#on our screens in real life

[madootles]

dramatic eyes. dramatic lips. drama on the cheeks.

sketch

[lemissingmask]

We need at least one more season of Leverage Redemption so Hardison and Breanna can take out AI designed to replace art forms (all of them), and Eliot can punch a few tech billionaires and politicians in the face.

[bxtchyfukei]

At this point it’s literally just there for good publicity points, don’t fucking convince me otherwise.

[immoralkombat]

i'm going to be so mentally ill about evil ninja mime and fire lord johnny cage now <3

[icewindandboringhorror]

examining a seemingly normal image only to slowly realize the clear signs of AI generated art.... i know what you are... you cannot hide your true nature from me... go back where you came from... out of my sight with haste, wretched and vile husk

[mantisgodsdomain]

Playing 3DS games after having seen the overall fandom response to release and long-term impact and the way it's looked back on and such is... bizarre, honestly? Like, maybe it's just because we got our introduction to gaming in the 3DS era, but it's incredibly strange to know that games we knew and loved and would have considered relatively mainstream just... didn't stick in people's minds.

Like, take the Gen 6 Pokemon games. Those were great games! One of the single things about X/Y/OR/AS that we don't see people talking about but that stuck in our mind was how the developers made an effort to make it so that every single Pokemon in the games prior was spread between just those four games! We remember that just the sheer variety of potential Pokemon available was enough to get us a start into challenge runs simply by virtue of how much variety could be added to a playthrough by the sheer amount of potential on offer!

We remember spending hours just... hunting around the region to figure out where those last Pokemon we needed to fill the 'dex were, wandering around to try and find Hidden Ability pokemon from Horde battles, getting to actually interact with our Pokemon in Pokemon Amie.

Yeah, there were more obscure games out there, and yeah, they impacted us as well - Pocket Card Jockey stands out in this regard, as an extremely fun game that we're pretty sure was played by maybe three people, maximum, but it's not quite the same. These were games that we played ourself! These were games we saw other people playing, that we played with people over the internet, that felt like they were well-known! We were under the impression that these were mainstream interests, not Niche! it feels... singularly bizarre to realize that, for the majority of people out there, this game was a forgettable disappointment.

[isa-ah]

been following you since PRE bubblegum karkat days and it’s been really nice watching you grow and heal and whenever i see you on my dash and think of your growth it reminds me of my own healing journey. i find that really nice

HAHA that was AGES ago dude. my god. i cant believe youre still around, that was like, the worst of it LOLOL weve both probably come a looong way since then, yeah. life used to be abysmal but now ive got my hubby and mother in law and were moving to nola next month so theres nothing to fear =')

[dinitride-art]

Mike and Will both would’ve died in season one if someone didn’t save them. They both have dramatic near death experiences that are set apart from everyone else. Will needed cpr when they found him in the library, and Mike actually jumped off a cliff. Those two situations both went far enough that it would have been too late for them to save themselves. And that’s why either of them dying at the end of the story doesn’t make sense. They’ve already almost died. They were already too far over the precipice to turn back by themselves.

Maybe a conclusion to this could be the two of them learning how to live by themselves. In the monologue Mike says that, “[he] doesn’t know how to live without [El].” And while Mike’s just saying whatever he can in that moment, what if there’s truth in that statement? What if he doesn’t know how to protect himself. How to not jump off a cliff and be caught? And Will’s hated accepting help for a while now. But always has to rely on people to save him in the end. Maybe Will’s going to figure out how to protect the people around him- without putting himself in harms way.

Maybe the conclusion to this story is learning how to save yourself. To love yourself as much as everyone else does so you can protect them too. Strength doesn’t come from self sacrifice. Not in this story. Barb, Bob, Eddie- they didn’t run away. They didn’t make sure they themselves were safe. And all their deaths have caused has been pain. Being the hero gets you killed. But trying to live? Will reaching out for his mom when he’s stuck in the Upside Down? She came to find him. Whether they believed her or not. Will was alive, and she went to save him. And when El was on her own in the woods, Hopper put eggos in a box. He took her in, and kept her safe. From everyone- maybe a little too much at times- but he went to her. And he protected her.

But Nancy’s right. “They aren’t little kids anymore.” They’re not going to have someone to protect them all the time. They’re going to have to be strong enough to protect themselves. Strong enough to live. Not sacrifice themselves to save everyone else.

[raineandsky]

#31

Getting into a villain’s lair has never been so easy. The hero more or less just walked in—there’s no security, the place in plain view. She’s half expecting to find the villain already putting cuffs on his hands when she finds him in this maze.

She finally—finally—comes across another human being lingering at the end of one of the endless corridors. One of the villain’s henchmen.

He spots her before she can hide, and he throws her a welcoming smile. “Ah, [Hero], right?” His voice echoes slightly across the space. “[Villain]’s just the third door on your left. Can’t miss it.”

She doesn’t trust this in the slightest. She slowly shuffles towards him, cautious. “What, you’re just giving me your boss’s location?”

The henchman shrugs. “He wants to see you. Big fan and all.”

“... of me?” the hero asks disbelievingly. She’s finally close enough to him, and he leans forwards slightly, lowering his voice. 

“Look, he’s not really a villain,” he says quietly. He checks down the corridor nervously, ensuring the two of them are alone. “He’s a nice dude. It’s just his birthday, y’know? He wanted to pretend to be this big scary guy for his big day.”

The hero can’t believe this. “So I’m not… arresting him?”

“Oh, no, he wants to be arrested. That’s part of it,” The henchman snorts amusedly, “unless he whoops your ass, which I doubt he ever could. Let him have this for today, please? Just play along.”

“Fine,” the hero snaps shortly, and the henchman beams, “but if you’re saying this to try and get my guard down, it won’t work, okay? The moment I think he’s actually a threat he’s going down. You too.”

The henchman nods quickly. “Of course.” He gestures down the corridor next to him. “Third door to the left.”

She rolls her eyes in exasperation as she sets off past him. Hopefully this means today’s job is easy.

[highfantasy-soul]

So with the news that Netflix has cancelled Shadow and Bone season 3 and the Six of Crows spinoff, I feel extra justified in supporting the changes made to the show, specifically the advancement of Kaz's revenge story and Wesper. (This also goes for the Wheel of Time show that I feel shares many similarities to the process of adaptation that S&B faces)

In this day and age, showrunners can't expect 7 seasons of 24 episodes anymore. They have to cram as much into the (shortened) seasons they do get as they possibly can - which is where I and so many others get the frustrating feeling that they aren't sitting in the moments as long as we want them to.

BUT, script writers are having to work within insanely small parameters which makes sprawling fantasy stories (specifically ones based on books and with heavy internal dialogue and a huge cast of characters spread out over the world) extremely difficult to tell without having to cut massive sections to streamline the story or fast track some things/make things much more obvious than is shown in the book (as the internal monologues take care of clearing up confusion in written media).

So the frustration with ending 'slow burn' romances in visual media, while objectively I agree that it sucks we don't get more time to explore the character's feelings for one another, I'd much rather have canon, on-screen Wesper than another 'queerbait' flirtation that those who haven't read the books could just interpret as two guys being pals. Both Jesper and Wylan are side characters to the side characters in the show - they just couldn't get as much time to develop their relationship as say, a show with only two main characters who are the slow burn romance.

I'm glad the Crows got their due in the show - I felt they were all so incredibly in-character even doing things that weren't in the books (as of course, the Crows weren't in the Shadow and Bone books at all) and I love that we got to see more of Matthias in prison and Kaz got his revenge on Pekka in a wonderfully book-accurate way.

People who want one-to-one on-screen adaptations with books seem to ignore the logistical factors showrunners face with their shortened episode counts and the threat of cancellation looming over just about every single first season a show gets now. (Honestly, it's a miracle that Wheel of Time got a 3 season deal to start with so the showrunners could plan out three full seasons to make their bid to keep going with the story as Shadow and Bone didn't even get that).

Should we demand better from companies like Netflix that continually cut budgets and axe shows despite their massive popularity so they can save money? Yeah, duh. But let's put our anger and frustration where it deserves: on the powers that be, not those who are desperately trying to write a meaningful story in those terrible conditions.

Kind of a huge part of the writer and actor strikes was against these practices that make it so difficult for artists to make a consistent living in conditions that can sustain art rather than just content. We've still got a ways to go, but in the mean time, I'm going to enjoy the work they are able to create and view it from a more grounded perspective, understanding that they have time, monetary, and casting constraints they've got to work within.

If you want slow burns, go to books where authors have an infinite number of pages they can stretch the romance out in and you get all the juicy inner dialogues. For now, slow burn anything isn't really possible in the visual media sphere - not ones that are guaranteed to come to fruition at least.

[mummer]

great hader quote. have always appreciated how this show writes and most importantly FILMS violence. its always kind of mundane, this sort of everyday thing, sometimes shocking or disturbing or even breathless, but never ever cool or exciting for its own sake. lots of long takes, lots of still takes, just letting it unfold without visual judgement. which puts the impetus on the audience to judge it. hey i think this guy might be good at directing tv shows

[here-there-everyfuckenwhere]

I saw that new Elvis biopic in cinemas a few days ago, and I think now that I’ve gone away and thought about it, I can finally say why it sucked so much ass.

No offence if you liked the movie, I can totally see why it would appeal to a lot of people (there were a LOT of really great things going for it, actually. The cast were amazing, it looked amazing, the soundtrack was.. great)

The musician biopic is becoming a really popular trend in Hollywood recently, and, don’t get me wrong, there have been some AMAZING ones in the past few years (Tick Tick Boom is probably my absolute favourite, and one of my favourite movies of all time. Period.). But, most of the time, these movies are extremely formulaic. They typically centre around a (typically white male) musician, who comes from seemingly “humble beginnings” and the first half of the movie is a feel-good, success story. Then Big Business Man In Big Business Man Suit seduces our all-American rockstar hero man to the dark, corrupted world of rock-and-roll, leaving his devoted wife/kids/family/ect. in the dust and everyone leaves the cinema after the second act like “poor little all-American rockstar man”

Idk... I think that’s the main reason I didn’t like Elvis. I liked all the weird hallmarks of Baz Luhrmann’s style that were scattered throughout the whole film (the fragmented time-skip-y style of storytelling, the almost obnoxious amount of glitter everywhere, the anachronisms that are a bit weird but can be excused by a casual “eh it’s a Baz Luhrmann film” and a shrug, ect.) but other than that, it just felt like a mass-produced rockstar biopic..

[clickedbait]

today's a long day for the life of a stay at home mother, but i will be around here or there. i'm going to jump between this blog and @sleazeballtm. everyone have good days!!! 🩷

[attapullman]

i can’t wait for the sleepover! thank you for doing this!!!

tj you sweet soul!

i’m so glad you’re looking forward to it! get yourself a sweet treat to enjoy all the delicious lil Lew bits we’ll be devouring!

my goal is always to make tumblr a fun place to be goofy and enjoy the things we love, so always happy to host a sleepover ✨

[noctude]

fine. fine. fine. here it is. DON’T watch this

mp3 download / youtube go nuts my friends.

also if you like this but you also hate it why dont you umm check out my real music i have a new instrumental album coming out soon :D

[video description under cut, written by @starberry-skies​]

[Video Description: A parody of the song "No Children" by The Mountain Goats, from the perspective of an Among Us imposter. The video begins with the title "No Amongus Babys" as synth music begins to play. The video show various Among Us screenshots and lyrics with typos and emoticons. The lyrics are:

"I hope that our small surviving crew Gives up on trying to catch us. I hope we come up with a failsafe plot to throw off all the proof they attached us. I hope the wires we mended Start an electrical fire! And I hope we disable the light fixture, I hope the impact is dire. And I hope the reactor a few rooms from here Someday blows up; And I hope that the broken airlock funnels me into space, And I never come back to this ship again!

In my life I hope I lie, And tell everyone you were a crewmate. And I hope you’re sus… I hope we’re both sus."

[Music break, and as the words “lalalallalalallla yayyy” sparkle on screen]

"I hope I murder a witness tomorrow, I hope they bleed all day long. Our crew says there's no one to trust but ourselves, We know too well they’re not wrong! I hope we sabotage quickly, I hope the tasks aren’t over, I hope you vent before I do, I hope we never get voted. And I hope when you vouch for me days down the line… You can’t find one true thing to say. And I hope that if I kill and I self-report, You’d let me just dig my own grave.

I’m in medbay… I am faking a task. You are coming down with me, Scan in unloveable scan. And I hope you’re sus I hope we’re both sus!"

The lyrics end, with the glittery text "i love among us". The rest of the text flashes in with cheesy effects, which read: "i'm noctude this one goes out to kal cabbagegunk he gets prophecies when feverish about among us its normal". End VD]

[vanessagillings]

I’m posting the ever-so-rare photo of myself alongside one of my characters based on my childhood because today is World Autism Acceptance Day, and I wanted to show my little corner of the internet who this particular autistic person is:  

I was officially diagnosed in February, at age 38 (I’m now 39). A lot of people thought I couldn’t be autistic.  Some people who know me in real life still don’t.  And until around 10 years ago, I didn’t think I could be either, because I was nothing like the stereotype media portrays. I was told that autistics lacked empathy (untrue), and never played make-believe (also often untrue) and only enjoyed STEM.  I was — and am — an empathetic artist -- and make believe?  I can spend days sketching finely bedecked bears brewing tea or carefully choosing the right words to weave tapestries of fiction — though perhaps my hyper focus was a bit of a red flag.  Even so, how could autism describe me?  I was a good student.  I got straight A's. I didn’t act out in class.  I can make eye contact…if I must.  And lots of girls hate having their hair brushed with an unholy passion, right?  Clearly I swim in sarcasm like a fish, so autism couldn't be why I was so anxious all the time, could it?

If someone had told me when I was younger what autism ACTUALLY is — instead of the nonsense I’d seen on screens — I would have seen myself in it.  I didn’t hear that autistics have sensory issues until I was in my mid-twenties, which is when I first began to really research autism symptoms, and I had almost all of them:  sensitivity to light, smells, fabrics, temperatures, textures, and certain touches, all of which make me feel anxious, I fidget (stim), I never know what the hell to do with my hands or where to look, I talk too little or too much, I have special interests, I have entire animated movies memorized shot-by-shot and can remember the first time and place I saw every movie I've ever seen but I often forget what I'm trying to say mid-sentence, I echo movies and tv shows (my husband and I have a whole repertoire of shared echolalias, making up about 20% of our conversations), I was in speech therapy as a kid, I have issues with dysnomia and verbal fluency, I toe-walk, I can't multitask to save my life, I like things just-so, I’m deeply introverted but not shy, I need to recover from all social interaction — even social interaction I enjoy — and I find stupid, every day things like grocery shopping, driving and making appointments overwhelming and intensely stressful, sometimes to the point where I struggle to speak.  It turns out, I am definitely autistic. My results weren't borderline. Not even close. And while these aren’t all of my challenges, and not everyone with these symptoms is autistic, it’s definitely something to look into if you present with all of these things at once. 

So why did it take me so long to get diagnosed? The same bias that exists in media threads through the medical community as well, and because I'm a woman who can discuss the weather while smiling on cue, few people thought I was worth looking into. Even after I was fairly certain I was autistic, receiving an official diagnosis in the US is unnecessarily difficult and expensive, and in my case, completely uncovered by my insurance.  It cost me over $4000, and I could only afford it because my husband makes more money than I do as a freelance illustrator — a job I fell into largely because it didn’t require in-person work; like many autists, I have been chronically underemployed and underpaid, in part due to physical illness in my twenties, which is a topic for another day.  But it shouldn’t be like this.  It shouldn’t be so hard for adults to receive diagnoses and it shouldn’t be so hard for people to see themselves in this condition to begin with due to misinformation and stereotypes. Like many issues in America, these barriers are even higher for marginalized groups with multiple intersectionalities. 

It’s commonly said that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.  This is why it’s called a spectrum, not because there’s a linear progression of severity (someone who appears to have low support needs like myself might need more than it seems, and vice versa), but because every autistic person has their own strengths and weaknesses, challenges and experiences, opinions and needs.  No two people on the spectrum present in the same way.  And that’s a good thing!  No way of being autistic is inherently any better than any other, and even if someone on the spectrum struggles with things I don’t — or can do things I can’t — doesn’t make them more or less deserving of respect and human dignity.

But speaking solely for myself, the more I learn about autism, the happier I am to be autistic.  I struggle to find words and exert fine motor control, but my deep passion and fixation has made me good at art and storytelling anyway.  I find more joy watching dogs and studying leaf shapes on my walks than most people do in an entire day.  More often than not, the barriers I’ve faced weren’t due to my autism directly, but due to society being overly rigid about what it considers a valid way of existing.  My hope in writing this today is that maybe one person will realize that autism isn’t what they thought — and that being different is not the same as being less than. My hope with my fiction is to give autistic children mirrors with which to see themselves, and everyone else windows through which to see us as we actually are.

If you’re interested in learning more about autism or think you might be autistic, too, I recommend the Autism Self Advocacy Network  autisticadvocacy.org and the following books:

What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic by Annie Kotowicz

We're Not Broken by Eric Garcia

Knowing Why edited by Elizabeth Bartmess

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD

Loud Hands edited by Julia Bascom

Neurotribes by Steve Silberman

(trigger warning: the last two contain quite a lot of upsetting material involving institutionalized child abuse, but I think it’s important for people to know how often autistic children were — and are — abused simply for being neurodivergent).

Thanks for reading 💛