Did I mention how proud I am of my brother (not pictured, this guy's name is James lol) and everyone else involved in the making of his movie? Because if I didn't I'd like to mention it another hundred times.

some of you will have seen this before, part 1/4

Morning reblog

Aaaaaaaaaaa this was such a wonderful fun thing to wake up to!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink - Chapter 6

Reblog!

This is a jar full of major characters 

Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories. 

We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls. 

Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left. 

This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left. 

And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left. 

And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right. 

Until these are the bowls. 

Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other. 

This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl. 

This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference. 

This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.

The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss. 

This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world. 

I mean, imagine your party guests arrive

Oh my god they are adorable!

And they see their bowls

But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.

I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?

But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat. 

And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant. 

And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.

*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*

Because given recent events, THIS CLEARLY FUCKING NEEDS TO BE SAID AGAIN.

It’s back! *REBLOGS AND QUEUES*

I think Tom Holland is adorbs and great, but it does really feel awkward that they basically lifted huge chucks on Miles’ character and put them in a white character.

seeing this today is prompting more raven boys thoughts god i will never shut up about the parallels with the marauders like gansey is james ronan is sirius adam is remus and noah is peter. TELL ME IM WRONG

everyone is working against me in my mission not to reread the raven cycle @jilyism @thequibblah

Okay but please tell me why one of the characters is named after a type of sweater

ahahahhaha

and his full name is arguably worse - richard campbell gansey the third 💀

JSYK this is what I'm picturing

I also love the Raven boys and this picture is objectively hilarious.

But def a good good read. I picked up the first book the night before a long solo road trip and was SO enamored that I bought the audio book so I didn't have to stop "reading" to drive

You know the weirdest and most painful thing about having a kid is all the mourning you go through for versions of them that no longer exist? Nobody prepares you that. My chubby-cheeked little boy is grown up. Gone. It's weird.

I wish this was talked about more because it's so raw and beautiful and confusing. My baby just turned one and she is so beautiful and smart and sweet! But she isn't the tiny newborn that I also adored... like the point of parenting is equipping your kid to grow healthy and loved but also please don't, yet, just wait slow down.

I just want to hold this version of you a little longer. I'm falling in love with a new you every. day. It's exciting and magical and scary and lonely? I can't keep up you're going to outgrow me and my God I am so proud of you keeping running baby!

Anyways so now I hoard pictures and video clips

😍😍😍😍😍😍🥰❤❤❤❤❤

Piggy backing on Anon... They both entered a baking show? Lily, for the financial award. James, for another reason.

Contestants in competition cookery/baking shows in the UK are nice to each other and help each other out, is the only thing, it's a very different energy to shows of their ilk in the US, so I'm not sure how that premise would work as a "rivals" fic? Anon we need clarification. Are they contestants on a show or just operating rival bakeries?

Their school is having a bake sale and each is trying to raise more money than the other. 

James would ruin his own plan by buying literally everything she puts on sale and would have no way to justify his actions without admitting that he has Feelings for her so he'd scramble over himself to make up some wild lie that makes no sense whatsoever.

Jily as rival bakers in the sense they own separate businesses, but competing for charity and randomly matched as a pair/team for the second event ?

A little slice of something, from the AOUC universe because I guess that's a thing now?

Lovely 😍aw

Guys it's a TWIST it's so great my brain literally said "please hold"

All this, and the fact that if the ocean had sharks as big as Megalodon and had enough of them to sustain the species at all, we would have found at least one Megalodon tooth washed up on a beach somewhere that wasn’t fossilized. More likely, we would have found hundreds of such teeth every year for as long as we have existed. “We didn’t know giant squid existed!” is a common argument I see from cryptozoologists, but it’s also flat out false. We did know. We knew there were giant squid for centuries because we found remains of them for centuries. We simply hadn’t captured or filmed a live one!

Okay, so I am well aware that this isn’t at all how evolution or natural selection works, but I still want a horror film that begins with a pair of scientists with dramatic music playing in the background as they pour over piles of records, until one of them turns to the other and says “it’s the whales. They’re becoming smaller, and more skittish.”

The other scientist looks out the window, over the sea. “Mother of god,” she whispers.

Alternatively;

We begin to find giant shark teeth washing up on shore. People freak out. “Scientists find evidence megalodons never went extinct!”

Then the lead scientist calms everyone down so they can explain. “No. It’s worse than that. If they never went extinct, we would’ve found evidence like this before now. This means… ” Dramatically takes off glasses. 

“They’ve just come back.”

“But they can’t just suddenly come back like that!”

“You’re right. Someone brought them back.”

PLEASE,,,

Jesus Christ Super-predator

I’m pretty sure that I was the one driving when we all got into this little circus car but now I’m wedged under the back seat and the clowns have just ramped us off the grandstands and directly onto the popcorn cart

The reason the heroes are always so easily able to infiltrate the bad guy’s secret base isn’t because evil minions are stupid. I mean, they may well be, but that’s not why.

Rather, it’s because effective operational security depends on establishing and enforcing norms. No behaviour is suspicious in the abstract; that judgment can only be made with reference to some accepted code of conduct.

And if you’re a minion? You basically have no point of reference, because working for an evil overlord is, scientifically speaking, weird as hell.

You had to fight a giant squid as part of your orientation. You’re pretty sure Alice over in engineering is a version of you from a parallel universe, but neither of you have ever had the guts to bring it up. Your supervisor wears a horned helmet in the goddamn break room.

So when you’re confronted with that “new hire” who’s really, really obviously three raccoons in a trenchcoat, you’ve gotta ask yourself: is this… normal? Should I be reporting this to someone?

More importantly, do I want to make this my problem?

And for those who make it as minions, the answer very quickly becomes no, no I do not.

Fair point! What ifffff they were more established and it was one fake issue but the purpose was for Lily to have to visit his desk and SURPRISE! flowers

a little texting drabble to cleanse my writing palate

Amazing 😍😍😍

for fellow austins and the rest of texas

fuck ERCOT

Mutuals please be aware I am walking between your desks and dropping lolly pops and small cards in your cardboard mailboxes as I go around

Two days in a row can you BELIEVE??