Nicknames: When You Shorten Someone’s Name Affectionately

Thinking about Lilo & Stitch makes me really appreciate certain things about the original + the series. Almost every single named [human] character in the movie isn’t white: the only exception being Mertle, y’know, the bratty little girl we’re not supposed to like.

Besides all of the racial representation, Lilo herself is very much a neurodivergent icon, and her portrayal as the protagonist is amazing considering how characters like her are typically either sidelined or depicted in ways to make them less sympathetic/human (modern media does at least a slightly better job at adressing that kind of thing tho).

So all of that is great, but to anyone that hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch: The Series, it also does some extremely refreshing stuff.

Pleakley gets tons of validation to dress in drag, everyone always referring to Pleakley as “she” when dressed up as “aunt Pleakley.” There’s even an episode that tackles Pleakley dealing with the pressures of his family that wants him to marry a girl and settle down to have a “normal life.” After the episode's shenanigans, there's a realistic depiction of the misunderstanding of a heteronormative/traditional parent with their non-traditional child: Pleakley's mom says that she just wants her children to be happy, but when Pleakley says that he is happy, she thinks he's only trying to console her as she insists, "How can you be happy? You aren't even married." But Pleakley finally gets it through to his mom when he says, "I don't want to be married, mother! I'm happy just as I am."

After getting to meet all of Pleakley's ohana throughout the episode and hearing from Pleakley himself -after all of the previous misunderstandings- that he really, truly, is happy, she's finally starting to understand.

Even though his mom comments as they leave that she wants him to “try wearing men’s clothes more often,” she still does walk away accepting that she simply doesn’t understand her son's way of thinking. It’ll definitely be hard for her since she’s so much more “traditional,” but she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that her son is who he is, and likes being that way, so she’ll love him regardless. She's trying her best.

The portrayal of people with physical disabilities is also great. It’s not because there’s one recurring character with some condition, but almost because there are non-recurring characters. It isn’t in every episode, but here’s an example: they want to show someone at the park playing fetch with their dog for just one shot. They could very easily have it be any a random person, but they decided to make it a lady in a wheelchair. There's another episode where Nani's friends from highschool show up and one has forearm crutches, but not just because she had some recent accident. No one in the episode questions her condition or feels the need to point it out, the only comment on it being that the friend will use the crutches to lightly bonk the others' arms, and Nani jokes, "You are still deadly with that thing."

The fact that they include characters with disabilities when they "don't have to" makes it that much more normal. These people aren't some special case or the main highlight of the episode, they're just another person. They're normal.

There's so much that all of the original Lilo & Stitch media did right, but now the name will forever be tainted with the association of the remake, which I'm sure will have absolutely none of the tasteful writing and ideas of anything prior to it.

remember kids, the moral of "Irish and Italians weren't even considered White yet!" isn't "because in those times people were so ignorant they didn't think the Irish were white". the moral is "because white is an unreal category created to justify slavery and ongoing hoarding of power and wealth". It's not that you know better about Italians. It's that the boundaries of the higher caste have changed.

obsessed with morpheus turning up every 100 years with a new period appropriate emo outfit except he also inexplicably has eyeliner for some reason

The crux of the anti trans movement is a war on bodily autonomy. They don't want you to have any agency over what you look like, how you dress, who you date, whether to have kids, etc.

They want total control over you. Not just trans people. Not just queer people. You. Everyone.

Trans people are just a scapegoat. They want total control over everyone's self expression. They want the right to mold you into their perfect little cog in their dehumanizing machine.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. Our rights are your rights. Our destruction is your destruction.

THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1973) — Dir. Gordon Hessler

Okay, okay. As a girl who grew up on the old swashbuckler films. Can I talk about the fucking romance of Nydas Okiro. Betrayed and backstabbed by his crew. Holding his wound. Panting in effort and grief. Telling his traitorous underling that gold means nothing if you do not use it to lift people up. That gold is a resource by which mortaldom climbs. That they are going to save the people of Avalir, and that cause goes above any oath he ever made in a past life.

You can picture so clearly in this moment the kid who joined a pirate crew to climb the skies. The dream he must have had. The dream he shared with Laerryn.

And it’s the end, and he’s betrayed, and he’s standing on what has to be one or two fucking hit points remaining, and he stabs that traitor in the front, and uses every resource he still possesses to get as many people as possible out and to defend them in the process.

And he’s … he’s not only betrayed, he’s rewarded. For the man he’s been. Because Alessander steps up, Alessander thinks to save the sorcerer school, this other piece of Nydas’ dream. When Nydas and his conjured dragon are standing alone and surrounded by devil puppets, the fucking sphinx from earlier, the sphinx from the parade, busts in and rescues him, and has been protecting them the whole time from further tampering of the constructs. Nydas was the first to step up, to try and protect the tree, to try and avert catastrophe, to try and hold the line, and that ripples out. His people stand up around him.

And an entire army of constructs, on Nydas’ word, burst out of the Golden Scythe to defend Avalir as she dies. His ships fly to evacuate her people. The world might be damned, he might be nearly dead, but by Avalir, he and this city will go down fucking swinging, and saving everyone they can.

The romance of this man. I can’t even.