waltzofthewifi

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the human mind is prone to catastrophizing when left unoccupied. And that’s why it’s important to always have a little Blorbo to rotate in your head. It acts as a protective charm of sorts to redirect your imagination away from harmful spirals

thoughts without Blorbo: oh my god I was so cringe in seventh grade why did I do that

thoughts with Blorbo: I haven’t considered the interactions with bleebus; I must rectify this immediately

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I’m about to make a comparison that y’all are gonna haaaaate me for, but here it goes. I struggle to fully blame Gale for Prim’s death, because I think a far more interesting read on Gale and on his “using Snow’s rulebook” is a study in a young man (an adult, mind, not a teenager, just, to get that out of the way) who has been abused by the system his whole life and is then given a sense of autonomy to fix it. He has every right to be angry, but he is, in a way, naive. His worldview (one that sees some people as collateral because of their allegiances) is informed by his anger and his sense of powerlessness, and designing the trap with Beetee allows him to grasp a sense of putting his skills to good use, of making a difference. And then, because the people he’s working for aren’t so different from the people who used to abuse him, and this isn’t hypothetical talk in the woods anymore, it all goes wrong. Gale talks a lot. Gale doesn’t do all that much: and he can’t! It’s not really his fault! But you can almost see how it’s easy to make these decisions in the abstract, when it’s not impacting you; when you’re not in the Games, or trapped in The Nut. Playing by Snow’s rulebook in any case is a dangerous game, because Snow was once angry and powerless too, and that doesn’t excuse him, but let’s not lose sight of Coin’s hand in this.

Okay, with me so far? Well, here comes the comparison you’re gonna hate. It’s not Katniss or Peeta’s fault that the man in District 11 is shot. It’s the Capitol’s fault. But let’s look at some similarities here: two angry (yes, Peeta is angry) kids who are trapped in an abusive system (and one from an abusive household) are given a shred of what looks like autonomy (money and a microphone) and they try (and Peeta in particular tries, by offering a yearly gift from their winnings) to use some of that autonomy to make things right — and people die. This is not to discount the differences in the way Gale, Katniss, Peeta are viewing the world and the people in it. This is most certainly not to say that designing a trap to take advantage of people’s compassion is anywhere near the same as offering people condolences and money.

This is to say that the real enemy is always the system that pits people against each other in such a way that one group’s good requires the destruction of another, whether you are being taught by said system or trying to resist it and being punished for it, or both: am I talking about the Capitol or the Rebellion? Yeah. Yes.

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Prim likes to catch Katniss up on all the gossip she missed while away on her hunting trips

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I love when there's characters that are pair bonded and you know that wherever one of them is the other is also gonna be there.

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I see some people thinking Jake saying "I'm the Librarian" means he's the only Librarian and something happened to the others, but I take it more as he knows Vikram came from a time when there was only one Librarian and he feels he has to give out "cultural shock" information slowly.

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Obviously, we haven't seen the characters interact onscreen, we just have to go off Charlie's single sentence about how Eve feels about her, but I like to think that rather than Eve just being a hater (because we know that isn't Eve) it's more similar to how Robby is with Samira in The Pitt.

I think she knows and fully believes Charlie has the potential to be a good guardian (and maybe she even told Jake to contact her to help Vikram) she just also sees that at this point Charlie doesn't entirely know how to think outside the box and needs an unconventional Librarian to help her do so.

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Finally caught up with Librarians: The Next Chapter

Love how they managed to capture the fun of the original TV show without making the new characters one-on-one for the originals

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"guys in a spaceship" is really one of the genres of all time. like no way dude i wonder what they're gonna do in the spaceship this week

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I have a weird question: Is chiefdom hereditary in Inuit communities? In the Northern Water Tribe, we know that Desna and Eska inherited their chief position from Unalaq- but I’m unsure about the Southern Water Tribe, maybe Sokka inherited the position from Hakkoda and then when Sokka died without issue, they held elections and chose Tonraq? Or maybe Sokka was democratically elected as well?

I’m sorry if I ended up rambling. It’s just that seeing Desna and Eska inherit their chiefdom really confused me because I always thought that it was an elected position

Traditionally, leadership in Inuit culture was determined by consensus, so basically a democratic election. Typically, the qualities that led people to choose you as a leader were your survival skills.

I've mentioned before that the Northern Water Tribe has more non-Inuit cultural influences than the Southern Water Tribe, so I've always just chalked up their hereditary leadership as being another example of that. Considering their proximity to Ba Sing Se, their emphasis on a strict hereditary chiefdom might be for the sake of projecting an image of centralized power, to help ward off their imperialistic neighbors to the south.

As for the Southern Water Tribe, I think they're actually a collection of small and independent villages, with each one having its own leader that's democratically elected; this is how they're portrayed in the "North and South" Avatar comics. This would explain why Katara mocked Sokka when he tried to claim he was a prince to Yue; it would be like the son of a small-town mayor declaring himself a prince. Plus, if leadership were hereditary, princedom would have been an internal struggle for Sokka, similar to Zuko. But Sokka's insecurity is never framed as not being worthy of being chief, but as simply lacking traditionally masculine skills.

I think Sokka eventually becoming the Southern Water Tribe Chief had more to do with his status as a prominent war hero than to his connection to his father.

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genres i'm tired of:

"feminist retellings" of stories that can already be considered feminist in their own right

"feminist retellings" that fumble the "feminist" plotline so bad it just turns misogynistic

"feminist retellings" that still center around and hinge on men

"feminist retellings" written by people who don't understand what feminism is

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World’s finest

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[ID: A cropped photo of page XIII from the book "Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture", reading: "As political texts, movies from Star Wars to Forrest Gump have their own set of ideological assumptions. If we view movies as being apolitical and having no ideological axe to grind, however, we will not see or understand their implicit political values and assumptions. It is easy to miss what we do not expect to find. Unnoticed and unquestioned assumptions are powerful, in part, precisely because they remain unnoticed and unquestioned, beyond the realm of critical examination. But what we regard—or more accurately, disregard—as trivial often contains the core values we accept as given. End ID.]

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Eliot Spencer in The Cooling Off the Job (S03E08) LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION (2021—)

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i think all the best sci-fi is the sci-fi that looks dirty and lived in. like yeah we could have space travel and lasers but people are still gonna leave dirty cups by the side of their sleep pod and get weird alien mud stuck on their boots and put off fixing that faulty light on the lower deck of the spaceship. its relatable. its humanizing.

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Peeta: I'd like to wake up with you every day for the rest of our lives.

Katniss: I wake up at 5am every day to go hunting.

Peeta: I'd like to see you at some point every day for the rest of our lives.

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I actually think Battinson has the best potential to bring out Bruce’s medical education when it comes to being Batman.

Keep in mind, it’s not that Bruce couldn't graduate med school. He just chose not to.

Battinson who can analyze a cut, determine the object used to inflict it, the intent behind it. And if you lie about it, he’ll know.

Battinson who’ll turn off his detective brain while at a scene, marching directly in someone’s face, — officer, offender, someone who just needs help and that's it, — and his voice is soft, which they know means bad. “Go see a doctor. Right now.”

Battinson who never leaves unless he makes sure everyone who needs medical attention at a scene gets treated accordingly.

He never says a word, just works, like ink on paper, hands capable of harm and healing of equal quantity. They feel safe.

Battinson who carries medical supplies on his belt. Narcan, Tylenol, insulin, bandages. An emergency scalpel.

Getting handed a tampon by him would be a religious experience.

ER doctors, from Park Row to the Narrows, don't know how, why, or when they started assisting the Bat on operating people. From civilian to Rogue. They just do.

He even gets his own pager.

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People losing it at the ‘pause button’ suggestion for Elden Ring are not prepared for my ‘tourist mode’ suggestion.

There should be a mode where people like me can just run around and look at the pretty landscape and soak in the atmosphere with the soundtrack. All NPCs and Bosses are still there, but instead of fighting you they stand still and do a lil wave 👋 as you admire them. Maybe some start reciting the game lore like they’re tour guides lol