out of context S7 screenshots I found on my laptop

titsay

Kiana Khansmith
d e v o n
todays bird
almost home
Peter Solarz
i don't do bad sauce passes

★

pixel skylines
noise dept.
hello vonnie
Xuebing Du
Three Goblin Art
NASA
Monterey Bay Aquarium

izzy's playlists!

Origami Around
sheepfilms
No title available
dirt enthusiast
seen from Türkiye
seen from India

seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany

seen from Germany

seen from Singapore

seen from Germany
seen from Greece

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Argentina

seen from Norway

seen from Argentina

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
@astrongcapablewizard
out of context S7 screenshots I found on my laptop
the full spectrum
Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.
@tearyeyedcat this was beautifully written, thank you for adding it!
Another excuse for me to post Head Writer of ATLA Aaron Ehasz’s great characters board:
THIS. I saw a post the other day that literally said if you do it to a fictional character, you’ll do it in real life.
No. Just NO.
I’m so glad someone put it into words.
In art, we can be fucking nuts.
Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you
A while ago one of those posts went by that was like “the leads of the previous show you watched are now in the show you are currently watching. how do they handle it?” and I was like ok the heated rivalry boys in black sails would just. Die. They’d just die. RIP.
But the more I think about it the more I think the opposite is where the comedy is.
Like:
What it looks like to me is that these churns of outrage aren't actually about anything that these creators say or do, so much as they are a kind of reflexive action in response to literally any kind of friction. Like an angry infected rash flaring up with pain when it is brushed by a feather.
The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!
But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.
There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.
And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!
It creates this fucked up upside-down bizarro logic wherein the corpos and the companies can transgress to almost literally any degree, as much as they want, as often as they want, but queer independent creators (and I cannot stress this enough: especially if they are not men) have to walk tightrope on a razor wire and may God help their souls if they ever put a foot wrong. We will shake and shake and shake the towers until they each fall down; I didn't like that step I think you were taking, how dare you believe you deserve to be up there!
These posts are sisters
— Jon Steinberg, co-creator of Black Sails
friend sent me an Instagram reel yesterday with 1000s of likes that was basically like "pride and prejudice is timeless actually because it's about an autism4autism romance 🥰" and then the creator proceeded to cite moments in the book and film where Lizzie and Darcy are "socially awkward" and....listen. I'm far from an Austen scholar, but I have taught Austen novels as an educator and this kind of psycho-pop analysis that views characters as individuals with autonomy over their actions, rather than tools in a story written at a particular time to say something about that time, pisses me off more than I can say without sounding like an asshole. I'm sorry but Darcy isn't rude and awkward and even cruel to Lizzie because he has autism, he says and does those things because he's a wealthy upper class land owning man raised to see a middle class woman from a large family with no male heirs like Elizabeth as inherently beneath him which he expresses to her multiple times because it is socially acceptable for him to do so in a society where someone like him is privileged above almost all others. He is "socially awkward" around her because of misogyny and classism (PREJUDICE) and she is "socially awkward" around him because a woman of her standing at that time simply wouldn't have had much to do with the gentry but to actually push back against the shit that Darcy says would be social suicide for her whole family so she protests the only way she can which is refusing his advances (PRIDE). not to be the "context collapse is the death of media literacy" guy. But this is the problem with the kind of head empty, let people enjoy things, if I can't relate to it what's the point type crowd. Youse think you're being so quirky justifying incoherent and anachronistic interpretations with your rampant individualism, ensuring that other people never confront anything that challenges them in these stories like patriarchal misogyny and classism. Pride and Prejudice becomes an "autism4autism romance", completely undermining the historical context of its status as one of the great social satires about the class and gender politics that Austen so expertly observed around her. This attitude is why we have nonsensical historical dramas that actively hate history like fucking edgy bdsm "Wuthering Heights", Bridgerton, The Buccaneers, and even a 2025 Frankenstein movie where the monster is just misunderstood and does no wrong uwu etc. because individual relatability and catharsis is king over anything actually saying anything about anything now. Everything is relatable and nothing is meaningful.
"Everything is relatable and nothing is meaningful" hits so hard, and the way so many shows and films and books are now happily going down that road and smoothing everything down and refusing to engage with the actual genre and context and type of story they're supposed to tell is so frustrating.
That's how we end up with a period drama/regency romance like Bridgerton which doesn't seem to understand its own premise - that this genre is supposed to be about the tension between its characters' very human quirks and desires and a very rigid society with lots of strict rules. But the show doesn't want to get into the dirty and complicated mechanisms of class issues, so every conflict has to be internal: Sophie isn't worried about becoming a mistress or marrying Benedict without his family's blessing because she knows there would be no way back to a normal life for a woman of her station, and she would have no protection if they eventually broke up, no she's worried because she's not sure she can trust Benedict's feeeelings and also she thought her daddy betrayed her and she thinks she's not worthy of love :( :( :(
And yeah you could say "it's just a silly fluffy show, it doesn't have to be that deep!" but I think it does, because not only does it make those stories less interesting and meaningful, it also makes them less entertaining and just plain bad at playing with the conventions of their intended genre.
That's also how we end up with so many romantasy novels which don't care about the fantasy part at all. They don't care about trying to play with an imaginary world or using it to say something interesting or meaningful about the real world, and they don't care about actually playing with the conventions of the genre to make the romance more engaging. It's just "what if they were insecure because of Past Trauma but one of them is a Paladin and the other a Fairy?". History and fantasy are just an added synthetic flavour, an aesthetic to add swords and pretty gowns which will look cool on Instagram but then it's completely hollow inside, and it's just really sad and we all deserve better?
i find it pretty limited when people see wuthering heights as just a love story, but i also tbh find it pretty limited when people say it's about a toxic relationship, like a lolita-esque tale where you're supposed to see beyond the pretty words and understand heathcliff and catherine's relationship as harmful and bad. i think wuthering heights is about lots of ways love and abuse can co-exist and isn't interested in drawing any clear lines about that. it's a book that doesn't give clear answers, and that's what makes it so compelling to me. the most poignant example for me is this :
(...) I heard Hareton sternly cheek his cousin, on her offering a revelation of her father-in-law's conduct to his father. He said he wouldn't suffer a word to be uttered in his [Heathcliff's] disparagement: if he were the devil, it didn't signify; he would stand by him; and he'd rather she would abuse himself, as she used to, than begin on Mr. Heathcliff. Catherine was waxing cross at this; but he found means to make her hold her tongue, by asking how she would like HIM to speak ill of her father? Then she comprehended that Earnshaw took the master's reputation home to himself; and was attached by ties stronger than reason could break - chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen."
hareton is undeniably abused by heathcliff, but catherine decides to respect that it's not how he sees it and let him have his own understanding of this relationship. is she right? it's what she thinks is right. the reader can decide what to make of it
and i find it frustrating to think that love of heathcliff is what kills catherine, like she dies from their #toxic love. she dies much more from trying to be a respectable wife to edgar, going against her nature and cutting her off from half her soul. sometimes it also feels like a reading of catherine's character that robs of her agency and makes her heathcliff's victim, and i really don't see her that way. i doubt catherine would have been happy living with edgar forever and never seeing heathcliff again
Hard agree - this is Gothic fiction and given over to all the things that frighten society.
Gothic writers use the environment and relationship with immediate surrounds as a manufestation of a character's inner world and choices. Which is to say, yeah, the book is about as subtle as a hammer that Cathy died from being stifled in her new life. She's happy when she's running wild on the moors. After she's married, the walls of her new estate and the confines of an orderly, society marriage hem her in and she fades away.
Totally agree. I've always found the general superficial online discourse around this book - that I love so much - really deeply annoying, and obviously the latest adaption has made things even worse lol
"Oh but this can't be a love story, those people are too mean!", "actually this book is kind of problematic and really romanticises abuse and unhealthy relationships?", "well this isn't meant to be a love story, it's just a criticism of the class system" ok can I introduce you to the world of nuances? Have we become so obsessed with neat little categories and tropes and hashtags that we can't accept that a novel and fictional characters can be beautifully complex and contain multitude? Why do you all talk like puritanical 19th century critics complaining that novels are corrupting the minds of impressionable young girls instead of teaching them good morals? Why are you expecting a work of art to give you answers instead of asking you questions?
The idea that this can't be a love story because the characters are "mean" or sometimes hurt each other is just so weird to me. Is love really only and always a 100% positive emotion which never hurts ever and can never make people do shitty things? Are only "good" people - whatever that means - able to love? They're just two poor kids clinging to each other in a bleak and abusive environment? They literally each have a big super famous speech where they declare that they share each other's soul and can't live without the other? Isn't that love? Yes, they don't always treat each other, and other people, right, and yes they do quite a few shitty things, and fuck up, but you can't deny they care about each other and see each other in a way that no one else does.
And the social criticism is tied into the love story: they love each other but can't get married in this world because they'd have nothing! Cathy literally says in her own big speech that she's marrying Edgar because she hopes to be able to use his money and her position to help Heathcliff, the true love of her life! And then she dies trying to be a perfect little wife while Heathcliff sadly proves her wrong and manages to get rich on his own, and we have to wait for the second generation to hopefully stop the circle of abuse. Emily Brontë isn't saying "wouldn't you loooove to fall in love with a brooding angry guy who abuses you and everyone around you and makes you die for you?" she's saying "look at what this society does to its children! To its women! To the people it excludes from its system! See the torments those two imperfect soulmates went through because they couldn't be together in the mortal world?" and sorry but that's a lot more interesting than if she was just trying to depict the perfect or the most toxic relationship or whatever some people seem to expect, and it kind of slaps
LET’S HAVE A CONCLAVE
it's true and you should say it.
coming out of the tags to say that some of us have been saying this for years and have been called all manner of degenerates, perverts, and pedophiles over it, and we really deserve an apology we will never receive
We DO deserve a fucking apology we'll never get, and not to soapbox, but lemme just throw out another fucking explanation of exactly why this shit keeps happening in the slim chance that it helps at least one person not fall for it: Fascism in ANY form will ALWAYS present itself as reasonable to YOUR sensibilities. It preys on a lot of things, your disgust reaction, your fear reaction, your own shame, your need for a tribe, your need to feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, your need to protect your resources, your need to boost your own ego, your need to feel better than others, and in my opinion, the worst thing of all that it can prey on is your WANT TO DO GOOD. It turns that Want To Do Good against you, gives you "acceptable targets" and sets you loose, thinking that you're being a fucking super hero. Fascism will ALWAYS feel okay when you're doing it because you understand why you're doing it because you've been told why you should be doing it by someone who's fucked the narrative to make you feel good about hurting other people because they've convinced you that you are protecting people by doing it!! Fascism tells you: "The sort of people who value a sex scene in a movie are perverts, and perverts are dangerous, right? Oh god... What if they're a rapist and that's why they like that sort of stuff? Yeah, that trans girl that made that post about movies needing sex scenes... She pisses in a diaper, that's fucking disgusting right? And she likes weird fiction... And diapers are meant for kids... So... Yeah... Exactly, you got it! See you figured out what she was too! So you should trust your gut with these people, you're really good at spotting them! You know when someone is evil! And you DEFINITELY should not listen to a pervert explain themselves, because... Right, exactly, what's the point? They're just going to lie about it and probably say gross shit to you." Did you catch how that worked? It let YOU make the conclusion. It let YOU answer the questions and start setting shit in stone in your own mind. And the next thing you know, you're using fiction as proof, anything outside of your own comfort levels as evidence, you've become an emotionally reactionary fascist who genuinely believes you are making the world better, and safer, for the people you love, and who love you in return. Fascism doesn't begin with violence, it begins with a kind hand held out in your direction from someone else who believes they're helping. You might not even realize you've fucked up. Ever. That's how it works. That's how it thrives.
THIS!!!
People probably already pointed this out but something I find really interesting about Severance is how little work the Innies actually seem to be doing lol. Obviously part of it must be for narrative reasons because it would be kind of boring to watch a bunch of people in suits crunch numbers all the time, and they do establish that they have quotas and perks if they meet them etc... but there also doesn't seem to be real sanctions if they don't? And in general the hierarchy seems less worried about them getting shit done than about keeping them in check and under control. They do spend a ridiculous amount of time doing mind numbing team building and running around corridors and getting into petty office drama and having little chats and their bosses seem pretty fine with that, encourage it even, as long as they behave.
And obviously I get that it's meant to be a commentary on bullshit jobs and corporate environment and how so many office jobs are more about showing up and being part of the culture and office life than about getting some actual shit done and everything, but it does make me wonder if the Macrodata Refinement Team might not actually be stuck in the Ultimate Bullshit Job because, what if their real job is just being Innies? What if the numbers actually mean nothing and their work tasks are useless and there is no macrodata to refine or whatever because their real job is just Being Here?
Because the show has been establishing that Lumon is experimenting with expanding the use of severance outside of work, we met the creepy senator's wife who clearly used it to give birth, and obviously there is the whole Gemma Mystery and the possibility they might be testing it on dead people, so what if the team is actually just a bunch of lab rats, stuck in this controlled environment, given just silly little tasks and basic enrichment to test out how humans are actually reacting to severance in the long run, but their actual work doesn't matter because that's not what their job is really about?
happy national holiday to those who celebrate
Crying bc the events of Pacific's Rim are literally happening right now. January 8 was the day Mako and Raleigh fought those kaijus in the Hong Kong double event. January 12 is the triple event where they close the breach. In two days we cancel the apocalypse.
JANUARY 12. ITS HAPPENING TODAY. ITS HAPPENING NOW. TODAY WE CANCEL THE APOCALYPSE!!!!!
When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain all.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex