he’s not that typical “so hot” main white boy protagonist, but man is he cute as hell, boyfriend material right there
big bluebell eyes and kinda big nose but so adorable, his teeth gaps and his hair is kinda long in the back, i just love his design so much, what a precious boy
i don’t mean to hijack your post, but i would like to add to this, if you don’t mind??
not only is jim lake jr. one of the best examples i can think of for a soft-looking design for an animated boy with a lead role—soft jawline, gap-toothed smile, not very strongly built (he’s a twig, to put it frankly), all of which are traits that are actually more common in american caucasian teenage boys his age than the husky jock-type—but his character design (personality, morals, and values) is soft as well.
one of the very first scenes we’re introduced to him in is him making breakfast for his mom. i started watching from part 1 again with a friend (their first time watching, a rewatch for me), and they instantly pointed out this scene and said they were so glad to see it, since there is next to no “soft” representation of sons towards their mothers in media, and i realize just how true that is. yet trollhunters gifted us with jim repeatedly showing affection and love towards his mom, NO MATTER who was around (i.e. holding her hand, and even made his concern for her one of the main plot points (keeping everything a secret from her because wants to keep her safe).
moving on, within the first few episodes, jim is shown to be the type of guy who would rather talks things out than fight. not only is this shown in his interactions with steve, but it’s also shown in his training: he dodges and deflects rather than begins with full offense. this doesn’t stay that way for long, but even later on, all the way in part 3 during “bad coffee”, he tries to reason with strickler. he doesn’t want to fight, with strickler even being surprised when jim pulls daylight on him simply to use as leverage (“so you do have it in you”). he doesn’t even want to kill chompsky, a gnome who caused nothing but trouble to begin with and could have easily been disposed of.
this does change more after his transformation, as he instantly goes into a “fight now, ask questions later” kind of mode for the eternal knight and doesn’t reason with gunmar before fighting him and only questions morgana a little (which i believe is because of merlin’s repeated gaslighting that morgana is inherently bad and refuses to disclose much about the situation, but that’s a whole other analysis), but he still, EVEN THEN, addresses angor’s past in an attempt to connect and make him rethink what he is fighting for.
this post is getting long, so i’ll just give one more point: jim is not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, and i mean that in a couple of ways. first, he’s introduced to the three rules of being a trollhunter, and the first rule, right off, is “always be afraid”, to which he responds that that should be no problem. that’s a pretty big deal to me, how quickly he takes up this rule. he doesn’t have a problem showing his fear, because all of this is big and scary and new and he figures anyone else would be afraid too. either that, or he doesn’t care what others think because he knows it’s scary for him, and they won’t experience the same things as he does.
okay, now count how many times jim openly cries. go ahead. how many is it? i don’t have the episodes on hand at the moment, but i can recall from memory at least 5 times jim had tears in his eyes or running down his face, whether in front of others or not. and he never tried to mask that or deny it. not once was he shown to quickly scrub at his face when someone else was around to cover up the fact that he was showing emotion. he openly wept for vendel in front of blinky, toby, arrrgh, and claire; he cried out for help and sobbed in “unbecoming”; he had tears streaming down his face when he feared for draal’s life in “the oath” as he was being literally dangled by gunmar.
this is the kind of representation i am all for for the younger generation.
I love it when people try to claim representation in fiction is being taken “too far” to the point where it’s no believable. They’re like:
“What’s next, a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum?” Hi, my name is Rachel, also known as Rachna, and I’m a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum.
“What’s next, a transgender Latino man with chronic pain?” What, you mean my former colleague, Marco?
“What’s next, a Black Jewish lesbian?” Bitch, I know I three Black Jewish lesbians, WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING POINT?
im so tired of the argument being “what’s next? a feasible combination of human conditions other than straight white cis able-bodied dude? that can’t possibly happen!”
The point of voting blue in 2018 isn’t to make the US perfect. We cannot accomplish that in one fell swoop. There’s gerrymandering, voter apathy, voter suppression, and generations of older party-line fucks we have to deal with.
Voting blue in 2018 is to make it lessimmediately threatening for PoC, LGBT+ people, the disabled, and any other marginalized demographic. It’s a stopgap against Republicans who are aligned with Nazis, white supremacists, and sexual abusers.
Correcting politics in the United States is going to take decades of new voters staying on top of politics and not falling prey to apathy, like our predecessors.
People telling you not to waste a vote on 3rd Party this midterm aren’t saying “never vote 3rd party.” Republicans have united behind one utterly heinous front.We need to unite behind Democrats, for the time being.
You either hate Nazis or you’re on their side it’s easy as that you can’t be morally grey on this
You can’t even say something like “I’m not into politics” or even the #woke version “I’m not educated enough on this matter to have a side” or something because even children know Nazis Are, like, Bad
The premise of minimum wage, when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a home and support a family. That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.
The fact people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people that ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home and a family, is disgusting.
Also if a livable wage breaks the system then the system deserves to be broken.
They sent pipe bombs to Obama, Clinton, CNN, and a major Democratic donor. They marched through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us.” They jailed and brutalized and outright killed Black protesters. They ran a woman down with a car for protesting their hateful rhetoric.
They threatened from the start to resort to violence if they didn’t get their way, and then got their way…and resorted to violence anyway. They are the purveyors of a body of politics that sees most of us as subhuman and undeserving of life, and actively works toward our destruction.
Remember that during this election.
This is not a matter of choosing the “lesser evil”. This is flawed politicians vs. actual fucking terrorists. This is human failings vs. inhumanity. This is not being progressive enough vs. silencing the opposition with violence.
No fucking contest. Get out and vote.
It was a terrorist attempt on several people, including two previous presidents. And our current president decided that the best thing to do tonight would be to hold a political rally.
You have to vote. Lives are on the fucking line here.
People have already died. Heather Heyer of course, but let’s not forget that the lack of response to Puerto Rico resulted in the deaths of thousands. That level of racism and neglect is state violence.
Don’t be precious about your vote. Your lives, all our lives, depend on it.
Specifically, more people died as a result of the hurricanes in PR than were killed in all locations attacked on 9/11.
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice – they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
Miguel is right. The first time I watched it, I expected a later scene where Miguel was proven wrong or shown the error of his ways—one where it’s firmly established that adults might make rules that don’t make sense, but they have their reasons and it’s best to abide by their wishes.
But no. That doesn’t happen. Instead, we see that Imelda’s insistence on the music ban, and her refusal to reconsider, indirectly (or perhaps directly) land Miguel in even greater danger, as he wouldn’t have gone after de la Cruz were it not for Imelda insisting he give up music forever. The happy ending comes not when Miguel agrees to give up music to please his family, but when he defies the ban to save Héctor and restore Mama Coco’s memories.
I can’t tell you how many kid’s movies I’ve seen that would have taken “Family comes first” to mean “The adults’ wishes are paramount even if they’re unreasonable.” It would have been so easy to have Miguel simply go along with what Imelda wanted, but Pixar instead gave us a story where a child’s decision to contest an unfair rule is what eventually restores a broken family.
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