My Spookie Wookie Ouija Board Girl, 1920

Pride and Prejudice (2005) + tumblr posts (part 1)

barbie is for the girls who grew up playing with barbies. it's for the girls who didn't. it's for the girls who aren't girls anymore. it's for girls who feel trapped by how rigged society is against them. it's for girls who grew up hating the colour pink because it was girly. it's for the girls - the people who were taught that any show of femininity, anything even associated with it made you weak. it's for the boys who don't realise the system is rigged against them as well. it's for the mothers who pushed down and locked up the weird and dark and crazy parts of themselves. it's for the people who love barbie, and hate her.

it's a love letter.

this is what the barbie movie is about btw

Thinking about how I would write an adult Scooby-Doo series, because I think it can be done.

The first thing I’d do is make the characters actually be adults.  Still young, but adults, in the mid to late 20s range.  Mystery Inc. is a private detective type business that they run together.  In this universe, the supernatural/ghosts/etc are real, but not necessarily common, so when they take on a case, the culprit might be a person disguised as a monster, or it might actually be a real ghost.  The stakes can be higher; sometimes a bad guy is legitimately trying to kill them.  Sometimes the mystery they’re trying to solve is a murder.  Sometimes they actually get hurt on their cases.

Fred: the core of Fred’s character should be that he’s incredibly kind.  Like, give a stranger the shirt off his back kind.  The “Fred can’t talk to potential clients because he might take a case for free and we need to eat” kind.  He’s an honest and good person and sometimes gets himself into trouble because he assumes other people are too.  While he’s not very good at reading people or noticing ulterior motives, he’s brilliant when it comes to mechanical or engineering type stuff, so he’s the one who keeps the mystery machine running, builds their gadgets, and of course, designs the traps.

Daphne: she comes from old money, and her parents absolutely despise her life choices, to the point where they haven’t officially disowned her, but they have basically cut her off, so she doesn’t actually have access to any family money.  Growing up wealthy has granted her a variety of skills, including speaking multiple languages, horseback riding, and fencing.  She’s very into fashion and jewelry (even if she can’t afford it anymore) and has extensive knowledge of both that can occasionally provide a vital clue in a case. And even though her parents have cut her off, Daphne still has a wide network of contacts she can ask for favors sometimes, because she’s personable, and people tend to like her.  Daphne is also very emotionally intelligent, and is usually the one who can spot when someone is lying to them.

Side note - I ship Fred and Daphne, so I think I would start them off as an established couple for this universe.  Dating, engaged, married, I don’t care.  They are stupidly in love, ride or die for each other.  There’s no will they, won’t they, no worries about cheating.  They are in a healthy, happy, loving relationship, and no one (not even Daphne’s disapproving parents) are going to mess that up for them.

Velma: she is the forensics nerd who sometimes gets super excited about the wrong thing at the wrong time (”He was mummified in seconds? That’s so cool!” “Velma!  His wife is standing right there!” “Oh.  Sorry.”).  She’s not purposely insensitive, she just gets laser focused on her work and forgets to filter herself sometimes.  She’s also the one who can get so fixated on solving whatever mystery they’re working on, she’s willing to bend or maybe break laws.  Is breaking and entering really so bad?  Not if it gets them answers.

Shaggy: he is still the comic relief, but he’s the comic relief by being the only person in the group that actually has common sense.  He manages the business’s finances, he’s the only one who knows how to cook, and the others tease him for being a coward sometimes, but Shaggy maintains that if a ghost with an axe is coming for you, running is the only sensible option.  He should also have a range of random knowledge that sounds useless, but sometimes saves the day (ex ventriloquism, origami, the history of spoons, etc).

Scooby: as this is a universe where supernatural creatures exist, Scooby is an ancient eldritch type being that took a shine to Shaggy when he was a kid, and took the form of a talking dog to befriend and hang out with him.  Aside from the talking dog bit and not aging, he never uses his powers in a way that anyone notices.  The audience is not told upfront that Scooby is an ancient eldritch being; it should slowly be hinted at throughout the series so the audience put it together, but the characters never realize it.  Scooby genuinely considers Shaggy to be his best friend, and cares about the rest of the gang too.

Because of the Velma show, a lot of people's pitches for a new adult Scooby Doo have Fred coming from a richer, upper-class family. Now, I know that comes from Fred being Mayor Jones's adopted/kidnapped son in Mystery Inc, but we're totally missing a goldmine here.

Fred isn't like Daphne. He doesn't come from a rich family more often than not. In fact, Fred's family history is so strange and convoluted from reboots, off-hand mentions, plot twists, and straight-to-DVD movies that Fred is related to more people than my mom knows people at random restaurants.

The goldmine is that we don't know the truth about Fred's family or parents. Are they the cruise-loving Skip and Peggy Jones from "Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!"? What about the dangerous Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves of the original Mystery Incorporated? Or what about Mayor Fred Jones Sr?! It's not that last one, but the gist is we don't know who Fred's parents actually are. Fred doesn't know who his parents actually are. You look up "Fred Jones parents" on Google, and THE TOP RESULT IS FREDDIE SHRUGGING IN THE CONFUSION AND HORROR OF IT ALL!

Nobody knows where Fred came from- not even Fred- and maybe that's how it should be...

All these obscure family members and the 5+ potential parents from his overlapping stories... the elaborate traps and random knowledge explained away offhandedly by his shady past... that perfectly happy, preppy attitude untouched by the greed of 1970s capitalists and ghouls... the ascot!

These all lead me to believe that Fred has no parents, rich or otherwise. Fred Jones is a [teenageyoungadultcollegiate] man who awoke one day from nothing, a new consciousness born of the universe, with nothing but a love of learning, a passion for solving mysteries, and a fucking groovy van to help him survive. From there, our dear Freddie made a family for himself, by traveling the world in his van, meeting new people, and picking up the weirdest interests and hobbies.

While the other members of the gang all have families and homes to go back to, Freddie has the mystery machine. That is his home, and his family are the friends he makes along the way- including Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby. Amen.

I went ahead and redesigned the Mystery Inc Gang because I hate Velma and HBO Max for what they’ve done to my blorbos. Also they’re college students now cuz I have a brain

No scooby doo?

You’re so fucking right what a fool I am

You fucking fools. Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated (2010) WAS the Scooby Doo show for adults

I’ve watched this show through 3 times and will start doing so again tonight.

I don’t mind a new take on an old thing, but Velma is terrible and also not it.

i think one of the reasons glass onion is so fun is that it just... loves the audience back.

so many popular movies and shows these days thrive on a sort of bitter engagement with their fans - where the fans are dismissed as being stupid, annoying, and needlessly angry. we are constantly positioned as being less intelligent as the writers.

so much of "spoiler-free" movie-making relies on writers getting away with one twist in their work, regardless of if that twist was earned. the work doesn't actually have any rewatch value or interesting writing - because they think "good writing" is about "pulling one over" on the audience. they don't focus on making interesting characters or storylines or good endings - they focus on fooling you. glass onion, meanwhile, has faith that the audience has figured the ending out, and that we'll watch anyway, because we love the characters.

so many adaptions of older works... kind of seem to hate the original work. they're done without passion. they're done almost as if checking off a box. so many of them openly mock the audience for enjoying the original, almost directly telling us that we are fools for ever having loved something.

but glass onion. loves the audience. it knows that many of the people watching are mystery-lovers. it is an homage that feels love towards the original works it references. it knows we also love those works; and instead of trying to disparage those works, it allows us to celebrate them.

one of my favorite things about it - and maybe why i found it so satisfying - is that this movie isn't trying to tell you it's the smartest, bestest, most-clever detective story. instead, it asks itself what is satisfying and exciting for the audience? and actually gives us that payoff. it's bright, colorful, and fucking fun.

just... more of this please. i'm very bored of nihilism and grittiness and "shock value" writing. put the love back in. let us love unironically. have your work say i love you too. thank you for sharing this story.

I just really, really want to highlight this part:

Because it’s so fucking true and I see it all the goddamn time and I’m so TIRED of it.

This is one of the many issues I have with the Kenneth Brannaugh Hercule Poirot remakes.

That and trying to improve on something in all the wrong places.

the fact that the house speaker election hasn’t been this bad since the civil war and the guy is named fucking mccarthy and it’s jan 6 … this has to be a tv show cause how do you so perfectly reference three major events of extreme internal division in the US by pure coincidence

I apologise for having a nuanced opinion on the Internet, but "The destruction of a vast network that many creators rely on to reach their audience is heartbreaking" and "Watching the multibillion-dollar impulsive purchase of an entitled man-child crash and burn within days of getting his hands on it is objectively funny" are two statements that can and should co-exist

hope they keep making halloween movies because whenever i see a trailer for one all i can think of is that letterboxd review and it tickles me

When Jane Austen said, "And sometimes I keep my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in," I felt that

Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world’s foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.

Arth is the Welsh word for bear.

Which suggests that Welsh people are either just always down to meet a bear, or have somehow broken the bear curse. Either way, impressed.

they know the bears can’t make it to wales without going through england first. an acceptable cost.

One moment you’re 17 and daydreaming about how glamorous your life will be when you’re finally an adult, then all of sudden it’s a decade later and “treating yourself” means buying full price pistacchios and taking a bath on a week night.

we really needed a nadja and guillermo bonding episode

Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. “All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is,” Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science. Read more.