#baker!graves

[pilfappreciator]

Brandi and Bruce’s S/o looking after the bakers dozen on their own, what shenanigans occur?

Anon this is?? Literally so cute what the hell??? Also referring to them as the "bakers dozen" is so genuis sfhjjfdadfggh—

Reader & the Bakers Dozen: babysitting solo

Includes: GN! Reader, mentions of polyamory, mentions of Vacay Lovers, slightly Parental! Reader, the Bakers Dozen

CW: Bruce Jr.

🍪 POV: your partners go off to some fancy convention to promote their business, leaving you to watch after all 13 of their kids. Chaos ensues

🍪 These little shits are already a lot to handle, so when you suddenly find yourself being the only adult in the house responsible for them? Yeah, babes, you've definitely got your hands full

🍪 Luckily, you've spent enught time at the Vacay Lovers household that things are at least a little easier for you lol

🍪 They definitely behave much better for you compared to other babysitters. Partly because you're smoochin their parents (and don't wanna get in trouble), and partly because they genuinely like you :3

🍪 But they're still little shits thru and thru, don't forget that

🍪 If they happen to have school? Chances are Bruce and Brandi already took care of their lunches and stuff before they left, so it'll be up to you to pick them up (WARNING: THE KIDS WILL TRY TO CONVINCE YOU TO GO ORDER AT THE NEAREST FAST FOOD PLACE! Unless you've got money for 13 happy meals, prepare to hit em with a firm refusal). Definitely helps if you blast some music in the van! They've kinda lost interest in Velvet & Veneer after learning the two literally tortured their dad and uncles...

🍪 Play Brozone. They'll go crazy and shout-sing along with Bruce's parts lol

🍪 Later in the day you can expect a few to come up to you for homework help. They might also wanna help with dinner, but fyi there WILL be a mess. Pasta sauce on the floor, flour all over the counters, stains on your clothes— the whole shebang

🍪 Want the least amount of casualties? Just let them set the table (no worries, all the plates and stuff are made of plastic ajdjakkala)

🍪 A few of them have some dietary restrictions tho so keep that in mind!! Luckily, you can always find a list of reminders/examples up on the fridge courtesy of lovely muppet wife Brandi <33

🍪 If the kids don't have school that day, then be prepared. You're gonna have very little time to yourself ://

🍪 Like they've each got their own interests and hobbies to keep them occupied, but sometimes they'll need you to reach somewhere up high, or for you to play tiebreaker/settle an argument, or they honestly just want you to join them for a game of hide and seek which???

🍪 "Aw, you sure you guys don't mind me joining in?"

"Yeah! Just cuz you're old doesn't mean you can't have fun, too!"

"...Gee, thanks :D"

🍪 They're merciless

🍪 They've all got their own set of chores they need to do. Each and everyone will try to worm their way out of them. All of them. Everytime

🍪 Sure, they can be a little hyper sometimes, but they're like 6-8 years old so that's expected. For the most part, they're all pretty chill

🍪 It's Bruce Jr. who you've gotta watch out for

🍪 He is a shit- stirer and I WILL FOREVER STAND BY THAT

🍪 This guy won't hesitate to rally his siblings into whatever plan he's been cookin in that feral little head of his. Prepare yourself because you're MOST DEFINITELY getting pranked. It's like a requirement or something

🍪 One nice thing i have to say about Bruce Jr. is that he's actually pretty resourceful. Like this little dude is using everyday household items like he's staring in his own Home Alone movie AKSJSJAKA—

🍪 Rest assured, tho, none of his pranks are seriously harmful or anything but like... at the end of the day, expect:

1) to be covered in craft supplies

2) your clothes/skin/hair a mess

3) to have one limb stuck in a bucket

4) all of the above

🍪 Honestly I feel like Bruce and Brandi would be surprised if they came back and DIDN'T find you sporting paint-stained clothes or with glitter in your hair. Maybe a few stickers slapped on your forehead??

🍪 The trick to dealing with this little agent of chaos is to either keep him separated from his siblings long enough so he doesn't manage to rope anyone into his schemes, or strike some kinda deal with him. Considering he's got 12 siblings, all of whom you need to be watching over at the same time, chances are the second option is your safest bet

🍪 Chances are he'll ask for something semi-illegal, or at the very least something that DEFINITELY requires adult supervision

🍪 DO NOT LET THIS BOY TALK YOU INTO BUYING ANYTHING RELATED TO FIRE. Seems like an easy task, I know. Unfortunately this little shit enherited his dad's charm so watch out o_o

🍪 He'll settle for a happy meal tho. Hopefully you didn't already cave and take him and his siblings out to eat earlier, otherwise you're spending even more money ajsjakkala

🍪 If any errands need to be run during your time there, you BETTER BELIEVE they're all coming with. You'll need to be incredibly vigilant during this time cuz these kids are even more rowdy in public than they are at home. If you're smart about it, you can turn the whole thing into a game! If everyone manages to grab everything off the grocery list in a certain amount of time or if they're able to find the best quality (but relatively cheap) brand of laundry detergent, then you'll buy each of them candy or something uwu

🍪 You can count on them to be cooperative, but like... bring the family child leash just in case

🍪 Cough cough (Bruce Jr.) cough cough

🍪 MOVIES BEFORE BED! It's a bit of a family tradition in the Vacay Lovers household. Yknow, just some way for the kids to spend time together before the day ends

🍪 You're most definitely gonna be playing tiebreaker when the time comes. All 13 of them have wildly different tastes

🍪 Absolutely no scary movies tho. They'll try to argue that theyre able to handle it, but at the end of the night expect to find yourself under a pile of frightened children who've ctawled into bed with you

🍪 Their collective nightly routine is literally?? So chaotic??? Like all of them are simultaneously trying to squeeze into the same bathroom just to brush their teeth... running in and out of their respective rooms... trying to sneak some extra dessert before bed

🍪 Literally never a quite moment in this household jshskakakam

🍪 You might have to read a few bedtime stories or sing a lullaby—

"Dad does it better"

"Just go to bed, Benji"

—but once they've settled in under the covers? Out like a light. They are unconscious the moment their heads hit their pillows

🍪 You'll probably have a mess (or two... or three) to clean up afterwards, but once they're taken care of? Dishes washed? Counters clean? You're more than welcome to crash on Bruce and Brandi's bed <33

🍪 Said couple returns home the next morning...

🍪 Just to find their kids drawing on your face with marker. Cross your fingers that none of its permanent 💀💀

Hope this was good! I know I call them all little shits BUT I MEAN IT AFFECTIONATELY OKAY AJSJAKA

Ngl I feel like this could have been like... more colorful? Like I was very general about the kids and their behavior as a whole, but now I'm super tempted to make a post describing each of them and all their little quirks! Just something fun to do that'll help me write them better in the future ;3

[the-gotheltic-rowan]

so my siblings and I are rewatching turn

[telemiel]

not to continue beating a dead horse, but i needed so much more of sharon and andrea's friendship in mc, and it feels like such a disservice that we never got to explore their relationship outside of the office. why couldn't we get even a few scenes of them not at work??

also, where did gavin disappear to after the closer?? like can you imagine the three of them together?? the sass alone would be beautiful

[glowing-starlight]

Tiberius and Vipsania(I, Claudius 1976) for Anonymous

[paceypeternathanslawyer]

One Tree Hill Meme (5/24) Favorite Episodes Favorite Episode Per Episode Number

Season 1 Episode 5: All That You Can't Leave Behind

Season 2 Episode 5: I Will Dare

Season 3 Episode 5: A Multitude Of Casualties

Season 4 Episode 5: I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

Season 5 Episode 5: I Forgot To Remember To Forget

Season 6 Episode 5: You've Dug Your Own Grave, Now Lie In It

Season 7 Episode 5: Your Cheatin' Heart

Season 8 Episode 5: Nobody Taught Us To Quit

Season 9 Episode 5: The Killing Moon

[lyledebeast]

Fathers, Sons, and Imperialism in Turn and The Patriot

It’s interesting that between these two narratives about the American Revolution there are three British characters from three different social classes, with three different problems that all, somehow, have the same solution: military service. And in each case, the British Army provides for the character in a way his father could or would not. William Tavington joined the army because his father “squandered” the wealth he was meant to inherit.  Edmund Hewlett joined because the trade embargo the Continental Congress enacted in 1775 nearly bankrupted his father.  Ensign Baker never knew his sailor father, grew up in an orphanage, and joined up because the Army needed healthy young men even if no one else wanted them. That military service is treated as a catch-all solution goes to show how imbued with imperialism 18th C society was at every level.

Of course, it turns out to be a very poor solution for all three characters. Tavington and Baker are both dead by the ends of their stories, and Hewlett comes near death many times, often at British hands, and is forced into one morally untenable situation after another, which nearly breaks him.  Their similarities end here, though, because while Baker and Hewlett are presented as sympathetic men who are doing their best to do what they see as right, Tavington is presented as the ultimate evil.  For a movie that is just under three hours, it has an extremely brief resolution.  Benjamin Martin stabs Tavington to death, delivers a voice-over monologue that fast forwards to the end of the war when he and his new bride/old sister in law find the house Tavington burned being rebuilt.  Martin’s job is much easier than Turn protagonist Abe Woodhull’s.  While Martin only has to kill one man and fix what can be fixed of the problems he caused, Woodhull has to uproot the effects of imperialism, including in his own father’s beliefs and values.

Of course, Turn has more room for nuance in four seasons than The Patriot has in three hours, but there is a deeper difference at work here.  The reason Turn can afford sympathetic British characters is that it presents imperialism itself as the ultimate evil.  Part of the reason Richard Woodhull clings so stubbornly to the British empire is that he recalls a time when it did defend his community from the Dutch and the Iroquois.  Abraham has no success in convincing his father until the community, and Abraham himself specifically, come under British attack in the form of Captain Simcoe.  

The major antagonist of the series, Simcoe is also the character who most effectively represents the evils of imperialism: While Tavington and (presumably) Baker are from England and Hewlett is from Scotland, Simcoe has never been to Great Britain. He is the son of a British surgeon who suffocated in the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. By far the most enthusiastic soldier in the series, he sees it as his personal mission to “remind” colonials throughout the empire that their homes “belong to our king,” in Ghana and the Caribbean before he was stationed in Long Island.  As much as he is an advocate of imperialism, though, Simcoe is its victim as much as Hewlett and Baker.  In Simcoe’s final scene in the series, General Clinton offers him an appointment in upper Canada, citing the effects of the wound Simcoe received in his last encounter with Woodhull as preventing the wartime appointment he wants. Violence has been such a staple of his life that he is deeply bewildered by the thought of operating in a British colony where the only enemy to be subdued is the weather.

Regardless of narrative length, presenting Simcoe as an agent of imperialism, the true evil, makes more sense than presenting Tavington as the main enemy to be defeated, not least because no one man could possibly have all the power The Patriot attributes to him. The movie’s original tagline invites the audience to see Martin as having no choice but to take up arms against the British in response to Tavington’s actions, and the movie’s producer describes General Cornwallis as “a victim” of Tavington’s seduction.  The idea that only Tavington has any volition in this story is ridiculous.  Cornwallis has the ability to restrain him and does retrain him for the entire middle of the movie.  Martin has the ability to take his grievances against Tavington to Cornwallis before he massacres the British soldiers in the woods, and even after that he has a militia full of trackers and “excellent marksmen” who could eliminate Tavington.  They choose to not do these things. There are numerous Watsonian and Doylist explanation for this, but the one I’m most interested in here is that the story needs a villain, and that villain cannot be imperialism because the movie’s protagonists have spent too much time enforcing and benefitting from it themselves.

While Turn is a story about children pushing back against the patriarchy of imperialism--both figurative and, in Abe’s case, literal--The Patriot is a story about fathers.  A number of the fathers in The Patriot are also veterans of the French and Indian War, known as the Seven Years War in Europe, a global conflict between the British and French Empires.  While Abe’s freedoms are palpably restricted--he can’t even have an extramarital affair in his own home without the British walking in!--The Patriot’s fathers chafe against what they see as ingratitude for their service in preserving Britain’s empire.  “I lost a leg fighting for King George, and now he cuts off my other leg with his taxes!” Mr. Howard complains near the start of the movie.  Of course, he has more to complain about when Tavington arrives and visits the same brutal treatment on him and his family that colonial forces under Benjamin Martin had visited on the Cherokees during the last war.  Well, not quite the same.  Tavington does not use pieces of his victims as bargaining chips or incentivize murder with a scalp bounty. 

The narrative seeks to balance Martin’s past actions with his current feelings about what he has done, but those feelings do not diminish the concrete rewards he continues to enjoy owing to the exact same set of actions. Gabriel Martin tells us that all his life, men have bought his father drinks because of Fort Wilderness; he does not mention his father refusing to drink them. Men choose to fight for Benjamin Martin because of Fort Wilderness. His house is being rebuilt for him on land he took from the Cherokees by committing atrocities at Fort Wilderness.  The wages of imperialist violence have served him well.

It seems worth noting that while Martin’s arc ends with him killing a British soldier, in some respects, Abe Woodhull’s begins in the same way.  He makes several attempts to resist or give up spying in season one, but Baker’s death is the action from which there is no going back.  When his wife Mary asks him if Baker’s death meant nothing, he replies, “It meant everything!” He ends his explanation to her by declaring “I will not stop until every king’s man goes back to England.” His choice of words is interesting here.  He took no pleasure in killing Baker and he does not want to kill British soldiers in the future; he just wants them out of his home.  Obviously, his views evolve a great deal over the next three seasons, but ultimately he does not lose sight of what the real enemy is.  Whether it is Baker’s untimely sense of honor or the best chance he ever gets to kill Simcoe, Abe is not going to let one British soldier stop him from doing what he believes is right.

There is a degree of understanding for British soldiers as people in the young patriots of Turn that is completely foreign to the fathers of The Patriot.  One pervasive example is that the preferred moniker for such soldiers in Turn is “bloodyback.” Having lived in British-occupied Long Island, the young patriots are all too aware of how that term originated, and as the audience we see several floggings of British soldiers administered by British officers.  Imperialism harms its enforcers, not just those whom it subjugates.  Meanwhile, the moniker used in The Patriot is “redcoat:” ironic given how many characters have donned “red coats” themselves in the not so distant past.  

The fathers in both stories are afflicted not so much by poor memories as by short-sightedness.  Like Benjamin Martin, Richard Woodhull is a supporter of imperialism until it threatens the life of his son, but he catches a lot more criticism for his choices throughout the series than Martin ever does.  “You’re a businessman, and you think the British are a safe bet,” Mary chides him before encouraging him to prioritize his family over his politics, as she has done.  He only takes her advice when Abe has a rope around his neck, having clung so tightly to the benefits of imperialism that he very nearly loses his only son.  In this story, it is the children of independence who guide their imperialist fathers, showing them that change is possible.  Meanwhile, the valorization of Martin’s gains through imperialist violence in The Patriot assures the audience that no change was necessary to win the fight for independence.  Small wonder that movie came to enjoy such popularity during the second Bush administration.

[vmpirevnom]

I made something

[amtrak12]

Okay I still don't know what the pocket watches are in Pushing Daisies, but I learned grave robbers who stole bodies for anatomists to dissect were called 'resurrectionists' and um... I feel that's relevant to Ned and his powers.

[paganminiskirt]

Jack Baker is one of if not the most genuinely terrifying antagonists in the entire RE franchise and I think the fact that the same game wherein he grabs you and forces you to look him in the eye as a section of his skull regrows around his visibly pulsating brain also features him stumbling around as a pair of disembodied pants and fretting over whether or not his bug wife heard him say something rude about bugs. I think that’s actually a reason why everyone seems to find him so crushingly intimidating. Not something that happens in spite of it.

[lettherebemonsters]

God speed to Head Baker Charles Joughin for surviving the sinking of the Titanic through sheer English spite and alcohol, as well as eventually being a participant in WW2.

RIP you badass.

[weirdlookindog]

Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave #1 - 4 (Monsterverse, 2010 -2013). Covers by Basil Gogos, Rick Baker, Terry Wolfinger & Nik Poliwko.

[partiallypearl]

MAGGIE AND LEIA IN SEASON 1 EPISODE 10: HEART SHAPE

[crackmori]

I'm two days into college And I'm three lectures behind There's this guy, let's name him Colin He says he wants to be mine But it doesn't really sit with me quite right 'Cause he doesn't really like the things I like And I keep accidentally locking myself out of my dorm in the middle of the night

Kel I know you sent this

"how interesting.."

"I know this is Headspace and not Faraway but me and who?" (Biscuit please notice meeee)

"no one, hero. your ass could never score any bitches."

"Sigh... God, please strike Mari down for her sins. They were atrocious."

"Not as atrocious as you yourself."

". . . . I hate you."

[lyledebeast]

It’s probably because they’re both so much taller than everyone else on the show that it’s impossible to not compare them, but I’ve been thinking a lot of about John Graves Simcoe and Ensign Baker.

So many times we see Baker either being singled out in ways that make him uncomfortable or appearing suddenly while things are happening that make him uncomfortable.  He looks like he wants to disappear, but his height makes that even more difficult. Perhaps it is embarrassment about his height that makes him keep some distance between himself and other people at all times.. In the scenes he shares with Mary Woodhull, they almost never appear in the same frame; rather, the camera focuses on whichever one is speaking.  He only appears in the same frame as Abe when it is absolutely necessary, such as when he helps Abe up after Simcoe’s attack and when he quietly explains the dueling rules while serving as his second.  In spite of towering over his costars, Thomas Keegan makes Baker one of the least intimidating characters on the show through his performance.

Samuel Roukin’s Simcoe, though, takes up all the space his height affords him and more.  In his scenes with both Abe and Anna Strong, not only do he and his scene partner occupy the same frame, many frames are wide shots that emphasize how much space Simcoe actually has and that no one is near enough to hear what he is saying.  There is no reason for him to stand practically on top of Abe or Anna except that he is using his height to physically intimidate them.  While he feels differently about them and believes he is pursuing them with totally different aims, these framing choices reveal his behavior towards them as functionally the same.

 And then, of course, there’s the scene where Simcoe pushes Baker against the wall outside the Woodhull’s house and orders that he give up the details about why Mary is currently inside, destroying the kitchen in a fury.  The shot reveals that Baker is the taller of the two, but neither of them notice in this fascinating juxtaposition between the British solider who seeks information to do harm and the one who has more information than he wants.  It is a tragic irony that Abe, who wants so badly to kill Simcoe, succeeds only in killing the British soldier who has tried so hard to keep him and his family safe. 

[vmpirevnom]

I’m sick so I’m not at school rn. Anyway-