A Robotic Work in Progress

athelind:

regdwight:

m-l-rio:

The good plot twists aren’t the ones that are wild left turns out of nowhere, they’re the ones that make all the other little things that didn’t quite add up before suddenly click

it shouldnt be “i didnt see that coming!”

it should be “i SHOULD have seen that coming!”

Or, as I like to phrase it, “But of course!!!”

Shyamalan nailed this with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but dropped the ball after that.

Someone who consistently nails it? Brandon Sanderson.

For me, the key part of any major plot twist or reveal is “does this make me want to watch/read it again?”

I think a lot of creators make the mistake of wanting the most shocking reveal, because that’s what people will talk about.  The problem is, shock wears off eventually.  And then what?

The best kind of reveal is the kind that changes how you look at everything that came before.  It gives you a new context, and it makes you want to experience the whole thing all over again with this new context in mind.

And this works even if you kind of guessed it already, because it’s different when you KNOW, and you can go back to appreciate how it all fits together.

lets-steal-an-archive:

BREAKING: Joe Biden today signed an executive order ending new federal contracts with private prisons.

This is great news, and a reminder of one of my three favorite memories from LEVERAGE (longtime humans know this one, you can skip)

The S2 finale – which would have been a perfectly good series finale – left Nate Ford in the hands of law enforcement. And Portland had this perfectly good empty prison sitting there. So S3 started with an episode about Nate, in prison, discovering a cash-for-inmates scam.

This episode was of course based on the famous “kids of Cash” scam where two PA took kickbacks to jail over 2000 kids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

So @Dean_Devlin as was his wont, arranged for the premiere episode to be shown in a proper theater, but party, etc. It was (insanely) shot on 6k, so why not?

At this screening I was sitting next to an older Hollywood agent …

During the screening he leaned over to tease me. “This one is a bit much, isn’t it?”

“No, this one is real,” I whispered back.

He stared at me.

“Except in real life, it was kids.”

A beat, then in full voice, in a crowded theater, he exclaimed “IN AMERICA?!”

Yeah, man. Welcome to the country you don’t know exists, in the dirty little corners of your shining city on the hill.

I don’t think we changed his politics. But we opened up his world a little. So I’ll take that win.

Axios | John Rogers (thread)

(via athelind)

kaijuno:

Wait this is funny

(via theunofficiallibrarian)

jerboamoe:

tipsykipsy:

marmod:

having a 3yo brother means i get exposed to kids’ shows way more often than i thought i would at this point in my life, but man, binge watching thomas the tank engine as an adult is a wild fucking experience

all these trains (and there’s like 20 counting locomotives alone, don’t even get me started on the anthropomorphic train cabins) are MAD competitive the whole time and will constantly fuck up their own whole day by tring to prove they’re the biggest baddest train. and like, i understand that you gotta get you plot from somewhere and i imagine plotlines like this happen in cars etc. as well, but the other day i was watching and i noticed that all these goddamn locomotives have DRIVERS in them. that apparently have no control over their train’s actions at all whatsoever. so these trains wake up, pick up their drivers, go to work, get taunted by another train who’s like “ha ha i see u there with your 4 cabins but did you know i can pull SIX cabins and still fucking book it at 80mph” and the 4 cabin train will be like “fuck it i gotta prove myself now, hook me up with 4 more cabins” and will inevitably derail themselves or some shit while the engine driver just shuts up and kicks back the whole time

i explained this to my brother and was like, is that fucked up or what, but he just pointed at the green train and went “that’s percy” so i guess that’s his take on the situation

OKAY I’M GETTING IN ON THIS BECAUSE I’M MAD AND FULL OF COLA

I worked on that show. For three hideous months of my life, I did this.

And there was this whole unwritten rule structure about the drivers and what they did and when they did it and how/when they needed to act

And there was this weird fucking balance between what the trains did and what the humans did - the drivers would only act when the train can’t do a thing by itself. Hooking up to another car? Driver does it. Need to shift from one track to another? Driver gets out and does it. Loading up one of the cars? Drivers.

See something funny here? BECAUSE I DID. What driver would hear their sentient train say “fuck it i gotta prove myself now, hook me up with 4 more cabins” and NOT respond with “Percy just shut up and drive we have people to transport or the Health and Safety committee is going to breathe fire up both our asses”??? 

Naw, they hear their giant fucking trains with giant fucking faces whining about how they are getting old and outdated and how they need to prove themselves by doubling their reasonable capacity and they go “welp, okay” and they get out and they hook up those cabins.

Otherwise, the trains had total autonomy to do whatever petty competitive shit the plot of the day demanded that they do. Go way too fast and end up breaking because they wanted to race a new and not outdated engine that’s actually built for speed? They do that. Go 100% the wrong direction because they wanted to show their friends a thing they got loaded up with and end up ruining it? No probbo, Bobbo. Disobey directions given by Sir Topham Hatt HIMSELF because they’re too proud? You do the thing buddy. Strain way too fucking hard to carry 8 fucking cabins when they were only built for 4? YOU GO FOR IT YOU MORON TRAIN. 

SO WITH ALL THAT HERE’S MY THEORY that I had to develop because it was either that or never stop drinking ever again

Those drivers? They never speak to each other, never acknowledge the existence of any humans. They get in the train, go with the train, fix the train, load or unload the train. That is all they do. 

They’re not human. 

They are symbiotic extensions of the trains. They are a combination of the birds that eat parasites off hippos and fucking Boston Dynamics style robots where literally all they do is whatever shit their designated Train Of The Day deems worthy of their time. 

With no task to fulfil, they are thoughtless beings. WATCH THEM. They look around at nothing. They blink. Sometimes they lean on the edge of the window. 99.5% of the time, they do nothing, they see nothing, they interact with nothing. They are shaped in such a way as to avoid unsettling the real humans of the world, but are below humans in almost every way - Sir Topham Hatt never speaks to them directly in the way he speaks to the engines. 

If the train derails and it’s possible that a human driver would be severely injured? It’s fine, because they’re not actually human. They crumple into a heap of non-euclidian geometry and then rebuild themselves like an inflatable snowman. Their recovery is fuelled by the years of poor decisions they’ve helped enable - all this time they’ve been feeding off the intellect of these trains. 

Why do the trains never learn from their mistakes? Why, after more than 30 years, are they still getting stuck, taking on more weight than they should know they can handle, still derailing themselves? 

Because these symbiotic train extensions need their slice of the pie. They must feed. And what’s more cost effective than sandwiches? Thought. 30 years of quiet leeching, giving the trains enough processing power to do their jobs, but not so much that the trains don’t need them anymore. 

The trains are in a constant state of developmental hiatus because of the drivers themselves. 

NOW YOU MAY BE THINKING, this seems weird and unusual. Why would Sir Topham Hatt allow for this? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective for the trains to be able to learn from their mistakes and become better workers? 

And to that I ask you… from this entire operation, hauling coal, hauling people, hauling animals, being  “really useful”… what do the trains get out of this? They are kept alive and maintained, but neither are they allowed their own independent thought, or their own free time or interests. Everything they do is done under orders of Sir Topham Hatt.

And without the brainpower to devote to critical thought, they are unable to see how their petty struggles to be better than each other only reinforces the system where they are coerced into being “really useful”, above all else. 

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

did not expect to wake up today to thomas the tank engine discourse and unsettlingly well-thought-out conspiracy theories..but at the same time, in this day and age, i really cant say im surprised

(via royallylilac)

bundibird:

thunderboltsortofapenny:

gamebiadvance:

video-store-clerk:

free-range-tiddies:

Can’t believe Peter Griffin really tried it.

Ok but I’d the second dude like…a vampire? Because my straight ass is bewitched.

[Transcript:

(the first person has text over them that says “being fat and wanting a girlfriend”)

First person: “See what’s behind this door..!”

(Door has text over it that says “fat girls” while The Toccata and Fugue in D minor plays in the background)

First person: “Noo, is there a bett-”

Second person: “ Yo it’s funny that there’s an entire demographic, of petite women who love bigger men. But because you’ve just ousted yourself, as a cunt, it’s never gonna happen for you mate. You’re really out here body shaming, all these beautiful shawties, big body Bugatti (kiss noise), exquisite; but you’re built like a less cool Bling Bling Boy from Johnny Test. Make it make sense mate. It doesn’t- it really doesn’t. Could’ve kept your mouth shut. But you had to say something. And you even went so far as to put it on the internet. And you thought that was a good idea because-? Please, take yourself elsewhere. Sincerely the entire fucking human race.”

End transcript.]

The moment that man started speaking -

That transcript up there is great, but it fails to mention that the second person? Has a voice like… warm caramel. Like a blanket on a rainy day. Like the gentle creak of an ancient tree in an even more ancient forest. A voice that’s a low, deep – far deeper than expected – warm, and has a soothing timbre that, honestly, I could listen to for hours.

To be honest, I almost envy the first guy.  He gets THAT VOICE directed at HIM.  That man could insult me for ten minutes and I think I’d thank him afterward.

(And that is not a kink that I normally go for at all.)

(via meagirl31)