Where Stories Gather @my-words-are-light - Tumblr Blog

You’ve heard of “i didn’t say it was good, i said i liked it,” get ready for “i said it had some technical problems & didn’t fully deliver on its themes, not that i didn’t like it”

elucubrare

#I voiced a criticism of some of its aspects#which in no way implies I did not like it#“and especially does not imply that I would like to hear a defense of it of the form 'shut up and let people have fun'”

REALLY endorsing these tags from galileosballs

vulturevanity

I think we need to kill the sentiment that people lose their right to personhood once they do something bad enough

vulturevanity

I don't know who needs to hear this but you need to stop dehumanising people even if those people are "abusers" or "creeps" because you need to understand that you are not immune to doing something equally as bad

Abusers and creeps are not some species of especially heinous animal or alien or monster wearing the face of a human. They're people. And you NEED to drill it into your head that they are people because you NEED to remember that people are capable of doingn heinous shit. And you are a person. And your loved ones are people.

By emotionally classifying people who have done heinous things as subhuman filth incapable of thinking and feeling and acting just like you and me, and by using that emotional dehumanization as a reason to deny those people any compassion or support on a systemic level, you risk becoming blind to abuse/violence perpetrated by someone close to you or even yourself. Because if "abusers don't deserve rights", then you won't ever want to admit or accept that you or a loved one is perpetrating abuse, and that makes stopping the abuse or preventing further abuse much harder. This is how you end up excuaing abusive behaviour on the grounds that, since you don't see someone as a disgusting subhuman pile of garbage therefore they can't possibly be An Abuser, Trademark

vulturevanity

And here'a the even harder pill to swallow: since the world isn't split into "abusers" and "good people", in the same way you or someone you love can inflict abuse/violence on others, the people who HAVE inflicted abuse/violence on others can, in fact, change and become better people

There is no bottomless chasm of moral uncleanliness that someone can run off and fall into and get stuck in forever. People can do better. Yes, even those people. You HAVE to accept this. Otherwise not only is there no motivation for anyone to try and do better (which is when people become stuck in a cycle of violence and abuse they don't want to escape), but your idea of a perfect justice system doesn't look any different from Literal Christian Hell. And I HOPE you understand that Literal Christian Hell is, to put it very lightly, not a good justice system.

trickedsparrow

Unchecked and fear-driven dehumanization is the brick foundation for fascism.

radicalgraff

"Fuck the Colony / Close Pine Gap / Land Back"

Graffiti seen in central Australia near the Pine Gap US spy base following an anti-war & anti-colonial protest coverage last month, which demanded the facility be shut down and the site returned to it's traditional owners, the indigenous Arrernte people.

bobdylanyaoi

biting the hand that feeds me but im also sucking on the fingers a bit

everyones-berry

I did it again, I hyper focused on a drawing again but now its my phone's lock screen

demilypyro

Kyoko Kirigiri is so funny. Imagine your special interest is murder mysteries and then suddenly you find yourself in the Murder Mystery School. And you're like okay. Lock in. Don't look excited about this. They'd think you're weird. Or suspicious even. I know she was doing quicktime events

borkthemork

trubbishrubbish

She's such a nerd when it comes to mystery and detective media that she'll pull out something obscure and be disappointed when someone doesn't get it. It's so adorable

slowavesloth

steelplatedhearts

it’s simple: when I like an adaptation, everyone complaining about changes to the text is a whiny baby who needs to get over themselves and accept that sometimes you have to change the story to enrich the experience/work within the medium. when I don’t like an adaptation, it’s because nobody else understands the core themes of the original work and would be better off just creating a story independent of what they’re trying to adapt.

qillermeme

cheminsdudesir

I found an article about her and her situation:

A 22-year-old mother and her four-year-old daughter spent Wednesday packing up their apartment after being given a final notice of eviction

The article links this gofundme for her:

I recently lost my job, which caused me to fall behind on my bills. As a… Jaela Jackson needs your support for Help Us Find a New Home After

dontbelasagnax

Mentioned to my mom I'm asexual a couple months ago and today.... we got into the car and she hit me with, "So you use they/them pronouns now?"

I went, "What. no. she/her."

"How does that work? With she/her/hers and they/them?"

I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Well you came out as-" and I said, "I'm asexual."

She replied, "Like an amoeba, I know."

"Oh. My god. No. Mom. It doesn't- it's not the asexual you learned about in biology. I didn't come out as a single celled organism."

With heavy relief, she said "Oh, it has a different meaning?"

"Yes, mom."

savetheworldkissaplushie

tobiasdrake

Thinking about the way BND uses MJ and the way Spidey 5 is likely to use MJ sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I think I've put my finger on why the MCU Spider-Man feels so offputting.

Basically, what it comes down to is that the MCU Spider-Man movies don't really know what to do with Peter's supporting cast or personal life or... Or the very concept of Peter Parker as a human person outside of being Spider-Man.

Homecoming was probably the most Peter Parker that an MCU film has featured on account of its mission statement of keeping Peter grounded.

But then Far From Home took him away from his setting and supporting cast to send Spider-Man globetrotting with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Mysterio. It still found excuses to bring his class along with him, though, so he could get into Peter-like shenanigans in these strange locales and start a relationship with MJ.

Nonetheless, May and Ned were reduced to recurring gags.

And then No Way Home pretty much kicked Peter to the curb. From the moment Doc Ock arrives on the film, it is 100% a Spider-Man movie. MJ and Ned are paired up to wander around being Spider-Man's sidekicks for a bit, May's killed off, and ultimately the very concept of Peter Parker is deleted from the universe.

Which then brings us to BND, whose central thesis is that Peter Parker is an integral part of who Spider-Man is and that Spidey needs to be feeding his Peterness too. It reconnects Peter with MJ and Ned, and ends with the promise of a restoration of Peter's identity outside of work.

But. LIke.

What does that even look like? Who even is Peter Parker at this point?

Peter has no day job. He never went to college. He's apparently independently wealthy enough to afford multiple years of housing and supercomputers and shit without an income; No idea where that money came from.

He doesn't have Aunt May. He doesn't have the Daily Bugle or Horizon Labs or anything. He doesn't have Midtown High anymore. He's never really been established to have any sort of dreams or aspirations besides "be Spider-Man" or alternatively "get that cute girl to be my girlfriend".

Flash sometimes exists for like one or two scenes of a movie.

It feels like we started Homecoming with a notional idea of Peter Parker and then spent the next three films subtracting elements from him. What is there left to build from?

If the idea at the end of BND is that Peter's going to take more time to be Peter then Spider-Man 5 is going to have its work cut out for it figuring out who Peter Parker even is. Who he can even be in the corner he's been written into.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the Peter elements of Spider-Man 5 are just going to be spent on "get that cute girl to be my girlfriend", since they left that "MJ has a boyfriend now" plot thread dangling. Maybe it'll be about rekindling his relationship with MJ. Or maybe Black Cat will be in it and it'll be about how she's all wrong for him and then it'll be about rekindling his relationship with MJ.

I do not buy for one second that the MCU actually intends to leave Peter and MJ split up. I thought before BND that we were going to have to spend a movie painstakingly watching them get back together, and now I've increased that estimation to two movies of painstaking Will They/Won't They shipping of a couple that already did and it was already fine before they fucked with it.

But also. Like.

I hope it's not just Ned and MJ. Because Peter needs, like, an actual life. Even if he's going to have to build it from scratch because the films have burned all of his bridges to the iconic Peter Parker stuff.

Please let the big Spider-Man plot of movie 5 be in service to Peter's growth and development as a person rather than just having Peter be what Spider-Man does in his downtime. Peter needs another Spider-Man Homecoming to detox from the No Way Home/Brand New Day double-whammy.

tobiasdrake

I think what it really comes down to is that the MCU just doesn't really do personal stories about the protagonist where the villain his hero persona fights reflects some element of the personal struggle going on in his civilian life and helps him grow as a person through their conflict.

It does have those kinds of villains, mind. But it doesn't have those supporting casts and status quos and relatable life lessons for the human side of the superhero. This is because the MCU tends to treat its heroes as full-time heroes.

It's just that this is more noticeable with Spider-Man because. Like. We expect Iron Man to always be Iron Man when he's onscreen, even if he's not in the suit. We expect Captain America to be Captain America and to deal with Captain America type problems, not regular people problems. We expect Thor to always have his Thor face on and always be doing Thor things.

But we expect Spider-Man to have a rich, robust life as Peter Parker. We expect to see him doing Peter things just as much if not moreso than Spider-Man things, and for Spider-Man to be a tool to facilitate Peter.

And the MCU has struggled to deliver that because it just isn't the type of story the MCU tells. The MCU is much more comfortable operating in the "Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman wears" space, and that just doesn't really work for Spider-Man.

jcogginsa

The gradual erosion of the Secret Identity has been going on in the superhero genre for a while now, though the MCU being the juggernaut it once was has certainly contributed heavily to it's decline.

Part of it is an issue of managing time. Comic Books pivoting to a writing for the trade model means that there's less room in each issue to focus on building a civilian supporting cast, and creators increasingly pivot towards having the heroes interact with other heroes instead of civilians (There's a very good post by Maxwell Grant on Tumblr that discusses how this has lead to Amanda Waller losing her complexity and becoming a one note villain)

With TV shows, the pivot towards shorter seasons has left less room for playing around in a status Quo. Seasons have to be serialized, episodes have to push that serial narrative forward, and there's no room for the civilian Superhero divide. The Supporting Cast has to just be the supporting cast, for both sides of the hero.

Which have some upsides to. ironically, given your fers about MJs future, this trend has contributed to a lessening of will they won't theys in movies. Outing the Superhero to their love interest eliminates the missed meeting drama that was prevalent in Superhero stories for decades.

The Love Triangle between Clark Kent, Superman, and Lois Lane used to be a core element of Superman stories, and I can't remember the last adaptation where Lois was still in the dark by the end of the first installment. And while I feel Superman as a character is harmed by the lack of Dichotomy between his two identities, Lois figuring things out is a better look for her.

Which gets at another big difference, a desire for the Supporting cast to carry it's own weight in the story. In the old days, a Supporting cast was there to cause problems for the hero. They would drive social situations that put the hero in conflict with his duty, they would try to uncover the heroe's identity making them take greater efforts to hide. They would be endangered to make the latest villain's scheme have more stakes.

Nowadays, there's more of an effort to give the civvies a role that contributes to the resolution of the problem. Most commonly in the form of "The Guy in the Chair" who talks to the hero while he's in the field, and feeds solutions to him that the hero would have just come up with on his own in the old days.

jordanbolton

“The Driver” by Jordan Bolton

Prints and zines available on my Etsy

Subscribe to my Patreon to get early access to new comics alongside much more!

aya--bb

genuinely I'm so sick of people wanting all fiction to be ethical. can we all just get a little gross with it. the point of fiction is that it's not real. we can be unethical in fiction; same goes with being perverted with fiction, being unrealistic with fiction, and being grotesque with fiction. not all fiction has to be ethical, not every character has to be ethical, and that's okay. can we stop with the puritanism. be gross. be unrealistic. be whatever. if I don't like it it's not my business as long as we're all clear that its fictional.

notemily

via ered.bsky.social, the only kinds of unethical fiction:

people in the replies are going "what about books glorifying unethical things" and "what if it's propaganda" and you, my friends, are who this comic was made for

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

may you one day soon find the courage to open the tubberware container in the back of the fridge inshallah

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

@abx5 how does it feel to have single handedly saved the lives of thousands?

#put it in the deepest and coldest part of the freezer for a few days before dealing with it #it wont save you but it will minimize the stench

kedreeva

#if it's plastic throw it away#the mould is in the plastic now I'm sorry it's ok just throw it out#if it's glass do the freezer trick and clean it (via @sleepymccoy)

I feel like this will save a few more people.