ive got this energy beneath my feet

#Oh she gagged them, thank you Saoirse <3

Like she barely spoke during this conversation until this point and you could see in the second panel here, how they were ignoring her when she tried to say something and Paul just kept going with his bit; then she said it and silenced them completely.

Not only was she speaking truths but also it showcases how men can get so caught up in themselves or their opinions and not acknowledge the women into the conversation.

gen z has to reckon with its radicalization problem. you are not a morally pure and superior generation of youth come to save the world, your men and boys are radicalized at an unprecedented level and you ignore it because it’s too hard to address but you have to. these boys are in your classes, they date your friends, you know them and you cannot continue to pretend this is an “old white guy” problem

girls are contributing, too. the coquette aesthetic, the “i don’t want to girlboss i want a man to pay my bills”, girlmath girljob girlmoney. it’s a joke, it’s clothes, it’s whatever, i get it but it is driving a mentality of traditional gender roles and you know you’re joking but your boyfriend doesn’t. your kid brother doesn’t. you have to stop this shit it is a contributing factor

“if they lose democrats should’ve done [x pet thing i personally think] and then they wouldbe won” “democrats shouldn’t have done [x pet thing i personally think] and then they would’ve won” idk man it sure just looks like there are a hell of a lot of people who are fascist and are motivated to vote for a fascist to implement fascist policies regardless of what the left is doing

boy do i understand how compelling and comforting it is to think that with a few changes, a winning democratic campaign could’ve been run. that there was a path further to the left, with more voraciously ethical clarity, with smarter consultants or less pandering to the imagined centrist republicans, or more separate from the biden admin that could’ve put up the margins we needed. and maybe that is true!

but i think the largest truth about the election is going to be that the cultural trends are the harbinger of a more general reality - there is a uniform, aligned, mobilized, right wing of this country that is not only comfortable with fascism but yearns for it in every facet of their life. the marvelslop hegemony, the flattening of critical works and harassment of critics of every type of art, the public obsession gen z has with adherence to trends and derision of Others…. all singing canaries that join transphobia, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, genocidal urges, fear… etc etc etc in a mass that longs to hear one single voice that sounds like Their voice, with any deviation punished and destroyed into silence. and they were given that voice and voted accordingly and without deviation.

and our system is not currently set up to run a powerful opposition to that sort of thing. a country trending this fully to the right does not have a defense. and although i would’ve done so many things differently from my own limited perspective, there was no campaign the dems could’ve run at the point the baton was handed off to kamala that had a chance against that. she may still win and that will still be true. and that’s the challenge we have to prepare ourselves to meet going forward.

genuinely when you log off and are only exposed to the lives of those around you as god intended you realize how much shit does not matter. i know this is not a hot take but we were not meant to hear every thought, feeling and opinion of people we will never see face to face. it’s so much easier to pile on people for harmless but annoying opinions when you will never have to spend extended time with them.

not to sound old fashioned or whatever but getting rid of payphones is a mistake, and the only reason we should do it is if we're replacing them with free, public use phones. Having the ability to reach out to others in every place of public congress and transit is an important safety feature and the advent and adoption of smartphones does not negate their utility.

I know i've already lost this battle, so it's somewhat pointless to say, but smartphones die. chargers aren't always there. smartphones break. some people don't have them. Being able to call someone and ask for help, to get in touch with friends and family, without relying on something you yourself own, is a societal good.

Furthermore, expecting everybody to have a single piece of fragile technology on them at all times to the point that critical services are not available without them is truly mind-boggling to me. This goes for things like restaurant menus and transit maps as well. you should be able to navigate the world without a brick made by Apple or Samsung, and if you can't, then something is fundamentally broken. It's one thing for new technology to augment an existing real-world experience, it's another thing to usurp it entirely.

I want more stories that explore the angst potential of unrequited platonic love.

Like:

‘You’ve always been like a brother to me but I’ve realised you only come to me when you want something’

‘My surrogate parental figure just sees me as another student/employee/lackey’

‘I raised you like my own child but you don’t even remember who I am’

And of course, the classic ‘You’re my best (and only) friend but I know I’m only one of yours’.

Oh maaaan, platonic pining is such a big thing for me. I think it’s something most of my fandoms have in common … I’ve come to realize that what I really want out of a piece of media is a relationship arc that hits most of the beats of a UST/pining arc, or a classic bickering-lovers/enemies-to-lovers arc, but does it with friendship and/or family relationships. Characters desperately yearning to be friends or family, and not knowing if their love is requited, is so completely my jam in every way.

I'm saying this as a fan, but also as somebody who worked their arse off writing screenplays at film school, don't hate on the writers when they go on strike.

Writers control the story of the show, there is so much detail and fine tuning done in the scripts. Everything an actor or a director adds, is adapted from the script. There is no show without the script, but still screenwriters are horrendously underappreciated and underpaid.

Director, actors and producers usually end up with most of the credit.

Writers deserve to be seen. If your favorite show is delayed because of the upcoming strikes, don't be surprised and please don't be angry at the writers. They are fighting for their art to be appreciated.

Honestly, this shit with Hogwarts Legacy is just like what happened with Chick-fil-A like ten or fifteen years ago. Some of y'all might be too young to remember it, but it went almost exactly like this shit today, only the target was technically gay people (not like we aren’t all lumped together when push comes to shove, but gay was the political scapegoat in US politics at the time, as trans people were still on the fringes of social awareness).

It came out that the people who own Chick-fil-A were donating to organizations in other countries that were actively working to get gay people there killed, and were also very monetarily invested in stripping gay people of any legal rights they’d amassed in the US. So a lot of queer folks were asking for allies to boycott Chick-fil-A to show solidarity.

And it turned into a giant fuckin circus for bigots to rally around. There was even a support Chick-fil-A day, I remember it because I was a server at the time and our restaurant was empty most the day - while the line for Chick-fil-A down the road was like a mile long consistently.

But while that was obviously annoying, that wasn’t what hit people the hardest. Cuz we expect clowns to wear the shoes, right, it’s not shocking.

What disappointed people, or really demoralized a lot of young queers at the time especially, was the allies who would still go there. Because they like the sandwiches or fries or whatever. The people who’d march with them in the parade or be supportive of marriage equality, who would then turn right around and give their money to people who were trying to actively harm their friends.

Because the chicken was good.

I remember a friend of mine being really just absolutely broken up over that, trying to understand some of her friends reasoning and at the time I couldn’t give her an answer. I could now, though.

And it’s this:

Talk is cheap.

It costs nothing to say things. A person can say whatever the hell they want, any feel good flowery thing, and it doesn’t really cost them.

But when they are asked to actually give something up - or put their money where their mouth is and just….can’t do it. Well then there isn’t much else for them to say, is there? At least nothing that’s worth anything.

Some people had to find out the hard way that the choice between a chicken sandwich and funding people who did not believe in their dignity as a human being was, in the eyes of certain allies, apparently really hard. Too hard, in fact.

These allies would march in the colorful parades and go to the bars for drinks, but in the end, you couldn’t actually depend on them to inconvenience themselves. They were fair weather allies, and they were there for the party and that’s about it . They wanted entertainment, and it didn’t matter if that came from having fun gay friends or a tasty sandwich.

This is the same thing, really, or pretty close to it.

These types of people just wanna have fun. Either you, their friend or whatever, are fun or the game is fun, and if you stop being fun by incidentally making them feel a little guilty about where they spend their money , then they might just choose the thing that doesn’t make them currently uncomfortable.

And I’m not saying these people who say trans rights online but who also really, really want to play wizard game and already have are horrible people or anything - they’re just not very good. They have no real character. And unfortunately there’s not much you can do to change that, other than investing time and energy in people who do.

nickelodeon animation production workers are unionizing and if this goes through we will be the largest group of production workers to unionize in the animation industry. 

look at this on twitter!!!!!

been thinking about the x-files place in media and how the show, and mulder and scully’s relationship influences how tv is created. i think any show that is a police procedural with the skeptic/believer dynamic is genuinely inspired mulder and scully. i’m talking about bones, castle, and lucifer among many others.

i enjoy this dynamic but have been wondering why, aside from lacking david and gillian’s chemistry, these shows and ships cannot capture what the x-files and msr did so effortlessly.

i’ve come to a few conclusions.

first: the msr dynamic is misunderstood. people think that this dynamic is man is an annoying manchild and woman puts up with him. the msr dynamic is not that. not really.

mulder is, at his core, a deeply traumatized person on a mission to find his sister who was abducted by aliens. he becomes blinded by his mission, but he is highly intelligent and accomplished on his own. scully is also highly intelligent and accomplished, and they see that about each other in very first scene that meet. there is immediate respect between them, which is VITAL.

i think a lot of modern media thinks that the man has to be kind of an actual idiot (or overly sexual in his advances) at first and the woman has to help him “grow up” when that is not the case with mulder and scully at all. mulder and scully challenge each other’s world views and beliefs and help each other become the fullest versions of themselves, which is not always easy. but it is always with fundamental respect and true friendship. if mulder becomes a more mature and serious person because of scully it’s because of her influence on him, just how he influenced her to have the courage to open herself up to belief in the unknown.

and mulder and scully’s “slow burn” is so iconic because their moments of flirtation and intimacy early on is subtle. but it is there. mulder doesn’t have to ask to see scully’s tits for us to know he wants to. (but it’s a hell of a long time til he does.)

and, unlike instances with caskett and deckerstar - they are not “forced” or tricked to work together, they choose to. they actually refuse to be pulled apart because together, they will find what they’re looking for

which brings me to my next point! i think something a lot of shows don’t do is give a real reason for the copaganda other than it just being copaganda, especially a fantasy show like lucifer. on the x-files, mulder and scully are fbi agents- but them working for the fbi serves for the plot as a way for them to gain access to government secrets and lies by working from within. in a lot of ways, it is a criticism of the fbi and the government at large. mulder and scully are fbi agents because of their mission, their mission is NOT to be fbi agents.

the hunger games films tore out the books teeth. like it does the series such a disservice when it stands for nothing, says nothing, passes no judgement.. katniss speaks so plainly in the books about what she thinks of the capital. of what they do to her and her family and the districts. of the different worlds she witnesses as she’s straddled between 12 and the capital.. she calls it barbaric. she calls it disgusting and wrong and horrifying, over and over, and the films were like how do we market this teen romance.

like these…… are unmarketable to a production company. as they should be

Matt Damon explains why they don't make movies like they used to. Pls watch.

This is actually a really good perspective and explains why the MCU is the way it is. It is essentially one-off entertainment without the backup of DVD sales (of course Disney being Disney it is still backed up by massive merchandise and spin off sales). The movie is designed to be “disposable”. The rewatch value is low because it’s not intended to be sold on DVD for people to treasure and rewatch every year at Christmas (or whenever) with family. The idea is to generate hype, through manufacturing controversy or teases or gossip. Keeping spoilers under wrap is integral because the rewatch value is negligible. It hinges on surprise or shock (or wtf value) to entice audiences to give up their money to see it in theatres. It is about spectacle, about being loud and colourful and busy, so that for the first 30 minutes after you walk out your senses are still buzzing and you feel like that was worth your $30 or however much. It takes a while for your brain to come back online after the sensory overload to then try to pick apart the plot, and by that stage it doesn’t matter, you’ve already hyped it up to your friends.

And the story or characterisation doesn’t matter because no one is watching that again to care.

“Customers need to know that just ‘cause you hit one-click buy, it’s not magic. These are real people being affected. We want you all to stand in solidarity with these workers. They come from y'all community, they’re your neighbors.

The first thing we’re fighting for is job security. They hire and fire people all the time. There’s people that are homeless and people in shelters working there that we help.

We’re fighting to make everybody a shareholder again, which they stopped in 2018, and bringing back the monthly bonuses for productivity and attendance. They stopped that in 2018, as well. Bring back hazard pay.

They think the pandemic is over. People are still working, catching covid, still being sick. And, also, providing a better quality of life: a pension, free college…everything a union can provide, we want to provide.”

-Chris Smalls, Amazon Labor Union