the secret to being a cool adult is to wear things that your younger self wanted to wear but couldn’t and to do things that your younger self wanted to do but couldnt
“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story
Anyway, if Cobra Kai as a series hadn’t ever happened I would have had the same headcanon as Ralph himself that Daniel married Kumiko and moved to Okinawa. Cos it’s obvious that’s where he felt like puzzle piece that fit the picture.
But of course, for the series sake, it’s better this way. It’s also good that he’s married with children here, with a career too, cos it makes it impossible to just deroot himselfand start over. His character arch is about always being the one who doesn’t quite fit, until he resolves the conflicts he has in with himself.
I feel such empathy towards Daniel and relate to him. He’s so likable and friendly and yet he doesn’t seem to be maintaining friendships at all. Even his marriage at the moment is crumbling. He’s an extrovert and yet constantly picked up upon and pushed to limit.
I look forward S5. I wanna see what this unraveling of life might bring. I’ve felt since S1 that Daniel isn’t fully content with this life he has, but he doesn’t want to break things he’s successfully managed to built when nothing else lasts. But you know, maybe it’s just good for him, that there is an ultimatum coming. What do you want, Daniel? Don’t posture, don’t think of someone else - who do you wanna be?
every post of a tiktok video: 12,746 reblogs, 45,094 likes
yes but the experience of occassionally seeing a curated-by-my-homies tiktok vid on my dash is so violently different from the endless stream of scrolling through algorithmic video content. i crave variety. what is my social media experience without walls of text interrupted randomly by videos of ducks and pictures of weird vegan brownies.
something about how Crowley has Sam literally come and kill him, has Sam watch him in agony pleading and instead tells Crowley how despicable he is, just for Crowley to break free, tell Sam he isreminded about how evil he is, yet he still just. lets Sam live.
Brennan’s description of Invisibility is so interesting and breathes so much life into the magic system of this hyper-arcane world. I’m always more of a sucker for hard magic systems and as much as D&D alreadydelivers on that front, I love hearing these little details that combine common knowledge of physics and light with the arcane.
It also gave Cerrit’s 31 Investigation check the appropriate depth and dimension. It can sometimes be hard as a DM to find nuance within the success or failure of a roll. How does a 19 Persuasion check manifest compared to a 23? What does it mean to get 30+ on a check and how does it go beyond the standard success? The way Brennan handled it was kinda - for a lack of a better word - elegant? He let the narrative reflect Cerrit’s specialized abilities which made that 31 feellike it was a success beyond the norm.
like they were not some badass hunting couple duo, they were two people attempting to live the most cookie cutter lives possible under the shadow of mary’s past and angel meddling. it’s an important part to the Tragedy that john doesn’t know. he’s mourning a woman who never really existed. mary suffering in silence. a “love” that they didn’t really choose of their free will, and john had no way to even suspect anything was wrong. MARY KEEPING HER LIFE AND PAST A SECRET! THE REAL HER PRACTICALLY DEAD LONG BEFORE THE YELLOW EYED DEMON
‘a lot of people believed amber in 2016’ so we’re using our made up facts now? because i was there and no they did not. on the night of the restraining order, maybe, three celebrities voiced their concerns and thoughts (most notably andy richter and the vampire mom from twilight) but there was Extremely little tangible support. when paul bettany wrote his little ‘johnny was so nice to me when plying me with cocaine so he couldn’t possibly hit his wife’ tweet, the likes and quote tweets FAR outweighed any on likes concerning amber. right of the line tabloids including the daily mail, the sun, the national enquirer went in trying to eviscerate her from year dot and they succeeded because the majority of people believed she was lying for attention. it didn’t change under #metoo, either. u could talk about harvey weinstein but don’t mention johnny. u could make fun of kevin spacey but don’t mention johnny. u could say there was widespread, well known campaigns to silence victims of sexual violence but Don’t fucking include johnny when you talk about it. jk rowling FOUGHT to have johnny in those movies and fought to keep him in despite using her concerns about domestic violence to attack trans people in years to come. so, no, no one supported amber in 2016. it was celebrity gossip blogs and most people quietly going ‘i think he did it’ only to get shouted at violently by possessed 40 year olds who can’t comprehend the guy they fantasise about might be the same as the guy living next door to them who doesn’t let his wife talk to her friends anymore.
I am so incredibly obsessed with the way they incorporated emperor georgiou into the discovery crew like everyone is running around with all these kooky VALUES and IDEALS and georgiou is like “I want to kill people” and they are like “no BUT you’re our family” and she’s like “kill the people who want to hurt our family!!” And discovery has to be like “well. Still no but thank you”
fundamentally i am a petty and mean-spirited person who is also a chill, laidback guy. basically everything is cool with me except for the fact i am irritable and hold grudges. so i’m kind of a weird standoffish dude but yeah i think i’m pretty approachable and friendly
rereading my own writing is just a constant fluctuation between “damn, girl, you wrote this? (affectionate)” and “damn, girl, you wrote this? (derogatory)”
superman enjoyers talk about clark like he’s our beloved baby son or big brother and we’re very, very proud of him. batman enjoyers (who aren’t right wing shitheads) talk about bruce like a stinky feral cat we mostly love because he’s given us toxoplasmosis
one of the best things martha wells does is let murderbot retain its ownership of its body and boundaries. it’s so common to see in fiction for a traumatized and “anti social” or shy character to, over the course of the story, “come out of their shell” in order to show closeness and trust between them and another character. that’s frequently done by “fixing” the character’s preferences/actions–after everything that the friend has done for the traumatized character, now’s their chance to show how they’ve “healed” by getting rid of their boundaries and acting how the friend does, how they’re “supposed” to
for murderbot, that could’ve been done in so many dumb cheesy ways, like murderbot allowing dr mensah and the other survey members to hug it whenever they wanted, or murderbot “making the effort” to look them in the eyes when talking, or even murderbot promising to stay by mensah’s side/on preservation forever, getting rid of its hard currency cards because it knows it won’t need them anymore yadda yadda retching as i speak
instead, murderbot’s needs and preferences are the ones being accommodated for. mensah gets it its drones so not only can it build its own surveillance system in order to do its job/feel safe, but so it can interact with humans in the manner it prefers, watching through cameras rather than making eye contact itself. pin lee literally puts “no hugging” in its contract. despite preservation primarily using a barter system, murderbot is paid in hard currency that allows it to leave the station/return to the corporation rim if ever it wants to. it’s not forced to conform to the “normal” standards of showing and reciprocating affection and trust just to make the audience go awww how touching
that makes the times murderbot does allow itself to be touched all the more significant, because it shows how serious the situation is lol, since likely a hostile is shooting at them and murderbot is using its body as a shield or picking them up to run away or is carrying them as protection or because they’re hurt - all things murderbot is okay to do, because that’s its job, that’s what it’s most fiercely passionate about, keeping its clients alive and safe. and even after an event like that, it’s never presumed by its friends that they’re allowed to cross murderbot’s boundaries now, or that they can expect it to cross them regularly now. yet the level of caring remains the same!
murderbot’s “wrong” actions are never treated as something to fix but are respected and accommodated for by the people it cares for and that is so fuckin important
basically a rule of thumb with the “their lover/spouse died and they’re sad about it” as a villain backstory trope is like, if it was a relationship between a man and a woman then it sucks and is boring and lazy writing and also probably misogynistic if it was the woman who died solely so the man could be sad about it. but if it was a gay relationship then it is one of the most heartbreaking and visceral motives you could possibly give a villain and also it means everything they do is ok
People trashing Kamala’s Mom don’t seem to understand that it comes from a place of love and that Kamala knowsthat.
In the comics, she sneaks out to go to a party instead of Avengers Con and Zoe makes fun of her family, and you get this scene:
Which puts across Kamala’s POV in a way the show couldn’t when they changed her origin, but it’s still relevant
Kamala doesn’t dislike her Mom for saying no. Her Mom (and Dad) are not bad parents, nor are they in the wrong. She gets mad and sneaks out because she’s a teen and figuring out who she is and who she wants to be, and it’s complicated and confusing, and that’s a part of Kamala’s journey.
A journey that, by the way, is just as much about embracing her roots as a daughter of Muslim immigrants from Karachi as it is about figuring out her superpowers. And, spoiler alert, her parents are proud of who she is — even if they don’t always know how to say it. Just like Kamala loves them, even if she doesn’t always say it. That’s just how brown families are
the scene in spider-man 2 where peter’s mask get taken off during the train fight scene and the passengers all decide to keep his identity a secret because he’s just a kid and he’s the beloved hero of new york >>>>>>>>> mcu peter parker getting hatred and harassment thrown at him by the mindless mobs in the new spider-man trailer.
can we also include the part in the first movie where an angry mob shows up to pelt things and yell at Green Goblin for hurting Spiderman and the kids he’s trying to protect? the lines that the two men give still get to me.
guinea pig instagram accounts are so funny cause the captions will be like “uh oh! pumpkiwumpkin is being extra sassy today!” and the picture is literally just
