seidmadr-secrets

[seidmadr-secrets]

mildly insane stormlight take time

in defending moash's attempts -- both unsuccessful and successful -- to kill elhokar, the moash defender argues that the correct response to incompetence, trauma, and deep-rooted insecurity is death, and that once a person has done bad things they are fundamentally irredeemable and unchangeable.

this is amplified by the fact that alethkar is a monarchy and elhokar did not choose to gain power. his crime was being a weak ruler--not a malicious one, simply weak and easily misled--while having been thrust suddenly into the position and lacking meaningful role models.

elhokar was decidedly a shit king. alethkar was better off led by jasnah. but deciding someone who isn't even evil should die for convenience's sake is evil tbh

[seidmadr-secrets]

D&D 3.5 with a bunch of different source books and a spiral notebook with house rules we were expected to know (turned each weapon into a skill, instead of a feat tree for instance) is probably the most complex game I have played.

Because the game where every single weapon hit has to register separate results for pain, trauma, blood loss, rate of blood loss increase, and difficulty increase on the death roll (plus, have to check for permanent damage, loss of function, risk of amputation, balance and a bunch of others based on which of the more than 20 hit locations you struck) was a bit too convoluted for me to actually play.

There's an evil twin to "has only ever played Dungeons & Dragons and thinks all tabletop RPGs are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons" that lives somewhere in the vicinity of "went straight from Dungeons & Dragons to rules-light storygames and thinks Dungeons & Dragons represents the high end of tabletop RPG complexity". Like, buddy, you have no idea.

[seidmadr-secrets]

Let’s sing loudly for mama 🖤

[seidmadr-secrets]

Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."

[seidmadr-secrets]

I absolutely love this take, but I'm reading her as someone who has learned the hard way to cope with autism. None of what anyone around her does really makes sense, but she is highly intelligent and she has learned by rote how to deal with things.

That said, these aren't exclusive. And while the Stormlight would heal her, she might still be an egg, and that hasn't kicked in.

transmasc jasnah... performing femininity so perfectly because, like so much of how she presents herself, it's just another mask of conformity

[seidmadr-secrets]

“protect children” <- reactionary drivel basically every time

“be kind to children” <-radical thinking that causes way more arguments than you would ever imagine

[seidmadr-secrets]

change does not come from a place of comfort

[seidmadr-secrets]

me when we start eating billionaires and i have to kill gomez addams

[seidmadr-secrets]

Interview with Brandon on Wind and Truth (and more)!

Recently we had a chance to sit down with Brandon and ask him some questions! Naturally most of them focus on Wind and Truth, so for spoiler reasons teasers are below the cut.

psst, are they gone? good, good. anyway, marketing™ time...

Want to hear about Hoid's dating life? How about pedantry over the definition of "God Metal"? Or perhaps serious topics like how Brandon decided who should hold Odium are more up your alley? All these answers and more await you!

...And also RAFOs. There were lots of RAFOs. But fewer than you might expect!

Besides, we kept the video under an hour, by our standards that's practically short. So really what excuse do you have? (Don't answer that.) Watch today and cure your brainworms!*

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This video is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any brainworms.

[seidmadr-secrets]

Shrug and move on. My mutuals circle isn't tight enough for me to vent there. I might, in theory, send it to discord pals. But I can't remember any fandom take that both annoyed me enough to make me care, and also want to share that view.

i actually need to know people's thoughts on this because at least in my experience the answer to this has drastically changed since i was on tumblr in the 2010s and its driving me fucking insane

*im talking about fandom takes specifically. not someone being horribly evil about a real-life issue or or blatantly factually incorrect. literally just harmless fandom disagreements or differing interpretations of a text/character/etc.

[seidmadr-secrets]

"This isn't a machete. It's a brush knife. Says so on the packaging."

But yeah. Seriously, this is shit. All imprecise laws like this just gives the legal apparatus the power to arbitrarily attack people at will, and let others go.

This headline makes me feel like I'm in a dream. Like, I know they just mean that there wasn't a specific law against machetes before because why would there be who the fuck just carries a machete around, and that after this they're updating their knife laws, but for some reason I see this and my brain automatically goes "man, they must have had a pro-machete stance before this, all those people who just carry machetes around Melbourne all day must be so upset"

[seidmadr-secrets]

Self-indulgently turning over some thoughts about “comparing apples and hand grenades”

[seidmadr-secrets]

"there are only two sexes, it's literally third grade biology!" and pronouns are taught in kindergarten and you dont seem to understand those either

[seidmadr-secrets]

Like this? Elevated crosswalks that double as speed bumps?

They are really neat, and the best ones also include narrowing of the roadway, as that slows down the traffic even further. But you need to think more about drainage, since it becomes a dam in case of heavy rains.

This is a friendly reminder that none disabled people often do benefit from the same accommodations disabled people benefit from.

[seidmadr-secrets]

Just consider the fact that Vetinari wears the lilac for a second.

It’s one hell of a political statement, coming from a man who is typically all about being very subtle and understated and keeping his cards close to his chest. Just consider how much of a— aha… ballsy move that is.

He’s openly stating with each passing year that he believed in the Glorious Revolution, that he believed that Lord Winder should have been assassinated, that he believed that police brutality on that scale needs to be stamped out once and for all.

That he believed, and still believes, that unfit rulers should be overthrown.

He meets with aristocrats and the “perennial waverers” as they are termed in the book with a lilac bloom pinned to his robe. He wears a symbol of the hopes and dreams of his youth, every year.

It almost reads as a throwaway statement at the end of an incredibly emotional book, but it’s far from it. There’s so much meaning in the fact that Vetinari wears the lilac and visits the little graveyard each year under the cover of darkness. Is it any wonder that he wound down a corrupt City Watch, and is so vehemently against the prospect of war and loss of life?

[seidmadr-secrets]

Okay okay, listen, Night Watch is an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. It’s done so well I want to scream. Not only do we, the readers, know that the revolution will end in tears, the protagonist of the story knows it too! Vimes goes into this with the exact same expectations as the reader of here we go, we know we’re in a tragedy, we’re know we’re doomed by the narrative. AND YET, AND YET as the story goes on, you start to hope that maybe, just maybe, something will be different this time.  Even Vimes starts to entertain the idea, but every time this happens, you get reminded (by the History Monks) that No. This is only going to go one way. This. is. a. Tragedy.  BUT STILL. These are good people and look, some things have gone better this time, maybe it’s enough? Vimes always wins in the end, doesn’t he? And so you HOPE and by hoping, you wilfully forget what you’ve been told again and again, that this is a tragedy.  AND THEN THEY GET SO CLOSE. SO FREAKING CLOSE that when it all goes wrong you feel surprised, even though you were told from the very beginning how it was going to go. It’s insane. It’s Terry Pratchett at his finest. Its’s a goddammed masterpiece.