The Nosy Kitty

Just a cat, alone in a big scary world.

[fipindustries]

i really im absolutely astounded at the phenomenal job that MIB did not to be racist against aliens, despite being a movie about secret agents chasing evil aliens. that scene where jay helps an alien mother to give birth is probably one of the most humanizing moments for an Other ive seen in a movie ever.

[fipindustries]

like it grabs the body snatcher trope from the cold war "aliens are all around you, hidden in diguzise, they could be any one of us!" and then it says "and theyre just people, theyre literally just people trying to live their lives and thats fine"

[fipindustries]

you literally have a whooe scene where a cop stands out because he says "i dont care how menacibg or threatning someone looks im not going to shoot them if there is a reasonable explination for what theyre doing, one is sneezing and one is just doing excercise", and that is the guy that gets aproved to join MIB.

[phaeton-flier]

The movie has a real love for NYC and immigrant culture as a part of that. The opening scene where K welcomes the undocumented immigrants to the United States. One alien greets another and says he's ordered him pierogi. A lot of them are refugees from their home worlds who just want to survive.

[thenosykitty]

Then there's that amazing scene in the sequel when K gets his memories back. It all but spells out the message: on this godforsaken rock we're all just space aliens lost in the streets of New York, trying to make do. And that should bring us together.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

i NEED people to realise foreshadowing is. in fact. a literary device. and not a Bad Thing. the audience picking up on your hints is a Good Thing. because. it makes the story and it’s conclusion make sense. and some people will not see those but enjoy seeing them on a second read through. red herrings are one thing but if your novel consists of nothing but red herrings it’s not a coherent story it’s just a collection of paragraphs that don’t actually plausibly link to one another. you're not fighting with the audience you don’t look clever you look like you don’t know how basic fiction works. be vulnerable for once in your goddamn life and don't treat writing like a game to be won where the audience losing is a good thing.

[ineffectualdemon]

Getting to the end of a story and going "THE CLUES WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME!" is always joyous for me whether or not I picked up on the clues leading up

If I saw the clues and caught the hints then yes! I am clever and me and the author/creator/artist etc were in on it together the whole time!

If I didn't notice the clues or got fooled but can clearly see them in hindsight then "Ha! You won this time storyteller! I am delighted by this game we play!' and then I enjoy putting the pieces together afterwards and enjoying how clever it was. I feel like the creator respects me as an audience

If there is a "twist" that comes with 0 clues or foreshadowing at all I'm annoyed. I'm pissed off. I feel like I'm being condescended to and patronised. It's not clever or interesting and makes me annoyed I ended up caring about characters and plot points that ended up meaningless.

Because it's not that these stories don't have foreshadowing or plot clues. They just abandon it for a "surprising twist"

A story that pays off the clues is letting me into the fun and makes a participant in the story

A story that just gives me a "shock" but no pay off is telling me not to engage or get attached or care. So why would I watch?

[s-n-arly]

OMG! THIS!

Random plot twists that don't connect to anything in the story are not clever. If we don't see it coming because the writer didn't provide any clues, they aren't clever and it's totally unsatisfying (and I will NEVER read this writer again). These clues need not be lit up in neon with a parade of elephants and showgirls. But they need to be present

I'm a writer and am rarely surprised. Often, if I am surprised it's because the writer was a dumbass and included a "twist" that makes no sense (and therefore isn't really a twist, it's just random bullshit). If a writer genuinely surprises me, without being an absolute dumbass, I am FUCKING DELIGHTED! I will tell everyone I know to read the book/see the movie/watch the show.

[ardentmystacina]

Foreshadowing is the reward for paying attention. It's the story letting you in on the secret like a co-conspirator because you're the clever little audience member who has been picking up on the clues the writer has been setting up.

It even makes watching/reading again more worthwhile because if you didn't notice the foreshadowing the first time you have the joy of being able to notice the things you missed!

[book-historia]

Ah yes, the three genders

[heroineimages]

I love used bookstore labeling.

[tomthefanboy]

aka the Phil Foglio Section

[thenosykitty]

Reblogging just for the last line.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[leebrontide]

I keep seeing posts claiming that x y or z action you can do to build a better world won’t matter. That capitalism doesn’t care, and your own actions dont amount to much.

It’s so painfully individualistic. Of course me doing that thing isn’t going to save anybody or anything.

Im not trying to be a superhero who personally saves the say.

I am one leaf making oxygen in a massive forest of other trees making oxygen. I am doing my best and having faith that millions of others will do their best as well.

Because that can and has made big changes over time. Like. That is just how change happens. Thats cultural shifts. Thats political shifts. Thats how lasting changes happen.

I don’t plant milkweed because I’m personally gonna save monarch butterflies. I plant milkweed because I know thousands of us are gonna plant milkweed and send money to the people fighting horrible pesticides in court.

The standard for change isn’t “is my doing this going to change the world?” The standard is “is my doing this part of the shift I want to see my community make?” And if the answer is yes, I do my best.

[fluffy-critter]

people keep on complaining that all social media is written by vibecoding techbros with ties to law enforcement when Mastodon is just, like, right there

[thenosykitty]

People only say they want freedom, then balk when it turns out that freedom takes work and involves responsibilities. Never mind when they reach the next level and realize freedom is a collective noun. One can only be free together with other people.

[raymoohackery]

"whoa there pal! looks like your favorite web service is getting hit with enshittification. you should try this NEW PLATFORM, that is only mildly alike in function, has no stable source of funding, and is being ran by some people in their home office as a hobby. this will be a long-term solution for you that you can build a community on, i promise!" <- sentiment i see a lot on here lately. like. lol

[jadewolf-writes]

So, as a certified Old Internet Person, this is actually how most fandom spaces operated in the "Golden Age" of the internet.

Many of the MUCKs and MUDs out there were hosted on personal servers... yes, often run in their home office... or sometimes piggybacking on server infrastructure at colleges and universities. They were not run by companies, but by dedicated fans who did it for love of the fandom.

Now people use Discord.

We also used forums, generally either on free platforms (most of which don't exist anymore) or on servers stood up and run by... again... individual dedicated fans.

Now people use social media or reddit.

We also used newsgroups/usenet. Completely decentralized. There were newsgroups for literally everything.

Fandom used to be fully in the hands of fans, not corporations.

Sometimes, websites or forums would shut down when the owner lost interest or moved on (or if drama broke out). So, another fan steps up and sets up a new home. And the community migrates over.

Communities were small, focused, and were not prisoners of big tech censorship.

If you want to ditch these centralized, corporate run, highly censored social media platforms, that's the answer. It takes work and people willing to step up and do it, but that's the price of getting out from under Big Tech's boot for fandoms.

[maculategiraffe]

the thing is that every time they invent a new thing that everybody has to be able to do to get along in society, that also involves making some people disabled who weren't before, because they can't do the thing. and they never could do the thing, but it didn't used to be a disability.

driving a car. making a phone call. navigating the internet. getting a mortgage. you know? they keep adding new things that everybody has to be able to do or else there's something wrong with you. well maybe there's something wrong with driving a car. maybe it's a hideous activity. did they ever think of that

[sandwolf5]

Check it out! I was on a podcast!

[androgynosaurus]

Honestly be pretentious as fuck about the stuff you create. Do a press release for your fanfic updates. Do a Q&A about your webcomic. Make fake merch designs for your OCs. Commission "official" book covers. Very few of us will ever get to a stage where something we've created Makes It Big but even if you have an audience of 5 people plus a shoelace fucking indulge yourself and pretend!! It's the only way to live!!

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.

Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Write a story that just takes place inside one pathetic little person’s head. Do it. It’s enrichment in your enclosure.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Do the writer’s equivalent of playing with finger paints. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.

[transwarlock]

If you’re like me and so painfully autistic that you Literally Can’t Conceptualize How To Do This, look up examples of experimental fiction.

Two of the most famous examples of this are House of Leaves and this one old book written by a French(?) guy whose name escapes me where he systematically chose each word so that there wasn’t an entire ‘e’ anywhere in the entire text from cover to cover.

Tell a story exclusively through dialogue.

Write from the POV of a recipe blogger about her latest dish that’s not actually about the dish itself — maybe it’s about the Cold War or her pending divorce or generational trauma, but it’s still technically a recipe, so on her blog it goes.

Make a buzzfeed-style list of helpful criteria for people to look at if they suspect they’ve been isekai’d.

Go crazy. Be stupid. Have fun.

[depsidase]

[sodiumvaporss]

i do have to say that no matter how shitty any sort of media is or how shitty your own creations are. always remember

[geneticdriftwood]

honestly? abandoned/on indefinite hiatus/very slow to update fics, even and especially AUs and longfics, are often some of my absolute favorites. and people who refuse to read them are missing out!

for one, stories don’t have to be finished to be enjoyable and worth reading. but also? an unfinished fic is a whole little universe that just keeps on existing in my head! their world stays alive for me in a way that doesn’t always happen with fics I binge read and finish, and i love it. i don’t know how their story ends, so it just keeps going! and even when those stories DO update and finish years later, they’ve been in my head for so long that they stick around like old friends.

so to any author with unfinished works: thank you SO much for sharing what you had without waiting to finish it first. you’re just giving me the gift of getting to spend more time with your story and your idea. if you do update again someday, i’ll be delighted to jump back in! but if you don’t, just know a little piece of your world still lives on in a beloved tiny terrarium in my brain. i promise i’m taking good care of it :)

i don’t normally ask this, but if this resonates with you please reblog it, so it can reach the authors who need to hear it <3

[juicymori]

[severeannoyance]

Yes, this. A stunning number of people will default to "because it's illegal." Teaching an intro-level bioethics course will demonstrate real fucking fast that a lot of the population just lets legality stand in for morality.

[sandwolf5]

Available now! Riders of the Dream, Volume Six. The crew of the Spirit Walk will face high adventures and fight xenophobic alien insects. Join them in defending the Dream from invasion and extinction. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ4MTYZS?dplnkId=b8c7823f-d2b3-457b-b236-ca56ac8f15e6

[rubyleaf]

Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.