#the trade

[tkachuktkaching]

One year ago today Matthew Tkachuk was traded to Florida from Calgarin a blockbuster trade that sent shockwaves through the NHL

[amitlee]

Send in pairings, spots, or prompts for drabbles!

*Not strictly for MCYT, feel free to send in other fandoms!*

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[refreshdaemon]

"The Trade" explains Gaku's betrayal sufficiently and puts Haru in a bind when the BNM discover he's been hiding Karen, but having Riku, Nagi, and grandma Taki defend the Tawara house from a Fuma class assault is certainly the action, thriller, and comedy standout of this episode of House of Ninjas.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Extremely nitpicky but I hate white wedding gowns in fantasy, especially when they make absolutely no sense in the setting. No, that culture in the far north that prioritizes function over form and mostly wears heavy furs would not have the means, ability, or desire to make a sleeveless ivory silk gown with a semi-sweetheart neckline. Please be sensible about this and use your creativity instead of just slapping a Kleinfeld wedding gown into a medieval fantasy setting.

[mellawildheart]

this man ❤‍🔥😍

[angrylesbianstereotype]

Okay Walter White was actually pretty funny as a character bc he was so toxic that seasoned drug lords were like I cannot work w this man I have to put my mental health first

[prokopetz]

A thing that bothers me about wizard schools in popular media – outside of the magic-grade-school stuff, anyway – is that they're typically depicted as being basically magic universities, but their actual curricula and pedagogical approaches look much more like those of a technical institution. Like, buddy, that's not a wizard university, that's a wizard trade school. You can't just slap university student culture on top of trade school pedagogy. It doesn't work like that – the one emerges from the other!

[yokelfelonking]

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED. (This wasn't a bad thing, but the power-hungry on the Evangelical Right saw this as a golden opportunity to grab power and influence.)

EDIT: By Popular Demand - Freedom Fries. I initially left these off because they came a couple years after the initial panic and most people thought they were kind of absurd (and I don't recall anyone really going along with it other than maybe some local diners here and there). France didn't want to get involved in our world policing so some folks were like "TRAITORS!" and wanted to call french fries "Freedom Fries" instead, so as to stick it to the French.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)

[tkachuktkaching]

A year ago today, the Florida Panthers shocked the hockey world by pulling off a late-night blockbuster deal — one which brought Matthew Tkachuk to town in a trade which sent two of their top players to the Calgary Flames.

And they have never looked back.

In his first year in South Florida, Tkachuk has been everything the Panthers hoped he would — and, perhaps, more.

Not only did Tkachuk exceeded his scoring total from the season before, but he became one of the biggest names in South Florida sports as he helped lead the Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final with playoff heroics.

In his first season here, not only was Tkachuk the MVP of the All-Star Game held in Sunrise, but he was a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy as league MVP.

Around 11 p.m. on a Friday night, phones started buzzing as news of the trade unfolded.

Everyone knew Tkachuk wanted out of Calgary, that had been public for about a week before the trade went down.

But Florida going all-in to get him was a calculated effort in which neither the Panthers, Flames nor Tkachuk’s camp leaked information until the deal was done.

“There was a very short window and the timeframe was very quick,” general manager Bill Zito said. “When you have an opportunity like this, you need to pursue it. The cost was very high and we decided it was something we needed to pursue. We are thrilled to be where we are right now.”

Tkachuk, in fact, was asked by his agent (and uncle) Craig Oster to say nothing about the eight-year contract extension he was getting with Calgary which would pave his way to the Panthers in the first sign-and-trade in NHL history.

Only he was on a family vacation to celebrate his brother Brady’s engagement.

Matthew Tkachuk ended up spilling the beans to his happy parents.

“I was the happiest person ever,’’ Tkachuk said. “(Oster) said ‘don’t tell anyone’ so I went to my parents’ room and told them. I was thinking about everything — but we couldn’t say anything.”

Still, the news did not leave the Jersey Shore until it hit the NHL offices which led to the leak to the national media.

The Panthers were not trying to bury the trade that night. They were just trying to keep things under wraps as much as possible as other teams — reportedly Tkachuk’s hometown St. Louis Blues and Carolina Hurricanes — were also in talks with Calgary about a trade.

Zito made sure by throwing in two great players, a top prospect and first-round pick that he would not get outbid by anyone for Tkachuk.

“Situations, like this, when you can add a player like Matthew to your organization, the price is steep,” Zito said. “That’s how things worked out.”

Now a year in, Tkachuk is embedded in South Florida with a house in Fort Lauderdale he compares to a hotel because so many family members stop in to visit during the season.

At 25, he remains one of the top young players in the NHL — and has seven years remaining on his contract.

The future is bright for both Tkachuk and the Panthers.

While they were all disappointed with the way the season ended in a 5-game loss to Vegas in the Cup Final, the road to the championship is something which will not be soon forgotten.

Tkachuk’s overtime winners against Carolina and trying to play through a fractured sternum will not be, either.

“It just shows how badly we wanted it, which makes it that much harder now,” Tkachuk said a few days after the season ended.

“There are so many things throughout the season that it’s just such a grind to get to where we are are. … It was such an unbelievable season to be a part of for my first one down here.’’

Yeah it was.

[publiccollectors]

A graphic from Mad magazine #182 from April 1976. The larger piece this comes from is "A Mad Portfolio of Some Idealists' Dreams" by Arnoldo Franchioni.

I have been starting to visit and revisit Mad following the discovery of a huge box of old issues in the storage unit of my wife's late uncle. Some of this stuff has aged in rather interesting ways.

[theworldsforgottenboy]

Every fall out boy song is like *nonsense lyric* *nonsense lyric* *the most profound cunt serving couplet in the English language since Shakespeare that sends you straight back to middle school* *nonsense*

[imanes]

"Refusal to handle military equipment for war in Palestine

While a genocide is underway in Palestine, workers at the various airports in Belgium are seeing weapons headed for war zones.

The loading and unloading of these weapons enables the resupplying of organizations killing innocent people.

We, the different unions active in the ground handling sector, call on our members not to handle flights that ship military material to Palestine/Israel as there were also clear agreements and rules at the start of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine.

We call for an immediate ceasefire and ask the Belgian governments to be consistent and not to tolerate arms shipments through Belgian airports. As unions, we declare our solidarity with those who are taking action for peace.

The common trade union front"

[rabbitcruiser]

On August 9, 1988, in a move that heralded significant change in the NHL, the Oilers traded Gretzky (along with McSorley and Krushelnyski) to  the Kings for Carson, Martin Gélinas, $15 million in cash and the Kings’ first-round draft picks in 1989. "The Trade", as it came to be known,upset Canadians to the extent that New Democratic Party House Leader Nelson Riis demanded the government block it,and Pocklington was burned in effigy outside Northlands Coliseum.

[hyolks]

al's the kinda guy to wear sweater vests and oxfords <3