#fat people exist stephen

[melodiesofmidnight]

One of the most frustrating things about film adaptations of Stephen King's Carrie is the repeated omission of one primary feature of her appearance: her weight. She is not thin; she has bad skin, greasy hair, and frumpy clothing. However, upon the night of her prom, she is able to transform herself into someone considered to be attractive: whilst still being fat.

By continually casting thin, beautiful women in the role of Carrie, the films 1) imply that fat women cannot believably have Cinderella moments without shedding any pounds and 2) remove one of the most crucial aspects of the story: audience introspection.

The films do not force us to recognise and challenge our biases. We do not see ourselves in the bullies, who are humans, for better or worse -- as represented best by Sue Snell and Chris Hargensen. We do not see ourselves as being capable of what these teenagers did to Carrie, because their insults seem comedic and far-fetched to us, parody beyond relatability: Sissy Spacek and Chloe Grace Moretz do not elicit any implicit revulsion in us. They are thin, and beautiful, and the bullies' motivations in harassing them are outlandish and superficial beyond empathy.

However, if Carrie were to be kept fat, the audience would finally be forced to look inward and to recognise the ugliness in themselves that is instilled by societal norms. Instinctually, society rejects fat, unattractive women. Carrie, were she to remain as she was in the book, would elicit the same reaction from general audiences as she does from her classmates at school.

No longer would people be able to distance themselves from their own disdain for women and girls like Carrie by sitting safely behind the absurdity that is an attractive female lead being ridiculed for their appearance. They too would exist as Miss Desjardin did in the novel: sympathetic, pitying, but ultimately put off by Carrie, solely because she does not fit the requirements of modern, aesthetic womanhood.

People would finally be forced to reconcile that with themselves. How much more resonant would Carrie's retribution be if audiences finally felt the full impact of its being directed at themselves just as much as it is directed toward the ill-fated prom attendees? How important of a discussion could it have inspired even back in the 70s?

Even still, Hollywood is too scared to fully sit audiences before a mirror. Even still, we are unable to accept the lessons a novel like Carrie offers without having its protagonist altered nearly beyond recognition. How long will it be before we are able to portray the tragedy of Carrie with all of its nuances intact? How long before we are able to feel the sting of injustice just as sharply when a protagonist is fat as we do when a pretty and thin protagonist is injured?

I'm still waiting for the Carrie modern audiences need to see.

#carrie #stephen king #brian de palma #carrie white #carrietta white #carrie analysis #carrie 1976 #carrie 2013

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

There is a Christo-fascist in the House!

Stephen Jay Morris

10/28/23

©Scientific Morality.

I remember it vividly. During the Vietnam war in the 60s, the overall sense of helplessness among Americans as the U.S. Air Force dropped bombs on Vietnamese villages full of children, mothers, elderly people, and other innocent humans. The government said that the Viet Cong were among the peasants and was using them as human shields. Those civilians were merely “collateral damage.” In other words: oops! It got to the point, during the anti-war movement, where every tactic we employed was futile. Demonstrations, civil disobedience, voting for liberal Democrats. The killing continued. So, what could we do? A group of militants from SDS became “The Weathermen” and utilized terrorist methods, like planting bombs in public buildings or at corporate headquarters. It didn’t work!

Doesn’t that sound familiar? You see, if you criticized the U.S. government then for its war strategies, you were “anti-American.” The Conservatives were stanch supporters of the war in Vietnam. After all, not only was this a war against communism, it was also a war on yellow people! Bumper stickers abounded on 10-year-old cars: “Love it or leave it!” along with antenna-mounted American flags! My favorite Bumper sticker was: “Don’t like the police? Next time you are in trouble, call a hippie!” One thing they used to talk about was the man-made tunnels in which the Viet Cong hid.

The same thing exists in Gaza city; Hamas has tunnels everywhere! That is why Israel must flush them out by carpet bombing the city! So, if civilians are crushed under collapsing buildings, oh well. Blame it on Hamas! If they’d never attacked Israel, then nobody would have gotten hurt! In this war, if you criticize Israel, you are Anti-Semitic! History repeats itself, repeatedly.

The primary reason I hate Hamas is because they are Theocrats. They want Palestine to be an Islamic state. Israel is a Secular democracy and an asylum for Jews in the diaspora. There are some Judeo-Fascists who want to turn Isael into a Theocratic state, as well as a separatist state for Jews only. “Kick out all non-Jews!” This was the Rabbi Kahani doctrine when he was Aliyah to Israel. He was the founder of the American Jewish Defense League. They were a Right wing militia group for Jews. Got the picture?

Here is more bad news: The MAGA Republicans are one step closer to making America a Christian state. In Congress, the Republican majority just elected a certified Christian-Nationalist to be Speaker of the House. If that doesn’t put a chill in your spine, then you must be high on meth! Maybe you ought to forget your family problems and show a little concern. If not, well I don’t give a happy shit! You got so many warnings from the Anti-Authoritarian Left. If you believe it’s only a shower, then take off your clothes and walk in and get a whiff of Zyklon B. When Democrats warn you about the dangers of a fascist state, then you know you are the deep state. The Democrats never used the word, “fascist” until now.

You should worry. When the God Squad enters your homes and conducts a search for anti-American books and other Satanic contraband, then hauls you into Jesus’ camp for owning an art book full of photos of 17th Century paintings of nude, fat women, then you will say, “The far out Left was correct! Politically correct! Go ahead—laugh now, cry later.

Me? I will protect my family the best I can, but I will laugh at your tears the way you laughed at me. I will get the last laugh.

#stephenjaymorris #poets on tumblr #youtube #anarchism #anarchopunk #anarchocommunism #american politics #anarcho punk #anarcho syndicalism #anarchofeminism #anarcho primitivism #atheism #agnostisizm

[goosemixtapes]

max’s top books of 2022 :3

past top tens here & here! as always, these rankings are based on some nebulous alchemical combination of “it’s objectively good” and “i like it a lot.”

weird reading year! lots of mediocre books! lots of rereads! lots of things i felt very mid about! but i did finish the shakespearean canon, so, fuck yeah! more details beneath the cut.

in place of runner-ups this year, i’m pioneering a brand new category called BOOKS I LOATHED. those being: Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill (why would you write a retelling of something as cool as the oresteia and make it stilted, misogynist, and incestuous); Dracula (holy fucking shit is this book boring. i did enjoy dracula daily, though); this fucking Dan Brown book i couldn’t even finish which is rare for a guy with completionism OCD; and, of course, my least favorite book of this year & one of my least favorites ever, Robinson Crusoe (i can’t summarize my thoughts in parentheses. click my review)

my top anticipated 2023 release is alecto the ninth. no notes.

okay, the list, in order of increasing enjoyment:

10. The Ides by Stephen Dando-Collins

roman history hyperfixation went fucking insane this year, gang. roman history hyperfixation went fucking one thousand. i haven’t read every book about the late republic (not even close to it), so i can’t speak to how this measures up in the field, but if you’re interested in the assassination of julius caesar, you should check this shit out. i particularly appreciated the amount of direct quotes from historical figures included, because that 1) made it easier to read 2) made the historical figures it concerned feel closer. this book flows like a thriller until the actual ides; the discussion of the aftermath is a little less gripping, but so goes history.

9. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

this is the first of its kind i’ve ever read--a book centered around the oppression fat people face, focused on 1) breaking down fatphobic factual misconceptions (like the idea that diets are a cure-all or even that diets are all that effective) and 2) examining the effect that fatphobia has on individuals and society. beautifully well-researched; beautifully written. wish i could beam this entire book into the head of everyone around me. (gordon has a new release coming out in 2023!)

8. Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan

this is not a self-help book, but i read it like one. it is not, either, despite what the title may suggest, some trite thinkpiece about introversion being So Cool And Quirky Special!, or about introversion being A Curse On The Bloodline That Must Be Cured. it’s more autobiographical than that: it’s the author’s story of a year in which she tried to exposure-therapy herself into being more outgoing, friendly, and honest, and not only is it very well-written, it’s also just really fun to read! have you ever wanted to experience improv vicariously without actually having to do improv? this is the book for that.

7. Aeschylus’s Oresteia

greek tragedy doesn’t do it for me like shakespearean tragedy, but hooooooly shit. holy shit. i had the pleasure of studying these plays in a class and they made my head spin inside out. the IMAGERY! the VIOLENCE! the TOXIC FAMILY DYNAMICS! the RAGE! the GRIEF! the VENGEANCE! the MILF! the oresteia has it fucking all! if i pop up with a lesbian orestes book in five months, look away. (goosemixtapes, inc would like to note that there is no lesbian orestes book in progress.)

6. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

AKA the only vampire media that exists. in which vampirism is a contagious disease, and vampires are sectioned off in government-run quarantine “coldtowns,” where some of them kill people and some of them become instagram influencers. (not literally, but they might as well; this book is almost metacommentary on the allure of the romantic-gorgeous-sparkly-pop-culture vampire). every character is beautifully well-drawn, especially for a YA standalone; i even found myself rooting for the heterosexual romance! also, there’s a trans girl, and she doesn’t even die! this was a recommendation from my dearest @yvesdot​, and it has crack in it. it has crack cocaine in it

5. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher

apparently i’m on a nonfiction sweep. (to be fair, “read more nonfiction” was one of my reading goals this year.) this is what it sounds like--a candid and shockingly clear-eyed memoir chronicling the author’s fourteen-year struggle with eating disorders--and also more than that--an incisive exploration of both hornbacher and the family and society that shaped her, with some of the rawest and most evocative prose i’ve read in a long time. not recommended for the faint of heart or people with triggers around disordered eating (or, at least, i recommend you step very carefully), but wow, i’m going to be thinking about this one forever.

4. Cassandra by Christa Wolf & Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

okay, this one is a double feature. which i recognize is weird, because these are different books by different authors published in different years, but on a metatextual level, these books are holding hands. these books are lesbian kissing, even. both of them take a character from classical epic/theater--cassandra the prophet from troy; lavinia from the latter half of the aeneid--and tells the story through her eyes, in a very deliciously metatextual way. wolf’s novel (more of a monologue), written in east germany under the looming threat of nuclear war in europe, is rife with themes about war and destruction and the rise and fall of cultures. le guin’s novel is more interested in narratives, fate, and fictionality, but war themes are again at play, because it’s the aeneid. also, both of these authors truly understand aeneas from the aeneid and i don’t say that fucking lightly. books written for a target audience of me

3. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women by Coppélia Kahn

okay i don’t even have anything to say for myself here. i’m thinking about victor @asimpleram​ saying my yearly top 10 list is just an english class assigned reading list. but as one of the few people in the world who is derangedly interested in how gender is constructed in antony and fucking cleopatra (and also julius caesar. and shakespeare in general. but i got really into FUCKING antony and cleopatra this year), i could annotate this book for ages. i filled a google doc with so many screenshots from this book that it negatively affected my drive storage situation. shakespeare fans eat fucking good

2. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan

i’m not particularly into outer-space scifi, so i wasn’t expecting to like saga, but i started it, again, at the behest of @yvesdot​ (as i was in their house and they were handing it to me). and then it proceeded to do horrible horrible things to me to the point where i haven’t picked up the new issue because i’m still recovering from the way volume 9 got my ass*. this comic is a fucking masterclass in 1. creating compelling characters in a reduced amount of space and 2. maintaining constant narrative tension while also sprinkling in just enough happy/hopeful moments that the devastating plot beats hurt all the more. also, the character concepts go crazy hard and it’s anti-war as fuck. also, again, trans woman who doesn’t even die! cw for lots of, um, explicitly drawn sexual content (sooo many dicks in this comic oh my god) but if you are ready to have your heart broken you need to pick this up.

*i am physically fucking incapable of attaching myself to characters who survive things. just fyi

1. the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

and speaking of having your heart broken. i dearly dearly hope nobody is surprised by this one. lumping all three of these into one category because i don’t want to pick a favorite (it’s GTN), and because i have the same thing to say about all three of them: READ THESE BOOKS. i knew before i turned the last page that Gideon the Ninth was going to be my book of the year; it’s been a long, long, LONG fucking time since i’ve wished so badly i had written this exact book myself. do you like BUTCHES? do you like NECROMANCY? do you like CATHOLIC AESTHETIC THAT ALSO CRITICIZES CATHOLIC IMPERIALISM? do you like DYNAMICS WITH THE COMPLEX TOXICITY LEVELS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS? do you like SEXY WORLDBUILDING? do you like expertly-crafted ENSEMBLE CASTS? do you like STORIES THAT ARE WELL-WRITTEN? do you like WORDS? man, you’ve gotta try TLT. yes, i know that the worldbuilding is sometimes abstruse; i know that everyone spends 90% of the first read in absolute confusion; i know that muir’s sense of humor isn’t universal. but i also know these are some of the best books i’ve ever read, and some of my favorites of all time. absolutely world-changing.

if you’ve read this far--you’re very brave! please tell me your favorite (and least favorite) books of the year! drop recs if you have them! and have a happy new year!

#max.txt #misc book tag #every year the taste gets more esoteric. #no prizes guessing the number 1 winner this year. #readings

[literaticat]

In publisher’s weekly and some other publications, I’ve seen it more than once said by librarians that there’s a need for books for that black hole of an age range of 14-15, and a need for shorter books for the MG category. I think the article described some MG books as being as thick as your palm.

So, if we’re hearing these cries-- what does it take for publishers to hear the cries too?

(I realized after I pressed send on this that It's REALLY long and rambly -- even more so than usual -- probably because I am procrastinating packing for a trip I'm taking in an HOUR. SORRY!)

*

Publishers hear them.

It might surprise you to know that publishers actually DO publish books for 14-15 -- they are generally called in parlance "upper MG" or "lower YA" (or sometimes if somebody is feeling cutesie, "tween") -- unfortunately it's a little hard for people to FIND those books because, well, in the US at least, there isn't any place in the bookstore specifically for them. And there are fewer school librarians and others to do readers advisory to show kids (and adults!) where they are.

In the UK, as I understand it, bookstores sort of go "Children's - Teen - YA" and what WE consider "upper MG/lower YA" is "teen", and their YA is the saucier older stuff. This is smart, because a lot of times, kids of 8-12 ARE really strong readers, and WANT to get into more sophisticated fare and "read up", but they really AREN'T ready for, or even interested in, the sex-drugs-rock-and-roll of the older YA. (Hell, I don't even know that I'M ready for it sometimes lol). And kids who are 13-14-15 may want to read books about kids who are, you know, their own age, going through authentic middle school and early high school stuff -- but MANY of those kids are not remotely close to having boyfriends/girlfriends, worrying about their gap year before college or whatever.

SO ANYWAY - those books do exist, though I agree there could be even more. However, there's a discoverability problem, because if nobody KNOWS how to find them and they just have to troll through the MG or YA section trying to randomly figure out which MG books are a little more sophisticated and which YA are a little less sophisticated, like, they are going to give up.

Well, why don't BOOKSTORES just CREATE A SECTION then, and publishers can publish books labeled SPECIFICALLY FOR THAT SECTION? Yeah, I don't know. As I said, that seems like the elegant solution. The thing is, I think that a lot of times people chafe at "over labeling" things. Like if I say "this book is for 8-10, this book is for 10-13, this book is for 14+" and actually put prescriptive LABELS on them saying that, it's almost like "rating" the book or telling kids "you HAVE to read this level of book" when they are really ready for or want something different.

There ARE good reasons to keep "MG" and "YA" as broad categories that can encompass LOTS of kinds of books, rather than getting super granular. The kids section has always been a big tent where LOTS of kinds of books fit, regardless of genre, supposed age range, etc -- Like when I was 10 I very happily read Babysitters Club AND Sweet Valley High AND Judy Blume's YA fare AND Beatrix Potter AND Pippi Longstocking (not to mention Stephen King and VC Andrews!).

As for lengthy books: The fact is that big fat commercial series and such DO often sell better than quiet, introspective and short books. So those chonkers are also what they push the hardest and what people are likely to know about. (Not to mention, they are the most visible and take up the most LITERAL real estate on the shelves). So it can be hard to see the "little" books about 13 year olds going through friendship crises when there are 1000 giant books about cats having wars etc. They ARE there, though there could and should be more! (Yes, even though shorter books are published -- ALL books should be shorter, IMO -- and I think some publishers would agree).

I dunno, there's lots to unpack here and it's an interesting conversation for sure. As far as creating a new category -- it's tough. (Just look at the trajectory of "New Adult" to see how tough!)

I just think that it's bigger than "oh publishers can just decide this" on a dime -- there's actually several groups that would need to get on board (educators, librarians, booksellers, AND *all* Publishers) and likely an education campaign for readers and parents that would have to happen, yadda yadda, and it's above my paygrade!

[pnuk-r0ck]

I love Stephen King because the characters he writes are in one way or another, so human and people can find themselves in the characters. Like he always has a supernatural element 2 his stories (Carries telepathic powers, the shining, Pennywise, etc.) but his characters are flawed and human, not overpowered. Like Jack Torrance has angry issues that stemmed from his dad being abusive, which later caused him to lash out at his family just like his father would. The ghosts of The Overlook took advantage of his fear of becoming his father and turned him into his father. The kids from IT had far from perfect lives, they were all bullied and had personal struggles. Like Bill had his stutter, Beverly had an abusive dad, and Richie couldn’t keep his mouth shut for the life of him. Carrie is one of my favorite examples, a girl from an overly religious family who got bullied because she was off putting. She’s a shy fat teenage girl just trying to exist, but her classmates, period, and telepathic powers ruined that for her. She wished for a normal prom but it ended up with her killing her classmates because they fucked around and found out. Stephen King isn’t afraid to make the characters scarily realistic even if his stories are filled with strange powers and eerie creatures.

#I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABT STEPHEN KING☝️ #Stephen King #Victor Speaks

[methinmycoffee]

Okay, to elaborate on my shocking hot take from last night, here’s a few things I didn’t like about the new episode (Japanese Toilets)

But First, Some positives:

It was decently funny, not perfect, but I laughed a few times. When it wasn’t relying on poop jokes I thought the episode was decently entertaining. The ending, where Randy stops Stan from continuing the fight against toilet paper by just going “I got fucking shot, Stan” was the best part.

I guess it wasn’t the worst possible Randy episode. There have been better, sure, but he was okay in this one. Still practically insufferable, but okay.

And finally, I thought that Randy comparing himself and his family to the Kennedy family was pretty funny too. Good foreshadowing, I guess? I jokingly texted my friend “Randy’s gonna get shot this episode” the first time he said John F Kennedy’s name, and then he did.

And now, the negatives:

Too many shit jokes. This episode is like 1/4 people using the toilet. I literally don’t care that you can take a fat dump on the toilet and enjoy it, please stop making me listen to Stephen Stotch use the bathroom. This episode could have fit a real B plot if they cut all those scenes, which leads me to my next point:

There was no real B-plot, which is fine, except they set up a real B-plot with the whole “Stan gets called rich by kids at school” couple scenes, and then it went nowhere. They also could have cut the scene where the proctologist shoots himself in the ass, and then you’ve got enough time to do at least something.

It felt like it wasn’t well paced. Like, everything was moving super duper fast, from scene to scene, each moment serving to only set up the next, which is perfectly acceptable, except then we took a two minute break from that pace to listen to Randy use a toilet.

Also some random nitpicks:

(Also negatives, but much stupider)

I think that one random blonde character was voiced by the incomparable Betty Boogie Parker, which is totally cool, except why not have that character just be Heather Williams? I am starving for pre-existing characters to have lines, I got really excited when Clyde spoke.

They retconned Randy some hemorrhoids, which was kind of necessary for whatever they were doing with him, but he didn’t have those before

And finally: I think this should have had a little more Clyde in it. Just switching Clyde out for Jimmy would have worked well, and I cannot believe Clyde’s only line in an episode was about toilets was just to call Stan rich. All I’m asking is that you imply that toilet paper companies killed Betsy Donovan in order to silence Clyde, is that really that much to ask? Maybe not even that, but give him something considering the other toilet episode he was in actually killed his mother. I don’t think he needs to be in every episode, but he would have fit this one so perfectly it’s ridiculous that they didn’t use him.

Overall:

This episode isn’t the very worst episode of the show, but it was very modern South Park, which means that it was an unnecessarily stupid Randy episode that didn’t add anything to his character or the show. If you enjoyed it, that’s fine, but it’s really not my favorite.

#south park #new episode #Japanese toilets #first and last time I will ever use that tag #I’m tagging him you can’t stop me: #clyde donovan #he should have done something #please I’m begging you acknowledge Clyde #sorry I didn’t post this last night #anyway have a good day #I never know how to end these conversational tags

[julesomalley]

steddie prompts that live rent free in my head and that i wish i had the time to write

period AU where Lady Nancy Wheeler is set to marry Lord Stephen Harrington (a very big, very successful union that their parents are already congratulating themselves for arranging), except A) nancy is in love with her childhood best friend (and housemaid) Robin and B) steve is in love with his father's gardener, Eddie. Basically a fruity four period drama

grocery store AU where Robin challenges Eddie to beat Steve at this employee of the month thing, just to spite him. Eddie has a big fat crush on Steve so he accepts because this is his idea of flirting

college roommates AU where Steve and Eddie meet when they're assigned the same dormroom in college, and at first, they do not get along, at all. i haven't decided on what their majors should be, but i always love when people headcanon Steve would have gone on to study educational sciences or psychology, and Eddie just screams music or art student, i mean

steve and eddie throw a surprise birthday party for their favourite son: dustin (don't tell the others he's their fav tho)

teacher AU where the spicy six are all teachers in the same school and all of their students just live off speculating on their relationships (there's a betting pool going on, led by none other than Max Mayfield)

baking competition AU where steve and eddie both enter the competition and try to kiss beat one another with delicious pastries and cakes (just picture eddie with an apron, his hair white with flour)

and of course, the classic someone gave me their number in a bar but it wasn't actually theirs and now i've just texted a complete stranger the horniest text to ever exist

#steddie #prompts #writing prompts #fanfic prompts #fanfic #feel free to use these as an inspiration for your fics!! #just tag me in them or send me the link if you do #because i want to read all of these so so bad #stranger things

[byrusvirus]

Re-reading Skeleton Crew for the first time in ten years...

I never see it mentioned much, but "Word processor of the Gods" really has to be one of Stephen King's worst works. It's a horrid combination of the old nagging wife trope and gross contempt towards fat people that's just plain unpleasant to read. The narrative tries to make you sympathise with the protagonist, but I just wanted to kick his ass.

I honestly don't think this plot works for such a short story. If you're gonna have the guy do something as drastic as delete his wife and son from existence and rewrite reality... then you're going to have to go into more detail about how horrible his victims are if you expect me to still root for him. I mean, literally the most info we get about how bad the son is that he's emotionally distant, somewhat slobbish and insults his dad. Big deal. No word on how the protag's lack of good parenting skills plays a part in this, huh.

On the plus side, "The Jaunt", "Beachworld", "The Raft" and "The Mist" still hold up brilliantly, especially the jaunt.

#stephen king #books #rambling #sorry I got mega annoyed by this story and had to rant #skeleton crew is still worth reading for the most part

[froggierboy]

u know what. the fact that thinness as well as natural lack of prominent female secondary sex characteristics are literally the expected standard for trans men has literally destroyed my self esteem and resulted in intense dysphoria and dysmorphia that at this point ONLY surgery will fix and im a little mad that it didn't have to be this way, that i literally fundamentally can not relate to any of the trans men i know irl and that they largely fail to acknowledge that their experiences aren't actually universal

#like i have literally had trans masc ppl ask me why i didn't bind WHILE I WAS BINDING #fat people exist stephen #but also at my thinnest i was a DDD so :/ #ALSO next person to be like 'pcos is a blessing for trans men uwu' or who used pcos as an 'excuse' for how they look on t #can catch these fucking hands #u all are not going to leave ppl who don't pass in the dust and then turn around and co-opt the full reasont hat we dont

[whitehotharlots]

Queering the word queer

The discourse is in bad shape.

Before I can explain how it got to be so broken, we’re gonna need a little refresher course on the last 12 years of American culture and politics, to see how the two concepts melted hideously into one another in a process that strengthened the former while rendering both meaningless:

Venture back to October of 2010, and you’ll find the prevailing trend within liberalism was a belief that politics were very dumb and unimportant. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert epitomized this with their Rally to Restore Sanity, a response to the gauche concerns of the Tea Party movement, in which a parade of the most boring celebrities on earth (Sheryl Crow, John Legend, The Roots) gave speeches telling everyone to chill out. Attendees were encouraged to bring in hand-made signs bedecked with slogans of apathy. Popular ones included "Stark Raving Reasonable,” “Don’t Believe Everything You Think,” and (most ironically, 12 years later) “I encourage you... to stop drawing Hitler mustaches on everyone.” 

The times have very obviously changed.

What happened? Well, it turned out that politics actually are important, even if the people to whom they’re important are often unable to articulate why or how. The Tea Party was Koch Brothers astrotruf, and Glenn Beck was a big fat crybaby who didn’t actually believe anything, sure. But these movements were tapping in to widespread discontent that existed, even if it was understood stupidly. And then, the following year, Occupy happened. Young people facing lifetimes of debt, shoddy medical care, and little chance of personal fulfillment had decided that politics actually mattered... again, even if the movement was in retrospect comically dedicated to its own defeat, its discontentment was real. And this discontent was of the sort that our nominally liberal institutions couldn’t just will away through mockery.

So they started to admit that, okay, sure things aren’t great, and perhaps those things might be the fault of the political structures that, at the time, they controlled with a congressional supermajority. But it was still naïve to suggest that anything change. See, us humanities profs have been doing some research, and we’ve come to a conclusion that might shock you: The Personal is Political. You think you’re upset about the horrors of our criminal justice system, our militarism that somehow gets more incompetent the more profanely we fund it, or our almost incomprehensibly awful healthcare. But those are just symptoms. The true cause of these so-called “political” maladies are our--or your, to be more precise--personal inadequacies. Not enough people read the correct books, watch the right TV shows, or use this newfangled kind of magic justice language we are inventing on fly. Until these adjustments take place on the individual level, how can we possibly expect the structural stuff to change?

So here we see two prevailing trends that would shape the next decade: 1. the realization that the social conditions created by our politics were very bad and in danger of collapse, and 2. the insistence that the only proper way to engage with political structures was through apolitical means. This was a matter of life and death, we were told, which was why it was imperative we didn’t address any actual matters of life or death. 

Since left-liberals behave like dairy cows (and elected Democrats behave like 5th-generation abattoir owners), everyone went along with this shit. Many did so cynically. Many more did so with hesitation. But by the end of the Obama era, this was the consensus: the people who say nothing has improved over the last 8 years are looking at the wrong stuff. It’s ignorant to care more about wages and war and healthcare than about the racial makeup of NBC’s My Five Gay Dads, or the fact that we took the black lady off the syrup bottle, or how many Oscar nominations were just received by Mierda de Cebo de Premio Lloron, the director of whom was not only a lady but some kind of Mexican. Plus, a woman is about to be president, and so anyone who says things are going bad right now is probably misogynist.

Then Trump happened, and what had started as a cynical deflection to prevent mild structural reforms morphed into an all-consuming mania. Politics wasn’t just important--it was a matter of literal life and death that should shape every aspect of how everything is understood, discussed, and defined. There’s freakin’ Nazis holding torches on my MSNBC screen, after all. 

Rather than accept Trump’s rise as a consequence of their cynicism and steer the ship in literally any other direction, liberal institutions doubled down. They had no other choice: they couldn’t abandon the culture war stuff now without delegitimizing their leadership base--people who had grown fat producing takes about how biting your fingernails is privilege weren’t about to give up their media jobs and NGO sinecures. The Personal was Still Political, only now even more so. Being the wrong kind of person means creating the wrong kind of politics, which means you’re literally doing literal genocide. And, no, this doesn’t mean it’s bad to do actual genocide.... remember we got to focus on the personal, which is now the political. 

The political is no longer political, and personalities must now be replaced by capital-D Designations that are kinda sorta vaguely related to politics.  

The Designations--which, again, are the entirety of politics--are determined by a combination of about 60% identity markers, 39% aesthetic choices, and 1% the things a person actually does and believes. Doing Politics now consists only of determining the Designations of others, and striving to ensure that your Designation as one of the good folx does not come into question. And this is, seriously, like, so important. There is no other acceptable manner in which anything--literally anything, from the brands you and others consume to the movies you watch to the words you use to describe yourself--can be understood. 

However earnest or cynical it may be, the belief that the Personal is Political does not elide the fact that politics always redounds to a struggle over power. Politics now might be more superficial than it’s ever been, but this very superficiality has made the battle over Designations all the more vicious. In turn, this viciousness makes the Designations even more divorced from any sort of worthwhile meaning, which leads to more viciousness, and it just keeps going back and forth like that. 

A perverse trend that’s emerged from this milieu: the tendency of terms to acquire entirely new meanings while retaining the moral urgency associated with their old meanings. This applies to no term more than it does to Queer, which used to mean something like “gay in a manner that people find especially annoying” but now means literally nothing. No, seriously, I’m not exaggerating, this is how it’s defined: “’Queerness’” is an umbrella term that is both an orientation and a community for those on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.” Or there’s this, less pithy proclamation of meaninglessness: 

Queer is a word that describes sexual and gender identities other than straight and cisgender. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people may all identify with the word queer. Queer is sometimes used to express that sexuality and gender can be complicated, change over time, and might not fit neatly into either/or identities, like male or female, gay or straight.   

So the word means nothing. Got it. But then... why are people so fucking angry and annoying about it? Well, because it carries immense moral weight. Because the term used to refer to people who were marginalized, this propriety should still be applied even to people who are explicitly adopting it in a manner meant to improve their social standing.  Because, seriously, they’re totally not normal. Because being normal means being empowered, which is bad, which is why we’ve empowered people who are not normal, but they’re still not empowered even if they have tons of actual power because they can’t be because they’re not normal. Because the Personal is Political. 

[queer-and-dear-books]

Title: Darius The Great Is Not Okay

Author: Adib Khorram

Genre: YA Fiction | Friendship | LGBTQ+

Content Warnings: Depression | Anxiety | Bullying | Terminal Illness

Overall Rating: 9.9/10

Personal Opinion: Darius Kellner suffers from clinical depression and anxiety. He’s never had any real friends and he’s pretty sure his father is disappointed in him. When his Persian grandfather becomes ill, the Kellners fly to Iran to spend time with him. Adib Khorram weaves this eloquently enrapturing tale about a boy who is scared to be more than he is. It’s about a boy who makes a friend who he cares about and makes him feel wanted. It’s about him confronting his demons and learning his worth. And... I see a lot of myself in him.

Do I Own This Book? Yes! It was actually the last book I bought from the local bookstore in the college town I went to. The day before my flight home, I went to the store one last time and found this jewel.

Spoilers Below For My Likes & Dislikes:

Likes:

- This novel captures the terrible effects of depression and anxiety in a kid who feels like he shouldn’t be depressed. Because in his mind, “nothing bad has ever happened to him.” Darius is second-guessing himself constantly. He finds it difficult to speak his mind even when there’s so much he wants to say. He’s lonely because he’s clueless at socializing, faces casual xenophobia from Trent, and feels like he’s constantly disappointing his father. Like he’s not enough for Stephen Kellner. It’s painfully relatable, to the point where I feel like I know everything that he has gone through and it allows me to not only sympathize, but actually picture myself in his shoes.

- Speaking of relatability, the fact that Darius doesn’t know how to exist in Iran is way too relatable. Especially whenever he interacts with his relatives. I am always dealing with people making comments about how I don’t understand Chinese or about my gut or why I don’t have a girlfriend. It’s just the experience of queer fat kids with traditional families. It just sucks. I am happy for Darius though. The language barrier isn’t as thick and he actually likes his family. And his family makes an effort to include and love him and I love that. Likewise, he wants to make the effort to know more about his extended family and he puts in that effort even when it’s difficult in the beginning.

- Anytime Sohrab and Darius had a fight, I understood. The utter humiliation of having your intact penis compared to the Ayatollah’s turban sounds miserable. The way Sohrab exploded that day he found out his father died in prison makes sense. He’s a teenager who was upset and knew how to hurt Darius, but even through all that, they persevered. They’re still best friends that treasure each other. It’s so precious and I want to protect them. The gifts they exchanged, the non-judgment of their interactions, everything is perfect. Their friendship not only makes sense but it works so well. And when they fight, I don’t feel like choosing sides because I understand their reasoning for reacting the way they do when they explain it. The same cannot be said about other fights in other books that I have read.

- Darius’s relationship with his father, Stephen Kellner, was so frustrating to read about. But when you learn the reasons as to why Stephen was so distant, it all falls into place. Depression is a hell of an illness and he was so disappointed in himself for failing his family, it was hard on him. It thrills me to see how their relationship grows so much. Even if all it took was a single conversation about his son’s heart being broken. Because you could see it, all those pieces and fragments of their relationship repairing itself in those last few pages. It’s sort of magical.

- I think, something else that Khorram does that no other writer has ever done as well, is give his main character this wealth of knowledge when it comes to his mental illness. Darius is aware of his shortcomings and he knows which ones are a result of his depression. The medical jargon helps the reader understand that he’s trying but it’s difficult. Meanwhile, in other books, characters engage in toxic behaviors and just go, “Yeah, everyone does it.” Darius, on the other hand, engages in toxic behaviors and wishes so badly to change. I respect that more than I think I’m capable of explaining.

- Also it doesn’t get explicitly revealed until the sequel but Chip being queer was a thing I called the moment he tried to tell Darius about his backpack. The fact that he liked Darius was obvious from the ending too when they rode their bikes in the same direction. He’s not a bad kid, just horribly misguided by his ass of a best friend, Trent Bolger.

Dislikes:

- Stephen saying that he wished his son was “more normal” made me cringe. I get it. He had no idea how his words would impact his son. But god, the way he had talked to and about Darius before their “big conversation” was awful. I hated it. Like it doesn’t matter what shit you’re going through, you’re his father so don’t say shit like that dude. It’s gross and demeaning and it’s no wonder Darius had believed he wasn’t good enough. You would think that Stephen also having depression would make him more understanding as to why it’s difficult for Darius to be “more normal” too. Yeah, he should make more of an effort but you can word it nicely. Anyway, I'm glad he learned and grew. But it shouldn’t have taken his son running away for him to realize that. This honestly the only reason why I can’t give this book a perfect 10.

- There were a lot of Star Trek references. Not necessarily a bad thing. There are always going to be characters that hyperfixate on media that I just know nothing about. But there was a lot. I like the tea hyperfixation though, there was a lot of sensory details involved whenever Darius talked about tea.

- Babou shouting at Mamou, how dare he. But I forgive him since he had a brain tumor. Humans are not immune to illness. But it still sucked seeing Babou act out in certain ways and breaking sweet Mamou’s heart.

#Booklr #Booksbooksbooks #Book Blog #Book Review #Book Recs #Darius The Great Is Not Okay #Adib Khorram #Queer Books #LGBTQ #Queer Lit #Queer Representation

[natromanxoff]

Jackie Magazine - 1976

Roger

John 

Freddie

If it’s hard to read, transcription is under the cut. 

BRIAN MAY, born on July 19, 1947 is a true Cancerian -- a fact that’s obvious even from the back of a concert hall. He’s absolutely typical of his sign -- kind, quiet, and thoughtful, and you can tell that when you watch him onstage, standing at the side, leaving the showmanship to Freddie, and just concentrating totally on playing his guitar.

Another characteristic of Canceriands is that they tend to be delicate -- and that’s certainly true of Brian. 6 feet 3 inches tall, and very thin, with a head of black curls framing hispale face, he looks somehow fragile -- the kind of person lots of girls want to mother!

In fact, Brian is one of those people who seem to be constantly in the wars. On Queen's first American tour, he was taken seriously ill with hepatitis and was told to take it easy for a whole year. Then, almost at once, the doctors discovered he had a bad stomach ulcer which had to be opeated on.

"That was probably my own fault," Brian told me. "In America, and for a long time before that, I’d continuously eaten all the wrong type of food. I used to eat cornflakes and cakes and rubbish foods. I never got fat, you see, and so that’s the sort of thing I existed on. "Since the ulcer I’ve had to be more careful. I eat little and often, and the right things. I drink milk, and try not to drink without eating."

During Queen's last big tour of Britain, Brian was  looked after and nursed by the group’s personal masseur, Stephen. Every day, he woke up each of the group at the right time with a proper, protein-packed breakfast -- and he kept trying to persuade Brian to eat health-giving wheatgerm!

"So healthwise, I was just fine," said Brian. "Except for time I fell off the wooden clogs I always wear and twisted my ankle!"

All of Queen are clever, but Brian is perhaps the most intelligent member of the group. He’s a qualified astronomer, and was recently offered a place on a space exploration trip -- a privilege which was given to only very top astronomers. And that’s just what Brian is - potentially one of Britain’s best men in the field of astronomy!

But although he's still trying to write a post-graduate thesis when he can find the time, Brian's involvement with Queen means he just doesn’t have enough time for astronomy these days. "I do have a telescope on my flat," he told me, "but since it's in the basement, it isn’t really a lot of help! And the nearest I’ve got to astronomy recently was when I went to the astronomers’ Christmas party!”

So for the moment, he contents himself with going on holiday to Tenerife whenever he can. Two friends of his have set up an observatory there, and Brian spends his holidays gazing up into the night sky. In fact, he’s fascinating to be with when it’s a clear night, because he can name every star in the sky, plus the planets, and even their lakes and even craters! His specialty is dust layers on planets, which is what he and his Tenerife friends study.

And he’s passed on some of his interest to the others in the group. When they rehearse down at Ridge Farm, an old Tudor house near Dorking, in Surrey, Brian always keeps them up till all hours, showing them points of interest through the telescope there.

When he is at home, which doesn’t seem to be often at these days, Brian lives in a homely little basement flat in Kensington. The flat shows a lot about his character. Most of the things in it are old and treasured, Brian hates change. The living room is dominated by an enormous old harmonium (it looks a bit like an organ), which Brian carefully dismantled and then put together again. Of course, to someone who made his guitar out of an old fireplace, as Brian also did, a harmonium is no problem!

Leaping about all over the flat is his slightly ferocious black cat, Smokey. And everywhere, there are penguins! 

"I've always been fascinated by penguins," laughed Brian, "and as soon as that got out to the fans, they started sending them in by the hundred! I’ve got penguin brooches, knitted penguins, felt ones, wooden ones -- you name it. I’ve got it! I love them all, but my favorites are probably the brooch I wear on my jacket, and the one on my guitar case. "

Outside the flat sits Brian's one big luxury -- a flashy red sports car. But apart from that, his life is quiet and definitely unflashy. 

When I’m at home, I like to stay there,” he said. “I play music, read a lot and poster(?) about the flat -- and that’s about it!”

If any of his musician friends are playing nearby, he’ll go along to watch them.

Although he doesn’t know many people in the music business, he does have a few close friends -- including Slade, Black Sabbath, and Ian Hunter.

AND of course, Brian works, even when he’s at home. The group’s never forgotten for long.

He takes a great deal of care over his songwriting, and always makes sure he has his facts right -- for instance, when he wrote "The Prophet's Song" for "A Night At The Opera," he stayed up all night, reading the Bible. 

"I worry a lot about the details," he said. "In fact, I worry about everything! I can't help it - it's just the way I am. And then other people tend to worry about me, because I look so mournful, and so it goes on!”

Brian also worries about the way he looks onstage. His favorite colors are black and white, which have just the right dramatic effect. His best-known stage costume is the flowing tunic which was designed for him by the famous designer Zandra Rhodes. And on the last tour, he wore a beautiful doublet top he’d commissioned himself.

"It was an exact replica of an Elizabethan top I saw in the Victoria and Albert Museum,” he said, “I liked it so much that I commissioned a designer to make me one like it. It was really beautiful. It took months to make and it cost me a fortune, but I think it was worth it! "

And that’s typical of Brian. When he cares about something, no effort is too great. He's a perfectionist - and it shows in his music!

Next week - Roger Taylor

#queen #queen band #brian may #queen scans #jackie 1976

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE VERY BEST COMPLIMENT EVER

Picture it: Del Rio, Texas, 1985. Classic border town. It’s 1985 inside our New York City tour bus, but it’s 1955 out there all around us. Nevertheless, the food and the weather are fantastic! A completely unprepared young ingenue finds herself on tour...

It was the glamorous and exciting mid-80s. Not even kidding, this was an amazing time to be a young artist in New York City. Ed Koch was the mayor, people were wearing a lot of black with neon, you could still afford to go to the movies on the Upper West. Starbucks didn’t exist yet and the City was littered with Greek coffee shops and Chock Full O’Nuts shops. Please, in the name of sweet bleeding Stephen Sondheim, stop me before I get down to reminiscing hardcore. “I found it at the Colony!!” Lordy, those were the days, hipsters.

(There was also an awful new emergent disease, taking from us some of our brightest and best young gay theatre artists, while in Washington, D.C., the Reagan Administration turned a blind eye. This is not that story. But I was there for that story.)

Among the crazy things that happened in 1980s Manhattan, was that time that some people cast me in a non-Eq national tour of “They’re Playing Our Song,” as leading lady Sonja Walsk. In a Hollywood-generated storyline, or at least a Hallmark-generated one, this should have led to incredible stardom, marriage to a total hottie with money, and my own Emmy-Award-winning TV show. It did not (as far as I can tell). It did, however, lead to some adventures, including the night I got the best compliment I have ever had in my life.

Our tour bus – or rather, the airport van that is being used as a tour bus, because this isn’t a big cast and our producers may not be the most lavish spenders in terms of cast comforts -- pulls up to the local high school, where we move ourselves into the Girls Cloak Room and the Boys Cloak Room, and prepare to perform our professionally-touring two-act musical comedy in the cafetorium.

The cafetorium.

Like, they had to move the Texas flag and the U.S. flag and the podium out of the way before we took stage. We were lit only by oldschool red, white, & blue striplights from above and a pair of follow-spots from the front. The follow-spot operators went to school there and were legit seeing the show for the first time ever as they lit it, an epic feat of intentional theatre. It was also at times hilarious, at times frightening, for the two of us onstage. One false move and we’re dancing in the dark! Then the light! Then the dark!

(TPOS has 2 leads and 6 backup singers. It’s a terrific show to produce in a city where everybody has other gigs besides the show. Out on the road, it’s a big fat BORE for the backup singers and an all-night workout for the Vernon and the Sonja. It is also a super cute show that deserves more love.)

Anyway, cats and kittens, you have to remember that way back in the last century there was no internet and precious little cable tv. People needed entertainment, same as always, but compared to what is available to stream now (if you have decent broadband), we were closer to being medieval bards, traveling town to town with our loadbearing animals and our colorful outfits, to do our Passion Plays for the townsfolk and perhaps receive coins and food. When we came to places like Del Rio, the house was always sold out and we felt kind of like Elvis. Or the Beatles. Or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, featuring me as Annie Oakley. We were the only show in town that night and it felt like the whole city had turned out to the cafetorium.

So I’m backstage after the show, removing my Act 2 wig & toweling off sweat and like that, when someone told me that there were a couple of people there who would like to speak to me. I threw on my robe or something, and stepped out to meet this couple who immediately just touched my heart, simply by existing. They were clearly poor as dirt. They were careworn from years of hard work. This husband and wife were not familiar with Zabar’s, H & H Bagels, West Side Dance Project, or anything else from our fancy NYC milieu. And that’s when the husband gave me the greatest compliment I have ever known in my life, before or since. Don’t laugh. It’s not a punchline.

The man took his hat in his left hand, and shook my hand with his right, and said, “Ma’am, we ain’t never seen no shows or nothin’, but you’re the best thing we EVER seen.”

Cats & kittens, I could have died on the spot. I have never felt more like Dolly Parton in my life. We had a few minutes’ chat, I thanked them so much for coming, and there were doubtless some of those little cliches: “How you remember all those lines?” and so forth. But it was the naked sincerity of his statement, the unvarnished honesty of that moment. Holy Toledo. I do wish I could have internalized it better at the time. Life is a journey, not a destination; sometimes we carry a lesson with us like a good-luck charm, a pebble to remind us, and this moment has been one of those for me. “…you’re the best thing we’ve ever seen.”

Not gonna lie, I truly wish that the depth of their admiration had been enough to propel me with confidence into a hotter next chapter. But the biz is tougher than anything, and lots of really good performing artists never make it even as far as I did, so this isn’t regret, that’s not where I’m going with it. Someone else can write that book. This is about appreciating that little moment, from over forty years ago, and how it has come to matter more and more to me over the years.

Let me share this pebble with you: You don’t know it, you don’t know who, but you are in all probability the best thing someone has ever seen, or perhaps heard, or read, or met. Yes. Even you. Stop it. Look at me. OK? OK.

This re-invention phenomenon I have been observing? Well, isn’t his part of it? After this period where life itself lost meaning for so many of us, it feels like maybe, just maybe, Springtime is actually coming for us. And maybe, just maybe, if you’ve had those times of “WTAF am I here for anyway?”, sometimes known as Existential Dread, sometimes diagnosed as Major Depression, always a bummer; maybe you just keep shining your light and being your best available version and you will be the best thing someone else ever saw. Heard. Read. Was inspired by. Whether they tell you or not.

We may live in times of darkness, but maybe you and I are part of the Light.

Recently, a couple of friends have said things to me that tell me I’m not far off. That I’m kind of nailing some of the things they are experiencing in their own lives and paths. I do not pretend to hold a medical degree, nor one in clinical social work. If you need help, you go get you some. MamaCat is nobody’s shrink. I’m just this plump granny doing the Reinvention Tango on the regular, same as you. But I am also, and cannot help but be, your cheerleader.

I know perfectly well that there are those who do not wish to grow, change, help, benefit, share, etc. This is not for them. They’ll never find this blog and read this post anyway. And I think we all know that some day there will be some obstacle past which you cannot get, and one past which I cannot get, and that’s just how it goes. But in the meantime, while we’re here, I want you to know that I don’t have to define what good you and your story are doing for anyone, to know that you & your story ARE doing good.

And I’m very proud of you.

Meow, darlings.

#actorslife #actorsathome #theatrelife #grannyhasapast #characterwoman #grannyhasalife #grannyhasapresent #olderactress #waitingforpizza #texas #ontheroad

[moonlit-imagines]

Headcanons for being Tony Stark’s Daughter (The Aftermath)

Tony Stark x daughter!reader

warnings:

a/n: y/n is about 17 or 18; i cried while writing this. sorry this is really long!!! pls forgive me 🥺

prompt: takes place from a3 to smffh

The Early Years (1) The Teenage Years (2) The Intense Years (3) Continued (5)

let’s start on a happy note! ahahah

so for a while, earth was calm

you, pepper, and tony got to be a family for a while

wedding planning!

of course you got to try the ben&jerry’s ice cream named after your dad: Stark Raving Hazelnuts

“it’s not fair that you got ice cream named after you and i didn’t”

“well, when you grow up to be as awesome as me, maybe you’ll get your own ice cream flavor”

developing nanotech suits together for a Bonding Experience(tm)

speechless after the first test

“dad, this is...”

“the coolest thing to ever exist?”

“yes!!”

yall ready for some shit?

the day that ebony maw invaded was pretty—what’s the word? interesting? no. well, yes, but...HORRIBLE.

it all started when you got the call from your dad

“y/n, incoming call from ‘big fat meanie’”

“god, i really have to change that. okay, JOSHIE, answer it. hey, dad? what’s up?”

“hey, kid! you know that weird ass building on bleecker street? how fast can you get here?”

“JOSH can you track FRIDAY really quick? lets see how far dad is...uh, okay, be there in five, see ya”

taking your suit for a spin and realizing how GREAT it was to be able to basically fold up your suit and put it in your back pocket

knocking on the door and it opened on its own, it was kinda cool

“is this a museum? cool.”

bruce turning around to see you after about three years and giving you an awkward smile and a wave while you stood frozen around the wizard-guys

“y/n, god, you’ve grown up!”

charging into him for a long overdue hug

“you don’t know how much i missed you. it’s been chaotic without you”

“i can...i can only imagine”

a debriefing on the situation you were about to face, and bonus! having to play the catch-up game with bruce

“just call him, dad. we need as much help as we can. steve will understand”

rushing outside to face off with some ugly-ass aliens

“oh nooo, it’s roger smith from american dad”

bruce: 👀, stephen: 👀, wong: 👀, tony: 👏👏🥰 that’s my girl

simultaneous nanosuit unveiling

“you ready for this one, pops?”

“of course! ive waited years to kick some more alien ass”

montage of you and tony getting your asses beat together (as a family <3)

peter showing up

“give me one good reason why i shouldn’t send you back to that school bus”

“because i’m good company?”

“whatever, just listen to whatever dad has to say, i forfeit my responsibilities over you”

pew pew, repulsors, pew, tiny rockets! fun! action! destroying new york again and again. good times...

until JOSHUA gave you notice that your dad was flying high

“call him. now.”

“hey! how’s it going down there?”

“dad, you know how i feel about you and space”

“i know, i know. i just...i gotta take care of this. keep pepper safe for your old man, okay?”

“i lo—l—ve y—”

“y/n? y/n?! i love you! shit!”

“we lost connection with her, sir”

trying to call peter

“call failed, y/n. should i try again?”

“i’m gonna kill them...”

walking through the rubble to find bruce, the only sensible man you know

taking him to the avengers compound asap to get to rhodey and figure out what comes next

meanwhile, tony was dealing with space and another teenager

and worrying a lot about leaving you on earth

“i mean, mr. stark, y/n’s one of the most capable people i know. she’s probably trying to fix this whole mess as we speak”

“i didn’t get to tell her i love her”

“oh...”

having a lovely meeting with thaddeus ross with rhodey, having a lovely time watching them passive-aggresively argue until your former teammates arrived

having to patiently (and professionally) wait for ross to hang up before running into them for a hug

“holy shit, you guys have no idea how bad i’ve wanted to see you. it sucks not being all together anymore”

“i know, y/n. we’ve all missed you.” -cap

“a lot” -nat added

bruce’s little entrance that was sure to bring some awkwardness

you, secretly freaking out about your dad

sam was the one that found you crying after you “stepped out” for a few minutes too long

“oh, y/n,” he was contemplating grabbing someone else to step in, but decided to sit next to you in the hallway, “i’m sorry, kiddo. i can’t promise you anything, but your dad is a fighter. a big pain in the ass. i think your odds are good”

laughing through your tears

“yeah, you’re right. thanks, sammy”

he gave you a little hug while you calmed down

getting to business, the ass-kicking kind

as the wise natasha romanoff once said to your father, you were being “uncharacteristically non-hyper verbal”

your mind did this funny thing...wandered into places it really should not go

the talk about sacrificing vision led to wakanda, where you had a swell time patrolling

“guys! we’ve got incoming. a lot of incoming”

well-deserved uncle/niece team up. who wouldve thought?

you would have nightmares about these aliens for years to come

“you get to die, and you get to die! everybody gets to die!”

“y/n, what did we talk about?” -rhodey

“using humor as a defense mechanism makes the team uncomfortable...”

covering the girls 😌 because we gotta have those all-girl teamups, uh-huh?

some more blasting

thor made his comeback and you just could not miss it

“hi, thor!”

you landed next to him and your helmet receded

“well, hello, miss y/n! good to see you again! my, you got taller...oh! meet my friends: rabbit and tree”

having a “what the actual fuck” moment upon seeing thanos for the first time

and flying at him from behind with a massive nanotech blade ready to kill this purple bastard

but he grabbed your arm and flung you into the dirt, that was gonna leave a mark

“i just had to make a suit when i was ten...no one stopped me, huh? i couldn’t be elon’s kid, he was a nice guy”

watching thanos snap his fingers and looking around to see dust floating through the air and thanos retreat

“rhodey? uncle rhodey?!”

“i’m right here, kid, don’t worry”

he grabbed your hand while you were dusting

“tell my dad i love him, promise?”

fading away and leaving rhodey with your last words

he was mad before anything else

all he could think about was a promise your dad made him take years back

“rhodey, you keep my daughter safe no matter what, promise?”

the avengers recooperating at the compound, waiting to figure out whether any of the space-crew survived

they had to let pepper know that you didn’t make it, she was a mess upon hearing that news

tony finally making his way back to earth

and stumbling out of that ship

“where’s y/n? where is she?!”

“tony, tony, calm down”

“dont tell me to calm down! where is my daughter?!”

“she made me promise to tell you thay she loves you”

tony knew the answer by now, he lost his mind over your death

it didn’t feel right not having you by his side, for the past 18 years you’ve been with him

after a long period of recovery, tony and pepper moved on, got married, built a home, had a new daughter...

tony made sure there was a spare room for you

he put all the things you left behind in it

there were so many photos of you in the house

and he’d show your sister, morgan, all of them. he wanted morgan to know her sister

“that’s y/n when she built her first robot. it snuck up on me a few times. it went ‘boo!’”

morgan loved the stories about you, but she didn’t understand why she couldn’t see you

“when do i get to meet her?”

“uh...maybe someday, sweetie”

after being unbothered for almost 5 years, the remaining avengers came back with a plan that was so tempting, he just wanted his little girl back

cracking under pressure and telling pepper that he couldn’t ignore this mission because it was his chance to get you back

“get her back, tony”

“you think so?”

“i miss her, too.”

and so it began, he made it his mission to get you back

peeking at the wallet picture of you on his shoulders when you were so little

tony travelling to 2012; loki’s invasion

and there you were, the sassy genius 12 year old that he missed so much

“we’ve got this, tony, we’ll bring her home” -scott

and then things went badly and also 2012 tony went into cardiac arrest and 2012 y/n dove onto the floor to tend to him

“dad? give us some room, would you?!”

2023 tony smiling at how much he missed you worrying about him and how reckless he was

but also...the mission kinda went bad so that sucked

push it a bit farther back and now tony was with grandpa stark! asking how to be a dad and all that!

he could barely stand still waiting for you to come back to him, god he missed you more than he thought

and after a bit of hard work, it was time to snap

just like that, you were back in wakanda, puzzled by the gap in time before one of dr. strange’s portals opened in front of you

and then you were in the ruins of the avengers compound

“JOSHUA, can you locate my dad?”

“i think you’ll be able to see him”

“wow, i cant believe i programmed your cocky artificial ass”

“i think you can”

seeing your dad flying high and patching into the comms

“miss me, old man?”

and then he hit the gas to get to you and when this man hugged you, you almost couldn’t let go

“i’m so sorry, y/n. god, i’m sorry. these last five years...i was so lost without you”

“it’s okay, dad, i’m here now”

getting shot at during your reunion

“son of a bitch...we’re having a family moment here, asshole!”

yes, im gonna say it again. of course i am! and.........father/daugher team-up

the last one

“peter, is that you? you asshole! i cant believe you went to space without me!”

“missed you too!”

rhodey!! cant forget about uncle rhodey!!

“you gave my dad the message, right?”

“it was your dying wish, of course i did!”

“great. don’t forget i love you, too, rhodey!”

“couldn’t let me forget it”

lest we forget that pepper joined the fight?

plot twist: (step)mother/daughter team-up

mother/father/daugher team up!!!! ultimate stark machine!!!!!!!

and then you left him alone for 5 minutes and he’s got the infinity stones and you know it’s the last time you’re going to see him and you cant decide what your next move is and you’re just frozen and you cant catch your breath and he snaps and your heart plummets

you have to rush to his side, the last time you can sit beside his tired body and let him know that its going to be okay

“hey dad, it’s okay, we’re gonna be fine. thank you for everything”

peter grabbing your hand as you both sobbed next to your dad, feeling robbed of your time with him

pepper brought you home where she told you all about the five years you missed

both of you just cried harder than you’ve ever cried before

“so i have a sister?”

morgan was so happy to meet you, she couldn’t contain herself, practically latched onto you

and she didn’t fully understand what happened to tony

you saw your new room for the first time and didn’t leave it for a while, occasionally pepper or morgan would pop in

morgan actually crawled into bed with you a few times

the funeral was one of the worst days of your life

the remnants of your young life pulled back together for one day

then you hid back in your room before you heard a knock

“who is it?”

“it’s happy”

“come in”

“hey, kiddo. me and morgan are gonna get some cheeseburgers, you wanna come?”

she really was a stark

after a long hibernation, you started to get back into the groove of your old life

but the press was brutal and harsh, you were bombarded with questions regarding your dad

it took everything not to explode on camera

you stayed in contact with the rest of the avengers, mourning your dead, keeping the support system, staying a family

it was all you could get...for now

#tony stark x daughter!reader #tony stark imagine #tony stark x reader #tony stark #iron man x daughter!reader #iron man imagine #iron man x reader #iron man #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #marvel #avengers x reader #avengers imagine #avengers

[popculturebuffet]

Animaniacs: King Yakko Review (Comission by BlahDiddy)

Hello my beautiful technicolor rainbow! It’s time for Animaniacs, and while there is no balonga in my slacks there is one last christmas review for my friend to finish up, and after two visits to Acme Lab for the spinoff we’re finishing up with a look at Animaniacs proper.  Suprisingly for a show that stands so easily on it’s own it’s existance is entirely thanks to another show: Tiny Toon Adventures, which had largely the same staff, including ep and co-creator stephen speilberg and Todd Ruegger, who was brought aboard from A Pup Named Scooby Doo. Since TIny Toon was a colossal hit with tons of awards and merch, including some very good video games I wish Warner would find a way to re-release, I mean.. come on if disney can rerelease the disney afternoon games (If...not..for..switch), and LIon King and Aladdin games (If somehow FOR switch), then Warner, which has it’s own game stuido no less, can put together a collection of the good Tiny Toons games when the new show comes out soon. 

Point is it was a mass sucess and Warner Bros likes money, so they had Speilberg try to get Rutger to come up with another show for the two of them to do, something with name value. Rutger found his inpsiration when seeing the iconic warner water tower and taking some platypus characters, came up with our heroes and the rest is history.. well okay he retooled them from plataups’ to early looney tunes and other toons style characters minus the racisim of say bosko the tall ink kid but still, the rest after that is history. And the rest of this review is after the cut

The show was, and KINDA still is, a variety show: taking a page from looney tunes, as well as tex avery’s other work, the crew decided rather than just focus on the warners, to instead create a whole cast with various ensembles to work with so we got Pinky and the Brain, The Goodfeathers, Rita and Runt,  the Hip HIppos, Katie Kaboom, Chicken Boo, and my personal faviorite Slappy Squirrel.. and the bane of my existance, Buttons and Mindy.. or rather Mindy’s Mom. The kid did nothing wrong.  So naturally the first thing Animaniacs related I cover.. is an episode entirely breaking from format for one 20 something minute Warners cartoon. I do intend to do more animanics stuff in the future, so i’ll hopefully get a chance to talk about everyone, I just feel unlike with say house of mouse most people reading this probably know who they all are, and I can save any deep dives for if I cover the characters specifically. Spoilers: there’s probably never going to be a buttons and mindy deep dive unless someone tourtues me by paying for it. 

So with that out of the way, we can dive into the episode.. which I won’t be covering in my usual recap it point by point because the writers have freely admitted that’s not what Animaniacs is about. While some of i’ts SEGMENTS are more story based like Pinky and the Brain, Goodfeathers and Rita and Runt, most are just based on simple set ups to reams and reams of gags. And I love it. I grew up with this stuff not just Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs but the classic Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Droopy shorts. 

Their well timed, well executed feats of comedy and most have aged pretty well.. emphasis on MOST. I’m keenly aware why there are several gaps in the shorts for both Tom and Jerry and The Looney Tunes on HBO Max, including all of the Pepe LePew and Speedy Gonzalez shorts. Also all of Droopy is missing. 

My grumblin aside though, it is VERY NICE to have all the classic Warner and Tom and Jerry shorts at my fingertips and it was one of the biggest selling points of Max for me. Last year I gained an intrest in the old disney theatrical shorts, hence my various birthday specials, so I BADLY wanted to revisit the theatrical shorts I grew up with. And honestly.. Max is the best way to do that: their in crisp hd, in neat season collections (Though the Looney Tunes one is better sorted, tom and jerry’s seasons are just.. random smatterings of shorts across various eras), and most importantly EVERY SHORT they felt comfortable with putting up there is on there. Every. Single. One.  I make a big deal about this because Disney.. has only maybe 30-40 of their hundreds of shorts on there. Now lucky for me the vast majority are still on youtube and I get why some really arne’t suitable.. we probably don’t need the donald duck short where he prepares to shoot a penguin in the face or the Goofy short where his own reflection, the goofy equilvent of tyler durden I guess?, keeps saying “Hey Fat” to him. And yes BOTH of these actually happened. But.. there’s MANY shorts with no clear excuse why their absent like the triplets first apperance, gus’ only apperance, and one a friend told me about.. that time mickey built a robot to box a gorillia. Again not making this up, just wondering why you can’t restore the rest of these for plus. They’ve ADDED shorts ocasionally, but it still dosen’t make a whole lot of sense to just.. not have them all up there. and to not put them in some sorta collection for easier consumption but hey it’s Disney. They either full ass things or half ass it. There is no middle ground.  Point is Warner.. actually cares about their heritage in shorts and honors it and thus has everything avaliable in the best quality, so tha’ts nice.

My point after that detour is I really love this kind of humor, and now as an adult I can see the effort the timing, pacing and character chemistry these shorts had takes. And Rugger and co.. they got it. They got it down perfect. And this episode is a great show of that and just how they barely updated this format for the 90′s. But as I said it’s more about the jokes and basic setup, our heroes are slotted into x scenario and just left to run wild. It’s been the basic seutp for looney tunes, tom and jerry and all the gag based greats, and it works perfectly here. Sure there’s some setting and continuity with the warner lot, scratch n sniff, ralph, plotz and in the reboot Rita, but it’s mostly just our heroes go up against “X asshole” and it just works. 

And that’s.. entirley what this episode is. The short is an homage to the graucho marx film Duck Soup, which given the warners were based on the marx brothers that isn’t a huge suprise, a film like brian’s song I have not seen, but genuinely want to. The basic setup is the same: An underqualified womanizer, though since htis is Yakko it dosen’t get past hitting on his chancelor, played by hello nurse, constantly, which is still.. ewwwww... but clearly not the same thing, becomes king of a small nation and ends up at war with another country. There were spies and other stuff in the original short but that was left out to streamline things.  But this homage stands on it’s own fine: The basic plot is this: Yakko, due to being a distant relative and the last one alive, becomes king of the small happy and very musical, as the wonderful opening number shows, country of Anvilania, which makes anvils and why yes there is one MASSIVE anvil gag as a result at the end. Yakko says he’ll try his best and geninely tries to with the shenanigans you’d expect, including Dot not gettnig Polka Dot’s are a thing and instead taknig any mention of it as a sign to polka, Yakko again hitting on his colleague and wanting ot get a new anthem because the current one by “Perry Coma’ puts people to sleep. Honeslty that gag didn’t do it for me: Partly because I genuinely know next to nothing about Como and he’s far past my generation.. and because despite this, SCTV did a MUCH better Perry Como gag over a decade before this episode that while still left me baffled as to why anyone cared about mocking him, was 80 times funnier and felt far less like you needed to know who he was to be funny. 

That being said it’s one of only three running gags, and jokes period that didn’t land for me. The other ones being the hello nurse bits, because it’s aged really badly to have Yakko harass one of his employees and his age is hte only thing that keeps it from scuttling the episode as he’s just 13 or 14. Maybe 15. 

So SO glad I now have that on hand whenever i need it. The other being the “Your highness” joke as it just.. dosen’t make much sense and isn’t very funny. But that’s it: a refrence i specfically don’t get and I doubt most of you will, and if you do fine we all have our frames of refrences, a joke that’s dated very poorly, and one that just.. didn’t land. And even then the Perry Coma thing’s third use to knock out the opposing army DID work for me as did the VERY clever joke of “Sire” “Maybe later”, so even the weaker bits still had some legs.  But getting back to what little plot there is the king of the rival country, upon hearing this, assumes he can easily intimidate a child into giving him the throne and goes to a royal reception. Instead, as you’d expect, the Warners mistake him for a party clown, show him no respect and fail to take his delcration of war seriously, and while in a REALLY great gag, and the reason i’m not doing a strict summary is 90% of the review would be me saying something to that effect, Yakkos’ call to action for his troops ends up having them all run off in fear, the Warners take out the army as noted above and then in one of the most GLORIOUS climaxes in the series history...

 In which the Warners give the bad guy “all the anvils” as he requested. I sadly coulnd’t find a clip of it but seek it out if you got hulu, my words can’t do it justice as they hit him with anvil after anvil in increasingly clever and insane ways till the guy finally gives up and it .. is glorious.  Other highlights not already mentioned include: The opening song, the bad guy dictator from the other nation not being able to hear because of his helmet and his attendee having to lift it, leading to Yakko taking off his helmet just to end the “what’ running gag, Yakko’s bit explaning his distant relation and more.  So yeah not a ton to say on this one. It’s a very good, very funny episode but also very typical of a warner cartoon in structure, just stretched over 22 or so minutes. As I said with few exceptions the jokes work, the anmation is crisp as always, and the climax is one of the series best. A crisp, quick watch and a nice quick review after a week of with some really tough ones behind me and ahead of me and a month of rather large ones a few weeks out. So yeah if you like animaniacs, even ifyou’ve seen this one worth a watch, if you have any more animaniacs you’d like me to take a look at feel free to comment or comission and until the next rainbow..

#animaniacs #yakko warner #dot warner #wakko warner #anvilania #hello nurse #king yakko #duck soup #goodnight everybody #hulu #warner bros #kids wb

[klbmsw]

Thomas Clay-

· There's a reason why we can't have nice things in this country. Our roads and bridges are falling apart. Our electrical grid is so antiquated that if most civilians understood how bad it really is, there would be drastic measures taken. There are a whole variety of cybercrimes that happen every single day including child sex trafficking that we can't even get the house or senate to address because Republicans would rather litigate Roe vs. Wade every election cycle than to accomplish anything real or meaningful that would make life better for the American people. Truly, I say this in all honesty and the utmost contempt, if any Republican wanted to help their fellow countrymen then they'd find the nearest pool of water and drown themselves. Of course Republicans are too heartless and selfish to do anything for the good of the country or their fellow man. As you can tell, I've become a bit more ornery the past three and a half years but the last week or so has put me in a lather of murderous rage after the Scumbag-in-Chief had the unmitigated gall to claim Kamala wasn't 'qualified' to be Veep while his toady DeJoy is dismantling our post office to prevent people from exercising their right to vote in the vain hope of helping Dumbfuckitus get re-elected. Anyone seen any Republicans saying this isn't okay? That slowing down the mail on purpose is keeping our veterans from getting their meds on time? Anyone remember the apoplectic rage seizures Republicans were having when Clinton pardoned Marc Rich? Or how silent they are now after he commutes Roger Stone's sentence?What I am grateful to Trump for is proving me right to all of my friends who would say to me, 'Oh Thomas! Republicans aren't as bad as you're saying they are! It's just a difference of opinion but we're all Americans in the end.' Well how'd that turn out for ya hmm?Republicans will lie about anything, cheat as the day is long and steal as much as they possibly can from future generation who will just have to listen to The Black Keys' 'I Got Mine' and suck it because doing anything for anyone else is anathema to the black hearts that pump the slime of sedition through their veins. Trump has known since before the election that Russia was interfering in our election to benefit him alone and after the election he promised to have a commission look into it. What's he done to keep a foreign country from undermining our Republic again? Well besides not a damn thing, he's floating the turd of an idea that he should have Putin come to Washington so he can show how 'tough he is on Russia.' It's enough to make even the grossest flatterer nauseous. If Republicans gave one solitary frig about a fair election, we could have block-chain electronic voting. Block-chain encryption is what Bitcoin uses and it is quite simply impossible to hack. It is impossible to forge or tamper with. Each nonce and hash created in a block chain is unique like a social security number. To give you some idea how big a 256 bit encryption chain is, when Alan Turing was trying to crack the German Enigma machine, the possibilities of finding the key were one in 158 million million million combinations or a trillion million. The numbers to a 256 bit encryption are so large they would make Kurt Gödel crosseyed. The technology exist right now for all Americans to vote instantly and safely. We would have all of votes counted instantly and we could declare a winner as soon as the last poll closed. But we can't have nice things like that because 5% of the population controls 40 senate seats which are you guessed it, Republicans. Republicans have no interests in a free and fair election because they know if they had to compete by winning a simple majority vote, they would be in a permanent minority. That's why scumbags like Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis do everything they possibly can to keep black people from voting.Black people aren't their only problem come November. Right now Joe Biden leads Trump among Latinos 59% to 31% and naturally you would wonder how any Latino could support Trump. It's no different than chickens voting for Colonel Sanders but that's not important. What is important is that there are over 8 million newly registered latino voters in the United States, 2 million in Texas alone. I might be telling tales out of school but I don't think Latinos are much happy with Stephen Miller's nazi policies towards them. Think what you want but Trump is not trying to sabotage the Postal Service and constantly whining about imaginary voter fraud because he's not worried about winning this election. He's good and scared and he should be because as dumb as Trump is, he is well aware of what Attorney General Adam Schiff is going to do to his felonious ass! He can sign as many pardons for his friends and family as he wants but you can't pardon someone for charges that haven't been filed yet. If we ever hope to rebuild what's left of our self-respect as a nation then Donald John Trump must spend the rest of his god-forsaken life in prison for the crimes he's committed against the people and our Republic. For all you namby pamby democrats who still soil your honor by speaking to Republicans, just remember this; Republicans are nihilistic lying scumbags who should be afforded the same deference we grant syphilis and pederast. You best get that straight NOW before you start telling your 'friends', "it's got what plants need' because I am damn sick of having that orange shit-demon in my life and anyone who isn't on the Fuck Trump Train is a mortal enemy to all that's right and good about the United States and we must all be ready to raze the earth to remove that petulant miscreant from our house come hell or high water on November the 3rd.If you'd like to help me keep shoving a harpoon into Fat Nixon's ass, please join my patreon for a paltry $1 a month. Thanks. https://www.patreon.com/thomasclayjr