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you’re over-describing the wrong things.
okay. so. this is going to feel a little bit like a call-out, but in a “i have done this and will probably do it again” way, not a “you specifically are the problem” way.
because.....:
most writers don’t under-describe.
they don’t.
they over-describe, just… not the parts that actually matter.
and that’s where everything starts to feel off in a way that’s hard to explain but very easy to feel.
like you read a paragraph and go:
“this is technically fine. why am i bored.”
let me show you the pattern.
you will spend:
5 lines describing the curtains
3 lines describing the exact shade of the wallpaper
2 lines describing the way light hits the floorboards
and then when your character is:
about to lie
about to confess something
about to make a decision that will literally alter the trajectory of the story
you give it:
“she hesitated.”
and then you MOVE ON??
be serious for a second.
this is what i mean when i say you’re over-describing the wrong things.
it’s not that description is bad. i love description. i want to eat description. i want to live inside it.
but description has a job.
and its job is not “make the scene look pretty.”
its job is:
direct the reader’s attention to what matters emotionally.
so if you are describing something in detail, i need you to ask:
“why this. why right now.”
because if the answer is:
“i pictured it really clearly in my head”
i regret to inform you that your reader does not care. gently. respectfully. they do not care.
they care about:
what your character wants
what is getting in the way
what this moment means
everything else is background noise unless you make it matter.
here’s where it gets a little uncomfortable:
you are probably avoiding describing the things that feel harder to articulate.
like:
the exact shape of someone’s hesitation
the difference between anger and hurt in a single line of dialogue
the way attraction feels when it’s inconvenient
the moment a character realizes something they don’t want to know
that’s the stuff you skim past.
because it’s messy. and specific. and requires you to make choices.
so instead, you describe the room.
because the room is safe.
the room will not expose you.
the room will not force you to decide what your character is actually feeling.
and i get it. i really do.
but also: that’s why your scenes feel flat.
not because nothing is happening.
but because the important thing is happening off-screen.
let’s fix it. practically. no vague advice. i don’t do vague advice.
next time you’re writing a scene, do this:
pick one moment where something shifts.
not physically. emotionally.
a realization. a decision. a change in power. a crack in composure.
and then instead of writing:
“she hesitated”
you stay there.
you stretch it.
you get uncomfortably specific.
what kind of hesitation?
is it:
the kind where she already knows the answer and is stalling
the kind where she’s hoping someone interrupts
the kind where saying it out loud will make it real
what does it feel like in her body?
what does she notice in the room because she’s hesitating?
(see how now the description has a job. it’s not random anymore. yay)
this is the shift:
description should orbit emotion.
not replace it.
not distract from it.
not hide it.
orbit it.
another thing. and i’m going to say this very gently because i know how attached we get to our sentences:
if you can cut a description and nothing changes about how the reader understands the scene?
it was never doing anything.
it was just sitting there. looking pretty. contributing nothing to the emotional experience.
and we do not keep freeloaders in this house.
this doesn’t mean your writing has to be minimal.
it means your writing has to be intentional.
you can describe everything if you want.
but then everything you describe needs to be pulling weight.
it needs to be revealing character, or building tension, or reinforcing mood in a way that actually connects to what’s happening internally.
otherwise it’s just… decorative.
and decoration is not story.
so next time you feel like your scene is “missing something”
before you add more description
ask yourself:
am i avoiding the part that actually matters?
and then go write that part.
even if it’s harder.
especially if it’s harder.
anyway. that’s your gentle (not gentle) reminder for today.
go make your characters feel things on the page instead of hiding behind the wallpaper.
i’m watching you.
(in a supportive way. mostly.)
I HAVE DIGITAL PRODUCTS!!!
if you're writing dark academia feel free to check out this packet filled with all the juicy prompts to spark ideas!
A gothic prompt pack for writers who love cursed universities, secret societies, and scholarly rot.✎ Write the Darkness ✎A 75-prompt horror
need help with your opening pages?! i have a free ebook for you all (aesthetic, cohesive and actually informative! it's free! but tips are highly appreciated!)
✦ A free (and actually helpful) guide to leveling up your first 10 pages ✦If you're unsure whether your opening is ✨doing enough✨ to hook re
On the note of describing everything if it helps us understand what the character is feeling:
She hesitated, eyes flicking to the cracks that spidered across the corner where the paint was peeling away.
Should she speak, and reveal the truth, festering like the mould that dotted the edges of the walls? Or should she keep it drawn tight like the curtains that were too long, too thick, too heavy to let in even the most blinding sunlight.
"Grayson, I . . . " She trailed off when a muscle in his jaw tightened, the only other indication of anger the almost inaudible creak of leather under his fingers when his grip intensified on the armchair.
She fell silent again, gaze dropping to the worn carpet. Now that the couch was gone, every flaw in the threadbare covering seemed magnified a hundredfold.
When she dared to look at Grayson again, his gaze was piecing, already finding fault with her whether she spoke or held her tongue. She fumbled for the doorknob behind her, the pitted metal cool in her clammy hands.
"I'll . . . see myself out then."
The glass that had been in Grayson's other hand shattered on the wooden door she stood before, and she flinched, despite all her resolve to face him, both crystal shards and rotting splinters spraying over her in a shimmering cascade.
It was only when the floor creaked that she realised she'd squeezed her eyes shut, backing up into the door she was denied an exit through, Grayson's sudden closeness a tangible thing that kept her frozen and trembling all at once.
"After ruining everything, now you dare to leave?"
The linked article
This article is genuinely insane. I learned to read at the same time and it was completely different. I was taught to sound out the words and if I came across a word I didn't know, they did suggest we use context clues to figure out the meaning, but it was also made clear that that was not a perfect solution and the best option is always to look it up. But seriously, just a memorizing? That is inside.
I taught English as a second language for over ten years. In order to become a proficient reader in English, most kids will need to be explicitly taught phonics. To become proficient in Japanese, you need to learn radicals.
Three-cueing is essentially crutches that help you get by but let you down eventually. It's very common when learning a foreign language, I misread kanji sometimes because I pattern-recognize based on context instead of really looking. The solution is to do some proper studying, but I don't wanna.
It's also interesting that this sort of contexual confabulation and pattern-recognizing is how LLMs work. Not sure what to do with that.
Absolutely fantastic article, but I do want to say that this...?
... Is absolutely terrifying in the context of all other anti-intellectualism happening right now. This guy is STILL pushing his 'observations' while denying evidence that it doesn't work.
girls with adhd playing long rpgs like "i am overwhelmed by the state of the save file i left off with last time my attention arbitrarily fell onto this game. time to start from scratch."
"yeah i fucking love this game. i've bought it on console and pc, and then the remaster too. i have no idea how it ends, i only get 40% of the way through the main story each time"
I think for a lot of white people, when you call them out on their casual racism (microagressions and non-overt things), they see it as a case of hurt feelings from your point of view as opposed to a discussion of harmful practices that aid the vehicle of racism. So in response, they take it as a personal attack, rather than a learning experience, and go on the defensive by bringing up a time that you made them upset as leverage. Or they defend their actions by doubling down on the behavior at hand and dismissing your criticism as over sensitivity and emphasizing their “harmless” intent. And I think that is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to address casual and interpersonal racism with the general white population (and also other poc tbh).
I think white people NEED to read this and let it sink way deep down inside them.
When the topic of racism comes up from racialized people, immediately stop talking and listen.
It’s not about you, white person, it’s about the biases you’re perpetuating. Don’t take it personally. Chill out, thank them for educating you, fix your mistake, and do better next time.
If anyone wants a whole book dedicated to that education, Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad is an excellent read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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McCalls Pikachu Plush 2512 Sewing Pattern
This thing has been out of print for like, 26 years and some of us want to make chubby classic pikachu so uh... I figure it's okay to share bc it's kinda hard to get your hands on the remaining physical copies.
Bonus points: Aelith made some embroidery/applique files for it too
Remade by AeilithArt so that we could use the pattern without like, destroying it. It's not exact since it's trace, but it's p much the same
I just want to remind everyone how affordable buying food from indigenous tribes is. I live in a major city and I was able to purchase and ship (15) pounds of fish from back home to myself for cheaper than I could buy it from a grocery store here in the city. Yeah, shipping has its own environmental factors but I was able to support an indigenous owned business while also getting my groceries at a lesser cost. (Buying in bulk is always a good idea if you’re planning on having something shipped to you)
Some tribal owned grocers that ship:
Bow and Arrow (Ute Mountain)
Native Harvest (White Earth)
Red Lake Fishery (Red Lake)
Wozupi (Mdewakanton Dakota)
Ramona Farms (Gila River)
Tanka Bars (Oglala)
Indian Pueblo Store (Pueblos)
Twisted Cedar Wine (Cedar Paiutes)
Ute Bison (Ute)
Seka Hills Olive Oil and Vinegars (Yocha Dehe Wintun)
She Nah Nam Seafood (Nisqually)
Sakari Botanicals (Inupiaq)
Honor the Earth (? Anishinaabe)
Nett Lake Wild Rice (Boise Forte Anishinaabe)
Passamaquoddy maple (Passamaquoddy)
BONUS: coffee :)
Yeego Coffee (Navajo)
Spirit Mountain Roasting (Yuma Quechan)
Birchbark Coffee (Anishinaabe)
Thunder Island Coffee (Shinnecock)
Small correction:
Honor the Earth is an organization founded by Winona Duke of the White Earth Nation (Anishinaabe/Ojibwe) with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers (LGBTQ musical duo Indigo Girls and long-time political activists.) You can buy Honor The Earth merch online to support the environmental work they do, specifically to help protest Enbridge Oil’s Line 3 Pipeline routed through tribal lands that endangers wild rice beds which are both a staple crop and sacred to Anishinaabeg.
However, Winona also heads up a hemp farm called Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm located on and run primarily by members of the White Earth Nation. It seeks to general local wealth for the tribe by encouraging the production of hemp as a fast-growing renewable and regenerative crop resource to be used for everything from non-plastic textiles/clothing, housing construction and insulation, food products, and CBD products! (They also grow other crops there such as heirloom varieties of corn, beans, squash, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, and ceremonial tobacco in an effort to help re-establish and increase tribal food sovereignty!)
They have both a brick-and-mortar shop called The Hemp Market Store and Coffee Shop in Osage MN where they sell their products and others by Indigenous-owned & -run companies! (They also sell those seasonal tribal heirloom crops there including Lakota squash and Ojibwe purple potatoes.)
But you can also buy many of their products online including hemp-fiber clothing, hemp tea, and hemp pasta. They also partnered with an experienced tribal herbalist to formulate CBD medicinal products like balms and oils (haven’t used it myself, but I the CBD balm for my mom for Christmas a few years back and she said it helped her chronic hip pain a lot.)
compiling some additional info from other reblogs + fixing some broken links
it looks like some shops’ products are seasonal and arent avaliable at this time of year (november 2023), but it may be at a different season
new or fixed links in green with ✳️ emoji inactive/closed website in red with ⛔️ emoji
Grocers: from salamanderinspace’s reblog of product list
Bow and Arrow –> Cornmeal, Polenta
Native Harvest –> Maple Syrup, Plum Syrup, Coffees, Jewelry
✳️Red Lake Fishery –> fish (Walleye, Perch, Crappie, Northern, Whitefish, Smoked Fish)
✳️Nawapo (formerly Red Lake Nation Foods) –> Mixes & Batters, Teas & Coffee, Fruit spreads, Wild Rice, Personal care, Handcrafted gifts
Wozupi –> seasonal produce [no online ordering right now]
Ramona Farms –> Beans, Wheat Berries, Whole Wheat Flour, Corn Meal Products, Grits, Pinole, Chickpeas/Garbanzo beans
Tanka –> Buffalo-cranberry snacks [no online ordering right now]
✳️Indian Pueblo Store –> Housewares, Apparel, Mugs, Jewelry, Decor, Baked goods mix, etc
Twisted Cedar Wine –> Wine
Ute Bison –> Bison jerky sticks, skulls, and robes
Seka Hills –> Olive Oil, Wine, Vinegar, Nuts, Beef jerky, Honey, Body Care / Soaps, Pickled Asparagus
⛔️She Nah Nam –> [website is closed]
Sakari Farms –> Hotsauce, Tea, Seasonings, Lotions, Medicinal herbs & oils, Squash Candy
Honor the Earth –> [see the reblog above]
✳️Nett Lake Wild Rice –> Wild rice (website features recipes)
✳️Passamaquoddy maple –> Maple products (syrup, sugar, candies), Pancake and muffin mix, Seasoning
✳️Ioway Bee Farm (Iowa, recommended by watcherscrown) –> Honey, Lotions, Lip balm, Beeswax, Candles, CBD products, Honey sticks
Online retailer: partnered with some of the grocers in the list above, so you can order several grocers’ products from 1 place
✳️Tocabe (Osage, recommended by killmecoward) –> Pantry food staples
✳️Indigenous First (recommended by pingnova) –> Handmade crafts/art, Foods & Teas, Personal care, Decor, Seeds, Books, Jewelry supplies
✳️SweetGrass Trading Company (Winnebago, recommended by watcherscrown) –> Handmade crafts/art, Foods (of note: Salmon), Coffee & teas, Personal care, Books (website features recipes)
Coffee/Tea:
Yeego Coffee
✳️Spirit Mountain Roasting
Birchbark Coffee
Thunder Island Coffee
✳️Owl Lightning Coffee (Ute (?), recommended by c4-magic)
✳️Wild Canadian Tea (Algonquin/Anishnaabe, recommended by bellarad)
Recipe sources:
Bow & Arrow Brand, Ute Mountain Tribe
Native Harvest, White Earth Band (wild rice recipes)
Ramona Farms, Gila River (bean/corn-based recipes)
Sweetgrass Trading Co., Winnebago Tribe
Nett Lake Wild Rice, Bois Forte Anishinaabe (wild-rice-based)
I highly recommend the bison tallow balms (and all other products) from Fierce Women’s Warrior Society (a collective founded by women from several Montana tribes) that sells cosmetics and other products to raise money for self defense classes for native women and advocacy around MMIW in MT and beyond.
it's actually sick you get tired of eating the same food over and over when some animals they just eat grass all day mind you. just another pointless challenge mechanic added in by big universe to get you to go to the grocery store
Right wing manipulation tactics explained
this is an epic exposure of how propaganda functions.
tbh i think the funniest phenomena that's been happening in the last couple years is "youtuber, having gone too deep into the research hole, has been made an investigative journalist against their will"
Shout out to the guy who wanted to do some fun & silly little reviews but uncovered an illegal gambling operation
(Review 2)
this guy started out poking fun at australian politicians and ended up investigating the firebombing of his own home, during which he uncovered connections between the same politician he was making fun of + major organized crime
JasperDasper started out just curious why everything had suddenly become about trans people and questioning some of the sources used in a book. He came out of it, 4 years later, with a 5 hour long video that connects all transphobia to less than 60 people. (I'm not joking. literally every single transphobic rhetoric and bill passed is because of these 50 or so people.)
If you wanna watch it I cannot recommend it enough; I just warn that it covers a LOT.

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If you're thinking about moving on from Spotify, I can't recommend enough getting into modern MP3 players (more properly called digital audio players, or DAPs, since they play more filetypes than just MP3) and building your own music library.
There's been a massive amount of innovation in the lower end of DAPs, and you can get a lot for under $100. Here are the main ones I recommend:
Snowsky Echo Mini - This is the most affordable one, at only $65 CAD (I think it's even less in the US) and the one that I ended up buying. Designed to look like a cassette player. The main drawback is that the interface is slightly unintuitive and it doesn't have a touch screen, but I've been delighted with mine.
Hiby R1 - This goes for $85 USD, and is the most widely recommended of the bunch for its good UI and wide range of utilities. Has a touchscreen and buttons.
Tempotec V1 - Similar to the Hiby R1, although the specific features are slightly different. Also has a touchscreen and buttons.
Innioasis R1 (honourable mention) - Designed to look nearly identical to an iPod Classic, including a fully functional clickwheel The sound quality on this is notably worse than the other DAPs I listed above, and the Bluetooth is widely reported to be unreliable, but I have to include it for people who desperately want an iPod again (and don't want to shell out $300+ for a modernized Classic) and because it has an extremely active modding scene.
You will need to buy a microSD card to upgrade the storage of most of these, although these days you can get 250GB for under $20.
Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?
I've seen this passed around a few times, and I have one thing to say:
It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.
calculusmadeeasy.org
It's almost like something happened in 2020-now that is causing these problems.
And something still happening. Like it never ended but we pretended it did.
an important addition
sometimes i worry that *i'm* wrong and SU is bad/rushed/blah blah. then i remember whites fragile need to be perfect and ego defense of thinking she's fixing things. i remember how its perfectly mirrored by stevens need to fix others. how its both beautifully symbolic in CYM an made more explicit and heart-rending in future.
yeah that shit rules. white being reformed is great. its the ultimate rebuttal to the ideology that only good/useful/perfect people deserve to live- which is exactly the standard white held herself and everyone else to. it mirrors stevens arc of selfless heroism. it mirrors the toxic, insecure selflessness thats plagued everyone from pearl to jasper to rose about what it means to "deserve" to live it ties into "love like you" of how learning self-love is intertwined with loving others. it ties into how steven can't let go of his hero role until he's confronted by *literally* having his own mind in white's body, hating the idea of being like her yet ironically reacting exactly how she would - "this is someone bad for society, they should be shattered, this is what's best for everyone." trying to hurt her only hurting him. trying to help her helping all of gemkind - from the corrupted gems to dismantling a system that was held up by those exact ideals.
yeah no SU is fantastic. i'm so sad that its reputation is "oh well it wasn't that good, but it had some lgbt+ rep :)" which is just about the most condescending crap ever. i would gladly flip it. i think most cartoons that have come after SU haven't been that interesting, they've just been mostly generic stories with some lgbt+ rep.
I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Steven Universe and it wasn't after they made the alien invasion plot explicit, the part where everyone says it 'gets good', like you have to wade through the earlier stuff like it's a fucking slog and not some of the best children's television out there. I fell in love with SU in episode 2, at this moment:
"Well done, Steven! You saved most of Beach City!"
Yeah sure, plenty of shows do a silly 'haha things got broke' bit, but this was different. This was bringing home something important that they'd been saying all episode.
This was the episode that introduced the thesis statement of the whole show, and they managed to keep that thesis statement clear throughout the entire thing, all the way to the end: "If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs." Steven Universe is a show about how things are broken, and that's okay. Steven Universe is a show about how people are fucked up, and that's okay. It's not our job to be perfect or condemn everything that isn't; it's our job to say "okay, we've got this fucking mess here, and wallowing in blame and recrimination and shame and self-hatred isn't going to help. How do we move forward?" I had never, ever seen that message committed to in another children's show before Steven Universe, and it's one of the most important things you can tell any kid -- that the mess of their life is normal! That it's okay! We have stuff that sucks and we can move on with that!
Oh, sure, other shows will have a Very Special Episode every now and again where someone makes a bad mistake and has to be 'forgiven', or is unable to do something and has to live with it, or there's a tragedy or whatever. That's not what Steven Universe did. Steven Universe got comfortable with the mess on every level and kept coming back to it, both subtly and overtly. Steven can't save the moon goddess temple, Greg fakes a broken leg to be with his son and psychologically fucks up his magic powers and the other plot of the episode that's acting as a metaphor for the whole thing involves them literally fixing that problem by duct taping over it, the Gems don't know how to raise Steven and make him a false obstacle course to boost his confidence and he has to Uno Reverse their own trick on them and shoulder the responsibility of parenting them instead of the other way around. There's an entire episode that's just Peridot confirming that her people fucked up an area of the Earth so badly that nothing will ever grow there again and this isn't resolved by fixing it, but by other characters saying, "yeah, it's broken and it sucks and we can't stop that. How about we grow a garden literally anywhere else on the planet."
And this is why it confuses the fuck out of me when people bitch about Steven Universe being 'problematic' because things suck. Yeah! That's the entire fucking point of the show! Things are allowed to suck and be broken. "Ooooh it's nazi apologism because he forgave a warlord and she didn't get murdered onscreen or whatever" he didn't forgive her! He convinced her to stop warlording and has an uneasy alliance with her! She's fixing what she broke as best she can, just like every single other character in the show! Her perfectionism and purity and total inability to live with broken things and messy truths and people who are different, sometimes in harmful ways, was the entire problem that the whole show was about! And Steven beat it! Insistence that the Bad Guys get punished or removed and the Pure Good Guys get a clean ending with no moral quandaries is the audience taking Evil White Diamond's position. It's literally being the villain of the show.

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That’s It.
I’m tired of seeing everyone repeat the same four points: “1) Nani gives Lilo to the state! 2) Hawaii has a better marine biology program than San Fransisco! 3) Jumba doesn’t get redeemed! 4) Pleakley’s not wearing a dress!”
Those are not the only things that were bad about this remake. You could easily tell it was going to be all that and more beforehand, but most people’s reaction to the trailer was “it’s surprisingly good!” and now they’re acting all surprised. If you didn’t see this coming, enough to purchase a ticket, you’re part of the problem and you don’t get the original movie any more than the people who made this remake did.
So I’m done being quiet, this is the Lilo & Stitch 2025 Takedown Post.
And as usual the only good thing about an attempted-remake is that it gives people a reason to think about what made the original so good.
Let’s go in order. But just scroll down to the Heading you Care About if you don’t want to read all this.
1. Cobra Bubbles
In this movie, Cobra Bubbles is a secret agent hunting for aliens and they have a new character take his place as the state social worker.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With this Change: “We shouldn’t have a black man or a government worker feel like an insensitive antagonist to Lilo’s family.”
That’s a stupid surface-level one-dimensional misread of the character from the original…and it wouldn’t have been hard, at all, for a child to explain to the 2025 filmmakers that Cobra is not an insensitive antagonist in the original.
Cobra Bubbles is not insensitive and he is not in any way portrayed as a bad guy in the original. Nani sees him that way, Nani sees him as antagonistic, because he’s the representation of Lilo being taken away.
But Nani is wrong about him and learns that she is wrong about him by the end of the movie.
Can we please make a list?
Cobra’s first interaction with the caretaker of the child he was being sent to protect was that she ran out into the road, yelled at a complete stranger, and dented his car.
Then he found her locked out of the home and threatening the child inside with a hammer in her hand.
Then he found out the stove was on while she was out, and she’d left a 7 year-old alone.
The 7 year-old made comments about being disciplined with bricks and a pillow case.
The 7 year-old looks like she might be more than a little emotionally unbalanced because she’s figuring out how to put voodoo spells on her friends to punish them.
He still gave that pair of sisters three days to straighten the ship. When in actuality, in 2002, under HRS §587-73, (don’t play with me) the social worker would’ve been well within his rights to remove the child from the home right then. But instead he gives her three days to fix it. THEN
The 18 year-old loses her job.
The family gets a “dog” who he is implied to know is an alien, right off the bat.
The alien is violent and wreaks havoc across town.
The 7 year-old almost drowns while they surf instead of find a job.
He lets the child and caretaker have one more night together to say goodbye, but when he’s on the way to get her he gets a call that she’s being attacked by aliens, hears a chainsaw, and finds the house on fire.
Do you understand what I’m saying.
Cobra Bubbles had NO BUSINESS being as BIG A SOFTIE AS HE WAS for all of the original movie. He was not only well within his legal rights to take Lilo away from Nani immediately, but he was actually required by law, it was his DUTY, to remove her immediately. But he didn’t do that. Why?
Now listen to me very carefully.
Lilo and Stitch is a movie about how “Family chooses to love and commit to one another selflessly, no matter what the other person can do for them or how hard they make it.” The fancy way they say it is just “Ohana means family: family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”
Did you catch that? “No matter how hard they make it.”
Cobra Bubbles was a CIA agent before this. A CIA agent who saved the planet, by doing what? Convincing an alien race to leave them alone. Oh, he didn’t fight them off? No. How? He “convinced” them? He talked it out? Sounds like a pretty compassionate guy, for all his tough exterior. How did he do that?
He could’ve picked any animal that’s actually endangered. The filmmakers chose to make him the guy who convinced aliens to value mosquitos.
MOSQUITOS. Creatures that give nothing, only take. Ugly little bloodsucking monsters. That’s the creature he convinced them to care about enough to save the planet.
NOW do you have any trouble understanding why this is the specific social worker who would give an alien-infested dumpster fire of a dangerous home a chance when two sisters are about to be torn apart?
Do you see that Cobra is just another example of the grace that the movie is always talking about? The love that transforms someone from bad to good simply because it refuses to give up even when it gets nothing out of it? I’m repeating myself because I want you to see why he was a well-done character who NEEDED NO CHANGE.
Cobra Bubbles’ character is not an insensitive monster who doesn’t care who his actions hurt as long as he gets the job done. But you know who that does sound like?
2. Gantu
Gantu is not in the remake at all.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “It’s going to cost us upwards of 1.5 millions of dollars to design, sculpt, rig, animate, and render a character this big in addition to finding a suitable voice actor to play the part.”
This is a really dumb choice for several reasons. A. Without Gantu, there is no “stakes-raiser” to Lilo and Nani’s story. The movie has no climax without him. For the first and second acts of the movie, it’s about a grieving pair of girls trying to prove themselves to a social worker while the story-equivalent of Beethoven the Destructive St. Bernard wacky Jumba & Pleakley antics get in their way. But when a 40-foot tall alien stomps into their lives and abducts Lilo & Stitch in a spaceship that careens around the island during an explosive sky-chase scene, now you have a high-octane, somebody-could-die climax.
B. Without Gantu, Stitch looks weaker. The climax gave Stitch a reason to come out of the wackadoo puppy he’s been posing as and suddenly remind everybody that he’s a lethal weapon who can survive thousand-foot drops, lava, and astronomic explosions—and a giant alien’s Thanos-dwarfing fist. Take him out and who do we have as a match for Stitch to go up against, even for a moment, and prove how much he’s changed to be willing to risk his freedom and fight?
C. Without Gantu you have no villain to reflect that STITCH is no longer a villain. (So they substituted Jumba.)
But the reason this character is really worth millions is, again, the theme.
I told you Cobra Bubbles was a character who did not put “duty” or even “convenience” or “position” over the real lives of Lilo and Nani. He saw that there was love there, and in his own way, he gave it a chance. And even when he chose to take Lilo away, he did it carefully; he gave them time to say goodbye.
GANTU IS THE OPPOSITE OF COBRA BUBBLES.
Gantu is the insensitive, uncaring, unyielding Captain whose commitment to duty turns into rage and cruelty. Not Cobra.
Nani thinks Cobra is walking in a threatening to tear apart their family in a display of government judgement. But that’s what Gantu literally does.
His first reaction to Stitch is to call for his destruction. Without even waiting to see if “it can be reasoned with” like the Grand Councilwoman suggests. He’s merciless. He mocks Stitch when Stitch is captive. And he knows that he caught Lilo, a human, along with him. He doesn’t care. He even suggests that Stitch eat her as a snack.
There are only two other characters who laugh at others’ misfortune in the movie. One is Stitch, the original villain. Then love changes him. The other is Jumba, who made Stitch. Then love changes him. But Gantu never gets changed. He’s only concerned with his job, and with personally annihilating the flaws he sees in Stitch.
Gantu is unyielding, ungracious, and cruel. And he’s big and powerful enough to be a test for Stitch to prove he’s changed. For the benefits he brings to the story, he’s worth 1.5 million and more. But they cut him anyway.
3. Jumba
In the new movie, Jumba is a villain through-and-through with designs on overthrowing the Galactic Council using Stitch, and instead of being redeemed, he’s sentenced to prison.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “We can’t spend money on our real villain so we’ll just keep Jumba evil.”
The reason this is dumb is obvious. They created their own problem, and the ‘fix’ makes the movie weaker, not stronger. But here’s how.
In the original, Jumba is introduced as trying to self-protect. He’s on trial, and he lies. But when Stitch is revealed, he’s genuinely passionate about the thing he’s created. And he cares about image. He prefers to be called “evil genius,” and he hates the headlines labelling him “idiot scientist.”
You have to remember he’s part of “Galaxy Defense Industries.” They had him making weapons of destruction anyway. He just got too into it with his genetic Experiments, went a little insane.
I’m not downplaying the fact that Jumba is evil at the start of the movie. He is. It is evil to be outcasted from society and then respond to that with, “well, if they’re going to treat me like an idiot, I’LL SHOW THEM, I won’t care about anything except my passion for mad science!” That’s evil.
But it also explains a lot.
I said it in another post. Jumba’s whole utility as a character is that he knows who and what Stitch really is, better than anyone. He made him to be a monster who can’t belong and wreaks havoc on everybody else’s ‘place of belonging.’ Jumba is the audience’s insider’s perspective on what is going on in Stitch’s head, at first.
But when he’s redeemed, it happens fast. And why? Because that’s how plain and simple Stitch is, as a character. Jumba knows Stitch is a disgusting little monster with nothing inherently loveable about him, and no “greater purpose.” So when his disgusting monster is loved by someone? When his disgusting monster is willing to ask him, Jumba, for help? Something totally outside his programming, totally not what Jumba thought he’d ever be capable of?
That proves to Jumba, in an instant, that there’s love out there that transforms. And creates a place of belonging.
There were already germs of that, a desire to belong, a compassion, in Jumba after he reached earth.
He doesn’t try to get Nani fired, he offers an explanation for Pleakley’s swollen head.
He claims he won’t hit Lilo (why would he care about collateral damage?)
He sounds sorry for Nani when she’s upset about losing Lilo, and tries to keep Stitch from bothering her.
My point is, Jumba’s redemption isn’t important because it’s cute or because we need to set up the big happy found-family trope everybody loves.
Jumba’s redemption is important because it is just one more PROOF that what’s happened to Stitch is so incredible. The love Jumba finds transforming his monster is enough to transform Jumba, too.
But sure, fine, whatever, make him a soulless one-dimensional talking head. Whatever.
4. Stitch’s Design
In this movie, Stitch is cuter than he is ugly, and he’s half Lilo’s size.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: “Ugly-cute doesn’t come across as well in ‘live action’ animation. And all the Wal-Mart moms remember Stitch as ‘cute.’ Plus we’ll save about 15% in rendering the animation.”
This is crippling to the characterization of Stitch.
Stitch is supposed to be an echo of who Lilo could become now that she’s lost her parents and may be losing Nani. This scene:
Where Jumba points out that Stitch has nothing, and destruction is his only purpose, is the evidence for that. But Chris Sanders, who made this whole story, also point-blank said it. Stitch is a future Lilo, if she loses her family.
So that’s reason number 1 that he should be her same height. But also, practically, no iconic pair of best friends, yin and yang, have visuals where one is smaller than the other. Especially not if one of them is supposed to be disguised as a pet.
The point is, Stitch is not LILO’s pet. He is her best friend, her other half. But between the muzzle-muscles they worked into his upper lip and the darkened dog nose and the butt-scooting across the floor, the remake is trying to make him more pet-like in relation to Lilo.
That’s not what he is.
I said this in another post. But Stitch is supposed to throw food to the back of his head like a gator—his lips are not designed for forming words. His gums and teeth are supposed to look like a shark’s. His nose is supposed to be too big, stamped into his face. His ears are supposed to be like bat ears, not bunny ears. He hunches forward, instead of bending at the waist like a toddler. His eyes can narrow to lizard slits.
He has to look like he can believably be a disgusting monster. Yes, he can also be cute. But he has to first look like a monster. Because that’s what he really is, in the story. If he isn’t, then LILO’s love for him doesn’t look as powerful.
It is easy to love a cat even if it scratches you, because it’s cute. It’s harder to love a life-sized spider that keeps knocking you down and eating your prized possessions and laughing when you get hurt. Stitch is supposed to be closer to the second one, so that Lilo’s love shines brighter.
But also, practically:
She can’t look him in the eye for emotional shots when he’s that short. He’ll always have to awkwardly be standing on a box or a chair or a bed.
How is he going to scoop her up, hero-style, and leap off of an exploding spaceship with her in his arms, when he’s half her size? He could do it: it’ll look stupid, though. So they just don’t have that part in the movie.
She can pick him up. That alone is demeaning and again, the visuals are silly. Not what we’re going for.
5. Lilo’s Personality
In this movie, Lilo doesn’t like weird stuff, and she screams when she first meets Stitch. There’s no problem that this solves. It’s just laziness and a lack of care about the characters.
I would like to remind you that the original Lilo:
Made her own doll that looks like a shrunken head and pretended a bug laid eggs in her ears.
Makes up stories about a fish that controls the weather and actively deep-sea dives to bring it peanut butter sandwiches.
Has a knee-jerk reaction of using practical voodoo spells on friends who wrong her.
Listens exclusively to Elvis Presley.
Fills baby bottles with coffee.
Believes Nani’s manager is a vampire.
Has fishing nets and seashells in her room for decoration.
takes safari pictures of overweight bleached tourists.
meets a social worker and her first impulse is to ask if he’s killed someone.
Nails the door shut when she’s mad at her big sister.
She’s not friends with pound dogs in that original movie; when they first get there she acts like she’s never been in the kennel before, and originally wants a pet lobster.
I know that we all love that little girl they got to play Lilo, but if you were really being objective, you’d acknowledge that she’s a little girl. She’s not Lilo. She’s a cute little girl.
They did not write Lilo into the 2025 movie. They wrote any old little girl.
You should have known, from the moment she first sees Stitch and her reaction is to scream in the trailer, that THAT IS NOT LILO.
Lilo had a very specific set of characterizations. She was a character with a personality that exploded out of the screen. Every other character in the movie meets Stitch and reacts with disgust.
But not. LILO. She’s the only one to react to him like THIS:
She is literally not like anyone else. She’s doesn’t care that he’s ugly. Or weird. Or blue. Or even bat an eye when he can talk with all those shark teeth.
From Moment One, Lilo chooses Stitch. She chooses to love him. Regardless of what he can do for her. Regardless of how many times he pushes her over or rips up her house or makes her relationship with Nani harder. That is the number one thing about Lilo.
She is desperate for people to stay, but she chooses to love Stitch even though he’s a monster. And she tries to make him better. And her love succeeds in transforming him when nothing else could.
Lilo’s personality traits all mean something in the story. (I.e. she likes Elvis because she’s clinging to the past, she snaps pictures of tourists like they’re safari animals because they’re inherently people who LEAVE and she has issues with LEAVING, etc.) But the thing I think that was so obvious that the moviemakers missed for 2025 is she has to be weird. If she’s not weird, there’s no reason for her not to have friends. And if she has friends, what does she need Stitch for?
But also, Lilo’s personality in the new movie is just boring. Cute. But boring. Cute’s not that great of an accomplishment; any 7 year-old is cute.
6. Nani
I don’t think you guys need to know this. It’s not just that Nani leaves. It’s that “take care of yourself” is the exact opposite of the selfless message of the movie.
In the beginning, Lilo literally argues with Nani after being told she’s “such a pain,” and goes, “why don’t you SELL ME and buy a RABBIT INSTEAD?”
And then breaks down and cries at the thought of Nani wishing she had a rabbit instead of Lilo, later.
Because Lilo is afraid of people leaving. But Nani won’t leave her. Nani loses her job, her own life, because of Lilo. But she’s desperate to keep Lilo anyway, because she loves her. Don’t you understand? The message of the movie was about self-sacrificial love. A love that doesn't care what I get out of the relationship.
Nani starts it. But you know what, David loves her like that, too. And then Lilo transfers it to Stitch, who shows it off to Jumba. It’s a chain reaction, but Nani is spearheading it.
You realize that when their parents died, Nani already would’ve been in high school? With a whole life of her own? Her own friends, her own potential boyfriend, a job she went to, surf competitions (the trophies are in her room.) Lilo would’ve been well aware that that was the status-quo: Nani has her own life. And even a seven year-old can see that that life is being put on hold, but maybe the big sister wants to go back to it, at every turn.
The fact that Nani never does that, never expresses a desire for that, only ever expresses a desire to keep Lilo with her, is huge. It’s the core of the movie.
I don’t think that needs any more explaining.
We could talk more. Like about how Lilo needs to see that Stitch is an alien, because that’s the ultimate test: he’s one of the monsters who destroyed her house, he’s been lying to her and using her as a human shield, he’s a criminal—but she still winds up giving everything up to protect him.
Anyway. My neck hurts and I don’t want to type anymore. But we could talk about the music, the social worker, the grand councilwoman—it just doesn’t matter.
Ya’ll had more than enough details in the trailer to be able to not go see this movie because it was obviously going to ruin everything. But instead you chose to make this twisted corpse “the highest-grossing movie of any Memorial Day.” You bought tickets because they ruined a perfect movie and slapped together an uglier package for you.
Whatever. It was my favorite movie today, it’ll be your Treasure Planet or Tangled tomorrow. Keep riiiight on giving them your money, and keep letting influencers regurgitate the same four obvious facts to you over and over, because they paid Disney to make a talking-point for their content benefit. Whatever.
Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.
Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.
The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.
Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:
Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.
Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.
Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.
The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.
Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.
The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.
The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.
David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.
It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.
...
So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."