#into the rest of it...

[halfbaked00q]

okay as an admitted did-not-watch-NTTD'er who got, like, all of their info from uhh recappers, the wiki synopsis, the specific clips with Q I watched, and whatever I osmosis'ed from fics.

I finally watched the beginning of NTTD at @prismatic-bell's nudging. And I was like. Okay wait. wait wait wait. This is... well-written? And shot and directed & acted?? In a hollywood movie lmao?? Like. The way it's set up w Madeleine's backstory, and then the Bond & Madeleine stuff that does a much better job of establishing their relationship, the goooorgeous wide shots.

I admittedly was rather "I close my eyes I do not see" to a lot of canon - coming from partially a comics fandom background I'm very aware, well-versed, and well-practiced in the 'canon is your pick-and-choose buffet no need to feel like you have to 'respect' the 'sanctity' of 'canon' esp when it's Bad (like it contradicts other canon or you can just Tell this character was Not Written Well and it's like, here's what it could be that is better)' - and from opinions I saw on NTTD I was expecting to be very pick & choose about it.

But okay, wait. wait wait wait. It works. The beginning at least which I watched. Works. Like, it establishes a key character moment for Madeleine that Explains Everything about her behavior, actually - like she just like Bond is actually also very traumatized & has been locking it down/deflecting it vs processing it, and the whole like Vesper thing is (to me) very obviously her misdirecting Bond away from her own Goin Thru It. I can see how it can read as very suspicious to Bond esp with everything else but it, like, is a Narrative and Makes Sense for her character and Works. wild.

Even the Bond stuff makes a ton of sense. Like, when I hadn't watched it and was going off second & third hand information, one of the things I was hrrrm ?? about was the. How do you get from the guy who says "I miss you" at Vesper's grave, to the guy who put Madeleine on the train. The man who, even after finding out Vesper betrayed him, still wanted to save her? Would... send Madeleine away? In what, a fit of pique? Surely he's more of a "run to me and I will handle it" if it turns out not to be true or a "if it is, I'll handle it" kind of guy.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT IT WAS. YOU KNOW WHAT IT FUCKING WAS LMAO. I WAS MISLED BY THE FUCKIN. BILLIE EILISH SONG LMAO. The lyrics of it make it SOUND like it's a like "you betrayed/cheated on me how could I have ever trusted you" break-up song kind of situation. BUT IT ABSOLUTELY FCKN WASN'T LMAO.

It's like. two traumatized individuals who trauma-bonded and honestly maybe should have spent time apart healing/learning themselves again before re-evaluating if they think a relationship could work, but like. they both were Goin Thru It and let themselves get carried away with it ig. And then right when Madeleine was like. hm I've been Not Dealing with this a Lot (tbh her being a psychologist probably made it worse cuz I think it made her more effective at Not Dealing With It and deflecting/misdirecting, but like. I don't think she was doing it intentionally, I think it was just a "combination of circumstances" thing. But this also works cuz I think before the like why did Madeleine push him towards Vesper again even though he said she was in his past. And it's like. She was delaying dealing with HER shit and probably unconsciously deflected his attention by poking at waht she thinks is still HIS equivalent to her baggage) where was I. Oh yeah, Madeleine is like. hm. yeah. the whole letting go of secrets thing. I. need to come clean to him...

but then all of the Spectre stuff happens.

Even the him sitting in the car thing is soooo so so. Cuz Craig absolutely put his whole pussy in the acting for this scene. he's got that like. wrong side of overstimulated so you shoot past being in the zone and instead are zoning out lowkey thing going on, mixed with the like. agent faced with a hopeless situation Observing Everything still but like vaguely morbidly amused about it, probably what's running through the brain rn is "lmao, wonder which bullet will be The One" kind of deal. And cross-cutting the shooting & wide shots with the bells was *chefs kiss* genius.

Even Madeleine not managing to tell him was well written/paced. Cuz it was very believable that she (not trained for this) was scared/shocked & couldn't get a word out. Until the "JAMES. I'd rather die than have you think I--" and then the fucking. tragedy of the bad timing. god. And then even her not just saying it later is like, it all makes sense with the way it was paced, shot, & edited. It was beaaautiful oh man. This also where I was like. damn lmao. miscommunication in a movie where it. feels like it makes sense and isn't just a stupid macguffin lol??? In a hollywood movie?? wild

but yeah this is also where it was like. hey wait. the man who, in the face of sort of a morbid (passively?) suicidal emotional blowout due to the Everything, but was able to break through it when she got through to him enough for him to look at her, and her to cry & shake her head like no, it's not true/no don't do this/please/(w.e). and go, "Okay." and take action. How does he put her on the train??

BUT. BUT FUCKING. BUT THEN. MY GOD. *Actually* watching the fucking scene I was like. Ooooh. ough ough oh god. This isn't him vindicatively cutting her out of his life "the bitch is dead" style. This is his Vesper in the elevator cage moment. He's fucking drowning in the cage but he doesn't want to take her with him. He's locking her out of the cage. god.

And the fucking. devastation on his face while he's on the platform. THAT'S HIS FUCKIN. VESPER HOLDING HIM ONE LAST TIME AND SHOVING HERSELF TO TH EBACK OF THE CAGE AAARGGGGHH BARK BARK BARK

Which, a-fucking-gain. THEN MAKES THE NO TIME TO DIE SONG. ALL THE FUCKING MORE EGREGIOUS LMAO. "was I stupid to love you was I foolish to trust was it obvious to everybody else" WHAT ARE YOU ON. THIS IS A SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY THIS ISN'T FUCKIN. 'THE BITCH IS DEAD.'

God this is like when ppl are convinced QoS was Bond going on a revenge rampage when he was (1) not even rampaging (2) not on a revenge quest/storyline - that was Camille's story!!!* caveat I did not watch QoS either lol, but I did watch a video essay breaking it down which I found Very Compelling and have since incorporated it into my worldview lmao. Like, in light of me actually watching the beginning of NTTD, and then it launching into the title sequence and the song. IT ACTIVELY. REWRITES HISTORY YOU JUST WATCHED ON THE SCREEN AAAGGGHHH BITE CHOMP KILL. IT UNDERMINES THE WHOLE. ALL OF THE WORK THE FILMMAKERS DID UP TO THAT POINT IN PLOTTING OUT ACTING OUT & ESTABLISHING THE STORY TO THIS POINT.

Like. The problem of the song isn't even oh it's a limited POV thing. IT'S NOT EVEN WAHT BOND'S POV WOULD HAVE BEEN/SHOULD HAVE BEEN BY THAT POINT. Again, this is the "the bitch is dead" edit of the scene, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED. THIS IS BOND LOWKEY SPIRALING AND LIKE. OVERSTIMULATED-EXTREME-EMOTIONAL-AMBUSH-IN-A-VERY-SHORT-TIME LOWKEY EMOTIONALLY SPINNING OUT. BUT THEN BREAKING THRU IT ENOUGH WHEN MADELEINE CALLED FOR HIM. TO LOCK HER OUT OF HIS SINKING CAGE. BRUH. BE SO FORREAL RN.

also lmao she clutches her torso WAY too high up, bruh that's her sternum not her belly... but ig the idea translates across still.

but yeah. god. And here I thought No Time to Die the song was just. boring & musically uninspiring. but no. it's so much worse lmao. god.

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[summer-fire]

[unpeeled-human]

webp. more like wet ppee.

also on bsky

[fluent-in-lesbianism]

I took a 6yo boy to his placement and as soon as I got him situated in the back he saw my SpongeBob driver’s license air freshener hanging on my rearview mirror. He asked if that’s really SpongeBob’s driver’s license and I said yeah it’s real. Then he asked where I got it if SpongeBob’s underwater so I told him I wore a helmet like Sandy and stole it from SpongeBob when he slept, and without missing a beat he goes “That’s identity fraud”

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

[nightwingsgypsyrep]

*taps microphone* is this thing on? Okay…

🎤 THIS IS A REMINDER THAT ALL OF THE ROBINS ARE SMART, GENIUSES IN FACT. THEY ARE IN A FAMILY OF DETECTIVES. THATS LIKE THEIR WHOLE THING. ALL OF THE ROBINS (AND THE REST OF THE BATFAM TOO) ARE CLEVER, STRATEGIC, AND CAPABLE, NOT JUST TIM. (No hate to my boy Tim, though. I love Tim.) YES, EVEN THAT ONE. Thank you. 🎤

[hoopskirt]

Goodbye Mr. Lynch I’ll see you in my dreams

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[lemonemenom]

No one owes artists anything.

But existence is lonely and sometime you throw hours and hours of effort into a void, on the slim chance it will say something back.

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books

[mitsmebinch]

for reasons i shall not discuss, a tweet

[daisyofwaterdeep]

had a dream I went to a hozier concert and mr. hozier stopped singing and pointed to me in the crowd and asked me to go get him some extra crispy tofu and a blueberry shake for after the show and then the crowd passed his debit card to me and when I got it I could see his real legal name was Horace Bob-omb

[baroquepopcorn]

[shoezuki]

Some wild shit goes on in ppls lives