I’m generally of the opinion that if your film requires so much cgi that your actors are performing against nothing but green screens, maybe you should just be making an animated film instead. Because you’re basically already making one anyway.
the colin trevorrow Rise of Skywalker script has some gems (kyle gets his mask welded to his face and rey murders him w a double-sided saber) but the rest of it is either so terrible or so ridiculously hysterical it makes me want to throw up laughing (hux realizes he lost the star wars)
“Keep descriptions short and don’t use poetic/flowery language in a novel” “if a scene doesn’t advance the plot cut it” “avoid complicated symbolism and hinting at things, just say what you mean” “too much worldbuilding is distracting” bites you bites you bites you bites you bites y
Pretty depressing that we live in a world where far more people are willing to believe that a 24 year old woman got married to a man 25 years her senior, all so, over the course of 7 years. she could meticulously gather fake evidence of abuse (including diary entries, corroborating texts and photos), convince a bunch of witnesses to lie under oath and goad her then husband into admitting to headbutting her on tape in an elaborate Gone Girl scenario to… *checks notes* write one line in an op ed, than it is for people to believe a rich powerful man with a documented history of substance abuse and violent outbursts hit his wife.
ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that’s like ’[children’s media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!’ is that those stories really and truly aren’t forpeople who’ll think about that, they’re for the people the children’s age, who don’t, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they’re too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword
i did not anticipate that this post was going to be this popular so like.
when i said “a sword” i was speaking metaphorically. i mean, literally as well, swords are cool as hell. but metaphorically: agency and the power to do something about their situation and the situation of the world.
a bunch of people have said that children who do not have supportive parents love this kind of thing, which is very true and part of a thing i was thinking of but is not in the post - often when you feel alone, reading about someone who is alone but in a much more dramatic way, with, again, the power to do something about it, is much more comforting than reading about someone who is kept safe and given the “right” supports. the dragon takes on the face of the fifth grade bully easily and naturally.
when i said “where are their parents” and “child soldiers” i was generalizing these kind of complaints. “why didn’t any adult step in”/ “these are bad pedagogical techniques” are some of the ones i see a bunch. and the answer is the same. they didn’t step in or teach in a way that would be good in real life because it is the opposite of empowering for a child to hear “when you’re older” in fiction as well as in real life.
someone reblogged this post with tags about how their younger self would have been furious if the events of one of those “villain gets mad at seer for sending children to fight them” posts had played out in real life, and that’s about right - one of the central things about being a child is not being taken seriously. those posts are by adults who have forgotten that, because being wrapped in a blanket and told to sit this one out means that you are not being taken seriously - as a threat; as an enemy; as a hero; as a person.
if your “counterexample” is not directed towards people under 20, you’re misreading the post. The new crop of adult fantasy books really examining the post-traumatic stress of child heroes is very much not for me, but if people like it, that’s fine. but that’s very different from stuff focused on kids with heroes who are kid-aged. “wow, the hero of this book is too young, it’s kind of funny that no one else can do anything/this Great Mage War is between a 12 year old and a 10 year old/whatever” is maybe a funny joke but it is not any sort of real or, more importantly, interesting criticism of the work.
kids’ literature is a great way of exposing kids to the thrill of danger while keeping them absolutely safe.
kids’ literature where the adults are a problem is a great way of teaching kids that authority is not inherently trustworthy.
kids deserve to be safe; kids deserve to feel powerful. a kid reading about an 11-year-old taking on the Dark Lord and winning is safe and feelspowerful.
