Reliable methods for avoiding emotion and making everything suck for everyone. — Happiness, friendship, peace, satisfaction — these and other positive emotions make life enjoyable, fulfilling, and worth living. But they come at a cost: they require giving up negative emotions — like anger, bitterness, and sorrow — that make life difficult, meaningless, and full of suffering. And nobody wants to do…

What’s difficult is figuring out what your characters want, why they want it, and what’s preventing them from getting it. — All stories are drama, all drama is conflict, all conflict emerges from desire, and all desire is determined by motivation. …

A line-by-line edit of a scene from the script. — Tenet tells the story of a secret agent recruited by a mysterious intelligence organization to investigate the source of time-inverted objects and stop a terminally ill madman from inverting the entropy of the universe. The script was written by Christopher Nolan. In this scene, the protagonist learns about inversion. 💬…

A line-by-line edit of a scene from the script. — Gravity tells the story of NASA astronauts Matt Kowalski and Ryan Stone, who, after a debris field destroys their shuttle during a spacewalk, attempt to return to Earth. The script was written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón. In this scene, debris caused by cascading collisions of satellites interrupts a…

A line-by-line edit of a scene from the script. — Avengers: Endgame tells the story of the Avengers as they reassemble to travel back in time and reverse Thanos’s destruction, thus restoring life to the universe. The script was written by Christopher Marcus & Stephen McFeely, based on the comics by Marvel. In this scene, Steve, Natasha, and Scott are…

A line-by-line edit of an excerpt from the script. — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tells the story of Frodo Baggins and company as they complete their quest through Middle Earth to destroy the One Ring. The script was written by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J…

A line-by-line edit of an excerpt from the script. — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers tells the story of Frodo Baggins and company as they continue their quest through Middle Earth to destroy the One Ring. The script was written by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by…

And anyone who tells you otherwise is sus. — I am confident that this article will receive no attention — that it will not be promoted or appear in recommendations — and that what ears befall it out of chance or misfortune will be deaf to its message. I am also confident that the people to whom such ears…

Principles for liberals, to get what you want. — Liberals and conservatives are fundamentally different from each other, and the discrepancies between their personalities make it difficult for the two to intercommunicate; indeed, whereas liberals tend to be more open and concerned with feelings (and as such tend to use more abstract, emotional language, which conservatives tend not to…