#throwing salt

[discoursecatharsis]

I've noticed this pattern with antis in fandom where, in their attempt to distance themselves from anything and everything "problematic" in their fandoms, they refuse to acknowledge when they DO enjoy something problematic. Therefore, they don't recognize the problematic elements of the ship, character, media, etc. They'll also heavily downplay or deny any problematic. aspects of their favorite fandom thing.

I just saw an example of this and it is blowing my mind right now and I need to share this with y'all.

It involves the comments on this video.

Some context for Princess and the Frog: the blonde girl is Charlotte, also called Lottie. She's the main character Tiana's best friend. Charlotte's goal was always to marry a prince, and she almost marries (who she believes to be) Prince Naveen, but once she sees that Naveen and Tiana are in love, she tries to help them turn back human so they can be together.

At the end of the movie, Tiana and Naveen get married, and this scene plays after. Charlotte dances with Naveen's kid brother, and says "I've waited this long" in response to him saying that he's 6 and a half years old.

Now Charlotte's line here, if you look at the context clues of her story line, implies that she's saying "I've waited this long for a prince to marry, so I can wait longer for Naveen's younger brother to grow up." It's just a joke. Albeit, a joke that many will find to be very uncomfortable and inappropriate, but a joke nonetheless. I highly doubt Charlotte is actually going to "wait for" this child to grow up to marry him. She's making a joke at her expense, about her desperation of her dream to marry a prince.

BUT FOR SOME REASON.... many of the comments are like "she means that she's been waiting to DANCE with a prince."

I'm completely and utterly serious y'all. Here are some of the comments along those lines, with thousands of thumbs up each.

If you've seen this movie, you'll realize that these comments make absolutely no sense for more than one reason.

1) Charlotte danced with Prince Naveen (or at least with the villain disguised as him) earlier in the movie. She danced with a prince already. Why would that still be her dream if she already accomplished that?

2) Lottie speaks multiple times (during her childhood and in present day as a young adult) about her dream of "marrying a prince." Not dancing with a prince. Not meeting one. No, she wants to MARRY A PRINCE AND BE A PRINCESS.

This video has some clips of her saying this, at the time stamps 0:20, 2:52, 4:08, and 5:21.

Charlotte does give up her dream of marrying Naveen specifically for Tiana, because she see that he makes Tiana happy. But with how she jumps in like a wide receiver to catch the bouquet at Naveen and Tiana's wedding, it's clear she still has her dream of marrying *A* prince, just not Naveen.

But back to the comments on that video.

The comments seem to be downplaying the actual implication of her line. It's almost like they're desperately trying to ignore what she actually meant and make it more wholesome because they don't want to admit that their favorite movie has an uncomfy and inappropriate joke.

It's disturbing that this is yet another example where people in fandom (who are fantis or have been influenced by that fanti mindset) are downplaying a scene (or a ship, trope, etc) that is ACTUALLY problematic because they personally like the movie or the character and they don't want to admit that it has some issues. Instead of just admitting "yeah that scene/line was kinda fucked up and gross," they are jumping through HOOPS to make it seem more innocent than it was. And this is completely blowing my mind and is honestly concerning.

If you want to personally interpret it in a different way, in a way to make it more palatable to you, be my guest. That's what fandom and fanon is all about and I do that a lot too. But to see so many people outright deny the actual implications of this line is... bizarre af. It's one thing to be like "hmm yeah I don't like that, so I'm going to personally interpret this ship/trope/scene differently so it's more comfortable to me." It's another thing entirely to be in complete denial and ignore the actual context of the character and their story.

Also, so many of the other comments on the video aren't even commenting on the actual scene or on what Charlotte said. They're just generic comments on how much they love Charlotte as a character or how they miss this 2D animation. It's like they're trying reallyyyyyy hard to ignore the joke that's being made.

On the grander scheme, this is concerning because these people are refusing to acknowledge something that's inappropriate at best and predatory at worse (an adult "waiting" for a child to grow up) because they don't want to be caught enjoying/supporting something "bad."

All their talk about normalizing and normalization, but they're the ones kinda normalizing bad things by downplaying them or being in denial of it when it's in THEIR favorite media. And that is very concerning and a big issue.

[vanmarkus]

9-1-1 • S1E01 || S7E09 ↳ “Has it really been that long?”

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[awakefor48hours]

Katara: *brings up her mother’s death, someone who died in her place because of ethnic cleansing, less than 10 times in show about world-wide colonization*

Fans: Katara is SO ANNOYING. She brings up her mom’s death every three minutes and I wish she’d just stop.

[whetstonefires]

Man sometimes I still think about Alfred's Bandit Anecdote in The Dark Knight (2008).

So, the most straightforward reading of this sequence seems to have been the one Nolan intended, because he is not actually a subtle filmmaker, and the further we got into the series the more heavily he committed to making Alfred a mouthpiece. Old man provides words of wisdom that frame the correct understanding of the situation; you can tell it's meant to be correct because subsequent Joker appearances reinforce its thesis statement.

Intended takeaway: some men (like the Joker) don't have rational motivations, they just 'want to watch the world burn,' and you have to account for that when trying to counter them. Chaos agents, basically unstoppable by reasonable means.

But the thing is. This is not a story that stands up to even mild interrogation. The number of assumptions Nolan wants us to swallow without blinking is kind of stunning.

First of all the obvious timeline questions that arise: the Anglo-Burmese Wars and periods between and leading up to them where this kind of white man's burden 'delivering jewels to local elites In The Burmese Jungle to sway them toward British interests, but getting waylaid by bandits' scenario makes any sense all, happened in the 19th century.

The Burmese resistance in the 1930s was centered on university student protests and that sort of thing; it was reasonably successful in moving Myanmar toward independence by increments, though who knows what would have happened without WWII. But it did not provide anyone with reasons to be hand-carrying huge gemstones through forests.

Even if we assume this was somehow a 20th century event, it has to have been before WWII unless we want to postulate a complete alt-history setting, and since The Dark Knight leans heavily into being a modern 21st century story with like, cell phone networking as a major plot point, this still makes Alfred old as balls. Born no later than 1920, and probably earlier.

But that's whatever; comics time. Batman Begins did some fun stuff (possibly in imitation of Batman (1980)) with making it ambiguous what decade it was supposed to be set in, though the sequels dropped that conceit. And anyway, people can be 90 years old.

So that's basically fine, although good god Wayne hire some more servants, this man should be fully retired already.

More problematic is the unfettered colonialism of it all, the confident proclamation that since this guy's motive wasn't profit, since he didn't keep the jewels, he had no motive. Because 'inconveniencing the Raj and weakening their control over the locality' isn't a Real Person Motive that a real person could have had. During or soon after failed wars to resist colonial subjugation.

Like. Come on??

The place where this story utterly shoots itself in the foot, though, is the clever bit at the end, where Bruce asks how Alfred's military unit solved the 'bandit stealing jewels he didn't even want' problem and Alfred's like: 'we burned the forest to the ground.'

Because this is so punchy! In screenwriting technical terms, it's quite well done. It's useless advice that loops the story back to its themes; obviously Batman can't burn Gotham down to get the Joker. Even in a Batman movie that doesn't like Batman very much, this is still obvious.

But at the same time this totally takes the legs out from under Alfred's words of wisdom about human nature. Because if that bandit 'wanted' to 'watch the world burn' then what his unit did wasn't so bad, right; he was basically asking for it. Burning a forest down with all the inevitable collateral damage and economic and ecological cost, all for the sake of horribly killing a group of people in the name of government revenues was totally okay guys!

It transforms the whole thing into a pretty obvious post facto rationalization of colonial violence. Which makes the Insights Into Human Nature bit real questionable!

But the movie gives absolutely no sign of having noticed this.

[pumpkster]

[wolfchans]

Eat! Eat, it’s okay! You eat! YOU EAT! ↳ 9 / ∞

[swordandboardllc]

Palestinian Own Voices Reading List

If you’re looking for books to read to help support Palestine and Palestinians through this current aggression and genocidal actions, I’ve created a list for you to look through. These books are all available through Bookshop.org, and may be available through your local libraries.

My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story, by Ramzy Baroud

Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape, by Raja Shehadeh

In the Presence of Absence, by Richard Widerkehr

On Zionist Literature, by Ghassan Kanafani

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, by Sonia Nimir

Power Born of Dreams: My Story Is Palestine, by Mohammad Sabaaneh

Stories Under Occupation: And Other Plays from Palestine, by Samer Al-Saber

Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank, by Kareem Rabie

Rifqa, by Mohammed El-Kurd

Of Noble Origins: A Palestinian Novel, by Sahar Khalifeh

My First and Only Love, by Sahar Khalifeh

Salt Houses, by Hala Alyan

L.J. Stanton

[chaoticshark98]

the marriage certificate (template below)

[mettywiththenotes]

Love how Izuku saw some vague shapes in the distance as he used OFA to break out of Shinsou's mind control and was like "oh yeah thats totally ghosts"

He's so casual about it too. Just says "hey I saw like multiple shadows in the distance and one of them had your hairstyle. any chance these are the souls of OFA?" and All Might is like "What are you TALKING ABOUT my boy 😨"

Personally I headcanon Izuku as a sort of horror/paranormal movie fan, so that's why he's unaffected and serious about it. He has watched way too many movies about stuff like this. He knows the drill

[jeeaark]

my mind has gone FERAL for GG's glorious future. BUT, I must know... What convinced Lae'zel to try an extra serving of calamari?! did Emps have to plane shift to save GG and just *Destroy* a bunch of enemies or something??

Oh man, That question brought out the big muse-a-lot hammer. But for like. Different answers. The Bad News: I have NO idea! Absolute zilch what specific moment would make Lae'zel go "Open-Minded-flayer Take #2". Maybe it's not even an exact moment. Maybe it's more like a very long and arduous slow-burning process. A very enemies to rivals to mutual allies to friends-who-won't-admit-they're-friends to I'll-think-about-it to count-me-in. A very 3-4 character developing campaign arc. The Good news: I know what starts them down that path.

Oh the shenanigans. Oh the things that can exist in the Far Realms where time doesn't exist and endless AUs do.

So what if Greygold accidentally meets their evil ending self and gets in an unfortunate predicament where Babe and Squid bud have no choice but to...Partner up to rescue them?

More shenanigans below:

Stakes are set. Maybe Greygold escapes, but can't return home without Grey following and is in hiding. Maybe they're bait and traps are set. Maybe they're dead (temporarily???). Maybe they're both having an intense therapy debate about redemption arcs until they're rescuers arrive. Greygold Mind Games Go.

The long story explanation: Greygold had never invested more into the marketing strategist business mindset than to turn their favorite romance novel, Tusk Love, (comic inside joke) into a pop culture hit. Emps lost a bet that they could succeed and now is following through with their not-so-innocent deal to use Greyg's trusted "adventurer" as their official public disguise.

Since the romance novel Tusk Love is now a popular theater play, Emps' public disguise keeps getting mistaken for that " one pretty tusked fellow on the bestseller novel (which recently updated their book cover with an anonymously commissioned illustration which looks suspiciously identical)" and never fails to receive an abundance of compliments. Emps has reserved the right to remain silent about the whole matter, but is pretty sure Greygold pulled a 'get praised, squiddiot' prank.

Lae'zel is gonna catch up on a lot of Squid Bud facts on this trip. Much to Squid Bud's dismay.

The irony is if Emps asked Minsc for help first, this adventure would have been solved within a day tops.

[discoursecatharsis]

Gonna jump on here with a quick little story. When I saw this movie, during the credits, I overhead the group behind me say things like, "I'll give him a pass if he's 18, but if he's 22, then no" and "she's 16, it's so weird" and I was screaming internally because it's just like "THAT'S seriously your takeaway after watching this beautiful movie?? can't relate."

Anyways I agree with anon's take here. There's really nothing more than they obviously care about each other (which makes sense considering the life-changing, world-saving events they went through together) and it's hinted that they may be a thing after the movies events. And besides that, their ages are literally irrelevant

I finally got to watch makoto shinkai’s “Suzume”. I remember how angry antis were when the first trailers dropped because the guy Suzume meets is a university student while she’s 17 and in middle school. You can guess what antis called this “relationship”

However the movie didn’t really add any sort of romance (in my opinion). Makoto Shinkai is known for adding comedy to his works, which is why the guy she meets was transformed into a chair. Yes, you read that right 😂

throughout the movie it does look more like her crush on him was one sided but it’s also fair to say that the guy deeply cared for her too after she went through great lengths to help him. Seriously, antis judged the film based on trailers and probably never watched the movie

though I’m not opposed to the idea that they became a thing after the movie’s events but this is left ambiguous so

.

[little-meowyao]

Imports from the clock app

Hm.

Like, I don't get it?? Why JGY in especific? They could've used ANYONE. NMJ would be good for this. So would WRH and JGS and pretty much all men with very few exceptions. WHY JGY??? JGY, who could be killed on a whim and no one would bat an eye? (LXC and SMS would, but I don't think LXC would necessarily do anything about it, and SMS would but he'd get himself killed before anything of significance happened)

JGY who had very little reaction when Jin-furen threw a teapot at him? JGY who could only cower when NMJ lunged at him with baxia? JGY who's been under someone's boot his whole life?

[splinterclan]

hello I love love love this clangen- your art, storytelling, world building, it’s all amazing! Do you have any tips on building characters and making them feel 3d, lifelike, and distinct from other characters? I’ve been trying to do a clangen but all my characters feel really 2d and flat…

Thank you so much!!! :DD I think the best way to make characters realistic/feel more fleshed out is to give them immediately visible flaws and then something to balance those out

Like for Moorsnow: She's too strict, distrustful, and doesn't express herself well (all flaws), but at the same time she loves her wife and daughter, she's willing to listen, she's not too proud to accept help etc.

If a happy character is happy all the time it can feel a little stale, so give them something to damper them or make them stand out - like maybe they secretly worry they're not good enough Or they accidently ignore people's feelings in favor of keeping the mood up so people can't be truthful around them

Or making an evil murderer kind to elders, or good with kits. It doesn't have to be that extreme, but basically juxtapositions make for good characters imo xD Thanks for asking!

[godelknurcs]

crossover

[uncanny-tranny]

I love you smile lines and worry lines and grey and white hair and wrinkles and purple spiderweb veins and the process of aging and living in a body that is standing the test of times. I love you experiences that make you wiser and stories that make you laugh, and every little process that happens to get to the point where you have so many memories because you have the fortune to be here and be so radiant