Hobbit Rambles - Tumblr Posts

Writing up Zuko meta about his character arc has really reminded me just how well written Zuko is.

It has also been serving as a good reminder that myself and/or fandom failing to recognize certain plot beats (foreshadowing, reliable vs. unreliable narration, etc) isn't always an indication that those plot beats aren't there.

If the new Fall of the House of Usher helped me realize one thing, it is that Edgar Allen Poe was really just the 1800s version of the Saw franchise.

Honestly, hateposting about one's favorite worst fictional characters should come back and replace anti nonsense more. Shamelessly hating on the fictional characters who did terrible things in canon, or mildly bad but extremely annoying things in canon, or even just hit on your personal squick(s) in canon, can make for great catharsis, without all the stress of moralizing other people's opinions.

No hate for hating fiction, only hate for using personal opinions about fiction to decide whether or not other people are allowed to be Good People based on how closely they align to the things that the loudest self-defined Good Person in the room has chosen to like.

Sometimes I need to focus more on posting about things that bring me joy.

Other times I need to accept that it does in fact bring me joy to hatepost about the Cattons from Saltburn, because they are terrible fictional people who I love to hate.

This got long and then I decided it probably should be it's own post rather than clogging up the OP's notes, but I've seen this post around a few times now and it has only gotten more frustrating each time I see it again.

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As someone who has had the pleasure of visiting cities that are vastly more walkable than most of those I grew up in, or most of those which exist in the US at all, I want to be clear that I am 1000% in support of walkable cities.

This list, however, is... troubling.

For one thing, what do lawns have to do with walkability? Nothing, or at least nothing directly. Lawnowners who don't want sidewalks next to their lawns are a separate issue, and making them deal with sidewalks anyway will always be easier than trying to ban lawns entirely. Especially when lawns don't really pose a water issue in many areas where drought isn't an issue, and they do provide homeowners with an easy and low-maintenance way to fill their yard with something green and alive that helps combat things like global warming a lot more than a block of highrises with sidewalks right outside would do. Or yards filled with, like, rocks and decorative fake plants, which would be the option some people would chose if they weren't allowed to grow a lawn instead.

(Yes, trees could be planted along those sidewalks by the city, but it is still often beneficial to focus on one goal at a time instead of shooting yourself in the foot by demanding everything right out of the gate. Especially when most people aren't going to see these goals as connected, when plenty of people are also perfectly happy to let their neighbors walk down the sidewalk next to their lawn.)

Then there's the issues of single family homes and access in cities for cars. At least the single family homes point specified "in cities," which I appreciate and support to an extent, insofar as "homes" is used to mean "separated houses," here. I'm gonna be honest, though, given some of the other points, I'm not sure how much to read into this particular one. I am firmly of the belief that families deserve individual living spaces with a reasonable degree of privacy from their neighbors, though, as do any people who want a bit of privacy and a space to call their own whether they live in a city or outside of one.

It's not always feasible, and I support plenty of appartments and high-density housing within a city, too, but take that idea too far and no one deserves to be crammed into the modern equivalent of tennement housing just to make the city a few blocks shorter on any given side.

As for cars, while I also 1000% support better funded, more comprehensive, and more accessible public transportation options, banning cars entirely is nonsensical. Even the most accessible public transport will still have issues for many disabled people, especially disabled people who need to travel to, say, a doctor's appointment or emergency hospital visit at either peak travel times when public transport will be incredibly busy, or outside of normal travel times like the middle of the night when it doesn't, actually, make sense to have the same number of bus drivers/train operators/what have you running the same number of routes as are available during the day.

Plus, not allowing cars majorly complicates the ability of people to get out of the city (or into the city from outside of it) if they don't have somewhere outside city limits to store a car/friends to pick them up/other easily available options for switching to a car outside the city in the event they're going somewhere that's not on a train or bus line. Even if every small town were linked up to bus and train lines, it would still take longer and likely require one or more transfers and significantly more advance planning to get between the city and small towns, and it would still be impractical to link up every cluster of farmhouses in the country with easily accessible and conveniently frequent public transport options, even just to major hubs.

If you don't think that would only worsen divides between "city folk" and "small town" folk who already get enough propaganda shoved down their throats on both sides against the other side, then I really don't know what to tell you.

Just off the top of my head, it makes it harder for people to commute and would force many of those who can only find jobs in the city to live there whether they want to or not, and vice versa; it makes it more difficult for people - especially disabled people with special accommodations needs - to visit family living in different locations, which can cut vulnerable people off from vital support structures; it also cuts down on options with the greatest personal autonomy for people who need to leave dangerous situations that they'd be able to leave easier/feel more comfortable leaving if they had access to their own car (though I'll be fair - this one applies in both directions; free and accessible public transportation also makes it easier for people in bad situations to escape those situations when they don't have access to their own form of transportation. Which is among the many reasons I am not arguing against a need for free and accessible public transportation, too, here); public transportation breaks down sometimes, and people often still need to get places when that happens.

The "architecture must be beautiful again" point is, I'll admit, mostly just annoying to me. What gives one person the right to decide what counts as "beautiful" over other people? Plenty of people today think of the architecture and styles of, say, the 70s in the US as pretty ugly, but many people in the 70s in the US thought that style was pretty groovy back then. Most people would agree, even when it was more popular, that brutalist architecture isn't very pretty, but I can list off a handful of people I know personally who disagree and would bet that they aren't totally alone in their opinions. I do think it's nice to walk down streets with architecture I find beautiful, and I think a lot of America very solidly misses that mark, but it would probably be more practical to include in a list like this that architecture should be made with quality and care and an eye to longevity, again. And then we're back on that being really it's own topic, and only tangentially related to walkability of cities.

(Hell, plenty of people find lawns beautiful, and in fact not ruining the aesthetic is one reason plenty of lawnowners cite for not wanting sidewalks plonked in next to their lawns. So I'd argue that "beautiful things to look at while walking" is its own double-edged sword.)

As for these points:

All public transportation should be 100% free.

Every commercial street should have at least one bench.

Public restrooms must be free, common and accessible.

I don't have any gripes with those. They're just 100% accurate and should be priorities for anyone who cares about progressive policies around public amenities, whether or not you care about walkability.

I know this is the site of Edginess and Drama, but sometimes I really appreciate stories where characters are allowed to be in mutually supportive and fulfilling relationships. Where maybe both characters are kind of a mess, but at least they know they can rely on each other for love and support, and the story isn't afraid to let them own up to their own bullshit when one of them falls down on their side of the bargain.

Finally let go of a plot beat tonight that I'd been convinced was necessary at this point in the story, even as every way I tried to write it still felt clunky and wrong for the characters at their current point of growth.

Suddenly, the flow of the whole chapter feels smoother, and I wound up writing more words tonight than I've written in... weeks??

Lesson learned, I guess! If a plot beat refuses to work even after multiple iterations, perhaps it's a sign that I was letting the narrative drive the characters' choices to an unhelpful degree, instead of letting the characters drive the story in a way that actually suits who I'd written them so far to be.

"Stories should teach us [x]," "Stories should teach us [y]," "Stories should teach us-"

No. Wrong. Incorrect.

If you are old enough to choose the stories you engage with for yourself, then you should be choosing stories with the lessons you need and staying out of other people's business when they choose to engage with the stories that weren't right for you.

Fighting back against oppression is not the same thing as committing oppression, and it is not hypocrisy not to tolerate intolerance from others.

That is not what a lot of supposed activism on this website actually does.

Guilt-tripping total strangers based on unfounded assumptions about their lives and experiences? Demanding attention and validation from strangers, as a way for said strangers to prove that they aren't Bad People, by demanding that what amount to personal vent posts be treated as meaningful educational resources on incredibly complex and serious issues? Trying to claim moral high ground over the fictional interests of strangers based entirely on some people's feelings of disgust as the only evidence of harm?

Wanting people around you to feel angry, or small, or ashamed, with no goal besides making someone else feel bad when it makes you feel better about the unfair hurt you've endured?

These aren't examples of activism or progressive ideology. They are examples of hurt people lashing out at easy targets with misidirected anger. They are examples of people engaging in the cycle of harm, when someone has made them feel small, and they chose to look for someone else they've decided should feel smaller as a way to make themselves feel big again.

I'm sure most tumblr users can think of at least a few posts they've seen like this, if not dozens or more.

Not just isolated posts, either, but posts with hundreds to thousands of notes worth of validation from other strangers.

That shit is harmful. Absolutely no one is ever obligated to engage with guilt-tripping, directionless anger that focuses mainly on punching down at one's peers, regardless of the source which originally inspired that anger. No matter how sympathetic someone's pain might be, it is not kindness to validate random cruelty as an outlet for genuine pain.

Engaging in meaningful activism is hard work. Hurting easy targets in the name of righteous causes is easy.

Being a decent person means being willing to ask yourself which one you're doing, and then being willing to step back and disengage not only when the answer is, "causing more harm," but also when the honest answer is, "I don't know."

Activism is not the same as causing harm. The corollary to that is that causing harm is not the same as activism, either.

I love it when movies use the fact they're told in an inherently visual medium really well, and put a lot of effort into being appealing to watch on a purely visual level alongside more general good storytelling elements.

If I were to make a list of my favorite movies from, say, the last five years or so, I'd absolutely include on it movies like Joker (the 2019 film), Saltburn, and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

All of these are very different movies; all of them are excellent examples of very tightly plotted, character driven narratives; and all of them use the fuck out of the fact that they are told in a visual medium, with incredible attention to visual details beautifully and expertly utilised as additional storytelling tools.

(The animation in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish? Stunning. The use of color in Joker? Masterful. The framing and coloring choices and camera work in Saltburn? Brilliant.)

Some movies are very pretty and have very little substance, but in a good movie, careful attention to visual details are just a sign that the person/team who created it cared to tell not just a good story, but a great story specifically for the medium in which it was told.

Sometimes, "Write for yourself," means that you have to stop waiting for someone else to convince you that your work has value worth sharing before you believe in that value for yourself.

Write for yourself because you believe you have a story worth being told, not because you are hoping that someone else will agree with you after the story is done.

It means worry about what other people will think about your story after you've written it, but you have to decide you have something worth writing first.

The only definite guarantee is that no one will ever think anything of the story you gave up on before it was ever put down on a page.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," is usually a reminder that you can't control anyone else's behavior, only your own. Sometimes, you have to know when to move on from a situation that is out of your hands.

In other situations, it can be helpful to consider if the horse is you this time.

For example, you can get as many encouraging comments and kudos as your fanfic has readers, but at the end of the day only you can choose whether or not you write more.

Sometimes it can be very freeing to realize that no matter how weird you are about a thing, there is almost certainly someone else in the world who is much much weirder about a different thing, possibly even a different thing that you are conversely pretty normal about.

We're all weirdos, when normal is measured by someone else's standards.

While I understand the popularity of the overprotective partners trope, might I suggest for consideration:

The couple who is always trying to hide behind each other, because clearly you are big and strong and capable but I am weak and small and frightened and would like to go home, now, but who unfortunately keep winding up in dangerous situations that they barely manage to luck their way out of every time in increasingly absurd ways, because they are both too curious for their own good and forget what happened last time, every time, the instant a new mystery appears.

"Neither of us throws ourselves into danger on purpose and we would both greatly prefer to be safe and cozy at home, but -" "Ohhh, is that a new murder basement?!" "Really? Where!?" "I wonder what's in it?" "Only one way to find out!"