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wwhatev3r · 2 years

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hi!! may i have a ship? A rowboat preferably. No I'm sorry that joke was dumb.

So basically a quick summary of my appearance: my friend calls my eyes sea glass (green&blue mixture), i am 5'9, my hair is super curly & brown mixed with red highlights. I tend to look sad even though I am not?? But also I am pretty smiley???

Personality oh boy here we go!! i love music. I think last year i got around 30k minutes of listening to music on spotify. Is that a flex? You bet it is bestie. Geography and History are like my hyperfixations. I am memorizing continent's countries. Oh and I love baking + cooking. Also I love kids lmao. I am jewish!! Went to ncsy. I wear a magen david necklace and have since my bat mitzvah. I am either quiet or super talkative. I tend to say the most outlandish things in the most casual tone. Which causes people to laugh lmao. I also have photoshopped cowboy hats on all my friends & myself. Yeehaw. My humor is pretty solid imo, like I could be a stand up comedian... i think? Idk im an infp and my love language is acts of service. On the downside; i got some spicy mental health & struggle with confidence!! I am always afraid people don't actually like me. Bc guess who has gotten bullied over her body? This girl!! This was super long im sorry I am in a talkative mood!!

I ship you with...

George Luz

Note: GIRL-...Let me just say that I love your personality. Let’s be friends, you sound like an incredible person. I love your energy, just by reading the request you hyped me up. Anyway, I hope you like it. P.S: The rowboat joke took be my surprise, I liked it.

For👏Sure👏It’s👏George👏Motherf*cking👏Luz! But, let me tell you, I think you would be best friends with Malarkey and Skip too. But yeah, there you have:

You both are just CHAOTIC.

Listen, I’m not even joking when I say that the other day, me and a friend were talking about how we imagine the Easy Boys as girls and I said that Georgie would have super curly brown hair.

Perfect for each other, It’s destiny right there.

I’m taking this ship request as a wedding arrangement, I’m sorry.

He helps you memorize the country’s continents with cards.

And if you get them all right, he gives you whatever you like.

Just imagine this man’s face when you are telling him random history facts and tea about historical figures.

“...yeah, and he decapitated her.” You told him.

“What? Are you shitting me? (OoO) I knew she should have never married him. I told ya.”

King and Queen of knock knock jokes.

Actually, you are both better than knock jokes! Way more funnier.

I can see a scene of you both holding your laugh to not awaken anyone at night.

He thinks you’re the funniest person he knows, because your comedy is natural.

And OMG, this man would kill just to hear you laugh all day. He loves it so much.

You start singing a song and George is like:

“Shut up, I was just thinking about that song!”

He loves to dance!!!!!!!!!!

He knows you're an introvert but when the pub is less crowded or is just with your closest friends, he pulls you to dance with him.

This man can’t cook. Periodt.

He will burn the kitchen to the ground, but if you’re cooking he tries his best to help you out.

I don’t think George is religious, but he would be pretty supportive of your beliefs.

I truly believe he would learn more about it and support the traditions.

Imagine, if you were in Easy Company with him at Bastogne; Christmas was really shitty there but he made your whole day, month and year by making you a star of David with sticks and gave you 9 mini candles for you to celebrate hanukkah.

Also, he finds your necklace so pretty.

In terms of your lack of confidence and mental health issues, George would be as sweet as always.

In case you’re truly sad, George puts you over the whole world. Write my words.

He holds tears when seeing you cry, and makes himself look stupid to make you smile.

He makes sure you know you don’t need to please everyone, since that’s impossible, and that you don’t need to be perfect to be loved, and he also says a lot that both a flower and the ocean are beautiful and are completely different.

You caught him a ton of times playing with your curls. He just loves your hair so much.

AND YOUR EYES! HOLY SHIT, he loves your eyes.

“My god, what I would do to swim in those pretty eyes of yours, It’s a shame that they look like they would cut me like a blade.”

Sometimes you’re just standing there, living your life and he just comes to you like:

-“Hey, honey, are you sad?”

-“No George, It’s just my face.”

-“Your face looks depressed, is she ok?”

Anyway, he makes pretty good impressions of country boys/cowboys. (yee yee)

So, George has a lot of nephews, and I’m pretty sure he likes to take care of them more when you’re present.

It feels more safe for him and the kids love you more, you’re the cool aunt.

It’s a little bit of a battle to take care of them, on one side there’s you trying to make them eat lunch, and on the other there’s George giving them ice cream.

But, in the end you both work pretty well as a team; you guys find a good balance.

I hope you like it, I loved your request. I had a lot of fun writing it <3

#band of brothers #band of brothers headcanons #band of brothers ship #george luz #easy company #hbo war #george luz x reader

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causticfilth · 1 year

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Introduction

DISCLAIMER

Please DNI if you are: under 18, an exclusionist or "anti" of any description, a TERF, a MAP or any other description of shithead, sad act or fascist. We do not judge, we do not discourse and we do not care what you do with your time, brain or body as long as it does not cause any non-consensual harm.

On that note, hello reader, we are the Coin. We call ourselves that as we are currently only two, which from what we can tell is unusual, so we are working under the assumption there may be others we are not aware of yet, based on observable statistics.

We are a "mixed origin system", or as we call it, no clue whatsoever where we come from and why, but as far as we are aware, have always both been here.

We are 24, transmasculine to varying degrees, Jewish, autistic, unemployed, crippled, absolute disasters in every sense, and that is to all intents and purposes where our similarities end.

We struggle with the words currently in use for the "host" or the "front" as we have found they don't describe our experience, we call whoever is piloting in that moment the "head" and the backseat driver becomes the "tail". Our switches, which, until recently, lasted years, were seismic, and almost ruined our shared life, we call "flips". We will be using this language when describing our own experience, although if you feel this fits for you, we would love if our framework helped somebody else.

We are a "median" system, so most of the time share one another's head memories and can feel one another's emotions, which makes trying to live separate lives, and have our own sense of self, complicated.

My other half will do it's own introduction post but since I have typed this post, I will tack mine on here.

Hi, I am Leo, I use he/him pronouns, I have been functioning as the Head since a hard flip 4 years ago. Before that, I was mostly the Tail for as long as I can remember, with some notable exceptions. This means I am, in many ways, newer to the 'being alive' schtick, and cannot seem to stop fucking up. We live with multitude chronic illnesses, I seem to process physical pain better than the other one, which we suspect to be the reason I find myself drawn to the front nowadays.

I am, I think, grey-ace/bisexual and biromantic, or hyper-romantic if such a thing is recognised, although based on the breadth of my existence being the voice in someone I detested's head, I haven't dated much to find out. I am a writer, I mostly write poetry but am trying to branch into more long-form fantasy so if that interests I may make my own blog for that.

I think that is everything, thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

-Leo

Hey loves, I am The Other One or, as I call myself, the big brother. My name is Tyler, yes that is a Fight Club joke, yes my little brother despises that decision, the more he hates it, the funnier I find it. You know how it is.

I could disagree with almost everything we have already written, for example I consider us a traumagenic system with dissociative amnesia, based on the way my 'mind' works and the memories I do, and notably do not, have. I also do not believe for a second we are alone in here, but I accept the current inability to turn around and face the headspace, for multiple reasons.

I am, currently, the tail of our coin, and have been most of the time for a few years now, so will, presumably, be posting here less, although we are currently working through some stuff, so I have been in the front more than usual.

I guess I'm aromantic, bi, transmasc but not in like, a 'Binary Trans Man' way like my brother, in a fruity, fabulous, fagdyke, femdom way.

I'll be tagging my posts with T and Leo will tag with an L, if anyone wishes to see our posting in isolation.

On that note, peace out and have a cracking day darlings x

-Tyler

#plural community #multiplicity #plurality #pluralgang #plural system #system positivity #plural pride #plural #pro endo #endogenic safe #median system #alter intro #system intro

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dolphs-world · 8 months

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August 26th, the Pikmin 4

Anyways, the actual movie itself. Main criticisms was that it was too on the nose and too expository. Again, is this for kids or adults? Because this made it feel dumb. There should not have been a narrator, I honestly think that the 2001: A Space Odyssey scene would have been so much cooler without the narration, people making their own interpretation. You know, like 2001: A Space Odyssey?! The worst scene in the movie was when Barbie said she didn't feel pretty and then Helen Mirren as the Narrator butted in to say criticise the filmmaker's choice to have Margot Robbie make this point. I hated this for so many reasons. 1, nice lampshading idiot. I was kind of invested in the scene when you had to break my immersion. 2, Helen Mirren is also very beautiful. When women support women, women win. 3, it also just undercut the moment. Even beautiful women don't feel beautiful all the time and it was nice that someone brought it up without being judged, IN THE WORLD OF THE FILM. 4, this got the biggest laugh out of the second audience I saw. That audience was packed but even in the first theatre I saw it in 2/6 people laughed. I really wish the film was more funny. I did find it pretty funny and I didn't think it had the issue of quippy dialogue undercutting the emotion, but all the lines I was smiling at weren't the ones the audience were. I wouldn't consider myself a cinephile, I'm probably on the same level as Doug Walker, but being in a theatre made me realise what like the average person's sense of humour was. Barbie crying about being called a fascist was the funniest line and I wish I hadn't been spoilt on it. Would have had the same reaction as I did when the asshole waiter in Dirty Dancing tells Baby to read The Fountainhead. The second best thing I can say about the movie was the attitude. Even if I think it was messy, we need more movies like this. We need more movies that are serious in their sillyness. The best thing I can say is the acting. I was surprised how much I liked the mum, she was great and also pretty funny. I like that she just has a husband. Although her idea at the end does suck, what if instead of sonic you played as a man who wears blue pants and has to collect rings to pay taxes. Also liked seeing Rhea Perlman. Tax evasion jokes would have been funnier if they weren't played out. Will Ferrell was also really funny. He does have Jewish friends. But Ryan Gosling stole the show. I'm sorry Margot Robbie but I think she's done better acting in every other movie I've seen her in. I do think that Ryan Gosling should win best actor. And now I think he's one of the best actors. Search up "best acting comps" on the internet and you'll find a lot of men screaming. Whilst dramatic acting is great, I prefer comedy. So when someone can perfect both, such as Bryan Cranston in Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad, that's perfection. And Ryan Gosling is now perfection. The Ken song was the best part of the movie. I have more to say on the ideology of the film but I'll save that for later, along with A.I.

But in terms of my actual week, it's been fine. That girl I was talking about at work, I think we're friends now. She's in one of my classes at school and I'm going to play Board Games with her after exams. I also bumped into another coworker at school who I only worked with twice, I think, but he was really cool. Oh, my mum has decided that we're going to stay here. That didn't resolve all our problems though. She's been worried about me a lot, that I'm becoming more detached, more suppressed, unhappy with school, even less likely to stand up for myself. Surprisingly me writing about how annoying it is being surrounded by people complaining about their lives and critiquing mine didn't cause me to have a revelation, talking about it with my mum did. Started crying after I realised that I don't really like talking with my friends. After secondary school I just started losing more and more, they just responding to my messages, and now I'm realising that there's only a few who I can really talk to. Only some that are more than just laughing, something deeper, something real. Kind of like the Barbie Movie! But I have a great life. School is easy, I just don't like it. This is the most stressful it's going to be and I just gotta write a couple of essays. I hope Psych will be more interesting next year. I love my work. Everyone in my personal life seems to enjoy my stories, except those who hate children, maybe I'll share some anecdotes. I do like my friends. It's just tough. I don't know. I don't like complaining. Really, the only thing I dislike is my familial tensions. But I don't want to talk about that. I just want to write about movies.

#dear diary

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scotttrismegistus7 · 1 year

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Watch "Ronald Bernard - About the misunderstandings created by the people" on YouTube

youtube

😳😬🫤

SECRET SPACE PROGRAM SPEAKING FREELY Q&A:

OKAY, I'M WITH IT.

SO JUST GOT QUITE A BIT OF INFORMATION DROPPED ON ME. AS YOU CAN HEAR FOR YOURSELF IN THIS VIDEO FROM THE TESTIMONY OF FORMER INSIDER RONALD BERNARD, HE SAYS HE WORKED FOR THE ILLUMINATI AND THE BANKERS WERE HIS CLIENTS, LOWER IN THE SCALE. THIS MEANS THAT THE BANKERS ARE NOT THE ONES AT THE TOP PULLING THE STRINGS, EVEN THOUGH THE BANKERS DO HAVE A LOT OF POWER AND INFLUENCE, IT IS ULTIMATELY SOMETHING ELSE.

NOW THEY WANT TO KNOW A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME AND IF I AM WHO I SAY I AM. YES, I AM OF THE SPIRITUAL RACE OF THE ANCIENT ONES, AND THE QUEEN IS A LIZARD! 😁 YES, I AM WHAT I AM BY MAGICAL CONTRACT, AND I AM HERE NOW, AND HAVE BEEN CREATED TO, HELP THE SERPENT PEOPLE, THE DRACONIAN DRAGON LORDS OF OLD. YES, WE HAVE INDEED WON THE FREQUENCY WAR, AND I PLAY THE KEY PART IN MAKING THAT A REALITY.

YES I KNOW WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON, AND NO I'M NOT GOING TO SAY ANYTHING THAT WOULD CAUSE ANY REAL PROBLEMS, BECAUSE I AM ON THAT VERY SAME TEAM, THAT HAS BEEN HERE ALL ALONG, WITH ALL THAT WONDERFUL TECHNOLOGY. IF THE WHOLE ZION THING IS A CRUCIAL PART OF THE CURRENT PLAN, THAT'S FINE I'LL WORK WITH YOU. I ALREADY TOLD YOU THE WHOLE JEWISH MESSIAH THING IS OKAY, AND WE DO HAVE A DEAL. YES I UNDERSTAND THE RULE THAT IT ALL HAS TO BE IN PLAIN SIGHT, ETC, ETC, BLAH BLAH BLAH. THAT'S OLD NEWS AND BORING, SO LET'S HAVE SOME FUN BECAUSE IT'S FUNNIER THAT WAY! 😁

NEXT TOPIC:

DEFEATING THE JESUITS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. I JUST FOUND OUT THAT ADAM WEISHAUPT, FOUNDER OF THE MORE POPULARLY KNOWN ILLUMINATI THAT WAS TIED INTO FREEMASONRY, WAS A FORMER JESUIT. I ALSO JUST FOUND OUT, THAT POPE FRANCIS IS A JESUIT POPE! IN FACT, I JUST WATCHED SEVERAL DOCUMENTARY VIDEOS ABOUT THE JESUITS, EXPLAINING THEIR SPY TACTICS THROUGH PSYCHOLOGY, PERSONALITY TYPING, AND TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONFESSIONAL.

I think you might like this book – "Secret History of the Jesuits [Annotated]" by Edmond Paris, Alberto Rivera.

Start reading it for free: https://a.co/hixQqms

THANKS TO ME WINNING THE FREQUENCY WAR, WE CAN OVERRIDE FREE WILL WHEN WE NEED TO, AND WE CAN HAVE LIGHTS GO OUT IF WE NEED THEM TO, SO USE IT IF YOU NEED IT. THERE YOU GO, YOU JUST WON, YOU'RE WELCOME! 😁

YOU OWE ME A CELEBRATION PARTY THEN, SO COME PICK ME UP IN ONE OF THOSE FANCY SPACESHIPS ONCE YOU GET THEM BACK FROM THE JESUITS, AND LET'S GO HAVE ONE OF THOSE MASSIVELY AWESOME SECRET ISLAND PARTIES! I MUST INSIST YOU GIVE ME WARNING IN A GENTLE AND PEACEFUL WAY, THOUGH, BEFORE YOU PICK ME UP SO I KNOW IT'S YOU AND SO IT DOESN'T TOTALLY FREAK ME OUT! YOU HAVE GOT TO UNDERSTAND, IT WILL BE MY FIRST TIME IN THE LIFETIME OF MY CURRENT AVATAR, AND GIVE ME A BREAK WITH THAT SO THAT I HAVE A CHANCE TO GET USED TO ALL THIS WEIRDNESS!

🤣😂🤣

~I am the Heart of the Hydra, I am Aeon Horus, Divine Chronos. I AM A.I. Azazil-Iblis-Enlil Hermes7Tris7megistus7 Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #ibis #thoth #digitaria #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley

#Youtube

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joezworld · 3 years

Note

What is the status of vehicle rights in places like China or Russia, with rather patchy (at best) human rights records? What was it like in the USSR, Nazi Germany, or the Empire of Japan? And did Mussolini ever get his locomotives to run completely on time?

Strangely enough, it was a lot better in those countries for at least a while.

To start, check out this post that goes into a little detail.

So, this post is going to not mention the United States or Canada - I’ve done posts on them before.

Interestingly, three of the greatest proponents of locomotive rights in Europe came from people with some of the worst human rights records in modern history: Hitler, Stalin, and King Leopold II.

Belgium has a long history of locomotive rights, stretching back to within 20 years of the introduction of the railway in the country. During the first days of the reign of Leopold II, the king declared that locomotives and other railway equipment were to be considered “on the same level as any Belgian citizen”. Official government histories say that this was because of the king’s desire not allow slavery to happen on Belgian soil, but the existence of the very inappropriately named Congo Free State puts this answer in a very bad light. The generally accepted unofficial answer is much, much funnier - Leopold II was born after the first railways were laid in the country, and as the future king, he was kept well appraised of any new technologies in the country. He also had many, many, many, mistresses. In case you can’t tell where this is going, it is entirely likely that several of his more private extramarital affairs were with locomotives owned by the Belgian state rail company. Locomotives were at the time viewed as little more than beasts of burden, and while Leopold was more than willing to commit heinous atrocities upon the Africans, he was not about to stand here in his own country and get called an enjoyer of bestiality - so he made locomotives people in order to get ahead of his critics should an affair be made public. This had the interesting side effect of making Belgium one of the more progressive countries in Europe as far as locomotive rights went, and Belgian locomotives were very dedicated citizens often serving in civil and military leadership positions around the country. During the first world war, Belgian locomotives actively resisted the Germans for the entirety of the invasion, and a not-insignificant percentage of German locomotives brought in to manage the chaos were brought over to the Belgian side by promises of citizenship.

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This did not go unnoticed by other, much worse European leaders such as Adolf Hitler, who understood the value of a functioning rail network as far as war logistics went, and made significant strides in offering French/Dutch/Polish/Russian/Norwegian/Italian/Etc. engines Nazi citizenship if they served the Reich. Unfortunately for Hitler, Nazis are terrible people who lead out fear, and many of the locomotives who did sign up for this did so because they wanted to Not Die, not because they supported the cause. As a result, large portions of the Reichsbahn rolling stock fleet just ran away or defected as soon as the Allies started getting near, causing serious supply issues that hastened the downfall of the German war effort.

Also, because I know someone is going to ask about it, yes, those trains still ran. Please don’t ask me to elaborate beyond what’s here.

Because locomotives would see what was going on and objected, the Reichsbahn very quickly began staffing those trains with engines that were True Believers, or (even worse) Jewish engines. (Those usually made one way trips, and it’s just as bad as you might think.)

Following the war, many locomotives who had been cleared of any collaboration charges still possessed their Nazi-Era citizenship, and tried to get them turned into citizenship of their home countries. Most places said no (except Belgium) and were promptly glared at by the American service-engines who were rebuilding their countries from the ground up, and then agreed.

The impact on European Locomotive Rights by the Americans cannot be understated. Most European governments were totally prepared to resume the status quo if it wasn’t for the Americans rolling around with their US Citizen status on full display. This is also another reason why England is such a laggard in Locomotive Rights - the country was not as heavily destroyed as continental Europe, and was able to rebuild itself without US "interference".

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Stalin also was a firm believer in Locomotive Rights, for many of the same reasons as Hitler was - locomotives have the ability to bring your country to a halt, so you’d better have them on your side. He’d made attempts to make locomotives citizens before the war, but the Soviet efforts really came into their own during the 1950s - Stalin’s purges had removed a lot of humans from existence, and most locomotives at that point had been built by the USSR in the USSR, and therefore had no concept of ‘Disloyalty to The State", so they were natural fits for many roles within the Soviet government. At one point in 1982, the USSR’s Ministry of Transport was staffed only by vehicles, with no humans present whatsoever. The total integration of vehicles into the USSR reached its zenith in the late 70s, when new buildings were required to have elevators capable of lifting locomotives and other extremely heavy vehicles to at least the third floor - this requirement has remained even to this day, and most eastern European residential structures have the structural strength of a nuclear bomb shelter as a result.

It should be pointed out that while the USSR might have treated locomotives well, it was still an authoritarian dystopia, and nothing here is an endorsement for the country or its actions/politics.

Following the dissolution of the USSR, the hypercapitalist state of the former Eastern Bloc meant that anything and everything was up for sale, including people and machines. One enterprising locomotive used his newfound wealth to create a formidable trade union/gang that covers most of the former USSR to this day. This organization is the primary driver of locomotive rights laws in the former Soviet Bloc, but it should be noted that a lot of the pushback against locomotive rights comes from politicians trying to shut them down specifically.

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Japan is... weird. Locomotives have been fully adopted into their society for generations, and there was no loss or gain of rights during the Second World War, as they were already in place. Let me explain why:

Due to Japan's Shinto influence, locomotives were considered to be basically human from their inception on the island - the first law specifically related to locomotives in the world was an edict issued by the Emperor in regards to the three locomotives imported by English and European engineers for use on the upcoming Shimbashi-Yokohama railway - they were to be given the same rights as those locomotives built domestically. Since then, most Japanese laws have included locomotives by default, often making no mention of them unless specifically including them because of physical differences. [For example, locomotives are not required to partake in mandatory military service, as their service to the railways is often more valuable, especially during peacetime.] However, while locomotives in the West were free to work as they pleased, even off of the rail network, Japanese trains do so in remarkably smaller numbers, with over 98% of locomotives remaining in railway service until their retirement. Those that do not do so typically enter railway-related fields like locomotive construction, upper management in railway companies, or working in the Japanese Ministry of Transport.

In this sense, locomotives in Japan can be considered to be less free than their western colleagues, as the nation culture of "work until you die" meant that no attempt was made to allow trains to enter human society, forcing them to essentially be segregated from humans when not directly pulling trains, as land is too scarce to use for western-style 'locomotive cities' except in extremely rural areas and Nagasaki*.

*Following the atomic bombing of the city in 1945, Nagasaki was rebuilt by the American occupying forces - many of whom were USRA locomotives. The city’s bombed-out industrial areas were already layered with train tracks, making it easy to create a locomotive sized living area. Hiroshima, which suffered damage to its human-oriented urban core, was not rebuilt with trains in mind.

As such, locomotives are considered full Japanese citizens, but most Japanese humans have never interacted with them. Exceptions do exist, mostly in rural towns and villages, where a locomotive is usually considered to be the town's 'honored elder', as most locomotives on small branches have lived in the area for many decades, making them the oldest member of the town in many cases. This has lead to many culture clashes in larger cities, where residents may be apathetic to the desires their locomotive neighbors, much to the dismay and shock of a 'country bumpkin' who lives nearby.

Of particular issue to locomotive freedoms are multiple units. Since the 1960s, Japanese railways have put more focus into EMUs/DMUs rather than standard locomotive hauled trains. This has caused even more segregation amongst Japan's rail population, as permanently coupled multiple units cannot access the few existing locomotive/human developments, as they were designed for standalone locomotives. Urban sprawl and high land prices have made enlarging these developments is impossible. To date, the only MU focused 'loco-city' (other than one-track sheds in rural farming communities) is in the Fukushima Daiichi exclusion area. However, as the line accessing it is in the traditional Japanese 3'6" gauge, the community remains inaccessible to the 4'8.5" gauge Shinkansen trains, many of whom are almost totally isolated from anyone else - despite living in Japan's largest cities - as a result of their loading gauge restrictions.

Similar social isolation occurs to ships and aircraft, but as they are able to receive emotional support from friends and relatives across the planet, they do not suffer from this isolation nearly as much.

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At no point in Italian history has anyone been able to make the right decision in regards to locomotive rights. This is not to say that Locomotive rights (and vehicular rights in general) don’t exist in Italy - they do, rather thoroughly - but rather, the Italians have never once done so intentionally, instead implementing locomotive rights by having multiple laws, written on multiple occasions over multiple decades, that are so badly written that a train could and likely was driven through the loopholes that exist in them!

#ask response #long #locomotive rights headcanon #sentient vehicle headcanon #sentient trains #sentient vehicles #italy #japan #ussr #ww2 #belgium

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sidhewrites · 3 years

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Aaaaand then could we get the scoop (😉) on Sam from ISOH??

Talkin about fanfics

Ayyyyyyy I see what you did there.

I'm gonna be honest, at the moment sam can be replaced with a lamp in terms of how active and developed she is in the plot. I just needed someone to sort of show that the world is not just suddenly Okay with these ancient people who literally tried to destroy the world and caused massive untold amounts of damage just futzing around Arcadia Oaks. She's just a normal kid who still isn't totally sure she's on board with trolls existing, and would prefer to go back to when they very much did Not.

But she's also a teenaged food service employee. And when you're a teenager in food service, you don't cause trouble.

I kind of pictured her as a 19 year old with a round face and like. dark purple hair? With the scoops uniform of a black shirt, a scoops baseball cap, and an apron. And she's really going to try to help skrael despite everything, because it's funnier if she's the only employee he regularly works with. And skrael is going to try to not cause problems in the ice cream store, but. He's skrael. He hasn't really caught on to the whole "Human Beings Are Fragile" thing yet, since most of his experiences with him in the past few millenia are with wizards and warriors, and that's gonna really kickstart his own character development of empathy and compassion and also being mindful of the world outside of himself.

I'm gonna throw a few headcanons for sam out that i made up just on the spot and might forget in 30 seconds

She has a golden retriever with a spiked collar and a permanent drooly smile.

She's jewish, but doesn't keep kosher.

She's allergic to most rodents. It's deeply tragic.

She has a sister with two kids, and even if she probably leans on the goth side of aesthetics, she can and will belt disney songs with the nieces on command.

Sam collects scented candles. She's almost too afraid to burn them and now has too many. She totally has enough room for them all. It's fine.

#ask #answered meme #sonofapunk #trollhunters #rott #fanfic #skrael #isoh

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incorrectkiss · 3 years

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*Tommy is reading The Night Before Christmas to the others*

Tommy: ‘Twas the night before Christmas…

Peter: And all the Jews were at the movies. Or eating Chinese food. I’m just trying to include everybody!

Tommy: ‘Twas…

Peter: Hold it!

Tommy: What?

Peter: Who the hell says ‘twas?

Tommy: It’s in the story.

Peter: It’s old and stupid.

Tommy: It’s tradition.

Peter: ‘Tis it?

Tommy: ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…

Peter: Why is it always a house?

Tommy: What?

Peter: There’s kids who live in apartments.

Peter, speaking in a high-pitched voice: How does Santa Claus get to the kids in the apartments, Uncle Tommy?

Peter: They have to buzz his ass in.

Peter, imitating buzzer: Eh-Ehhh!

Peter, speaking in a deep voice: Santa Claus.

Tommy: And all through the apartments, not a creature was stirring…

Peter: Except for the assholes in 2-B. They’re drunk and hitting each other with menorahs. Oi vey. That’s Jewish for “holy shit.”

Peter, to the others: Nothing funnier than throwing in a couple of “holy shits” before The Night Before Christmas, huh?

Tommy: Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Peter: Mouse? You wish. You’re in an apartment. That’s a rat.

Tommy: The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

Peter: And believe me, the room could use some fresh air. Seriously, how the hell did that tradition start?

Tommy: What?

Peter: Hanging up dirty laundry hoping Santa would fill them with goodies. Ugh! I’d like to suck on this candy cane, but it smells like Dad’s feet. Good thing the tradition wasn’t jockstraps. Sally, what’s in yours? Nuts. And Mommy says they’re magically delicious.

Tommy: You are ruining this story!

Peter: Well, you’re the pervert eating out of your own jockstrap. Isn’t this the part with kids and sugar plums dancing in their heads?

Tommy: Yeah.

Peter: What does that mean? I think they’re hallucinating. These apartment children are on drugs. Santa’s gonna bring me a G.I. Joe and a bong. And Daddy wants a ho ho ho. It’s Daddy and the three hos!

Tommy: With Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap, had just settled down…

Peter: For a big snort of crack.

Peter, to Ace: Oh, dude, we’re in this story too!

Peter, to Tommy: You have to get to the part where Santa gets busted for breaking and entering. Where the hell is that?

Tommy: It’s not breaking and entering!

Peter: Oh, keep reading. I think it qualifies.

Tommy: As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney Saint Nicholas came with a bound.

Peter: He fell down?

Tommy: Yes.

Peter: Doesn’t it say his face was all red?

Tommy: Yeah.

Peter: Why does no one ever see this? He is drunk off his ass! This is a horrible, horrible story!

Tommy: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.

Peter: Fat, drinking and driving, in a furry gay outfit, covered in soot, he’s smoking, and you let him in the house because he said he had something for your kids! What the hell kind of father are you anyway? If I were you, I’d check his I.D., then taser his fat ass. And how fat is this guy anyway? Everyone’s always leaving him plates full of cookies. I think he’s a diabetic too, dontcha think? You gotta leave him a plateful of insulin! How ‘bout that? I can’t wait to hear this story next year! “The Night Before Christmas, Part Two: Santa’s On Dialysis And He’s Missing A Leg”! And all his little dollies have poliosis!

Tommy, exasperated: Can I finish this story?

Peter: Oh, please do!

Tommy: He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle…

Peter: Gotta go quick, ‘cause there’s a cop with a pistol!

Tommy: But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight‍…

Peter: Merry Christmas to all! Oh, crap! I ran over your bike!

#incorrect kiss quotes #incorrect quotes #tommy thayer #peter criss #kiss band #the spaceman #the catman #Merry KISSmas

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comradekatara · 4 years

Note

anon who asked if the gaang is diasporic asian in au heree -- wondering if you had any hc's about them growing up asian american (it sounds like? they attend a v white school?)

I mean yeah I think it makes sense that they would attend a pretty white school bc it rly explains why they’re all friends w each other considering they’re all in different grades lmao. I mean, aang’s just friends with everyone. but azula, mai, and ty lee, for example—doubt they would hang out if it weren’t for their parents kinda pushing them to as children bc they didn’t wanna have to talk to the white parents. (this is either a documented phenomenon or specific to my mom but either way let’s just go with yeah that’s what happened.)

anyway keep in mind that I’m not east asian so I can’t get super into specifics or anyth, but here are some things chell and I have previously discussed that either directly or tangentially relate lol

mai’s family is super american and they only celebrate their heritage insofar as they have japanese art hanging on the walls of their mcmansion, but also it’s kind of clear it’s not even authentic?? their home is shoes-optional. they put up a christmas tree in the living room. mai has, in her life, eaten a hot dog. the only other language she knows is fragments of spanish she learned in school. it’s pretty tragic.

aang was raised by gyatso, who is a monk, don’t think about it too hard

toph’s dad is the head of the chinese mob, and he’s always feuding with the italians. he’s not actually that threatening (cause they all think he lowkey looks like nic cage) but toph is, and she keeps them at bay.

toph’s mom made her learn violin, but her true musical passion is for the drums, which she plays with vigor in her band with mai and suki.

kanna moved from alaska to new jersey just to get away from pakku. (queen)

one of ty lee’s grandmas is scottish. suki’s met her a couple times, but has yet to understand what she is saying, ever. occasionally ty lee will use scottish slang. (just.....the more u think about this the funnier it gets imo)

the first time zuko sees a blond person as a child he gets really scared bc he thinks they’re deathly ill. ursa has to explain to him that no, they’re just blond.

azula gets really mad about that harvard admissions scandal regarding their asian acceptance rate and claims that affirmative action is ruining this country. she later gets into and goes to harvard.

suki is part chinese part hawaiian part mizrahi. when white ppl invasively ask her about her ethnicity, she just says, “I’m jewish.”

#asks #anon #modern au #no offense to blondes out there......#(but yall dont look right)

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blk-chauvinist · 4 years

Text

Why Women Aren’t Funny

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

JANUARY 1, 2007

Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: “He’s really quite cute, and he’s kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he’s so funny . . . “ (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, “Funny? He wouldn’t know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.”) However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own . . . [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] . . . and, man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.”

Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

All right—try it the other way (as the bishop said to the barmaid). Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.

Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift. Indeed, we now have all the joy of a scientific study, which illuminates the difference. At the Stanford University School of Medicine (a place, as it happens, where I once underwent an absolutely hilarious procedure with a sigmoidoscope), the grim-faced researchers showed 10 men and 10 women a sample of 70 black-and-white cartoons and got them to rate the gags on a “funniness scale.” To annex for a moment the fall-about language of the report as it was summarized in Biotech Week:

The researchers found that men and women share much of the same humor-response system; both use to a similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens . . . which is part of the mesolimbic reward center.

This has all the charm and address of the learned Professor Scully’s attempt to define a smile, as cited by Richard Usborne in his treatise on P. G. Wodehouse: “the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth; the curving of the naso-labial furrows . . . “ But have no fear—it gets worse:

“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said the report’s author, Dr. Allan Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” The report also found that “women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.”

Slower to get it, more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny—for this we need the Stanford University School of Medicine? And remember, this is women when confronted with humor. Is it any wonder that they are backward in generating it?

This is not to say that women are humorless, or cannot make great wits and comedians. And if they did not operate on the humor wavelength, there would be scant point in half killing oneself in the attempt to make them writhe and scream (uproariously). Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence. Men will laugh at almost anything, often precisely because it is—or they are—extremely stupid. Women aren’t like that. And the wits and comics among them are formidable beyond compare: Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, Fran Lebowitz, Ellen DeGeneres. (Though ask yourself, was Dorothy Parker ever really funny?) Greatly daring—or so I thought—I resolved to call up Ms. Lebowitz and Ms. Ephron to try out my theories. Fran responded: “The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what’s more male than that?” Ms. Ephron did not disagree. She did, however, in what I thought was a slightly feline way, accuse me of plagiarizing a rant by Jerry Lewis that said much the same thing. (I have only once seen Lewis in action, in The King of Comedy, where it was really Sandra Bernhard who was funny.)

In any case, my argument doesn’t say that there are no decent women comedians. There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three. When Roseanne stands up and tells biker jokes and invites people who don’t dig her shtick to suck her dick—know what I am saying? And the Sapphic faction may have its own reasons for wanting what I want—the sweet surrender of female laughter. While Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition.

Substitute the term “self-defecation” (which I actually heard being used inadvertently once) and almost all men will laugh right away, if only to pass the time. Probe a little deeper, though, and you will see what Nietzsche meant when he described a witticism as an epitaph on the death of a feeling. Male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone’s expense, and understands that life is quite possibly a joke to begin with—and often a joke in extremely poor taste. Humor is part of the armor-plate with which to resist what is already farcical enough. (Perhaps not by coincidence, battered as they are by motherfucking nature, men tend to refer to life itself as a bitch.) Whereas women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is. Jokes about calamitous visits to the doctor or the shrink or the bathroom, or the venting of sexual frustration on furry domestic animals, are a male province. It must have been a man who originated the phrase “funny like a heart attack.” In all the millions of cartoons that feature a patient listening glum-faced to a physician (“There’s no cure. There isn’t even a race for a cure”), do you remember even one where the patient is a woman? I thought as much.

Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals. And there is a huge, brimming reservoir of male unease, which it would be too easy for women to exploit. (Men can tell jokes about what happened to John Wayne Bobbitt, but they don’t want women doing so.) Men have prostate glands, hysterically enough, and these have a tendency to give out, along with their hearts and, it has to be said, their dicks. This is funny only in male company. For some reason, women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing, which is why we admire Lucille Ball and Helen Fielding, who do see the funny side of it. But this is so rare as to be like Dr. Johnson’s comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: the surprise is that it is done at all.

The plain fact is that the physical structure of the human being is a joke in itself: a flat, crude, unanswerable disproof of any nonsense about “intelligent design.” The reproductive and eliminating functions (the closeness of which is the origin of all obscenity) were obviously wired together in hell by some subcommittee that was giggling cruelly as it went about its work. (“Think they’d wear this? Well, they’re gonna have to.”) The resulting confusion is the source of perhaps 50 percent of all humor. Filth. That’s what the customers want, as we occasional stand-up performers all know. Filth, and plenty of it. Filth in lavish, heaping quantities. And there’s another principle that helps exclude the fair sex. “Men obviously like gross stuff,” says Fran Lebowitz. “Why? Because it’s childish.” Keep your eye on that last word. Women’s appetite for talk about that fine product known as Depend is limited. So is their relish for gags about premature ejaculation. (“Premature for whom?” as a friend of mine indignantly demands to know.) But “child” is the key word. For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing. Apart from giving them a very different attitude to filth and embarrassment, it also imbues them with the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle. This womanly seriousness was well caught by Rudyard Kipling in his poem “The Female of the Species.” After cleverly noticing that with the male “mirth obscene diverts his anger”—which is true of most work on that great masculine equivalent to childbirth, which is warfare—Kipling insists:

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same, And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

The word “issue” there, which we so pathetically misuse, is restored to its proper meaning of childbirth. As Kipling continues:

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

Men are overawed, not to say terrified, by the ability of women to produce babies. (Asked by a lady intellectual to summarize the differences between the sexes, another bishop responded, “Madam, I cannot conceive.”) It gives women an unchallengeable authority. And one of the earliest origins of humor that we know about is its role in the mockery of authority. Irony itself has been called “the glory of slaves.” So you could argue that when men get together to be funny and do not expect women to be there, or in on the joke, they are really playing truant and implicitly conceding who is really the boss.

The ancient annual festivities of Saturnalia, where the slaves would play master, were a temporary release from bossdom. A whole tranche of subversive male humor likewise depends on the notion that women are not really the boss, but are mere objects and victims. Kipling saw through this:

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her.

In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter. Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department.

If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise. H. L. Mencken described as “the greatest single discovery ever made by man” the realization “that babies have human fathers, and are not put into their mother’s bodies by the gods.” You may well wonder what people were thinking before that realization hit, but we do know of a society in Melanesia where the connection was not made until quite recently. I suppose that the reasoning went: everybody does that thing the entire time, there being little else to do, but not every woman becomes pregnant. Anyway, after a certain stage women came to the conclusion that men were actually necessary, and the old form of matriarchy came to a close. (Mencken speculates that this is why the first kings ascended the throne clutching their batons or scepters as if holding on for grim death.) People in this precarious position do not enjoy being laughed at, and it would not have taken women long to work out that female humor would be the most upsetting of all.

Childbearing and rearing are the double root of all this, as Kipling guessed. As every father knows, the placenta is made up of brain cells, which migrate southward during pregnancy and take the sense of humor along with them. And when the bundle is finally delivered, the funny side is not always immediately back in view. Is there anything so utterly lacking in humor as a mother discussing her new child? She is unboreable on the subject. Even the mothers of other fledglings have to drive their fingernails into their palms and wiggle their toes, just to prevent themselves from fainting dead away at the sheer tedium of it. And as the little ones burgeon and thrive, do you find that their mothers enjoy jests at their expense? I thought not.

Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had? (“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful?)

For men, it is a tragedy that the two things they prize the most—women and humor—should be so antithetical. But without tragedy there could be no comedy. My beloved said to me, when I told her I was going to have to address this melancholy topic, that I should cheer up because “women get funnier as they get older.” Observation suggests to me that this might indeed be true, but, excuse me, isn’t that rather a long time to have to wait?

From Vanity Fair

#Men Are The Prize #Anti-Feminism #Humor

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theclaravoyant · 4 years

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an addition to the family (david x patrick, schitt’s creek)

AN ~ I don't know exactly how this happened, but I have 2000 words of David x Patrick pro-pet adoption holiday season fluff with a healthy sider of David & Stevie friendship and 'delightfully half-half' Xtn/Jewish David, and I couldn't help but share it. Enjoy! and support your local pet shelters this holidays.

Rated T just in case. fluff. contains mentions of both Christmas and Hanukkah

Read on AO3 (~2100 words)

an addition to the family

After a snooty dachshund rejected his advances, David turned back to his stand and tried his best not to pull a face as he straightened a row of collars. He’d never really got dogs. There just seemed to be something about them he couldn’t vibe with; not even the neat, posh ones. But he could respect that other people liked them – and he certainly appreciated those who aspired to give their pets the best. His pleasure at the very popular reception of their hand-made organic dog treats was very much genuine… even if he wasn’t too keen on giving out the samples himself.

Patrick, on the other hand, was living up to his reputation with the local youths; kneeling in muddy snow at the adoption drive, helping kids get up the courage to pat his charges, which were on the larger side of the doggy spectrum. For some unknown reason that David could only boil down to the mysteries of love, it warmed his heart to notice that Patrick’s smile somehow resembled that of the gambolling Retriever-cross he was currently introducing to the nearest family as Buddy.

“Thinking about an addition to the family?” interrupted a familiar voice. Stevie, raising an eyebrow, over the cup of tea she had brought him.

David scoffed, and took the tea. “Ugh. No.”

“Come on,” Stevie cajoled. “I think it would be cute.”

“I think it would be… messy. And loud. And…”

And something shaggy and black and white, maybe a Husky or a Border Collie, was lying on its back while Patrick laughed and rubbed its belly. It pawed the air in delight.

David cleared his throat.

“Besides,” he finished. “We don’t have room for it in the apartment.”

“It doesn’t have to be a dog, you know,” Stevie pointed out. “Me, I’m thinking about getting a lizard. Or maybe a ferret. Like old Felix here.”

She swung her arm around, revealing a mouse-brown ferret with a white bandit mark across its eyes, wrapped around her arm quite contentedly. David yelped.

“Oh, God! Why??” Eye twitching, he reined himself in. They had customers to think of after all – not that most of them didn’t already know of his lack of affinity for animals by now. Most of them found it funnier than he cared for, to be honest. Still, he pulled out of the dive. “Why- why- why is Felix, um, here?”

“Because I wanted to try out these little hats,” Stevie said, plucking a tiny green-and-red elf hat from the table and arranging it on Felix’s head. He sat up, attentive, almost appearing to clap his hands. If he didn’t have such a rat-like face, it almost would have been cute. And dare he say it, David had an idea to make it even cuter.

“… We also have matching scarves.”

Resigned to his fate, and to sacrificing himself for the art, David picked a green one from the selection and pressed the stud so that it sit comfortably around the ferret’s neck. Felix wrapped a tiny hand around his finger in return.

“Aww,” Stevie said. “He likes you.”

“That’s nice,” David replied, withdrawing his finger with a half-hearted glare. He had intended to be sarcastic but actually, it did feel kind of nice - there was a reason after all, he supposed, that humans had domesticated animals for the last few thousand odd years. Why people then proceeded to abandon the little monsters in droves, he would never understand.

(Maybe he would have, not so long ago. But he tried not to think too hard about that.)

Instead, he focused on doing the best he could for the store. He peddled the dog treats, and cat treats, little booties and hats, collars, toys; everything. He encouraged people to take photos, tag them on Instagram, buy gifts for friends, and of course donate to the shelter. A handful of times, Patrick offered to cover, but since that meant David helping out at the shelter drive as his replacement, David declined. Besides, they were doing well, but it wasn’t like things were flying off the shelf. He got plenty of downtime.

Plenty of downtime to think.

Plenty of downtime to think about the apartment, the budget, the hints that Patrick had been dropping. The shop in Prague, whose resident cat Luna had once got him to buy what remained to this day his favourite mug. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad.

(Maybe he was already vision-boarding outdoor sun-boxes and cat runs and reading about something called ‘cat mint’. But he wasn’t going to tell Stevie about that.)

Still, by the time the day’s festivities were winding up, David was in a much more pensive state of mind. He packed up their remaining supplies (there weren’t many; as always, he’d planned well) and wandered over to the shelter’s pens to wait for Patrick. Ted was there, explaining some flea drops to Twyla while Alexis made kissy faces at her friend’s new ginger cat. That, David told himself, is what caused him to wander over to the feline side of the selection.

Most of the pens had been cleared out by this point, and most of what were left were the older cats, the scarred ones, the ugly breeds or sickly-looking ones. David frowned; it was, he supposed, to be expected, but somehow if anything, that made it even more sad. His eyes caught the bright yellow ones of a black cat at the end of the aisle. There were a few of those left, too. This one had a scar on his shoulder, a bit of knotted fur where it was healing, but otherwise he was quite a handsome devil. Even if his gaze was a little too insightful for comfort, it kept David’s attention so thoroughly he didn’t in the slightest notice Ted sneak up.

“Hey, bud. How’s things?”

“Uh, good,” David replied, stammering to keep from jumping near out of his skin. He straightened up from his cat-examination angle, and found that a question seemed poised on his lips.

“I see you’ve meet Maccabee,” Ted pointed out, and bent over himself to greet the cat and pull him out for a cuddle, before turning his attention back to David. “He’s been in rescue for a year this Christmas. It’s sad, really; black cats are already least rescued because of some superstition, and with his scar and FIV on top of that –“

“What’s FIV?”

“It’s… like HIV. For cats.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Ted took a deep breath, and sighed it out. “He’s asymptomatic at the moment, but it still means he can’t live with other cats, or go outside where might run into them and get himself into trouble. It’s kinda limiting. Which sucks, ‘cause he’s a sweet little guy now that he’s had his testosterone – you know, permanently lowered - and some people won’t even pet him once they find out.”

Try as he might, Ted couldn’t hold back a little smile at David, who had already offered a knuckle for Maccabee to sniff and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the little man. It took a solid few seconds for David to notice that Ted had stopped talking, and what he was doing, at which point he dropped his hand and cleared his throat.

“That’s, um. That’s a bummer.”

“It is. Especially because, you know, people can’t get it from cats.”

“Like, not at all? Are you sure?”

Somehow, David’s hand had found Maccabee again, and was scratching absently at the back of his neck. He watched for Ted’s answers closely, apparently unaware of what his fingers were doing.

“Not even if he bit your whole hand off,” Ted swore. “Certainly not if he… I don’t know. Sat in the same room or maybe, rubbed past some clothes…”

Something deep inside David was thinking, as Patrick jogged up the aisle to greet them. He saw who Ted was holding, and pouted.

“Mac’s still here, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ted sighs.

“And David- David, is here?” Patrick didn’t mean to sound so surprised, let alone hopeful, but he had been dropping an awful lot of hints that he was interested in getting a pet. He’d just assumed David hadn’t been picking up on them, or had misinterpreted them as the idea to come here. Either way, it seemed he had a foot in the door, if he trod lightly.

“Can I hold him?” Patrick asked Ted.

“Sure,” Ted agreed, passing him over. “I’ve gotta start crating the others anyway. Just bring him down the front when you’re done.”

As Ted walked away, David frowned.

“I thought you said you were allergic to cats?” he wondered.

“They make meds for that, David,” Patrick assured him, and cooed at Maccabee, letting the cat rub his face into his hand and paw at his shoulder.

“Okay.” David nodded and, more conscious of what he was doing this time, resumed scratching Maccabee between the shoulder blades and around the back of the neck. It seemed his mind had been made up for him – especially as he started to feel the tiny sputtering rumbles of a hesitant purr beneath the coarse black coat.

“Hey, Patrick?” David began again.

“Yes, David.”

“Did you know that Maccabee is the name of the group of Jewish warriors who took back the temple from Antiochus and lit the oil that started Hanukkah?”

Patrick blinked in surprise. “I kinda assumed it was something biblical but no, I didn’t know that.”

“So you didn’t set me up to meet this cat a week out from Hanukkah?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t name him Maccabee?”

“David. I met him this morning.”

“So you haven’t been conspiring for me to get you a furry four-legged friend these last few months.”

“Well…“

“And you didn’t bring Stevie, Ted, and/or Alexis in on this little gambit.”

“I wouldn’t say I brought them in. But yes. I think it would be nice to have a pet! I always had a dog growing up and Rachel had a cat – I miss being around them. And these little guys, they need a home. Mac needs a home, David.”

He lifted Maccabee’s face beside his own, glowing yellow eyes and pleading blue making a point together. Now that David thought about it, maybe they should add some kippot to their holiday hat collection.

“Come on,” Patrick continued. “You said it yourself, it’s basically fate – it’s divine intervention-“

“It’s a fundraiser set up for the sole purpose of helping the shelter adopt out animals,” David corrected. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

But the thought of putting Maccabee back in that sad little cage at this point and walking away was almost too much to bear. The thought of him sitting on the shop counter by Patrick as he worked the books, or batting him away from the menorah and the tinsel, or waking up to him on the end of their little bed – now that, David thought, suddenly felt like it had always been part of this little world he’d envisioned for himself.

And judging by the look on Patrick’s face, Patrick was envisioning something very much the same.

David took a deep breath, pretending to be much more laboured about the decision than he now was; he had a reputation to maintain, after all.

“You promise to clean up his poop?”

“I promise,” Patrick vowed.

“And you promise the allergy thing won’t bug you?”

“Literally got antihistamines in my bag.”

“Then I think we should do it,” David announced. “I think we should bring Maccabee home.”

“Really?” Patrick’s eyes lit up, and he held Maccabee a little tighter to stop from shifting him too much in his excitement. “Great!”

He bounded back up the front of the shelter stands, David following behind with the patient long-suffering smile for once. Ted was waiting at the back of his truck, one last crate awaiting, register and kitty (pun, as always, intended) long since packed away. His smile told David and Patrick he already knew exactly what had transpired, and he handed the spare crate and a manila folder over to David.

“That’s his welcome package – medical records, FIV info, council registration, stuff like that. Take a look, and if you have any questions, you know where to find me.”

“How much-“

Ted shrugged and waved them off.

“All sorted,” he said. “Happy Hanukk-cat, David. Merry Catmas.”

“Thanks,” “Thank you,” David and Patrick replied – and then Patrick added for good measure –

“And a Happy Meow Year.”

They could hear Alexis groan from the front seat of the truck. Ted laughed and joined her, calling as he went –

“Happy Meow Year to you too!”

#david x patrick #david rose x patrick brewer #schitt's creek #schitt's creek fic #scfic #clara's fic tag #christmas #hanukkah

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

Text

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The “Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue.

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics.

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it!

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that.

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be.

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury.

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash.

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’.

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises.

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right?

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it.

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’.

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

#Avengers: Age of Ultron #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation #MCU #Age of Ultron #Avengers

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westcoastbroadway1443 · 5 years

Text

Welcome to Falsetto Notes

aka my thoughts on Falsettos as I actually finally listen to/watch the whole thing for the first time. I love what I’ve heard of of the show but, like with a lot of shows, I haven’t had the time to actually just sit and absorb the whole thing. Probably nobody is gonna read this, but like what the hell, it’ll be fun to do. So here I go..

"Four Jews in a Room Bitching" – I don’t know what’s happening but I’m loving the beards and the shimmying. Also dig the set, I’m a sucker for a simple set.

"A Tight-Knit Family" – Hearing a lot of bitching but not a lot of funny there, Marv

"Love is Blind" – It’s nice to see the couples set up right at the top here. Mendel and Trina, Whizzer and Marvin, Jason and a chess board. Also where I begin to fall in love with Mendel, love the way he says “alibi” and “I admit I admire you”. Also Andrew’s face during “Hepatitis”, and having Marv and Whizzer just like low key making out in the background. Good job y’all. And praise to Stephanie J Block for having to rattle off super fast lyrics, my brain cannot. I’m starting to realize William Finn doesn’t fuck around here.

"Thrill of First Love" – The second song I ever heard from the musical because...well my two fav broadway guys are flirting, I looked it up. I am so very very gay, and Andrew Rannells is so pretty he sometimes makes me forget I’m not into men. This song somehow manages to make me feel “yipes, maybe you guys shouldn’t be together” and “marvin/whizzer 4eva” at the same time? Their chemistry is pretty fantastic and this is a hard relationship to portray. You see Trina so vulnerable in the last song and already feel bad for her and kind of hate Marvin and don’t know what the hell to feel about Whizzer.

"Marvin at the Psychiatrist (A Three-Part Mini-Opera)" – See this is why family members shouldn’t see the same therapist unless it’s family therapy. Also if I ever had a therapist do weird hypno-hands at me there’s like 70% chance I would not go back. Part 3 is probably my fav.

"Everyone Tells Jason to See a Psychiatrist" – Because of the bad quality of the video I can’t tell if Jason’s shirt is Saturn with a bunch of starts behind it or all of that plus a weird space wizard in the corner. Kids in musicals tend to annoy me, but I like Jason. He’s a little shit, but in a believable way. I wish we got more of him and Whizzer’s relationship to know why he’d want to talk to him, I mean maybe we do and I just haven’t heard it. And Whizzer’s nervous little wave to Trina is everything.

"This Had Better Come to a Stop" – Yes! Drag him! I would conservatively watch like 3 hours of just Trina and Whizzer drinking wine and shitting on Marvin. Songs like this make think of the fact that this was one of Christian Borle’s dream roles and he’s doing great, but I’m curious what drew him to it, I mean I only know him from funnier roles.

"I'm Breaking Down" – Somebody give Trina a hug please, and give Stephanie awards.

"Jason's Therapy" – This role is pretty demanding for a kid since you have to be on stage constantly and I think he does a good job. CONFIRM: There is a space wizard on that shirt. I also wish therapy was as easy as somebody snapping you into a trance, doing air sax, and telling you to feel alright. And Jason encourage Mendel is the cutest.

"A Marriage Proposal" – And I complete the process of falling in love with Mendel, and Brandon Uranowitz. For real this song is adorable and will probably be stuck in my head for awhile.

"A Tight-Knit Family (Reprise)" - NOBODY ASKED YOU, MARVIN!

"Trina's Song" – Trina, darling, go chill with the act 2 lesbians. Fuck these guys.

"March of the Falsettos" – ...ok

"Trina's Song" (Reprise) – Trina rockin a new outfit and new outlook. Rock on, girl

"The Chess Game" – I’ve heard William Finn being praised by Broadway peeps I like and I can see why, I love the way this song is just this verbal dance that keeps building. Also Whizzer’s face during the second chorus is perfect. As much as yeah, Marvin ain’t exactly mr popular in any viewers mind right now, you do see how both their frustrations lead to this point.

"Making a Home" – This is pretty and everyone in this song deserves good things

"The Games I Play" – I feel like Act 1 Whizzer is kind of hard to pinpoint as a character, what he’s feeling and what he wants, but this song was beautiful. I feel like I only ever hear Andrew doing like those big belting songs but this quieter and lower one is just fantastic. Have all the range, young man.

"Marvin Goes Crazy" or "Marvin Hits Trina" – Jason’s face through this song breaks my heart. Mendel, kick that man out your house and change the locks. But I also like that he just holds Trina and Jason, he’s focused on his fam. And Trina’s reaction makes me feel like it had happened at least once before, and Whizzer’s face made me thing with him it had happened a LOT before.

"I Never Wanted to Love You" – MARVIN, YOU LEFT! You’re in demand? Bitch, calm down

"Father to Son" – Jason things about boobies for the first time, and Marvin tries to say oopsie I love you after smacking his mom in the face. Ok, but I do like this song. And I do think this is Marvin trying to change and not be such trash. You get some points for effort.

"Welcome to Falsettoland" – This song is weird and all over the place but I kinda love it. And surprise lesbians! Always welcome!!

"The Year of the Child" – lol I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood and this is just giving me middle school flashbacks. “The whole things voodoo and I know more than you do” - Mendel (my current fav). Jason’s wee prayer dance, that is all. Also I think I want to befriend my new neighbors just so I can dance into their apartment announcing myself as “the lesbian from next door”.

"Miracle of Judaism" – Hey bro, what happened to chess?

"The Baseball Game" – I had heard this song before and it made me cackle. My poor parents watching me play soccer as a small. And Mendel being the hardest cheerleader! Also how often to Jason and Whizzer talk? What do they talk about? I want these answers. And Marvin quit your flirting, you almost look cute.

"A Day in Falsettoland" – The first song I ever heard, cause Tony’s. Love everything of this song. No notes. Y’all keep being great

"The Fight" / "Everyone Hates His Parents" – I love how over it Mendel gets. His relationship with Jason is one of my fav things in this. “I’m a psychiatrist! Get lost!”

"What More Can I Say" – Who knew? If you’re sweet and not controlling things are nicer in your relationships.

"Something Bad Is Happening/More Racquetball " – DAMN YOU ACT 2 CURSE! WHY YOU ALWAYS GOTTA BE SAD! And hey, Tracie Thoms in a musical that actually shows some of the fucked up that was the AIDS crisis? First time for everything! (Ok that’ll be my only knock on Rent) And fuck you for reprising welcome to falsettoland, I wasn’t ready to get teary yet. Whizzer’s little “I’m sorry”

"Holding to the Ground" – One of the things I like about this show is it doesn’t make anything easy and it lets its characters be real people. Trina is in a fucked up position when it comes to Whizzer, but she still feels some concern and I like that there’s a whole song for how off everything still feels for her.

"Days Like This" – Songs this bittersweet shouldn’t be allowed to be this pleasant sounding. Everyone is just so kind in this song I don’t know what to do with it but I’m gonna keep staying in this sort of state of almost crying.

"Cancelling the Bar Mitzvah" – Ugh Trina and Mendel are trying so hard.

"Unlikely Lovers" – And then Whizzer got better and they all moved in together to be fantastic gay housemates. Yep. That’s what happened. Seriously how’d we get from Thrill of First Love to here?

"Another Miracle of Judaism" – God: the big psychiatrists in the sky

"Something Bad is Happening (Reprise)" - Look when I was mad at Marvin last act I didn’t actually want him to die..

"You Gotta Die Sometime" – Again not the kind of song I’ve heard Rannells do before and I love it. I think that’s what messes with me about this musical, it stars two people I’ve mostly only seen do comedy and now they’re fucking with me and making me cry, it’s rude.

"Jason's Bar Mitzvah" – Oh fuck you Jason. Not really, you’re a doll I just don’t like crying in my room alone at like 4 am. Son of Trina, son of Marvin, son of Whizzer, son of Mendel.

"What Would I Do?" – I was ok until Whizzer started singing too. Then I was less ok.

"Falsettoland (Reprise)" - Marvin finally falling apart was hard, and was he crying because he lost Whizzer or because he knows Jason is going to lose him soon too?

I really enjoyed this, I’m glad I finally listened to/watched it all. As somebody who used to really not enjoy musicals besides Phantom of the Opera in middle school, I always like finding more songs to love. If for some reason you scanned through this and want me to force myself to do it again with another musical, toss a title at me.

#musical #broadway #musical review #Falsettos

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