#because you know what? he's a child of irish immigrants

[lnsfawwi]

Here's a thought:

kid Steve speaks better Gaelic than English. their pastor sometimes takes care of Steve when Sarah is working and he'd teach Steve English but, as one can imagine, the accent is not good. Steve is also partially deaf, he doesn't always control his volume well, so he speaks broken, heavily accented English, and that isn't a winning combo for friendships on top of his firecracker personality.

enters Bucky, the popular kid who somehow decides that Steve is his best friend in the world.

Bucky's grandparents immigrated from England, his dad is Romanian Jew. Bucky is not a very devoted Catholic, and the family still celebrates major Jewish holidays. they even hold a mini bar mitzvah for Bucky's 13 birthday.

the point is, Bucky has a fairly neutral accent that gets more Brooklyn by the day, he is also some kind of a polyglot. he speaks also Yiddish, he learns Italian from the neighbors, and French at school.

Bucky never makes fun of Steve's accent or gets frustrated when Steve can't quite get the pronunciation right. they read together, literally. Bucky would have one of his favorite novels, and he'd read the words out loud for Steve, when it's Steve's turn, he listens and helps him when Steve struggles.

Bucky is also the one to suggest they create a sign language of their own. just simple daily vocabulary like 'food', 'movies', 'home'. they add 'punk/jerk' and 'sorry' to their vocabulary after a short while.

and the thing is, losing Bucky is more than just missing a person in his life, it's that the most basic act of talking - not even about him - just talking, in his own native language, is a constant reminder of this loss. they don't have only their own sign language. in a way, English is their language too. losing Bucky is losing the languages, the tool of communication and connecting with other people and the world around him.

[godeaterazathoth]

Issues I have with ikevamp

That I’m venting here because they won’t leave my skull

*Content warning, we’re talking about men in the past, they did some bad stuff*

Part 1, historical inaccuracies

I’m I history nut so this really gets to me, since I know the deep details of these peoples lives.

The timeline, ok so the game takes place in 18th France, correct me if I’m wrong but I think it is in the second empire (1852-1870) considered there is a noble class, yet you can clearly see the Eiffel Tower which was completed in 1889, there is no mention of the 1889 exposition, so it must be after the tower had become permanent, by then the 3rd republic was around, if we are in the republic the Count wouldn’t be called that by the npcs at all the parties he goes to, no matter which we’re in, NOBODY mentions Napoleon III at, NOT EVAN HIS UNCLE (WHOSE SOMEHOW BECAME CASS CONSCIOUS!)

How does the time travel work, example, Dazai died in 1948, his plan was seemingly to wait until he’s born in 1909 then kill himself as a baby, but then he decides to use the magic door, what are the consequences of 2 Dazais existing at once or him erasing himself from history, he’s a pretty important literary figure, does someone else replace him or does the space time continuum collapse?? Is the future Vlad sees set in stone or can it be changed, just copy someone else’s time travel bit!!!

So straight up these guys aren’t who they say they are, we’ll go through 1 by 1

Napoleon- doesn’t mention he left the love of his life to marry a girl 20 years his junior (like think how interesting it would be if he’s conflicted about love cuz he had to give it up for political reasons) -that scene where MC talks about all the ‘good’ that he did in Europe, like committing war crimes against the Spanish and Portuguese and Eastern Europeans, being a coloniser, killing the slaves he freed when they asked for more rights, killing thousands of men in a meaningless war (ligit H*tler vibes)

Arthur- goofy irl, literally believed in fairies, had 5 children and married twice but he never mentions any of this, he cheated on his first wife while she was dying of TB, he was a liberal unionist (tldr didn’t like Irish people) he was anti-immigration, might have committed fraud. We’ll get to the other issues I have with him.

Leonardo- fruity as hell, vegetarian

Mozart- they got his character completely wrong, the guy was a complete man child, vain, broke, by the end of his life his career fell off (Beethoven better composer), in love with his cousin 🤢, had a s*at fetish 🤢🤢🤢. The hole Salieri thing didn’t happen.

Vincent- they made him too mentally stable, I’m all for him being meek, but the guy had serious issues that they ignore, he ate paint thinner, was rejected by his both crushes, WHY DOES HE HAVE BOTH EARS, DID IT GROW BACK, THEY SHOULD HAVE LEFT HIM WITH ONLY ONE, also he should be ginger smh. Oh yeah and they never mentioned the s*ecide attempt.

Theo- doesn’t mention his wife, or son, WHO HE NAMED AFTER VINCENT, his wife is the person responsible for Vincent’s work not being completely forgotten, was way nicer irl.

Issac- tbh hotter irl, low key ace, maybe a fruit, kinda mean, the only thing they got right was the major virgin vibes.

Jean- WHY MAN!??!! Even if the didn’t want a lesbian route, they could have gone with any other guy from the 100 years war, Edward black prince, idk WHY GENDER BEND ONE OF THE MOST PROMINENT WOMEN IN HISTORY, I’m fine with the delusional trans dude lie, but they say that he was a guy all along, THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF HIM BEING BURNT AT THE STAKE IF HE WASN’T CROSS DRESSING???!!! was he double cross dressing??? This is the worst of them all, give me the girl boss we deserve (revers fate)

Dazai- not depressed enough imo, he was a leftist, again missing wife, their were two su*ecide attempts, guy lived through fire bombing, had a few children that he is fine to erase from existence.

Shakespeare- probably a fruit, again never mentioned his wife and kids, btw the way he talks is annoying, some people don’t think he’s real.

Faust- NOT A REAL PERSON.

Sanson- too young, this guys is 67, really liked the guillotine, just saw execution as his job didn’t really care, had a wife and kids.

Vlad- Ok is he supposed to be Vlad THE impaler? Cuz he’s not evil enough, or is he a Dracula reference, cuz he can’t dance that dance either, why did they call him Vlad if he isn’t a blood thirsty war criminal.

Count- not enough history to work with.

Part 2, problematic moments

So I ha have seen some posts on the low key misogynistic way the MC is written and treated and there are a lot of issues wit white washing history so another trigger warning ⚠️

Misogyny- the MC of this game is not the best, I know she’s a self insert but she has no backbone at all. She lacks agency I’m most of the routes, like the MC getting kidnapped is a troupe in all these games, but Emma can escape on her own, Kate has ⚽️, even Alice had more depth to her, seems the only thing MC can do is cry and wait to be saved, I swear she gets kidnapped once in every route, I think they could have given her more character to work with. Another thing, but Jean being a man is bad, really bad, she’s a feminist icon but they made her a man, it’s sought of saying that women aren’t capable of this so she had to have actually been a man.

Handling of SA, important one here, I’m ok with the flirty guy, but I really hate Arthur, he doesn’t just flirt with her in chapter 1 he assaults her and acts like he did her a service, and she just forgives him!?! I’m fine with a guy that sleeps around, I like Jin and Nokto fine, but the way Arthur talks about women, always calling them Birds (if they were going for English slang it doesn’t work cuz he doesn’t have a cockney accent) or worse Skirts, it’s dehumanising, and shows that to him women are vehicles for sexual pleasure and aren’t on an equal level of understanding. There are smaller parts to, Leo kisses her without consent, the Count hides the truth from her, idk but Theo calling her a ‘hound’ sounds like he’s calling her something else…

Minor points on classism, I’m not expecting the communist manifesto, but all these games aren’t very good at dealing with class deviation. In Vlad’s route, the orphan boy thinks he can impress the rich girl, this is the 19th century, capitalism is on the rise, but there’s no comment about how it’s impossible. The little school Napoleons runs is strange, considering he was in a position where benefited from poor people existing and staying poor, ( side note, he’s teaching them swordsmanship when ww1 is right around the corner, just saying they won’t need it in the military) called MC out as a social climber, these games sought of depict the past through rosé tinted glasses, there’s only passing reference to how fucked people were in the past, Also all the historical inaccuracies above tie to this.

Anyway love to hear some other opinions, (I started playing this game before my transition and have always thought it it was wired, it’s my personal least favourite just cuz I couldn’t really get into any of the guys, my OC ended up as a Carmilla reference so….)

I have seen a post talking about some of the issues before so that’s what got me to write this out, if you disagree or want to add anything I’m all ears 👂

Thanks for reading 💗💖💖💕💓💝💗🥰🥰🥰❤️✨✨✨✨❤️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[februaryschopin]

(audience booing track) okay hear me out before you guys throw your tomatoes at me because i killed off a previous chara i had just HEAR ME OUT… as always i’m 9688385 dms behind but trust me i will get back to you all one like at a time :-) it’s me anwar (not hadid) + thank u! yapping below on a particular visitor from allara!

liam fanning-ngoc, 25 / general (footnotes wip if i ever get to it lmao)

ENTER the life of a former weird boy (still is actually) from the allara server and more specifically from boston, massachusetts, usa where finding a wasian of irish and hoa vietnamese chinese descent is as easy as 1-2-3. his parents had a meet-cute back in their college days so whenever liam tells people how his white dad and asian mother met he’s always met with dreaded questions alluding to his dad going out of his way to find an asian wife (you know what i’m talking about don’t play with me) and liam’s like “yo dude what are u talking about lmao my dad met my mom on accident in boston college’s dining hall”. SO the now berklee college of music professor marries his long time girlfriend, a vietnamese chinese immigrant woman from terra who’s a musical therapist for children

all was technically well until some unaddressed hiccups concerning their marriage tho? as in cultural differences and backlash on the mother’s end who refuses to fully assimilate to allaran/american society which didn’t translate too well for the white side of his family that are “pseudo true” americans as far as having more than 4+ grandparents who were born in allara. so plenty of misunderstanding stemming from xenophobia and liam’s dad is a deadbeat emotionally especially bringing up the fact that liam is very visibly mixed looking and not at all white passing (more on that with his first cousin on the fanning side of the family *side eyes emoji*) which made him the butt of the joke for shitty “stinky lunches” and anti-viet/sinophobic sentiment while growing up overweight and as a continual afterthought

his dad is an amazing lover, a wonderful husband, a love bomber to infinity which is probably what convinced his mother!! BUT.. the downside like we mentioned above is having an emotionally neglectful/deadbeat dad who simply filed an app to terrascape for a kid by the expectations of his wife (lowkey to shut her up hahahahshafjgj ah shit) and the same shitty tired ass excuse of being “married to his work/career” comes into question. bro can’t name any of the 2 childhood friends liam grew up with, but his mother can. after a certain age his father ends up not knowing a damn thing about his kid and i think. at the end of the day. it’s because he’s unable to fathom his son’s biracial identity and refuses to help confront his son’s difficulties.. with such? especially considering that his wife raises liam with a strong arm because she REFUSES to have a useless whitewashed child that embarrasses her so.

this is the part where liam’s dad starts to hate his wife who is a person outside of being an object of his desires which is fucked as we all know and spoiler alert: he doesn’t have the fucking balls to break up/divorce her because men love making their problems everyone else’s so :-) but do keep in mind that liam’s mom isn’t emotionally avail either, very much the “here’s some fruit i cut for you” immigrant mother after she emotionally abuses you because she always thinks what’s best for her is what’s best for You so no she’s a mother who never apologizes but will. cut up some damn fruit or cook his fave northern viet dishes for him and it’s probably why liam was a fat lil boy

he’s def that weird kid you shared an honors class with that people just left alone after making shitty jokes about? but you feel kinda bad for him despite not knowing much about him? liam grew up on making friends from rpg games, forums, aside from the 2 buddies he’s known all his life. he was a band kid and was fairly good at playing the upright bass, but didn’t have aspirations to pursue music the same manner his parents did. instead he’s working on his 20th-21st century comic book/manga collection and can flawlessly imitate the voice of bruce lee speaking in english (and LOVED play fighting with his loser friends after binge watching 1970s hong kong martial arts movies).

tho eventually he stops feeling bad for himself (which honestly partial to blame is america’s amazing job at emasculating asian men which is totally a conditioned culprit!!!) and ends up losing the weight upon sophomore year of college, gains an interest in fitness and attempts to finding a personal style which honestly still he’s not really fashion conscious. painfully looks like a frat boy and is used to the allegations but the fuck ass loser in him hasn’t left, but he realizes how people treat him in the last recent years due to being relatively conventionally handsome(?) and only hot people get to be weird and have niche interests apparently

AND ALAS it’s been three years since he graduated from umass boston with a vietnam + ireland flag sash draped around his neck lookin like a goof but reppin hard for both sides lmfao and rn he lives in the megabuildings with a roommate (plot? anyone?)! a bachelor’s in communications + marketing with a minor in digital arts. since he was a kid he used to mess around on a hand-me-down terra-esque-photoshop-based-software and since then i’m afraid we having the coming of herb lubalin except in the year 3024. bro was making his family homemade birthday card graphics, eventually websites and now is working on prototype designs for apps, etc. he works for the gaming company that has launched the ever so successful iron fist which has been his latest project atm and man is he psyched, so much that he was offered to position in their physical office in terra’s server so long as he migrates with the proper visitation/work documents AND YEAAAH i’ll quit yapping here bg-wise but i can happily :-) expand if needed be. i fucking love expanding..

personality

truthfully and i know i always say this but he’s definitely leaning towards the ambivert side of people, give him a topic that he’s well informed on/interested or if you guys have a common interest then BOOM. it’s all over, i fear that you have a yapper in him. but that aside genuinely quite friendly aaaaaaand keenly leans into his intuition too a lot of the time? naturally curious about people and things so believe me when i say he just Has to fuck around and find out or else it’ll kill him to not? want to do that? very trustworthy, almost just as reliable, enjoys being someone’s rock or pillar to lean on because he didn’t have that as much growing up so it’s really the least that he can do. half a strategic planner, half a “fuck it we ball get up everyone today’s the day”, one hundred percent hypocritical and conflicting and very much a social/emotional chameleon. despite being a yapper also do trust me when i say that his yapping is purposeful (the aquarius mercury is doing so much heavy lifting in his chart). uh also is pro-terra bc bro is not tryna die out he just would like to enjoy his time in this simulated reality so!! idk man people hate him for his boyish whimsical nature but that’s neither here or there

[cherrybombfangirl]

Hey you! Yeah you! Interested in my in progress Marvel OC Fanfic?

Ao3 Link: Only Human (7244 words) by cherrybombfangirl)/

Wanna read a Marvel fanfic that’s mainly an OC insert but also fixing everything that’s wrong with the MCU? It includes fixing what needs fixing, and my OC and all the small OCs that come with her.

Yeah you wanna read it!

The fic includes:

My OC Stacy who is the daughter of Steve and Bucky, a chaotic bisexual ADHDer, a maliciously compliant little shit, a gremlin but also a sweet ray of sunshine, coming from a mixed faith family, and just being the bane of the US government/Tony Stark’s existence in general

Fixing the erasure of representation issue- not just the whitewashing! Especially Steve’s disability and being an irish immigrant, also aggressively queer as he should be

^^^ and Stucky Supremacy :D 

Autistic, Trans, Asexual, Bisexual, and Jewish Peter Parker! (also he actually acts like a teenager and not a fucking child, the fuck writers and fans)

In fact, all of the characters that should be Jewish are actually Jewish (Wanda and Peitro, Kate Bishop, Bucky, Moon Knight, etc etc), because we all know how terrible the MCU is at respecting the source material

No romanticizing Tony’s shitty behavior and getting called out on said behavior multiple times

Civil War is actually about Steve Rogers and not just Iron Man 4 :) (also Tony being proven very very wrong)

Actually addressing how bad the Sokovia Accords are and how awfully they treat people with superpowers (and how it’s really just the US gov. trying to have their own little superhero army and how that’s fucked up)

Fixing this issue the MCU has where they reduce characters to a few traits and take away what’s at the core (especially with newly introduced characters)

Fixing Age of Ultron and Endgame (because AoU was a trash fire and Endgame was a good concept but terrible execution)

Did you know Peggy’s character was based on a character from the comics named Cynthia Glass who was a Nazi Spy? “Based on” as in the writers took Cynthia’s character and just slapped Peggy’s name on her? Yeah so, Peggy’s actually gonna be a Nazi spy in this fic and her sus behavior (shooting at Cap, Operation Paperclip, etc) won’t be ignored or brushed off

^^^ in fact she manipulates Steve into letting her have his and Bucky’s daughter so that HYDRA could have their own little supersoldier lab rat and also Peggy not being a good mom and handing Stacy over to HYDRA like it’s nothing

The ending to Endgame actually makes sense (and no Steve undoing his entire arc because WTF WAS THAT-)

More time saying fuck you to the US government because we hate them in this house, and we stan Stacy for doing everything she can to be the bane of it’s existence. Everyone but Tony is right behind her :) 

All the Young Avengers are closer in age because they should be, also they’re all younger than 20 because that should be happening they’re not supposed to be adults

Lots of trauma and mental health issues for everyone, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety and more!

More time with Nat and Yelena BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T GET ENOUGH T-T

[usaigi]

Mexican Matt Murdock Headcannons

Yay my meta was well received thank y'all. Here are some hc as a treat :)

Jacobo "Jack" Murdock is from Monterrey 🤠🇲🇽 Super Norteño, he sounds like a cowboy. Has the thickest accent, it embarrass Matt so much

Jack never went to high school and tells Matt to copy how the people on TV talk. They speak "proper" Spanish.

Dad's great great great... granddad was an Irish soldier in the Saint Patrick's Battalion. Hence "Murdock"

He was boxing in Mexico when he met Roscoe Sweeney. Sweeney promised he'd sponsor Jack's work visa and help him immigrate to the US

Sweeney never followed through with the sponsorship. He'll get around to it, don't worry. But as long as Jack's undocumented, he can't box for other promoters/organizers

He would go back to Mexico but he's making more money here than he could back home. Plus he met someone.

Margarita "Maggie" was training to be a nun until she saw him

Baby Mateo Murdock takes after her. He has her eyes, red hair, and pale skin Maggie worries will burn in the sun.

(TW Intrusive thoughts/Post Partrum Psychosis) Maggie worries a lot. About Matty choking on his blanket, about SIDS, about how she betrayed God, about how her child carries her sin, about how the devil possessed her husband, how maybe she should borrow Mario's car with Matty in the back seat so she can drive them off a bridge so at least one of them gets the change to go to Heaven

She nearly kills him.

Jack calls Father Lantom and their marriage is annulled. Maggie leaves to get help and doesn't come back.

Jack still misses her. Matt never knows.

So many nicknames: Matty, Canelo (Cinnamon), Chiltepin (Small Peper), Rojo (Red), Tomatillo (Tomato), Chapulín Colorado, Diablito (little devil), Irlandés (Irish. Later takes a 23andme and finds out he's only 5% Irish)

Jack doesn't speak a lot of English. Matt becomes his personal translator by 1st grade

After the accident, Matt even has to translate what the nurse says for his dad. There's an interpreter when the doctors need to talk to his dad. It hurt hearing about his diagnosis and treatment from the doctor. It hurts all over hearing the interpreter repeat it to his dad.

Matt feels so guilty he can't help translate documents for his dad anymore.

His dad's funeral is the first time Matt meets his extended family. One of his Tia offers to take him in but that would mean leaving New York/the USA and going to Mexico.

He says no. New York is his home.

Sister Maggie is one of the few nuns who speak Spanish. And the only one who will read him poetry. She reads him Jose Marti, Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes. Matt likes her. Even if she's strict and doesn't tolerate his sass.

Nina Rosario from In The Heights Kinnie

Almost cried the first time he heard "Breathe," no song has even spoken to him more

NINA: They are all counting on me to succeed I am the one who made it out The one who always made the grade But maybe I should've just stayed home... When I was a child I stayed wide awake, climbed to the highest place, on every fire escape, restless to climb .... I got every scholarship Saved every dollar The first to go to college

Takes a 3000-level Spanish for Elektra. Should have thought this through, Elektra speaks it with an Ethpañol accent. Cringe.

But the class is interesting. So he takes another. And another. And soon enough he has enough credits for a Spanish language and literature major.

Eavesdrops on a lot of conversations. Both because no one assumes he knows Spanish and because of his senses

Foggy: Do you have health insurance?

Matt: of course *pulls out his Vick's Vaporub*

Can't eat spicy food. This face turns as red as his hair :( The other Defenders/HFH tease him for this

Dislikes Spanglish because text to speech/screenreaders don’t recognize it

Calls La Virgen de Guadalupe Mom

Drinks Corona :D

[denimbex1986]

"It's a really difficult one to, to try and sum up, but it's about this man who's lost his parents when he was a boy. And the basic premise of it is a very beautiful one; what would you say to your parents that you weren't able to ever say to them before? He meets his parents as, as they are now; and they're the same age, he talks to his mum and dad...when they're the same age as he is now. And he has to let them know who he is, and so it's a very beautiful premise. A difficult one to, to - I keep saying to my friends you know: 'Just go see it, just go see it.' Because you're like: 'Oh my god, it sounds crazy', but it's a really beautiful idea. Because, you know, so, so much of us, you know, so many of us think about people. You know, I was walking down Fifth Avenue today and I was thinking: 'Most of these people are probably having conversations with, with people they haven't seen in 15 years.' You know, we spend so much of our time in memory, you know, and so - that's where the ghost is. Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"What's so extraordinary about this film is that you're always the child, aren't you? When your parents...and I love this idea that you know, we don't do any, in the movie we don't do any - like, in the theater you can play several different parts, and, and the audience immediately believes it. But in the movies, sometimes we've got to put like a nuclear glow around them to show that they're ghosts. We do none of that stuff; it's just exactly the way our memory works, which is, you know, you remember the people exactly as you remember them and not - you don't really think about logic too much. So all the conversations are very beautiful and loving, but they're also kind of thorny because they've got a lot of kind of attitudes that would have existed around the nineteen - late 1980s. And he has to sort of, in some ways, kind of come out to them and it's very - it's beautiful because it talks about the accidental cruelty of families. You know, that we can have great love, but also your family can say things to you that are pretty bruising. But it's so compassionate and it's so tender, and people when they go and see the movie, you know, you can audibly hear - I wasn't able to see it for ages because of the strike - and I went to see it in, for the first time with a big group of 500 people, in London and just, people were audibly weeping. And so to be able to, I don't know, capture the audience imagination in that way is, is pretty wonderful."

"It was incredible you know, because Jamie Bell and Claire Foy play my parents, who are younger than me...It's sort of a crazy idea but it's got this epic, it's got this epic subject matter to it, which is - it's literally about life and death. And it's so, so beautiful and so incredibly; I'm proud of it - I find it very moving even talking about it. So, but yeah, so it's, it's really just very, very specific, and we shot it in the childhood home of the director, which is extraordinary. He lived there when he was nine or ten, so we went back into his, his home, so it was sort of magical; the whole thing was really magical."

"...He'll kill me for saying this but Paul was in an ad for sausages in Ireland. Now he's so cool. No - he's still an ad for sausages; he'll always be an ad for sausages. Easy, tiger. So, and then of course, I knew him from 'Normal People', which I'm sure everybody knows him from. And so we were required to forge this sort of huge kind of chemistry and intimacy in this, in this, in this movie and, you know -

...We did a little sort of a sketch for Comic Relief in, in London, but certainly nothing like, like the intimacy we have to forge in, in this one. And so, yeah, it was just one of those wonderful, wonderful experiences. I, I love him dearly."

"...You know, I think storytelling is so much part of Irish culture. I think probably because of immigration. You know, so many Irish people moved over here, you know, and so how you keep people alive is by telling stories about them. You know and so Ir - Irish people - you know, of course I'm biased - but I do, I do feel like there's, there's, we've had a lot, we've had a bad; a lot of bad knocks, but I love it. It's fun; I'm going back there for Christmas obviously. Well, I don't wanna, you know, I don't want to fall into cliche but we'll have, we'll have a couple of drinks."

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hi, in the HTTYD episode "Tone Deaf", you had mentioned that Smotlouts song was a ripoff of a similar song (repetitive melody with increasing pitch). What is the artist/song title of the song that Snotlout was imitating? I remember hearing this on a radio station and have been unable to identify it. Thank you.

Hey there! I'm stoked about this because you're sneaking into my passion for folk music! Be prepared to get 500% more information than you needed! ;)

For starters, I'm glad good search engines exist to refind what you were referencing. In this 2016 post about Tone Death, I commented Hiccup's song started melodically similarly to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," while later elements of the song sounded familiar, but I was unable to place it. I'm still unable to place it, though it sounds like another old-fashioned band tune.

Since you mentioned a repetitive melody with increasing pitch and that matches When Johnny Comes Marching Home, I'm assuming that's what you were thinking about!

I don't mind that RTTE 'used' When Johnny Comes Marching Home. It wouldn't be a ripoff in my book. It makes music in RTTE boringly unoriginal, but composers closely mirror songs (especially folk songs) constantly, and a composer would know that, if he modeled something off a famous melody like When Johnny Comes Marching Home, it'd be noticed.

I'm not going to assume knowledge or nationality here, though I know many folks online will be well-acquainted with the song. So I'll start by saying there's no artist particular to it. There's technically not even one concrete title since it's a folk song from the United States Civil War, and as with all folk songs, that means variation, variation, variation. As a child, I learned it as The Ants Go Marching One by One! There's another children's variation, The Animals Went in Two by Two.

I have to nerd out and blab on the song since your ask gives me the excuse!

Irish-born immigrant Patrick Gilmore, one of the most well-known bandleaders of his time, is said to have composed When Johnny Comes Marching Home, with lyrics, in 1863 while serving the Union in the US Civil War. It was published on September 26 under the pseudonym Louis Lambert. The song became popular with both Unionists and Confederates, as it sang about the desire to see soldiers return home. However, Gilmore acknowledged he'd adapted an older melody. Where this older melody came from, though, isn't clear-cut.

The best claims I've seen point out the tune was published in July 1863 as Johnny Fill Up the Bowl, arranged by J. Durnal. Well, where did Durnal arrange it from? I've read Johnny Fill Up the Bowl was a popular drinking song with soldiers. But that's not the origin point, either.

There's a branch of this folk tune that's Irish, Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye, published contemporarily to When Johnny Comes Marching Home. (Hmhmhmhm Gilmore was Irish.) This publication was in 1867 by Joseph B. Geoghegan. I read that was originally under a different melody, though I couldn't find a scan of the sheet music to verify that with my own two eyes.

Tracing the song back further isn't as certain. Folklorists have pointed out melodic similarities to John Anderson, My Jo. That came from Robert Burns circa 1789, but even he was placing lyrics to an earlier melody. His poem was a polite change from bawdy lyrics that existed previously - a song running back to at least 1630. There are tons of variant titles to John Anderson, My Jo, and there are reportedly about forty variations to the tune (everywhere from Sweden... to Wales... to the USA's Johnny).

Going further back then that, there's less consensus. One scholar has suggested a connection to The Three Ravens, which was first referenced in print in 1611, but would be even older than that. Another song that's been proposed is I Am the Duke of Norfolk or Paul's Steeple, first put to print in 1651, but possibly arising from an event that occurred in 1561. Presumably a ballad arose within a week of a fire that burned down a steeple at Old Saint Paul's in London.

Of course, if you listen to something like Paul's Steeple, it's quite different from Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye - but that's the nature of centuries-long folk song evolution, where new sounds, shifting melodies, different lyrics, and more spawn across generations. It's like languages... Old English ain't intelligible to today's English, but there's a direct chain of evolution linking back.

As an American, I can say When Johnny Comes Marching Home is one of the most ubiquitous folk melodies around me. Its references typically retain military connotations -- to give one example, in Guns N' Roses's Civil War.

If you heard it recently on the radio, that's heckin' cool! I know that this song keeps appearing and reappearing in pop culture in different iterations. I'm so removed from pop culture I have no idea what you might've heard that's recent. Maybe now that you know it's citing When Johnny Comes Marching Home helps! Best of luck finding what you heard.

[fortunatetragedy]

hello hello!!!! super curious about 🪐 saturn and ⭐️ star for the ask game :D

Aaaah I woke up to an ask from Moriah hello hello!

This is from the Space-Related Ask Game I reblogged last night.

🪐 Saturn - What do your characters think about marriage? Are any of them married?

Oh man you picked a good one lol.

I'm going to need to layer this answer.

Sullivan was raised Catholic in an Irish immigrant family. He is his parents' only child, and they had him young (Pa was 18, Ma was 16.) He left home when he was 15 because he finally got big enough to knock his old man out in a fight.

(His father was a miner who started drinking when Sullivan was around 9 or 10 to cope with depression and chronic pain. Grandpa Sullivan had loads of kids and was also physically abusive.)

Royston's father disappeared when he was small, and his uncle moved in to "help" his mother with the four kids left behind.

Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to have Royston's childhood trauma in your head all day.

(Royston's mother died delivering a stillborn baby. The uncle, who would have greatly benefitted from modern therapeutic practices and medication, made Royston help him bury them out in the woods. He was six. The next 6-7 years they made each others' lives hell, and Royston eventually killed him.)

So Sullivan thinks of marriage as something he should have done, because Sullivan wants to be Good, but Sullivan is also so homosexual he never could have pulled off a marriage for appearances or convenience unless he found someone like Gott who also needed a beard. This was one of several reasons Sullivan's career was kneecapped.

And Royston, as far as I know, never had a "marry her for her money and then take all her shit" arc, but he had plenty of other parasitic homosexual relationships that netted him the same result. Otherwise he considers marriage a legal contract that allows a man to own a woman #Royston is a feminist #it's 1873.

~*~And then they meet each other.~*~

Long story short they've been time looping for so long they feel like they've been together for years and years and years. But even the first time they met it was like "Oh damn hi who are you and can I spend the rest of my life figuring it out?"

If Sullivan and Royston could marry, they would. By Book 3, they might as well be married. Sullivan wants to call Royston his husband in Book 2 and Hofer and I have decided to just go ahead and let him LOL.

God they suck.

⭐️ Star - Do you have a favourite character? If so, why are they your favourite?

No contest. It's Sullivan.

When I wrote the first draft I had trouble wrapping my head around why he was so stalwart in going after the missing recruits even when events in the 1874 timeline are loudly yelling at him to turn his happy ass back around. I was jokingly referring to him as Lawful Good, but that's reductionist, and I knew it.

My roommate (who is autistic) pointed out he read as autistic in draft 2.

He made so much more sense after she said that LOL. Nothing about him or the way I wrote him changed, I just spent less time going WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

(Turning around isn't an option, but I needed to know what made Sullivan not turn around, you know what I mean? Besides "He can't." Because for Sullivan it's a "He won't turn around," not a "He can't turn around." It's his principles and his devotion to his job and his men that make him not turn around, not blind duty or obsession or all the reasons other people can't turn around.)

Besides that:

He's fucking funny.

He's kind and patient with the men under his command.

He's a horse girl.

He would talk for 200 pages about camels if I let him.

He never judges Royston, and asks questions to figure out why he's acting the way he is.

Big Uncle Energy.

There isn't much I can throw at him plot-wise that he isn't able to sort out after the initial shock wears off.

Uses crutches as a weapon in Book 2.

Not even a little willing to sacrifice Royston and makes sure he doesn't end up in situations where he has to pass a morality check by himself (he won't LOL.)

His friendship with Hofer pretty much saved the series.

Talking about Sullivan has me all hyped up to finish writing Chapter 8 now, thank youuuu <3

[crimeronan]

as an Irish person reading trc/tdt what do you think of Maggies characterisation of the Lynch family??

oh i LOVE this question. anon so kindly giving me permission to infodump....

the short answer is: i love it?? i love it. i have varying quibbles about how niall's "redemption arc" is done and stuff like that, but purely on the irish side of things, i love it

further necessary context: i'm irish-american a few generations removed from ireland (who happens to have a hyperfixation on irish myth), my closest familial connections in the country are some distant cousins that my great-aunt traced recently. direct relations to her, but given that she is like 96, much less direct to me. so my perspective is very different from that of an irish person raised n living in ireland, & most of what i love most about the lynch family is directly related to diaspora and intergenerational trauma stuff

i said i was gonna infodump and then couldn't decide where to start. waow. okay so i've talked before about most of the worldbuilding in the dreamer trilogy being based in irish myth - ronan being from the otherworld (eldritch god, fairy, same thing), fintan mac bochra and the hawk of achill, not giving your true name/address to people at the fairy market, etc. these stories are woven through the whole fabric of the series

then the concept of irish storytelling itself is Also woven through the whole series, on both a meta and in-canon level

traditional irish storytellers will take a myth and make it their own, you can trace the origins of different tales back dozens or hundreds of years. the goal isn't to tell the story the way it's been told in generations past, but instead to tell it how You'd tell it. so there are these books repurposing irish myth in this unique way, but also these characters who are all so in love with storytelling in their own ways

you can see it in how niall and aurora tell their stories, how niall's always have a focus on action and tragedy and grisly death while aurora's are more focused on the love and the feelings and the soft fade-out of a tragic hero

you can see it in how declan has inherited niall's propensity for storytelling (the twitter confirmation of his middle name being "tadhg" still makes me Big Eyes Emoji) and also inherited niall's propensity for reckless idiocy, Geis Of Bullshit indeed.

then there's the way that declan and ronan both find themselves playing out different parts of niall's worst traits, how intergenerational trauma seems inescapable, how every damn person in the family is So Mentally Ill. this isn't necessarily the case for every irish-american family but it sure is for kitkat's. hoo boy we love giving chronic pain, psychosis, and inescapable depression to our offspring

that greywaren quote about "diaspora always idealizes the homeland" has stuck with me for a while because there's this kind of muted longing in the books' depiction of ireland itself, but also in the books' depiction of the barns, a place that niall and mór Made ronan's homeland. and more than that i see it in declan's views on his parents themselves, how he's able to reconcile with mór Because she's so distant and unfathomable and never personally fucked him up, so it's easier to forgive and forget everything she's done... how niall is dead and gone and can no longer change his behavior or grow or learn or fuck declan up any worse, so it's easier to accept his love as uncomplicated and good. child idealizing his distant homeland because that's what he's Supposed to have

truly don't know if that was the authorial intention but. it's the only way declan's arc makes any sense to me. that one line does a shitload of heavy lifting

and on a less theme-heavy note i love little details like. the brothers being so in touch with irish culture as second-gen immigrant kids, love that they play the uilleann pipes and attend the fleadh, love that ronan can do an irish accent on command, love that declan keeps photos of ireland in his bedroom but they still don't quite reflect his True Self like his attic does, love that mór is a gaelgeoir (irish speaker), there are other details i'm forgetting now

this post is ungodly long so i'll leave it here. these r my thoughts. it's good shit o/

[doberbutts]

Yet another example of white fans sorely lacking in any racial knowledge: a post regarding the Harfoots saying "they're all different ethnically but have the same accent? How does that even work?" and I'm wondering if they speak to literally any person of color ever at this point.

Accent is, shockingly, not determined by race but by the language(s) you learned to speak as a child. When I was in grade school, we had two Asian kids (both Chinese adoptees) in my class. One spoke identically to all the other American kids. One spoken WITH A WELSH ACCENT because his parents had immigrated to the US from WALES. And he was very proud of his Welsh upbringing and frequently threw hands whenever people asked if he was British.

I work with a latina woman from Puerto Rico who speaks with a typical American accent for the area. She came here when she was very young.

I stick out here whenever certain accent or culture things come up, less because of being black, and more because I had a VERY Pennsylvania Dutch upbringing and it shows in the way I talk at times and the occasional German word I don't know the English translation for. New England in general is not particularly racially diverse (mostly Polish, Irish, and Italian) but the black people who do live here have the same accent everyone else has for the most part.

I had a British Literature teacher, a white woman, who was born and raised in India by white people who have been living in India for generations. English was her third language which she learned in school, not from her parents, who rarely spoke English and when they did, like her, it was very obviously accented. Quite different than the German-influenced English I grew up hearing.

One of the chihuahuas' breeders is a white-passing mixed race afro-native woman from northern Canada, and her accent is only noticably different if you hear her husband or kids- who were raised in the US- speak in the same conversation as her.

A friend of mine is from Syria. He's been in the US since he was a young child. His accent is practically undetectible, in fact we (friend group) often forget his first language isn't English until he asks us what a word we said in passing means or until he brings up his citizenship status.

The color of your skin or the racial mixup within your genetics has absolutely fuckall to do with how you say words. That's determined entirely by what words and sounds and pronounciation rules you learned as your language center in your brain developed as a child. Harfoots being ethnically diverse but having the same accent is unrealistic? As unrealistic as real life, I suppose.

[hollow-keys]

Diana and Clark for the character bingo (bc you said they were on your mind)

I mean, they were on my mind but I have the attention span of a *remembers goldfish can actually remember things for months* me.

Anyway, on it boss 🫡

Clark

People in the 30's were so right to get attached to him I really love him. I relate to his feeling of alienation and his self consciousness a lot which has led to some. Projecting. A lot of people are wrong about him (by virtue of being so popular) but not enough to tick the everyone is wrong about them box.

Of course there's the "Superman should be dark" Zack Synder crowd and whatever the fuck Injustice is but there's also people who make him too clean and perfect or overemphasise his niceness IMO. My view of him probably comes from reading older comics (especially golden age) where he's a bit rougher and I like that side of him. Like his original tagline was "Champion of the Oppressed" he forced a war profiteer to enlist to teach him a lesson, he trapped a mining company owner (and his party guests) in a mine so he would make his mines safer, he tore down a slum to force the government to rebuild it with better materials all within his first few issues in Action Comics. And this characterization wasn't entirely in those early issues, like later on in DC presents #28 where he fucking. Gives Mongul (unfortunate name)* a brain hemorrhage (it was the only way he could think of to defeat him). Or in The Death of Superman where he kills Doomsday without umming and ahhing over whether or not it's sentient. He's like Diana in that he won't kill most of the time and tries to understand others but he's not a hardline "no kill" guy.

*Elaborating on that but giving a character who is both a villain and has yellowy coloured skin a name that's one letter off of a real Asian ethnicity is uhh... unfortunate ignorance at best and purposefully racist at worst. Mongul. Mongol. They're not even pronounced differently.

*Abrupt segue* Anyway, back to Superman. His meaner and more overtly leftist side frequently gets watered down so he gets characterised as a "hug it out" liberal. I won't say this is a mischaracterisation because there's no one Superman, but it's not my fave.

There's also a lot of discourse about who the real guy is. Is he Kal, Clark or Superman? So you get the shitty take in Kill Bill that calls Clark Kent his critique of humanity (what?) or the Byrne take where Kal doesn't matter.

In my view, he's all of it. He grew up an anomaly, worried he could crush his peers without a thought, constantly having to control himself. Of course he's clumsy because he's spending so much time reigning in 99% of his power, he doesn't have brainspace to think about minutiae. Of course he's anxious because one wrong move could kill somebody. When he's Superman a lot of his brainspace gets freed up because he doesn't have to hide so he's more confident. His heritage does matter because all immigrants, or even descendants of them like me, feel a connection with their heritage, and for someone who never got to know it in the way he should have, he feels a longing for it.

He idealises Krypton and is forced to recon with the flawed reality of it later when he talks to Kara about what it was actually like, which I found a bit relatable because I would idealise Ireland as a child and only really took the rose coloured glasses off later on (which sounds stupid but I was a child and it was really easy to feel like Ireland would be more of a home for me when I didn't fit in in England and my Irish mother accepted me. I extrapolated).

None of it is fake, which is out of line with golden age Clark being non-confrontational and making himself small as part of his disguise, but I don't treat any era as gospel. So yeah, I have a lot of autistic feelings about him.

Umm. I didn't intend for this to be so long I just got rambling about various Clark thoughts that have been buried somewhere in my head for a while.

Diana

She may not be your fave of all time but she's still going in the blorbo by proxy category because you're a fan. On to my actual thoughts about her.

A lot of my feelings about her are mired in my thoughts on her treatment as the only female member of the trinity and how the amazons are treated/written in general rather than solely being about her because in a lot of ways she's symbolic of DC's treatment of women.

WRT the trinity, she's the only member without a secondary title (she used to have Sensation Comics a long time ago) and her potentially much more interesting dynamic with Clark is shoved aside in favour if Clark + Batman. The trinity really feels like it's BATMAN!!! Superman also! and uh *checks smudged handwriting* Wobner Woman.

WRT her she's frequently sexualised, almost always written by privileged men, her supporting characters get nothing (the first non-Diana wonderfam related ongoing was Wonder Girl in 2021 and only lasted 7 issues), her lore gets retconned with much less hastle than Batman or Superman's and her series numbering keeps getting rebooted*

*This may seem like a petty complaint but I've noticed that characters who get rebooted numbering are often ones who while popular enough to get consistent ongoings, don't get a lot of faith from DC so they use the new number 1's as a gimmick to garner interest.

But to focus solely on her as a character, I feel similarly to you about liking her in a chill way. She feels less relatable to me than Clark but she's very cool still. I like her optimism, her strong sense of justice, general badassery and also that she's willing to cross that line and kill under certain circumstances. Her diplomatic bent really makes her unique among heroes too.

I need to read more of her absolutely.

---

But yeah, the reason I was thinking about them was because I was (and am) annoyed that Clark and Bruce are pushed as the dynamic when Clark and Diana make much more sense.

They're both outsiders (in different ways) with incredible power who base their justice around harm reduction and have a sense of optimism about the world and the ability to do better. Both make a point of being compassionate, considerate and diplomatic. Bruce's justice is rooted in his trauma and a desire to protect others from experiencing that and he's more pessimistic. He's not particularly considerate or good at communicating, he can be quite self centered and he's obscenely wealthy, which I think would put him at odds with Clark and his values. (Yeah, yeah, Bruce donates to charity but he's still a billionaire so it's clearly not enough, and while Clark may not be straight up commie, I do think he'd agree that being a billionaire is too much).

The reason Bruce and Clark are pushed so much is because they're DC's most famous characters but Diana isn't too far behind and she makes more sense as Clark's closest friend on the League but DC hates women and loves Batman so it's Batman and Superman: World's Finest forever and ever.

Thanks for asking!

[thesunsethour]

dia dhuit! i was wondering why you dont like leo varadkar? this is completely genuine, im a young irish person who knows very little about irish politics and would love to learn more, ive seen a lot of leo hate but im not sure where it comes from, and i respect your opinions on other things so i was hoping you would be willing to explain a little?? no worries if not, go raibh maith agat!! <333

dia dhuit! thanks for this ask, getting really annoying about politics is unfortunately one of my favourite hobbies 🙏

i’d like to start by saying that i am biased against varadkar since i lean left politically, and therefore have never voted fine gael and will never vote fine gael, because i don’t believe that their policies/promises/ideas are what’s best for ireland in the short or long term, and are often actively damaging.

leo varadkar has been the leader of fine gael since 2017, and his party has been in government since then. in that time:

• child homelessness in ireland has reached its highest ever recorded level

• he and his government ended the no-fault eviction ban during the worst housing crisis this country has ever seen

• our hospital systems reach breaking point every winter, and in 2022, 60% of newly trained doctors emigrated to Australia

• the mother and baby home records have been sealed for 30 years, against heavy protests from the victims and their families

and in terms of varadkar more personally, i just think he’s a very unpleasant politician:

• his ‘welfare cheats cheat us all’ campaign was hateful to its core, and incredibly ironic considering the dodgy accountancy going on in gov depts

• leaked confidential information of GP pay deals to a friend

• just google “tiny tim should get a job”

• is a landlord. enough said

i do want to stress that i vehemently disagree with some criticisms of varadkar, namely those coming from ireland’s far right wing. accusations against him include: that he has let immigration spiral out of control and ireland is full (this is fascist rhetoric used to justify the arson attacks against various asylum seeker accommodations), that he has let ‘trans ideology’ (whatever that is) dominate our schools (blatantly untrue. if anything, varadkar still has a long way to go before he is anywhere near as progressive as he should be regarding trans rights). lots of these far right wing criticisms are heightened against varadkar since he is of indian descent and openly gay.

in fact, i will give one (1) small bit of praise to varadkar: i thought he handled brexit okay. but apart from that? i can’t say much

fine gael have been in government for over a decade, and our most successful feats (gay marriage referendum, abortion referendum) have come as a result of grassroots campaigners. i do not think that fine gael, especially under varadkar’s leadership, has helped ireland. as a young adult trying to live in dublin, i feel the effects of the housing crisis every day. i feel the effects of our government’s apathy towards young people every day. this is leo varadkar’s government, and so yes i do blame him

[beautopia]

just in case ur curious

emil and erin: chicanos (mexican born in america/colorado) their mom is mestizo and their dad is a half afro-mexican and half indigenous. they speak both spanish and english but emil is exceptionally better at spanish than erin

neo: nigerian dad and haitian mom. originally from france but immigrated to colorado as a child. neo speaks french, haitian creole, and english.

bambi: the same except she only knows english.

jubilee: iranian/persian jewish born and raised in california by a ashkenazi jewish family. she’s 90% a english speaker but she catches onto some of her mom’s german.

charlene: cuban mixed with arawak/taíno, irish and various african descents (though she will tell you otherwise). born in new york but raised in maryland. her primary language is spanish and her english can be a little choppy at times. she prefers to talk to emil because she can just speak spanish to him lol

cole: if you asked him he would just say he’s white but he’s specifically full blown italian descent with like a pinch of icelandic. born and raised in cali baby. um he took a french class in high school but other wise he’s just english only

cece and judy: italian dad (like cole) and black jamaican mom. also born and raised in cali. cece can speak patwah but judy can’t at all #embarrassing

dondre: afro-cuban. born in cuba moved to maryland at 9 years old. despite living in the usa less than charlene most of the people in his circle are black americans so he learned english easier and mostly speaks through aave. he’s still fluent in spanish he just doesn’t speak much since most of the people he hangs with aren’t spanish speakers.

mickey: her mom is white and her dad is black (no specific origin). she’s originally from new york but hopped around different states trying to discover herself before she finally landed in cali. she only speaks english but she’ll sometimes be like “emil what’s milk in spanish” or whatever and start sprinkling random spanish words in her conversation

janice: chinese american. born in cali raised in tennessee by her step mom then moved back to cali to connect with her biological family again. she only speaks english but is slowlyyyy learning mandarin with her folks. her son chris is chinese and ecuadorian.

malcolm: salvadoran and portuguese. born in florida moved to colorado and then moved to california. speaks english spanish and portuguese.

kourtney: black british (no specific origin). she speaks english.

soo-min: 3/4 korean and 1/4 punjabi indian. her mom is full korean while her dad is half korean half punjabi. she was born in washington but moved to cali to live with her uncle after her parents died. she speaks korean and english.

yumi: japanese. born in japan but immigrated with her family to california when she was 12. she speaks english and japanese.

precious/adonis: filipino. born in florida moved to california but eventually moves back to florida. speaks english and tagalog

[inkribbon796]

Egotober 2023 Day 5: Roses are Red, Violets are Blue

Summary: . . . Florida Teen Arrested for Putting Humans in Jars at Florida Zoo

Prompt: Jar

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31

Bing liked humans, they were fun. Some were less fun than others, but on average he liked them.

And in Gainesville he saw all kinds of interesting and fun people. He liked going to school fairs and the schools definitely liked having an actual sentient AI talking to their budding STEM students. He had the names of hundreds and even thousands of budding scientists.

His names.

Bing wanted to see what they would become, what they would do.

One of his names however was causing problems in the city. And Bing only knew that cause this human child, a teenager really, was using something he had given to every name he kept tabs on. A little pin with a minute amount of dead nanites. Unusable, but noticeable.

A little budding eco-terrorist, and a dangerous one. Most of the time, his names resorted to firecrackers or at the most dangerous a pipe bomb.

This one was more dangerous, this one was causing civic engineering damage. They were smart, not just in what they were doing, but in being smart enough not to get caught.

And Google was starting to get interested. He refused to tell Bing why he was so intent on finding this person.

Fourteen hours after he’d called the Egoton branch for help, he got a call.

“Bing, what’s up?” Silver called.

“Finally,” Bing said. “Finished putting out fires?”

There was silence for a bit. “No. We’re fighting Irish and American immigration to get Marvin over here. Fuck Dark, and fuck no one here being able to read aura. What’s the problem? An eco-terrorist?”

“Yeah, one of Gainesville’s brightest is turning to crime to push back against a couple things in the city. And they’re smart enough not to get caught. We’ve been trying to catch this kid for four months.”

“How old is this person supposed to be?” Silver asked.

“Seventeen,” Bing said. “We think. They’re at least in high school.”

“Too young,” Silver said. “Between them and the guy that keeps trying to solve crime over here we might be dealing with a miniature league.”

“Don’t have to, dude,” Bing said.

“What does that mean?” Silver's tone sounded dangerous.

“Google’s interested in them, not Dark, Googs is hella interested.” Bing’s mind was already made up.

“We can’t have children fighting super villains, they’ll die. I’d rather fight against them than have them up against Dark. I lost Iblis, I will not lose anyone else.”

“Iblis wasn’t killed by a villain,” Bing said.

“I’m not arguing this with you. Dark travels down there to talk with some snake kingpin almost monthly. And he can be down there in minutes. I take either nine or three hours depending on where the fuck Egoton is because I sure don’t know where I am right now.”

“I can’t let Google have this kid, I can’t,” Bing said and hung up. Silver tried to call him back but Bing didn’t pick up.

Bing kept ignoring him as he broke apart into nanites and jumped from electrical outlet to outlet until he got to the nearby zoo where the latest situation was.

The eco-terrorist was in the zoo, terrorizing some of the patrons in, what felt like to Bing, the funniest way possible. Three patrons trapped under what looked like giant glass jars, ranting at them.

It was as adorable as it was dangerous. A seventeen-year-old in blue and black biker gear. It was almost enough to make Bing forget about how much damage they’d done.

“How do you like it when something throws things at you?” The teenage future-supervillain told a woman whose jar he was standing on top of. They sounded male-leaning but Bing had been corrected enough times.

“Well,” Bing said as he leaned against one of the jars where a young man was inside of it. Smiling. “Should I make the joke, dude? Or are you going to traumatize these people in a whole new way?”

The teenager almost startled and climbed off it before they could fall off of it. “Bing. You’re early.”

And they landed directly into Bing’s nanites. Nanites surged around them to bind the teen where they stood. Making it look like the top half of a jar.

“Nah, I was going to get you eventually, kid.” Bing said as he took the time to free the civilians and send them off.

Only one of the trapped people tried to beat up the tied and bound teenager.

Bing easily snagged him by the arm and threw him back. “Nah, big guy. You don’t need to pretend to be a man by beating up a tied up teenager.”

And for good measure, Bing audibly and visibly took a picture of his face. That got the guy to run off.

Leaving Bing with the “junior supervillain” on the mostly empty path. “Hey there.”

“I have a right to remain silent and I have a right to a lawyer.” The young villain said.

Bing used his nanites to unclip the kid’s motorcycle helmet. “You sure do.”

“Hey!” The teen said, trying to twist away. But the helmet came off and there was a perfectly normal teenage face.

Bing didn’t even need to start scanning his face. The android knew exactly who this was.

Logan E. Naraj. Honors high school student, and valedictorian at Buchholz High School. He/Him. The most promising of Bing’s names. Perhaps the single smartest student in the entire area, let alone in Gainesville. Maybe in the entire state, even. Not just in grades, Logan was devastatingly intelligent, and his eco-terrorist actions were proving it.

“I knew it had to be you,” Bing said. “You’re one of the only people smart enough to be doing half the stuff you’ve been doing.”

That seemed to disarm Logan a little bit, clearly not expecting a compliment. But he didn’t say anything in kind.

Bing stuck the helmet to Logan’s chest with nanites. Then Bing started taking Logan out of the zoo.

Police met with Bing about halfway towards the entrance. He was placed under arrest, and placed in the back of a cop car. Where Bing followed them closely to the station.

They got Logan into a little holding room, Bing not letting the kid out of his sight. It was only a matter of time before Google tried to sweep in. Bing couldn’t even guess what Google wanted with an actual human, but Logan had yet to actually kill anybody. If Google got involved he would quickly start.

They were waiting for a state lawyer and CPS to come in for Logan. So all they could do, since Logan refused to cooperate, was wait.

One of the investigators came over to Bing.

“Your friend come for him yet?” The officer said.

“No, but that’s probably because the dude knows I’m here,” Bing shrugged.

“Do you know what he wants yet?” The officer was shifting around but Bing didn’t pull up a camera to see it. He just shook his head and they were quiet for a good minute.

Then the officer clearly felt like silence was a bad idea.

“Logan Naraj, glad to finally have a name for what might be a two-year stint in juvie,” the officer said as Logan sat on the couch, Bing refusing to take his eye off him. So the second camera had to come up.

“And not the first Naraj we’ve had in the system, probably won’t be the last time either.” The office was giving Logan a scoffing, dismissive look.

“Why?” Bing asked.

“His older brother is currently serving a five year sentence at Florida Corrections, assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced last year. No parents, no surprise really.”

“Hmm, don’t think you should be making comments like that about a kid smart enough to make death rays.” Bing’s synthetic heart gave out a little bit.

The officer didn’t seem convinced but Bing didn’t care, he only had to convince Silver. And Bing was trying to cover every argument Silver had. He needed to keep this kid out of trouble, eternally bench him, and keep him in school.

He was already sending out a couple of emails as he’d been taking Logan to the station. And as he was looking at Logan and hearing this human bad talk him, he got a response from the only person besides Silver that he needed permission from.

“He’s going to be my apprentice,” Bing said.

“Why?” The investigator said.

“Look, either I take him for the Coalition, and he does community service for us, or Google takes him and he builds weapons for Dark and the League. Choose.”

“You said that just Google was interested in him,” the officer said.

“Yeah, and Google works for Dark, if Googs has anything, Dark has it,” Bing said. “And I don’t know if you know what happens in Egoton but Wilford doesn’t stay in jail, now does he?”

Bing waited to go in when the CPS rep and the lawyer had finally gotten in. He let them go in and talk to Logan before Bing walked in without the cops.

He grabbed a chair and turned it so he could lean his arms on the top of the backrest.

“Hey,” Bing smiled. Before the lawyer could make a noise, Bing kept talking. “You don’t have to say a word. You’re probably going back home after this. I just wanted to cut to the point where we make a deal, not waste your time.”

“He doesn’t have to take any kind of deal,” the lawyer said.

“Oh, I know,” Bing said, still smiling. “In fact, I hope he sleeps on it. Decisions need time to make them wisely, and I know Logan here is a smart kid.”

The lawyer glanced at Logan, and Bing let them remind Logan not to say a thing.

Bing pulled out a little card with the Coalition insignia on it and Bing’s contact information. “I want you to personally become my apprentice with the Coalition.”

“You can’t be serious,” The CPS rep said.

“Oh, buddy, I’m very serious,” Bing said. He looked at Logan. “I know Googs has been contacting you, and I know because he was gloating about it. And I don’t want Google anywhere near you, dude. I don’t want Dark near you because anything Google has, belongs to Dark. Dark doesn’t care about anything but himself, that’s just a fact.”

Logan didn’t say anything, but his standoffishness didn’t seem as cold. Which was good.

“So we’re gonna take you home, you’re gonna think on this, and then if you want you call me. And we can start some balls rolling. Get you some more equipment. Have you not go to jail for almost destroying the bridge? Think of it as cutting around juvie and skipping right to community service?”

Logan stayed quiet but Bing could see the gears turning.

Bing smiled and walked out, leaving Logan with the humans, and a smile on Bing’s face.

The police were pissed, no surprise. They’d caught Logan but were unable to arrest him on the spot.

Bing watched CPS take Logan home, where he basically was by himself, and was given instructions not to contact Bing or Google.

The kid didn’t last the night.

Bing stood on his apartment step, to be polite, and waited as Logan answered the door.

“I’m not saying yes,” Logan said as Bing walked in.

“Well, this sure ain’t a no, dude,” Bing smiled as he looked around and basically placed a tracking marker in the place so he could quickly come and go from the place.

“Hey, you like Wendy’s, kid?” Bing said.

The kid just glared at him. “I’m vegetarian.”

“Neat, cool,” Bing smiled at him. “I’ll order something else.”

“You don’t eat human food,” Logan said.

“I mean, I can, but we’ll be talking about this for a while and you’ve been out all night,” Bing said as he sat backwards on a rickety kitchen chair. Leaving the slightly comfier armchair for Logan.

“I’m just allowed to join the Coalition?” Logan asked.

Bing gave Logan a huge smile. “I’m in charge of the South Branch of the Coalition, only Silver and Jackie have any extra say on stuff. I got Jackie’s approval a couple hours ago, and I can convince Silver. Don’t worry. The only thing you’ve got to worry about, little man, is staying in school, and staying out of trouble.”

“You’ve promised change,” Logan said.

“There are a lot of things wrong in this city, and with the country, Lo, you’re taking on the small fry. Normal people. I want bigger, dude. I want to take on people like Dark, people who are stagnating the city.” Bing said as he tried not to lean forward in the chair and break it.

“If I joined, what would I be doing day-to-day?” Logan asked.

“Investigative work, maybe researching various magical and no-magical artifacts, you’ll be in school a lot of the time, there’s no getting around that.” Bing said.

“Okay, if it’s between you and Dark, I guess I don’t have a choice,” Logan said.

Bing stood up and clapped his hands. “Alrighty, then, dude.”

Out of his arm he pulled out something that looked more like a watch then the rest of the Coalition communicators. “To our newest hero. Welcome to the party, my man.”

“Logic,” Logan said.

“That your name?” Bing asked.

“Yes, if I could pick one it would be: Logic,” Logan said.

“Perfect, my dude,” Bing said.

“Where do you stay, or are you allowed to tell me?” Logan asked.

“Hey, I live anywhere with good bandwidth,” Bing said, shrugging. “You need me anywhere, anytime, and I got you.”

“Noted,” Logan said, trying to act normal but Bing wasn’t fooled. Those facial expressions, that heart rate. He cared a lot, that made Bing very happy.

Bing held out his hand. “I can order that food, and then you can get some sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow, after all and we’ll keep talking about Coalition stuff after school.”

“Alright,” Logan said.

So Bing ordered some late night vegetarian Chinese food. Logan ate and then he went to bed, and Bing went to go and officially tell Google to back off from Logan. That he had it under control and Logan got to be theirs without also being Dark’s.

[jadelotusflower]

Obscure Christmas Movie Rewatch: Mrs Santa Claus

Are you looking for a feminist, multicultural, pro-union movie to watch this Christmas? Then Mrs Santa Claus is for you!

Not only does it star the late great Angela Lansbury, it features some catchy showtunes composed by Broadway great Jerry Herman, choreography by musical stalwart Rob Marshall, and costumes by the legendary Bob Mackie.

The story behind this one is also pretty interesting! According to this retrospective on Dame Angela Lansbury (RIP), much like she was a champion for older actors to guest star on Murder She Wrote to keep their SAG cards, she was also the driving force behind this tv movie in order to honour her friend Jerry Herman. While he’d had great success as a lyricist and composer for such seminal Broadway shows such as Hello Dolly!, La Cage Aux Folles, and Mame (the latter staring Lansbury), he was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1985 and by the mid-90′s needed a project to focus on. Enter Lansbury stage left, who had a deal with CBS for a number of tv specials, and pitched this film together with Herman.

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Here’s the perfectly simple premise: It’s seven days until Christmas and the magnanimous Mrs Anna Claus sends all the elves home since they’ve finished the toys early. She also tries to improve Santa’s navigational route and wants to help him with his mail, but is utterly underappreciated by her husband (Charles Durning).

Lansbury brings her distinctive voice to her pleasant I Want song - “I've been manning the business and planning each holiday plan/And I'm tired of being the shadow behind the great man”.

She takes the sleigh and reindeer, but due to bad weather emergency lands in New York City, meeting Italian stable boy Marcello (David Norona) who shows her the immigrant melting pot via the song and dance number Avenue A (well, the Italian-Irish-Jewish pot at least). There’s tap and joyous dancing, all culminating in a Consider Yourself-esque street celebration extolling the “great kaleidoscope called Avenue A.”

There's also a cameo from Jerry Herman, suitably playing a piano.

We meet Sadie (Debra Wiseman), a young Jewish woman and Suffragette, with whom Marcello is in love with from afar, Sadie’s mother Mrs Lowenstein (Rosalind Harris, who memorably played Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof) who fears the police after fleeing pogroms in Europe, local gossips Mrs Shaughnessy and Mrs Brandenheim, and Nora (Lynsey Bartilson), a young Irish girl who works at child labor factory Tavish Toys. Nora's Irish accent is...look, I'm not here to rag on child actors. She tried her best.

Our villain is Augustus P Tavish, played by Broadway veteran Terrence Mann, crooning that his toys “Only have to last till Christmas.” If you want to hear his voice used to full effect however, check out the original Broadway cast recordings of Cats (Rum Tum Tugger), Beauty and the Beast (The Beast, particularly If I Can’t Love Her), and The Scarlet Pimpernel (Chauvelin, particularly Falcon in the Dive).

Mann is delightfully hammy in the role, in spats and spinning a cane, delivering every line on pitch as if it’s a song. It's CAMP and I love it. The movie's worth it for his dulcet tones alone.

Mrs Claus (taking the name Mrs North), is employed at Tavish Toys as a supervisor, singing and dancing around the factory floor, improving morale but aghast at the working conditions and poor quality of the toys.

Meanwhile, back at the North Pole, Santa only notices his wife is missing because his cocoa hasn’t been made right (ugh). It’s up to head elf (there’s always a head elf) Arvo is tell Santa she’s gone and deliver Santa some home truths.

Arvo is played by Michael Jeter, one of those delightful character actors with so many credits it’s impossible to identify where you would know him from (for me it’s Father Ignatius in Sister Act 2).

Santa bemoans that he can’t bear to think of Anna about her out there “alone and helpless.” Smash cut to:

What is it about Victorian/Edwardian garb that just feels like Christmas?

Sadie is literally on her soapbox (a manifestation of the trope), and Anna asks her advice about industrial action for the factory. In return, she gives Sadie advice for persuading other women to her cause, utilising the soft power of persuasion rather than shouting slogans. They go a recruiting through song, culminating in a suffragette march where they are joined by Nora, Mrs Shaughnessy, Mrs Brandenheim, and Marcello. I really like this one! It’s uplifting and upbeat, if a sanitised depiction of the struggle for women’s suffrage.

It musically echoes the opening number Mrs Santa Claus, even repeating lines that Anna sung for herself, now applied the the community of women who have embraced her: "We've planned our strategy and our flag is unfurled/For we have gifts of our own to offer the world."

Anna and Nora bond over missing the people they love - Anna her husband, and Nora her mother and little brother who are still back in Ireland (her father is working double shifts to raise the money to bring them over). It’s time for another song and dance number, Whistle - a tribute to vaudeville. This one is a bit overlong and unnecessary, the kind of number that works on stage post-intermission to ease the audience back in, but isn’t needed onscreen.

At the North Pole, Arvo and the Elves try to cheer Santa up by dancing to the tune of We Need a Little Christmas (first composed by Herman for Mame), but he remains sullen. Honestly, this Santa really sucks. He bemoans his predicament, and Arvo has to prod him to write down what his wife means to him. Of course he does it through song, promising to change but it’s a very shallow mea culpa.

Meanwhile Anna plays matchmaker, setting up local policeman Officer Doyle and Mrs Lowenstein, overcoming her fears when Doyle assures her he won’t be taking Sadie away for exercising her free speech. Mrs Lowenstein finally unpacks the bag she’s always kept ready in case they needed to flee again, including her grandmother’s silver candlestick - the matching one being lost when they fled the old country.

Marcello invites Sadie to the Policeman’s Ball, and they sing We Don’t Go Together At All, a pretty song I unapologetically love. However it does end with a trope I absolutely hate - where Marcello taps his cheek but when Sadie moves in to kiss it, he turns his head so she kisses him on the lips. It’s all played very sweet, but probably not something you’d see if the movie was made today.

At Tavish Toys, Anna leads the kids in a work slow down, and then a city-wide strike and boycott. Because this is fantasy world, this immediately leads to the mayor declaring that no child will again work under such conditions, and a call for child labor laws. I think its no coincidence that this passion project of Lansbury's deals with issues such as women's and worker's rights - however santitised. We must assume the elves have union benefits back at the North Pole!

At the policeman’s ball, Mrs North gets to wear this absolutely banger outfit, and gets toasted as “the Mrs Santa Claus of Avenue A.” Lansbury was 71 when she played this role, and all credit to Bob Mackie for dressing her not only with a stylish vibrancy in the earlier scenes, but putting her in a gown like this and going for glamour rather than the dowdy Mrs Claus cliche.

You may also recognise Nora’s outfit recycled from A Little Princess.

I also appreciate that Sadie hasn’t been overtly softened in her relationship with Marcello - she’s the one who gives the speech, engaging in some self-deprecation in decrying herself “the biggest mouth on Avenue A” and wearing a beautiful dress, but not torn down or diminished because of her activism - but rather celebrated and validated by the very people who used to deride her. She's learned the art of pitching your message to the audience rather than riding roughshod over them, but isn't any less of an activist.

But while Anna has finally been given the recognition and appreciation she’s craved, for some reason she misses her dropkick of a husband. “He Needs Me” is a nice song but undercuts the message a bit as she decides that “I need him much more”. You really don't Anna, go that extra step and stage a Santa coup - you deserve more than playing second fiddle to a dude who took two days to even notice you were gone!

She hurries back to the reindeer but is prevented from returning by Tavish, who has implausibly figured out who she is, and wants to stop Christmas so people will have no choice to buy toys from him again. It’s neatly and swiftly resolved by her recalling that as a boy the toy bear he’d received from Santa was stolen by his brother, and Mrs Claus gives him another one. Okay then.

Meanwhile, Santa is still sulking over his bad cocoa. WHY DON’T YOU TRY AND FIND HER YOU USELESS SACK OF SHIT?!? AREN’T YOU OMNIPOTENT? GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND DO SOMETHING!

This is a real false note for me - yes Anna has the sleigh and reindeer, but there is no way out of the North Pole other than that? He just sits and waits for her to come home - I suppose this gives her the agency, but it does feel like she is ready to return to her old life of being unappreciated, instead of going home to demand that he treat her right.

However Santa is slightly redeemed in that he declares that he will use her new navigation route, and also that she can join him in the present delivery duties. She also gets a new cape.

In New York, her friends also get their heart’s desire - Mrs Lowenstein her grandmother’s missing candlestick, Sadie and Marcello each other, and Nora the arrival of her mother and baby brother.

Overall I think this mostly holds up and deserves to be in the Christmas movie rotation. It’s a very female-focused piece - Mrs Claus is in the role of guardian angel, improving the lives of everyone she meets, but her solidarity is with Nora and worker’s rights, Sadie and women’s suffrage, and Mrs Lowenstein and her generational trauma.

It’s a charming little musical with a quintessential performance by Angela Lansbury and a nice parting message:

“As long as you love one another/You’ll have the best Christmas of all.”

[daughter-of-sapph0]

"elon musk was born in Africa, which means he's African American. if you're mean to him, you're racist"

he's not African American.

"but he was born in Africa! that makes him African!"

yes, he was born in Africa. to be specific, apartheid South Africa in a segregated white community. I'm willing to bet his entire fortune that he never spoke to a single Black person while living in South Africa.

"no but, his dad is African which makes him African"

his father is also not African. the entire musk family are immigrants from Europe, particularly England and the Netherlands. they were colonizers who lived segregated from the actual South African people. they exploited the people already living their for profit. his father literally owned an emerald mine that used child slaves.

"but no, hes literally African. his ethnicity is literally Afrikaner"

do you know what that even means? that doesn't mean someone native to Africa. that's a decent of Dutch colonizers who formed their own ethnic group. it's an almost entirely white ethnicity.

"are you saying people in South Africa aren't African because white people live there?"

no. you are intentionally and purposefully misinterpreting what I'm saying. the people who have been living in South Africa for hundreds of thousands of years are African. the colonizers who started living there only a couple hundred years ago are not African.

"I don't understand"

okay so I'm Irish and German. lets say that I move to Japan. and I have a kid in Japan. and during my time in Japan, I live in an isolated community where no Japanese people live. I live primarily in a community of other European. I don't learn Japanese, I don't eat Japanese food, my kid goes to an all European school in Japan. is my kid ethnically Japanese?

"wtf? of course not you fucking idiot! you're so dumb [laughing crying emoji x 27]"

replace Japan with South Africa and that's literally musk.

"okay but wait that's different! based redditor and super genius tony stark elon musk is actually African American and also black! I can't believe you're being so racist to him, you stupid racist! lol kek you're so triggered, libtard"