#you don't have to like the movie

[sparrowlucero]

speaking of how to train your dragon and creature design, the shift from the really naturalistic art direction and character animation for the first movie's toothless- the face getting flatter, the eyes bigger and closer together, getting rid of the little realistic details like the dust collecting between the scales, the pink splotching where the scales end at the nostrils, the muted markings, the animation making a shift from largely realistic animal behavior to much more anthropomorphic- is such a huge downgrade to me, made worse because it's subtle in such a way that you will sound insane if you mention it

(huge L for the "the audience's capacity to find a creature cute and empathetic and expressive is directly proportional to how much it looks like a human baby" principle of character design because the first one is so so much cuter)

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[allwomenjointhe4bmovement]

THE BARBIE MOVIE

(read to the end and watch the 2 videos I linked below before anyone comments or reblogs to talk sht!)

People who say that Barbie was too “feminism 101”, specifically referring to America Ferrera’s monologue, have COMPLETELY missed the point of the entire movie!

And by "missed the point of the movie", Im talking about the people who say it was basic and not deep. NOT the people who are pointing out that "feminist works created by greedy corporations are limited by the nature of how greedy corporations function".

Yall love to take my words and twist them!

I keep hearing people being like “oh this is such basic feminism, we already know this” You are not in the movie. What is actually happening is that you are an audience member witnessing a woman, Barbie, learning about the patriarchy for the first time.

 America Ferreira is not coming out of the screen to teach you, the audience member, about the patriarchy. She is teaching a woman who has just learned about the world for the first time.

The scene is emotional not because we don’t know this information and this is like news to us, it’s emotional because we are identifying with Barbie and that younger part of us that first learned about the patriarchy and how unfair it is. It is emotional because we are tapping into that 10-14 year old part of ourselves that first learned about feminism and we're able to heal through that and witness it in someone else.

That’s why that scene is impactful and important because we are actually witnessing for the first time seeing someone else experienced what we as women have experienced.

I get that the pink girly girl aesthetic is not for everyone. Obviously the movie doesn't speak for or represent ALL women (even though it had the most diverse cast I've seen in a movie in a long while).

Its not saying all women are hyper feminine and straight. It's just one movie! People are looking too deep into it. Why can't we just take the win and see this as a step forward!

It's easy to say "the movie sucked" when you weren't among the women who fought tooth and nail to get it made!

Ill repeat it again for the illiterates: America Ferreira is not coming out of the screen to teach you about the patriarchy, She is teaching Barbie! Its a fictional movie! Not an educational feminist theory documentary!

I never said Mattel and Warner Bros Studios are feminist allies because of this movie! I'm fully aware of the fact that feminists fought for this movie to be made. But some people assumed I wasn't!

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[castielsprostate]

the "i need everything gay and queer exactly spelled out for me word for word or it doesn't exist and is queerbait" crowd is going to hate venom 3

[umblrspectrum]

you'll never guess which movie i finally watched after 2 years of being lazy

[fighto-art]

Baby brodinsons bear hunting in Asgard featuring Thor unable to beat his codependent relationship with Mjolnir allegations

[dukeofthomas]

"Are the Robins child soldiers" It depends. If the story is super serious and into exploring complex morality and grounded from reality's standards, then yes. If the story is lighthearted, made for children, fluff, etc., then no. If it's somewhere in the middle, it might depend.

If an author wants to write a story seriously delving into the fucked up-ness of children fighting criminals, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a fun story about villains and heroes featuring Robin in a world where that's not an issue, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a serious story but not apply IRL-logic to Robin, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

[mollysunder]

Sky and Viktor's relationship is such a horror movie to me. You've got a man who was frustrated by the limitations placed on his life that were out of his control, like his class, mobility, and general health. Despite everything, he manages to rise beyond his station and avoid being an assistant for the rest of his life.

Then you've got a woman from the same background who admires him and all that he's accomplished in spite of the similar class based prejudices they faced all the while she's his assistant. She works up the courage to take leap of faith and reach out to him with her own research to show what's possible if they worked together as equals. And then he gets her killed!

Sky's death isn't the end of it because while it affects Viktor it is in no way meaningful to Sky's life or value as a person whatsoever. Even the pendant he wears in her memory is based on the design of her notebook, but that was just her notebook's cover, she probably bought it from a store and the design itself is probably mass produced. Why not use Sky's signature that was in her letter and in the notebook, the thing part if the notebook with real value?

Then Sky's brought back in s2 and she really only exists to be Viktor's assistant again, who he kills, again! But this time it's different because this time Viktor's making a conscious decision to look Sky in the eye and kill her... to prove he's changed.

In the middle of all this, in no way has Sky's death been mourned by her family or anyone else who could have known her. Jayce wasn't affected by the reveal, he didn't think it was important to tell Heimerdinger, or anyone who knew her. Nothing about her life, death, or disappearance has spurred any emotional reaction or even curiosity about what happened to her.

Sky's new life was also extremely isolated because she became further tied to him (in some ways you could say she was defined by him). Viktor never mentioned Sky to anyone in the material plane during his commune arc, so she only exists to him and she has no way to communicate with others, she's just there for Viktor's sake.

Then in the finale we learn this all a part of a big time loop where Viktor actively set the wheels in motion to have him and Jayce create hextech together, but if everything follows as is, that means Sky is violently killed in those timelines too. That means Viktor weighed the costs and decided over and over and over again that Sky was expendable enough to let her die for his plan to work eventually. How is that not murder at this point?

What's worse is that post-finale Sky's humanity is a point of dispute amongst the fandom, the VAs, and the writers themselves. Sky's the hexcore manipulating Viktor. No, Sky's a manifestion of Viktor's guilt. No, she's actually supposed to represent his humanity/conscious made physical. And in none of these arguments do they discuss Sky as a person, she's just an object meant to serve Viktor both in the narrative sense and literal sense as his assistant.

The most absolutely maddening part is that with Viktor's new bio on the League site, not only have most traces of Viktor had been scrubbed by Piltover's archive, but Sky's life has been completely wiped. Her death was implied to have been swept under the rug, and only described as the "loss of life" consequence from his Hexcore experiment.

Viktor was afraid of dying a senseless death (created by the conditions Piltover condemned his birth to) in obscurity and then he turned it into Sky's destiny.

[agnesandhilda]

watched conclave last night and then read the wikipedia entry for the book and now I'm wondering about the category ten shitstorm that a publicly intersex pope would cause

[hoziersong]

the reason poolverine is so appealing is also because in all of his two-decade run in the xmcu they have given logan some of the most boring and rushed relationships with women (because it was the 2000s and the mold that they followed for rugged manly protagonists meant an astounding lack of chemistry between them and their love interests in favor of giving them the "dead wife who has a montage at the beginning of the movie" treatment etc etc) and then they put him in a 2 hour long film with a guy even more insane and fucked up than him and they matched each other beat for beat. say what you want about the mcu but they achieved a level of chemistry between logan and wade that fox couldn't reach in 20 years with like four different love interests. which is also a petition for them to either go the gay route or finally let logan find a woman he has good chemistry with and who can pass the bechdel test

[a-most-beloved-fool]

I'm thinking about Gillian Taylor, lesbian (in my heart), standing on that stolen bird-of-prey on their way back to the 23rd century, and trying to figure out the correct way to (tactfully) ask if Kirk and Spock are gay.

Back in the 80s, she'd just assumed that they were gay. I mean, dressed like that? She'd also, however, assumed that they were on drugs, probably a hallucinogen of some kind, which - turned out to be not quite true. So, really, anything was fair game, now, and she no longer knew if they were gay. Maybe that's just how men in the 23rd century were with each other.

She tried to watch, to analyze their actions objectively, but with how busy they were making sure that the ship didn't explode, they weren't really interacting all that closely with one another, and she truly couldn't tell.

So instead she just stood there, next to Admiral Kirk, trying to find the right words to use, words which wouldn't be heard as an insult if she was wrong or if the 23rd century was no more enlightened about these sorts of things.

And then Dr. McCoy walked in and, casual as you please, said, "Jim, where the devil has your husband run off to?"

Husband. He said the word so easily, like it was - normal. Like it was safe and accepted, for a man, an admiral, even, to be gay. He didn't even glance at Gillian as he said it, never even seemed to consider that someone might react poorly. Maybe no-one ever did, in the 23rd century.

Everything sort of faded out of focus for Gillian, after that. She didn't hear another peep until McCoy, concerned, put his hand on her shoulder, and asked if she was alright.

She just smiled in response and told him that, yes, she was doing very well.

Because if Admiral Kirk could have a husband... that meant that she could have a wife.

Oh yes, she thought she'd be quite happy in the 23rd century.

[slymanner]

God dude these two scenes and how roxie moves hurt my heart so so bad 🥹

it's like a mix of anger, feral, emotional breakdown, and complete sadness that just fucks me up soooo fucking bad.

it's like she's a pet who got abandoned by their owner but they see them again after years of sadness and depression of them being gone and leaving them like that and all that anger and sadness just manifest's into one bundle of emotion's towards them they cannot control.

roxie baby ur gonna be okay u deserve better :[

[caluette]

kainess x rope (1948)

[mithrandirl]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) dir. Ralph Bakshi