You don't show blood in animated films, it's like almost a taboo thing. You can show characters getting beat up and bruised but never bleeding. It defies all corporate beliefs of making it a "kids movie". Even GDT's Pinocchio which has fucking nazis in it and guns shooting people never showed blood in it. It's just that sacred of a thing in animation that studios never cross.
But Puss in Boots, they showed it. Not only that, you get a fucking close up on it. Do you know how rare that is? The people who made it probably fought every tooth and nail to get this moment approved, because this is unprecedented in this industry. You don't show actual blood bleeding I cant stress how much this is such a nono in this industry.
But for this moment it's perfect, the inevitability of death in Puss in Boot's eyes, the amount of risk the studio took to get this moment in the film approved, shows how much DreamWorks really cares and wants this movie to not just be another haha kids film but for the adults watching it, the people who have seen the world and fear death, those with anxiety, get panic attacks, unsure about life the universe, getting married, being a family. These aren't ideas catered to kids.
Everytime I've seen people be like "oh studios need to stop making boring ass animations and actually make a film about serious topics and have better animation and care about the movie" THIS IS IT FOLKS. A STUDIO LISTENED AND IT'S OUT HERE IN YOUR FACE.
So seriously go watch Puss in Boots. It's incredible and you're missing out on something beautiful if you don't.
What I mean when I do not control the hyperfixation.
messy but them :)
“The EBU will be breathing a sigh of relief that they’re not faced with a Tel Aviv final next year”
I don’t think my ao3 usage is that bad and then the fucker goes down and I go insane 😃
my husband has gone to war (ao3 is down), it’s been days (it’s happened multiple times now). i miss him so (i’m getting withdrawals).
Boba Fett’s reputation as the best bounty hunter in the galaxy comes from him pulling off an insane number of jobs throughout his life, some of which were even deemed impossible for a lone hunter to pull off
funnily enough, he doesn’t actually remember completing all of the ones people attribute to him, but after seeing the footage and biometric proof, he assumes that he’s been blacking out and entering some sort of exhaustion fugue state, or maybe he’s just had a few too many concussions
it’s not until he tries to claim a puck from the guild and is told that he’s already working that job that he starts to figure out that something more is going on, and decides to investigate who it is that’s been working this job
as it turns out, there’s actually like ten different escaped clones pulling bounties under his name, considering they all share the same DNA and face, who’ve put together a few fake versions of his father’s armor
many of them even work in teams, trading off who gets to ‘play Boba’ to the guild or clients
(they’ve also been using their shared DNA to access his space netflix account, which explains why the recommendation algorithm never seems to figure out what he likes and keeps telling him that he’s already watched shows he finds)
(strangely, he realizes that they haven’t touched any of his bank accounts, despite the fact that they could certainly have gotten through their security measures the same way)
after discovering this, he considers confronting them, killing them, even just turning them in to the guild
but then he’d lose some of his reputation if it comes out that impersonators can mimic him well enough to get the job done just as well as he could
so he just sends them all a message telling them to not fuck this up and continues with this life
There's something funny about watching (and participating) in the chaos of "Ao3 is down"
When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.
One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.
I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.
I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.
I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered. When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.
She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.
I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.
And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.
So I guess, like, if you’re here and you’re 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if you’re younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.
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