While We're Here, Pass This With Me

voldlyvisceral

moniquill

No guys, I need to stop and talk about something in this movie and how fucking revolutionary it was; something that I haven’t seen in a movie before or since.

This is a movie about a kid who leaves her birth family.

Not a kid who find that they have a secret lineage or something that allows them to find their ‘true family’ - this is a movie about a kid whose true birth family is made up of bad people. So she gets out. And that is played as the right thing to do. She isn’t punished for it or made to feel bad about ‘abandoning her family’. There isn’t an underlying ‘but they’re your family and you have to love them’ or ‘they’re your family and they love you even if they don’t show it well or do hurtful things’ message of the kind that I see OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER in media. Matilda gets out and lives happily ever after because of it.

We need a million more movies like this to counter the metric shit ton of movies that directly counter this message.

geekypudding

Roald Dahl, teaching us that sometimes bad people exist in your life and it’s ok to find good people to replace them :3

brokensilence137

It also shows that nontraditional families (i.e. single-parent families) can provide a strong, loving environment. Matilda was neglected in a two-parent household with an older sibling, but she was loved and cared for by Ms. Honey.

So it’s not about blood. And it’s not about what the perceived cultural norms are. It’s about love.

vividlyvisceral

This is something I think about so much. The “family is forever” motif is so popular, particularly in movies for children, and it sort of reinforces this belief at an early age that you must stick with your family no matter what. But, for some people— including several of my friends, and my boyfriend— it’s telling them to stick with their family despite being abused physically/verbally/mentally, because it’s expected of them to put up with it because they share the same genetic material.

It’s frightening to think how many people stay trapped because of this.

(Matilda is a beautiful movie. Even though the Trunchbull still scares the bajeezus out of me.)

mathilda gif

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spontaneousmusicalnumber

sylvanas-girlkisser

Hi consider this your blessing from a certified forever GM, to please make your TTRPG characters Mary Sues.

Listen if you spend enough time in the hobby you will inevitably get people turning up their nose, saying you need to make your PCs “realistic”. These people are wrong! Especially when it comes to DnD. There’s nothing wrong with tropes but after a while all the human fighters who used to be in the army, and elf wizard trying to live up their family legacy start to blur together.

The same cannot be said for the diamond-skinned demi-goddess cleric who started her prayers with “Hey mom, it’s me”; the self-described “slutty pyromaniac” tiefling sorcerer; the ranger who wanted to domesticate an army of rats and declare herself “queen of the sewers”; or the slightly macabre mushroom druid who became a sheepgirl while trying to cast “trans your gender”.

mylordshesacactus

There is literally only one hard-and-fast rule in D&D character creation, which is one of basic courtesy to the DM and others–you have to create a character who, for literally any reason at all, would join an adventuring party.

(Like I said, this is basic courtesy; nothing is worse than the player who, when the DM introduces a plot hook, responds with “but why would MY character care? why would I get involved in this monster attack? MY character would just let the town guard handle it!”

The answer to “but why would my character want to get involved?” is “Because you’re not the only player at the table, and you’re not the main character in a novel.” Pulling the session to a grinding halt around your character’s…lack of interest in the entire game….is rude and unfair. This is a team-based game, and an understood rule of conduct is that you are going to be playing a character who will–reluctantly perhaps, warily certainly, out of fear or self-interest by all means, but will nevertheless–join forces with the rest of the group and have some form of engagement with the plot)

And get this.

The vast majority of players snottily talking down to the actually interesting and engaging character concepts for not being “realistic” enough? They violate that one rule all the fucking time. A lone-wolf jaded rogue sitting by themself in the corner might be “realistic,” but if they keep no-selling plot hooks and refusing to engage with the plot because “it would be out of character”, then they’re not a good character for D&D and their players should have made a better one.

Literally the only law of character creation is to make a character who will in some way, shape, or form engage with the fucking story.

Make characters who are INTERESTING and ENGAGING and FUN TO PLAY and yes, don’t let assholes ruin your fun, but also: You are probably objectively better at this than they are and you deserve to keep that in mind.

NEVER take character criticism from people who only have one rule they’re expected to follow and still can’t figure it out.