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My two fearsome beasts

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Assume the shark bite occurs while you're swimming at a beach and the lighting strike affects only you (no one else is hurt).

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a lot of really annoying media discourse on tumblr comes down to people having a hard time accepting that both of the following are true at the same time:

for any work of fiction interesting enough to be worth talking about, there will be multiple equally plausible and valid interpretations that are possible - and by interpretations here i don't just mean headcanons about minor details, i mean how you read the core themes and character arcs. and very often some of those equally valid interpretations will directly contradict each other and that's ok

not EVERY interpretation is valid, some are genuinely just dumb as hell and unsupported by the text

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who do you need for a (fictional) rebellion?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, given that my book series is about toppling. . . several monarchies. not quite sure how they're gonna do it yet. anyways.

so often I see posts/articles about how to write revolutionary leaders, but you need more than just a handful of angry people to enact meaningful change! here's a list of character archetypes I see all the time in stories centred around rebellions (in no particular order). you by no means need all of them. mix and match as you please.

a financier. this shit isn't gonna get done without funds.

spies. lots of spies. double agents, triple agents, people on the inside.

symbols for all the propaganda (this can be a person or something else, eg. your mockingjay).

someone who knows their way around the law to de-arrest folks and make sure no one gets caught out, etc.

demo mannnnn. or the swords guy depending on your story's setting (my demo man is a blacksmith).

the Really Angry Young Person (it's usually a teenage boy but obviously you can and should change it up) that's entirely devoted to the cause, willing to do anything.

not like, mandatory, but a character like saw guerrera from star wars comes to mind. specifically in andor, he says that as an anarchist, he's "the only one with clarity of purpose." kind of a blow stuff up now, form a government later kinda guy. basically you need some infighting.

ADMIN. you need someone organising all these madlads. who's reading all these 'emails'?

adding in my personal favourite of these archetypes: the guy that defects from the Institution to join the rebellion. possibly for homoerotic reasons. looking at you, agent kallus (from star wars rebels btw)

a tired older person who's seen far too much bloodshed in their life but is still fighting.

journalists/historians/documentarians/regular people with cameras (or the equivalent in your world), telling the world of the atrocities past and present. this bullet point is directly inspired by the people of gaza sharing the genocide happening there. free palestine, from the river to the sea.

the overlooked second-in-command that's kind of doing most of the actual work and keeping coalitions together n stuff.

the opposite of the spy: the traitor.

someone with charisma to convince people to join up. they're well-spoken and give rousing speeches. often, this person in actually the leader, but they don't have to be.

smaller groups within the rebellion that are probably constantly ignored by the higher-ups. will they break away and form their own movement? you decide.

add more if you can think of any!

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Soda Pop: A highly carbonated soda drink. It can be used to restore 50 HP to a single Pokémon.

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Telephone booth surrounded by snow in Hokkaido, Japan (2021)

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I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.

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OMG. Somebody said it out loud.

Disney is absolutely not the only studio doing this though.

It seems to have become standard practice across movies and series everywhere.

Anything that doesn't do it is like a breath of sunlight and fresh air inside a dank musty cave.

It's part of the 'fix it in post-production' epidemic sweeping through the studios. Fix it in post is often used as a time/money-saving measure - and is absolutely part of the same mess that the WGA is fighting against currently.

Rather than fixing things on-set - audio, lighting, something in-frame that shouldn't be, etc. (which is all handled by unionized crew) - they leave it for the CG folks (not unionized) to edit later.

(on ridiculously tight schedules that leave them scrambling, cutting corners, and working inhumane hours)

See also: that part where scripts aren't finished, because the studio won't fully staff the writers room, and won't pay to have writers on-set for day-of-filming script questions and fixes (which could resolve issues such as 'what kind of lighting do we need here?')

Anyway, all this shit we, as audiences, keep complaining about - bad lighting, bad sound, wonky visual effects, over-usage of not-great CGI, stilted acting on green-screen sets, scripts that seem not-quite-finished, costumes that look like they're cheap and flimsy, terrible hair and makeup, films and series that aren't as polished as they could be...

Plus the complaints we have about streaming services and their shenanigans...

All of that is enmeshed in the extreme capitalism that has taken over everything, including entertainment, to the point that studios are abusing their workforce and churning out material that - at best just doesn't live up to its potential - at worst, is just unwatchable shit.

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Wicked Movie is going to make a trillion dollars its opening weekend and everyone will leave the theater the angriest they’ve ever been in their lives because no one except for me and my beloved mutuals knows that despite having runtime longer than the whole stage musical it is a Part One that only covers the first act

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This tree at the west launch of the lake usually turns a brilliant color in October so I thought I’d post a before picture.

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“i’m not the same as who i was before [x] thing happened to me” does it help to know that you would not have stayed that person regardless

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Herb Garden

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also it helps me walk or whatever

[ID: a digitally drawn two-panel comic. / Image 1: Text reads: “How I expected using a cane would feel:��� Panel depicts a miserable person in tattered clothes, hunched over a cane and shaking as she walks. / Image 2: Text reads: “How it actually feels:” Panel depicts the same person, now standing tall and wearing flowing wizard robes and a long white beard. Her cane is at her side, glowing with magic, and she looks confident and powerful. /End ID]

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also, i keep thinking about that artist who lost an arm and she made self-portraits and of course they depicted herself without an arm, and people were like why do you keep marking art about the loss of your arm, and she was like i don’t. i’m making art about myself and i only have one arm.

while a lot of people write poetry about their own pain, sometimes personal poetry is just a reflection of who they are, and who they are is shaped by traumatic events and other things that you may find upsetting.

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How I pratice drawing things, now in a tutorial form. The shrimp photo I used is here Show me your shrimps if you do this uvu  PS: lots of engrish because foreign 

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jesus fucking christ