#i know so many people will hate this movie but i feel like it was created in a lab to check all my boxes personally

[aprillikesthings]

Okay so it’s going to depend on where you’re from and what you like doing!

My fave things about Portland:

Depending on your neighborhood and where you work, you can live without a car. (Having a car does mean far more impromptu trips out of town! And we have amazing places within an hour or two’s drive of Portland: mountains, the ocean…) It’s just relatively easy/pleasant to bike, walk, or take Tri-Met.

Lots of amazing places to eat, drink, have coffee

Lots of people are willing to be silly just for the fun of it

Once you start doing things, you will run into people you know everywhere. I dunno how many times I’ve tried a new thing (a pub trivia night! Contra dancing!) and run into people I know from other things. I imagine that it must feel suffocating to some people? I love it.

Speaking of which, though; there’s fun shit to do like. Every day.

Karaoke. Sorry I just love karaoke.

ADVICE! much which assumes you’re moving from a place that is not the PNW:

Get a decent rain coat with a hood that you don’t hate wearing, and comfy waterproof or water-resistant shoes. You can’t let the rain stop you from doing things or you just…won’t do anything. (Also, cotton sucks ass in the rain. Synthetic fibers and/or wool are your friend. Especially wool-blend socks.)

Visit as many city parks as you can—they’re all gorgeous. They also have free events in the summer, like movies!

If you get a library card for Multnomah County there’s multiple other counties that allow you to have a library card—including Washington (to the west) and Clackamas (to the east). We have an amazing library system. The downtown library is also just PRETTY and worth a visit!

I’d wait until spring, but consider getting a bicycle. Portland is great for cycling compared to most American cities, and there’s fun bicycle rides going on all summer (shift2bikes.org for event listings). If you drive, expect cyclists. Everywhere. We have a right to take up the lane on streets without bike lanes, side note. Plz don’t honk or pass too closely.

How to keep up on local news, politics, and events: the Willamette Week is online and in paper form, free from boxes all over town. The Portland Mercury used to be print but is now online-only. This site is just event listings: https://www.pdxpipeline.com/events/

OH ALSO some quirks of Portland geography:

There are six quadrants: NE, SE, south waterfront, SW, NW, and north Portland. (North is never just called “north” it’s always called north Portland?? Same with south, it’s always south waterfront)

In general, it’s twenty blocks per mile. Numbered streets run north-to-south; named streets run east-west (…usually). If you’re on a numbered street, the address counts blocks from Burnside.

Numbered streets count blocks from the river, or (in the case of NE and North Portland), from N Willams.

So 2753 NE 15th would be 27 blocks north of E Burnside, a bit less than a mile and a half; and 15 blocks east of N Williams. 1350 SE Hawthorne would be 13 blocks east of the river.

The streets in NW are in alphabetical order and you’ll notice that a BUNCH of Simpsons characters were named after those streets. Some are also in NE, which means 1. Yes there’s a NE Flanders 2. They’re sometimes graffitied exactly how you’d expect.

Speaking of street addresses: “the northwest is odd”: odd-numbered addresses are on the north or west side of the street. (Except in St John’s, which is in North Portland.)

Also seriously there exceptions to all of the above because of course there are lol.

“Downtown” with no modifiers is the inner west side, near the river. Some of the old streetcar suburbs also have “downtowns,” usually of a handful of blocks on one street, so “downtown Montavilla” is a thing that exists.

People really like knowing what neighborhood they live in and will often mention it it asked: I live in Hosford-Abernathy, just south of Ladd’s Addition. (The city-defined neighborhoods aren’t always the ones people use; “felony flats” is not an official name but people living there sometimes still call it that instead of Foster-Powell!)

Couch St is pronounced “cooch.” Willamette is pronounced “will AM it.” Glisan is pronounced “GLEEsin.” Also it’s ORigun. Not oreGON.

Anyway that’s. Too much information. Probably.

Anyway walk to the top of Mt Tabor some day after arriving and enjoy the views and smell the trees; they really are just fucking GREAT.

i'm moving out to Portland to start a new job, but it wasn't my first choice job. i'm feeling pretty bummed about it, but i want to be excited and happy to be going out that way! what can i be excited for? what are everyone's favorite things about life in Portland?

Hey, first of all, I’m sorry you didn’t get your first choice. That is a rough feeling. But I really hope Portland will be a joy for you to discover. I haven’t lived there myself, but I bet folks will chime in to share their favourite things. (🙏)

In the meanwhile I did scrounge this up from Reddit:

But I like to think you’ll feel absolutely spoiled by living in such a beautiful setting. PNW cities are really so special for being able to offer you the chance to just slip out of a metropolis into lush, green, quiet spaces and then head back to town with dirt on your boots, peace in your heart, and a proper appetite worked up for something pleasantly greasy and fried.

And especially now that so many people are moving in to PNW cities, I think it’s a lot easier to pick up friends than it was even a decade or so ago.

Wishing you the absolute best of luck in your move! 💙🌲💙

[uncanny-tranny]

If I'm honest, the whole "love in every stitch" saying for fiber artists does not apply to me, like. I'm trying to get this fucking hook into stubborn yarn and I'll be stabbing it like it owed me money. Is that love because I hope not 😭💀

[james-spooky]

this is a test

[silverbastardgoldenfool]

*emerges from the cinema covered in blood*

SALTBURN?????!!!!?!?!!?!?!*$&&*#&!?!!!!!!!

[mbat]

stories about redemption and redeeming even the worst characters, they could never make me hate you

[sonknuxadow]

they werent lying that knuckles series barely has knuckles in it

[thats-my-passion-right-there]

I finally saw the mean girls musical (the movie one) I have so many fucking thoughts oh my god

[runningatypufullspeed]

WOULD YOU GUYS LIKE TO SEE MY FUGLY UGLY ASS ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE X FAHRENHEIT 451 CROSSOVER DRAWING THAT I WAS FORCED TO DO FOR SCHOOL….. ITS SO UGLY AND MONTAG IS

WHITE.

AND THE HOUNDS ARE DISGUSTING THE COLORING IS SO SHITTY AND MILDRED …. Well ok she looks alright kindof but the COLORING ….. SKETCH WAS BETTER but do you guys. Do you still want to see it…….,,,,,,

ALSO NO OFFENSE TO WHITE PEOPLE PLEASE I LOVE YOU GUYS 🫶😁👍 within reason

[bl00dh0rs3]

God. God. God. Holy fucking shit i love Avatar so fucking much

[wellzofyouth]

That one post of my mine predictably aged like fine wine. Never let somebody on comic twitter in the writer's room😭😭😭 Like imagine a 1 to 1 adaptation of literally any event?? -1b at the box office. "Who are these people???"

[that-was-anticlimactic]

the lack of respect for the httyd books pisses me off ugh

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I forgot to mention that I saw the trailer for the new the The Hunger Games movie when I went and saw Blue Beetle (the prequel, you know?) and it does look really good (even though at first I was unsure about it). I'm probably for sure going to see it when it comes out. Though this will be the first time that I haven't read the book first... unless I do end up reading the book between now and then.

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Its just like. I just got my drive for animation back today of all days but I've committed to making a bunch of Valentines dolls and I have to finish them early enough so people can order them and have them *arrive* on Valentines Day and AUUUGH.

Just wish my brain worked properly. Yknow?

[piratewinzer]

I was so absolutely targeted and gobsmacked off my rocker by the very specific "mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about" and the example that is straight out of something my indeed 12 year old self not only wrote but ADMIRED in others writing at the time.

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[medicinemane]

The problem with a lot of body horror for me is it's just gross without being compelling

Like yeah you had that person tear their leg open and pull muscle away from bone in a way that's very uncomfortable... but I don't care. Or a lot of Hostel style horror for me it's just kinda... yeah... grossing me out isn't some kinda win

Cause it's not that I don't like body horror, I love Dead Space for instance which... kinda the core pillar of that is body horror if we're honest

Could be a matter of that that kind of body horror is more fantastic making it easier to digest, I will advance that as a theory, but personally I kinda think that it's more that they do something actually interesting with it

Like if I wanted to I could probably see a really fucked up leg wound (and worse) in looking online about this shitty world

Can't really find dead bodies contorted into killing machines though

So I kinda feel like it's my problem with a lot of horror, of that it's horrible in a mundane way where as I'm looking for some unfathomable secret out of horror

So there's a difference between some stabbing a person in the eye cause they're just a shitty person, and doing it to try and create a replica of an alien artifact that gives unlimited energy but also drives people crazy and then turns their bodies into horrible monstrosities

One is just way more interesting to me

[uwudonoodle]

When are we gonna get the Ella Enchanted movie we deserve?