The new trailer for The Imitation Game is here, and it has Oscar bait—and swooning Benedict Cumberbatch fans—all over it.

Alan Turing may have given the world the first primitive computer, but his life as a misunderstood gay man in mid-century Britain was by no means an easy one. Naturally, this means his life story is prime awards-season material, especially when paired with a cast full of all stars and a lush production teeming with historical details and the kind of heady film scoring that begs to be played beneath an acceptance speech.

Mark Strong, Keira Knightley, and that guy who plays Tywin Lannister all get great turns in the new trailer from Weinstein Films, but it's Cumberbatch whose awkward bashfulness will prove the real box office draw. And by "box office," we mean all the Tumblr fangirls who will inevitably turn up to see if Cumberbatch has given them a new slash fandom, and all the Reddit fanboys curious about whether this film is another kind of The Fifth Estate, his  WikiLeaks biopic where he played controversial ringleader Julian Assange.

Despite early fears that the movie would gloss over Turing's homosexuality, it seems to give a decent amount of plot time to the subject. Though the trailer itself couldn't be more vague about the "illegal" secret Cumberbatch is keeping, the YouTube description notes that Turing was persecuted for his gay lifestyle.

Turing's life is one of history's great triumphs as well as one of its great tragedies. Cumberbatch, if the trailer is any indication, makes Turing's pain and passions come to life.

Let's just hope his performance isn't overshadowed by the hero worship of his fans on the Internet.

Screengrab via YouTube

Note to IBM executives: If you're going to openly discuss why you think young women make bad hires in the tech industry, you might want to make sure you're not having lunch next to a young mom who's also a coder.

We're guessing Toronto editor Lyndsay Kirkham didn't stick around for dessert after her birthday lunch was ruined Monday. Kirkham, who's a self-described "feminist activist, writer, and gentle mama," has been a freelance coder for about a decade and allegedly overheard a conversation at the table next to her that spoiled her appetite.

@clayplacejones I'm in a restaurant. Trying to have a birthday lunch. Now munching on rage and sad heart.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

It seems Kirkham was seated next to two men she identified as IBM executives. After realizing the tone of their conversation, Kirkham whipped out her phone and livetweeted the whole thing.

These IBM executives should have picked someone else to sit beside to have a working lunch focused on "why they don't hire women".

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

"I was eating my lunch and they were already into ordering their coffees," Kirkham told the Daily Dot. "They started addressing how women weren't 'an option' for new hires."

Apparently IBM doesn't like hiring young women because they are 'just going to get themselves pregnant again and again and again'.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

Kirkham told the Daily Dot that the tech executives also "discussed holidays and how [women] needed more time to download and decompress from work related stress."

They went on to say that they only look at "mature women" who aren't likely to have kids. Absolutely awful.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

According to Kirkham, the two executivess thought that "mature" women were less likely to miss "years of work" because they were looking after young kids. At some point, the two men were joined by a woman who not only agreed with their thoughts on hiring young women but joined in their conversation.

Wait for it: an older woman has just joined the Misogyny Vortex.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

Oh. Shocker. They are all white.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

It gets worse. According to Kirkham, the executives listed off a number of women who are currently employed at IBM, all of whom apparently have kids, and listed the amount of time the women were expected to take off in the next few years for anticipated pregnancies. 

"They also mentioned women who had left after having children and had gone into real estate 'because it is flexible for their kid-related schedules,'" Kirkham told the Dot.

It's worth noting that, according to a recent study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 52 percent of women who exit STEM-related fields for other careers cite "hostile macho culture" as the number one reason they're leaving.

Should I mention that I know how to code, write latex and made my first computer program at age 12? Slip it in with "you're all fuckshows".

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

Although the sexist conversation soured Kirkham's birthday, she found plenty of support on Twitter, where her tweets sparked conversation and prompted other moms to discuss their own experience coding while parenting.

<3 these stories of nursing while coding! Got my first programming job while pregnant and did a lot of it :) @ameliasprout@HisFeministMama

— mvolz (@mariellevolz) July 21, 2014

The support also motivated Kirkham to get pro-active:

Fuck it. I'm going to take photos and share with IBM HR.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

While Kirkham's actions are unlikely to change the deeply embedded sexism of tech culture, they obviously struck a chord with her Twitter audience,and others in the community who responded to the all-too-familiar tale of wearying setbacks for women that she told.

These executives are so comfortable in the sexism that they are openly sharing. Wow. My disbelief is tempering my anger. #IBM

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

I should stop trying to use computers or the interwebs. Because: uterus. Thanks to IBM for this tech lesson.

— Lyndsay (@HisFeministMama) July 21, 2014

A request for comment to IBM was not returned at press time. 

Photo via Jhaymesisvip/Flickr; CC-BY-SA 2.0

Bad news for queer and genderqueer cinema lovers: The film industry still isn't ready to love you back, at least not according to GLAAD's recently released annual survey on GLBTQ representation in Hollywood.

The latest version of the Studio Responsibility Index focused on the seven film studios with the highest theatrical grosses last year. The survey reveals that of the 102 films these studios released in 2013, only 17 of them had queer or genderqueer characters—and most of the portrayals were offensive.

No studio mustered better than a 20 percent inclusivity rating using GLAAD's baseline criteria for queer representation. The "best" studio out of the lot was Sony Columbia, which only turned in two films with positive representation (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and Battle of the Year).

The vast majority of this representation was of white gay men, while at the bottom rung were transgender men, who failed to make an appearance in any film from a major studio.

GLAAD also smartly observed that of the two films on the list that portrayed transgender women as characters, they were "better described as 'impressions,'" because none of the women were played by real transgender women but rather by cisgender men in drag, ala Jared Leto's Oscar-winning turn in Dallas Buyer's Club.

In order to quantify its metric, GLAAD introduced the Vito Russo test, patterned after the Bechdel Test and named for the author of the seminal work on Hollywood queer representation, The Celluloid Closet. The Vito Russo test breaks down effective or complex queer representation into three components. The film must have:

• A character who is "identifiably" gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender
• Who is not "solely or predominantly defined" by their sexual or gender identity—that is, it's not the only thing you know about them
• Whose presence actually has a purpose within the plot of the story.

Applying the Vito Russo Test to the number of films released gives an even bleaker picture of the state of GLBTQ representation in Hollywood, as the majority of the films which included queer or genderqueer representation only featured characters for a few seconds, and often purely as the brunt of a gay joke, a source of "gay panic," or other offensive humor. Still, there were some bright spots, notably Lionsgate's Peeples, which presented a positive queer relationship to a predominantly African-American viewership, and Sony's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, which introduced a fandom favorite in the queer romance of Magnus/Alec, which will hopefully get more screentime as the series continues.

Here's the studio-by-studio breakdown.

• Studio: 20th Century Fox 
  Number of Inclusive Films: 1 out of 14.
  Titles: Broken City, which passed the Vito Russo Test.
  Difference from last year: With one film, Fox actually improved its metric from 2012.
• Studio: Lionsgate Number of Inclusive Films: 3 out of 21.
  Titles: Tyler Perry's Peeples and the Spanish-language Instructions Not Included both have notably positive representations of queer characters; however, the studio lost positive karmic points for its played-for-laughs portrayal of a bisexual matriarch in The Big Wedding, and an infinite number for producing Ender's Game, from the notoriously homophobic Orson Scott Card.
  Difference from last year: This is the first year Lionsgate has been included in the survey, though GLAAD noted that in the past the studio has produced a number of landmark films in the annals of positive queer representation in Hollywood, including Gods and Monsters and But I'm a Cheerleader!
• Studio: Paramount
  Number of Inclusive Films: 2 out of 9 films. Neither of these passed the Vito Russo test.
  Titles: Pain & Gain and The Wolf of Wall Street.
  Difference from last year: Paramount is failing compared to 2012, when its representation was "Adequate" according to GLAAD. Still, the org hastened to note that Paramount is a perennial champion of mainstream and groundbreaking films featuring queer characters.
• Studio: Sony Columbia Pictures
  Number of Inclusive Films: 3 out of 15, two of which passed the Vito Russo Test.
  Titles: Grown-Ups 2, which had "needlessly offensive" humor, as well as more positive representations in Battle of the Year and Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. This was the only film on the entire list that was also nominated for a GLAAD media award for its portrayal of the fandom favorite romance between minor characters Alec and Magnus Bane.
  Difference from last year: This is a marked improvement from 2012.
• Studio: Universal:
  Number of Inclusive Films: 3 out of 15. Only one of these passed the Vito Russo test.
  Titles: Kick-Ass 2, Riddick, and About Time. Although Riddick technically passes the Vito Russo test, it also evinces a wealth of misogyny, and undermines actress Katee Sackhoff's character by implying that her lesbian identity is only a phase until she finds a guy who's manly enough to win her over.
  Difference from last year: Despite, or perhaps because, of being the oldest studio on the list, Universal is perennially one of the poorest performers when it comes to representation. Its rating remained adequate from the previous year.
• Studio: Walt Disney
  Number of Inclusive Films: 2 out of 10, neither of which passed the Vito Russo test.
  Titles: Iron Man 3 gets a pass for including a 2-second "impression" of real-life MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts, along with the comedy Delivery Man.
  Difference from last year: Disney gets an "Adequate" rating over a failing rating from last year.
• Studio: Warner Bros.
  Number of Inclusive Films: 3 out of 18, only 1 of which passed the Vito Russo test.
  Titles: We're the Millers, The Hangover Part III, and Grudge Match.
  Difference from last year: Despite being a powerhouse of landmark queer and genderqueer films over the years, the WB dropped from an "adequate" rating to failing this year for films with negative and stereotyped references to GLBTQ characters.

Given that many of these studios have a history of risk-taking with certain queer and genderqueer-centric films, it's not a wayward hope that next year will see more positive representation from the list. GLAAD also noted that numerous subsidiary studios like Focus Features and distributors like the Weinsteins had positive track records as well. 

Still, it cautioned that "the images present in contemporary Hollywood film are rarely significant enough to leave much of an impact," and that "[i]n many cases, they may even be doing more harm than good."

At least we know that examining and identifying the problem is a major step toward providing a solution—and, hopefully, getting Hollywood to listen.

Download the full GLAAD report here.

Magnus/Alec fanart from The Mortal Instruments by far-eviler/deviantART

What does the city you live in say about you? A lot, if the rampant #I'mSo[city] meme is to be believed.

Currently going viral on Facebook, the meme has spent the past few weeks crawling across Instagram, Twitter, and other venues after a gradual climb to prominence over several years. It's also served as an important localizing voice on social media for the African-American communities who've been doing most of the hashtagging.

Screengrab via Facebook

The meme has quickly become a place to alternately joke about the ills of the city you live in, boast about the things you love, and take a trip down Nostalgia Lane:

Screengrab via Facebook

There was plenty of local crossover, too. Brooklyn Facebook user Christopher Graves got in on the action by sharing a viral video of a group of Kansas City police officers who blocked off a street in their neighborhood last week to play basketball with a group of local kids.

Although the meme seems to have been squarely cultivated by black social media users, the first instance of "I'm So [City]" that we could find is the early 2009 song by the punk-glam band MYNX, "I'm So L.A."  

Later that same year saw this tweet:

#imsomemphis That I'm going baby...to the Hole in the wall...

— En SHABBA Nur (@Owtlaw) September 12, 2009

The phrase started to spread. In 2010, on the Gucci and Waka song "Bite Me," Waka sings, "I'm so mother****ing neighborhood." A few months later, the first "I'm So..." community sprang up on Facebook, for I'm So Atlanta. (It currently has 65 members.) I'm So Houston followed.

There were other references here and there, like 2012's "I'm So Austin, She's So Houston," another "Im so LA," and a reference to "I'm so NY" from Earth to Echo's rapper wunderkind Astro. 

Meanwhile, "I'm so NY" was slowly making the rounds. Here's an April 2012 on-the-street reference:

Photo via Instagram

Later that same year, a now-defunct dating website called ItsSoMiami briefly appeared in southern Florida. But the meme really found its footing with Fabolous's Fall 2012 offering ,"I'm So NY." With the opening hook, "I'm so NY Weezy prolly don't like me," Fabolous referenced rapper Lil Wayne's distaste for the city.

Not long after that, references to the phrase could be found in association with the New York Knicks and related fan swag:

Photo via Fancy

Obviously New York and L,A, aren't the only cities with pride, or an identity hewn from place and local culture. But not everyone is happy with the display of local pride overwhelming their Facebook feeds:

Screengrab via Facebook

Still, the hashtag, which so far seems to have circulated among primarily African-American social media communities around the country, seems to be resonating with a number of people. On his website, Portland writer Jelani Greenidge took a moment to reflect on why the #ImSoPortland hashtag is "more than just a meme":

It’s important for me to remember how much I love it here, how much history I have here, because it brings important context to the times when I feel like I need to talk about what it’s like living here as a black person (hint: sometimes it sucks) . . .

It’s no surprise that “I’m So Portland” seems to be a mostly black social media meme, because white Portlanders have less of a need to affirm their identity in the context of this city. They have “Portlandia” to do that for them.

Regardless of what city you live in, it's great to be reminded that every urban neighborhood—and even suburbs like McKinney, Texas—has its strength as well as its weaknesses. Just take a look at the hashtag for one of the most unfairly maligned American cities, #ImSoDetroit:

Screengrab via Facebook

Screengrab via Facebook

No matter where you live, the hashtag is a reminder that you're surrounded by friendly neighbors—most of them on the Internet, just like you. And even if you're not a native of your city, now might be the perfect time to join in the hashtag and get to know someone on your block or your neighborhood. 

Who knows? You just might make the Internet feel a little smaller.

Screengrab via Facebook

Almost a year after refusing, along with others in Silicon Valley, to make its Equal Employment Opportunity stats public, Twitter has finally released its long-awaited internal diversity findings—over a month behind its social media competitors. 

Spoiler alert: they weren't good. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with tech culture—it's one of the most notoriously sexist and whitest industries around.

But to add insult to injury, Twitter apparently tried to divert everyone's attention from the news about its diversity statistics by releasing its news immediately—as in one minute before—Facebook's scheduled quarterly earnings report. 

The diversion tactic didn't work—probably because Twitter's findings were embarrassing. "[L]ike our peers, we have a lot of work to do," Twitter's Janet Van Huysse, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, wrote on the Twitter blog yesterday.

Understatement. While the range of ethnic diversity in the areas of tech leaves something to be desired, Twitter's leadership is over 70 percent white, with another quarter of leadership being Asian-American. 

Forty percent of oniline African-Americans who are between the ages of 18 and 29 are active on Twitter, as are 22 percent of all online African-Americans. But despite the fact that Twitter is a huge part of black Internet culture, only 2 percent of Twitter's internal culture is black. The number matches Google's internal culture, but Google isn't as strongly associated with the Internet's African-American community.

Although women are faring much better in the company overall, the gap in the tech department is a staggering 90 percent male to 10 percent female. Though this should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the blatant systemic abuse and marginalization of women within the tech industry, it's still painful to see. 

It's also odd that Twitter's gender survey doesn't include mention of non-binary genders. It's unclear if the omission is due to Twitter having no non-binary or transgender employees, or whether Twitter's presumably self-reported survey left out other gender options.

Going unmentioned in Twitter's blog post is the fact that its board of directors, chief executives, and investors are all white men. For a company whose IPO was valued at $18 billion, that's a lot of investment in a huge lack of diversity. 

And while Twitter claims that "we have a number of employee-led groups putting a ton of effort into the cause," of the six Twitter accounts that the blog post listed as being representative of Twitter's effort to diversify, only two, the GLBTQ group TwitterOpen and Women in Engineering have been around before this year.

In fact, Twitter ALAS, its Latino employee group, and Blackbirds, its African-American employee group, were both only created last week, on the same day, as though Twitter was scrambling to make sure it had ethnic equivalents of other employee groups in the company that had sprung up more naturally.

One positive is that while Twitter may have been trying to post its diversity stats while everyone was looking in the opposite direction, the added visibility is a hopeful step forward towards addressing a serious problem.

And since Twitter is hardly the only Silicon Valley tech and social company to be facing these issues, hopefully their commitment to transparency will make other companies, ones who also need to take a hard look at their diversity stats, follow suit.

Photo by John-Morgan/Flickr; CC BY 2.0 | Remix by Fernando Alfonso

Thursday was the biggest day of the year for fans of MTV's Teen Wolf. Amid a full-day of announcements related to the Teen Wolf panel at San Diego Comic-Con, MTV announced that the show had been renewed for a 20-episode fifth season. MTV also released a special trailer for the second half of Season 4. Check it out below:

Other big news was the announcement that despite speculation that he'd been written off the show, actor Keahu Kahuanui, who plays Danny, would be returning later on in the show.

The panel also had plenty of good will, like the delightful exchange between breakout actor Dylan O'Brien and a fan who got adorably embarrassed when he paid her a compliment. (She later got a hug from the man himself.)

Screengrab via YouTube

But there was controversy as well. Seated next to O'Brien is actress Shelley Hennig, who plays Malia, the recently introduced love interest for O'Brien's character Stiles. But prior to the panel, the seating arrangement was different:

Look who is sitting next to each other #teenwolfsdccpic.twitter.com/k7pfM64CZm

— Tiffany (@tifferini) July 24, 2014

Fans who ship O'Brien's character Stiles together with Tyler Hoechlin's character Derek, aka Sterek, were none too happy with the last-minute seating switchup. Many of them assumed that the move was part of the show's overall tactics of separating the two actors physically in order to help dissuade Sterek shippers. Since Sterek has been the show's behemoth slash ship since Season 1, it's a bit late for that.

"I think what really bothers me the most about this anti-sterek movement is that it’s keeping Hoechlin and Dylan apart," wrote stillhalesterek on Tumblr in reaction to the change. "They are genuinely bros and now they can’t even sit next to each other at cons."

In protest, some Sterek shippers subsequently photoshopped Hennig out of Tumblr photosets of Hoechlin and O'Brien at the panel, to the chagrin of fans of Teen Wolf's female cast.

Though it went unmentioned, Sterek cast an uncomfortable shadow over the panel. The final question from a fan was about shipping pairings that weren't currently happening on the show. The show's star, Tyler Posey, who has previously spoken of his discomfort with Sterek shippers, responded, "Can you think of a better question?" before going on to jokingly answer it. Numerous Teen Wolf fans spoke to the Daily Dot about being disappointed by the reaction.

"I feel very sorry for that girl who got pretty blatantly disrespected and put down about her question by people she admires just because her question was about shipping," wrote Tumblr user cottageintheclouds. "[S]haming your fans for asking you those questions kind of makes you a dick."

Sterek was also a controversial presence at last night's first annual MTV Fandom Awards ceremony, which saw a guest performance from Linkin Park. Fandom guru also received a special "Visionary" award.

Sterek was up for Ship of the Year but lost to The Vampire Diaries' popular romance Delena (Damon/Elena). Far more meaningful for Teen Wolf fans, however, was their fandom's win for "Fandom Feat of the Year." The feat in question was fundraising more than $25,000 to care for two wolves through the Sterek Campaign, a project created by Sterek shippers to show fandom appreciation to the show.

Although the Sterek Campaign was officially acknowledged on MTV's voting page, at the awards ceremony last night, Posey, who accepted the win, made no mention of the charity or the ship. He then gave the award to a fan named Tyler Villegas—much to the shock and disappointment of Sterek Campaign creator Qhuinn.

The Sterek Campaign won Fandom Feat of The Year?? 😱

— Fluent in Feels (@qhuinn) July 25, 2014

So wait. Posey gave the SC's award to a random fan? WHY?

— Fluent in Feels (@qhuinn) July 25, 2014

I... don't even know what to say.

— Fluent in Feels (@qhuinn) July 25, 2014

Though no reason seemed immediately apparent for why Posey gave the award to Villegas, Villegas seemed thrilled to get it and had no intention of handing it over to the Sterek Campaign.

Photo via Instagram

Thank you @tylergposey for giving me this award after they won the award at #MTVFanFest!!!… http://t.co/JFKG2HbFyo

— Tyler Villegas (@TylerL_Villegas) July 25, 2014

"I'm keeping it safe for all Teen Wolf fans forever," Villegas wrote in an Instagram comment in response to fans who begged him to turn the award over to the creators of the Sterek Campaign. "Plus I'm sharing this for everyone in spirit cuz we all made it happened. Hard work. Support. And Teamwork :) #humbleandgrateful"

Sterek shippers felt further slighted when Clevver TV's Joslyn Davis decided it would be a good idea to ask the Teen Wolf cast to read Sterek fanfiction on camera. One of the fics, an Alternate Universe fic where Stiles is a gymnast, was actually a finalist in the groundbreaking 2012 Teen Wolf fanfiction contest. And though the author of the fic in question commented on her Tumblr to note that she wasn't bothered by it, plenty of other fans felt the segment was intended as a mockery. A Tumblr post by kimmi-watch that currently has more than 3,000 notes encapsulates why asking cast members to read fanfiction is basically never, ever a good idea.

"I swear to God, I am so sick of being made fun of by these people for enjoying their content," kimmi-watch wrote. "I get to enjoy it in whatever way I choose and you shouldn’t be able to make fun of me for it. "

Though it's been a rough few days for Sterek shippers, there's plenty of excitement in store for Teen Wolf fans in the second half of Season 4—though with ratings on the decline from last season, the show might want to give Sterek fans a break.

The Daily Dot has reached out to MTV for comment. Meanwhile, you can catch the whole Teen Wolf panel here on YouTube. 

Photo via Instagram

A week after announcing it was discontinuing support for Sims 2, EA games has released the game for free online—along with every expansion pack ever made for it. 

The studio is releasing the older version of the game along with a whopping 17 expansion packs. That means that from now until July 31, you, too, can experience the wonders of the famed Ikea expansion pack, and the many other dubious Sims 2 glories that made Steve Hogarty an Internet folk hero. 

Plus, you know, getting the Sims without having to pay for it is pretty nice, too. EA has helpfully written a step-by-step guide to how you can get the game. You need to be a member of EA's Origin gaming network, but once you've gotten your free Origin membership, you can hop right in to the Sims by choosing "Redeem Product Code" from the Origin menu, and then entering the product code I-LOVE-THE-SIMS.

Sure, the game is a few years outdated, but by throwing in all 17 expansion packs as well, EA is providing you with a considerable deal on game features.

EA is also running a special free "On the House" promotion on an older version of the popular puzzle game Peggle.

Although most of the promotional efforts for EA are focused on gearing up for the fall launch of Sims 4, with its enhanced customization and emotive features, making the older version available for free is a great way to interest the larger community in the game. Whether you're new to the Sims or just experiencing a wave of nostalgia, you have until the end of the month to acquaint yourself with the virtual world where characters communicate in thought bubbles and speak in "Simlish."

Photo via naczosikan/deviantART

It's been nearly a century since H.P. Lovecraft first revealed unto us the rites of Dread Cthulhu, the giant tentacle monster who inhabits the deep Arctic seas, biding his time before he rises from his slumber and turns us all into his terrible minions.

But if you're nervous that your dark tithes and tributes will be insufficient to please the Great Old One, you might want to begin squirreling away the new cryptocurrency, Cthulhu Offerings. The "offerings" currently come for 2.5, with the value of the coins halving every six months around—what else?—the seasonal equinoxes, when, as the website informs us, "the time draws near, the return of The Great Old One is upon us."

In addition to allowing you to prepare for the rise of the city of R'lyeh, the offerings (OFF in currency shorthand) also allow you to find daily special blocks of coins, compete to get extra currency points, and enter to win a special randomized reward—after every 666th transaction, of course:

During the last five days, the 'Tharanak shagg,' or "promise of dreamland," the ritual reaches final pitch and the daily special blocks are highly increased... Cthulhu will return after the xxx665th offering has paid tribute to the Great Old One and he will bestow a bounty deserving of Him upon one lucky worshiper. 

The Cthulhu wallet also contains plenty of goodies. Upon downloading it, the console urges you to "speak directly to the altar from this window to perform the rite of Mu," and invites you to "speak evil unto Cthulhu or a fellow Cultist." 

Although the coin was first developed in September, it has gone through a few variants with each changing season. The latest version features a "Voices from the Deep" alert system. You can also lay your offerings at Cthulhu's feet for a few extra coin points.

All in all, while there's not curently a lot you can buy with Cthulhu's tithings, this is a pretty cool way to enjoy cryptocurrency, especially if you're new to trying it out.

Although we're pretty sure that if you begin hearing actual voices from the Deep, not even a well-stocked Cthulhu Offerings wallet can save you. 

H/T Observation Deck | Illustration by neriak/deviantART

Heads up, Wade Wilson fans: The Deadpool movie you never thought you could have is… still not coming to theaters any time soon. 

But the good news is that Marvel fans can finally get a taste of what it could've been. A new leak of test footage filmed in 2012 reveals what a Deadpool movie action sequence might be like. The footage features Ryan Reynolds reprising his role from X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the snarky "Merc with a Mouth."

In the new footage, which is directed by Tim Miller, we see Reynolds throwing out all the classic tricks of Deadpool's trade: singing, dancing, random banter with confused villains, and casual ass-kicking. If you watch the footage and come away feeling slightly dazed and confused, don't worry—Deadpool has that effect on everyone.

Comics writer Rob Liefeld first dropped hints about the clip at last year's Comic-Con, while script writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland) told ScreenRant a year ago the test footage was "amazing." What do you think? Were they right?

The number of comic fans who want a Deadpool movie is all of them. Can you blame them? No one around is as cool as Marvel's famous villain turned anti-hero who mostly pals around with Cable and Spider-Man while out-quipping bad guys and being generally badass. Deadpool's rogue trickster status and his unpredictablity have turned him into what is perhaps the world's best-known meme in cosplay form, which basically consists of Deadpool cosplayers being as unpredictable on the convention floor as Deadpool would be onscreen.

GIF by cosplaysleepeatplay/Tumblr

Unfortunately, the leaked footage doesn't really get us any closer to having a Deadpool film. For one thing, to really do the character justice, the film would need to score at least a PG-13 rating, and probably higher, since when he's not singing along to hip-hop, Deadpool's kind of an amoral hitman with the face of a rotting corpse. Not so much the quintessential Marvel hero.

And while it's true that Ryan Reynolds defied all expectations and gave a great turn as the fandom favorite, despite only having a few minutes of screen time in X-Men, he's already had his star superhero turn as the Green Lantern.

The studio with franchise rights over Deadpool is 20th Century Fox, which was last known to be having issues with the screenwriters' commitment to creating a "hard-R" script. But despite everyone ever wanting it to happen, it's been two years since Marvel chief Kevin Feige last mentioned the film as an active project. In the meantime, the early draft script for the project as well as the new footage have both surfaced online. 

Although copies of the leaked footage are being yanked from YouTube as fast as they're going up, Flickering Myth has kindly uploaded a mirror for you to enjoy when you're in the mood for snarky world domination.

GIF via Imgur

Update: The YouTube video has predictably been taken down, but you can still see the footage (for now) over on io9.

Photo by briannabites/Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

She moves silently and quickly through the countryside, clad all in black—but she's no ghost or figure from a dark folktale.

Shrouded heavily in all-black clothing, a woman alleged to be an Army veteran and a bereaved mother of two has been steadily making her way north through the Appalachian U.S., drawing interest from locals and Internet onlookers all over the country.

Traveling mostly along rural highways and small towns, the #womaninblack, as she has quietly become known on the Internet over the last two months, doesn't do a lot of talking. Sometimes she'll accept help from strangers, but never rides. Most of the time she simply walks on.

At various points along her journey she's carried a small cart, a lawn chair, a rolling suitcase, a walking stick, or nothing at all.

Bystanders who've noticed the woman in black on her travels have had widely different reactions to her.

"Hwy 27 tried.to talk to her but she would not talk just looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and had a half smile," wrote Drew Thomas on July 21 on Facebook.

In Cynthiana, KY, onlookers found her disturbing. "My friend asked if she needed help she just gave a blank stare.. Creepy!" wrote Megan Ritchie the same day.

"[M]y daughter said the woman had a sparkle/glow around her," wrote Len Ward after his teenage daughters encountered her in Chillicothe, OH.

I asked if maybe she had shiny things sewn on her clothes and my daughter said no. My daughter also reported a very peaceful feeling as she walked past this lady. Whatever this lady's mission, she had an effect on my girls last night.

On YouTube, a video taken in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Wise County, Va., shows the woman engaged in a heated debate with an onlooker about the book of Revelations. "We've already won," she says simply when he insists the apocalypse is yet to come. Since it was uploaded on June 3, it has received over 170,000 views. Over 30,000 people have followed her journey thus far on Facebook since "Where is the Woman in Black?" was created on July 18.

As she's traveled, word of her approach has traveled ahead of her.

OMG The #womaninblack is in romney which means she should get here to winchester today or tomorrow. THIS IS CREEPY.

— lauren callahan♡ (@laurlaurdawson) July 29, 2014

The buzz has also made her appearance something of a sideshow.

"[E]veryone was down at the end of our road (it connects to Route 50) getting pictures of her and stopping to take pictures but no one ever said anything to her at that time," reported Cynthia Karnes in Hillsboro, OH.

Other onlookers have wryly noted that the presence of so many spectators says more about the rest of us than it does the woman in black. Commenting to a photo album by Tod Kessinger of the woman, Facebook user April Taylor noted her walking in front of a U.S. flag and quipped, "America, where you can't walk without being stalked and interogated."

Still, as she's wended her way north through Appalachia, from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, then east through West Virginia and Virginia, the woman in black has brought strangers together, culling small gestures of kindness from passersby along the way. As Karnes wrote:

Chris approached her with 2 bottles of cold water, one in each hand held out together in front of him. That's when I noticed he also had a $20 dollar bill wrapped around one bottle. The lady stopped as Chris asked "Would you please accept these bottles of water & money." She took Chris's hands in hers and said yes. As she took them she looked him in the eyes and said God bless... Chris said on the way back home in our car that he had butterflies in his stomach after that but had never felt better about helping someone.

State troopers in Tennessee reportedly gave the woman rides from county line to county line, aiding her travel through the state, while Ohio police reportedly asked her not to walk at night for her own safety. 

She's also united the Internet in karmic good will.

" I'm very touched and moved by this woman, wrote Lori Hopkins-Dickerson on Facebook Friday. "I haven't been able to unglue myself from my phone [since] I found out about this story yesterday."

I am atheist, so I won't "pray," but I do hope that #womaninblack finds peace in her journey.

— Ir Mire Mé Féin (@is_mise_me_fein) July 29, 2014

People walk/hike off the miles for lots of personal reasons., Wounded Warriors & Heroes etc. Good luck #womaninblack

— Jackie Stafford (@bluestarohio) July 29, 2014

So who is she? At various times, the woman in black has claimed to be from an Islamic nation, to have worked for the Pentagon, to be on "a Bible mission," and to simply have had her car stolen en route to her alleged destination of Winchester, Va.

The truth may be perhaps less glamorous and yet more profound. According to the Herald-News of Rhea County, Tenn, the woman allegedly told Tennessee police her name was Elizabeth Poles, a 56-year-old resident of Motts, Ala.  

Poles' brother, Raymond Poles, identified her to Reuters and stated that she was a grieving mother of two who had lost her husband in 2008 and her father in 2009. 

According to her brother, Poles is an army veteran who had been receiving treatment from a veteran's hospital to deal with the painful loss of family members when she started shaving her head and disappearing for months at a time.

Poles' shaved head and heavy black garb could be references to Ezekiel 7:18, "They will put on sackcloth and be clothed with terror. Every face will be covered with shame, and every head will be shaved."

He added, "I wish she would come back and let us help her."

But whatever the reason for her strange journey, and however many gawkers there are along the way, it seems the woman in black has had plenty of help as she has walked through the rural Southern U.S. Many people have referenced Hebrews 13:2 regarding their treatment of the woman—"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

As Facebook user Jennifer Naugle noted, "[T]this has brought many people together and that itself is a blessing."

H/T ITV | All photos via Facebook

Twitter seems to have learned nothing from the travails of Robin Thicke. Anyone who witnessed the #AskRobinThicke hashtag meltdown could have easily predicted that when Twitter CEO Dick Costolo decided to take questions from Twitter users before going on CNBC today, something like this would happen instead:

What's your favorite way to enable serial online harassment? #askcostolo

— Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus) July 29, 2014

The Twitter version of a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) probably seemed, in theory, like a step towards transparency and community outreach when CNBC announced the hashtag earlier.

Our @JBoorstin interviews Twitter CEO @DickC today at 4p ET. Use #AskCostolo to ask a question. pic.twitter.com/Fe8GKtbR9Z

— CNBC (@CNBC) July 29, 2014

CNBC's own Storify writeup of the hashtag portrayed the tweets as predictably banal, mostly serious with some outliers thrown in. And at least initially, that seems to have been a fair assessment.

But CNBC also reported that nearly 33 percent of the Tweets addressed concerns related to safety, harassment, hate speech, and other forms of Twitter abuse. Since that assessment was made, the percentage has almost certainly doubled, if not tripled. The current reality of the #askCostolo hashtag is a melee of Twitter users demanding to know what Twitter intends to do about its widely-criticized harassment policies, and what many Twitter users see as a sustained habit of putting the onus on the victim to "just ignore" racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of hate speech, as well as personal threats.

The subject of Twitter harassment seems to have taken over the tag around 3pm Eastern Time, about an hour before the scheduled CNBC talk. A number of Twitter feminists including Shanley Kane, Imani Gandy, and Ashe Dryden urged their corner of Twitter to join them in an organized protest over Twitter's handling of harassment, something that has been a major concern to the Tumblr feminist community in the past.

But they weren't alone. A glance at the hashtag reveals just how complicated, complex, frustrating, and fundamentally unsatisfying, Twitter's abuse policies have proven for a large number of users.

If you tweet ceaselessly @support without response, does it make a sound? #askcostolo

— Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus) July 29, 2014

Why aren’t death and rape threats a violation of Twitter’s abuse policies? #askcostolo

— deus ex feminista (@ashedryden) July 29, 2014

Why is your Twitter policy to shift blame for harassment to the victim (“don’t respond!”) rather than to ban the harasser? #askcostolo

— Imani ABL (@AngryBlackLady) July 29, 2014

Why have we been suspended twice for RTing/exposing gendered hate speech on your site, rather than the abusive users we RT? #askcostolo

— Trigger Warning (@misogynyexposed) July 29, 2014

Why can people tweet threats and abuse, but as long as they "delete" it before Twitter gets around to it a month later, it's ok? #askcostolo

— Jacqui Cheng (@ejacqui) July 29, 2014

#askcostolo Why does the block feature block me from seeing what stalkers/trolls are doing, but not them from seeing my profile?

— Steffanie Y. (@sincerely_steff) July 29, 2014

#askcostolo Other social media sites block a harasser's IP address when reported, why can't Twitter do the same?

— Steffanie Y. (@sincerely_steff) July 29, 2014

Twitter users also took the company to task for its recently revealed dismal staff diversity count. Many of them correlated Twitter's low number of women and minority staffers with its ambivalent response towards harassment of women and minorities on its website.

Does twitter's useless system of reporting threats & harassment have anything to with its lack of diversity at twitter hq? #askcostolo

— carfire_so_blessed (@carfire) July 29, 2014

#askcostolo Seriously, what's up with your terrible diversity demographics? Why also are you not doing ANYTHING @ ABUSE towards WOC????

— Dorothy Kim (@dorothyk98) July 29, 2014

Will you hire more women, people of color and trans folks to decrease abuse on twitter @dickc#askcostolo and when will this happen?

— MDRSWRJ (@MDRSWRJ) July 29, 2014

There were other practical concerns and questions as well.

If @verified isn't more generally available to everyone (even with proof of identity), why isn't it named differently, like VIP? #AskCostolo

— Shane Becker (@veganstraightedge) July 29, 2014

And plenty of humor referencing the hijacking of the hashtag.

okay who do i have to receive an unsolicited dick pic from to get verified around here #askcostolo

— taylor hatmaker (@tayhatmaker) July 29, 2014

But most of the commentary centered around the need for a stricter, more consistently applied system of identifying and dealing with harassment and other incendiary tweets. One user referenced the recent rape of a 16-year-old girl that spawned a horrifying viral photo meme and hashtag on Twitter, #jadapose.

@dickc Why in the hell were images of a teen girl being raped even posted, much less ALLOWED TO TREND FOR DAYS? #AskCostolo

— LavenderKitchenSink (@lkscollective) July 29, 2014

In response to the deluge of tweets, CNBC anchor Kelly Evans asked Costolo on the segment what Twitter was doing to improve "user security," to which Costolo gave a somewhat unsatisfying response:

We have a whole product team focused on user safety and privacy, and we'll continue to invest in that as we become increasingly the world's information network, obviously it's the case that we need to take that seriously and address it.

The response doesn't indicate what action the company is taking to address recurring complaints about harassment and abuse on the site. Though it's a complicated question, it's one that many other major platforms have wrangled with more or less successfully. Tumblr allows the banning of users by IP address, and Facebook revamped its abuse guidelines after a dialogue with community members.

Twitter, meanwhile, is not very far along from where it was a year ago, when feminist Caroline Criado-Perez was inundated with rape threats on the website. The company responded by rolling out a "report abuse" function, initially only for mobile; but that solution has proven unsatisfying for many users, since reporting abuse of a third party takes you to a note informing you that only parties directly involved in a dispute can report the abuse in question.

Of course, Twitter may have implemented that feature because shortly after rolling out the "report abuse" function, transphobic abusers used the "abuse" function themselves to mass-report false claims of harassment. It seems as though Twitter just can't win no matter how vigilantly it tries to ward off inappropriate user behavior.

Still, the tweets on the hashtag keep coming.

Someone can threaten literally anything--even torture or murder--and then delete it, and you won't accept screencaps as evidence #AskCostolo

— Kevin Carson Ⓐ (@KevinCarson1) July 30, 2014

Whether the answers issue from Dick Costolo or not, it's clear that a stronger and more direct response from Twitter is needed about how it is dealing with abuse and harassment of its userbase.

In the meantime, Twitter might want to hold off on staging any more official PR campaigns.

Photo via fordschool/Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

It's been a week since Utah social media manager Tim Torkildson was fired from his position as blogger at a Provo language school. His crime? Writing a blog post about homophones. (Not homophobes, homophones.) He claims his supervisor told him the post made the school appear to be promoting a gay agenda.

Who knew the difference between "red" and "read" could be so incendiary?

Torkildson's supervisor, Clarke Woodger of Nomen Language School, told the Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday that the post in question had been too complicated for their students, most of whom are learning English as a second language. He also said that Torkildson had a tendency to "go off on tangents" in his blog posts.

(That last part is definitely true. Read on.)

But Woodger's account is not quite how Torkildson described it in his own blog post about the incident:

“I’m letting you go because I can’t trust you” said Clarke Woodger, my boss and the owner of Nomen Global Language Center. “This blog about homophones was the last straw. Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality.”

I said nothing, stunned into silence.

“I had to look up the word” he continued, “because I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. We don’t teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it’s extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning? I’ll have your check ready.”

It's hard to understand what about the post provoked such an extreme reaction. Maybe something about the way it was written was inappropriate for a language school?

Er... not really. Thanks to Google cache, here is the screengrab of what Torkildson's post looked like before it was removed from the website.

Given that homophones are found in many languages, and that English-speaking children begin learning to identify homophones as early as elementary school, it seems odd that Nomen would find the subject too advanced for their students. To emphasize this, Torkildson ended his baffled blog post about the firing with a colorful kid's chart explaining basic homophones:

But the Internet is far more preoccupied with Nomen’s alleged homophobia than with its actual grammar setbacks. Nomen’s Facebook page, which was active at the time the Tribune published its article on Tuesday, has since been deleted. Given the kinds of reactions the news has spawned in comments to the school's blog post and Twitter feed, it's a fair speculation that the Tribune's linking the school's Facebook led to the page being inundated with angry Internet users.

"Nomen Globals = Homophobes afraid of homophones!" wrote one visitor to Nomen's blog yesterday.

"I'd probably think twice about getting any kind of education from this language school since the school administrators don't seem to know the meaning of common English words themselves," wrote another. "Sounds like a very amateurish operation run by homophobic and unintelligent people just after the money."

.@nomenglobalarb When you learn English at NomenGlobalArb you don’t learn anything but bigotry and ignorance.

— my•glass•eye (@myglasseye) July 31, 2014

What's more damaging to a language school? Being thought of as gay, or not understanding basic language concepts? http://t.co/5oIXxOX6G3

— The Prodigal Bum (@prodigalbum) July 31, 2014

Youch! At this rate, you might think the school is regretting its decision to fire Torkildson.

Then again, maybe not. Torkildson's blog wasn't all kid-friendly: He recently wrote about soiling his pants and taking a dump in a local gas station urinal.

Screengrab via YouTube

July 31 is practically a national holiday for Harry Potter fans: It's the date of birth for both J.K. Rowling and her titular hero, who would be celebrating his 34th birthday today with his friends in the Wizarding World.

But there's another reason for all of us to be celebrating the Harry Potter series, thanks to a new study showing that readers of Harry Potter become less prejudiced over time and increased exposure to the values and beliefs espoused by Harry and company.

A research team led by Loris Vezzali of the University of Modena conducted three separate studies of Italian teens who read the books and responded to the allegorical political and humanist themes of the fight against the evil, racist Lord Voldemort.

"Extended contact via story reading is a powerful strategy to improve out-group attitudes," the researchers noted in "The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice," an article published last week in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Members of the Harry Potter fandom could have told you as much years ago. The vast behemoth that is HP fandom has provided seeds for amazing acts of political change and social equality for years, from the fandom-wide charity drive for the Haiti earthquake to the creation of the Harry Potter Alliance. Long before Rowling "outed" Dumbledore as being gay after the series ended, queer fans and supporters saw the series as a bastion of gay and lesbian relationships, and legions responded accordingly, creating major sub-fandoms around gay pairings like Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, and hailing characters like Tonks as genderqueer.

Among the generation of Harry Potter fans who incorporated gay relationships into their fanfic are numerous writers who have continued to do so in their published work. In Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, the main character Cathy writes slashfic about two male characters who bear a strong resemblance to Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Harry Potter fanfic writer turned-bestselling author Cassandra Clare likewise went on to pen a beloved gay couple with a devoted fan following in her own original series, The Mortal Instruments.

The studies, which looked at readers of Harry Potter on the elementary, the high school, and the university level, revealed that identification with the Boy Who Lived was a key element in the reader response to the books. Those who emulated Harry came away with an improved attitude toward "stigmatized groups," cited in the study as "immigrants, homosexuals, and refugees."

The research is great news for Young Adult fans, no matter whether you're a Wizard or a Muggle: Evidence that reading YA literature is a culturally significant act could go a long way to shut down the mostly female genre's many nay-sayers.

And if you've been looking for an excuse to finally delve into the beloved seven-book series that shaped an entire generation, now is the perfect moment to start. 

H/T NowThis; illustration by soldierseven/deviantART

The highly-anticipated trailer for Disney's all-star adaptation of the beloved Sondheim musical Into the Woods is here at last.

You may be hoping the trailer will ease your fears about whether the stage version of the musical, with its dark themes and post-modern remixing of classic fairy tales, made it to the silver screen intact.

No such luck. The first trailer, which debuted on iTunes, certainly looks gorgeous, and it naturally sounds gorgeous, with interesting new orchestration of Sondheim's familiar themes.

But if you didn't know better, you'd never guess you were previewing a complex musical that's almost entirely sung, ala Les Misérables. And sure, it's got some neat effects, like Jack climbing the beanstalk into the sky and some major Act-2 mayhem that usually happens off-stage. But all in all, the trailer could be a generic first-look at the next season of Once Upon a Time with just a few more flutes and French horns thrown in. As one YouTube commenter put it, "Really happy to see they're remaking Tim Burton's entire filmography as one film. Very excited."

Still, we can't help but be excited. Emily Blunt seems to be the perfect choice for the Baker's Wife, and while we didn't get much of a glimpse of Meryl Streep's witch—or anyone else, for that matter—we hope for the best, despite a recent report from Sondheim himself that some of the main plot points of the stage show had been jettisoned.

Then again, we know the danger of too much wishful thinking. We're on to you, Into the Woods.

Screengrab via YouTube

It's not news that the Reddit subreddit TumblrInAction lives for mocking the most extreme examples of what it views as Tumblr's gluttony of "social justice warriors"—a derogatory shorthand for the left-wing political activism, post-colonial theory, and feminism that make up a large part of Tumblr culture.

But ever since the controversial Tumblr medievalPOC first drew TumblrInAction's attention, owner Malisha Dewalt, whose real name was revealed in an interview with NPR last year, claims she has been harassed, threatened, and even stalked in person from members of the forum. Now, she's speaking out, and other subreddits are starting to take notice and take action.

MedievalPOC first attracted TumblrInAction's attention because Dewalt wrote about the whitewashing of Frozen. Using her by-now standard method of simply producing evidence, usually art-based, of non-white people living all over Europe, Dewalt argued that the film's all-white cast was historically inaccurate. It's a straightforward approach that has allowed her to produce many similar critiques, most notably of a popular Kickstarter-funded game, Kingdom Come.

Ever since then, the Tumblr has been a magnet for trolls, harassers, and death threats, of which Dewalt claimed to have received at least 30 by late May. The most recent flare-up came Wednesday, when Dewalt posted a link to a recent study of diversity in Hollywood science fiction and fantasy films. Although she wasn't the one who did the research, or even the one who dug up the link (it was submitted by another Tumblr user), the post went straight to Reddit and Dewalt claims she was bombarded with harassment.

By Wednesday evening, Dewalt had apparently had enough. "Let’s stop pretending we have no idea where this comes from," she wrote, posting a sampling of some of the harassment she found in her inbox throughout the day:

Screengrab via Tumblr

The TumblrInAction subreddit, like other "wank watch" communities of its kind, has a rule about not contacting the subjects of the blogs posted on the website. Dewalt points out that the rules appear to have no teeth.

"Medievalpoc has received tens of thousands of hits from this particular subreddit from more than 60 separate threads, some of which have hundreds of derogatory comments, using slurs, threats, and racist ‘jokes,'" she stated.

Even more alarmingly, Dewalt claimed she had to call the police on four separate occasions to deal with real-life threats to herself and her family. Here's how she described the experience:

The truth I’ve been keeping off of this particular blog has been that I have had to call the police and make reports for stalking, harassment, and threats four times in the last 6-8 weeks. People have and/or have attempted to post personally identifying information as well as slander about me, my family, other various loved ones of mine, and a subsequent rush of death threats (including ones posted to other sites), spamming of violent images, pornography, racial slurs, and threats of other kinds of violence from white supremacist groups and others have resulted. Some of them were contacting people close to me. Tumblr, predictably, has had very little interest in acknowledging any of it. It should go without saying that this has greatly affected my emotional and physical health.

This ugliness also affected my recent appearance at WisCon 38, due to people who meant me a great deal of harm encouraging people to show up at the con for some kind of confrontation. The con organizers and the safety committee received emails that greatly disturbed them, leading them to take steps to try to ensure my safety at appearances and panels, as did the security of the hotel hosting the con. For that, I’m very grateful.

Even without factoring Reddit into the equation, Dewalt has plenty of detractors on Tumblr. Numerous Tumblr users have rounded up posts she made that they found problematic, citing historical inaccuracy, unreliable source materials, and her general application of modern racial categorizations to pre-Enlightenment European cultures. She has also come under criticism for refusing to listen to self-identified POC who disagree with her, occasionally overriding the racial self-identification of other Tumblr users, and refusing to acknowledge the racial identity of certain marginalized groups. On her personal blog, she's been known to fling gendered insults at people who disagree with her. Recently the blog omgstopbeingashittyperson did a round-up of alleged discrepancies they and other Tumblr users had found in Dewalt's description of her own ethnic identity.

It's important to note that many of the criticisms of medievalPOC are coming from members of Tumblr who support the nature of her work but want to encourage greater historical accuracy. While the methods of any Tumblr user who claims to be an unofficial historiographer should be subject to criticism, it is, perhaps, even more important to hold bloggers like medievalPOC to a system of accountability because they profit from their blogging; Dewait, who recently sat on multiple panels at WisCon, is currently crowdfunding more than $650/monthly from subscribers on Patreon to help her do her work.

But while many of these internal critics on Tumblr are actively watchdogging Dewalt the way TumblrinAction is doing, they don't seem to be responsible for the stalking and violent language she identifies in her recent posts on the subject. Meanwhile, harassment and doxing have become well-known tools of anti-feminist and anti-social-justice corners of Reddit, particularly those aligned with the so-called men's rights movement. These communities, along with 4chan, have gotten in the habit of targeting feminist corners of the Internet, of which Tumblr is a hotbed. Currently, 4chan is allegedly gearing up for yet another "raid" on Tumblr users (click to enlarge):

Screengrab via 4chan

Internally, TumblrInAction seems to have been wrestling with itself over Dewalt's accusations. Ironically, after her latest post, TumblrInAction did make a new thread devoted to doxing—but it was to urge their members to protect themselves from being doxed by other subreddits, namely r/againstMensRights, which mused briefly after the post about whether it should form a new off-shoot, r/againstumblrinaction. Many members of the subreddit, apparently aware of how much controversy MedievalPOC stirred up on Tumblr without their help, are denying responsibility for the attacks.

On TumblrInAction offshoot r/TiADiscussion, moderator thehat2 posted a stern warning to users and firmly decried any and all harassment of Dewalt or other Tumblr users. On Tumblr, he made a helpful post explaining how to go about contacting Reddit mods to detail any abuse received from subreddit members. 

Dewalt, meanwhile, responded to the outpouring of support she's received for her posts by vowing to continue her work. 

While it's clear that Dewalt's blog is deeply meaningful to many people, it's also noticable that the constant harassment and offline incidents Dewalt has endured overshadow the important conversations about the subject matter and the historical accuracy of the work she is asking her followers to fund. While it's arguable that Tumblr itself is more than capable of devolving into hyperbole and inaccuracy if left to its own devices, its ongoing feud with Reddit unfortunately means that reasonable critique has gotten lost in the waves of trolling and harassment that have become par for the course in any interaction between the two platforms.

Illustration by Diego Diego Rodríguez de Velázquez via medievalpoc/Flickr

Warning: This story contains sexually explicit material that may be NSFW.

We've all heard of porn parodies of famous movies: Lord of the G-String. Titty Titty Gang Bang. The Wonder Woman porn parody that's better than the real thing.

But do any of these parodies have substance without the part we pay for? YouTuber LilGherkin has undertaken the task of showing us. They've edited the tongue-in-cheek porn parody Not the Wizard of Oz XXX to show us what the movie looks like without the actual sex.

It turns out that Not the Wizard of Oz, which debuted last year, has quite a bit going on outside the sex. The director is Will Ryder, an award-winning filmmaker (yes, really) with over 90 directorial credits to his name. Ryder claims to be pretty much responsible for creating the modern porn parody as we know it, and since we don't really know of a lot of other people who can take credit for titles like Britney Rears: Wild Back Stage Sex Party and White House Orgy, we'll let him have this one.

The official synopsis for Not the Wizard of Oz reads like your standard down-to-business porn parody:

Following a terrible twister, Dorothy awakes to a magical world of sex-crazed munchkins, horny witches, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion & the Wizard. You’re not in Kansas anymore during this delightful hardcore sexual adventure that will blow you away!

But in actual practice, as LilGherkin reveals, there's quite a lot of plot in-between Dorothy's pit stops along the Yellow Prick Road. (We know.) 

For one thing, it's a musical. What proper Wizard of Oz parody could get away without singing and dancing? Dorothy's big number, "What's Wrong With Me?" is performed by actress Maddy O'Reilly but sung by Lotta Dees, who we can only assume is someone blessed with a lotta other things along with vocal prowess. 

For another, it's arguably more socially relevant than its predecessor. As one YouTube commenter put it:

At least this Dorothy actually does something to earn money and help out her family back home while she's away in Oz. All the other Dorothy cared about was getting back home. The Wicked Witch is actually evil in this one, for god's sake she rape's in this one! Also this one has a song about Gay Acceptance. I expect this version to be incorporated the school curriculum sometime in the near future.

We wouldn't go that far, but it's clear that the cast of Not the Wizard certainly enjoyed their work, so at the very least we can all sleep well knowing that no Munchkins or Evil Witches were harmed in the making of this parody.

Just our childhoods.

Screengrab via YouTube

It's 2014 and there's still no Black Widow movie, but Marvel fans may have a new female superhero to look forward to on the big screen soon: Squirrel Girl.

Bleeding Cool has pointed out that Marvel, which usually signifies intent to move its comics into other mediums by trademarking characters and titles, is full up on recent TV and film franchises, like Guardians of the Galaxy, Age of Ultron, and Agent Carter. Also in the mix? Squirrel Girl.

She's a girl who's also a squirrel who's also a—look, just know that she was created by Steve Ditko, the legendary artist who gave the world Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, after writer Will Murray came up with the concept as a way to get back to the fun-loving joy of comics.

Screengrab via talisonpulido/Tumblr

Squirrel Girl, real name Doreen Green, is a '90s child, a tongue-in-cheek superhero with the power to control squirrels named Tippy Toes and Monkey Joe. She debuted in 1992 as a spunky 14-year-old who boldly asked Iron Man for a spot in the Avengers. His answer? "Maybe when you're older." Since then she's gotten it on with Wolverine, hung out with her own minor team of superheroes called the "Great Lakes Avengers," bested Deadpool in a merc-on-squirrel fight, flirted with Daredevil, and served as nanny for Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.

You might not think any of that is enough to make Squirrel Girl a compelling element for a TV or film franchise; but Marvel, who trademarked the name two weeks ago, was clearly anticipating a positive return on this weekend's Guardians of the Galaxy, which despite being a film headlined entirely by side characters, including a talking tree and a talking raccoon, is already breaking advance sales records, and is poised to bring in over $70 million in its opening take.  

Moreover, there's plenty of reason to believe, given the breakout success of quirky irreverant supergirl Kamala Khan, that Squirrel Girl will be a hit with audiences. Plus, she's the kind of character that could work equally well as a side-character in a film franchise or as the lead in her own animated series. She's already showed up briefly in an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man:

"[J]ust a reminder that this girl managed to break up a mob with an army of Squirrels and still has not even a cameo in movies to tribute her awesome," wrote Tumblr user all-things-squirrel-girl 15 days ago, in what may be the most prophetic post of the year. We did mention she can control her own squirrel army, right? Also she has claws and super-strong teeth, perfect for cracking nuts and-or-bones.

Photo via all-things-squirrel-girl

Meanwhile, while Marvel fans may be excited for the news, they haven't taken their eyes off the prize:

So Lucy is a racist pile of trash but it's doing well because everyone wants a fucking Black Widow movie already.

— Yvonne Popplewell (@UndieGirl) August 1, 2014

That's right, Marvel. You can trademark all the adorable furry side characters you want, but there's only one Black Widow, and we're still waiting.

Meanwhile, we'll be speculating about whether Squirrel Girl may finally be making her way to the Avengers Initiative in an upcoming sequel. Heck, we'd even tune in for The Adventures of Squirrel Girl & Friends on Saturday morning.

Now that you've fed us machine-gun-toting raccoons, the sky's the limit. 

(Or at least that one really high branch with all the acorns.)

H/T Bleeding Cool | Photo via wordsthatfit

What do you get when you cross a sculptor, an academic department, a designer with no sense of self-preservation, and a flowing river of balsatic lava?

A perfectly charred steak, well-done.

We know it's something of a cliche to want to be the guy on your block with the best grill, but this is a little extreme, even for us. British designer duo Sam Bompas and Harry Parr turned to sculptor Bob Wysocki and the Syracuse University to help them design the ultimate neighborhood barbeque: steaks grilled over an open plume of lava, heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bompas told Slate that he got the idea for the lava pour after visiting Sakurajima, an active volcano in Japan. He spoke of the joy of cooking a meal over the open fire of lava, but also noted that he had to climb over the safety railings to do so.

If you're thinking this might not be the guy you want to entrust with your home-cooked meals, don't worry—the grill took place outside in relative safety. But Bompas and Parr also want to turn their unique dining experience into "bespoke lava banquets" for elite clientele. We don't want to think about the inevitable "Lava banquet disaster" headlines in our future. Let's all just watch the pretty, deadly synthetic magma flow.

The cookout was done as a collaboration between Bompas, Parr, and the university's Lava Project, which they describe as "bring[ing] the spectacle and excitement of a volcanic eruption to Central New York."

Basaltic lava, similar to that found on the seafloor and erupted from volcanoes in Hawaii and Iceland, is melted and poured to produce natural-scale lava flows. 

Now we can add tasty charred sirloin to the list.

Screengrab via Vimeo

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige may be the world's most paradoxical figure this weekend. Basking in a groundswell of love over Guardians of the Galaxy, he's also coming under continual fire for the studio's failure when it comes to treating female superheroes fairly. Yesterday, in an interview with Comic Book Resources, Feige tried to be positive about all of the steps his studio has taken to feature more women.

Unfortunately, he appears to have forgotten that he's the Marvel executive with the power to make the movie he says he "believes in" actually happen.

" I very much believe in doing it," Feige told CBR.

I very much believe that it's unfair to say, "People don't want to see movies with female heroes," then list five movies that were not very good, therefore, people didn't go to the movies because they weren't good movies, versus [because] they were female leads. And they don't mention Hunger Games, Frozen, Divergent. You can go back to Kill Bill or Aliens. These are all female-led movies. It can certainly be done. I hope we do it sooner rather than later. 

The problem? Feige himself is the one with the power to greenlight a female-led superhero movie. Instead, he keeps insisting, as he did again in this interview, that the timing isn't right for a female superhero movie:

I think it comes down to timing, which is what I've sort of always said, and it comes down to us being able to tell the right story.

Feige's deflection once again leaves the rest of us to scratch our heads and wonder: if not now, when?

In addition to Marvel fans' by–now–default demand for a Black Widow movie, along with the long-rumored Captain Marvel movie that has yet to materialize, backlash ensued earlier this week over the studio's erasure of female superhero Wasp, one of the founding members of the Avengers. It's true that Marvel Studios has taken some positive steps forward, namely through the Agent Carter TV series, its well-received female ensemble for the Avengers series and Guardians of the Galaxy, and the recent trademarking of Squirrel Girl for a potential move to screen. But on the whole, fans remain dissatisfied. It doesn't help that during the studio's most recent spate of major film announcements in October, it revealed there were no plans for a female superhero film in development, nor would there be until 2017 at the earliest.

And despite Feige later teasing fans with vague mentions of a Black Widow movie being "in development," Comic-Con 2014 came and went without any major announcements on that front, leaving us more or less where we were a year ago in the quest for a female-led Marvel film.

The frustration is palpable, and Feige knows it. His listing of The Hunger Games and Frozen, et. al., is a direct address to Hollywood's exclusion myth that male audiences won't go see movies featuring women. It's also an indirect nod to the myth of the fake geek girl, an acknowledgment that Marvel's audience is both increasingly diverse and increasingly willing to support diversity in comics and onscreen.

So why isn't it happening? Feige says it's a question of franchise-juggling:

[W]e find ourselves in the very strange position of managing more franchises than most people have -- which is a very, very good thing and we don't take for granted, but is a challenging thing. You may notice from those release dates, we have three for 2017. And that's because just the timing worked on what was sort of gearing up. But it does mean you have to put one franchise on hold for three or four years in order to introduce a new one? I don't know. Those are the kinds of chess matches we're playing right now.

What's disingenuous about this answer is that Black Widow, of course, is already part of a franchise that's currently very much under development. And given that he's mentioned it in the past, we suspect that if a Black Widow film were really seriously under development, we'd have been treated to a major announcement about it at Comic-Con last weekend, not complete avoidance of the topic from Feige now.

But Feige's vagueness and evasion isn't even the most unfortunate thing about his responses to CBR; it's that he asks us to accept that this is an issue of franchise-juggling and chess matches. The question of whether half the world's population should be allowed to see themselves represented in mainstream media, playing a wide variety of complex roles, isn't something that should be left up to a managerial strategy. 

Moreover, Feige's insistence that a female superhero film has to have just the right story dismisses Black Widow's already-complex backstory and her layered personality, as played by Scarlett Johansson. If innumerable fanfic writers have taken the time to fill in the question marks we have about the "red on her ledger," and what happened between her and Hawkeye in Budapest, why is Marvel lagging so far behind?

Ultimately, Feige's interview may leave fans feeling more unsatisfied than they were before. He also went on to profess staunch support for the beleaguered Ant-Man, despite the recent departures of yet more members of the production. But hey—at least we're getting more CGI characters like the ones we enjoyed in Guardians in the upcoming Age of Ultron.

CGI animation to bring characters to life? High on Marvel's priority list.

Giving real women major on-screen representation? Not so much.

You can read the full interview with Feige here at CBR.

Photo via tales2astonish/Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

We thought the day would never come: a trending One Direction fandom tag on Twitter that's actually a work of satire. Behold, the wonders of #TumblrFansBeLike.

#twitterfansbelike WTF GIRLS SAT NEXT TO 5SOS LET'S FIND THEIR TWITTER AND SEND DEATH THREATS meawhile #TumblrFansBeLike use a condom

— Giulia (@giuliavidoni) August 5, 2014

#TumblrFansBeLike i can't believe he tweeted "thank you for listening to our album :)" like what about the deaf fans? SO disrespectful.

— nina :B (@rosyirishcheeks) August 4, 2014

You had no idea One Direction fans were this ironic, did you? 

Actually, it's not really wry self-awareness so much as a wry mockery of Tumblr culture. 

It should be no secret by now that One Direction fans throw the most epic feuds. There was that time they started a Twitter war with Beliebers through a sandwich joke, the time they faced off over a calendar date with Whovians, and, of course, the time they feuded with a record executive and his family over a hilarious case of mistaken conspiracy.

But no feud Directioners have had with other fandoms or individuals compares to the one that roils within the fandom itself, between One Direction fans on Tumblr and One Direction fans on Twitter.

What's the difference? A lot, according to the fans. Generally, Directioners who are pro-Tumblr see the Twitter fans as prone to making death threats and constantly creating drama, while the Tumblr Directioners are just here to party. Witness a typical post by Tumblr user aggressiveharrys:

does everyone one else notice how all tumblr directioners get along but twitter directioners always bitch at each other?

like tumblr directioners:

twitter directioners:

let’s all be serious we are the better half of the fandom

On the other hand, many Directioners on Twitter see the Tumblr fans as too politically correct, too obsessed with preserving the privacy and virtue of the band members, and too serious. 

Case in point? The recent hashtag #BeAFanDay, poised to coincide with the return of One Direction to the U.S. on tour, had band member Liam Payne going into full-scale parody mode earlier this week. Payne decided to turn his Twitter account into a total 1D fangirl account directed at fellow bandmate Niall Horan. 

Oooo I'm such a Niall girl OHH MYFFF GOWDDD IM CRUIYING #BeAFanDaypic.twitter.com/TafKItxniw

— MRS HORAN (@Real_Liam_Payne) August 4, 2014

After changing his Twitter name to "Mrs Horan," Payne proceeded to spend the whole day tweeting and behaving like a typical breathless Niall fangirl.

But not all fans were happy about his behavior. On Tumblr, more than a few users were upset that Payne was, in their eyes, using the #BeAFanDay tag to mock actual fans.

That's just the typical Tumblr "Social Justice Warrior" lack of a sense of humor, right? Well, at least according to Twitter fans, who promptly spawned the #TumblrFansBeLike hashtag in response to what they saw as Tumblr's spoil-sport attitude.

#tumblrfansbelike obviously liam mocking us showed his true colors. he is fanaphobic and i will not stand for it.

— chris pratt stan (@haimliam) August 4, 2014

#tumblrfansbelike*sees Harry sitting in grass* The earths spirit is bonding with him the grass helps His soul Embrace the freshness of it

— Shai (@RavishlyShai) August 4, 2014

#TumblrFansBeLike MRS horan?? why couldnt it just be MS horan not every religion believes in marriage its an insult to peoples beliefs liam.

— sinmi #_# (@styles1960) August 4, 2014

#tumblrfansbelike What is he doing? this is making fun of my religion i am 0.2% indian this is why i only stan louis pic.twitter.com/gRN5NnVGv3

— jafar (@isliamic) August 4, 2014

#TumblrFansBeLike liam please tag your incoherent text posts because they're triggering

— jake (@kazoouiam) August 4, 2014

#tumblrfansbelike liam taking pictures with his phone ???so disrespectful doesn't he know how many people cant afford one??!?

— eva :/ (@angrylous) August 4, 2014

You might think that all of this is a recipe for a giant fandom melee. But it doesn't really seem as though Tumblr fans have noticed. If they have, they're good at turning the other cheek. Meanwhile, plenty of fans who are active on both platforms have gotten a kick out of the tag.

#tumblrfansbelike im a tumblr fan as well and these are accurate lmao why would i be offended

— ❀ (@anxilouis) August 5, 2014

And there was plenty of pointing the finger at Twitter Directioners, too.

#twitterfansbelike *insert the n word here* *insert f*ggot here* *insert any other slur here*

— pop punk sam (@stumpniall) August 4, 2014

The whole tumblr vs twitter fans, nobody on tumblr gives u the time of day mate, they don't care about ur hashtag #tumblrfansbelike

— LOUISANDHARRY (@larry2k12) August 5, 2014

But before you go to hate either or both of the two Directioner clans, consider that there is, indeed, a self-awareness between all of the snark. After all, it takes two halves, however disparate they may be, to make a whole fandom, in all its diversity and drama. 

Twitter vs Tumblr #twitterfansbelike#tumblrfansbelikepic.twitter.com/1sZaaPFgKH

— Madasyn Knight (@KnghtMadasyn) August 5, 2014

All in all, it seems the Tumblr fans and the Twitter fans are just two different expressions on the same face of One Direction fandom.

 Photo via Twitter