i want life in every word

Em, she/her, 30s. Writer, cat mom, anxious pansexual disaster. Talk to me about Margaret Houlihan.

[emthought]

From Loretta Swit's needlepoint scrapbook

[writingrosesonneptune]

BEGGING people to realize that when you give critique (ex: beta reads and feedback exchanges), you are supposed to focus on the things you thought were executed well *just as much* as the things you thought needed work. If you just focus on the negative, the person you are critiquing will likely assume nothing they did was good, and in subsequent adjustments to the work may throw out the baby with the bathwater and get rid of all the elements that worked fine. If they don't give up altogether.

Critiquing is its own skillset that we have to hone! It is so important to be able to recognize not just mistakes, but also things the creator pulls off fantastically. This seems like an easy thing to notice, but there are A LOT of pieces to a work that when done right become almost invisible. They don't leap out at you like something that interrupts your immersion. That immersion itself is a sign of solid work, and it can be hard to recognize if you're not used to looking for it.

[mariekristina]

Yes, I would very much like a sponge bath. Please excuse my giggling, though, I have a bit of a crush.

[major-marg]

"When I talked about acting, my parents insisted it would never happen. All my young years, I listened to a lot of negative feedback. Why didn't I accept the string of negatives and go deaf to the voices inside me? Well, it's because I had this strong I'm-going-to-show-you attitude.

Some people think my big break came when I got the M*A*S*H series. Well, it wasn't. My break came when I left home. All my young life, my parents would ask: Who do you think you are? Well, I've finally found out."

- Loretta Swit

[thirdity]

“The writer’s audience is chronological. The actor and dancer perform in the present; if their work exists in the future it exists as memory, as legend. Whereas the canvas, the bronze, and, more durably because they exist in multiple, the poem, the sonata, exist not as memory but as fact; the artists who work in these forms, scorned or overlooked in their own time, can still find an audience.”

— Louise Glück, Proofs and Theories

[jace-targaryen]

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) dir. valerie faris + jonathan dayton

[whyenn-reader]

you are not immune to inventing an arbitrary set of rules that only you have to adhere to

[karolinactually]

[siderealglimmer]

THANK YOU DON’T MIND IF I DO

[ensign-ancic]

right......

[reagantheteenagewitch]

maybe if we keep speculating about mitch mcconnell more different repub senators will drop dead

[thelatecaptainpierce]

Top 5 Houlihawk Episodes (as voted by mashblr) #3: C*A*V*E

[churrotowns]

since it’s pride month, throwback to this beautiful cover and this wholesome interaction between two icons

[steelnail]

Are you free from your curse yet i miss you

[cal3ris]

is this gonna get me fired you think

[dyingroses]

M*A*S*H + text posts

[alansalda]

ALAN ALDA on the set of M*A*S*H (35mm)

[wanderingcoasties]

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”

— Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg commenting on how weird gendered defaults in entertainment are, and why we should think twice about them. Excerpted from this longer original post. (via 360degreesasthecrowflies)