mrs-pattie-thinks-things - Tumblr blog

[mrs-pattie-thinks-things]

If you didn’t want to strangle him, you were playing the game wrong

I am playing horizon forbidden west and I'm halfway through the Faro tomb mission.

I hate this man an IRRATIONAL amount aggsgsgsfs

She should be allowed to punch him in the face

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Hint: it was not any of those things

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It’s 1 am and I need sleep, but Horizon franchise is too good

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If you ever feel like ugly crying, here are two simple steps:

1. Start listening to The Hunger Games Audiobook

2. At the 6:44:23 mark, go listen to the song Can’t Catch Me Now from the A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

I’m glad I warned my husband that Rue was going to die soon and I will cry, because boy, was it ugly. The Hunger Games really holds up as an adult, way more than any other Young Adult novel I’ve read. Even more so that I now have a blond niece who Annabeth’s actress really remind me of. I have my own personal Prim and Rue and, fuck, it’s so much more real as an adult when children die. They’re so much younger now.

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When the expert in treating anxiety misses the mark on helping with your ADHD problems

(This is based of an amazing woman at what she does, by the way! I can’t expect someone to be an expert at something outside their experience!)

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Executive distinction isn’t just about things you don’t want to do

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I had an intuitive thought this morning and now you must all suffer too

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Michelle Krusiec’s performance in Community always bothered me so much. The more I watch this episode, the more irrational I realise my annoyance is, the more annoyed I am about it.

The thing is, she doesn’t sound like an actor performing a Chinese character. She sounds like an American actor doing a really, really bad performance of a Chinese character. We know she’s better than that. She performed in IMDB. We all loved her in that.

We know that community can cast Chinese actors.

We also know that they’re not afraid to go full parody in their portrayal of foreign accents either.

Which gives me the impression that her direction was to “act like someone who’s trying to act like they have a Chinese accent but is struggling to keep up the act.”

And you know what?

THATS PROBABLY EXACTLY WHAT HER DIRECTION WAS.

BECAUSE IN THE END WE LEARN THAT SHE’S FAKING IT. THE WHOLE TIME.

THESE TWO FOOLS WOULDN’T HAVE FIGURED IT OUT.

PIERCE IS TOO RACIST AND STUPID, AND JEFFS NOT WORLDLY ENOUGH TO PICK UP ANY SUS BEHAVIOUR AND HE’S TOO BUSY MENDING HIS EGO.

So Michelle’s acting choice makes perfect sense.

But then I watch it again, and it bothers me.

And I remind myself about the ending and how it makes sense.

Then I get irritated about my irritation.

And then I get irritated by how irrational my irritation is.

I’M IN A PERPETUAL LOOP OF IRRATIONAL ANGER OVER SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T MATTER.

That in a nutshell is the beauty of the show Community.

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I sat down with my neighbours and their teenage kids watching my three favourite princess movies from the 90s, and out of all of them, Pocahontas aged the worst.

It aged so badly.

I remember the hard hitting racism, the lack of sugar coating with casual genocide that they didn’t shy away from, but OH MY GOSH, WHAT THE HECK IS THIS ROMANTIC INTEREST WITH JOHN SMITH.

He’s singing about murdering every native he sees, right up to the point where he finds one hot.

And the audience is supposed to… be ok with this?

GOSH.

I remember Pocahontas having bad taste in men, but this is unrealistic. The teenagers who were watching it were booing John Smith every time he was on screen, and calling him gross. These kids are not brainwashed the same way I was as a young person. It warmed my heart.

The next generation are alright.

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I’m currently writing a lesson plan for my Bible Study about Ecclesiastes, and I can’t help but make memes. Also, there’s my artwork I clearly also must share.

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Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti

I know I read this book in 2018 but there is something about it that lives in my head rent free.

So, in general it’s a fun ride book for teens about kids with somewhat mediocre covert powers which they work together to use in clever ways. The main plot is they’re trying to save a character’s dad from a drug lord, a duffle-bag full of money gets mixed up and they have to try to get themselves out of a pickle they caused themselves.

Other than a few touching moments, nothing too deep, it’s just a fun ride.

Except the drug in question is ridiculously cheap.

And exponentially unprofitable.

If they had made up a drug. I don’t know, a purple crystal meth and called it amethyst. I could have just gone for a ride, but no, they’re caring around tens of thousands of dollars worth of something made from ingredients you buy at a hardware store. There would have been hundreds of clients the aforementioned dad was selling to for this to make any sense.

This book was clearly written for kids who probably don’t have deep chats with their local drug dealers. I understand I am not the target audience. But anyway, go get through the book I imagined that the duffle bags were actually filled with Home Depot gift card vouchers.

And now that this mental image is stuck in my head, it should be stuck in yours too.

You’re welcome.

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Why can’t we treat religion with the same tenderness, curiosity and freedom as we do fan theories.

Christianity already has the same language - cannon, lore, etc. It wouldn’t be such an added stretch to refer to doctrine as head-cannon and sermon as fan theories. Imagine if we could just bounce what-ifs and maybes at the wonder of how the universe works and our place in it, what vibrations do, why the colour purple feels magic and if a sentient creation energy cares about my hairstyle today. For some reason, we can ponder things about it in our favourite stories but not the story we currently live in.

I think it also has to do with how we view the world is, for some reason, intwined deeply in our identity. For example, I give my Twilight opinion that Renasberry and Rosalie should just abandon everyone else and become plutonic life partners. This opinion is met with “your ideas are dumb and you don’t deserve opinions.” How do I feel? Exhilarated. Thrilled. This is the passionate conflict that gives me life. Now, what if I say that I believe we are both infinitely insignificant in this universe except for love, and I am told the same thing? I don’t know how I would feel. It hasn’t happened yet.

But, seeing as there are people who will cry during discussions of whether the talking-snake villain origin story is literal or metaphorical, I imagine that it would deeply saddens me eventually. Which is sad. I wish we could dream, and ponder and imagine without being called heretical or be accused of spreading “dangerous theology”. Imagine being able to approach our faith asking genuine questions, without needing it to be approved by the fan club coordinators or the publishers (who, by the way, never met the authors in person.)

Because I have so many Bible fan theories.

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My main problem with Anne With an E

For those of you who watch Anne With an E, you would know that season one is an adaptation of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

And a fine adaptation it is.

I thought their take on it was gripping, entertaining, modern. There’s a lot they changed, including making Marilla and Matthew far more progressive than they are in the novel, whose original incarnations were strict conservatives. They added more action, added flash-backs reminding us that Anne was a very traumatised girl, and gave us small glimpses in the dangers of being an orphan during that time, and in fact, any time throughout history, even now.

However, there was one little detail that bothered me.

Now, I completely understand that they changed this to suit a modern audience, an audience who is far more concerned with social injustice than the happenings of a small country town, an audience who expects more sexual connotations, an audience who cannot relate to a conservative older person. I understand, I appreciate this and enjoyed the season regardless. One thing that got under my skin, however, was the added romantic background to Matthew Cuthbert, and gave greater emphasis to Marilla’s. Again, they did it to suit a modern audience. And this is what bothers me -

A modern audience can’t comprehend someone good being someone single.

This. But we see it all the time - our amazing friend who, by their mid-thirties still hasn’t had their first boyfriend. Our aunt figure, who is both mother and friend, who simply happens to have never found someone. These people are in our lives, yet for us, we believe in ourselves that if there has never been any romantic interest in our lives, there must be something wrong with us.

To be fair, this irritation speaks far more about my view of society than the show itself. I understand that from their marketing point of view, and with all the other changes they had made, this was a change they would have had to make also. And I understand.

I just wish they didn’t have to.

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This is something everyone should think about. Be honest. Be kind.

When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present really thinks that they can change the future by doing something small.

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Nature vs Nurture

Nurture: being trained from infancy to avoid conflict and hurting people's feelings, even if it means sacrificing an appropriate level of honesty

Nature: when my lecturer asks if we're listening, I respond with "your voice is causing us actual pain."

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Wait a second Star Trek...

Has it bothered anyone as much as it bothers me how in Star Trek, humans are the only multicultural species? Every alien race has their ideologies - Klingons as warlords, Vulcan worships logic, the Ferengi seek prophet above all else. There are fractions and splinter groups and rebels, but never a collection of ideologies.

This implies that all other cultures have been wiped out to achieve progress.

These species, all of them in the known Trek universe, have only been able to make it to the evolutionary state they are in by wiping out the competition. To create a unified planet, all must follow one sole ideology or perish. Earth, Earth is the only planet to achieve unity in diversity. The implications are terrifying if you think about it. We, out of all species, have valued diversity, but the audience knows that we, as a species are terrible at it. Wars, borders, segrication, racism, yet in the Trek universe, we are the best the universe has to offer.

And maybe, just maybe, that's the point they are making.

Every race has an ideology that they cling to that catapults them into the next advancement. Perhaps that is the message of Star Trek - in order to advance, our race must embrace unity in diversity above all else. Only then will war among us cease, and we can band together to build technologies of free food and free energy that allows us to explore the galaxies. This will become the supreme ideology that will make humans known throughout the universe.