Straight Parents: We just want to decide when our kids are introduced to the idea of relationships!
Also Straight Parents: (watch a one year old baby boy playing with blocks with a one year old baby girl) HAHAHA he is already such a ladykiller
I am used to people assuming my long haired dmab child is a girl, that is what 99% of people think, no matter what Baby is wearing. Despite the fact that I use gender neutral terms for Baby on tumblr, in real life I do not even attempt to raise them gender neutrally because I don’t trust society. However, I also do not rigidly enforce their gender. most people refer to them as a girl when they meet them, and typically I do not bother to “correct” them because I don’t care. The only time I “correct” them is when it gets weird or the interaction is prolonged.
One time I was at the store when another dmab child started following mine around. The family of that kid thought it was the cutest thing they had ever seen. They laughed, “look, he’s following that little girl around!” I smiled politely and kept shopping
They didn’t go away, however. They kept following us. My child didn’t really understand what was going on, and they kept saying things like, “look, he has a crush on the little girl!” I don’t know how long this went on, but it got really weird. Finally, I turned and said, “actually, he’s a boy.”
They disappeared. Not another word was spoken. I don’t think they even acknowledged what I said beyond a shocked “oh”. Suddenly, it wasn’t cute. Suddenly, it wasn’t Innocent. Suddenly, their boy didn’t have a crush on my boy, like they had insisted before.
i hope they find a stupid tiny fish or something on mars and make mining illegal, just like the devil’s hole in california
these endangered bastards and their bathtub-sized habitat (just the surface shelf of a giant cave structure thanks) singlehandedly pissed off SO many businessmen lol
As much as I would want Sam Wilson to finally be respected and treated seriously by every person in the MCU it’s pretty obvious that there are people who won’t like him being the new Captain. Showing that he’s still mistreated despite his role would be probably more realistic than just assuming everyone accepted him without hasitation (especially after the show revolving around his doubts about this very problem).
But if there will be scenes in future movies or shows where Sam is dismissed by people around him I want Bucky to be very, very obnoxious about his support for Sam. Every time someone assumes he’s the one in charge (like Walker did) he just asks Sam for his opinions and directions - even if he already knew the plan. Every time someone insinuates that Sam’s not doing the job right he just asks something like: “excuse me, where you personally picked by Steve Rogers to take the shield…? …yeah, that’s what I thought”. Or he’d just casually mention Sam’s accomplishments, because Sam would never brag about them himself, but Bucky wants people to know how good he is at what he’s doing.
Basically, I want Bucky to shower Sam with additional love and support every time a person as much as looks weirdly in his direction. And I don’t mean to imply that Sam wouldn’t be able to deal with unpleasant people just by himself, because he absolutely would, but it’d be just so much easier for him to be a good Captain if someone had his back 24/7 and was very open about it.
(Also, Sam is probably way too polite to say “fuck off” to random, rude citizens, so Bucky can do that for him without consequences. One of them has public image to keep, the other not so much and they can take advantage of that. “Captain America flipped me off” would become a headline nationwide. “Captain America’s boyfriend flipped me off” is way less catchy and scandalous.)
This right here. That’s ptsd. The first sound of metal clanging and he wakes up startled. Because that sound has never meant anything good. But then he realizes what’s going on and he smiles. This man was the world’s deadliest assassin for decades and it doesn’t matter to these kids, who just see him as some guy on their sofa. That little sigh of relief because he’s safe and not on the battleground. Among people who aren’t afraid of him, or his past. Because that’s his fear, hurting the people he loves.
THE APOLOGY. He acknowledged his privilege and apologized for it. Which is not the way I thought they’d do it at all. As a poc, I’m so used to seeing half assed apologies for racism or some noble gesture that is supposed to make up for it. So to see him identify his privilege, and hold himself accountable for his mistake, instead of blaming his own problems felt pretty genuine.
They finally admit the fact that bucky was projecting on to the shield. He finally admits that he was mad at Sam for giving up the shield because, somewhere, he felt like he was being abandoned by that decision. And when Sam tells him, “Steve is gone” he doesn’t look angry or defeated. For the first time, he actually looks like he’s accepting it.
“This might be a surprise, but it doesn’t matter what Steve thinks” it is though. He looks so surprised when Sam says that so easily. Because it’s what he’s been trying to tell himself and failing to. Steve’s been his best friend forever, the attachment is natural. But Steve is gone and Bucky is trying to move on with his life while still trying to be the person Steve thought he was. He’s carrying a burden he needs to let go of.
“You gotta stop looking to other people to tell you who you are” Bucky needed to hear that. Because it’s all he’s ever been. He’s only ever been the person others needed him to be. He looks down at the shield like he’s trying to figure out what he’d be if he let go of the attachment. And he’s willing to find out because somewhere along the way, he’s grown to trust Sam. And he knows Sam’s not going to coddle him and validate him because that validation needs to come from within. And he needs to figure it out. Sam has managed to kickstart the process.
Ok. So. We all know this iconic scene right? Cool, I really wanna unpack it a bit tho.
Let start with the way Sam positions himself:
Sam moves himself so that when he catches Bucky he’s the one who will likely hit the ground first and take the brunt of the damage/impact. Sam goes out of his way to save the supersoldier with a metal arm and around a century of combat experience. And you can tell that the supersoldier in question didn’t fucking expect it.
Bucky looks really fucking confused and slightly on edge when the camera flips to him while Sam’s diving at him. I don’t want to say that Bucky isn’t used to being saved (Im hoping this expression doesn’t mean he was expecting to get attacked) but I don’t think that Bucky is used to being saved. Not only is he getting rescued, he’s being treated as carefully/gently as possible considering the situation. For example, the way Sam grabs him:
HE SUPPORTS HIS HEAD!!!!!! HE FUCKING SUPPORTED HIS HEAD AND NECK!!! HEAT OF THE GODAMN MOMENT AND SAM’S IMMEDIATE INSTINCT IS TO PREVENT AS MANY INJURIES AS POSSIBLE!!! AND NOT EVEN ON HIMSELF HE IS LITTERALY ONLY SUPPORTING BUCKY IN THIS MOMENT BCS HIS WINGS ARE FOLDED IN AS HE FUCKING GRABS HIM!!!! AND THEN THIS:
Sam tucks Bucky’s head into his shoulder as they are sliding across the gound infront of a tire the size of a small child that could easily crush them both (also this screenshot was really hard to fucking get cause this shit all happened within the span of a second). Sam keeps Bucky’s head tucked through the rest of the time that they’re under the truck before they both get catapulted across a field of flowers (top comedy because Im a slut for irony). And in the shot that they come out from under the truck you can see that Sam is still holding Bucky above him and off the ground, still taking the full force of the impact. He even has his fucking legs off the ground:
(It’s a fucking hilarious screenshot without context). This is really great cause Bucky is usually used as something of a battering ram or a tool bcs of his inhuman strength and the metal arm, but right now he’s the one being protected while Sam uses himself as a shield. This is repayed in the next few shots that show them skidding/rolling (I would say tumbling but it’s more violent then that) across the field:
Fellas is it gay to hold you partner/coworker close to your chest as you roll down a hill to evenly distribute the force of the fall? Aside from how not-hetero this one shot is, Sam is now the one with his head tucked in but he still has his arms wrapped tightly around Bucky’s torso whereas Bucky has his grip around Sam’s shoulders. (idk if yall have ever been put in a situation similar to this but i have, obviously not to this fucking extent, but the person whose arms are around the other’s shoulders usually takes more damage as they’re shielding the other). Anyways, we all know how they end up:
Sam, now holding onto the straps of Bucky’s best thing, is on the bottom (sexualize that and i’ll block you 😘) and still holding him off the ground. I think it’s safe to say that Bucky is heavier then Sam but was still man handled into that position for his own good. I wanna revisit my claim of Bucky not being used to getting saved when we look at his expression when he rolls off of Sam:
He looks… idek ig this is what people mean when they say “unreadable expression” because his face is kinda blank but you can also tell he’s thinking about something. Im gonna go ahead and assume he’s confused because, again, why??? was he treated??? so gently??? (up until he was a smart ass about the shield ofc). Anyways, that’s basically it for this post I just wanted to point out some details that were sticking out to me.
“They queerbaited us with Sambucky and now they’re making Bucky flirt with a woman to no homo it” “Please don’t force a romance on Sarah and Bucky I’m done with heterosexuality” oh my god shut the FUCK up. I say this as a self-diagnosed delusional Sambucky stan, but y’all need to remember that this is a disney show we’re watching here. They’re never going to make sambucky canon, it’s 100% not happening and I’ve known this since day fucking 1.
Sarah x Bucky on the other hand? Literally the FUNNIEST outcome, I have never wanted anything more in my goddamn life. POV you are Samuel Wilson, you spent two years hunting down this creepy urban legend killing machine because he turned out to be your best friend’s long lost love from 70 years ago, became an enemy of the state for him, then immediately after you got him back your best friend fucked off to the 1940s to marry somebody else. Now you’re left with this…. Guy. You don’t exactly know what to do with him. He’s kind of alright, a little annoying, and you put up with some of his not that alright moments because he’s technically your best friend’s widow, you tease him about once being a creepy urban legend killing machine on a daily basis and he lets you. Life goes on. Five months later he marries your sister and now he’s just living in your house raising your nephews and using his creepy urban legend killing machine powers to carry groceries for your family. Literally HOW do you react to that. HOW the hell do you react to that. Sam Wilson is a good person that doesn’t deserve to have any of this happen to him, but I, on the other hand, am a terrible human being, and would delight in his misery. I repeat, I have never wanted anything more in my life, and if y’all blow this for us I swear to god. I swear to GOD.
Listen to me. Hating on Sarah x Bucky will NOT make them reconsider canon Sambucky or bi Bucky, what it WILL achieve. Is to have them pull that Endgame shit again and send Bucky back in time to the 1940s and reunite with Redhead Dolores, whom he’s secretly been in love with all along. So you guys better pull your shit together and shut it down before it’s too late
I often think of how absolutely bizarre it must be to be an everyday citizen in the MCU, but in particular, I think there must be a good portion of the population who can’t wrap their brains around the fact that a genocidal alien from a planet they’d never heard of had acquired magical gems and used them to wipe out half the universe, and now that’s why a lot of people have 5-year gaps in their resumes and occasionally really cheesy ‘time to rebuild’ grc commercials pop up in front of youtube videos.
me trying to explain executive dysfunction to the neurotypicals in my life from now on: okay so the hours in your day are the suez canal and the container ship is one tiny task…
I had a student ask for an extension on their final paper (for good reason). They just emailed me the paper with the caveat: “I changed my topic because I couldn’t get into it. I decided to write about sex instead because I could get into that.”
And I was like. Oh boy.
Except then I read the paper and y’all.
For their final, I gave students a pool of essays they could use for a research paper about mental illness in professional sports, or they could choose their own topic, based on a personal experience, that they then researched themselves.
This kid wrote about their relationship with an asexual partner, and used articles they found about the importance of communication and consent in relationships that involve individuals with different levels of sexual interest, articles about different kinds of asexual experiences, statistics about asexual individuals and sexual assault/domestic abuse, scientific articles, the list goes on. It was basically a 2-part treatise on the validity of asexuality and the fact that asexual folks can absolutely have fulfilling relationships (if they want them) with sexual folks provided there is appropriate communication.
I was touched, y’all. A., It was well-written, appropriately formatted, etc., but B., the amount of love this student had for their partner was just. So incredibly obvious. The amount of research they’d clearly done over the years, out of a desire to educate themselves and be an advocate, was really lovely to see in someone so young.
So the world may be a bit shit right now, but please know that somewhere in the midwest, there is a pair of high school sweethearts reunited over winter break who love each other very, very much.
You ever think about the fact that we’ve only seen Loki try to initiate non-violent physical contact like, twice and both times, he got dropped like a hot potato the second Thor showed up? Because I do 😢
Thor: My brother Loki is adopted. He comes from another realm called Jotunheim.
Avengers: So how does the adoption process work on Asgard? Even here it takes years to complete all the background checks and paperwork. I imagine there it probably takes literal centuries.
Thor: … There was no paperwork. My father found him while invading his native realm and since he was unattended, possibly because he had been abandoned to die or possibly because of the invading army, my father took him in the hopes he would prove useful.
Avengers: …. That’s not adoption.
Thor: …yes it is
Thor: so anyway back to the story of how Loki overreacted and made a big deal out of it when he found out 🙄💁♂️
Legitimately my pet peeve to end all pet peeves how Marvel, as well as every articleever written about him, continually refers to Loki as Thor’s adopted/step/half-brother instead of a kidnapping victim, which is what he is.
Also, does Thor even remember all the times he said the Jötnar must be destroyed? Or did he just develop convenient amnesia as of his dramatic “change of heart” circa 2011? Is he so emotionally constipated that he genuinely doesn’t see how those memories would HAVE to affect Loki in hindsight?
you guys ever think about how loki never dies screaming or making noise despite the ways he dies? because, suicide into a void, sure, he is sad and keeps his mouth shut in resignation, but he gets stabbed and it’s less of a yell and more of a groan and the only outward difference is that he breathes faster and stutters/repeats his words? he’s getting choked to death and his only noise of pain comes from a breaking arm and other than that he’s gritting his death through it and gets out a sentence at the end anyway? he was impaled and that’s it? his neck is getting crushed but that’s all? you’d think it’d be really painful and all… but he just suffers in silence… it’s almost as if… he personally wants a dignified death… or wants the show to not leave any constant spectator… like thor… remembering him suffering…
Being in control of himself is the hill Loki will die on, literally.
Remember this last summer when I noted that expired gas is not only cyanide, but also an endocrine disregulator? As in, if you menstruate and you go to a protest, your period might be fucked up and if there’s a fetus in you it might get aborted spontaneously? And all these clowns came honking into my mentions a) at best, smarmily telling me that maybe people shouldn’t go to protests if they don’t want a state-mandated abortion, and b) at worst, being eugenicists on main
elon musk fans when their tesla explodes and kills them
There’s a guy right now with a melted Model X in his driveway that’s still hyping the Tesla brand while the company is deliberately ignoring his calls and tweets for some kind of customer support
Hey guess what
Another “self-driving” Tesla suicide bombed a suburb, killing both dudes inside. Apparently nobody was behind the wheel which a legion of nerds is insisting is impossible since you need your hands on the wheel in self-driving mode, which is not the brilliant defense they think it is
Everytime someone says that being trans is just a phase because there are no old trans people, I think of situations like this. So many people hid who they were because the world wasn’t as accepting.
ok but……then they went and made this post so what’s the difference really you’re still bragging about it 🤔
Hypocrite bitch
The difference is Sadé isn’t plastering the homeless folks’ faces everywhere and using their identity to uplift their social standing. The issue presented is the camera.
Some questions to ask yourself next time you’re confused while reading: What is the purpose of this post? What is the problem being highlighted? Who does it hurt? How does it hurt? What is this person saying and who are they likely saying it to?
Didn’t know a tweet calling out performative “altruism” is enough to call a random stranger a bitch but y’all aren’t good people on here.
Divergent is a bad book, but its accidental brilliance is that it completely mauled the YA dystopian genre by stripping it down to its barest bones for maximum marketability, utterly destroying the chances of YA dystopian literature’s long-term survival
please elaborate
Sure. Imagine that you need to make a book, and this book needs to be successful. This book needs to be the perfect Marketable YA Dystopian.
So you build your protagonist. She has no personality traits beyond being decently strong-willed, so that her quirks and interesting traits absolutely can’t get in the way of the audience’s projection onto her. She is dainty, birdlike, beautiful despite her protestations that she is ugly–yet she can still hold her own against significantly taller and stronger combatants. She is the perfect mask for the bashful, insecure tweens you are marketing to to wear while they read.
You think, as you draft your novel, that you need to add something that appeals to the basest nature of teenagers, something this government does that will be perversely appealing to them. The Hunger Games’ titular games were the main draw of the books, despite the hatred its characters hold for the event. So the government forces everyone into Harry Potter houses.
So the government makes everyone choose their faction, their single personality trait. Teenagers and tweens are basic–they likely identify by one distinct personality trait or career aspiration, and they’ll thus be enchanted by this system. For years, Tumblr and Twitter bios will include Erudite orDauntless alongside Aquarius and Ravenclaw and INTJ. Congratulations, you just made having more than one personality trait anathema to your worldbuilding.
Your readers and thus your protagonist are naturally drawn to the faction that you have made RIDICULOUSLY cooler and better than the others: Dauntless. The faction where they play dangerous games of Capture the Flag and don’t work and act remarkably like teenagers with a budget. You add an attractive, tall man to help and hinder the protagonist. He is brooding and handsome; he doesn’t need to be anything else.
The villains appear soon afterward. They are your tried and true dystopian government: polished, sleek, intelligent, headed by a woman for some reason. They fight the protagonists, they carry out their evil, Machiavellian, stupid plan. You finish the novel with duct tape and fanservice, action sequences and skin and just enough glue and spit to seal the terrible, hollow world you have made shut just long enough to put it on the shelf.
And you have just destroyed YA dystopian literature. Because you have boiled it down to its bare essentials. A sleek, futuristic government borrowing its aesthetic from modern minimalism and wealth forces the population to participate in a perversely cool-to-read-about system like the Hunger Games or the factions, and one brave, slender, pretty, hollow main character is the only one brave–no, special enough to stand against it.
And by making this bare-bones world, crafted for maximum marketability, you expose yourself and every other YA dystopian writer as a lazy worldbuilder driven too far by the “rule of cool” and the formulas of other, better dystopian books before yours. In the following five years, you watch in real time as the dystopian genre crumbles under your feet, as the movies made based on your successful (but later widely-panned and mocked) books slowly regress to video-only releases, as fewer and fewer releases try to do what you did. And maybe you realize what you’ve done.
one quibble: hunger games was intense and sincere and the writer had worked for tv and knew exactly what she was talking about when she wrote how media machines create golden idols out of abused kids and then leave the actual people inside their glamorous shells to rot. hunger games had a genuine core of righteous anger that resonated with a lot of people. the hunger games was genuinely angry about shit that is genuinely wrong.
but divergent was clumsy make-believe the whole way through. it aped the forms and functions of dystopian lit but the writer didn’t actually have any real, passionate, sincere anger to put on the page. she didn’t know what it was talking about, so she didn’t have anything worth listening to.
there’s a difference between anti-authoritarianism as a disaffected, cynical pose and anti-authoritarianism as a rallying cry by people who believe in a bitter world. and the former is something corporations and industries and publishing houses are so much more comfortable with. so divergent and the flood of books published and marketed alongide and after it showed how the dystopian genre was no longer truly revolutionary, no longer a sincere condemnation of corporate oligarchies. the mass-market dystopian genre was now nothing more than an insincere playspace for people who were writing dystopia as a safely distant, abstract make-believe stage for their pretty girl heroes, rather than a direct allegory for everything that needs to be torn down in this world today.
This is the second branch of this post I’ve reblogged and like the fourth I’ve seen and I’m just thinking about how the Uglies series, a pre-Hunger Games forerunner of the YA Dystopia boom, had significantly less staying power than it could have specifically because…with the toxic beauty standards forced on teenagers being a Big Theme, studios couldn’t figure out how to make a profitable movie out of it. The book got optioned multiple times, but a film version made in Hollywood was destined to fall apart at casting & makeup - their marketing methods relied on exactly what the series was criticizing, which is…part of what made it so popular with teenage girls to begin with.
You contrast that with how the marketing for the Hunger Games films directly contradicts the messaging of the text, and how Divergent seems ready-made for the big screen, and it becomes really apparent why the genre folded in on itself. Capitalism tried to recuperate dystopian fiction criticizing capitalism, and in doing so, butchered the genre.
There’s also something rattling around my brain about a correlation between how made-for-screen a dystopian book is and how much it Doesn’t Understand Dystopia, with the culmination being Ready Player One, a piece set in a dystopia that somehow still actively glorifies capitalism & that was literally optioned for film before the book was published, but I don’t…know how to expand on that point.
nobody ever praises me or pats me on the head or feeds me small treats despite my consistent excellence in the field of not purposefully ripping cabinet doors off their hinges to fulfill some sort of maladaptive destructive urge
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