#sometimes one just needs to be reminded

[happy-mokka]

I'll turn old next year (the big 5 is coming around the corner). I grew up watching all the classics with my parents, and it is safe to say that I am a top-shelf geek when it comes to movies. Watching black-and-white ones still makes me super nostalgic. But for reasons unknown, this gem somehow never made it to my screen. I really have no idea why, honestly.

So, it took me until last Christmas to finally watch it for the first time.

I more or less knew what I was going to get. Still, throughout the movie, I felt more and more being dragged into this profound sadness.

I am now even older than George Bailey was supposed to be in the story. I have way less to show-off on my side, what society deems to be the basic traces of a "worthy" life (your own family, partner, kids, a career, a shiny car, maybe even some kind of real-estate). So far, I haven't stood on any bridge yet ready to fly, but the movie got to me...big time.

Even when it was over, I didn't feel uplifted at all. Yes, it was all nice and a beautiful happy ending with lots of sugar coating. I also got the basic message. But the thought remained that the world back then was a simpler place, and I doubted that Frank Capra would've been able to write the same movie today.

Now, half a year later and after reading the previous post, I disagree with my younger self from 6 months ago.

Yes, the world is a different one today than it has been in 1946. People could afford a house from a single income and sustain a family and kids on the side (if you take the average middle-class as baseline). But still, it was a hard world back then. A terrifying world war had just ended, taking millions of lives. The Great Depression was not even 15 years in the past and still in the minds of most people. The atomic bomb and its potential to world destruction made its entrance, and the Cold War was already on the horizon. The understanding that the ruling upperclass got through life with much less struggle and by exploiting the rest of the population was just as present as it is today.

So, taking all this into consideration, the world back then was just as bad in most accounts as it is today (ok, minus climate change, yes), from the perspective of the average population.

Realizing this, I think that its message is still absolutely essential and agree to everything OP wrote.

Is it super cheesy at time? Absolutely!

Does this make it less true? Absolutely not!

Most of the time, for most people, life sucks. It feels like an endless struggle.

It is important that we stop once in a while, grab a snack, and let ourselves be reminded that it has its beautiful moments... a lot of them, actually, if we just look closely enough.

I guess it is time for a rewatch...

Pop culture reduces It's a Wonderful Life to that last half hour, and thinks the whole thing is about this guy traveling to an alternate universe where he doesn't exist and a little girl saying, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." A hokey, sugary fantasy. A light and fluffy story fit for Hallmark movies.

But this reading completely glosses over the fact that George Bailey is actively suicidal. He's not just standing there moping about, "My friends don't like me," like some characters do in shows that try to adapt this conceit to other settings. George's life has been destroyed. He's bankrupt and facing prison. The lifetime of struggle we've been watching for the last two hours has accomplished nothing but this crushing defeat, and he honestly believes that the best thing he can do is kill himself because he's worth more dead than alive. He would have thrown himself from a bridge had an actual angel from heaven not intervened at the last possible moment.

That's dark. The banker villain that pop culture reduces to a cartoon purposely drove a man to the brink of suicide, which only a miracle pulled him back from. And then George Bailey goes even deeper into despair. He not only believes that his future's not worth living, but that his past wasn't worth living. He thinks that every suffering he endured, every piece of good that he tried to do was not only pointless, but actively harmful, and he and the world would be better off if he had never existed at all.

This is the context that leads to the famed alternate universe of a million pastiches, and it's absolutely vital to understanding the world that George finds. It's there to specifically show him that his despondent views about his effect on the universe are wrong. His bum ear kept him from serving his country in the war--but the act that gave him that injury was what allowed his brother to grow up to become a war hero. His fight against Potter's domination of the town felt like useless tiny battles in a war that could never be won--but it turns out that even the act of fighting was enough to save the town from falling into hopeless slavery. He thought that if it weren't for him, his wife would have married Sam Wainwright and had a life of ease and luxury as a millionaire's wife, instead of suffering a painful life of penny-pinching with him. Finding out that she'd have been a spinster isn't, "Ha ha, she'd have been pathetic without you." It's showing him that she never loved Wainwright enough to marry him, and that George's existence didn't stop her from having a happier life, but saved her from having a sadder one. Everywhere he turns, he finds out that his existence wasn't a mistake, that his struggles and sufferings did accomplish something, that his painful existence wasn't a tragedy but a gift to the people around him.

Only when he realizes this does he get to come back home in wild joy over the gift of his existence. The scenes of hope and joy and love only exist because of the two hours of struggle and despair that came before. Even Zuzu's saccharine line about bells and angel wings exists, not as a sugary proverb, but as a climax to Clarence's story--showing that even George's despair had good effect, and that his newfound thankfulness for life causes not only earthly, but heavenly joy.

If this movie has light and hope, it's not because it exists in some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but because it fights tooth and nail to scrape every bit of hope it can from our all too dark and painful world. The light here exists, not because it ignores the dark, but because the dark makes light more precious and meaningful. The light exists in defiance of the dark, the hope in defiance of despair, and there is nothing saccharine about that. It's just about as realistic as it gets.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Finally caught up with Apothecary Diaries. I can't believe they gave Maomao a gun.

[lucabyte]

some thoughts on Claude

alt title: diversity win! this Butch Nun is crafting bombs in an unventilated room in her convent while actively courting Mother Superior! Do Not Give Them Access To Unlimited Power No Matter How Nice They Are

+ bonus

[arcanegifs]

Here are some Season 2 Arcane GIF comparisons before and after I color and sharpen them! | Season 1 Comparison GIFs

[werevyote]

I'm nonhuman because I know therefore I am. Sometimes for some it's not that deep and we can just exist with that

[xxplastic-cubexx]

charlies turn for the reference sheet beam

[bittsandpieces]

if my migraine gets better soon im gonna repaint my nails for the coming week and i want you guys to help me choose the new color (i may or may not actually listen)

[burningcheese-merchant]

Nu uh take that back or i delete my tumblr and become a twitter artist

(i am officially obsessed with drawing your ocs,it's your fault)

In case you haven't noticed, you've fallen right into my trap............

Also

She's beautiful 😭 I'm such a sucker for your art, man. I love how you render stuff. Your colors are so beautiful!!! And idk what program and/or brush you use but it scratches an itch in my brain. You're honestly the best ❤️❤️❤️ I always smile when I see you pop up in my inbox haha. Thank you so so much for everything you send me ❤️

Also sorry not sorry for brainwashing you into loving my OCs so much. Welcome to my wacko cult, you're not allowed to leave :) it's ok though, we have angst and shenanigans and delicious Indian food

[hayaku14]

i just think if kaito sees this shinichi he's gonna lose his goddamn mind like i think he's actually gonna end up stealing for real just to sate this deep-seated desire he never even knew he had of wanting to decorate shinichi with jewelries and gems and ooooohhhhh like i know he's gonna find the ones that compliment shinichi's blue eyes the most, i fear for all the sapphire owners in japan y'all better hold on to them cause kaitou kid might just not return them for real lmaooo

[bukashki]

having multiple separate ideas and inspirations for a thing and suddenly figuring out how to connect all of them 🤼‍♂️👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👭🫂🫶 <- ideas connecting 🤸‍♂️ <- me

[waiting-drives-you-crazy]

sam kisses it before he gets to work

[crystallizsch]

*kicks down door* ehehehe it's luxe couture yuusha and rabbitwear yuuna :3

[dailykugisaki]

Day 367. | Id in alt

What their shadows look like

[candyheartedchy]

Missing certain f/os rn.

[nemaliwrites]

10,025 words today! my first 10k day since a year and a half ago surprisingly, but i still got it! i didn't actually work on this fic today, but have a snippet from the post wish AU - i need to get back to this...

“M. Agreste!” one of the reporters calls. He shoulders his way to the front, face painted with a layer of curiosity. Beneath that, poison. “Does your wife’s recovery have anything to do with Monarch’s defeat?”

Several things happen at once: Gabriel’s hand slips out of Emilie’s. He steps forward, raising that same hand — to do what, he does not know. He will never find out. Because before he can do anything, Adrien is there. Anticipating his reaction. Catching him, stopping him. Fingers wrapping around his forearm. Experienced with pain as he is, Gabriel flinches away. 

Silence.

His outburst has not gone unnoticed, captured by no less than fifty cameras. There is no escape. Not in the last world and not in this one. Monarch. He thought he’d left the crown behind, that he would be the only one who knew that name. It would fade away to time, as would his actions — though his rule would remain, always and forever. 

“Forgive us,” Emilie says with a smile, because things have flipped now and it’s her saving him. Adrien saving him. Everyone coming to Gabriel’s rescue. “We’ve, well, we’ve had our hands full lately, in more ways than one. Learning to be a family again doesn’t leave much time for following the news.”

“Oh, of course!” the man replies. “Mme. Graham de Vanily, if you knew what France has been like in the last year, you would hardly believe it. Magic, superheroes, it’s all so—“

“Her name,” Gabriel grits out, “is Agreste.”

“—and remarkable, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s another result of Chat Noir’s victory. Monarch has been defeated and here you are, healed!”

Adrien makes a strangled sound, as though it’s him that’s struggling to breathe right now and not Gabriel. “Whose victory?”

[kuroo-hitsuji]

The Dark Santa Mammon card... Unrealistic (/hj). I'm gonna be so real, as soon as I knew his ass wasn't possessed or cursed or something I would be eating that shit uP--

Mammon can be pushy. As a treat. On account of the whole being a huge sub literally 90% of the time thing shxhjsgdhzhx Very rarely Trying to be dominant gets you free Dom For The Day tickets in my book and Mammon has a surplus--