hello anon from a month and a half in the past!! the short answer is probably never at this point but if you want a plot synopsis I’d be happy to give it to you privately 🙂
“You tell me that it’s a cruel world… and we’re all just running around in circles. I know that. I’ve been on this earth just as many days as you. When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one, too. This is how I fight.”
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Name a better feeling than getting the first comment on a fic you were uncertain about and knowing that at least one person liked the tiny piece of your brain that you put on the internet
Comments are fucking LIFE, people. If you enjoyed, please let the author know!
The qualities that divide good children’s literature from bad children’s literature:
1) The dragons are real.
2) The adults don’t believe you.
will elaborate
what I’m getting at here is that being a child is an experience defined by marginalization—by powerlessness, not being taken seriously, not being believed.
when you are a child you are aware of the terrible things in the world and terrified by them, and you feel everything so intensely. Before you learn to manage your emotions, they are consuming, incandescent experiences that are almost impossible to access again as an adult. You are small but your emotions and experiences are as large and as vivid as anyone else’s, but they are not taken as seriously as everyone else’s. You recognize that adults condescend to you and dismiss you.
As a child, you know that the world ought to be fair, that people ought to be helped, and you ask “Why?” And you ask “What is the point?” And as you become an adult you learn to repress those things. The answer to every question you ask as a child is “Because you have to” or “Because that’s the way it is,” and these are bullshit answers and we all know it, but defending an authoritarian relationship to someone weaker is easier than defending things about our world that are indefensible if we look at them honestly.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Lucy first enters Narnia, she is not believed. Narnia has so much about it that makes it THE quintessential children’s book series, the archetype for children’s book series, and it all centers around how Narnia cannot be understood by adults.
Imitators have reduced this down to something about the Wonder of Childhood, something about how children are innocent and special that means only they can see magic because only they are able to believe in it. This is Not Correct. Books that do this are saccharine and awful because this is fake and we all know deep down that it’s fake.
Here’s the truth. Children do not live in an idyllic fantasy land where bad things aren’t real, adults do. For kids who have dealt with grief, abuse, trauma of all kinds—and let’s be real, that’s most of us—it’s condescending and idiotic to treat children as if they’re innocent about the evils in the world. Almost every child experiences evil early and is unable to communicate that experience to adults, whether this is in the form of a relatively innocent childhood fear or deeply damaging abuse.
There is much that has been said about how the Narnia books are about the trauma of World War 1, but most of that can also be said about how Narnia is about childhood in general—the traumatic nature of the return to the Real World is left unstated, because it is understood by the audience. Children have a vivid inner world that they do not have the vocabulary to explain to adults, and this is what Narnia is about.
There’s a reason why Neil Gaiman’s children’s books are so memorable, and it’s the same reason that they scared the living shit out of adults. There’s a reason why Where the Wild Things Are and Shel Silverstein’s poetry have had such a long cultural shelf life. These are not cozy, comfy stories that affirm adult perceptions of the childhood world as flat and innocent; they are troubling and ambiguous.
There’s also a reason why the children’s books that are so important often piss adults off. The best example I can think of is the Captain Underpants series. I never read any of them and yet I remember the extraordinary disdain people had for those books; they were the poster child for What Terrible Thing Has Become Of Literature.
And sure, maybe to an uncritical adult eye the adventures of misbehaving kids thwarting the rules of the world with poop jokes has no value, but I would argue the opposite—the poop jokes are, in fact, fundamental to the anti-authoritarian message. Adult attempts to suppress the scatological sense of humor children have hold a very important message about power.
Because here’s the thing: poop and farts are funny because they’re taboo, and especially so to children because we are constantly telling children what they Can and Can’t say. It’s not about poop, it’s about how adults betray themselves every time they get in a tizzy about a seven year old saying “turd,” because the fact that “turd” gets such a reaction means that uptight adults don’t have the power over kids that they want kids to think they have.
Scatological subjects embarrass adults, and the more uptight and controlling those adults are, the more devastating the embarrassment is. Kids are super conscious of the power dynamics in all their dealings with adults—how could they not be? And the explosion of raucous laughter that results from an elementary school teacher saying something that sounds sort of like “doody” wouldn’t happen if elementary school teachers weren’t constantly trying to reassert and solidify their position of power.
They, too, can be mortified and laid low by a humble “doody,” and if it did not have the power to do so, they wouldn’t try so hard to stop the kids from saying it.
I’d argue that where that all stands for Captain Underpants, part of it is also that it’s a comic book series for kids that features two kids who constantly disobey their teachers and principal. Dav Pilkey, the author of Captain Underpants, has ADHD and dyslexia and has been open about the fact that he was punished very often for both of these things. The reason why many adults find Captain Underpants distasteful is not only because of fart and poop jokes, though that is certainly a factor, it’s that the series is for those kids who can’t focus, who struggle in school academically because the author himself was a kid like that, and as a result Captain Underpants has some pretty strong anti-authority messages. For example:
Dab Pilkey genuinely has the best ‘about the author’ I’ve ever read and I think it’s a crime that it hasn’t been included yet
Dav Pilkey is not even in the vicinity of fucking around, is he.
Do non-americans realize that the United States is literally just a bunch of countries in a trench coat that agreed to be semi-nice to each other in order to sneak into the Big Boy Club? Because let’s be honest that’s just what the USA is
The rest of the world: So… you’re a big country?
The states, standing on each other’s shoulders: Y- yes,,,
I love how everyone who’s reblogged this hasn’t added anything on or tagged anything on it. They’re all just like “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the entire United States summed up in one post-”
absolutely bonkers that my own tags have crossed my dash like this more than fifteen reblogs after i wrote them
I moved to another state. 30 minutes away. My family acts like I betrayed them and can’t understand my life choices. It’s completely different way of life, especially during covid. Completely different country.
every single fucking time one of those articles of “things europeans find weird about america” complains that sales tax isn’t included
states set the sales tax!!! it’s literally different across state lines!!! american retailers can’t add it bc they’d have to account for 50 different prices!!!!!!!
It gets even more insane! California’s clean air standards for cars and other such things are so much higher than everyone else’s! So if a car manufacturer in Detroit wants to sell their damn cars in California, they need to build their cars to California clean air standards. But retooling an assembly line and car design to have some cars meet California clean air standards, while building others to other clean air standards is a lot of work, so car manufacturers all over the country have to build all their cars to California clean air standards.
Which is why California went into an uproar earlier this year when the Federal Government tried to argue that states can’t set their own environmental guidelines! “Fuck you!” says California, “we remember Los Angeles in the 80s, how bad the smog gets, go pollute your own damn air over in your own damn state where there isn’t a thermal inversion layer to trap all the smog down near ground level!”
“But you’re making it soooo haaaaaard to sell our cars everywhere else!” they whine.
“Fuck you!” California shouts. “And while we’re at it, we don’t give a shit what you say, Mister President, we’re gonna open our damn states when we’re good and ready, and our friends Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington State agree! Also, we’ve decided to legalize weed!”
“But the Federal Government says it’s illegal!” shouts the other states.
“Fuck you, we make the drug laws in our state, and we say toke up!”
“Now, hang on!” shouts the Federal government. “You can legalize weed in your state, but all banks are federal agencies, so if your weed dispensaries set up bank accounts, those accounts have money from illegal practices in it and are subject to seizure by the federal government!”
“FINE!” shouts California. “Hey, weed guys, you can keep selling weed, but you can only deal in cash!”
“How the fuck is that supposed to work!?”
“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, TAKE IT UP WITH DC!”
“By the way, if you’re gay married elsewhere, we won’t recognize it,” mutters Texas.
Oh also, the reason Florida is “so weird” is only PARTIALLY because people who live here are bonkers – it’s also because Florida state laws around privacy do not include the details of arrests! So in other states, when you’re arrested, it can just show up in the registrar like “25 yo man arrested 04/30/20” but in Florida they can (and do) print the details of why they were arrested: “25 yo man arrested 4/30/20 for riding an alligator through town while naked and smoking weed.” I promises you the other states have PLENTY of weirdos, they just don’t get their dirty laundry gleefully aired in the local news.
No, definitely not :D
Well, that was a … post. I guess.
Y'all forgot to explain that you can have city AND state sales tax.
It’s really fucking jarring after being in Oregon to go to Seattle for a convention and be charging customers WA tax AND Seattle sales tax.
Also I can’t believe no one talked about how we get about regional food and also about how Texas basically controls all K-12 textbook contents for the whole fucking country.
So you’re the EU except in permanent ‘Office Party: Everyone has had at least one too many drinks’ mode? And Texas is that person who hogs the copy machine to make copies of their butt?
Here is my piece to commemorate the Empires finale! I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for ages and I’m excited to finally show you 😄 I loved all of season one, so hype to see what the next has in store! I can’t wait to get painting 💪🏼✨
Unpopular opinion but it BAFFLES me how many people thought Erend was in the wrong when he had a go at Aloy in the daunt lol
Especially after reading Liberation. She’s the only person with a full understanding of what Ersa did leading to her death and the impact of it - and how she left without communicating where she’s going because she thought she could handle it
… then Aloy - in full knowledge of what happened, goes and does exactly the same thing
It’s not entitled or whiny to be like “hey you are my close friend and the only person who knows the circumstances surrounding the worst thing that ever happened to me.. and then you exactly replicated the circumstances surrounding the worst thing that ever happened to me and then sauntered back half a year later with no apology”
Then she’s like “where is this coming from”
Girl plsss you are a genius but you have the emotional insight of a particularly immovable boulder :’)
I love disney films, don’t get me wrong but hate them as a corporation and it’s so fucking funny to me seeing the response to encanto and how disney’s weirdness about luisa has affected them
because isabela is the stereotypical pretty ‘perfect’ character, they expected her to be very popular with little girls. but she wasn’t as popular with them or kids in general even nearly to the extent they thought she would be: the isabela merch isn’t selling much and the demand for luisa merch is extremely high because kids regardless of gender seem to adore her
bc of misogyny and gender stereotypes, they didn’t expect kids to like the strong muscly lady but boy were they wrong. and I’m so glad the kids showed the mouse right up on their bullshit lmfao
It also shows a deep lack of faith in their target audience to actually understand the story they’re telling. Because, like. My kiddo is 9, she’s exactly the demographic they’re going for, she’s obsessed with Encanto and she adores Isabela. Listens to and/or sings her song at least five times a day (I counted.)
Thing is, the Isabela she adores? Looks like this:
And all the Isabela merch I’ve found looks like this:
Disney really made a whole song about deconstructing the perfect princess trope, about how restrictive it is to have to be perfect and pretty and decorative all the time, about breaking free and finding joy and becoming your true self, then made a shocked pikachu face when little kids weren’t interested in a doll that threw all that away and went back to the quietly-miserable pretty-princess version of the character.
and this would have been such an easy fix!!!!
The doll’s dress could be made of color changing material in water or they could have included little packets of chalk dyes so that the kids could turn the Isabella doll into her happy self!
We ran into this same problem about a decade ago when tangled came out.
All the rapunzel dolls looked like her at the start of the movie with the super long blonde hair.
Kids didn’t like that because they loved her story about becoming free so they didn’t buy the dolls.
Or they did and then cut the hair themselves and used markers to make it brown.
Something that the doll makers could have capitalized on by including little scissors with the doll.
The difference between the storytellers and the marketing department
I truly love how queer can mean “Eh I’m some flavour of Not-Cishet but I don’t care to know the specifics beyond that” but also “I absolutely do know the specifics but we will be here all damn day if we get into it” and like. Everything in between. I think that’s incredibly powerful of us tbh.
