meghantonjes:

“I think a lot about what makes a strong female character. You know, movies and TV shows, these things have influence, my own website. So I think the question of “What makes a strong female character?”, often goes misinterpreted. And instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen, who maybe have one quality that’s played up a lot. Like, you know, a Catwoman type, or she plays her sexuality up a lot and it’s seen as power. But they’re not strong characters who happen to be female, they’re completely flat and they’re basically cardboard characters.
The problem with this is that then people expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple. When in actuality, women are complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy. And women happen to be people!”

-Tavi Gevinson for TEDTalks [x]

FUCKING PREACH

(Source: dohertypeter)

mystracarlile:

im-the-doctor-basically-run:

savberry:

im-the-doctor-basically-run:

I don’t people realize how sad this is.

I audibly, “Awww“‘d for this man in the theater.

Look at his face in the second gif. He is SO happy. Someone sent him something, someone thought about him, someone noticed him.

He probably works all the time, an ex wife who never speaks to him and child she never let’s him see, no other family, no friends, maybe a pet but probably something like a goldfish. He had accepted his place in the world, resigned to be alone, and then this little bit of hope flies into his window that someone out there acknowledges his existence.

Maybe it was his son, who after all these years, remembered all the fun times they had making paper airplanes together before the divorce, and somehow tracked him down. With newly resurrected hope, he looks out to see who this magical lifeline of a person is, who with this small act, is saying, “I SEE you, I validate you as one human being to another.” 

But the lifeline is severed in one brief gesture. “No, not you,” the gesture says. It was meant for someone else. And suddenly, he is alone again, right all along that no one cares anymore. That the world is cold and gray, he is not the main character in this story, just another extra no one will remember.

And in a fit of resentment for the person who got his hopes up, he crumples it up and throws it away along with his hope.

or maybe he’s a cartoon character?

Oh right I forgot that fictional characters don’t have back stories that govern every look, every reaction, every movement, every choice of their character. Part of any good story is creating and learning a long and rich personal history for a character. Characters are only believable when there is a sense of motivation behind their actions, the same as “real” people. The existence of something in flesh is no more real than something that exists only on a page or screen. Writers, actors, directors, cartoonists, etc, have to make these choices for MULTIPLE characters the same way you make your own choices based on your personal history.

The addict isn’t going to just one day become sober for no reason.

A person doesn’t just start murdering.

Someone doesn’t just decide to be a cop or a doctor or an artist.

You don’t just break up with someone or cheat or get divorced or fall in love or get married.

EVERYTHING has a background to it that led up to an action. Just because they aren’t “alive” doesn’t make their struggles or triumphs any less valid and people’s reactions to them aren’t any less real just because a character is fictional.

Do people cry fake tears when Simba dies or at the beginning of Up or when Dean Winchester is ripped apart by Hellhounds or when the Doctor fades before telling Rose, he loves her?

Is the audience pretending to be happy? Or faking laughter? Or anger?

Who are YOU to someone on the other side of the world who you will never meet?
You are just a story.
We are all just stories.
I would even argue that fictional characters are MORE real than living people. They will exist long after we die. Not even the authors will exist forever. How much unattributed literature is there? People will always be telling stories and those characters will be more real than anyone has ever existed or possibly existed(nod to religion). The settings may change and a few details may change, but the characters, the core of the character will remain, while our nameless carbon is recycled back into the earth.

This is tumblr for crying out loud.

If you think a fictional character is any less deserving of feelings than a “real” person,

I think you might be in the wrong place.

(Source: saltandtorchit)