internalizingexternalities

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Thinking about Lilo & Stitch makes me really appreciate certain things about the original + the series. Almost every single named [human] character in the movie isn’t white: the only exception being Mertle, y’know, the bratty little girl we’re not supposed to like.

Besides all of the racial representation, Lilo herself is very much a neurodivergent icon, and her portrayal as the protagonist is amazing considering how characters like her are typically either sidelined or depicted in ways to make them less sympathetic/human (modern media does at least a slightly better job at adressing that kind of thing tho).

So all of that is great, but to anyone that hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch: The Series, it also does some extremely refreshing stuff.

Pleakley gets tons of validation to dress in drag, everyone always referring to Pleakley as “she” when dressed up as “aunt Pleakley.” There’s even an episode that tackles Pleakley dealing with the pressures of his family that wants him to marry a girl and settle down to have a “normal life.” After the episode's shenanigans, there's a realistic depiction of the misunderstanding of a heteronormative/traditional parent with their non-traditional child: Pleakley's mom says that she just wants her children to be happy, but when Pleakley says that he is happy, she thinks he's only trying to console her as she insists, "How can you be happy? You aren't even married." But Pleakley finally gets it through to his mom when he says, "I don't want to be married, mother! I'm happy just as I am."

After getting to meet all of Pleakley's ohana throughout the episode and hearing from Pleakley himself -after all of the previous misunderstandings- that he really, truly, is happy, she's finally starting to understand.

Even though his mom comments as they leave that she wants him to “try wearing men’s clothes more often,” she still does walk away accepting that she simply doesn’t understand her son's way of thinking. It’ll definitely be hard for her since she’s so much more “traditional,” but she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that her son is who he is, and likes being that way, so she’ll love him regardless. She's trying her best.

The portrayal of people with physical disabilities is also great. It’s not because there’s one recurring character with some condition, but almost because there are non-recurring characters. It isn’t in every episode, but here’s an example: they want to show someone at the park playing fetch with their dog for just one shot. They could very easily have it be any a random person, but they decided to make it a lady in a wheelchair. There's another episode where Nani's friends from highschool show up and one has forearm crutches, but not just because she had some recent accident. No one in the episode questions her condition or feels the need to point it out, the only comment on it being that the friend will use the crutches to lightly bonk the others' arms, and Nani jokes, "You are still deadly with that thing."

The fact that they include characters with disabilities when they "don't have to" makes it that much more normal. These people aren't some special case or the main highlight of the episode, they're just another person. They're normal.

There's so much that all of the original Lilo & Stitch media did right, but now the name will forever be tainted with the association of the remake, which I'm sure will have absolutely none of the tasteful writing and ideas of anything prior to it.

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I think abt this tiktok all the time

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Never done thinking about The Rashomon Job. Because ok, I think that, on balance, we can assume Eliot and Sophie spent a not insignificant amount of time at that museum gala flirting aggressively with each other (Nate's careful excision of this from his reconstructed version notwithstanding).

We also know that Sophie clearly did not remember/recognise Eliot until he pantomimed his behaviour and accent that night. This tracks for Sophie; she's not a faces person. She notices actions, tones, accents, and above all she notices physical signifiers of social relationships (class, professional, personal etc.). She can be pretty confident, from her own grifting experience, that that's all most other people notice too.

Eliot, on the other hand, is absolutely a faces person. It's something of a recurring bit. There's at least one occasion where he IDs a guy he saw for three seconds. He's a hypervigilant observer with a detailed and well-trained memory ("it's a very distinctive..."). That's part of what gives him an edge (and also must make the occasions where he briefly becomes famous deeply stressful).

(The bit in the opening episode of Redemption S3, were they walk into a party and Sophie notices the decor and dress and Eliot notices all the armed and dangerous security is such a good example of their respective ways of seeing the world.)

Taking all this into consideration, I think we can fairly happily imagine the following: that Eliot Spencer walked into a theatre in LA with an alcohol-soaked insurance investigator, an annoying hacker, and a disconcertingly odd super-thief, and was absolutely baffled to find someone he recognised from that deeply frustrating attempt to steal the dagger of Aqu'abi doing the world's worst Lady Macbeth.

And then she clearly hasn't recognised him, and he's not going to bring it up, because it's just a one time job, and also there's her whole thing with Nate happening right in front of his salad. And then eventually it becomes "wait, this is gold", and he's just sitting on this reveal until that night in the bar.

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i have a croissant related grievance

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If Jane Bennet was the narrator of Pride and Prejudice, we'd have a new type of unreliable narrator that I can't personally think of any examples of in literature (though they are common in real life) where the person is too nice to describe immoral and/or foolish characters and their motives accurately.

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Link to thread

Link to news story

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happy fourth of july to the philippines ONLY

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My favourite part of the eliot-hardison dynamic is that hardison is always pushing his ideas of having fun, and eliot is usually annoyed but sometimes you can see him mentally going ...wait. this IS fun. and he's so surprised every time, like he has no idea how to deal with this

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I think Leverage has a really neat take on the concept of revenge.

Because a lot of times, revenge gets framed as this inherently immoral act, like it doesn't matter how evil the person you want revenge on is, it doesn't matter that stopping them is a net positive for the world, revenge is just bad and wanting it makes you bad.

But I think that a lot of the problems with most revenge narratives come from the fact that the person/people seeking revenge put too much importance on getting revenge, but there's not enough catharsis in the actual act of taking revenge. They end up left with a whole lot of left-over righteous anger, and no acceptable targets left to vent it on. That way lies the bloodline ending feuds of greek tragedy and the like.

But Leverage says "No, actually you're right, that guy is absolutely terrible, he does need to be stopped and his victims should be awarded the catharsis of revenge." But then, instead of taking the easy way out of having Hardison siphon all the money out of their accounts, or sending Elliot over to their house with a baseball bat, they complicate the revenge plot. Instead of walking the easier path of the quick and unsatisfying revenge, they insist on poetic justice and dramatic irony and the complete and utter, very public destruction of the worst people in the world.

That's why I think Leverage feels different to, say, The Count of Monte Cristo, or other revenge-centric stories. They go the extra mile to tailor their revenge to the target, and give them Exactly what they deserve.

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Hey bro can i fondle your wires i mean fondle your wires i mean stick my hands under your panels and fondle your wires i mean perform routine maintenance on your network?

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I love how all dogs are good dogs - when they're handled right - but they still range from lawful good to chaotic good. Like on one end you've got dogs who are like "I know what you want me to do, but what you are asking would contradict Previously Established Rules, and as much as I love you, I will not compromise my morals even for you, for without them I am nothing", and then there's dogs who are like "I know what you want me to do, but wouldn't it be so fucking funny if instead I did this" and bolt.

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A psychic link between people, but there's a communication issue between people who think narratively in words, and people who don't. Like one of them is like "huh so you really think in abstract wordless vibes and visions, like my dog?" and the other one is like "girl can you shut up? I don't care about what you're planning for lunch, I- what do you mean you're talking to yourself? Inside your own fucking head??"

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