#42texts

[plutojester]

I am literally one of those high strung Respect Our Troops middle aged dads but about Frodo Baggins. If you hate on him I'm gonna pivot into a lecture about everything he's fought for and sacrificed and how you wouldn't last a day in his circumstances and

[plutojester]

has enough time passed for us to admit that the chuck mcgill hate was corny and overblown and extremely reductive of his immensely well written character and that if he was played by an actor who was like 12% more conventionally attractive a lot of ppl who viciously hated him for (checks notes) being a shitty person on the shitty people show would have adored him and toxic incest yaoi shipped him with jimmy

[plutojester]

Willy's Chocolate Experience in Glasgow, 2024

[plutojester]

The way that Pan's Labyrinth said your compassion and selflessness matter even if you never stood a chance, even if they are but a spec in a barbaric and lonesome world. A story about somebody small and powerless and doomed from the beginning, who dies inevitably but dies loved. The ending could have easily been framed in a bleak and grimdark way but instead, the movie fades on a hopeful note. Because Ofelia represents the very idea of defying cruelty, an idea which survives her

The way Ofelias sacrifice of her escape for the sake of her brother feels like it mattered regardless of your interpretation of the film. Whether the Faun was real or not, whether he was a threat or not, the love she had for her brother mattered, purely because it was there. Perhaps because to love and be loved is in itself a precious, if not the only true, reward for the perils of life

The way that the lullaby represents the link between innocent goodness and conscious goodness after innocence has long been lost. Mercedes does not recall the words to the song, but she has retained the melody. She can no longer believe in miracles the way Ofelia does, but she understands the way Ofelia feels out of place as a dreamer and an idealist. You have to be at least a little of both in order to stand up to evil, whether because those traits have not yet been crushed in you or because you have painstakingly reclaimed them in spite of your suffering

[plutojester]

notice how jesse was entering his late 20s when his life stopped being a perpetually spiraling nightmare. breaking bad is so real sometimes

[plutojester]

If Tolkien dropped The Hobbit in 2025 people online would accuse him of being a "gooner with a barely concealed foot fetish" and I'm afraid it would kill the old man

[plutojester]

The thing about the dialog in the prequels is there's no way human disaster Anakin Skywalker would be able to properly articulate his feelings. So even if it was written with the intention of sounding profound and missed the mark, "I don't like sand" loops right back around to being good dialog because it is more in character and evocative of Anakin as a person than any genuinely poetic or sensible thing he could have said instead

[plutojester]

I feel like some people are so quick to call a horror movie "horror comedy" if it has any amount of bizarre or grotesque content. When like... the irrational can be a form of horror. Like idk man sometimes characters make really ill-advised and unhinged choices because they're going through hell. Sometimes obvious artificiality is a way of portraying the uncanny. Sometimes an over-the-top reflection has the purpose of underlining how oppressive and cruel an experience can feel rather than just giving you a hearty chortle. I think comedic value can co-exist with all of the above, and can definitely be leaned into on purpose via tone/framing/etc, but so frequently I will see a movie where I feel like you can only see enough humor to call it a comedy if you don't bother fully engaging with the emotional and thematic core of the story