reblog this to put a leaf on your mutuals head

one of my favorite tropes is when your group of main characters has been split up for questioning and they’re all answering the same questions in a neatly-spliced montage

my favorite trope is when the stories blatantly and hilariously conflict

bonus points if each interview is wildly unhelpful/off topic but in a manner that is in character for each person

do you ever have the sudden realization on how lonely you are and its just like

another life

I remember when the London riots happened and someone pointed out that the media’s emphasis on looting is always funny because not paying for something is such an oh so unforgivable crime while giving people money so they can pay for things is unthinkable.

it always comes down to context and framing, doesn’t it.

if you see someone setting fire to cars and smashing windows then without further context that’s pretty fucked up, but if you broaden the frame a little bit and see it as a response to someone getting choked to death or shot without any recourse suddenly the property damage looks like a moderate and reasonable method of raising the cost of brutality, as well as an unmissable signal that the local government has lost its monopoly on violence due to being perceived as illegitimate.

“if these protests continue they will damage the fabric of society / someone might get hurt” rings false when the protests only started due to someone getting hurt in a way that damages the fabric of society.

that’s the first positive framing of riotprotests I’ve seen that’s actually compelling, thanks

I mean to be honest I’m not a fan of burning buildings, but I’m really not a fan of getting murdered, and it would be misleading in the extreme not to see that interest in burning down police stations sure seems to spike right after those same police just murdered somebody.

reactions to riots will aim to sever them from their context, presenting a world in which people are just itching to set fire to shit on any day of the week but sadly don’t have a valid excuse, then they see an itty bitty mistake by an innocent policeman and boom it’s off to the races, they don’t really care about any of the stuff they put on signs and chant in the streets, they’re just troublemakers!

every riot is a genuine failure of governance and law enforcement, not a failure to control or suppress or disperse the riot, but a failure to give people a better option than rioting.

Muppet Frankenstein, where the only human actor is the Monster, and he has no prosthetics. Everyone just reacts to the one human in their world as a horrific monster. The body parts before the animation are even visibly felt Muppet limbs, but the creature rises as a human.

Some day I want to see a show that does the “no filler episodes” thing from the opposite direction. Just a whole season worth of low-stakes character pieces that seem to move the overall story absolutely nowhere, then episode 26 pulls all the triggers at once and this massive Rube Goldberg machine of a plot the show’s been quietly setting up in the background the whole time hits you like a truck.

#chekhov’s firing squad

Howl’s Moving Spirit Halloween

the inconveniencing

it’s crazy when the protagonist and antagonist are character foils

we hate each other but you make me who i am

we are morally / philosophically / ideologically opposed but also fundamentally similar in ways that create a unique connection between us

i don’t think I’m ever going to get over this line

 #the problem with becoming the kind of hero you needed yourself #is that it can’t change the fact #that nobody came for you                                                    

my favourite part about the old timey letters to Jonah is that they all contain in some way the sentiment of I am cutting contact with you because you are batshit insane. no one does it like Jonah Magnus!

may you find people who happily listen while you gush about your obscure interests. may you find people you feel comfortable and safe enough around to be your authentic self

Space Jam but literally

You know a little detail I love in The Martian book? That Mark is obviously smart, but to different degrees depending on the subject.

He’s a mechanical engineer and a botanist. This makes him especially good at math, biology, food science, physics, and techy stuff that involves building things or taking stuff apart and making it do something else and general problem solving

He’s also generally good at chemistry. He knows that to make water he can breakdown hydrazine, but doesn’t think about the fact that it would cause the place to fill with hydrogen and almost blow up until it does. He also knows you exhale some oxygen each time you breathe, but doesn’t know how much.

He knows that solar panels are held at a 14 degree angle but doesn’t know why, and only knows the angle because he was in charge of setting them up

When he gets injured he doesn’t say what muscles, just that his back hurts. He fixes most of his muscle injuries with pain killers and warm baths while thinking about how the medic would have more detailed instructions

He has no idea how the pilot is so good at pilot stuff, and never differentiates different kinds of rocks like the geologist would

It’s just cool to have a smart character who is smart at things that make sense for their degrees and experience. So many characters get the Sherlock Holmes treatment where they’re good at whatever the plot needs, but in this case the book uses his blind spots as part of the plot. He knows enough chemistry to solve problems but not enough to anticipate the problems the chemistry would cause as well. It’s refreshing to have a book where what a character is bad at, or just not super good at, works with the story rather than just getting glossed over or having the character magically good at everything because if you know botany obviously you also know anatomy and geology and meteorology, etc

A griffon with the front half of a kiwi and the back half of an echidna. 

a friend :]

FIRMLY believe that all good pieces of media should have at least one, if not most, of the following:

a) ghosts b) houses c) fucked-up families d) an abundance of love e) narratives about storytelling f) gay people