shaynarlambert

[shaynarlambert]

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."

[shaynarlambert]

[shaynarlambert]

PLEASE do yourself a favour and check out this wikipedia-styled template for google drive, made by @ Rukidut on twitter

I decided to try to sort my ideas and whats canon regarding my ocs with this and ITS PERFECT. IT ALL FEELS SO CONRETE. and i sure as hell AM Going to continue to use this with every single OC I have until google drives is set ablaze- Just!!!!!!!!

Also; link directly to the doc, just copy the file and you have your own lil template!!!!

[shaynarlambert]

I know most people on here don't like to go to the gym because you're all gay nerds. I like to go to the gym. For the purpose of understanding this post please try to imagine that you, too, enjoy going to the gym so that you can empathize with my point here.

Anyway, so imagine you are going to the gym. You're pumped about the concept of getting some muscle on you. Plus, the gym has this "lift weights every day!" challenge with a feasible plan to slowly and safely increase the amount of weight you can lift by the end of the month. Cool!

So anyway you go there, and you're having a good time. But then you notice something. Some people are coming in with these guys in shirts that say LIFT FOR HIRE. You're curious, and you notice over time that some people are actually paying these guys to come in and do the lifting challenge for them.

"Huh," you say to your mega hot, muscled gym buddy. "That's so weird. What's in it for the people paying these guys?"

"Dunno," says your friend, mid bicep curl.

"Um, actually!" says the gym owner. "Some people are disabled, so the only way they can lift weights it to pay LIFT FOR HIRE, inc."

"But wait," you say. "They still aren't lifting the weights though? Paying someone else to lift for you doesn't mean you've lifted the weights."

The gym owner gasps. "How could you SAY that?"

"Because... it's true?" you say. "Uh, if you pay guys to lift your weights, that's probably really good for the guys you are paying. But it's not going to develop your ability to lift at all. Your muscles aren't going to grow, you're just going to lose money and get no results."

"That's ABLEIST," they say. "How DARE you! Some people are LITERALLY paralyzed, did you think of that?"

"Well, yeah, some people are, and that means definitionally they can't lift weights," you explain. "And paying someone else doesn't change that. Maybe if they wanted to like, move something in their house it would make total sense to hire these guys! But if you hire them to do your workout you get nothing, because the purpose of a workout is personal development. I'm not morally condemning people who do it, but it seems like a waste of money when this event is, again, about improving one's personal abilities."

"This is absolutely DISGUSTING, CLASSIST rhetoric!" the gym owner roars, and then turns to one of the LIFT FOR HIRE guys, "Pay no attention this disgusting person, dear sponsor, we support your business and we totally want you to keep funding our gym!"

"Sponsor?" says your hot muscled friend who was way too busy actually doing their workout and getting gains to engage in dumb discourse. "Oh, now it makes sense."

"Shut up, you don't understand our love!" says the gym owner, before sloppily making out with a LIFT FOR HIRE guy in front of you.

Anyway, that's what learning about the whole AI nanowrimo controversy was like for me.

[shaynarlambert]

:(((

[shaynarlambert]

My friend was messing with Never Gonna Give You Up on her record player and she sped it up. It beCAME A FREAKING MAGICAL GIRL THEME.

[shaynarlambert]

i fear a lot of ppl confuse “was this character’s death well written and good for the story” with “did i like it, personally”

[shaynarlambert]

There are many sweet, soft moments in this book, and they all had me going 🥹😭🥰🥹

Pick up this book as soon as you can, y’all. It has All of the Feels.

The Keeper of Lonely Spirits (2025) | link to theStoryGraph

I love when my friends draw fan art of my book 🥹 @shaynarlambert drew this moment from The Keeper of Lonely Spirits when the main character brings a new friend back to her home after a ghost-related incident and worries himself over her twisted ankle, and then he FEELS FEELINGS (the horrors!!) because she teasingly calls him "grandpa" for worrying about her

here's the whole thing all together 💖

if you want to read a cozy, spooky fantasy about an old immortal ghost-hunter who flips out over feeling strange new feelings like "friendship" and "affection," keep an eye out for The Keeper of Lonely Spirits in 2025

link to theStoryGraph | link to goodreads | link to hardcover & eBook preorder | link to audiobook preorder

[shaynarlambert]

Different Stories Resonate with Different People

[shaynarlambert]

Jane Austen: so, you go to Mr Collins' house and Elizabeth is there alone. She welcomes you politely, but she looks---troubled.

Colonel Fitzwilliam: and of course she does, after everything I said to her-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: do I sense if she is mad at me specifically or it is just her headache?

Jane Austen: roll an Investigation Check.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *grimacing* it's a three.

Jane Austen: just her headache.

Caroline Bingley: *derisively* she only looks like she wants to stab you, Darcy.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *shrugs* I guess I am too nervous to really give her a proper look.

Jane Austen: what do you do next?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: well, I-I tell her, "In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

Jane Austen: Elizabeth blushes. She is absolutely stunned.

Georgiana Darcy: that is good, right? Right?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: I tell her that even if her family is--not ideal-

Charles Bingley: *making a face*

Caroline Bingley: *playfully disgusted frown* and I made my character romance you?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: -and I might be acting impulsively, I just have to let her know that I love her. That's it.

**Silence**

Jane Austen: *smacks her lips* okay-

Charles Bingley: *histerical laughter* I don't like the way you said it-

Colonel Fitzwilliam: it's an immediate natural one, yes? Please tell me it's immediate.

Georgiana Darcy: shhhh!

Jane Austen: give me a Persuasion Check-let me tell you, you have to roll very high.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: figures-very well-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *beat*

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *flatly* natural one.

Colonel Fitzwilliam: JUSTICE!

Jane Austen: *claps her hands* you make your grand love confession, but Elizabeth stops you and immediately rejects you.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: ouch.

Jane Austen: she tells you that she could never marry the person that hurt her sister and destroyed Wickham's future-

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *dawning horror* I had forgotten they had talked, fuck-

Jane Austen: and, finally-

Charles Bingley: there is more? He is already dead-

Jane Austen: Elizabeth looks at you dead in the eye and says: "From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

Fitzwilliam Darcy: damn.

Caroline Bingley: *dying of laughter under the table*

Charles Bingley: I do not know if I can resurrect you after that.

Georgiana Darcy: I knew it, I should have given you Bardic Inspiration-

[shaynarlambert]

[shaynarlambert]

I just learned yesterday that Pikachu, my favorite Pokemon, was originally designed not by Ken Sugimori (he only finalized the design), but by a female graphic designer named Atsuko Nishida. 

Also after googling her, I found out that she’s also designed Sylveon–another favorite PKMN of mine. She’s also illustrated some very pretty Pokemon cards!!

Thank you Ms. Nishida! :-) May you get more credit and love for your contribution to the Pokemon franchise.

[shaynarlambert]

one thing i've always understood as Akira Toriyama's influence on manga, even if just assumption on my part, was how his cartooning came to bear when he started writing pure action manga. when I think of his contemporaries I think of overblown special moves like Saint Seiya or the gory fist clusters of FotNS

to me it seemed what Toriyama brought to the table was the satisfaction of clarity in martial arts

when you read his fight scenes, which may have become notorious when animated for dragging on, there's no question about what's happening in the action

a clear kick to the jaw

a clean line of action on Yajirobe's slice

I first noticed this clarity pretty quickly early on in the General Tao fights during the red ribbon arc, where entire fight scenes playing out with these clear motions on the pages

Even as it got more detailed later on, the clarity stayed

clear hits on clear fight scenes

and dirtier but still completely legible lines of action

And when he started introducing the big over the top special moves we got the same thing quite often in DB: that simple visual clarity amplifying the excitement

i'm not super coherent on it right now, i'm not the biggest shonen action fan all the time and maybe Toriyama didn't introduce the world to visually clear and interesting fights in manga.

but when I see any action manga showing off clean fight choreography or sick ass lazer beams that show off clear shockwaves of destruction, i'll always be thinking of the GOAT

RIP Akira Toriyama

[shaynarlambert]

Hey, y’all! My buddy @connan-bell is an indie artist, and this is his new game. Make (us) Believe is an imagination-based card game about narrating crazy characters through even weirder scenarios. It’s TTRPG meets Apples to Apples, and it’s super fun!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/355347892462

[shaynarlambert]

Writetober 2023 Day 7: Craft

[shaynarlambert]

Writetober 2023 Day 6: Golden

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Writetober 2023 Day 5: Flies