spritelysprites

[spritelysprites]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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i never understood what made steampunk punk. romanticizing georgian era england and industrial revolutions are some of the least punk things ever. youre putting gears on a top hat

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I can’t describe the 50s scifi vibes I get listening to TOS. 

The guy who wrote this wrote Amok Time.

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now that I've had some time to think about the wicked movie, I'm even more confused about the plot and the magic system than I was at first.

so elphaba is the best at magic and she gets to go meet the wizard. how do we know she's good at magic? what are we comparing her to? the teacher didn't do any magic and neither did glinda. obviously neither did the wizard.

(that's leaving aside some other major questions: what makes someone like this teacher able to tell a person's potential for magic? if she's able to tell these things, why did she say no to glinda and why does she serve the wizard? what exactly is she teaching elphaba in these magic lessons? what is it to "make good"?)

I don't know what the rules or limitations of magic are and whether she is working inside or outside those limits. we have no way to know she's good at magic except that the story tells us so. we know she's got a lot of force behind her magic, but I as the viewer have no idea whether that's a good thing or what good/bad magic look like.

and I don't understand what the school is for. is it a magic school? if they're all learning magic, what are elphaba's lessons for and why is glinda so eager to get in? if they're not learning magic, what are they even learning? if shiz is an exclusive private school, sure, it makes sense that people would be eager to get in, but it doesn't make sense that our main characters get to wear totally different things from everyone else's uniform. (for those who say it's to make them stand out: see derry girls, lady bird, heartstopper. we don't have any difficulty making out who we're supposed to be looking at there, and they all include scenes with multiple characters in school uniforms.) if it's because they're so rich and influential they get to disregard the uniform rules, wouldn't everyone at this exclusive private school be doing that?

coming back to the story, elphaba getting to meet the wizard doesn't actually make any narrative sense. she doesn't get the chance to improve at all with her magic by this point. we're told she gets to meet him if she "makes good," but we don't even know what that means, let alone how or when she supposedly did it. I understand that the plot needs it to happen then or else it's less of a wizard of oz prequel and more of a boarding school au fanfiction, but nothing the characters do seems to influence what comes their way (with the exception of glinda's prank with the hat, which makes glinda feel bad and step forward to help elphaba and so they become friends), and the timing of this summons makes no sense. she doesn't get the chance to earn this meeting, she just lucks into it.

that's why the ending didn't have any punch for me. first of all, we all knew the wizard was a fake and elphaba was being set up for disappointment. but mostly, it's because that moment where the rug gets pulled out from under her doesn't actually have any impact. this isn't something she's worked for, and the average viewer doesn't cheer for a protag who takes her first real action at the very end.

(and nobody in the notes had better mention casablanca, because that's a very different situation. the protag is actively choosing non-engagement in the larger crisis of the war and in his personal crises every chance he gets, and so his actions at the end are actually a different kind of choice that show a change in how he views and deals with his problems. elphaba is just kind of standing there through most of the movie. sure, she wants things, but she's not doing anything about it, and she's not even improving at the one thing (magic) which we're told is her strength.)

the only thing that felt earned through the whole movie was the beginning of glinda and elphaba's friendship. but elphaba attending shiz, rooming with glinda, getting magic lessons, meeting fiyero, and getting to meet the wizard all just kind of fell into her lap without her having to take a single action. cynthia erivo gave a good performance, but the writing really let her down there.

I don't know. I can usually ignore a bad plot if it has consistent worldbuilding, or interesting characters, or is just fun to look at visually, but the wicked movie didn't have any of that for me.

[spritelysprites]

I love it when Viola is transmasc and I love it when Viola is bisexual and I love it when Viola is a butch repressed-sapphic cisgirl and I love it when Viola is a trans woman and I love it when it's not really clear what Viola's gender is and I love it when Twelfth Night is about genderqueerness and I love it I love it I love it when Viola is queer

[spritelysprites]

Very shy but long-time fan of your projects here - thank you especially for all the archival work you do! I have two discrete questions, if you happen to have a moment to answer them. #1 - I seem to remember you posted your procedure for getting PDFs off the Internet Archive at some point, but cannot find it for the life of me; might you be able to bring that back around (assuming it's still possible/becomes possible again)? And #2 - might I make a request to have Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthur trilogy added to the preservation project queue? Sword at Sunset is pretty widely available, but the older trilogy is out of print and tough to find even in physical form.

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to reach out, it means a lot.

So if you find something on Internet Archive unavailable for download, my first suggestion is to search for it on annas-archive. If hasn't already been pulled from the archive and shared there, you can use this method to get it yourself.

Of course! Request granted.

I'm going to provide all of Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian books right here and I'll add them to my retelling list asap. :^)

The Lantern Bearers (1959)

Sword at Sunset (1963)

Tristan & Iseult (1971)

The King Arthur Trilogy (1990) [The Sword and The Circle (1981), The Light Beyond the Forest (1979), The Road to Camlann (1981)]

The Shining Company (1990)

Take care and enjoy!

[spritelysprites]

it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.

which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.

it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.

[spritelysprites]

hobbies masterpost!

a really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.

learn to play guitar

learn how to make interactive stories with the free program Twine

learn how to make pixel art

learn another language

learn how to build a ship in a bottle

learn how to develop your own film

learn how to embroider

learn how to make chiptunes (8-bit music)

learn how to make origami (the art of paper folding)

learn how to make tumblr themes

learn how to make jewelry 

learn how to make candy

learn how to make terrariums

learn how to make your own perfume

learn how to make your own tea

learn how to build birdhouses

learn how to read tarot cards

learn how to make zines

learn how to code

learn how to whittle (wood carving)

learn how to make candles

learn how to make clay figurines

learn how to knit scarves

learn how to become an amateur astronomer

learn some yoyo tricks

learn how to start a collection

learn how to start body building

learn how to edit wikipedia articles

learn how to decorate iphone cases

learn how to do freelance writing

learn how to make your own cards and

learn how to make your own envelopes

learn how to play the ukulele 

learn how to make gifs

learn how to play chess

learn how to juggle

learn how to guerrilla garden

learn how to chart your family history

learn how to keep chickens

learn how to do yoga

learn how to do magic

learn how to raise and breed butterflies

learn how to play dungeons & dragons

learn how to skateboard

learn how to do parkour

learn how to surf

learn how to arrange flowers

learn how to make stuffed animals

[spritelysprites]

The funniest sword fight scene in the history of cinema. 

[spritelysprites]

what I really like about all these vintage couple’s portraits is that there is a very certain romatic decorum kept up – certain themes and poses – which, while of course being the mainstream preferred view of couples repeated throughout many studios, are just… so nice to look at. 

this staged affection, a mix of theatricality and intimacy, the couple holding still for a couple of moments and now immortalised in a very set sequence of embraces and kisses. there is a charm to it even when I can’t tell whether this was a genuine couple portait or just actors hired by the photographer.

the kiss on the bare shoulder (eyes perfectly averted), the cheek caress, the piano and the violin, the interrupted embrace, the woman tilted back as in a half-stopped dance…

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Remember when I said this? Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so have ten examples of home, home, home in The Raven Cycle.

[spritelysprites]

Do you have any advice for writing romance in general? I can't figure out a plot without making the romance a background idea :/

Come up with a pair of people who contrast in a pleasing way

Make them really really really want each other

Give them a great reason they must not, under any circumstances, fuck

Write about the consequences

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i want to attend a terry pratchett book club that includes at least one gen x or older british person because i feel like there must be so much brilliant stuff that is going right over my young american head

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i was wondering if it’s ok for everyone if i start making lockscreen in this size?

like if you save.

save through the app for better quality

please, don’t repost or remove my watermark from the lockscreens! have respect.

[spritelysprites]

pride lockscreens