ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

Westworld did this as well. Storytelling is dead!

IF FAN THEORIES ARE RIGHT IT IS A SIGN YOU HAVE TOLD A WELL-PUT TOGETHER AND FOLLOWABLE PLOT, NOT A SIGN YOU NEED TO MAKE UP SOME BULLSHIT FOR A TWIST ENDING. FUCK OFF WITH THIS SHIT.

No wait, I’m not done here:

If the fans get where you are going and ARE STILL HAPPY, you KEEP GOING THERE. It shows they’re invested and your story craft is setting up and paying off properly. 

It is not a sign you need to M Night Shamaylan things until narrative is fuckin dead and “surprise endings!” reign supreme. If no one can guess what will happen, you don’t have a plot, you have deus ex machinas strung together like a child’s macaroni necklace. It might be endearing and beloved but its hardly a fuckin masterpiece. 

To be utterly frank, this is where “NO SPOILERS! NO SPOILERS EVER! NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO BREATHE ABOUT THE PLOT UNTIL IT’S BEEN OUT ON DVD FOR FIVE YEARS” attitude has left us – And the studios ACTIVELY encourage that shit because first week viewing numbers are their whole lifeblood.

Sure, an “oh shit” moment is great, but if you’re doing it well, I should have that moment watching the show the second, fifth, or hundredth time, knowing how it will go. If being surprised were truly so important to a narrative, why even make a Shakespeare play? Is anyone out there still hoping Romeo and Juliet still get together at the end? Why make mystery novels into movies? Spoiler warning: Hercules Poirot gets the bad guy. Movies that directly follow historical events? Clearly worthless.

Come on, now. Sure, try not to spoil shit for people intentionally, don’t be a dick, but can we calm the fuck down and can Hollywood stop pushing this shit both in social media and with business choices like this?

“i cant help but think that fans should be allowed to like, gather in groups online and theorize and have fun without networks watching in”

-Lindsay Ellis abt game of thrones doing the same thing

If no one can guess what will happen, you don’t have a plot, you have deus ex machinas strung together like a child’s macaroni necklace. It might be endearing and beloved but its hardly a fuckin masterpiece. 

I think the reason a lot of leftists struggle with disability justice is that they haven't moved past the concept that discrimination isn't bad because it's objectively "wrong." yes, sexists are objectively wrong when they try to claim women are dumber than men. yes, antisemites are objectively wrong that jewish people are inherently greedy and run the state. yes, racists are wrong when they try to claim that white people are the superior race. and so on.

but then with disabled people, there are a lot of objective truths to the discrimination we face. people with IDs/LDs do fall behind and struggle with certain concepts. physically disabled people are often weaker and less capable of performing demanding tasks than able bodied people. many of us with mental illnesses are more reckless and less responsible. a lot of us are dependent on others and do not contribute much "worth".

and guess what? disabled people still deserve a place in the world. disabled people still deserve the supports they need. because they are people, and that should be enough to support them and believe they deserve a place at the table.

if your only rebuttal against discrimination is its objective inaccuracies, you are meeting bigots where they are at. you are validating the very concept that if and when people are truly incapable of being equal to the majority, that means they are worth less. this causes some leftists to then try to deny the objective realities of disabled people and/or become ableist themselves.

your rallying behind marginalized groups should start and end with the fact that people are completely worthy of life and equity, because they are fellow human beings and that should, frankly, be enough.

look at me. listen to me. this is directed at americans for the record. the reason you think North American animals are boring is because you live here. there are so many cool and beautiful animals here. we have beavers. we have wolves. we have moose. we have sea lions. we have armadillos. we have mountain lions. we have alligators. we have foxes. we have bighorn sheep. we have manatees. we have bears. we have ocelots. we have BISON. and that’s not even touching on the birds! or the turtles! or the snakes! we have amazing beautiful and diverse wildlife right here and it deserves to be appreciated and protected

Possums are the only North American marsupial, they eat ticks and keep down cases of Lyme, and they can't carry rabies! We only have two native boa constrictors; the rubber boa and the rosy boa! Bison and the American Alligator are LITERAL MEGAFAUNA LEFT OVER FROM PREHISTORY!

When I was a teenager, I was hiking with my family on Cape Cod. I was not a willing participant to these hikes; I would've preferred to be back at our rental cabin with a book.

But my parents were birders, so hiking we did go.

And about a mile up the trail, a woman came rushing up to us, clutching her binoculars to her chest. "Come quickly," she said, with a British accent. "You have to see this!"

This is what birders are like. They are as excited about a life bird as any fan would be spotting their favorite celebrity. You have to see, you have to.

So my parents rushed off with her, and I plodded along behind them.

To find a cluster of Brits huddled in a bird blind, staring at..

A blue jay.

A goddamn blue jay.

And I was a teenager, but I knew better then to mouth off in front of my mom. So I nodded, and smiled, and bit my tongue, until an elderly man looked at me with tears in his eyes, and said, "Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?"

And I stopped. And looked at it. The way they were. As if it were new. And damned if they weren't right.

I think of that, to this day. That sometimes, you need to step back, and see the world as if it were new. Strange, and haunting, and beautiful, so beautiful.

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?

I feel Like I should add the context of what a British jay looks like:

My friend teaches high school history and allowed his students to do their chapter summaries on their chosen biographies as originally created memes. He said that he had never had kids read so carefully to find the most obscure detail from chapters to make their memes. [pro-tip, for younger middle school/elementary school students, make a folder of popular meme templates, to avoid uncomfortable internet searches}

This reminds me of my class watching the 90s film and when it got to this scene some guy in my class shouted out ‘hoe don’t do it’ and then 5 seconds later -sigh- ‘he did it’.

Shakespeare would have loved this 😔

I think it's the ALMOST canon ships that get the best, most intricately woven, beautifully told fanfiction.

those nearly-kind-of-almost-maybe-could-be canon couples

the ones that make it almost painful to live with the knowledge that if just one or two things had happened differently, just one or two things: if one of them had said something differently here, done something differently there, or if certain events had shifted a little, just a fraction, they'd have been together - undoubtedly.

you can see it. everyone can see it. but it's not enough - they're still an almost-but-not-quite, maybe-but-it-was-never-confirmed, kind-of-but-annoyingly-ambiguous

fanfiction writers take their potential and they hold it close and they lovingly craft something amazing and beautiful with it - finally giving them the chance to be together like everyone knows they would be in-canon if the story wasn't against them

they spring out entire novels from canon-divergence in the places where just a little step in another direction could have led to them being together

they build whole intricate Alternate Universes where the characters are able to meet in an entirely different way and still fall for each other

what I'm saying is that the insanity of a ship where it was almost-canon drives writers to a specific kind of creative madness that produces the best fanfiction....

so if you check out my graph here you can see the line for the more almost it gets vs the more unhinged and motivated it makes the writers both rising in a wonderfully clear diagonal line and today I will be discussing the

the 100 fandom rewatch // 1.04 “Murphy’s Law”

An old laudna/imogen piece 💖

A gentle kiss 🌿✨

Jester, Joy ☀️

Can you find the hidden 🍆 ?

Poisoned prodigy

Stealing can be a love language

(Old-ish piece but I’m thinking about them)

How Taliesin’s Characters Tell Someone to Fuck Off

this goncharov shits gone too far cause now this actually sounds like a cool movie id wanna watch

Okay, but can we talk about the dance scene in Goncharov? The way Goncharov and Andrey are in-sync even though they aren’t dancing together whilst Katya and Goncharov are completely out-of-sync despite actually dancing together. How, when viewed from above, all the dancing pairs form the shape of the clock, with Goncharov and Katya being the minute hand and Andrey and his partner being the hour. Oh, and don’t forget about the music, perfectly blending the Main Theme (representing Goncharov himself here), Katya’s Theme, and Andrey’s Theme. Utterly incredible choreography, composition, writing, and performance.

For those curious about the motifs used in the score, you can find the Main Theme uploaded by @caramiaaddio and Katya’s by @unscharf-an-den-raendern

Goncharov (1973) - variant poster 2