“Some People Read With Their Feet,” Is A Quote That’s Been Relevant Since The Day I Heard It (and

“The Devil works hard, but AO3 authors work harder,” I mutter to myself like a mantra as encouragement while I trudge my way through my 10 year old WIP, which is not published on AO3.

When someone’s accent changes according to their mood

Forget pet peeves, what is one of your little loves?

I love in the summer when people drive with the windows down, and the music up, and they sing along really enthusiastically.

Petition to start referring to Susan Pevensie's arc as "The Tragedy of Susan" rather than "The Problem of Susan." Her arc is not defined by the "problem" of growing up; it is the tragedy of forgetting she is a queen.

In Prince Caspian, we see the seeds of this. "It's no good behaving like kids now that we are back in Narnia," Peter tells her when she is afraid of entering the treasure chamber in the ruins of Cair Paravel. "You're a Queen here." Aslan does not chide her for being too grown-up to believe in him; he lends her his breath for bravery so that she can stop listening to her fears. Susan's "problem" in this book is in fact that she behaves more like a child than a queen.

In many ways, Susan's arc parallels Prince Rilian's in The Silver Chair. He is the Lost Prince; she becomes the Lost Queen. He is enchanted to forget who he really is. The Green Lady twists his birthright so that he is going to conquer his own land and rule as a usurper--the land where he is meant to be the rightful ruler! He unconsciously trades his role as the true prince for a false kingship (similar to Edmund trading his birthright as a true king of Narnia for the Witch's false promise to make him a prince ... hey, you'd almost think this was a theme or something).

Susan likewise trades her identity as queen for a false substitute in England, exchanging the substance for the shadow. She is a child pretending to be a grown-up, not actually being grown-up. Lewis never says there's anything inherently wrong with "lipstick and nylons and invitations," but they are merely the outward trappings of society. What makes a person a king or queen comes from inside. When Rilian returns to Narnia, he is instantly recognized as a prince, despite his lack of a crown or any of the other formal trappings of royalty. He is recognized because he is no longer hidden by the armor of the Green Lady--and so he looks like himself. In fact, he not only looks like himself, he looks like his father. (Which is also how Lord Bern recognizes Caspian in the Lone Islands, despite Caspian not having any outward proof of his kingship--Caspian looks and sounds like his father. Shasta is recognized as a prince because of his resemblance to his brother--oh hey, we've got another theme going.)

Susan has put on the armor of the world, and in doing so has lost herself as queen. That is what makes her arc a tragedy. But! There is always, always hope. Rilian is rescued. Shasta is restored to his true identity as Prince Cor. Edmund is redeemed. Aslan breathes on Susan. Caspian's kingship restores right order to the Lone Islands. No one is ever irredeemably lost.

Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.

Even when they themselves have forgotten who they truly are.

It’s an epic false dichotomy we’ve got in the US and the hope that we’ll escape it is what keeps me going.

Realizing that you can (should! must!) have compassion for everybody and you needn’t (shouldn’t! can’t!) pick and choose who to look out for based on what’s popular or who you personally like or any other qualification other than who happens to be existing in your sphere of influence and who needs your help can be a tough pill to swallow in today’s political scene. May God provide all of us with a big sip of water to get it down.

The thing about political polarization that really gets me is what do you mean I have to pick between caring about the unborn and the elderly, or minorities and the poor??? Sounds like a totally made-up rule to me. Skill issue. I CHOOSE ALL.

"If you’re going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can’t pick and choose who’s going to be the sparrow. It’s everybody, and you’re stuck with it." - Madeleine L'Engle

My latest hot take is that Warrior Cats and Yellowstone, while vastly different media with vastly different target audiences, appeal to their respective audiences for the exact same reasons. Similarities include:

- the beauty of nature is a major theme and the expansion of cityscape is treated in both with the exact same level of narrative grief

- gratuitous violence and dysfunction

- readers/viewers vicariously live a power fantasy

- territorial disputes of a kind that no one else in their respective worlds engages in

- characters who are undeniably badass but all their ambition stems from their intense self-loathing

- oaths of unbreakable loyalty

- constant existential doom

- strict hierarchy enforced by violence

- murder plots that go off without a hitch

- murder plots that absolutely do not go off without a hitch

- lies about who your family is

- adoptions, but they’re a really weird dynamic

- lots of doomed romantic relationships

- “their death was all your fault”

- jaded antiheroes who can’t actually believe in the future they’re striving toward and sabotage it every time they get close by aiming for something imperfect (the best they think they can get/deserve)

One thing that bothers me about the ending of the Lilo and Stitch remake (among the other things people have already rightfully complained about) is how it acts like Nani has to go to college NOW or she's lost her chance forever.

As someone who was raised by a young mother that didn't get to go to college, because she got 2 kids at 18-20, but then went to college in her early/mid 30s when me and my sister were old enough to be left home alone, it just feels really insulting.

It really adds to the harmful mindset that someone's life, especially that of women, is over if they haven't "got their life together" yet before the age of 25.

There would've been no harm in Nani delaying college for like 5-10 years, instead of abandoning her sister during the most vital years of her development only 2-3 months after already having lost her parents. Animated Nani would never.

We talk all the time about how alike Haymitch and Katniss are, but I think the differences showcased in SOTR are fascinating.

Katniss goes into her Games thinking that her mother and sister will die if she dies and can’t come back to take care of them. Haymitch goes into his Games knowing that his mother and brother will only survive if he dies.

Katniss, in the beginning, is genuinely out for herself, determined to live and go home again. She has to be persuaded to work with Peeta even temporarily, during training and interviews, and she tries so hard to convince herself she’s okay with him dying that she surprises herself by calling out his name the instant she finds out two of them can win. Even so, she’s initially conflicted when the rule change is revoked.

Haymitch, already expecting not to go home, is only pretending to be selfish and ends up doing a pretty poor job of even that. He works hard at keeping Lou Lou alive—feeding her, keeping her away from the poisonous fruit and water—and she only dies because she finds a danger he didn’t know about. He hugs Ampert back, risks his own life to distract the porcupine, finds and feeds Wellie, and absolutely honors his promise that all the Newcomers are safe with him, not just safe from him.

What they do have in common is this: they try so, so hard to do wrong things in the interest of doing something right in the long term, but they just aren’t able to pass up a chance to do right when they see one.

Haymitch is explicitly told that any act of rebellion, anything to draw attention to the humanity of the district kids and the cruelty of the Capitol, will be punished by a painful death. Still, he calls out the Gamemakers for prolonging Lou Lou’s suffering and refuses to hand over her body to them. Still, he sabotages the arena. Still, he uses what he thinks are his dying moments to set up one last explosive in the hopes it might make a difference.

Katniss promises Prim she’ll come home, but she still runs to Rue’s defense knowing full well that whoever’s there may very well just kill her, too. She still refuses to kill Peeta and resolves to die with him rather than let the Capitol use her as their weapon.

Reading book two without first reading book one:

Rings of Power and orcs. I get wanting to show that villains can be redeemable, but that’s possible if and only if said villain wants and pursues redemption and recognizes where they’ve been wrong. LOTR and every related work prior to RoP consistently showed us orcs who firmly believed it was their right to torture and eat people. Saruman’s main obstacle in using them was that they couldn’t get along; they were killing each other for the opportunity to dismember and eat Merry and Pippin. There’s a lot of work to do before you can make people sympathize with orcs and RoP was not equipped to do even a fraction of that work.

Not to mention it didn’t need to be done. LOTR was already full of nuanced race relations, redeemable villains, and characters making themselves better or worse via their own free will. I would venture a guess that this is why Tolkien made the orcs so intensely reprehensible in the first place—in a world where Gollum, who attempts murder onscreen multiple times and explicitly states his desire to eat more than one of our beloved protagonists, is a sympathetic and redeemable character, you need a very concrete reason to see orcs as consistent, clear-cut villains. I would say we definitely have that. The orcs engage is gruesome violence and they like it that way; we never see an orc who wants to do things differently, therefore by their own choice, none of them have been redeemable.

Gollum is very nearly the same, except for a few moments where he shows disgust for what he’s become and a desire for something good and lovely, like sharing a meal with friends. It only takes a little bit to make him redeemable and it’s a clear picture of how real-life redemption can be accomplished from the measliest of starting points.

But you have to have that starting point, and I don’t think it’s unrealistic or in any way bad to have characters who don’t embrace that starting point, especially when there’s another character right next to them showing that their actions could have been forgiven if only they had any remorse.

the reason "robot racism" is often a really stupid metaphor is the same reason that like. discrimination against demons or vampires or whatever doesn't work, is because there's often a pretty justified reasons humans are scared of vampires or robots or whatever, in a way that doesn't apply to real life minorities, like a fantasy author will be like "the reason vampires are discriminated against is because most of them and kill and eat people for fun and pleasure, and so humans respond by trying to kill them, isn't that so sad" and like no that's a perfectly fine reason to not trust vampires i think.