lyin'

Buffalo girl. Writing, hopefully. Traveling, sometimes. Dreaming, always.

[pansy2025]

goo goo dolls if they were in dune: and i don’t want the worm to see me

[mezzodical]

[doomsday-dj]

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

[kuttithevangu]

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

[kogiopsis]

I've read the entire decision (skimming over the purely legal precedent/definitions bit) and here are some of my favorite bits:

[inadvertently-biblical]

SUPRIYA GANESH as SAMIRA MOHAN in The Pitt 8:00 P.M.

[robertmitchum]

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN dir. Stanley Donen + Gene Kelly 

[robertmitchum]

BONUS: 

reblog for good luck!! 

[thegirlwholied]

I'm late to the party but WTF is this new Tumblr update that seems to be turning posts into chain letters?

If I'm following right, you send out a post and it passes on via reblog, except the reblog replies don't come back to you, and if you're the one passing it on, it's your chain now... basically a chain letter.

Well. Every chain letter I was ever sent, in my preteen days when those were bopping around email with some frequency, died in my inbox

(and a few more died in my actual mailbox)

so for the record my interest level in a post version of chain letters is 0

[jaeausten]

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

[bob-belcher]

Happy International Women’s Day!

[luke-thompsons]

THE PITT (2025—) S02 | E07

[viscountessbranksome]

James Norrington did nothing wrong. His only crime was being a Jane Austen hero in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride.

[norrington-hell]

Okay, no. I tried, but couldn’t just let this post stand. Listen, OP, I agree with you 10,000%, but it is so much worse than that.

In CotBP, where the criticism that James is boring is most likely to come up, we can see in his introductory scene that James is head over heels for this woman by Regency standards. I mean, the unflappable, highest ranking Naval officer in Port Royal is reduced to a stammering, awkward mess around Elizabeth. If this were an Austen novel, y’all would be fucking swooning.

And what of the deleted scenes? (Don’t even get me started on this, I will rant for hours about how salty I am that they cut them.) We see James agonizing over the fact that he believes Elizabeth has only accepted his proposal as a means to an end. His stony veneer cracks, and we get to see him vulnerable!

‘Is it so wrong that I should want it given unconditionally?’ is such a fucking incredible line, and in a period drama, would be seen as a declaration!

But James isn’t in a period drama. He’s in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride. The film is an unapologetic mishmash of genres, and he has committed a cardinal sin by falling in love with Elizabeth, a modern character. She practically rolls her eyes at his heartfelt confessions! She wants nothing to do with his subtle emotional advances!

While, in a Austen novel, James Norrington would have been the clear hero and most obvious choice for Elizabeth to make, she is completely uninterested because he’s made the mistake of being period appropriate and not a product of the early 2000s like the rest of the main cast.

And the worst part is…once James changes so that he fits into their world…he is killed.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[hacked-wtsdz]

Elizabeth tho…I think it’s more than being “modern” for her too. Sure, James is a Jane Austen hero, but this Elizabeth isn’t a Bennet. I’ve just rewatched the Curse of the Black Pearl, and that girl has been ruthless from the start. Elizabeth knows what she wants, she knows what she doesn’t want, and she comes up with ways to achieve her ends every time, often despite what someone else might think or feel. That’s an incredible trait because ruthlessness isn’t given to female characters, as a rule.

So I really like Elizabeth in this situation and I really like that they weren’t afraid to make her that way. She didn’t agree to marry Norrington to play with his feelings like many other movies might want to persuade us, she agreed to do it as a mean to save Will, sacrificing herself. James is just a tool in her hands like Jack in the next movie. That’s what she does. And that’s what Jack does too, however while he’s adored for it, she is often hated for the same reason. And while I do feel sorry for James, I fucking love the writers for making Elizabeth that way. Not a “modern feminist icon” for the purpose of that, but a pirate. A ruthless, cunning woman who knows what she wants and knows how to get it but isn’t turned into a villain for that. It makes my blood boil when people (not even you precisely) give her hate and disdain for being a pirate in a movie about pirates, as if women must be empathetic and romantic no matter what.

[norrington-hell]

Let me be VERY clear:

I don’t believe Elizabeth did anything wrong either. Or, that is to say, that she didn’t do anything that wasn’t completely within character. She IS ruthless. She’s mercenary and calculating and cunning and she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants. And to have a female character like that in a modern major motion picture franchise is a SPECTACULAR thing.

I LOVE Elizabeth Swann. I ADMIRE her. If I told her to her face that I’d die for her she’d respond ‘you will’ and that is so fucking amazing and cool and sexy. All hail the Pirate King.

But this post isn’t about Elizabeth or her character. This post is about James. And we know for a fact his character is out of place in this film because he was originally written to be a secondary antagonist, a much more villainous and unscrupulous character. More like Beckett than the James we know.

But after Jack Davenport was hired into the project, James’ writing was changed. He brought this whole other layer to the character that had to be explored: the Jane Austen Hero, if you will. But Elizabeth Swann is steadfastly NOT a Jane Austen Heroine. She was written in the early aughts for a modern audience in a movie based on a theme park ride.

There is a tendency among fans (and I would argue among people in general) to see things in terms of black and white. As such, I’ve seen a fair number of people reading a post like this about James getting the short end of the stick and to assume that must mean the op is anti-Elizabeth. Or anti-Will. Or anti-whatever. But the tragedy of James’ story isn’t that Elizabeth has wronged him, it’s that she hasn’t. And he accepts it, takes his broken heart, and promptly ruins his entire life about it.

But that’s the topic for another post.

There is no Elizabeth hate in this post, my friend, no more than there is Elizabeth hate in my heart. Like James, I too fell in love with her for being just as she is. And if that brings us pain, it is through no fault of hers. She is a pirate, after all. The fiercest and most aptly named pirate in all of the Caribbean.

[ohmovie]

May death find you quickly if you bring them to harm.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) dir. Peter Jackson

[davinaclaires]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS 2002, dir. Peter Jackson

[catilinas]

meeeeeeeeeeee. right now. NOT rested have NOT had beautiful sleep

[thegirlwholied]

"No, not might is right. Might FOR right." - Camelot (1967)

"I have been thinking," said Arthur, "about Might and Right. I don't think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them...Might is not Right. But there is a lot of Might knocking about in this world, and something has to be done about it... Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out, but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad...And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might is only to be used for Right. Do you follow?... Do you see the idea? It will be using the Might instead of fighting against it, and turning a bad thing into a good." - The Once and Future King (1958)

fuck "might makes right"; there once was Camelot

[geddyqueer]

good morning. [checks news] oh, never mind.

[southfarthing]

while legolas and aragorn and haldir are deep in discussion about being granted entry to lothlorien, while gimli is grumbling about his poor treatment, and while the hobbits are in a daze of grief and exhaustion, there’s something so gentle and good about the way boromir sits with frodo and says, ‘gandalf’s death was not in vain, nor would he have you give up hope. you carry a heavy burden, frodo. don’t carry the weight of the dead.’

he’s a powerful, muscular man. a warrior, a captain, a future leader of his country, and he’d be right to feel offended at not being included in the negotiations. he’s technically the highest ranking member of the fellowship. yet he puts aside his pride to sit with the ringbearer and give him a kind word

[southfarthing]

@even-in-arcadia YES

[thegirlwholied]

Dream Thieves came out today. Finished already. 

…Sometimes how quickly I read leaves me sad, when it’s a book this lovely, where both the story & the sentences themselves sing.

It’s like a really good run on a new route~ despite all the trees & paths & sky & air burning down your throat, and taking note of all these things and thinking “oh, that’s nice, oh I’ll remember that, ooh I should write that down”, all your thoughts still arrow towards the finish, and being done, and you can’t forget about being done. And then when you finally are, no one else really wants to hear about your run, even though it might have felt like the most real part of that day. And of course you can go out & run it again, sometimes even right away, and spot new things, but usually you’re tired & empty for a while & the excitement of the first route is right out of reach. 

That’s something like what good books are for me the first time through, at any rate.

…And now I think I’ll go run (but first, coffee).

[ellipsus-writes]

If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)