always 2.43 am here.

REMINDER THAT LAIKA’S SECOND FILM NOT ONLY CONSISTED OF A CAST WITH FOUR CENTRAL FEMALE CHARACTERS BUT INCLUDED AN ENTIRE TOWN OF DIVERSE CITIZENS OF VARYING RACE, GENDER, AND AGE. LIKE A NORMAL TOWN HAS.

REMINDER THAT LAIKA’S THIRD FILM FEATURED SAME SEX COUPLES IN THEIR TEASER TRAILER

REMINDER THAT THIS IS ALL STOP-MOTION SO EVERY CHARACTER WAS DESIGNED, MODELED, SCULPTED, RIGGED, AND EVEN HAD TINY CLOTHES SEWED FOR THEM.

also reminder that they make chump change compared to disney who whines and cries that in all their years of experience they can’t handle the prospect of animating a girl with a face different than the rest and that it’s “too hard” because only females can express such a wide range of emotions that it makes them difficult to animate

there is no neutral or innocent choice in art

that is to say, as a writer or artist or filmmaker, you should be considering the meaning of everything you choose to include or exclude.  is there a water glass in the foreground of your shot? why?  you are creating a story from scratch, which means you are defining it by every choice you make, not just the major plot points.

especially in fiction writing or poetry, the author chose to write every single word.  nothing is there “on accident”.  if an author uses a color, they had to choose the color – and they had to chose to tell you the color at all, because they weren’t required to!  when i describe a color of something in my writing, i always think about the choice.  it’s never “just red”.

can analysis sometimes yield things the author didn’t intend? sure.  but (a) the point isn’t about trying to read the author’s mind, so who cares what they intended? and (b) sometimes the author actually does subconsciously weave symbolism into things.

I don’t think people in the US got this as much as we did over here in Europe and the rest of the football (as opposed to hand-egg) loving world. But this:

is a vuvuzela. The football loving (or just tolerating, or culturally affected by) world met these things en masse during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They were mass produced, they were fucking everywhere. They sound like this:

Over wide open terrain, perfect to summon your people for say, village council, which was what the original instrument was apparently used for. The plastic mass produced thing, in close terrain, is perfect to make it impossible for anybody to hear themselves think, let alone speak. Could it be perfect to disrupt a nazi, for instance if you are not able, for whatever reason, to punch him in the face? My friends, it just might be. Because these things were so heavily mass produced, at one point they couldn’t give them away. There is almost certainly still bunches of them sitting around waiting for the opportune moment, and the opportune moment is now.

If you’re someplace where nazis come to hate speechify (campus etc) get one. You don’t have to be super close for these things to be super effective, which is helpful if you’re not willing/able to get close up in somebody’s face - the damn things are just as disruptive from ten metres away.

It’s Vuvuzela revival time.

goldstarprivilege:

appropriately-inappropriate:

wirstdate:

liefplus:

if u weren’t aware of salvation army’s homophobia, its prety hardcore

a guy in a salvos truck yelled at me and my gf while we were kissing today so I was thinking of this

Do you know, when I was in high-school I went to the mall near my house with my girlfriend to do some Christmas shopping.

We were there, sixteen year old me and seventeen year old her, holding hands and window-shopping, minding our own business.

This Salvation Army shitheel gets aggro about it in the middle of the mall and I’m there totally flabbergasted cause like, it’s christmas

Only, 16!Tabi had even less composure than 26!Tabi, so I lost my fucking mind on her.

Thing is: when I’m really angry, I don’t rage, I go all cold and apparently that freaks people out, because I could see my gf backing up and the lady getting tense and then I realized that anger doesn’t solve problems.

So instead, I started wailing.

Picture this: 5’4, tiny, blonde haired high school girl with her little violin on her back and pearls in her ears just as PTA-approved as could be, full on sobbing in the hallway.

Just, sobbing like my dog’s been shot.

Now my gf’s like, “oh fuck” and the lady’s like “oh fuuuuck!” and I’m here, head thrown back, tears down my cheeks and in that shrill, distressed, /loud/ voice, “WHY WOULD YOU B-b-be so MEAN?! It’s CHRISTMAS!”

And the lady’s like “please stop Oh fuck” because now we have a crowd, and this Molly Weasley of a woman putters over, “what’s the matter, dear?”

And mall security’s coming and this bell ringer is looking very uncomfortable so I just look at this matronly ellen-watching suburban housewife lady, eyes wide and wet and my lip wobbling.

“I was, she s-said, s-s-she said I was going to HELL!”

And I burst right back into tears.

Maaaaaaaan, they didn’t even stick around to ask why she’d said it. Soon as I said it, Mall po-po bounced her like a fucking pogo stick.

We get outside and my girlfriend’s like “that is the most Slytherin thing I have ever seen anyone do.”

It was four years before I saw the Army back in that mall.

that is beautiful