#but this is everything to me

[ghostellie]

[messrsrarchives]

i JUST yapped about this on tiktok and i'm instantly here because oh my GOD.

(spoiler warning for heartstopper season 3 - episode 6)

ELLE AND TRANS ACTIVISM!? ELLE'S FUCKING STORYLINE!?

i'm crying and i haven't stopped crying.

i'm talking about the bit where she is brought on the radio to discuss her art. she's doing something that she enjoys, she's given a space to talk about it, and they make it about the trans "debate" (p.s bonus mention to "trans people aren't a debate, we're human beings")

i'm talking about elle LEAVING THE ROOM. and how fucking powerful and important and COMFORTING that is.

to have a trans person leave the room.

to have it shown that we don't all want to be activists, and you shouldn't expect us to. that we shouldn't need to be. to have media representation of a trans person choosing peace, and choosing what's best for her.

to have them specifically mention that a cis person was on the last show, and said transphobic things about same-sex spaces. to have it mentioned that the cis peson went first, and elle was brought on as a rebuttal. that she already had less power in this "debate" because they allowed someone with more respect in society, who isn't even part of the discussion, who wouldn't even understand the complexities of existing publicly as a trans person, to go first.

and to have her still. leave. the. room.

i've been on the radio nine times.

only three of nine discussions that i've had have been aired. why? because only three of them were meant to be about my identity. because that wasn't what i was there to talk about. it wasn't relevant.

and then to link it to everything now? to link it to all the massive discussions i've been having recently in this space? i'm sobbing.

trans people do not need to be activists. and i personally enjoy it! i enjoy talking about it - i hate that i have to, but i personally do enjoy being a loud activist (not that this is activism but yk, in my wider life) - but...

she came onto a space to talk about something she enjoyed, and ended up having to defend her right to exist.

and she left the room.

because the cis person went first. because that wasn't what she wanted to talk about. because it's exhausting having these conversations day in day out.

and most importantly, because she didn't have to speak on it.

and then, let's talk about the fact that she was only asked because she now had "influence". that her voice only matters now because she's "big", and it's insignificant otherwise. that a trans person with any kind of traction needs to be an activist - which we see SO much in the media! we see it so much online! that any successful trans person needs to be loud and active. that she was questioned about the meaning of her art only in the context of a political discussion on her right to exist.

so she left the room.

trans people do not need to be activists and they shouldn't be expected to be, and oh my GOD i'm so glad that we have that representation.

[amethysttribble]

It’s what he deserves! Him!

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[habken]

People don’t understand the concept of liking two characters’ relationship in multiple contexts. They can be lovers in one setting and just friends in another, their dynamic doesn’t have to be consistent in every piece of art I make.

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[shamefulzombie]

Not Perfect

[clairenatural]

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

[almondpiglet]

ppl were drawing mikus from all over so heres habesha miku and her lil twin sibs rin and len!!

[flight0fthecrows]

holds them gently

[cruelnemothesis]

[realtalk127]

thinking about how the best case scenario that elphaba can imagine in the wizard and i is that finally someone will come along who will be able to change everything about her. even in her wildest dreams, she views that as her best option.

and then.

along comes galinda. who - after spending an entire night attempting to give her a makeover - settles on: ‘actually, you’re perfect just the way you are. i wouldn’t change a thing. except maybe to tuck a little piece of myself in with you, just there.’

and i just think that’s neat.

[littlemut]

[ajaxgb]

Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.

[hannigramislife]

Absolutely nobody gets how much Dan Mora's design of robin!Dick Grayson means to me.

Like–???

This saved my life.