Whenever I see people discoursing online about how all fiction must model good behavior and explicitly state that any bad behavior depicted is wrong, lest someone in the audience mistake it for “glorifying,” all I can think of is that line from Arrested Development where Buster, in his mid-30s, objects to something by saying “that’s not the way mother is raising me”

Like yeah maybe YA books and kids’ cartoons have a responsibility to demonstrate the difference between Right and Wrong, since the audience is, like, actual children, but if you’re consuming literally anything more advanced than Disney XD’s Ducktales, you should absolutely be expected to bring your own moral framework from home and not need your media to spoon-feed morality to you

if you see a show about a a man manufacturing and selling methamphetamine while abusing his wife and murdering people and you can’t tell whether the author intends for you to think his actions are right or wrong? That might be more your problem than the text’s. You might just, at that point, be an idiot.

[banging on the notes of this post with a broomstick from below] yo shut the fuck up in there

people saying “don’t use your full government name for your ao3”, “create different emails for work and personal use” but personally I think it’s both sad and dystopian how capitalism/companies/even schools think they have the rights to cross your personal boundaries and insert themselves into your personal life. like, I get it, safety wise, why checking digital footprints can be important sometimes. but a gay fanfiction is not a fucking threat that could ever cause anybody harm. it’s funny (not really, it’s still sad and dystopian) how they now think they can control your personal life and prevent you from having hobbies

i HaTE myseLf SO MUch. i CliCkeD An UNdEScRiptiVElY NAmED scRIpt FilE tHAt i MAde In 2011 WitHoUT tHiNkING Of THe PotENtIaL ConSequeNceS aND GUeSS WHaT it DoES? guEsS WhaT iT fuCkInG does. I BEt YoU Can’t GUesS

It isn't just that Knives Out protagonists win by being kind and steadfast. They win by sticking to what it is they're good at. What they've been called to do, as thankless and as demeaning as those jobs can sometimes make them feel. They didn't play the "game" like Benoit did. They just did what they knew they were good at.

Marta wins because she was a nurse and a caregiver before anything else. She wins the inheritance because she gave Harlan companionship, not just medical care. She gets the truth out of Ransom because she acted as a nurse, trying to save Fran even though she still dies in the end. Had Harlan just fucking listened to the actual medical expert in the room instead of himself, he would have lived.

Helen wins because she's a third-grade teacher—her job is literally educating, caring for, and looking out for kids. Glass Onion isn't just the working class vs the wealthy, it's an actual functioning adult woman vs a bunch of adult-sized toddlers, whining and throwing temper tantrums and thinking only of themselves. She plays games with her third graders, and in the end she wins by making a game of destroying everything Miles ever held dear, even getting the others to side with her.

Jud wins because he's an actual fucking priest, who actually embodies everything his god taught. He doesn't try to poach Wick's "flock" or anything, nor does he allow himself to surrender to anger and vindictiveness in the way Wick did. Jud is absolved of all his crimes because he just wants to do good by his church, in the name of his god.

Just as Blanc is an excellent detective, so too are these three spectacular at their jobs.

Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig just keep reiterating the same points in every film and I do love them for it.

• Respect the working class

• Fucking respect women.

• Listen to the local queer person who is excellent at their jobs and you will go far.

• Be kind in a cynical world.

The best thing about Jud's ministry is how un-evangelical it is.

And I don't mean it's not like the Evangelical church, I mean he's not interested in convincing anyone to be a believer or a church goer. When the woman at the construction company starts talking to him about her mother, he doesn't tell her that God is there for her. He tells her that he's there's for. She already knows she can go to church, maybe she is even a Christian and feels like she has her God's love. But Jud knows that what she needs is another human being, because she's talking to him.

And that's such a better way to welcome people to your church than telling them to go. He's letting her know that there's fulfillment and safety and love there beyond just the religious side, because he's there.

Jud isn't interested in convincing anyone. He meets Benoit where he's at as an atheist, talking about the stories as just stories that we can take meaning from, and that works. It inspires Benoit to a moment of real, selfless kindness. He makes sure Benoit knows the doors are open any time he wants to enter, even if he enters as an atheist every time. Because the important thing is how you affect people and their actions, not how you affect their beliefs.

my actual favorite scene in wake up dead man is the one where jud is on the phone with the woman from the construction company and she asks him to pray for her, the sudden turn from humor to complete seriousness without it feeling like a tonal whiplash is really really good

I do love how the characters in wake up dead man are a lot more subtle with how awful they are. They're not the cartoonish evils of Glass Onion or the loud and chaotic old money evils of the first movie (which fit the vibe of their own movie). But the evil was more grounded. They were normal people that were radicalized by a man who used their bad sides to secure their undying loyalty. The incel behaviour is played for laughs, but it's also a sobering moment of ah, fuck these were just normal people before. They weren't rich. They weren't powerful. They were vulnerable. And easily manipulated.

"What if a streamer did make a secret final episode of a season of a show that ties everything together?" One already did. It's called Dropout and they're the only ones crazy enough to pull it off.

To avoid deer strikes, Finland is painting deer antlers with reflective paint.

politics brain poisoning is bad because i first read this and thought “i can’t believe they’d prevent the deer from going on strike”

"don't use Louis' pimp history to be racist against him" and "calling Louis a pimp is racist" are two different statements btw. the second one creates a far less favorable impression of your views on the historical sexual exploitation of woc.

"nooooo guys don't you understand that Louis is simultaneously Not A Pimp and also the Real Victim Here by being forced into pimping, 1910s prostitution is exactly like 2026 onlyfans!!!!"

Louis:

like you can stan Louis while also giving a shit about the sexual exploitation of Black women. that's possible.

also people are kidding themselves if they think "pimp" is the worst word for this situation do you want us to do what Louis himself does and start calling him a human trafficker.

I always recommend people read this essay on the themes of sex work in the show.

Louis has a complicated relationship with sex work. It is a period-piece complicated relationship with sex work, and it DOES impact the way he talks about and frames the women he works with, and the people he sees in the margins on his own power. Calling Louis a capitalist is talking about his real impact on those who have less power in their lives, and I think that matters for his style of vampirism.

Louis may have made his girls co-owners of the Azalea, but why did he? Did he listen them? Weigh their opinions? Or did he make them co-owners to get into the loophole of the law. He put that sign out on the building anyway, despite Bricktop saying it was stupid. And then we never hear anything from her again.

Louis's interaction with sex work is about survival. Survival of his family, his personal power in NOLA, maintaining power and status as creole during Jim Crow. These are complicated and nuanced aspects that mean that pimp ≠ evil but it does mean that pimp = "uses others as commodities".

He's great, he's fantastic, and he also a character whose flaws are closely related to this reality he chose vampirism to maintain.

Another piece of non-fiction I recommend to get a sex worker's side of the story is this beautifully written disseration that opens with this quote.

Reframing Louis from a plantation slave owner to a brothel owner was brilliant and maintains a nuanced complexity that describes his relationship with bodies: including himself, Claudia? and others in his life. From his performative sexuality to his want to pay a whore to sit in the same room as him, this brush was used on purpose.

...forgive me, Grace.

Tw*tter didn't appreciate my joke but I hope you guys will

Sometimes you will be a lesbian to your parents and a straight man to your partners parents and a gay man to your partner and a woman to your grandparents and out to your friends and stealth to your classmates and a nice young lady to the cashier at the coffee shop and then people on your computer will ask you to choose which of these identities you ACTUALLY are and which you are Appropriating The Oppression Of because don’t you know they contract each other. You can only be one thing solidly forever