#that's not how lives work!

[lindensea]

What was your problem with the In the Heights movie ?

I am just curious.

I have only seen the movie and not the stage musical.

You said Jon M Cho didn’t understand the Central them.

please explain ?

Hello! Sorry this has been languishing in my asks for a few weeks. Honestly, it's been about two years since I saw the In the Heights movie, so i won't have as detailed of an answer as I want. And also, I wanna be clear that I don't hate the movie. There are a lot of things i like about it, although ultimately it's just not as good to me. There's something intangible about Broadway ITH that i love but can't quite explain. But i'll try!

First of all, cutting down Nina's family drama wasn't the right move. But that's probably not what i was referring to in the post you found, and this response is gonna get long, so we won't even talk about the Nina's parents of it all in discussion.

I think what i was referring to is the change in the movie's timeline and how that undercuts one of the central themes. On stage, In the Heights on stage takes place over the course of 2 days and nights (plus the next dawn). It's a small and contained story, just a glimpse into the lives of community for a couple days (which it literally states in the first song). The story ends when Usnavi decides to stay. Will the bodega be successful? Will Vanessa be happy away from Washington Heights? Will Usnavi and Vanessa actually go on a second date? Will Nina do well at school? Will she and Benny stay together? Will Usnavi ever go back to the Dominican Republic? How will Benny fare with no job? What will Kevin do now? Listen, we just don't know. AND THAT'S THE POINT. It's a contained little slice of life in a neighborhood. It's a small story! It's not a grand story of people achieving the American dream (a fashion line, market, and children, citizenship, etc.). It's people struggling through the present and not knowing if it will all pan out. In the Heights says the future is uncertain but we're not giving up and we're living our lives NOW. It's literally Right There in the songs.

"Everybody's stressed, yes! But they press through the mess Bounce checks and wonder what's next"

In the Heights I've got today! And today's all we got, so we cannot stop This is our block!

So turn up the stage lights We're takin' a flight To a couple of days in the life of what it's like En Washington Heights!

Keep scraping by!

"In five years when this whole city's rich folks and hipsters Who's gonna miss this raggedy little business?"

We pass the test and we keep pressin'"

Where it's a hundred in the shade But with patience and faith We remain unafraid

The movie is framed through the eyes of older Usnavi, an Usnavi who has already achieved his dreams (whether it's the copout bar it seems like he's at or the bodega he's actually sitting in), and it robs the narrative and songs of a lot of their power. We all know where the story will end. Sure it ends a little different but we know it works out. In addition to the older Usnavi narration, there are two flashforwards--one for Nina and Benny before she goes back to school, and one IN THE MIDDLE of the finale. That last one is my least favorite. How can you have lyrics asking if this place will still be around in five years WHILE having the characters there at least five years later?? It's...tone deaf. Giving the movie a typical flashforward to a Hollywood ending, it directly contradicts the uncertainty that pervades the whole story. It kind of changes the genre too. It makes In the Heights into a bigger story of achieving the American Dream, when all it really is supposed to be about is making it through the day through the power of community.

[eruditetyro]

good morning let’s hear it for Mildly Cool Outside a round of applause for Mildly Cool Outside

[brainrotcharacters]

When irl pisses me off, I rewatch the Honda Odyssey scene to relax

[whatkindofnameisella]

can you believe that we have fanfiction. that we have websites dedicated to fanfiction. that there is a place that you can go and read tens, hundreds, thousands and thousands of pieces of writing that strangers have made. people who are not "writers". people who come home at the end of the day and have feelings and say, i am going to put that into words. i am going to share those words. short, long, sweet, sad, horny, funny, wonderful words. we are all just human and we all love to make and remake and share that with others. can you believe that.

[goryfluff]

Nautilus expedition live streams (+ their commentary) 2020 / 2021 / 2022

[frostedpuffs]

does anyone else hate that work takes up like 90% of your life and you literally are always working and have to form plans and important things and even seeing friends or eating meals around work. it's always just work. im spending my life just being At Work. i don't have time for hobbies or for seeing friends bc it’s always Work. like two days off a week isn't even enough because my days off aren't consecutive so i just spend those days exhausted or doing errands or house chores. there is not enough Time. all the time goes to Work. WHY IS LIFE THIS WAY. humans were not meant for this

[thismission]

two of the sexiest lines in this game fr

[natp20]

i'm going to lose my mind

[an-established-butt-dent]

Soooooo after the new details that have been revealed about Veilguard, how do we all imagine a Solavellan reunion is going down? Trapped in the fade together? Lighthouse makeout sessions? A very sad mural dedicated to his Vhenan? My brain is infested with new headcanons.

[petricorah]

I love "i would kill for you" ship dynamics but what about "i would stop killing" ship dynamic??

I would lay down my sword for you. I would change my nature and go against everything i've known. I would resist the easy way out of solving my problems. I would give up the adrenaline of battle to stay by your side and make tea instead. I'm not sure I know who I am without a weapon in my hand because I've had to fight for so long but for you I'm willing to try and figure this out.

It must be hard. To put down your weapon that's protected you for so long. It's allowed you to stay alive it's kept you from getting hurt--physically and mentally. Because you've never had to worry about a real relationship if you think you'll be dead at the next battle. And you feel naked without it and it feels like you're ripping off an extension of yourself. Are you even whole without it? Are you worthy of being loved if you can't prove it by risking your life? And yet they've found someone who's asking them for something much harder than dying in battle on their behalf. They've found someone who wants them to live. And that's much more terrifying.

[catmask]

with that said there are characters that a fat maybe not canonically but they are spiritually. to me. they may not be drawn that way but i know whats true. ive seen it like a sort of prophet

[xitsensunmoon]

You'd think after getting your dear daycare attendant out of the Pizzaplex you would live happily ever after, hm?

look who changed their mind to post the whole thing together oops

[rainyinautumn]

Etho's behavior in session 5 was frankly unhinged. he killed Bdubs' horse IN FRONT OF HIM and managed to get away scot-free in the chaos of the situation. AND THEN he stole the chicken farm hopper while HALF THE TEAM was in their base without them noticing, tried to trade it BACK to them, and finally returned it after GAINING THEIR ALLIANCE? what even. good for him.

[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

What level of down bad is "Abusing your powers as an Akademiya employee to keep tabs on your crush's library loans"? Just asking for a friend.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[hollis-art]

au idea... tng but it's set in the 80s and the enterprise is an apartment building rather than a ship

other tenants of the building include: -Picard (the head of the college that Data attends) and Q (no one really knows what he does, he just pops in and out whenever he pleases) -Troi (high school guidance counselor) and Riker (personal trainer) and Worf used to live here too but he moved out -Beverly (still a doctor) and Wesley (burnt out college freshman) -Barclay (works at Blockbusters w/ Data and Geordi) -Guinan (bartender of a secretly gay bar)

the ds9 apartment is a whole other story