarize book reviews. You can quote and cite book reviews if that is useful to you, or if you want to increase your word count by discussing both the book and the reviews of it.

3. Use a lot of quotations. You might be surprised at how much space quotations can take up in a paper that makes responsible use of them—I’ve written papers where quotations (from both primary and secondary sources) took up almost half the word count. Of course, if you use them clumsily, it might come off as a transparent attempt to take up space, but if you use good, relevant quotations that support your argument, you look like a thorough, meticulous scholar.

Remember, if your quotation takes up more than four lines, you need to use a block quotation. In proper MLA format, a block quotation is indented one inch and retains the same font size and spacing as the rest of the text—which takes up tons of space, but if you have a sense of shame, like I did, it looks a just a little bit too space-waste-y. But hey, that’s what the handbook says to do!

Be more sparing with block quotations in shorter papers and more generous with them in longer papers. Writing about anything in verse (poetry, Shakespeare, etc.) is a good excuse for lots of block quotations!

4. Use footnotes instead of parenthetical citation. This is actually something I whole-heartedly recommend, if you have the option (you might not). Not only do Chicago-style footnotes take up tons of space on the page, Chicago citation is more useful, more flexible, and more professional-looking than MLA. The higher up you go in academia in the humanities, the more people you will see using Chicago and using footnotes. Just make sure you format the citations properly, because the format for footnotes is a little different than for bibliographical entries.

5. Paraphrase and summarize. Okay, so we were all told to analyze, not summarize, but sometimes you just need to fill space to make your ten pages. And you might be surprised at how much summarizing you can do before your paper actually starts to sound bad, and at how much summarizing academics often consider necessary in their papers. If you paraphrase something AND quote it, it takes up tons of space. And if you are summarizing an argument from one of your sources, it can be useful and sometimes even necessary—it often reads not as summary but as synthesis (because you need to understand the argument to summarize it and boil it down for the reader to understand), especially if it is an idea that’s fundamental to your own argument. You can also summarize different arguments other people have made about the topic you’re writing about, to give the reader a sense of the conversation you’re entering into. Summarizing what other people have said is a lot easier than saying stuff yourself; just remember that even when you put other people’s ideas into your own words, you still have to cite them to give them proper attribution for those ideas.

5. Mention the names of the authors and sources you cite. Instead of just quoting or paraphrasing your sources and adding the citation, include the names of authors and sources in your text, e.g., “Historian R. I. Moore, in his 1987 book The Formation of a Persecuting Society inwhich he discusses the sudden explosion of persecutory activity against marginalized communities starting in the eleventh century, argues that…”

6. Quote sources from other languages. Then include a translation into English (or whatever language you’re writing in) either in the text of the paper or in a footnote. This takes up tons of space and makes you look really smart. Make sure you say where you got the translation from—you can cite a published English translation with attribution, or you can translate the quotation yourself and add a note that you did so. This is a tip for the multilingual only—DON’T quote anything you can’t read, even if you have a translation of it. (Of course, you can just quote the translation by itself.)

7. Some “your mileage may vary” tips. Everyone is a different kind of writer, so other people might not find these as useful, but these are strategies that have worked for me. Before you start writing, gather all your quotations and arrange them in the order you plan to use them; then write the paper around them—voila! A lot quicker than an outline, and saves a lot of time flipping through books and articles and searching for quotes as you go. Don’t get stuck on one part of your paper; if you can bear to write non-sequentially, skip to a section you are in the “mood” to write about instead—keeps you from wasting time dawdling because you don’t know what to say or how to phrase something. Do all your bibliographical entries and citations at once (at what point in the writing process you do it is up to you)—this prevents you from having to look up the citation format multiple times. If you need bibliographical info for a book you no longer have access to, Amazon or any university library search catalogue is a good source for that information.

8. And some “basic” tips of the margin-fudging, 2.2-spacing variety. Hit the space bar twice after a full stop (you might be surprised at how much space that takes up). Use Cambria, Microsoft Word’s new default font, instead of Times New Roman (if you have the option—it’s significantly bigger.) Remember that a greater number of shorter paragraphs takes up more space than a smaller number of longer paragraphs. Divide your paper into sections with their own title headings. If your teacher is picky about margin size, fudge only the right and bottom margins. (You can fudge the bottom margin the most, because Word is often idiosyncratic about where it breaks a page, depending on the paragraphs involved.) 2.1 or 2.2 spacing is a thing you can do if you play around with the paragraph settings, and it’s not obvious unless you have a teacher who’s on the lookout for that sort of thing. Some people double space their header info (name, date, class, professor’s name), but personally, I think that looks ugly.

Hopefully, this is useful and might save some poor souls from the desperation and ignominy of plagiarism. Feel free to chime in if you find these helpful (and what you found helpful or not helpful), or if you have any tips of your own! I will add more as I think of them!

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Sun, 19 May 2013 22:22:12 -0400

slashtheist: Name: superWOLF: The Code [Original Trailer]...

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:38:14 -0400

slashtheist:

Name: superWOLF: The Code [Original Trailer]
Genre: Supernatural / Teen Wolf Crossover, AU
Pairings: Dean/Jackson, Stiles/Derek, Sam/Allison
Tags: demon!Stiles, BAMF!Stiles, angel!Lydia, were!papa Stilinski…

This video is for Sugi, who participated in SC’s Wolf Haven Charity Project and kindly donated money in exchange for a video of mine. Her prompts were: ‘Explosions or action or demons or apocalypse or SPN x-over, as long as it features Stiles and Derek’. So here it is ;)).

× For more info read the video desc.: here

sterekandstuff: Help is on the way I watched Slashtheist’s...

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:37:00 -0400

sterekandstuff:

Help is on the way

I watched Slashtheist’s incredible trailer and I Superwolfed pretty hard sooo… I tried out some episode stills? They’re not quality or anything but I hope they’re entertaining ;)

merlin meme [1/1] Favourite Female Character; Guinevere.

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:08:28 -0400

merlin meme

[1/1] Favourite Female Character; Guinevere.

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Sun, 19 May 2013 19:04:12 -0400

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Sun, 19 May 2013 17:01:19 -0400

rneerkat: whens chip skylarks next tour

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:19:24 -0400

rneerkat:

whens chip skylarks next tour

bloodcaste: johnlock? no. john locke. right to property. social contract. classical liberalism.

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:15:18 -0400

bloodcaste:

johnlock? no. john locke. right to property. social contract. classical liberalism.

There is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you.

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:10:27 -0400

There is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you.

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Sat, 18 May 2013 23:40:43 -0400

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Sat, 18 May 2013 23:36:30 -0400

Vastra’s letter to Clara

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:32:38 -0400

Vastra’s letter to Clara

Demons run when a good man...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:24:45 -0400

Demons run when a good man goes to war.

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Sat, 18 May 2013 23:17:51 -0400