"I am the monster parents tell their children about at night."

And other writers be like: But it turned out good, right? I hope so. Writing can be so hard sometimes.

And then some more writers pitch in with: Wait, you actually write?

And normal people are sitting there like: If writing is so hard, why do you do it?

And writers be like: That’s not how it works. We don’t call the writing. The writing calls us. Sometimes it’s hell, but the writing demon summoned us to be the writers, and we cannot refuse the call.

But the writers are also like : I refuse the call every other day.

Favourite Marvel Movie Moments / Avengers (2012) 

First of all, it’s not an attack on genre films, generally. It’s not even an attack on a genre of film, specifically. He didn’t speak about “superhero movies” as a whole, like Ridley Scott or James Cameron have in the recent past (although, let’s face it, the genre is synonymous with Marvel at the moment, anyway). He expressly targeted Marvel films; the MCU in particular. Gee, I wonder why.

He also didn’t say that they were “bad”, he called them theme parks. You read that superficially and assumed that he meant, “Things that are fun” but what he actually meant was, “Things that are built with the soul purpose of funneling people into seats to be optimally profitable.” 

It’s very amusing to me that you folks will log on Tumblr to hem and haw about late stage capitalism, but then leap at the chance to defend your favorite Mickey Mouse production from the scary old man who’s been trying his best to make good films for 50yrs. What good, respectable consumers!

Lastly, he refers to cinema as “human beings trying to convey emotional, and psychological experiences to other human beings,” and you guys all either went, 1) “Cinema just means it’s a movie played in a theater, hurr hurr hurr,” 2) “Thor almost cried one time when he planet blow up,” or 3) “That’s pretentious! Everything is art! My cheerios are art!” and again this is missing the point. 

When you watch a Marvel film, a writer didn’t decide that he had something interesting to say about Frog Man and pen a script, and then a director didn’t get to take said script and produce a work through their own artistic lens. A boardroom full of people in suits sat around and decided which licensed properties they already owned the rights to would be most profitable, and how it would fit into the conveyor belt of content they’d already pre-designed, and then they controlled every single aspect of that production, down to tone and color grading. And if you don’t believe that, ask Edgar Wright.

Martin Scorsese gave you guys an incredibly milquetoast, obvious criticism of movies you slurp down, and it made you all fume, but what you should be mad about is that you’re forced to consume fast food art when you could, just as easily, be getting filet mignon with the same genre and character roster.

a) watch more movies – including the works of greats like Martin Scorsese but also, even more so, non-tentpole works by women and directors of color so you don’t think the rare time Marvel/DC lets a Patty Jenkins, Ryan Coogler or Taika Waititi direct their latest installment is the pinnacle of progressive cinema; and

b) stop treating “fandom” as a replacement for a personality, so you don’t take it so incredibly personally when someone criticizes a giant corporation that doesn’t care about you except as a profit-generator. 

It’s been really bizarre to watch the absolute fury Tumblr has toward particular directors - be it Scorsese in this instance or the Russos or Joss or whoever - when really all the things y’all are angry at come down to corporate films built by committee and distributed by MBA majors. 

Seriously. Every single MCU complaint I’ve seen has come down to story choices that were specifically, deliberately made to sell more films. Every single one. These are not random choices (why on earth do y’all seem to think these choices are random? Do you know how much talent and money runs through this stuff?) These films are made to sell as well as possible across as wide a spectrum of people as possible. Most of the things you wish the films were doing? Those things don’t sell well enough to justify the costs.

These are business decisions, made by people who are disengaged from the emotional end of storytelling but who survive in the studio world precisely because of that disengagement. 

You as fans are filling in the emotional and character gaps with fanfiction and fan art because you’re starved for the sorts of stories you could have but don’t. And instead of searching out and embracing the few small films that have managed to get made in this environment and that DO the things you wish the huge films did, y’all get angry at the people pushing for better.

The bits and bobs of character arcs and solid twists and really anything enjoyable that you love in these films is despite this studio system, not because of it, and it’s mostly due to all those guys y’all keep getting mad at. If you don’t believe me, look at the sorts of things the Russos or Joss or anyone else make when they fund things with their own money. Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was funded from Joss’s pocket. Watch Patty Jenkins’ short films or Monster or read the story about how she fought for the No Man’s Land sequence in Wonder Woman (the only piece of that film that most people remember). The Russos’ sense of creative freedom in the paintball episodes of Community is gleeful and insane; they made Winter Soldier with more creative freedom than they had on Civil War, Infinity War or Endgame and it shows. Taika put more depth and emotion into Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople than he would ever have been able to put in Ragnarok. 

Look, I like Civil War, it’s a fun movie; but for every Civil War we get, all that money could’ve gone into 20 different films that do what you wish these movies were doing, and that fill gaps that you’re trying to make fanfiction fill right now. Those films are always out there struggling for life, but no one watches them, therefore no one with money will put any money toward them. So instead of 20 different movies, half or a quarter of which might change your life, we get one fun-but-pretty-inconsequential film. It’s not worth it, but this is how the system functions right now.

It’s not an accident that less money means more freedom, and more freedom means better story arcs and better character development. These few guys who  are talented as hell and they know how to tell stories. It is the corporate studio filmmaking world that restricts them, not the creatives themselves. 

And they are not, for God’s sake, making these choices as some kind of personal affront to you. The amount of people on Tumblr that imagine that is just wild. Just absolutely wild. 

He had a lot of flaws, but he tries to be good! He was sweet and gentle and loving when he wasn't trying to exude his Asgardian warrior strength and energy!

slut shaming doesnt make you cool

literally no one cares if you smoke weed every day

literally no one

do not be afraid to make eye contact with people in the hallway

thank the people who serve you lunch

say hello to the janitors

appreciate your parents

establish good friendships with teachers who care the most

it wont make you a teacher’s pet so stfu

I will never forget I befriended all the lunch ladies in middle school and they used to ask to see my drawings. And if some drawings came out badly and I wanted to throw them away, they would ask to keep them and hang them up in the kitchen. They all signed my middle school yearbook. They'd open the snack line earlier, keep it open longer, or grab extra stock from the kitchen just for me. They'd make sure my favorite lunch was prepped for me to grab daily and brighten my mood if I was visibly upset.

When I went to high school, one of the lunch ladies transferred with me and continued to spoil me and treat me super well, including letting me skip in line, opening a closed register just to ring me up, etc.

My elementary school janitor talked to virtually none of the students, but went out of his way to smile and wave if he saw me because I used to write him thank you cards for cleaning the school every year. He told me he always hung them up on his fridge at home.

As someone who goes through this at least twice a week, hearing that your parents love you while they also abuse you is not closure

If you (like me) love your family, the actual words end up hurting way more than anything else, cause then you start doing leaps of logic:

“If they love me and they abuse me maybe it’s me who is wrong, maybe I deserve it”

“Well, they couldnt have know they where hurting me, they just didnt know how to be parents”

“Maybe there is something wrong with me as a whole and they are trying to fix me”

“I’m the abnormal one, they are the normal ones”

This ends up breaking your sense of self, and again, as someone who goes through this often, it really affects the way u interact with others an takes responsibility away from the abusers

It also haves the horrible effect of normalizing said abuse, I sometimes feel I cant talk about how much my parents hurt me to others cause they would often just go “that’s how parents are”

At least irl, I have a lot of people said that, cause the abuse is normalized to that level

“All parents scream, all parents beat you if u dont behave, all parents are emotionally distant, all parents hurt you by ignoring your well being and doing what they think is right, all parents berate you”

And it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid thinking that maybe everyone is right and maybe u are just a monster for even implying your parents were abusive

Until shit hits the fan

“I care about you” loses all meaning if that person has abused you, or neglected you

Because as harsh as it might sound, it does not matter if they really love you or care about you, they still hurt you, and refusing to apologize or worse, making a fuse about how they shouldn’t apologize shows that they do not love you

They love the concept of you they have created, they dont love you

Even if they didnt meant to abuse you, if they refuse to apologize that means they value their pride more than your well being

And you know what, it sucks that most representation of “closure” between an abusive/neglectful parent and their child always ends up with the child “understanding” their abuser and forgiving them

Because the burden it’s always put on the child, the one been abused always haves to be the bigger person, they have to forgive and then glorify their abuser, or else they are “immature traumatized shit heads that cant understand”

And … you know what, this haves an effect on people

I have seen it happen, people that are starting to grasp the concept that maybe what their parents did wasn’t ok, after been bombarded with this tropes end up undoing all that progress and going back to “it’s ok they abused me cause they knew better than me” and then idolize their abusers, only to then repeat the cycle of abuse onto their own children

It also makes things worse for everyone that tries to break the cycle, because it paints those that are doing the emotional work of healing like the ones to blame for “not understanding”

It honest to God scares me, thinking that one day when I’m older I might “understand” why my parents hurt me so much and think it was ok

Cause it isn’t, and I’m not stupid, I understand why they do it, but that still doesn’t make it ok, that still doesnt mean they where right, they hurt me and they keep hurting me, and they aren’t going to stop, ever, because they do not care, they will always say they love me, that they care about me, but they don’t

Cause real love and real care isn’t abuse, it isn’t yelling and screaming at you because it’s easier than asking others for help, it isn’t blaming you for been a child with needs for ruining the rest of your family, it isn’t toying with your emotions left and right when its convenient because they know you have a pathological need for love and approval, it isn’t been petty and hurtful when they are been called out for acting like shitheads, it isn’t exploding with rage and taking it on you because u are the easy target

It's validating for both real life survivors of abuse and fiction ones. not to mention educational for those who don't know or understand survivor's guilt of abuse.

My abusive mother has said she loves me in hopes to bring me back. Even people who want me to go back to her recognize and warn me that she will abuse me again if I give her the chance and tell me to only meet with her in public, crowded locations with lots of witnesses.