toboldlynerd

[toboldlynerd]

There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.

When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.

Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?

With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.

They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.

Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.

I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.

The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.

Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?

Were they wrong to trust?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.

A claw split the great glass cocoon.

The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.

In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.

It took its first breath.

The flames were the colour of cornflowers.

The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–

It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…

And it could finally open its wings.

Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.

The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.

It probably wouldn't mind.

[toboldlynerd]

if you work with kids 80% of your job is just this

[toboldlynerd]

I'm about to have a hot take and I would say it shouldn't be controversial but this is Tumblr so who knows.

A few weeks ago, I saw Jurassic Park for the first time, and there is a scene in there I think every aspiring filmwriter should be forced to watch and dissect. You may be thinking it's a Big Moment, like the timing on getting the power back on, or whatsisface IT guy shutting down the system to go steal embryos. You may think it's the kids and whatsisface who kinda looks like but isn't Harrison Ford* seeing the brontosauruses for the first time. Or the moment the first T-rex crashes the fence. But it's not any of those.

No, it's when Ellie finds Hammond in the dining room and he's eating whatever was supposed to be served for dessert and he's like "it was melting. I didn't want it to go to waste."

Because there is so much humanity in that line. It's not some big, grand theme statement. But I guarantee each and every one of us has been in a situation where life is going to hell in a handbasket for whatever reason, and we sit down and we may not be crying outwardly but we're screaming inside, and we wash the dishes. Or fold the laundry. Or eat the leftover Chinese so it won't be thrown away. We have exactly one point of control over one tiny little thing that seems (and often is) absolutely futile, and fuck it all, we need that control. Just for a moment. Just to feel something that isn't black screaming despair.

Hammond's guests and grandchildren are in grave danger. There is nothing he can do about it. Ellie's fiance is one of those guests. There's nothing she can do about it. They're in a severe thunderstorm in a place with mostly dirt roads in the middle of the night and all of the power is out and there are animals that dwarf skyscrapers outside. They. Can. Do. Nothing.

So they sit down and they eat the ice cream.

And then when Ellie says "it is good," Hammond just very quietly says "spared no expense."

His entire dream is in ruins. I know in the book he's more morally dubious, but in the movie I think he really genuinely believed he was doing something that could be wonderful and got stars in his eyes. In this moment he's grieving the potential loss of his grandchildren. The knowledge that even if (if!!) they survive, they will likely never see him the same way again--nor will his children. He's grieving because his beautiful dream has killed multiple people and he's realized he created a nightmare. He's grieving because he's in a hell of his own making and there's nothing he can do about any of this.

The animatronics are amazing, the CGI is top-notch (especially for its era), the story is solid, the cinematography is ace, but the moment that made that movie to me was that scene in the dining room lit only by the lightning, where two terrified human beings eat a dessert they almost certainly aren't really tasting, and say "it was melting" and "it is good" because if either of them says what they're really thinking, even breathes so much as a "do you think--", they will both scream until they go insane.

We've none of us faced dinosaurs run amok but we've all of us eaten the ice cream. And I think every prospective filmwriter out there, and a whole lot of shitty execs who wouldn't know a real emotion if it danced naked in front of a neon sign, need to see that scene and be forced to really sit with it.

I think movies would be the better for it.

*I would apologize for only learning half of these characters' and/or actors' names but frankly my facial recognition was already bad and has gotten worse in the last couple of years so you'll just have to deal with that.

[toboldlynerd]

So much of what is “cringe” is just… earnest.

[toboldlynerd]

"Kill yourself" is basic. "I hope your fandom gets a new installment that is objectively a great work but also tonally dissonant from the previous ones in a way that generates a huge newbie boom of people uninterested and hostile towards the history of the franchise" is smart. It's possible. It's terrifying. It's happening right now.

[toboldlynerd]

[toboldlynerd]

meows at you loud as fuck. meows at you loud as fuck again

[toboldlynerd]

[toboldlynerd]

Oh my god we actually did it.

[toboldlynerd]

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

[toboldlynerd]

"But how can you justify a player character with a (non-disinherited) noble background in a dungeon-crawling fantasy game" well, the most obvious approach is a fantasy setting whose nobility practices cognatic primogeniture where, instead of "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes a priest", it's "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes an adventurer". From the player's perspective, it handily explains why the title comes with little material support from the family; from the family's perspective, there's an unspoken understanding that most of the spare heirs will be eaten by a dragon (or whatever), thereby simplifying the inheritance situation, and the few survivors will become great assets.

(There is, of course, the possibility that a surviving third son, having grown powerful and understandably harbouring some slight resentment, may return, kill his elder brothers with dark magic, and take over the dynasty, but in practice this almost never happens.)

[toboldlynerd]

Fencing, Scottish style

[toboldlynerd]

#darcy caring so much about lizzie's opinion of him #he starts going out of his way to make small talk #and interacting more with people he does not know 😭 Pride & Prejudice (2005) Dir. Joe Wright

[toboldlynerd]

i havent stopped thinking about this tiktok and wanted it on my blog

[VD: A TikTok from @/soupygarbagejuice. It starts with a clip captioned "Biggest Croissant In Malaysia", of a waiter bringing out a large plate with a massive croissant on it out to a woman at a table. Voiceover says "Today I wanted to eat a Croissant–". A man stitches the video, greenscreened over the final frame. Transcript is as follows:

"A few months ago, this was the last TikTok I saw before falling asleep, and I didn't dream about croissants, I didn't dream about her. Every single dream that I had for a while took place in a reality where Billy Joel– one of Billy Joel's greatest hits was called 'The Biggest Croissant in Malaysia'. It just existed, it played on the radio, people would talk about it in the background, 'He played it at The Garden last night'! So at one point I woke up and did my best to recreate exactly what it sounded like in the dreams. [Singing over piano and drums] She ordered the biggest croissant in Malaysia! She ordered the biggest croissant in town, cause Daddy's not around anymore! He's in Singapore, he's in Singapore!"

End VD]

[toboldlynerd]

doomed by the narrative and haunted by the narrative and a secret third thing (narrating the narrative)

[toboldlynerd]

sometimes i feel ive got to

[toboldlynerd]

maybe growing up is just becoming who you were at 14 again but learning how to love her this time