it’s jokes on here but rly truly genuinely the thing u like abt taika’s core affect has always been his māori-ness. what ur perceiving in his comedy and writing and emotional beats and exploration of masculinity and general clown shit is peak pasifika. not that islanders have the monopoly on his tone but. since 2 cars 1 night, eagle vs shark, flight of the conchords, boy, hunt for the wilderpeople, what we do in the shadows, our flag means death etc. he has never not been a māori eccentric making distinctly happy-sad dramedies born out of māori boyhood and the cadence of nz aoteoroa village kid humor like. that is an islander doing bits at ur aunty’s funeral if i ever saw one
anyway just ensuring the masses. that’s not western hollywood progressive ally it-boy sauce. u know what i mean. like the reason it’s refreshing is bc pasifika masculine tenderness exists outside of That. māori boys traditionally wear skirts and weave and wear flowers in their hair and collectively weep at funerals and kiss the body in the casket and tell self deprecating jokes when grandma is bummed out and learn to carry grief very. absurdly, comedically, softly, openly. grief both personal and historical. colonized islanders navigating the fracturing of our communities via jokes etc. it’s everything that white masculinity is not. so!!! idk there are and will continue to be a trillion essays on taika’s sauce bc he gets written fat checks and has like 7 massive projects out at any given time but the conversation would hugely benefit from not leaving out his. entire artistic ethos as an islander
Hey, since pride months coming up soon, I wanted to remind everyone that terf and exclusionist circles will try to cause a controversy online like they do every year– be it a “new more inclusive flag” for an already existing identity and accuse the original of bigotry, (just last year, we had a “new” pan flag made by terfs because the maker of the original flag supported he/him lesbians) starting hate campaigns against certain identities, etc– they will pretend to be concerned little lgbt+ members and they will pretend to bevictims to make us believe them and segregate online queer communities.
They will do this on pride month specifically because that is when queerness is more talked about and celebrated, thus giving them more attention if they come out with a (albeit fake) bigotry accusation.
Be aware of them. If any sexuality’s or its flag’s legitimacy and inclusivity is being questioned by the masses; do research before you follow what you see on your dash, on an instagram info presentation being reposted, or on a carrd link. (All of which can & are made by anonymous people you don’t know the motivations of.)
Because no matter how smart you are, you might be following a crypto-terf (terf who hides their beliefs to get non-terfs to agree to their ideology in more subconscious ways) without knowing and if you are, they– and sadly the queer people they can trick– will be putting their fake facades on your social media.
Again. Do your research. Don’t blindly believe an account’s words just because you’ve followed them for a while. Be aware.
every writing tip article and their mother: dont ever use adverbs ever!
me, shoveling more adverbs onto the page because i do what i want: just you fucking try and stop me
May I add something, because I will never shut up about this book (Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark):
Finally, some good fucking advice
THIS. CHANGES. EVERYTHING.
[ID: Text highlighted in yellow reading, “To understand the difference between a good adverb and a bad adverb, consider these two sentences: ‘She smiled happily’ and ‘She smiled sadly.’ Which one works best? The first seems weak because ‘smiled’ contains the meaning of ‘happily.’ On the other hand, ‘sadly’ changes the meaning.
Remember the song ‘Killing Me Softly’? Good adverb. How about ‘Killing Me Fiercely’? Bad adverb.
Look also for weak verb-adverb combinations that you can revise with stronger verbs: ‘She went quickly down the stairs’ can become ‘She dashed down the stairs.’ ‘He listened surreptitiously’ can become ‘He eavesdropped.’ Give yourself a choice.” /End ID]
the mcu is the “the curtains are just blue” of cinematic experiences
Is that why it’s so good?
YOU
f scott fitzgerald scared to say god himself is watching nick carraway and his band of socialite hedonists so he makes up an optometrist billboard constantly overlooking them (out of fear, hes scared)
michael crichton throwing out a version of jurassic park that just says “science, without restraint, can be dangerous. and dinosaurs are cool”
edgar allen poe’s first draft of telltale heart: “if you kill someone…..you might feel bad about it/:” but he starts trembling looking at it and says “no…..i’m too much of a pussy…to say this”
ppl with really long queues amuse me, like, they will like your post and then you find out within 3-10 business days whether they also thought it worthy of reblogging
I know for a fact no one in an emergency would ever call on these losers for help. Useless.
Like the conservatives got all this via voting but tell me how voting is meaningless?
a rabid white minority gets shit done BECAUSE they have no hesitation about identifying institutionalized power as the most important power, BECAUSE they don’t whine about the terrible ideological burden posed by casting a ballot
but sure. voting mysteriously becomes meaningless & seeking institutionalized power becomes silly cringe behavior only when it’s NOT primarily white men seeking power to act in the interests of white men at the expense of everyone else. sure.
One thing to remember however: this didn’t happen overnight.
This has happened over forty years of slowly picking away at democracy with votes and legislation and policy and conviction. Forty years of slow wearing down, of teaching Americans that they’re special and that they deserve peace and prosperity and never having to make hard choices between the bad and the worse.
It’s true that your vote in the next elections may make little difference this year. But the votes that the conservatives gained in 1980 didn’t make much difference either: at least, not that year. But they kept voting. And they kept voting. And they persuaded others to keep voting along with them.
And forty years later, you’re staring down the barrel of a dysfunctional democracy, and what looks like it’s very much going to turn into a Christian theocracy. (I am deeply cynical that it will stop at Roe v Wade. Deeply cynical.)
Do you have the courage to stand up and fight for the rest of your life? Do you have the vision to plant trees for an orchard you’ll never get to enjoy? Do you understand the weight of one vote and one vote and one vote and one vote and one vote, year after year after election after election after decade after decade?
Or do you just want “one and done”?
The dude in the tweet above wants “one and done”. He’s not willing to put his shoulder to the wheel and work for his democracy. Look, he’s not unusual in that - the truth is that most Americans aren’t. They were taught that the world they inhabited wasn’t just a privilege that they enjoyed but their right to have and to keep without expending any effort to ensure that it remained so.
It’s true that after the next election, things will look no better than before the election. But keep pushing at the election after that, and the election after that, and the election after that…
Don’t want to expend the energy?
Then STFU about the broken system! It was your lack of expended energy - or the energy you spent persuading others that ‘marginal change’ was just as bad as ‘no change at all’ (*coughs*NeverHillary*coughs*) - that contributed to the broken system today. Put in the work - put it in over the time period that the conservatives who are now shaping your world against your wishes did - and you might very well see the results.
The current state of American politics didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.
Changing it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen - ifyou work to make it happen.
If the left stops voting then the right would just dominate and it will get worse.
Simply voting for the president won’t matter. You need to vote in local and state elections. You have to pay attention to the stances of the candidates.
Go to primaries. Support progressive candidates and push for them. Help do campaign work. Help advertise the stances.
Also pay attention to what is going on and voice your opinions to them. Especially for local issues.
I have this fantasy that I can go back in time and get everyone who voted in 2008 to also have voted in 2010. Imagine how much better the country would have been had the GOP not had any power at all after the Bush debacle?
But nope. We handed the house to the GOP a mere 2 years after starting to clean up their mess. And as a result, almost nothing got done and the government was shut down a couple times.
The GOP is going full fash. Getting them out of power is, like, the very least you can do to stop them.
Roe v. Wade being overturned was only able to happen because conservatives have a 6 to 3 supreme court majority.
Conservatives have that majority because they got to place 3 judges.
They got to place three judges because they won the 2016 presidential election.
The Roe v. Wade decision can be traced back to a single critical election loss using only three logical steps and morons like this are still saying voting doesn’t matter. This was an election in which many self identified progressives chose not to vote, and looking at the numbers it could have been won if more progressives had voted. If this doesn’t cement a decision to vote in every single election you possibly can for the rest of your life then you simply are not paying attention.
This is a particularly dramatic and straightforward example of the principle talked about above: Elections shape the future, not the present, and we often don’t feel the real consequences of a win or loss for years. Every election matters.
If you do not strategically vote you are not progressive. Strategically you are centrist.
anyone who tries to convince you there’s no point in voting is ACTIVELY TRYING TO SUPPRESS YOUR VOTE.
^^ This is what these “democratic politicians are ineffectual, therefore voting is useless” idiots sound like.
I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook
“The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present” are you kidding me this quote has propelled me through at least three emotional crises
“The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.” That quote literally got me through grieving my brother like WTNV goes HARD
A List of Some of My Favorite Quotes From This Insane Podcast:
“You are beautiful when you do beautiful things.”
“The present tense of regret is indecision.”
“We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights– mostly void, partially stars– that sky reminds us we don’t understand even more.”
“Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is.”
“Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don’t believe, no one will.”
“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”
“Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”
“Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?”
“When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves.”
“We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?”
“Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error.”
“We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people.”
“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk.”
“There’s nothing under your bed. There’s nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all.”
“The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer.”
“Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about.”
“Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work.”
“And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*”
“Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry.”
“As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others.”
“Guns don’t kill people! It’s impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it’s a miracle!”
“Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all.”
“There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world.”
“You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don’t commit.”
“I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. ”
“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.”
“And now, the weather.”
I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.
Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.
I owe the creators of this podcast more than I could express.
“the lights over the Arby’s” is such an intrinsically queer piece of writing that it hits me *hard* every time.
“We will never be the same again. But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.” (from Episode 75)
going postal hits a little different. like i know several discworld books operate on sheer chaos but going postal doesn’t let you rest for any of its 300ish pages….it’s just watch this manic 24 year old conman whose defining character trait is an inability to stop talking when in high stress situation get put in EXTREMELY high stress situations for two weeks straight. no breaks! its like watching vine era 6 second comedy that lasts for hours and is also about monopolies. oh also goth gf <3333
so in Everything Everywhere All At Once, at the very end overlaid with the final title card is a chengyu (i.e. Chinese idiom), also on the poster here, which I’m pretty sure makes it the Mandarin title: 天马行空 (tiān mǎ xíng kōng)
I love love love trying to figure out chengyu movie titles, there can be so many layers of meaning, having a whole film to contextualize a new chengyu is the absolute best. Disclaimer that some of this is a vibes-based interpretation of double- and triple-meanings that a fluent speaker might (and is welcome to) tell me is totally off-base, but media analysis is subjective and I’m just learning and having fun!
The literal meaning of 天马行空 is basically “celestial horse traverses the sky”, the idea of a mythical horse running with miraculous speed, as though flying through the air.
Baidu gives two idiomatic/metaphorical meanings – for literature or poetry, 天马行空 describes a writing style that is bold, powerful, imaginative, and unrestrained. Writing like a mythical flying horse, zoom zoom, love it, you’re describing the style of the spectacular movie you just made, genius, obsessed.
When 天马行空 is applied to people, translating the descriptions from Baidu gave me words like: impetuous, impulsive, fickle and impatient, restless, scatterbrained, not steady, not dependable, anxious, without peace of mind, impractical, and has unrealistic and fanciful ideas. Different vibes! Not quite as positive a connotation! Do we not like it when people’s brains zoom zoom like magical horses? What gives? I’m looking at the final character, 空, which upon closer study, means “sky” by way of “empty; hollow; void”, appears in words for fruitless efforts, empty slogans, wasted journeys, adding the meaning of “in vain” or “for nothing”. I’m looking at the third character 行, which in addition to meaning to go/travel can also mean behavior/conduct/deeds/actions. A sense of the magical horse in your brain going fast but accomplishing nothing? Almost like Evelyn as we meet her at the start of the film – restless, impatient, definitely without peace of mind, a million fanciful dreams unrealized – the fruitless efforts of a mythical horse.
On the other hand, this second chengyu dictionary’s entry has a decidedly more positive take on how it applies to people – the mythical horse is a metaphor for a remarkably talented person, and can be used to describe a style of literature or to praise a personage or fictional character. According to this guy it is ‘a vivid and distinctive image, an unconventionally graceful artistic conception, and has considerable romantic charm’. Beautiful. Getting a sense of the contradiction of the multiple Evelyns, spectacularly talented and successful in so many universes while spinning her wheels at a laundromat in this one.
The full line of poetry, 其所以神化而超出于众表者，殆犹天马行空而步骤不凡。which, and I really hope I’m translating this passably, might be something like:
“One ascends to godhood if one rises above the surface of the masses, almost as a celestial horse traversing the sky with a step out of the ordinary.”
I love this SO much. The universal sentiment of this, that nonconformity is so rare and extraordinary that it might as well give you magical powers and make you a god – so great! And then in the film, they make it literal! You literally DO get magical powers if you eat a tube of chapstick (or declare love for someone you hate!! or maybe just declare love for another woman!! or are into kink!!)!!!! Not to mention that 空/sky is also “void”, and 不凡/out of the ordinary is also “not of this world”, literally a film about traversing the void and stepping into another world. Obsessed.
sometimes the best fanfics are written by middle aged adults with years of writing experience who simply know how to craft a good story. but also sometimes the best fanfics are written by a sixteen year old girl with something deeply wrong with her
#fandoms need both
#biodiversity
trade secret, the middle aged adults with years of writing experience are just the sixteen year old girl with something deeply wrong with her but all grown up
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.
I would ask everyone in the notes making “Just get married” jokes to pay attention to the fact that the person who tweeted this has a wheelchair emoji in their name and remember the fact that people on social security disability payments lose all their benefits the instant they get married.
A rule like this will fully back disabled people on SSI into an ultimatum of stay single and get evicted or marry and become unable to pay the rent anyway.
This is such a great point. We all need to be mindful of how a lot of these laws are used for ableism. There are so many things we do that we don’t know we’re doing that was put in place to actively harm the disabled community. Like the way a lot of jobs require you to be able to lift 50 pounds even though it has nothing to do with the job.
Something that a friend of mine pointed out also is the demographics of Shawnee. Shawnee is a suburb of Kansas City, MO (a lot of Johnson County is).
Compare to:
The city itself.
This isn’t just “we can keep the poor people out,” it’s definitely “we can keep the foreigners/the Black people out.”
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