ellemilady

[ellemilady]

(Dad): I got two half & halfs

(Me): Sweet

(Dad): I also got two teas

(Me): Extra Sweet

(Dad): no, I got the low calorie tea

[ellemilady]

[ellemilady]

Me: Don't start another au don't start another au don't start another au...

Also me: counterpoint - Pride and prejudice tma

[ellemilady]

More Star Trek memes

[ellemilady]

I’ve spent entirely too much time watching YouTube videos trying to figure out Android 21’s origin story and if Good 21 got a happy ending.

Someone help I just want to know 😭

[ellemilady]

+nondescript, protective footwear (not the time to show off the bright/custom sneaks, never sandals)

+layer a plain, preferably dark colored shirt under a protest/organization tee if you’re wearing one.

+study march route/protest location beforehand. Park further away if you’re driving. Identify escape routes.

+please listen to experienced organizers. They’ve trained, planned, & done this before. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Back in 2019 i found a guide to equipment used by protesters in Hong Kong. I think it's useful and a lot of it could be applied to protests happening in the us:

(+ goggles might be good against tear gas as well)

Source

[ellemilady]

Oz: "Alright... so, you know how you all independently made the decision to dedicate your lives to defending innocent people from death and destruction, which we all know is a battle we cannot 'win' because death is inevitable and destruction is ongoing, and there will always be another Grimm and there will always be selfish people?"

RWBYJNRQ: "Yeah?"

Oz: "And you know how you later learned that the forces of darkness are presently being controlled by a witch who's been seeking out powers, allies, and tools with the express intention of causing as much death and destruction as possible, so we all decided to try to prevent her from winning this war even though we know that defeating a single individual will not magically stop death and destruction, and the Grimm will continue to ravage the Earth and selfish people will continue to rise?"

RWBYJNRQ: "Uh-huh?"

Oz: "Well, I'm afraid there's something more I must tell you: I was told that I personally will not be able to kill that individual. This is actually a completely pointless distinction because obviously you don't need to kill a person in order to prevent them from causing further harm, so if we manage to either imprison her or simply force her into a checkmate so she stops killing people, we've accomplished our goal of neutralizing this individual - and at any rate, 'defeating Salem' has never at any point ever been considered the final step in our journeys. As established, the Grimm and evil people will always exist no matter how many individuals we defeat, so defeating individuals is not our end-goal. We all signed up for an ongoing job of service, protecting the world from the vicious soulless man-eating monsters that existed before Salem and will continue to exist whether or not she's around to direct their attacks. So, the alleged invulnerability of Salem literally does not change or drastically alter your lives in any way, shape or form. You wanted to fight monsters until you retired; just consider her a higher-priority monster. The mission has not changed. The goal is to protect innocent people from the monsters that roam the earth alongside the forces of evil. There has never ever been floated an idea of a 'final victory' that will magically establish permanent peace and joy and love and happiness at which point we will all retire and hold hands and skip merrily through fields as lifelong besties for the rest of time. So the presence of this enemy does not change your life plans or goals in any way whatsoever."

RWBYJNRQ:

Oz:

RWBYJNRQ: "Fuck you"

RWBYJNRQ: *Abuses and attacks Oz for months*

RWBYJNRQ: "Woe is me boohoo I can't believe that Oz didn't tell us that we can't magically stop death by defeating Salem and taking an early retirement! He's the REAL monster!"

RWBYJNRQ: "How can we possibly go on like this?? How can he possibly expect us to protect people like we've been training to do for six years?? How can we be expected to fight monsters, if we don't have a Final Boss to defeat to end the game early?? The fact that Salem exists and that she is immortal has made us completely and totally forget the singular reason we ever decided to fight Grimm in the first place! If we can't magically stop all evil forever by defeating one individual that we didn't know existed for the first five years of our training, that means that training for five years with the goal of protecting innocent people from death and destruction was all actually a manipulation tactic!"

RWBYJNRQ: "WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP COMPLETELY! THERE IS NO HOPE! FLEEEE, FLEE FOR YOUR LIIIIIIVES!!! THERE'S AN IMMORTAL GRIMM WITCH AND WE CAN'T KILL HER WHICH OBVIOUSLY MEANS THAT PROTECTING INNOCENT PEOPLE FROM GRIMM IS STUPID AND IRONWOOD IS STUPID FOR TRYING IT AND ACTUALLY HE'S ALSO EVIL BECAUSE ONLY AN EVIL MAN WOULD ASK SOLDIERS TO PROTECT INNOCENT PEOPLE FROM MONSTERS IF THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP THEM FROM EXISTING PERMANENTLY!!!"

RWBYJNRQ: "THE KNOWLEDGE OF SALEM HAS MADE US GIVE UP ON EVERYTHING AND ATTACK ANYONE WHO STILL TRIES TO FIGHT HER"

RWBYJNRQ: "WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T OZ TELL US ABOUT THIS???"

RWBYJNRQ: "Um, uh, hi. My name is Ruby Rose, and I'm a Huntress. And if we've done everything right, I should be talking to all of Remnant right now...."

[ellemilady]

Zuko finding out about the gaang’s shenanigans after joining them and vice versa is still the funniest thing to me and I think about it all the time

Zuko: where did you even find toph?

Sokka: oh we ran into her while she was a pro wrestling champion

Zuko: .. that twelve yr old blind girl was a what now??

~

Zuko: you said you tried firebending before? Who taught you?

Aang: this strange guy called jeong jeong who lived in a forest

Zuko, who grew up in the firenation and probably heard all about this man: THE DESERTER??

Aang: ya how’d you know??

~

Aang: you know what’s strange? Zhao seemed to just disappear after the north pole... I wonder what happened?

Zuko: oh he’s dead

Aang: w-what?

Zuko: yea. Watched him drown too. A big grabby hand got him and dragged him into the ocean

Aang: .... *crying*

~

Zuko: so what did you guys do while hiding in the fire nation?

Aang: oh not much tbh, I went to school for like two days, Katara and I blew up a factory, we cleaned a river, Toph scammed a whole town, Katara learned bloodbending and I went to therapy

Zuko:

Aang: did I forget anything? Oh right Sokka got a sword

[ellemilady]

one day some of you will actually go outside and go to pride and you’re going to meet old black queens who refers to themselves as femme, you’ll meet people from small towns who still use the word transsexual, you’ll see that your local activist organization set up a stall about your local LGBT history that includes leather bar’s history, you’ll see lesbians in groups refer to themselves as “guys” and “boys”, you’ll see someone with breasts and pasties and little else have “he / him” painted on his chest, and you’ll be so caught up with your terminally online attitude that instead of appreciating the wide diversity of people who exist in the LGBT community who are brave enough to share themselves you’ll just be formulating posts and tweets in your head for when get home about how “problematic” it all was and it’s honestly tragic

[ellemilady]

[ellemilady]

I’m not the only one who still has habits originating from Ancient Internet, right???

[ellemilady]

It *is* hard to edit your own work. That’s why there are professional editors, whose sole job is to read, review, and point out issues. That’s why RWBY writers are held to a standard higher than hobbyist fanfic writers, even writing on a deadline.

…it just doesn’t seem like RWBY uses editors at all, and just goes with the first draft.

(Sorta response to the anon ask about potential) I think it's important to remember that we, the audience, have liberties that RT doesn't when it comes to our fics/rewrites. RT doesn't have the luxury of years of retrospection on the show, or all the time they could want, to write. RT are also writing from scratch, not just adding to another's work. It's like the difference between following a recipe and cooking from scratch.

Not saying it excuses their blatant missteps, but as someone who has written on a deadline like that for something I'm getting paid for before, let me tell you it can be really easy to let cracks form moment to moment.

Hey, @just-rwby Idk why I just haven't been seeing your asks until recently, but this is a very fair point to make. It's easy to spot mistakes from the outside, it's much harder to see them in your own work. I have a consistent writing partner for fan fics who often will scroll over sentences on our google docs that I wrote and then write 'What?' So I know I'm just not communicating what I want right, and not writing so well. Writing is hard, and I'm by no means a professional.

As for re-writes, it is important to note that we are looking at RWBY from the outside and have all of the time in the world to figure out how we’d ‘do it right,’ we have all the pieces we need, we know where the characters might be headed from the start, we can see where the writers may have tripped up, we can watch RWBY fifty times to make sure we have the full picture. If someone were to re-write Harry Potter, they might get rid of the unnecessary floo network and use portkeys from the start because while JK Rowling might not have invented them when she wrote book two, we know - after years and years of being able to critically look at the complete series - that portkeys are going to exist and will be crucial for the fourth book. But that doesn’t mean that we’re better or worse at writing than JK Rowling.

The first time I was making a ‘re-write’ it was to alter the character reactions to Lost Fable in volume six that had really frustrated me. During the course of that fic, me and the person that I was writing the fic with turned it into a big overarching story where we A. Forgot that Raven had suggested Ozpin was her headmaster and had him be the former classmate of Qrow. B. Missed the quick flash of Pietro we see in volume three when Penny is killed and instead wrote an OC father for her. C. Forgot that communications were down and had that OC father contact them via their scrolls sometimes. And so on and so forth. Even with the option to watch through the first five seasons over and over, we were still making lots of mistakes. Of course, we were writing the fic for ourselves, never published it, and never sold it or claimed to be professionals.

Making AUs is great! It’s always fun to re-write things in the way that we want or to fix the mistakes we can see since we’re not under any time limit and can really think things through. For instance, I’ve been slowly trying to work on a RWBY re-write and one of the things I’d do is keep Ironwood a hero and go with Yang x Weiss and Blake x Sun as romantic ships. It would be ridiculous for me to say that RWBY should’ve gone with those ships and that arc for Ironwood just because I want it. But it is perfectly valid for me to say that I don’t think the way they did Ironwood’s arc was good and that I don’t think Blake x Yang as a ship has been done well. And it may have been rushed, but CRWBY are meant to be professionals trying to sell a product, unlike me.

Criticizing RWBY is valid, even venting and bashing and nitpicking is valid (posting it using the proper tags in a website so the creators will never see and that fans of the show can filter out.) RWBY the official product has to be held to a higher standard than any fanwork, because it is official, it’s meant to be professional, and it’s a product that RT is trying to sell people on. As creative and good and full of potential RWBY can be at times, their big mistakes are more serious and impact the overall story or even have hurtful narratives that impact the real world.

But RWBY fanworks are inherently built off of RWBY. People who make RWBY  re-writes can alter the world magic, they can change up character ages and backgrounds, they can throw in ‘fixes’ and leave out some of the bigger mistakes and some of the harmful narratives in RWBY... But in the end, they aren’t making their own product, they’re just altering the foundation of someone else’s work and doing so with none of the limitations they have. Whether or not people who make these re-writes are better writers than the CRWBY writers is something that can’t be gauged through those re-writes, it has to be gauged through the products they’ve actually made on their own.

I’ve never managed to make anything of my own. I have tons of ideas, but I struggle to get them to become anything solid. The fact that the RWBY writers consistently put out a product is an accomplishment I’ve only dreamed about. But there are still these big, blatant mistakes and it is perfectly to valid to wonder at how they were missed and to criticize RWBY for them, because it impacts their story in the long run.

[ellemilady]

For all of you posting your thoughts as you watch Voyager, I just want you to know I enjoy reading them. <3

[ellemilady]

To add!

Goku from Dragonball Z: a pure hearted hero who’s naïveté directly leads to villains taking advantage of him, and causing friends to get hurt. His hyper focus on wanting to fight is what led him to give Cell a senzu bean rather than to finish him off. Future Trunks died, Gohan was traumatized, and Goku later had to sacrifice himself—and King Kai—to avoid Earth being destroyed.

Inuyasha: Pure hearted good guy who is also hot headed and short tempered, and repeatedly gets his butt kicked because of it. He lets everyone easily goad him into doing something stupid, and over the course of the story has to learn to get a handle on himself.

How much would we have not gotten from both of these stories had Goku and Inuyasha not had these flaws—or had them, but there be no effect on the characters or plot?

I honestly don’t know why you keep bringing up the “let the characters e flawed and frustrate/challenge/whatever the audience” when that’s clearly not what RWBY is doing and I apologize, but I’m getting the idea you think this is the only way to write good characters.

I mean... honestly yes. This isn't a revolutionary concept, the idea that your characters should be well-rounded and being well-rounded includes being flawed. Being wrong at times. Doing things that the audience would not or could not do. If we were to make a list of our favorite characters — or, more accurately, the ones we think are really well written — and I asked what flaws they had, when they'd made mistakes, how they'd grown, and when we'd disagreed with them, if the answer is, "Nothing and never. They're perfect, they were always perfect, and I stand by everything they've ever done 100%" then, frankly, I'd think that answer was a lie. Or that the person giving it hadn't engaged well with the text. This isn't to say that a character has to be all these things simultaneously, but a character who doesn't have any of this and, crucially, if those aspects have no impact on the story then no, I don't think they're well written.

Come up with a list of the most pure, supposedly perfect characters in fiction (that people like) and I guarantee they've got flaws that help drive the story:

Usagi from Sailor Moon - a lazy crybaby who has to learn to put effort into helping herself, her friends, and saving the world

Izuku from My Hero Academia - an overly-self sacrificing kid who tends to get himself hurt to the point where he's of no help to anyone, actually making the situation worse than when he learns to hold back

Hagrid from Harry Potter - an impulsive man whose tendency to keep animals puts himself in danger, both in terms of physical safety and getting in trouble with authorities. He also struggles to keep information confidential and often tells people things he shouldn't

Uncle Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender - A former general who, notably, we meet much later in his life, after he's grown and figured out how to better approach bending, war, and balance. It's because of his failure and the loss of his son that he becomes the man we know today

I could go on (and in much more depth). The point is, all the great characters are flawed in one way or another and, importantly, the story engages with those flaws. We're supposed to recognize and grapple with them. A character like Hagrid who takes actions that simultaneously stem from a place of compassion (raise dragon) and is foolish (gave a dark lord important info, keeps said dragon in his wooden house, now has a bunch of 11yos keeping this secret) is what makes them feel like a person. A character who is always right and always perfect and never does anything the audience is encouraged to grapple with is... well, that's a Mary/Gary Stu. That's something audiences hate. The concept of a character is not recognizably flawed (by the story) is so reviled that (the misogyny inherent in the term's conception aside) we've created an entire pop culture concept to say, "Nope. Don't like that. That needs to be improved. It's bad writing." It doesn't matter what RWBY intends. Their intention does not exempt them from writing their characters badly and, yes, I think the choice to ignore the flaws that are so clearly there for a "Ruby and co. are #perfect" is a huge mistake for not just them, but the story as a whole.

[ellemilady]

Tumblr is seriously taking me back to the LiveJournal days with all the times I blurt out “omg put it under a cut” to all y’all’s long-ass posts.

[ellemilady]

I saw this tiktok on twitter and I just had to 😂

[ellemilady]

Hmm, okay, so I keep seeing discourse about “the labor shortage”, and there’s a few huge very simple explanations aside from unemployment and low pay.

First, and at least President Biden and Governor Beshear of Kentucky addressed this one: CHILDCARE. Daycares have closed, have limited capacity, and I’m sure need workers like everyone else. Low-paying retail jobs don’t exactly letcha bring your kids with you, nor pay a whole hell of a lot for professional child care.

Who else provides childcare for parents? GRANDPARENTS. You know, the demographic that suffered the highest death rate from the pandemic. Along with losing a precious member of their family, families have also lost in them the person who cared for their child while they worked.

Relatedly, another reason for the labor shortage?

The nearly 600,000 DEAD. Nearly six hundred thousand people in the United States literally do not exist anymore. They’re gone. That NO ONE has connected the dots and realized this would *also* impact the number of people available to work is just…astounding.

This is the thing that really gets me. We have ALL watched video after video in the past year of out-of-control assholes screaming, assaulting, spitting, coughing, and even so extremely, *murdering* low wage essential workers in retail and the service industry. Absolutely fucking NO ONE should be treated the way retail workers have been treated this past year. Every sanctimonious blowhard in politics and the media whinging that people need to take these jobs and get off unemployment would refuse to be treated the way retail workers are treated.

The SAME type of people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th have been terrorizing low wage retail workers for over 365 motherfucking days now.

It is absolutely unsurprising, and completely understandable, that many people have decided, FORGET THAT.