Sweetheartsoldier - Ranger's Dislodgment

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)

“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.

Countless children’s media misled me with their emphasis on the dangers of quicksand, but VeggieTales was spot-on with their emphasis on the danger of the public veneration of material goods.

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.

There’s a time and a place for overthinking fiction, and if the time and place is here and now:

Do you find it endearing if the love interest is stupid or are you just afraid of other people’s free will?

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.

Snow says it’s better for Haymitch to die than to live long enough to have his heart broken by Lenore Dove. If he really thought Lenore Dove was going to betray Haymitch the way (he thinks) Lucy Gray did to him, he wouldn’t have needed to poison Lenore Dove. Just sayin 👀

“Some people read with their feet,” is a quote that’s been relevant since the day I heard it (and before that, to be so honest), and something else that’s rattling around in my brain is some post (I’ve got no hope of finding the original as I can’t even recall what website I saw it on) saying something along the lines of “it tracks that the Pevensies are British and that the moment they found themselves in an unfamiliar place they declared themselves its royal family.”

If you want to talk about colonialism, talk about colonialism, but it does frustrate me to see a point missed so thoroughly. I hate to see it missed and I love this particular aspect of the series, so I’m going to take a moment to talk about it.

The Pevensies did not declare themselves royalty. Becoming kings and queens was not their idea. This was an expectation that the people of Narnia had for them, and when the kids were informed of this expectation, they found it daunting, to say the least.

This theme recurs almost beat-for-beat with Caspian, who is very openly unsure of himself and his ability to rule Narnia. It evolves with Eustace, who begins his arc unable to even consider the possibility of himself doing something important for Narnia or vice versa. It returns with Jill, who gets angry at being saddled with a mission that feels altogether too big for her.

The premise that keeps coming up throughout the series is this concept of worthiness and capability. The takeaway is not that some people are made superior or that people can make themselves superior. The takeaway is that you will feel inferior. In fact, if you feel superior, you are probably delusional: a danger to yourself and others. You will feel inferior, but that is neither a sentence to accomplish only little in life, nor an excuse for only accomplishing little in life. You will be afraid and insecure and uncertain and embarrassed, but you can and must do great things nonetheless. We are, all of us, made for greatness.

I think a lot of what pro-AI people are really wanting is stuff that already exists but they don't know it's out there like

can't format a work email? templates

don't know how to write a resume? templates

writing a thank you card or a condolences card or a wedding invitation? templates templates templates

not sure how to format your citations in MLA or whatever format? citationmachine.net

summary of something you're reading for school/work? cliffsnotes.com

recipe based on ingredients in your fridge? whatsintherefrigerator.com

there's a million more like, guys, we don't need AI, we never needed generative AI

Field Fire