silentauror's Blog, page 84

atlinmerrick:feministism:DON’T YOU EVER ASK WOMEN WHY THEY”RE AFRAID AGAIN.Zero to full rage...

atlinmerrick:

feministism:

DON’T YOU EVER ASK WOMEN WHY THEY”RE AFRAID AGAIN.

Zero to full rage in one short post

babyanimalgifs:Big scritches (via)

babyanimalgifs:

Big scritches 

(via)

ceruleanmindpalace:Sherlock couldn’t find his purple mask…This...

ceruleanmindpalace:

Sherlock couldn’t find his purple mask…

This one is for all those in the fandom who are currently recovering from surgery.

Soft pastels on brown paper, A3

Feel free to reblog here on tumblr but don’t post my art on other
sites/social media or use in any other way without my written
permission.

I love this

starry-bi-sky:satirizing:Thought this was worth sharing:Why...

starry-bi-sky:

satirizing:

Thought this was worth sharing:

Why are you leaving the best parts in the tags akshs

“Yes.

-HAMM”

Hahahahahahaha!

buster-bro:dragons-study-too:anothersadgayboy:anxietyproblem:...

buster-bro:

dragons-study-too:

anothersadgayboy:

anxietyproblem:

@psych2go

Always busy, always irritated.

5/5

All of these all the time. My only off is going to bed to sleep after a solid 38 hour day of dealing with this.

5/5. I feel hella called out

glitchinthesystemstuff:derinthescarletpescatarian:pollicinor:Il...

glitchinthesystemstuff:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

pollicinor:

Il troll di Photoshop

Imagine being this good at photoshop and using it for evil.

This man is a living monkey’s paw

Crying

alexandredumas-eatyourheartout:architeuthisducks-blog:endreal:sp...

alexandredumas-eatyourheartout:

architeuthisducks-blog:

endreal:

splend-42:

i-wear-the-cheese:

primavera-cerezos:

it would take 2.3 million years for Jeff Bezos to earn his $183.3b net worth working 24 hours a day at New Mexico’s $9/hr minimum wage.

That’s 11.5 times longer than the human race has existed.

Not long enough.

What if we gave it a twist? Rather than earning that amount of money, what if it was to save that amount while still paying bills and feeding himself?

And since it IS hell, his car starts making a Noise about once a month.

This is why you gotta eat the rich, kids

Add a big pandemic in there, too!

So, I watched Happiest Season yesterday, and I have thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Spoilers abound and...

So, I watched Happiest Season yesterday, and I have thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Spoilers abound and this is long, so I’ll put this under a cut. 

Happiest Season: a review

You have to ask yourself how “happy” a happy ending really is when you glance down at the time bar on the film and see that there’s less than fifteen minutes left and none of the story’s problems have been even remotely resolved.

Skip to the closing credits, and I hadn’t changed my mind. This is a “happy” ending where a great deal of the problems in the plot were left either completely unresolved, or whose happiness wasn’t earned – wasn’t properly fleshed out, developed, supported, or in fact, even happy.

What an incredibly toxic family the Caldwells are. Let’s start with them: there are three daughters. Sloan has apparently cemented her parents’ permanent disappointment by having left a promising legal career in favour of raising a family. Side tangent: are we really still having this discussion, in 2020? This binary choice between family OR career? Besides, Sloan evidently developed a different, and very lucrative career. I also strongly dislike the way the perception of her marriage ending is portrayed as a failure. Her awful parents both resent her having left the legal field, yet have refused to now see her as anything other than a parent, ignoring her new career choice and, it seems, literally anything else about her. Then we have Jane, who is overtly abused. Treated as lesser than anyone else in the family apart from technical support with malfunctioning printers, Jane is constantly criticized, chastised, literally told to not put herself in the centre of the family for a holiday photo. I was horrified and devastated by the wanton destruction of her painting at the end, too. I’m happy for her that her book got published and that she found success there, but I hate that this brutal, completely unnecessary destruction of her art happened and was totally overlooked.

I’m going to come back to Harper, because there’s a LOT to say there.

The way the parents, Tipper and Ted, treated Abby, was appalling from start to finish. Leaving aside the ENTIRE question of the secret girlfriend thing, if my family ever treated a friend or even distant acquaintance the way the Caldwells treated Abby, I would be furious with them. I used to frequently bring friends who were international students or just on their own for the holidays to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas festivities. These people were so, so, so incredibly rude to Abby, from ignoring her when she first arrived to giving her a terrible bedroom with a door that doesn’t lock, to walking in on her multiple times while she was changing or in bed – that level of complete disrespect infuriated me! Just allowing those awful kids to be in her private space without any sort of discipline, consequences, or apologies was unacceptable. The way they treated Abby after those same kids – which she was stuck with, without any sort of request to watch them – planted that necklace on her, was unacceptable. The utter lack of apology for having literally accused her of theft, for accusing her multiple times after that – WOW. Treating Abby as though she was the unexpected, extra guest at the restaurant that first night, and giving the ex-boyfriend the parents kept shoving on Harper the proper one was unacceptable.

Then there’s how Harper treated Abby. Let’s start with the restaurant: first of all, had my parents pulled that stunt on my friend/guest/secret girlfriend, I would have let them know then and there that it wasn’t okay. And then I would have, I don’t know, asked the staff to bring a proper chair, and if that turned out to be impossible, I would have insisted that she take mine instead, and sat on the little chair myself. Asking anyone to closet themselves is an act of violence, and watching that as a member of the LGBTQ2+ community was actively harmful to witness. Again, a lot of the crap that Harper subjected Abby to would have been awful no matter WHO Abby was: you don’t abandon your guest to hang out with old friends. If they’re ready to go home, then you go home with them. It’s basic hospitality. Considering that Abby was Harper’s partner, that’s a whole extra layer of harm. THEN add the ex-boyfriend, a horribly-treated ex-girlfriend, and toxic old friends to the mix, and you have something beyond appalling. Adding this stuff on top of not standing up for Abby to her family, not insisting that she be given somewhere proper to sleep during her time in her parents’ house, not insisting that she be treated with the most basic respect, not defending her during the whole jewellery theft situation, and even going along with the parents’ de-invitation to that dinner – that’s inexcusable. You don’t treat other people that way, much less your partner. Then add Harper calling Abby controlling, while simultaneously having the nerve to get angry about Abby spending time with Riley, which is possibly the only good thing that happened for Abby during that entire, awful trip – yeah. I was finished with Harper by that point.

Harper also actively participated in the way her sisters were constantly put down by their parents. The responsibility of being the privileged favourite is to use your status to bring others up. Harper doesn’t appear to have any sort of spine or courage whatsoever. It was only after she was forcibly outed by Sloan – and such was her privilege that the parents believed that it was a “malicious” lie rather than a “shocking” secret – that Harper even admitted the truth, and that was only after forcing Abby to watch her deny it yet it again. While I did love John (the gay best friend)’s entire speech about someone’s love not being the same thing as being ready to come out, there is nonetheless a ton of harm in forcing your partner watch that. It does affect them. It does disavow their identity at the same time, when they’re in a relationship with you. Her pattern of behaviour of throwing other people under the bus, like Riley, is very much intact.

I completely comprehend Harper’s fear of being rejected by her family. Apparently it was a well-founded fear, based on her awful, awful parents. That’s one of the reasons why the ending didn’t resonate for me at all: it wasn’t earned. Harper’s turn-around from being completely unwilling to have her parents know the truth to claiming that Abby was the only thing that mattered to her, came out of nowhere. It wasn’t a supported development. It happened too quickly. Similarly, the parents both going from being just about the worst parents on the planet to having a VERY sudden change of heart and behaviour, just happened unbelievably quickly. There was no questioning the entire history of their practises or what was wrong with them, no questioning how they’d treated any of their kids. The whole “consequence” for Ted was deciding, of his own accord, not to align himself with a politician who would force Harper to zip it – sorry, continue to zip it – about her identity. He shouldn’t have aligned himself with that woman in the first place. No one ever apologized to Abby about the way they treated her from start to finish, from patronizing her for being an orphan or the constant lack of respect shown her, to the false accusations of theft. Not a single part of it was atoned for at any point. Even Tipper being so disgusted with Abby’s ipad photography skills was disgusting. You just don’t talk to other human beings that way, and there was no resolution for me on any of this. There were also no consequences for Sloan’s horrific, SUPER-public outing of Harper, for Harper’s destruction of Jane’s painting, for the kids’ planting of the necklace on Abby, or for anyone’s horrendous treatment of Abby in general.

So yes: when you’re less than fifteen minutes out from the end of a supposed romantic comedy that was more upsetting to watch than entertaining or funny, and you’re actively rooting for the main character to walk away from her so-called partner and her toxic family, that’s not good. I’m not sold on the “romance” aspect, either. John (Dan Levy’s character) was the only good part of this movie, for me, and that’s overlooking his completely rude ignoring while on his phone at the beginning, or his negligent care of the animals he was supposed to be taking care of. (Gross, again – animals’ lives have value, too, and if my pet sitter killed my pet through negligence while I was away, I would be furious!) But his point about “sticking it to the patriarchy” in terms of Abby asking Ted for his permission/blessing to marry Harper was spot on. For all the hype about this being a progressive, lesbian, holiday rom-com, this film managed to perpetuate a lot of gross aspects of straight, white, misogynistic, heteronormative culture, like women being the property of their fathers and needing to obtain a male parent’s “permission” to marry another human being. The only person’s “permission” that was needed here was Harper’s, and then it’s not about permission – it’s about two adults making a consensual decision to commit themselves to each other. It’s great if you have the support of family – aka, BOTH parents, on BOTH sides – but that support is a bonus, not a prerequisite. Perpetuating the false dichotomy of family vs career for women only, is a harmful one to keep perpetuating. That question is never asked of men.

I was honestly kind of disgusted that Abby chose to stay with Harper by the end. I get it, but it definitely didn’t leave me with warm, romantic feelings. It left me with the deflated feeling I invariably experience whenever a woman makes the choice to be the bigger person and submit herself to a damaging situation or relationship. Mostly what I’m left with is anger that no one spoke up for Abby at any point, even John. That, and anger and sorrow over Jane’s painting. So yeah: it wasn’t as bad as bury your gays, but it also wasn’t really a happy ending for me, or super enjoyable to watch. Do better, Hollywood. Do a lot better.

justqueeerious:“I play an immortal character in The Old Guard with Charlize Theron. My character...

justqueeerious:

“I play an immortal character in The Old Guard with Charlize Theron.

My character just appears for probably two minutes, but I trained a lot for that character. I trained for all the action and delivered my best of the best; not just one hundred, but two hundred.

I’m really excited of the movie and it came out, and I just realized that they pulled me all the way from Vietnam to London and shot all these things for three months,

and I appeared for one minute on screen, and then they drowned me in the freaking ocean for five hundred years—that’s the interesting part of the character.

But the thing is, it kind of payoff because I appeared at the very last scene that is leading us to a sequel, which I hope there will be a sequel. Otherwise, it’s gonna be just one minute. So if you guys likes the movie and comments about Quynh, I’ll have a chance to go back and give more about Quynh— the very first Vietnamese character from a big hollywood project.”

—Ngô Thanh Vân (Veronica Ngo) talks about her character Quynh, The Old Guard (dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2020)

Man, I hope there’s a ton more of Quynh in the sequel!!

All_I_need from Ao3 here. I just realised I forgot to tell you how the beouf turned out - I shared it with my foodie friend and he loved it. It was absolutely delicious but I'll make like half that portion next time so I don't eat beouf bourgignon for 5

Ahhh, that’s so great!!! I’m so happy it turned out well for you! It also freezes SUPER well, so if you end up having more than you need/want next time, just portion that bad boy out into tupperwares to make for delicious lunches later on! Thanks for telling me how it went for you! :)