#the most stereotypical slavic dad to exist

[shizunstan]

I was today years old when I found out Neil Gaiman was the same age as my dad

I don't know how to feel about this

#there's literally just a month difference #and yet they feel like people from different eras #like my dad #the most stereotypical slavic dad to exist #and freaking neil gaiman #i'm sorry but i need a moment

[revive-the-fandom]

Now you may be asking “Isabel, what’s the point of writing a small essay on a minor character from a kids movie?” and I’ll tell you!  

NoneofmyfriendswillputupwithmybullshitThere is no point!  I just like writing things about things I like!  And I wanna write about

Her.

Because she was a cool fucking character!  With an awesome design!  And I don’t give her enough attention!

And that’s her introduction!  A large, chunky girl wearing a black T-shirt and a pretty pink cardigan looking absolutely murderous.  She’s tough and strong and intimidating.  How often do we get that from animated little girls?  Astrid is all of those things but she’s also tiny, and wearing form fitting ‘tough action girl’ clothes.  Cupcake gets big ole boots and a freaking tutu!  Her hair is messy and nothing she wears matches and she clearly doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit!

I mean,

look how scared these guys are of her!  Pippa and Monty are more timid but Claude, Caleb and Jamie seem like regular old roughhousing tough kids until this moment.  And they’re all scared of a girl in a tutu!  Like, bullying is obviously not acceptable but so much media portrays the bullies as football players or edgy kids who smoke, or a manipulative and condescending queen bee type.  Cupcake is a big, quiet girl in a tutu.

and when she finally turns to the dark side and joins their play?  She’s not suddenly delicate or girly girl.  She chases them with a lump of snow larger than her own head.  And seems so utterly impressed by Jamie’s sled ride through town!

but still has the empathy to be worried when he crashes and gets hit by a runaway sofa

and when the others admit to constant nightmares she shows a lot of empathy and understanding towards the group (Caleb in particular) 

she seems to be able to read people too!  Claude, Caleb and Jamie push each other around a lot.  Pippa and Monty don’t.  So once Cupcake is added to the group she starts pushing them around too, starting with Caleb.

Poor kid.

Time to talk about Cupcake and her belief in the Guardians!

She’s super into unicorns (obviously)

but it’s never confirmed if they’re real like the Leprecaun and the Groundhog (I suppose the Groundhog was necessary since it’s partially staged in Pennsylvania) 

however she is shown to be very well connected to the spirit world, at least unconsciously.  Aside from Jamie and Sophie, Cupcake has the most interactions with the Guardians and the Spirits around them.

She’s the first to be influenced by Jack’s magic on screen (and the only one of the group to experience this)

She’s sent dreamsand and nightmares in one night, plus she’s visited personally by Pitch on the eve of his first attack on the Guardians

She’s also the first of Jamie’s friends to be visited by Jack, she’s the first to get outside and sled with them (indirectly convincing the twins to join the sledding) and seems to have no trouble reigniting her belief in the Guardians and believing in Jack off the bat.

She’s techincally Jack’s second believer, and she’s also the second one to stand up to Pitch and defend the Guardians

She instigates the fight against the nightmares

and overall has the most interactions with spirits.  She’s one of those characters that bumps into the spirit world without wanting or trying to.

And then there’s the question of her home life and her family.  Her home appears a couple of times during the film, though it’s not as intimately known as the Bennett’s home.  It’s easiest to find during Pitch’s introduction here

her room is the one with the blue light.

I’m going to go on a tangent here and talk about her house and it’s location.  Because as you can see here it’s three floors above a shop and next to what I assume is the town hall. 

The shop is visible in multiple scenes, such as the sled ride at the beginning

which means that her house is adjacent to the town hall and the square with the statue

yet another landmark is the petrol station

where the final battle occurs (god Cupcake’s room has the best view for this movie)

... Actually...  now that I’m looking, I’m gonna have to make a ‘spot-Cupcake’s-house’ post bc this is getting ridiculous lol

Now my question is this: how much of the building does Cupcake’s family own?  

There’s a couple of maps (neither are true to the film istelf but...) by Peter Maynez one of which lists Cupcake’s home as a ‘loft’ which implies that her family owns just the top floor or so.  Which is fine... except...

what apartment has a dog door????

So I propose that Cupcake’s family is actually loaded and owns the whole building including the shop.  That way there could be a portion of the ground floor that’s part of their apartment.

Which brings me onto the shop itself.  It’s name is clearest in this shot

Kice’s BAIT & TACKLE

I’m not well versed in fishing terminology but it does appear to be a fishing shop.  Now I have been informed by my dad who has been to the US unlike me, that this would be full of fishing gear and also maybe hunting gear (maybe guns? idk I’m British I don’t know the rules about guns - tho Burgess is confirmed to be in Pennsylvania if it’s state by state?), camping gear or general outdoors equipment so probably a decent amount of income.

Kice seems to be a surname.  I might have gotten the wrong end of the stick here but that’s what I’m assuming for now.   Kice (according to Ancestry) seems to be a Germanic/Slavic last name, which may be Cupcake’s last name?  

Cupcake’s family is also a mystery but we do know that this guy(?) exists

and that he likes to read the newspaper in the morning

so he may be her father or father figure?  They might not even be a guy but they do have a stereotypical masculine figure so I’m going with that?

anyway, weird shot next!

I spy with my little eye three pairs of shoes.  These are three different types of shoes so they may all belong to one person, or they have three other people in the house and these are their current shoes?  I think Cupcake keeps her shoes in her room/next to her bed so 

I would also say that considering the (possible) size of their house it would be easy for her to have siblings living with her (younger so they don’t keep shoes by the door, or older so they could be out all night).

(The heavy decoration in Cupcake’s room also implies that the family has money)

Cupcake/Pippa&Monty/Claude&Caleb/Jamie&Sophie/Town of Burgess

#rotg #izzie gabs

[anotheronechicagobog]

I’ve gotten some negative DMs so I’ve decided to make a little bit of a statement.

I am of Slavic descent. I do not know which country, or even region, of Eastern Europe I am from, only that my dad’s side of the family is Eastern European. I am caucasian, but I don’t always look it. I have been asked if I’m Asian or First Nations many, many times, I usually just respond with ‘why do you need to know?’ ‘what made you think it was appropriate to ask me that?’ or ‘how is information like that any of your business?’ There is absolutely nothing wrong with being Asian or First Nations, I just don’t know why pasty white people feel they are entitled to anyone’s ethnicity or race.

I’m getting off topic; I am of Slavic descent. Barring Brian ‘Otis’ Zvonecek, I would like for you to think of a character that was Slavic and had absolutely no ties to the Russian mob, KGB, or Russian brides (which is a human trafficking scheme btw). I bet you can’t. Don’t worry though, I can’t either! And that’s my point. I started watching the One Chicago Series because they had a character who had that same heritage as me, who looked a lot like me (olive skin, still a white person but dark enough that pasty people think you don’t share the same racial identifier as them) and he was not, in any way, connected to any of the Russian stereotypes I’d had shoved down my throat growing up! It was amazing! (I started watching because of a S6 repeat while S7 was running, and he died beginning of S8 so I only got one season in real-time, unfortunately) But I don’t think a lot of people I know grasp just how important this was for me.

I grew up being asked if my family and I were spies. I was called ‘comrade’ in a shitty Russian accent more times than I could count (seriously, if I got 5 cents every time it happened I’d be able to pay for undergrad, law school, and a house by now), I was emotionally, mentally, and physically tormented, I was told I was evil for my DNA, and I spent a lot of time fearing for the safety of me and my family. There were numerous times I genuinely thought a group of classmates were going to kill me. I was called nothing, the word ‘nothing’ so that I would know that I wasn’t even good enough to be the filth on the bottoms of their shoes.

They told me I was evil, so I grew up thinking there was a ticking time bomb in my mind, that one day a switch would flip, and I’d suddenly be speaking fluent Russian (a language I was forbidden to learn growing up, barring the word ‘matryoshka’ which is a Russian nesting doll, because of the negative and nightmarish hold the memory of the Soviet Union had on my family), doing backflips in heels, and killing everyone with acrobatic hand-to-hand combat. I am not joking. Being half Slavic has been a huge factor in my depression, anxiety, and suicidal state. I was so afraid of being evil that I did everything in my power to be good.

But none of it mattered, because like they said, I was born Slavic. I was born evil. Rancid. Rotten inside and out.

So when I found a character who wasn’t even remotely involved in the usual BS Hollywood puts Slavic people through (I’m looking at you CSI: Miami, yes I’m still salty about that), I was ecstatic. I’d only just started rehabilitating myself from the trauma I’d endured in my childhood, and this helped a lot if I’m honest. I actually cried tears of joy because of it, and stared blankly at the screen when he died.

So when I decided to write fanfiction, I wanted to put a piece of me, and consequently Chicago Fire, in my work by making some characters Slavic. And it brought me so much joy and peace to be able to do that. And to read what I wrote, because there was Slavicness and goodness in it. I know that there are so many underrepresented or misrepresented people in media, trust me, I do. But this was about me for once, and finally feeling like it’s okay for me to even exist. To not feel like an abomination. Just for a little while.

And while I desperately want for more accurate and less derogatory Slavic people in media, it is not my priority. My priority is for visible minorities to get better representation first. Because I at the very least have some people who look like me, and talk like me, and walk like me, and that’s more than most people can say. 

So I do try to be as inclusive as possible. I never put physical descriptions in (I don’t have porcelain skin, flowing blonde hair, or piercing blue eyes either \(0_0)/), and I try to even out how many of the readers in my fics are related to white characters, with readers related to characters who are people of colour. And that’s if I decide to make the reader related to anyone or from a specific culture, because I know that I probably won’t get to everyone, and sometimes what makes a reader fic so great is a blank slate. I research other cultures, their words and foods, so that I can bring other neglected people into the spotlight. I promise all of you, I am trying my best.

I don’t get paid for doing what I do, and it takes a lot of me to write and post. If I genuinely do something wrong, message me or comment, I’ll fix it. But I’m trying to make myself feel okay about existing, and I want to help others feel okay about themselves and who they are too. So please, no hate. There’s more than enough of that in the world already.

#One Chicago #Chicago Fire #Chicago PD #chicago med #brian zvonecek

[celestius]

Swinging on the spiral

In one of his essays, Alan Watts proposes a theory that there is a certain balance and circular structure to existence, and any movement on this circle is naturally counter-balanced. The two examples he uses are food and traveling. We are able to produce more food as a whole but it has less “actual” food in it - its supplemented by additives, hormones and the like. We are able to travel anywhere in the world, but there is less reason to do so. There was a time when Marco Polo brought back his description of Asia and it was a mythical place that only one in a million could see. It was also a place that was fantastically, vastly different from the western world. Today, most of us can go to those places - but due to globalization, they will be less “different” - we will see the same stores, the same fashion, the same languages.

Watts' observation made a powerful impression on me, and I find myself applying it to many different things on a regular basis.

Look at the question of longevity: through incredible advances in medicine, we are able to extend the lives of many, to save them from numerous ailments long considered terminal. We use miraculous and not so miraculous pills to boost our chances of survival. And yet our natural longevity moves contrary to this. The very lifestyle that “allows” advanced medicine leads to ingestion of cancerous chemicals and poisons in our food. What we eat is less healthy, and so is mostly our lifestyle. With the medical knowledge and equipment we posses today, it is very possible our ancestors from the middle ages could have lived much, much longer. The more we make up for the deficits in our lifestyle, the more these deficits require the solutions we have been providing. The more efficient a pill is, the more likely it is it will cause a different disturbance in the body.

To be clear: I don’t think Watts suggests that our endeavor is pointless, and neither do I. To move forward is no less meaningful, and due to the relationship between action and inaction, is possibly more meaningful than standing still - even if the changes we inflict upon the world and ourselves only trigger mechanisms that counter them and render them void.

Because I have recently started teaching and not so recently became a father, I have also found myself applying these principles on education and upbringing.

Most parents today, I hope, understand that physical punishment is not a very good parenting tool, and neither is requesting blind obedience, forced conformity to gender and behavioral stereotypes etc. ON PAPER, today’s children have much, much better parents than your usual stern Slavic dad who comes home smelling of beer and hands out beatings like candy. And yet, in spite of this objective advancement, a concerning amount of children today suffer from anxieties, depression, inability to confront the world - about the same amount I imagine could have in another era despaired over why their father hadn’t showed them love. We have improved our metaphorical carpentry but somehow the products of our toils come out overly flourished and impractical. Conceivably, we raise children in more kindness and understanding than at any point in human history, and yet, they still manage to somehow come out equally “damaged”. It just fascinates me that there is such balance to the universe that no matter when one is born, they have on average the same amount of problems to cope with it with regards to their childhood, the same chance to become a functioning, happy adult. Those whose road was filled with obstacles naturally posses more power to overcome them, those whose wasn’t are naturally weaker and the much diminished (by human advancement) obstacles in their way take about the same effort out of them - both reaching a similar chance of final content.

This concept was really the best summed up by a picture where two parents gaze lovingly at their child and think “we will not fuck him up like our parents fucked us up” and a child labeled “a whole new kind of fucked up” :)

I do not for one second believe that we should start reverting or give up on advancing our methods. I don’t believe the answers lie in the past. I still 100% believe in progress, even with the certainty that it will be unavoidably contradicted in some new way we haven’t thought of yet.