#suspension of disbelief?? ye

[poisonouspastels]

I wish more people would weigh out the demand of how "realistic" something is regarding horror media thats supposed to be around a certain time era or within certain limitations with the fact that if it WERE 100% accurate to what it's trying to represent, it'd probably be lame as hell.

[autism-alley]

hi originally posted this at the end of a long thread of back and forth, here’s the og post if you want full context but i feel like this needs to be its own post especially bc i keep seeing this argument being made—the argument that the kids (in this case it was annabeth) SHOULD just know the monsters are monsters and who they are and how to defeat them before ever encountering them, that it’s a problem if they don’t.

the problem is not if 12 year olds should recognize a trap when they see one, even if they’re smart 12 year olds, and if that’s realistic. that is entirely beside the point.

the problem is rick riordan wrote a book series whose formula is bringing myths to the modern age and he’s not sticking true to that in the show—percy jackson and the olympians’ Shtick is taking these classic, ancient threats and giving them a new face. these traps work because these kids are not walking into a cave marked with Get Out and getting ambushed by monsters—the monsters are disguised as harmless mortal human beings, in harmless mortal human being places (for the most part) and i think we—and more importantly, the show—are all forgetting the mist, the magic involved here. it’s not just that medusa is a “creepy lady with her eyes covered” it’s that there is ancient magic at work here, magic that, like the systems of abuse pjo exists to criticize, has been evolving and continuing its malevolence for millennia. it’s formulaic, that’s the point. it’s the same trap you’ve learned about all your childhood, the same trap a thousand children before you learned all their childhoods, and still, it works. you fall into the trap. because that’s how generational abuse works. it’s a trap. it isn’t enough to learn monsters exist, what they look like from a second hand story that originated thousands of years ago. if you want to escape alive, you have to adapt as quickly as they do, recognize their face, and ultimately, beyond any individual trap, the game itself has to change. real, generational change.

so. the problem is rick riordan wrote a series with a formula for action that perfectly captures the overarching, systemic conflicts he was commentating on, and then threw that formula out in the show because it was “unrealistic”. i don’t give a damn about realism when it works to the detriment of the story. this is a story about generational abuse, yes, but it’s told through ‘a tale as old as time’ and that’s why it works so fucking well. and when it comes to basic storytelling, if your characters know the threat before they even walk in and you do practically nothing to then make up for the stakes you have removed, that’s a flaw. now you’ve lost the entertainment value for your audience, on top of also lessening your themes.

something else that is so. honestly soul-crushing as a writer and a creative, is that to me this is reflective of the way we are now afraid to tell earnest stories. stories where we care not for listening to the people who want to pick apart fictional, mythical, fantasy stories for not being “realistic” instead of aligning with our target audience who acknowledges reality is not what makes a story. think of your favorite movie, show, book, comic, what have you—has the reason for your favoritism ever been because it is the most reasonable, the most grounded, the most practical out of any you’ve seen? or is it because of the emotion? the way it speaks to you, to your life and the person you are? the journey it takes you on? is the percy jackson and the olympians book series so good because it’s inherently realistic?

the secret to storytelling is, very simply, focus on your story. everything else is secondary. if it’s written well, it doesn’t matter to me that the characters walk into a trap that, to the audience, is obviously a trap. because i can understand how the characters don’t know it, and how the story falls apart if the narrative just tells the characters it’s a trap from the jump. that’s what dramatic irony is—first used in greek tragedies! this is literally a tale as old as time in every sense except for the end—where it’s happy. and it’s not earned if we don’t first see, over and over, the status quo as a tragic trap.

it’s not about if annabeth (or the other kids) is “smart enough” to not walk into a trap, or about if she’s just too prideful to not walk into what she knows is a trap (or any reason that could apply to the other characters), it’s that annabeth, at the end of the day, is a character. she is a storytelling tool for the messages of the narrative. that doesn’t make her any lesser. in fact ignoring it reduces her, because it reduces what she represents. it’s about how rick riordan, or whoever else at disney, has fumbled the storytelling bag so ridiculously hard that they can’t take the simple, effective formula outlined from start to finish (by good ol 2009 rick himself) and adapt it to the screen without answering the most unimportant, derailing, anti-story questions.

[nethnad]

rewatching the swordfight scene from the sea devils right now and

this has got to be the strangest en guarde position i've ever seen. sir what are you doing

[anoant-haikyuu-dump]

Taketora "eats an entire carton of raw eggs for the protein boost" Yamamoto vs Shohei "nods encouragingly while thinking about how he's gonna retell this on stage later" Fukunaga

[fatfurfoof]

please please PLEASE draw the baskin robins bunny again. shes so goober i need to see her more /nf

here! BASK in the ROBIN!! i will draw her more properly later but still traditional sketches are nice hopefully

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

it was an er au specific suggestion at first but now i'm kind of into the idea that arthur's inexplicable inhuman durability is a thing john is unintentionally doing.

like, larson implies that they're both dying but this obviously hasn't been borne out by canon so far, because arthur seems in fact to have something holding him up beyond any reasonable physical limits, not wearing him down. so maybe it's the reverse. maybe larson and yellow were killing each other only because they were fighting over the body and the power constantly. maybe "having a god inside you" is a thing that can very quickly destroy a human body if the god is actually trying to destroy it—but john wants the opposite, so that's what his very limited power responds to. rather than tearing each other apart, they've grown into each other, physically and metaphysically entwined in an even deeper way than just sharing body parts.

maybe taking john out permanently would bring the hammer down! maybe all of the stupid bullshit would catch up with him and he'd start dying! maybe it'd be like shutting off a vital organ! maybe, maybe, maybe!

[hedonistbyheart]

Oh my god, shut up about the phone charging scratches from sherlock being a stupid idea! I'm not here to defend Moffat's stupid ideas - lord knows he's had plenty - but that idea comes from Doyle! The only reason it's a phone is because nobody has pocket watches anymore. It's not Moffat's stupid idea; it's Doyle's!

[mongeese]

Let's make one thing clear and that is that Kipperlilly Copperkettle would be a horrible teenager in every universe, but in her specific setting she was right. The universe does revolve around the Bad Kids, bc they are literally the protagonists. And she correctly identified a way to become important in that universe -- by becoming a villain. But Brennan did that totally by accident and therefore there's no engagement with that concept whatsoever

[averagemrfox]

Everyone is talking about the terrible tan lines team rwby will end up with but I haven’t seen anyone talking about Yang’s prosthetic being made of presumably some kind of metal and there’s no way that wouldn’t get toasty in the desert heat

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

Larian doing bull shit with God Gale not being able to heal Karlach's heart or cure Astarion's vampirism, because" interfering with bodies" isn't in within his domain.... when it literally is what all gods do when they grant their clerics healing magic?

I really wish Larian just gave a real reason for God Gale not doing it. And not just some bullshit that makes no sense.

[kashilascorner]

Oh ok. I get now why a lot of people didn't vibe with the ending.

All and all: excellent manga, overall very good final act, too rushed final 2-3 chapters but weak and honestly mediocre epilogue, which makes the high of the ending kind of leave a bitter taste. I think Noda had a good steed and suddenly he had to finish and had to rush all. So the ending in the sense of the final arc was good but the ending proper (final couple chapters) + epilogue......... Not so much

[mask-of-anubis]

you know what? I decided don’t care about any another plot hole in this show. Because as far as I’m concerned the only plot hole that matters in this whole show is that goddamn latex hyper-realistic skin mask bullshit they tried to pull in the middle of a random episode of s2

[ro994art]

Now that I've finally watched (and fell in love with) the movie, quick sketch of Ember and Wade. I feel like they embody this meme. 😝🔥💧

[pianapplez]

I'm so tired of shows that absolutely ignore the source material and feel like they straight up don't understand what's important about it, just make a different show why even bother at this point.

[marciabrady]

as i was thinking about both fiona and odette one day, i realized how many similarities they shared! fiona transforms into an ogre at night, while odette transforms into a swan by day- literally recalling fiona's curse: "by night one way, by day another."

in their respective films, they're both seen healing parties that been injured with arrows back to health:

someone must've had to teach them how to heal said arrow wounds...with fiona, specifically, i feel like she's a product of the early 2000s. in certain moments, they make her this traditional princess for us to laugh at, and in other moments she's like this badass fighter, but they don't explain where those things came from...like who taught her how to fight? then my mind started opening up to the possibility that odette and fiona were somehow related/their stories intertwined

upon further thinking upon this theory, i thought about odette's formative years as portrayed in the opening number of her film. she's seen as being a prim princess with proper manners, but also someone that's combative and isn't afraid of a physical confrontation

ok so remember this. BUT ALSO there's a frog called jean bob in swan princess, who claims that he's actually a prince and that, if odette should kiss him, he'll regain his human form

you know who the voice of jean bob is? JOHN CLEESE AKA FIONA'S FATHER, KING HAROLD, THE FROG KING

this convinced me that fiona's ogreism is a recessive gene from king harold since she, too, turns into a green swamp-dwelling creature, similarly to a frog, just like her father.

BUT if it's recessive, that means it would've had to have been inherited from both sides...which would only be plausible if her mother had a similar transformation spell she was under- say, a SWAN TRANSFORMATION SPELL

also, in shrek 2, fiona's mother says the following about how she met fiona's father:

"don't you remember when we were young? we used to walk by the lily pond and (they were in bloom) our first kiss."

um, our first KISS

also, both odette and lillian (fiona's canonical mother) have feathered blonde hair. another connection- in the third film, fiona's mother is seen head-butting through a brickwall and freeing the princesses from a prison. when fiona is shocked, her mother replies:

"well, you didn't actually think you got your fighting skills from your father, did you?"

UM

odette is a fighter and, going along with my earlier point, the one that i think taught fiona how to safely remove arrows! so odette HAS to either be fiona's mother or cousin and lillian is her aunt or mom...it all connects

also, not for nothing, but odette is the only princess to have an onscreen awkward phase (which relates to fiona feeling ugly) and odette is literally a ginger with braids at that time, which is fiona's signature look

furthermore, in the beginning of the swan princess, the parents arrange a marriage between derek and odette. in the hopes that the prince and princess will fall in love, the parents make them spend every summer together from the age of 6 to 16, praying they'll develop a romance. odette secretly likes derek the entire time, but derek hates her. it isn't until their final meeting, when she's grown up and conventionally attractive, that he takes to her and quickly announces to, "arrange the marriage!" odette interjects, "wait!" he replies, "what? you're all i ever wanted...you're beautiful." and she LITERALLY says, "thank you...but what else?" he blankly stares at her and says, "...what else?" to which she replies (source):

i can see this being a generation curse where fiona, too, needs to learn this lesson and i think, since odette already knows there's more than beauty, it causes...tension between she and fiona. fiona being like, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE LIKE THIS."

but also, the frog king, the swan princess, the ogre princess- this is def a family line COME ON

also since odette knows it isn't what it seems (which the prince has to master in the swan princess, as per odette's father)/there's more than just beauty, that's why i think she (lillian) wasn't shocked when fiona came back in shrek 2 as an ogre, whereas harold was visibly more upset. also, idk if you all know but there's a deleted scene with a character called dama fortuna that asks fiona to choose between 'beauty' and her 'happily ever after.' fiona chooses beauty like...again, the generational curse!

this would prop fiona up to be a perfect mix between her parents. like odette, she sees past appearances and knows there's more than beauty which explains why fiona doesn't judge shrek that much. she's initially disappointed he's an ogre purely because of her curse but otherwise, she doesn't care. meanwhile she can't accept herself because she takes half after her father, harold, who is so unaccepting of himself but also those around him (ogre shrek and fiona). like it makes SO much sense that fiona would be a combination of these two (source)

harold's need for "beauty", ie people who are societally acceptable in his eyes, leads to him literally imprisoning his daughter to a tower so no one sees her as an ogre. meanwhile, with lillian, she's way more accepting which is why i never understood how she would also send fiona off, especially since she willingly married harold the frog king.

BUT if you subscribe to my theory that she's odette

it would absolutely make sense she's cosign on sending fiona off because of the line above ("you're all i ever wanted; you're beautiful"). when fiona's growing up, odette/lillian notices fiona parroting a lot of her father harold's harmful rhetoric. where harold sends fiona off to hide her, i think odette/lillian sends her off so fiona learns the same lesson harold/frog king had to learn (it isn't as it seems/there's more to life than beauty or being accepted by society) and allowing her daughter to mentally develop in her formative years without the negative influence of her father or the unrealistic beauty standards/wrong priorities that far far away sends forth as an allegory of the entertainment and beauty industry (fairy godmother).

BUT i think with time, odette/lillian starts to feel bad and urges harold to bring fiona back, which brings us to the fourth movie with that scene where she convinces harold to make a deal with rumpelstilskin to bring fiona back

i have so much more to say on this but i'm wrapping this up for now and am qualifying this as the thesis of my theory

[offonaherosjourney]

Whenever a Bridgerton character (specially a married one!!) has absolutely no idea how sex and pregnancies work, EVERY SINGLE TIME there are such scenes I need to pause the episode until I'm able to concentrate again on the plot instead of having most of my brainpower focused on daydreaming a scenario where I shake the 4th wall until they let me in and I get to teach some DESPERATELY NEEDED sex ed to everyone