#(says the one who speaks French 80% of the time....)

[bixbythemartian]

Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but I've seen posts about this get passed around. And it's probably too late to push back on this, anyway, but I'm so frustrated I feel the need to say to say something. This is coming from a place of love- I just hate seeing this going around, and I want to offer some perspective on the matter.

First of all, regarding that poll where the user did not know how to pronounce 'Miette'- if you look in the replies, it doesn't take long to discover that the OP was genuinely confused about the pronunciation and, when corrected, was working to get it right. That poll came from a place of innocent ignorance. I hope the OP took it down and stopped reblogs and turned notes off or whatever, because some people said some awful shit. I hope you are the kind of person who is kind and understanding, in the face of such ignorance. Or, if you can't be that, I hope you can at the very least be quiet. (And props to the people in the replies who patiently and kindly explained things to the OP.)

Second of all, I've seen a lot of posts talking about literacy rates, and I'd like to point out that English literacy has very little to do with figuring how to pronounce a French fucking word, goddamn. The OP just didn't know. The dunking, the pointing, the laughing- rude, unnecessary, not helpful.

Thirdly, in response to the complaints of 'they don't even teach phonics in schools these days'- that's bullshit. Because the odds are very good that they didn't teach phonics in schools when you went to school, either.

When I was a kid, it was called Whole Language. It was the new hot literacy technique, and a lot of schools adopted it. It used cueing techniques and sight words and was very similar.

If you're a millennial, you might remember the commercials for Hooked on Phonics, and you might conclude that teaching phonics in schools was perhaps not common, if you think about that for a bit. If it was worth it to sell a whole reading tutoring program for struggling readers based in phonics, perhaps it might lead one to conclude that phonics weren't as common as other methods, right? You might not have been taught phonics to start. What you do know about phonics, you might have picked up in the past 20-30 years, right?

Okay. Lets go back further, you know Dick and Jane? It was based on, more or less, the same sight words principle, and those primers date from the 1930s, although I don't think that teaching technique came really into vogue until the 40s.

If you are alive, today, in the United States, the likelihood that you were not taught phonics in school is well above non-zero. Especially if you're a millennial.

The notable exception is the 1970s. And during that period of time, there were probably plenty of schools that still used fucking Dick and Jane. And plenty of schools that were starting to adopt Whole Language, because while it was popular in the 80's and 90's, it was developed before. So, Gen X, you didn't get out of this unscathed either, though you had a better chance of getting a phonics-based reading program, I think.

'Kids these days' are not less literate because they were taught wrong. A great deal of us who are alive and speak English as a first language were taught wrong.

(I also think this is the common way English as a Second Language is taught and I'm sorry if you learned sight words, it's so much less intuitive than phonics, and English phonics aren't particularly intuitive. But I know a lot less about this, and I'm not sure.)

The reason some younger people struggle with language and words that I, for example, don't, is that I've been reading and speaking the language a lot longer. That's it. That's likely the same thing for you.

Please quit mocking people for their lack of information, for a start. I don't blame you for not knowing this about the literacy programs, for example. I had to do a lot of research on this. Right? Odds are good, you didn't know this.

And you are hitting people who struggle with literacy for other reasons- English as a second language, for example. The people who deal with dyslexia, there's plenty of autistic people who struggle to communicate fluently in their first language, and many more people who struggle with learning, speaking, and otherwise communicating in English for a huge variety of reasons.

Even if you're right, you're hitting people who had no choice in the language method they were taught from. They were five.

I don't think people mean to be unkind, generally (some do, but we block and move on), but it's really frustrating to a lot of snark circulate without the greater context of 'actually, a lot of English speakers of all age groups were taught English this way, especially USAmericans' and 'hey, what does English literacy have to do with pronouncing a French word, anyway?'

Okay? Okay.

Love you bye

#literacy

[ego-meliorem-esse]

Could you talk a bit about Matthew and Alfred relationship? Our boys need love too

The lads! The fellas! The absolute units!

Bear with me here I wanna give a little bit of a context and a personal explanation as to why I'm really fascinated with these two countries in general.

If there is one nationfolk relationship that comes as close to pure and friendly as it possibly can, it would be the Us-Can one. Of course, it has major problems and unavoidable disputes. But let me tell you, as a balkan, ex-yugoslav cretin, I cannot help but be intriqued with the way these two comunicate. They make fun of eachother sure, they have disputes and squables, sometimes outright clashes, but when there is crisis in the US for example, all I hear is Americans straight up saying "ok well time to move to Canada". It's fascinating to me! As a Croat who, after returning from Serbia from a 3 day trip, brought home souveniers (key chains mostly, with the Serbian flag) I was yelled at by my dad who afterwards didn't talk to me for a few days. All because I dared to bring this enemy countrys flag into our home. Now, I was born in 1999. I have no connection to the war 8 years prior. No excusable, personal vandetta. But still it' s very much acceptable to hate so strongly. And even if it wasn't 8 years that passed, but 80, there still would be a widely accepted resentment. But alas, I am not talking about people, cus frankly people are just people. Alliances and relations between countries are another thing. Imagine sharing a huge fucken border with another country and being friends. My euro brain is imploding. Uncomprehensible.

Now I do understand the US is often described as a bit of a phycho, and frankly Canada is an expert at dealing with the phycho. Kudos. Keep the yanks from whipping out their home protection assault rifles and unleashing hell fire is risky shit. Canada manages tho. What I'm really interested in is the USA's view of Canada. They aren't a threat. They aren't suspicious. They are a force to be reckoned with tho, but they are friends. If there is one ally the USA can rely on its the maple sucking french/anglo bastards up north. So much history in such a short time. Fascinating.

To relate this to the bros, I think these two understand eachother better than most. Matt is quiet, obsetvand and passive (mostly), while his unit of a brother is loud, idealistic and prone to thinking the world owes him time on the world stage. And it works. Matt is the one to talk to his brother in a way that gets Alfred to listen. H speaks Alfreds language and can communicate with him freely. I think that that is a skill and in the modern era, a privilage that not many have. Not many dare to tell Alfred to his face that he fucked up majorly, but Matt can. He knows he can. Alfred knows he can. So he does. Matt can pull his brother aside after an outburst, and for the lack of a better word, humble him.

Alfred respects his brothers oppinion more then other nations'. He went from seeing Matt as a weak, self-pitying and ambitionless dominion, to accepting his views, ideas and even asking his oppinion on certain matters. I like to draw a parallel here. Matt had to sacrifice everything and himself to have Arthur call him into the war room and ask Matthew for his oppinion. Alfred is not much different. It takes time for Matthews voice to be heard, but when the time comes, it's desperately needed.

Alfred tho, is and always will be Alfred. And if somthing else catches his attention, he will ignore the house on fire across the street. He is prone to isolation and ignoring his brother for extended periods of time, just sending him a tiktok every month or so. That being the only indication to Matt that his brother is alive. Alfred has so much shit going on and his 13 braincells have to spread evenly across to cover it all. His brother is a constant in his life, stable and therefore forgotten.

That being said, I don't think there is another person on Earth Alfred loves more than his brother. Showing it is not something he ever learned tho. He knows he cannot buy his way into showing his love for Matt, so with his lack skills of other forms of love expressions, he does nothing.

As for Matt, he checks up on Alfred as much as he can. His history and past have tought him to expect nothing form the people he loves. So he doesn't. He knows Alfred is his closest ally and best friend, but doesn't ask for anything Alfred himself isn't giving. He is a person who waits to be asked to hang out on Saturday instead of asking his friends himself.

So while almost all I talked about is sad and somewhat negative, I do think the bond and conversations these two share are one of the most honest and true expressions of brotherly love. And by god I usually don't use the world love when describing nation-folk relationships, but in this case there isn't a replacement.

sorry for the personal shit and Alfred slander, I love him.

#sorry for the long post #im hungover #eating doritos and smoking cigs #hetalia #hws america #hws canada #ask meli #meli speaks #my headcanons

[spacerangersam]

Tell me more about your BBC Ghosts character swap AU please?

(like I wanna know from you about the other BH ghosts you didn't draw in their character swap AU version yet on what their character swap would be, for example Thomas, Mary & Robin please?)

Thanks!

I'd be happy to!

Thomas is a caveman, tricked into a fight by his cousin (with less of the dramatics though, since Francis couldn't have forged a letter)  who either got stabbed with a spear or bonked on the head with a club. Regardless, he was killed and in death, gets to carry around a spear. It‘s big, cumbersome and annoying, and I just think it’s funny. He can give the living bruises with it.

To blabber on a bit: his name is actually To, but Julian thought that was stupid so renamed him Thomas, and he did originally come from Scotland. Though it wasn't called Scotland when he was there, obviously.

He struggles a lot with modern English - he’s lived through the rise and fall and change of so many languages that he really struggles to keep up. He slips between using new English and old English, French, old Brythonic languages etc, especially when he’s upset. That's what really kick-started his friendship with Patrick- Pat was the first one really willing to just stop and try to understand what Thomas was saying, and the first one to really sit down and help Thomas with his English. They have lessons every Thursday evening. 

He still likes poetry, but because of all that he’s even worse at it. He also still hates Byron, just for less personal reasons.

With the whole having being around for thousands of years and watched people come and go, he's terrified of the other ghosts moving on without him. He doesn't like to sleep alone because of it, likes being able to keep an eye on at least one ghosts during the night. He tends to spend the night with Pat or Kitty, curled up on the foot of their beds, but he’ll stay with someone else now and then

Mary is a Girl Guide leader from the 80s. She's a timid woman to begin with, raised in a strict Catholic household, who works in a farm shop-come-cafe. She was encouraged to take up the Guide role by her husband to give her more confidence, and she stayed with it after his death. It didn't really make her more confident though, and her Guides quickly learned that they could walk all over her. She died while camping out on the Button grounds - some of the girls set a fire that quickly got out of control. Mary couldn't get out of her tent and died of asphyxiation (suspend your disbelief if you wouldn't mind). She still was close to Annie (and depending on how much you want to play around with the au, Annie could still be around, era switched with the plagues) and learned to be more confident through her.

She insists on doing grace at mealtimes, even though she can't eat, tells people off for blasphemy, and prays on Sundays in lieu of going to mass. The longer she's with the ghosts though, the less she does it. She has a few handy survival tools in her pockets, and like Pat, knows a thing or two about using a bow and arrow.

Robin is from the Georgian era, a nobleman's son who was sent to live with his uncle in hopes he'd straighten Robin out and turn him into a proper gentleman. Robin hated that idea. He planned to make a getaway and start a new life, one where he could just be himself, only to get struck by lightning before he ever made it off the grounds.

It's hard think of a Robin with ‘perfect’ speech, so I like to imagine he came over from North Wales, Welsh being his first language. He does speak English, albeit reluctantly, and has no desire to be fluent in it.

He's still outdoorsy and cares a lot about animals - his parents never had much time for him so he spent most of his time chasing around mice in the manor and sneaking into the stables to pet the horses. He can also still muck around with electricity.    

I don't think I've talked about Julian either, but he's the headless Tudor. Much like in canon, he didn't pay much attention to his wife or child, which was ultimately his downfall when he unknowingly partied with people who were plotting to kill the queen and was damned by association. He got his head lobbed off, and the head can appear in photographs. He makes so many jokes about it.

I can't really think of much else to say at the moment but yeah, that's them

#sorry there's so much about thomas i just. i think about this version of tom and his relationship with pat a lot #roleswap au

[cctinsleybaxter]

2023 in Books

I need to stop bragging that I’ve got this reading thing all figured out, because man if 2023 wasn’t a year of terrible books. I liked less than half of the 37 I read and nothing quite gripped me in the way it has in years past… but to put it more optimistically I liked a full third of what I read, and the ones I liked best were a fascinating and unexpected silver lining. Without further ado:

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, trans. Brian Hooker

Tell this all to the world- and then to me. Say very softly that… she loves you not.

I read a couple of plays this year for the first time since college and liked them fine, but there’s a reason this has been adapted five million times. Everyone go watch Megamind right now.

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

Of all the found footage-inspired horror fiction I’ve read this one makes the best case for existing in its chosen medium, as a 70s UK folk rock band are interviewed about the summer they spent recording what would become their final album [thunder crashes.] It reminded me of a Tana French mystery in its language and ability to make space feel lived-in; the character writing is so strong I realized that at some point I had stopped checking the interview headings to know who was speaking. Hand unfortunately distrusts her audience to read between the lines at a few crucial moments (and ruins what would have been a perfect ending and a deeply affecting scare by gilding the lily, or, in this case, photograph), but I love that she went from seemingly by-the-numbers American YA fiction to a meticulously-researched and truly unique horror novella. Puts other writers working in the genre to shame.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin

Reminiscent of the best kind of TCM suspense thriller (and was adapted into one), but could only exist as a book for the kind of narrative tactics it employs. Levin is brilliant at setting and character; I think any one of his contemporaries would have leaned into archetypes for this sort of story, and he instead distinguishes his proper nouns in subtle, clever ways that lend them the weight a noir needs. Can’t wait to read more of his stuff!

All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva

I’d like to know why this anthology got hit with what a friend has termed a pottery barn throw pillow cover + a ‘the tiny things we know to be small’ title, because the eponymous story isn’t even called that! It’s just The Names They Used for God, and is, appropriately, about two women kidnapped by a religious extremist group. High risk-high reward; I think taken at their base premise the stories could have been insufferable and are instead strange, compelling, and fantastical. There’s a methodicalness and, I don't know, lack of whimsy? to them that’s unusual for fantasy, but also an absence of any one goal or moral in the way Le Guin speaks so highly of. It made me feel the way I did reading and adoring Kelly Link in middle school, and Sachdeva has a much different style that I guess works all the better on adults. My favorite was Robert Greenman and the Mermaid.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Lauren Hillenbrand

Someone recommended this to me via Tumblr anon over five years ago, so let me start by saying if that was you I’d like to thank you properly! This book rules! It was written in ‘99 so falls prey to a very specific kind of jingoism, but the mechanics of that are interesting in and of themself. Seabiscuit the animal is a lens through which to view turn-of-the-20th-century America written from the precipice of the 21st; his story told through the expertly-researched biographies of his owner, trainer, and jockey. Hillenbrand is not only a good pop nonfiction historian, but has been a sports writer since the 80s and I never imagined the genre could be so thrilling as I did reading her work. Horse racing is insane and no one should be riding these things btw.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

It was one of the great livery-stableman’s most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

Wharton came from old money New York*, was deeply disillusioned with it and pined for rational (i.e., even more insane) social and political scenes, had myriad thoughts about women and gender relations, and held a love for interior design. I learned all of this after reading but it’s apparent on every page; deeply funny and perceptive, fantastic use of language, the moments where it lost me completely nothing if not interesting. What sticks with me the most are a flair for the operatic and an ability to voice both the feeling and consequences of losing oneself to imagined scenarios. Read the pink parasol scene.

*Ancient Money New York; the saying ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is apocryphally attributed to her father’s side of the family

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan S. Slaght

We’d return to our camp to huddle in the freezing tent and wait for our owls in silence, like suitors agonizing over a phone that never rings.

One of the better pieces of science writing I’ve read in a long time, as Slaght frames rural communities as a quintessential part of ecology rather than a barrier to it. His style is amiable and matter-of-fact (sometimes overly so; the amount of metric GIS directions, help), but he's super engaging and clearly holds just as much compassion for people and history as he does animals and natural landscapes. The Blakiston’s fish owls he’s studying are described as unreal, with hoots so low and quiet it sounds like someone has thrown them under a blanket. You can listen to them here.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Took my breath away and surprised me in a way a book hasn’t in years. I'd read Clarke’s 2004 novel when I was maybe fourteen and had vaguely positive but mostly neutral memories of it, and Piranesi being sci-fi-fantasy that came recommended by Tiktok had me very dubious. I ended up devouring it in the way I haven’t read books since I was fourteen; more of a mystery than the suspected high fantasy, with characters I would do disservice to in trying to describe in brief. While the mystery isn’t difficult to ‘solve’ (I’d argue the book also skews young!), the story ends in a way that’s both deeply unexpected and in the only way it could have.

Honorable mentions

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, trans. Peter Washington

[Jigsaw voice] Every man has a devouring passion in his heart as every fruit has its worm.

I spent so much time running my mouth about this one on Tumblr there’s really not much left to say. I think it’s a work of genius that was physically exhausting to read, and I’m sticking it with the honorable mentions mostly because I remember The Three Musketeers being the better book. If you want to read Dumas- and you should- start with that one.

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

I would’ve liked this more had I read it in my late teens/early 20s, but I still think it’s pretty good and would absolutely recommend to anyone in that age bracket. Things that normally annoy me about philosophical first-person lit fic didn’t matter under the weight of Jon’s narratorial voice. He reminded me a little of Lynda Barry’s Maybonne in his understanding and depictions of community and family; his stream of consciousness letting contradictions sit rather than trying to explain them away (Whitehead also makes sex very prosaic and pretty-sounding while still being frank and gross about it, which is a rare talent!)

The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From by Edward Dolnik

This one fell in the rankings because the writing isn’t my favorite (think early days Vulture article rather than NYT), but I cannot stop referencing it in conversation. I want to read the whole thing to people and make them understand how truly unfathomable it is not only that every one of us is the product of 1 sperm and 1 egg, but that anyone ever figured out how that process works. When Western Europeans first started using microscopes they studied water; there were gross little bugs in there to watch and enjoy, so when semen was revealed to have its own bugs no one was shocked, but they also weren’t impressed. We would not see one enter an egg until EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FIVE.  

Killer Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh

The Malaise of First Night Nerves had gripped Peregrine, not tragically and aesthetically by the throat but, as is its habit, shamefully in the guts.

Has made it into my top 5 favorite Inspector Alleyn mysteries. I’m not keen on Marsh’s theater settings (and there are a LOT of them), but a convoluted setup made this one all the more rewarding. The final revelation as to a point of blackmail is visceral and bizarre in a way I haven’t seen from her before.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.

Best read in conversation with other writers, I wouldn’t recommend Fanon as the end-all-be-all introduction to communist and socialist thinking (the fact that he inadvertently describes what was going wrong with the USSR at time of writing is fascinating), but he explicitly invites that conversation and the value and impact of his work really can’t be overstated. Our points of disagreement tend to be in regard to nationalism, not his condonation of violence.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Fascinating to see how Austen was thinking about relationships near the end of her short life. I laughed to see the idea of preferring your brother-in-law’s family to your own was back in full force from my own favorite Emma, as well as an eleventh-hour ‘maybe I should ship the villains??’ My biggest issue is that, like Emma, Persuasion is written in third person limited narration, but Anne is fundamentally Good™ so doesn’t need to learn anything about herself or the world; critic Bob Irvine points out that she and her dashing, misogynistic sailor are beset rather than changed by it. That said I love a people being beset by people (concussed temptresses) places (Bath) and things (cars), and Austen's writing style is really firing on all cylinders here.

#i say 'nothing quite gripped me' but i'm still pretty fresh off some of these so remains to be seen in the long run! #(e.g i always end up wanting to swap at least one finalist and one honorable mention looking back at last year's list) #also as always these aren't ranked- just loosely grouped by date read #books #2023

[cant-get-no-worse]

'Let's all take a moment to remember the somptuous ref manipulation/acting performance given by Luis Suarez on March 2017. This guy practically gave us the Remontada as much as Neymar 🙏'

Ciene you can't just drop this and not elaborate

Took me about a month but oh but anon, I will. A year ago, I watched a short documentary of a former French ref who analyzed the Remontada (heavily criticized for its refereeing decisions, dubious penalties given or not given, etc) and the external factors that made it happen. Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'll give you a bullet point resume of the doc here, since it's exclusively in French.

So here's why La Remontada isn't only the consequence 22 players' mentality and in-game performances for 90 minutes but rather a product of a boiling setting, wrong UEFA predictions, inexperienced referees, weak communication, experienced players' social manipulation on top of 22 minds in radical different headspaces.

Practical context.

February 14th, 2017. Paris Saint-Germain beats FC Barcelona 4-0 at the Parc des Princes in the first leg of the UCL's round of 16.

March 8th, 2017. FC Barcelona receives Paris Saint-Germain in the second leg of the UCL's round of 16.

2. Emotional context.

After the absolute "desastre" (Mundo Deportivo's front page) that was February, 14th, everyone, save a few Barça players and part of the culés, consider the second leg to be already done and over with. No team has ever broken a four goal difference in a UCL knockout stage and the sheer beating taken by Barça at the Parc stands fresh in everyone's minds as a chapter closed. PSG has secured its ticket into quarter-finals. Barça has fallen deeper and deeper since their 2015 treble.

March 6, 2017. Four PSG players do an at-the-time chill, but after the facts bit of a surreal interview where they talk about the up coming game and their feelings about it. One Marco Verratti notably jokingly asks the three others if, hypothetically speaking, they'd be happy if they lost the game 5 - 1 but still scrapped by to the Quarter Finals. 2 of them say they'd be fine with it. The 2 others, Verratti included, say they'd be disgusted having conceided that many goals; "You let 5 go in, people are gonna laugh at you."

3. UEFA's wrong predicitions and choices of referees.

Refereeing a knockout UCL game is the stuff of what the UEFA calls "elite" referees, the best of the best in Europe.

Following the 4 - 0 of the first leg, the UEFA, deeming like 80% of football world the encounter to be over, decides to appoint a up-and-coming referee in what is talked about as an "easy game" within the Federation. It's still a knockout round game, so there are still the bright stage lights, but the stakes are deemed to be nul because of the 4 - 0: the perfect stage to give a referee a safe space to grow experience and for the UEFA to test him in stress-free conditions.

4. The refereeing squad of March 8th, 2017.

Deniz Aytekin is the main referee of the game. He's got a solid reputation as the 2nd best German referee at the time and destined to replace the old first one.

This is his first ever UCL knockout round to referee.

The whole refereeing team consists of 5 guys. Four of them are FIFA referees, meaning they've already referee international games. One of them, which we'll call Double B., is however only a Bundesliga referee. He's never refereed a European game in his life, never been under such bright spotlights. He's there as an Additional assistant referee (AAR), meaning he's behind the goal line to observe if any incident occurs near the penalty area.

He's the weak link of this whole refereeing team.

5. A boiling setting.

Despite the heavy 4 - 0 slapping received by the home side in the first leg, the attendance on March 8th is 96,290. The stands are jam-packed, heated by Luis Enrique's words of the previous night in press conference:

But the audience must be a cauldron, before and during. There will be no need for a break. I don't ask them anything. But we will need a Camp Nou like a volcano.

The setting in which everything happens plays a key part in how the night's going to go. The chants, jeers, shouts, whistles and protests of almost a hundred thousand people are directed at the opposite players, but also and more importantly at this team of referees thrown onto the pitch. One of which has never refereed a European game, and another one who's experimenting his first UCL's knockout round.

This isn't me waxing some poetics by the way, but a factor to take into account when analyzing this match. New Zealand's famous haka, the ceremonial dance executed by the All Blacks at the beginning of each of their rugby match, has been critized for being a tool for the team to take psychological ascend over their opponents. This debate has taken place around a one minute ceremonial dance performed by fifteen players. Now picture ninety minutes of ceaseless jeering produced by a hundred thousand people all around you, constantly, added to the twenty-two players, their coaches, their staffs and substitutes on the pitch pressing you at every decision.

That's why UCL games require "elite referees", and that's why it was the mistake of UEFA to call up inadequately prepared referees to this game that changed everything.

6. First shake (3')

Luis Suarez (Barça, n°9) scores with his head. The 4 -0 is reduced to 3 - 0 (aggreg.) not even three minutes into the match. In the referee's head this match, which should've gone rather peacefully and without surprises, is already shaping up to be something else than a mere testing game.

More importantly, as players celebrate wildly, you can see Double B., the referee in charge of checking the ball has crossed the line and can indeed count as a goal, looking at an assistant referee rather than taking the decision himself. First tip of something wrong: you got a referee who's not assured enough in his own judgment to make a call.

At such a stage, a weakness in decision-making is unforgivable. It will prove true later.

7. Key fault (23')

That's Edinson Cavani (PSG, n°9) in white. That's Gerard Piqué, local angry catalan man (Barça, n°3) in blue.

Piqué just made an uncontrolled tackle from behind. Piqué, known for protesting at every corner, walks away without saying anything when Aytekin pulls a yellow card.

That's because he knows in any other circomstance and game, this action should've been a straight red.

This will prove key in the game's unfolding, acting as a pressure point on the referee's future decisions and players' behaviour.

8. Tense situations. Luis Suarez, local Karen. (23' - 45')

The next twenty minutes are a swarm of potential-penalties situations and complaints. Neymar falls in the penalty box but isn't given a penalty. Around the 30', Cavani takes a yellow for referee contesting: knowing Piqué's first tackle deserved a red, Cavani is outraged at the lack of yellow showed by Aytekin the second time Piqué fouls him, and reclaims one is showed. He's the one that takes the card instead, sending him furious.

Most notably, at around 35', Suarez almost goes to head-to-head challenge with Meunier over some action at a corner. He then proceeds to get up Aytekin's face, protesting over what seemingly is nothing.

It is nothing, but what Suarez is doing isn't innocent. Protesting and contesting every call the ref does is a behaviour he's known for, has got the referees wary of players like him, and not only because it's annoying: because over the length of 90 minutes and within such setting, a player constantly contesting and protesting calls can get in the head of lesser-accustomed referees.

The devil works hard, but Luis Suarez, appointed contester in chief, works harder. That too will prove true later, at the tipping point of the match.

9. Half time (45')

At half-time, the socre is 2 - 0, five yellow cards and four potential-penalty situations the ref has had to deal with. Players and referee squad go back to their locker rooms to a feverish stadium. At that point, a referee is redoing the first half of the game in his head: what Aytekin, and the players & staff, are seeing, are all the accumulation of non-given cards, given cards, tense non-penalty calls and contests. This piles up in everyone's mindset and creates a serie of pressure points in the unconscious - or conscious, in case of players like Luis Suarez, used to play on such chord - of everyone on that pitch.

This is very much not what the UEFA had planned for this team of referees.

9. Turning point. (50')

At the 50', Neymar (Barça, n°11) in blue is tripped by Meunier (PSG, n°12) in white inside the penalty area.

Aytekin doesn't give the penalty. Players protest. Aytekin consults the sidelines referee. A few seconds later, he gives the penalty for Barcelona.

This precise moment is where Aytekin loses the match and what explain the Remontada.

See, when this action happens, Aytekin is there (bottom, in yellow glow):

About 14m from the action: the most well-placed to judge what happened and make a call.

Up there (top of the screen, circled in red), you got Double B., the Bundesliga ref, who's the furthest from the action, the less experimented of the referee squad, who shouldn't referee at this level. As Aytekin says nothing, players start protesting, and start swarming up Double B. :

That's Luis Suarez at the left, by the way. I know, color me surprised. Local referee's-face-lurking man, just short of hand-written protest signs but not of hand movements to express his sheer outrage at the call, how could you not call this, there is foul, see, see, there's penalty, call it, how can you not see this.

So Suarez is once again complaining - with Rafinha (Barça, n°12) - but this time not to Aytekin: he's complaining to the very much non experienced Double B. And as Aytekin hasn't announced a penalty, what's Suarez doing? What he always does, what he's been doing since minute 0, probably been contesting nurses' opinion since he was out of his mother's womb. Provokes, simulates, criticizes, contests. There, he's pointing at the penalty area. Now what's Double B. doing? Not staying in his place, that's for sure: he walks on the pitch and towards Aytekin, forcing the latter to acknowledge the opinion of his AAR by going to him. Thing is, it's not like Double B.'s opinion was 100% his: he's inexperienced, far from the action, litteraly swarmed by Barça players telling him there's foul and penalty, and under the pressure of 90 thousand people currently yelling him the same thing.

So, instead of acting like as a proper AAR - an assistant referee - and letting the main ref make the right call from where Aytekin was the most well-placed to, or staying where he was and letting Ayteking know his opinion in the privacy of their headset, Double B. publicly backs Aytekin to a wall.

Seconds later, Aytekin points to the penalty spot and, amending his previous decision, gives the penalty. Messi (Barça, n°10) transforms it.

3 - 0.

Aytekin's just lost control of his referee team, and he's just lost control of the game.

10. Getting control back. (50' - 67')

So at that point, you have on your hands a match that has completely changed, a boiling situation escalated into prime Balkans 1912, a stadium on fire, players thinking they can do about anything, and a referee squad who starts taking decisions in your place.

Aytekin isn't an idiot. He's a ref with experience, no matter how little in the UCL. He knows he has to take back the upper hand in this game, or it's going to be hell. When a ref has to tell others something, he does this through his headset: this is what Aytekin must have done after the 50' minute, following the previous incindent. He most certainly has send a message to his assistant refs and linesmen, reminding them of how it worked: they have authority in the designed zones they're astrained to, but he remains the main ref and the one to make a call elsewhere.

This reminder of hierarchy is not without incidence on the follow up.

In the following minutes, Aytekin refuses to give penalty to Neymar when he falls in the box.

At 62', Cavani scores, bringing hope to everyone on PSG's side, but also allowing the referees to breathe: this game might finally fall back on its feet. At 67', Aytekin immediately calls Suarez's bluff when he dives into the penalty box and gives him a yellow. You can visibly see Aytekin regaining confidence in his own judgments and taking back the prevalence in calls. Everything is finally resolving itself.

Is it, though?

Two issues.

we're at the 67' minute. This is the eight yellow card showed by Aytekin. Amongst referee, there's a sort of implicit accord that beyond five yellow cards, you should start putting reds, to take back control of the game. A red makes all your over-excited players stand still.

minutes pass, and soon enough we're entering the 80th. This match is a high-intensity one, both mentality as we've detailed extensively, but also physically. It's back and forth all the time for Aytekin, who's the only referee constantly running all around the pitch with the players.

Eventually, Aytekin pays this physical intensity, and this reestablishment of hierarchy within the referee squad.

11. Fucking up. (85')

Di Maria (PSG, n°11) goes back for a speedy counter-attack towards Barcelona's goals; he's fouled inside the penalty area by Mascherano (Barça, n°14).

Highlighted in yellow, the other assistant referee.

Highlighted absolutely nowhere to be seen, Aytekin.

Aytekin is too far away, he's been running around for almost ninety minutes, he's worn out. So for once, the most well-placed referee to make the call for this action is the Assistant Referee.

Slight issue there: this assistant referee is part of the squad that's been put back into place some twenty minutes ago by Aytekin over an almost point-by-point similar situation happening on the other side of the pitch. He's heard his colleagues and himself get told that in such cases, it's Aytekin who gets the final call. Problem is, it should indeed be Aytekin to make the final call, but only if Aytekin is in a position to call anything: this isn't the case here. The Assistant is utterly alone and the closest to the action. He's the one who has now a legitimate say to whether or not what he saw counts as a penalty.

He doesn't say anything. Aytekin doesn't call the action. No penalty given to PSG. This could've been the goal that would have turned the history of the match.

It doesn't. The score remains 3 - 1 on the pitch, 5 - 3 on aggreg.

12. Luis Suarez. Yes. (91')

After Neymar reduces the 5 - 3 to 5 - 4 at the 88' in a free kick that's enough to make a grown man tear up each time he recalls it, there comes this.

These images make me howl with laughter. I genuinely cannot help but laugh out loud each time I see the face of this man, giving Camp Nou an acting lesson worthy of being hidden behind a MasterClass paywall. Because spoiler alert: this bitch has not been tripped by Marquinhos (PSG, n°5).

There is a contact, but this isn't a penalty contact. There's an amplification on Suarez's behalf - no one who's been tripped falls with their hands in the hair, your first instinct dictates you to put them in front of you to soften the fall - and borderlining on simulation.

Aytekin gives a penalty and a yellow card to Marquinhos. At shis tage of the match, with these stakes, at the point where the action happened, if you're gonna call penalty and thus validate the fact that you think Marquinhos willingly fouled Suarez as he was going to the goal, this shouldn't have been yellow. This should've been straight red.

Giving a yellow highlight Aytekin's incoherence in his decision making. Confusion furthermore highlighted by what happens next.

Do you know what's the rule for penalty taking? As soon as 2 players, one of each team, have intruded the surface as the taker is taking it, the penalty has to be redone.

Do you know how many players are in the penalty area? Seven.

Aytekin doesn't make the call.

Barcelona gets its fifth goal at the 91' minute. 5 - 5 (aggreg.)

13. Match ended. (91' - 95')

Over the course of the next few minutes, Suarez manages to avoid a card once again, having trapped Aytekin in a mental game where Aytekin can't give him a yellow without giving him red, Verratti gets a yellow, the stadium cries at every opportunity. It's the tenth yellow card Aytekin has given in this match.

This is Argentina - Netherlands 2022. At this point, so many yellow cards don't mean a single thing other than the referee has well and truly lost control of the game.

At this point, Aytekin knows he's fucked up, massively so. His only redeeming grace would be for Barcelona not to pass to the Quarters. He'd go under the radar for a bit, until the UEFA use him again for another game, and his career would get out of this mess mostly fine.

Tough luck.

So the Remontada is the result of a crash fall from 4 - 0 heights, a profession of faith by a 25 old, unwavering hope of a thousands, failure of UEFA to consider UCL football as an ever-changing tide where the beaten team isn't condemned to defeat, failure of the winning team to conserve a cool head, inexperience of a referee, lack of proper communication, wrong calls, non calls, too much calls, peer pressure and one very, very decided Urugayan.

In short: I understand where the feeling is coming from (ie: obvious failures of refereeing) but I don't believe the Remontada to be rigged. I believe it is merely a splendid display of the impossible rendered possible by humans being humans, at their strength as in their complete failings, and a serie of unfortunat/fortunate events (depending on which side you're standing on) resulting from each action, decision and mindset of the involved actors. UEFA business men are humans. So are players. So are referees. It was unfair. If I was a PSG supporter, I believe I too would be calling it rigged for lack of better words. I just so happen to have been on the lucky side. It's the referee's fault, it's everyone's fault. It was avoidable. Or perhaps it wasn't. Beautiful football for some, nightmarish evening for other, at the end of the day, it just was, and that's about it.

#anon i took so much time answering i hope you didn't think i was ghosting or anything #just finding the documentary and putting it in resume ergh #doc is “Décrypté: La Remontada” by the way! #also rewatching this game's highlights made me tear up like wtf i still love that 2017 team. i love it so much. i love these people. #remontada #barça

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #80: Harry Potter, but make it The Old Guard

I know what some of you may be thinking - haven't you done this crossover before? And you're right, I have. But shortly after posting that I realized I had missed a massive opportunity, because right there in the first book is the philosopher's stone, a magical object created by Nicholas Flamel that can grant the user eternal life.

So I thought: What if the sorcerer's stone was just a cover for The Old Guards' flavor of immortality? Or: What if The Old Guard intervened in Harry Potter's life following the destruction of the stone?

Bear with me:

The legend of the philosopher's stone arrises some time in the 12th century, when Nicky, needing a quick explanation for his immortality in a sticky situation, comes up with the idea. It's intended to be nothing more than a means of diverting attention while he makes a quick escape. He certainly never intends for it to turn into the subject of serious alchemical research for the next thousand years.

The Guard ends up running with the story, because it means they don't have to fake their deaths in the Wizarding World every couple of decades. Joe and Booker are particularly fond of raising the story to new and more ridiculous heights each time they use it - though this somewhat backfires in Joe's case, with the addition of Flamel's wife Perenelle to the myth.

Just imagine it:

Fast forward to summer 1991, when Dumbledore asks to borrow the stone for "research".

It's hard not to be suspicious, as the conceit needed to ask someone to turn over what is supposed to be a powerful and unique relic upon which the owners' lives rely is extraordinary - to say nothing of the fact that he's the headmaster of a school full of children and having such an object in a school is foolhardy at best. Even so, they hand over the fake stone they put together for just such occasions they're required to produce it, just see what Dumbledore is planning.

To say they are unhappy that he uses it as the MacGuffin at the end of an obstacle course designed to draw a genocidal Dark Lord into a school full of children would be an understatement.

The day after the wards they placed on the fake stone tell them it was destroyed, Nicky walks into the Great Hall during breakfast and makes a scene to rival all scenes, not the least because it involves a lot of confusion on how this completely unassuming man in muggle clothes found his way into Hogwarts without anybody knowing and then who proceeded to calmly and rationally accuse Dumbledore of child endangerment and willful negligence.

After the teachers get over the shock that the thousand-year-old "creator" of the stone 1) looks younger than most of them, 2) prefers to dress as a muggle, 3) is Italian, not French, and 4) prefers to go by Nicky these days, they're equally as angry at Dumbledore for daring to hide something that dangerous in a school - even if, "It was only a fake."

While that situation is bubbling over in the Great Hall, Andy and Booker investigate the - not yet dismantled - obstacle course and are even less impressed with Dumbledore than before.

Joe elects to check on the child who ended up in the hospital wing because of it - and becomes nearly incandescent with rage, because one doesn't need a thousand years' experience to realize the child in question has very clearly experienced significant physical and emotional abuse. That it's Harry Potter almost makes it worse, as it speaks of someone either being exceptionally negligent with regards to their responsibilities to such a famous child or else intentionally placing him in a position to be abused in order to utilize that fame for their own ends. Given the events with the stone, Joe is inclined to believe the latter.

It's not quite a kidnapping - Joe asks Harry if he'd like to get away from his abusers, even if he has to convince Harry that the events of his childhood count as abuse, - but it's equally clear that Joe has no intentions of allowing Harry to return to the Dursleys even if he'd said no.

Needless to say, the others are quite surprised when they return to their latest safe house and find Harry there, but quickly agree with the necessity after Joe explains the situation. (Andy has to be talked out of murdering Mr and Mrs Dursley. Harry's justice comes through the muggle courts.)

And so Harry is adopted by Joe and Nicky, with Booker initially reluctant to get too close after his experiences with his own children. (After some growing pains, Booker gets over himself and becomes a favorite uncle, coincidentally preventing the nonsense with Merrick that occurs in canon.)

HP canon continues apace, albeit with some adjustments:

Events of Second and Third Year are flipped, with Sirius escaping during the summer of 1992 after the papers announce Harry's "kidnapping" from Hogwarts. (Nevermind that if the Wizarding World checked with the muggles, they'd find all the adoption paperwork in order, if expedited.) Sirius' innocence is discovered at the end of the year - and when Snape ends up reflecting back Lockhart's oblivate when he tries to claim the capture of a dangerous escaped convict for himself, he earns momentary approbation throughout Hogwarts. Sirius is found innocent at his long delayed trial, but Joe and Nicky refuse to let him spend time unsupervised with Harry until he gets the medical treatment he so clearly needs.

Third year, Lucius Malfoy plants the diary in Ginny's school shopping somewhat by accident - he was aiming for Harry's school things, wanting to hurt Sirius by hurting his beloved godson, as Lucius had been using the Black accounts to grease palms and Sirius' freedom means that he now has quite a debt to repay before his embezzlement is discovered.

Now having some experience with trustworthy adults, Harry comes clean about hearing a voice in the walls when his parslemouth abilities are discovered during Lupin's rather more successful dueling club. Lupin realizes the monster must be a basilisk after that, and with some detective work eventually relieves Ginny of the diary before anyone is dragged into the chamber.

With Fourth Year comes the Triwizard Tournament, which not even "the great Nicholas Flamel" can get Harry out of, due to the binding nature of the magical contract. Though Dumbledore comes under international scrutiny for failing to ensure the safety of his students (eventually losing many of his non-British titles), this does little for Harry. The Guard takes up residence in the castle, helping him research and train, but events largely follow canon. Cedric dies, Voldemort returns, and no one believes it - not the least the wider Wizarding World, which largely believes Dumbledore spun a child's traumatic experience into a means of regaining the political clout he lost over the course of the year.

As Dumbledore is already losing political favor, Fudge doesn't waste Umbridge on the DADA position. Instead the real Alistair Moody takes up the position, which only highlights how obvious it should have been Crouch Jr was not Moody. Dumbledore loses further political clout when this leaks out, but when Voldemort makes a play for the Ministry at the end of the year he regains most of it. Harry is able to warn his parents of what was happening because of his visions, who in turn warn the Ministry in time for action to be taken - and if Dumbledore is disappointed Harry left the fighting to the adults, he hides it well.

Sixth Year largely follows canon, minus the Harry/Ginny subplot. And though Dumbledore encourages Harry to tell only his friends about the Horcruxes and "leave the poor Flamels out it", Harry does exactly the opposite.

This has interesting consequences for Harry's Seventh Year, as Voldemort is unable to gain a foothold in Hogwarts despite taking over the ministry. This is in large part because Joe and Nicky set up shop in Hogwarts, very obviously offering The Flamels' protection to any who need it, while Andy and Booker work in the background to track down and destroy all the horcuxes.

By the time Voldy makes a play for Hogwarts at the end of the year, they've destroyed all the horcruxes - save the one in Harry - without his knowledge. And when Joe takes down Voldy when he decides to torture Harry to force the surrender of the school? Well, the horcrux in Harry is too small and in too weak a state to keep the main piece tied to this plane of existence. Voldemort dies, Harry and the Flamels are hailed as heroes, and life in the Wizarding World returns to normal.

Harry goes on to lead a long and fulfilling life in the British Wizarding World. (He gains a dual mastery in education and DADA at a French magical university and ends up teaching DADA at Hogwarts for almost seventy years.) And though he keeps in contact with the Guard until his death, he never resents them for not sharing their immortality, having learned quite early on how little a blessing it really is.

Bonuses include: 1) Active, attentive, loving parents tempering Harry's recklessness and encouraging him to put more effort into his studies. This causes him to drift apart from Ron - though they remain friendly acquaintances - and closer to Hermione, Neville, and others outside his house. Harry and Hermione remain friends throughout Hogwarts, become each other's go-to plus ones for all social events afterwards, and eventually fall into a romantic relationship in their final year of university. They are the only ones that are surprised by this turn of events, with their various friends and family members having started betting on when they'd get together begining in Third Year; 2) Harry and Hermione turning their home into the first Wizarding foster home, raising a variety of Wizarding orphans as their own, and serving as a two-person lobbying group for modernized family law in the British Wizarding World. Though they are surprised by a pair of twin boys late in life - who they name James Sirius and Joseph Nicholas - they treat their biological children no different than the orphans they continue to take in; and 3) A running joke wherein the immortals call coffee The Elixir of Life.

And that is surprisingly more than I thought I'd have. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you do anything with it.

More Terrible Fic Ideas

#plot bunny #fic ideas #harry potter #the old guard #hp #tog #andromache the scythian #nicolo di genova #yusuf al kaysani #sebastian le livre #immortal husbands #immortality #yusuf x nicolo #found family #families of choice #wizarding world #wizarding society #hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry #albus dumbledore #voldemort #hermione granger #harry x hermione

[fullgrownpalace]

Hi! I just wanted to say I adore the way you draw Ma'am! She's really pretty in your style ^^

Question wise though, do you have any headcanons or anything like that for her or any of the other characters?

I wish I hadn’t accidentally privately responded to a previous question about my headcanons for her, because it was a LONG LIST, but I’ll try and list a few!

This’ll be long so it’s all shoved under the cut, minus some more private HC’s-

Full Grown/Ma’am

• She’s a huge sweets fan, and once Big Deal gets better at cooking and baking, she has a habit of stealing away muffins or cookies, much to the exasperation and chitterings of him.

• I give her battle scars beneath her suit!

• She has some sort of connection to Reggie which royally pisses her off for A WHILE, especially as Endless tries to push for their friendship. In comes my mentor!AU where a greater looming evil forces them to call a truce and they eventually become like family.

• She’s the original leader/Queen of Endless before Bad Things happened and shunted her into the volcanic stasis until Reggie revives her.

• She’s the original creation of Endless. She was made by a very, very lonely little girl who desperately needed a friend and was scared of growing up, who got whisked away to Endless at its most baby state. Full Grown bloomed into life just about the same age as the girl who created her, and she ages alongside her until the girl grows away from Endless and finally stops coming to Endless. Ma’am stops aging from there.

• She likes wrestling, obviously, but she also likes hockey. She likes the fighting lol

• Big Deal’s affections scare her and make her anxious, she’s scared of niceness and affection in *general*, so she acts up, acts out, lashing out and thrashing and acting petulant in her denial to try and create distance. It doesn’t work.

• She can play a few musical instruments! Namely the piano and guitar, but a few others too.

• She can speak a few different languages, mostly because one of my favorite Matt Berry songs has French in it and I said she can.

• Her music tastes are very wide and varying but she favors acid jazz, psychedelic rock, and hypno-pop.

• Ma’am is OLD, lmao. She clearly is themed around astro-retro futurism of the 50s and 60s, between her house, her theme song, her aesthetic, so I like to put the height of her leadership around those eras.

• She /likes/ entertaining guests. Beneath all her bristle and coldness and axe-crazy mania, when she’s not putting out her icy, angry exterior, she *likes* having guests and being able to entertain. We see her even say that she likes having guests when Brown Roger comes around (poor Brown Roger lol)

• She likes roller skating

• She’s got a closet full of unique clothes, but after Bad Things and her stasis in the volcano, she sticks to wearing her Endless suit because her clothes feel too personal and vulnerable for a long time.

• She’s a hopeless romantic at heart, though terribly scorned, so she hides it beneath briars and thorns and chaos. She loves chick flicks and romance novels and she values loyalty and respect.

• Her and modern technology are Not Friends. Her range in technology goes up until the late 80s/early 90s, and I KNOW the show is technically supposed to take place in that era but that completely bypassed me back in 2019 when I started making my AUs, which take place 2015 and above, so modern technology makes her curse and sneer and growl in frustration.

• She just really likes food. Big Deal has to learn fast how to cook and bake properly for her because she gets very cranky when she’s hungry and she eats A Lot.

• She’s like a giant lizard cat. She’s very bendy and flexible, likes climbing trees and crawling around searching for shiny things, and she likes basking under the sun, even if she complains about being around others the whole time (she’ll also grab Big Deal and curl around him because he’s a little furnace, much to his flustered-ness)

• She’s genderfluid and queer. She doesn’t care about earth terms, she’s a shapeshifting alien queen in a different dimension, human customs and opinions don’t really matter when it comes to who *she* is.

• She and Big Deal manage to cross over onto earth at some point and she creates earth human forms for them.

• I technically have a full name for her but thatsss a bit private and will only be revealed if I talk to you for a while hdhfjd

I have a lot more but for the sake of saving time, I just have those for now for her.

Reggie

• CHAOS GIRL- she maintains her chaotic, bright, colorful nature even into adulthood. I really like focusing on her and her friends growing up into young adults because like.. self projection and also because this show is *about* growing up, and it’s SO interesting exploring that facet and seeing how their personalities, ESPECIALLY Reggie’s, grow and flux, yet how they still stay true to themselves.

• She /can/ sing a lil bit but it’s one of the few things she’s very shy about, between bullying and befriending people like Todd and Esther, and eventually Gwen, who are all so musically oriented, so she kinda just.. hides that she can kinda sing by being so overly dramatic about *badly* singing.

• She grows a steady mentorship/apprentice dynamic with Full Grown (though it depends on AU for how old she is when that mentorship starts, for my main one, she’s almost 13, for a few of my others, she’s older teens) who eventually becomes a like a very dear family member to her

• She’s a sporty girl when she hits her teens. She’s got a LOT of energy and frustration to expel and she winds up enrolling in volleyball, hockey, and rollerderby throughout her teen years to help her adrenaline junkie life and it helps with the frustrations of Having To Grow Up.

• She keeps her tooth gap, she never gets it corrected, and she’s got a very crooked and mischievous smile that lasts her whole life.

• She’s COVERED in freckles.

• She’s very shy around Conelly for a WHILE, they don’t even start dating til Reggie’s like 16.

• She’s actually very good with science, it just takes Ma’am’s mentorship to help her realize that ‘hey she actually sometimes likes learning’ and she likes astronomy, astro-physics, physics, and chemistry (she finds interest when she’s being taught magic and finds out there’s a lot of science behind potions and magic)

• She’s forever a foodie, always munching and eating SOMETHING. She’s a frequent food thief and steals snacks from Mack and Beefhouse, from Full Grown and Big Deal, and from her friends.

• She’s the championed Knight of Endless, in all essential aspects. She undergoes weapons training from Full Grown when she hits adulthood due to other threats on Endless.

• She LIKES dressing up, she LIKES dresses sometimes, she just doesn’t like dressing up the way Judy wants her to, and she doesn’t like feeling clumsy and doesn’t like feeling like she’s just playing dress up to be someone she’s not (unless it’s cosplay, she gets her friends into cosplaying with her).

• Most of her wardrobe I draw her in comes directly from my closet or from my style.

• She gets rebellious with her friends when they’re 16/17 and Todd’s older brother takes them to get ear piercings together, so she’s got two lobe piercings and industrial piercings on both ears. When she’s older, she also has a tongue piercing, because she thought it was Cool™️ and she likes to stim with it.

• In my main mentor!AU, she chops all her hair off to her shoulders directly after her 18th birthday in a fit of frustration and rage and panic. Mood.

• She also puts colored streaks in her choppy hair when she’s older, regardless of shortness or longness, she’s got green, pink, and blue streaks randomly smattered through her hair.

• She’s got severe ADHD and is possibly autistic

• She ALSO likes wrestling, so her and Full Grown cheer and snicker and snort over wrestling.

• She maintains her artistry as she grows and is quite successful with her art on the occasion. She’s the designer for Dustin’s podcast’s merch, Space Draculas. His podcast focuses on mythological legends, paranormal encounters, and supernatural beings with Todd’s older brother a few friends. Any pics of Reggie I draw wearing an alien with fangs is for this podcast of his.

• She and Judy mend their bonds over the years, and Judy is definitely the Team Mom for all her friends.

• Reggie’s first car is a Volkswagen Beetle that’s got a yellow body, but the hood, front two doors, and trunk are all different colors. The car is littered with car stickers and it has pins all in the roof from the inside, and she’s got worm on the strings tied to the rear view mirror.

• She ends up being a very good babysitter, it’s her job as a teenager, so she winds up being very good with kids.

• She curbs her dirty, messy habits as she grows older, but sometimessss she still gets down and dirty on Endless, she’s got no problems with getting muddy and dirty, covered in paint, sticky with sweat and sand, and she has to be reminded that showers are REQUIRED /more/ than twice a week.

• Full Grown regularly chews her out because she tries to enter the witch’s home with her sandy boots on. That’s like.. a YEARS long habit.

• She winds up being a rather well skilled magic user

Big Deal

• Learns much of his cooking skills from infomercials after Ma’am falls asleep, alongside with tentatively befriending Mack and Beefhouse and learning from them. They reach out to him first, with much grace and forgiveness, one day when he’s searching for recipe ingredients and they end up being well friends to him, and eventually, Ma’am as well. (She’s much more resilient and hesitant to befriend the others after everything and many of them are just as hesitant of her but Reggie growing under her mentorship helps)

• He whacks Reggie in exasperation when she tries to steal food.

• He was made by Endless to protect his Ma’am and be a tiny little plush dragon to her.

• He purrs when he’s comfortable and happy, and so does Full Grown (though she represses it for a very long time). He also trills and chitters and chirps in feral little noises to her and she’ll make noises back.

• he looks smooth and round but he’s made up of really smooth feathers and he’ll puff up and flair out in high emotions or shock.

• He’s SO little and she’s SO big. My Ma’am is around 7’0” and he’s like.. thigh/butt level to her.

• He’s the first being to see her cry after her revival from the volcano, regardless of my AU and how long it takes for her to finally cry, he’s always the first one to see her cry.

• He’s a very enthusiastic learner and absorbs knowledge like a sponge, and he loves listening to his Ma’am talk so he’s willing to sit and listen and learn until he’s falling asleep.

• He does NOT like horror movies. He does not care for wrestling, or hockey, it all makes him cringe and fret so much, but he LOVES fantasy, adventure, romance, and music, so Full Grown introduces him to musicals and romcoms.

• he LOVES entwining his tail with his Ma’am’s tail, which, for a long time, is a very rare thing, but it grows more constant as time passes.

• he’s got little padded pawed hands! Tiny hands with little heart shaped paw pads!

______________

Okay these are all I can think of tonight but I WILL update this as I think of more, or feel free to message again with individual characters!

#twelve forever #12 forever

[eminsunnytoons123]

Since i have now made Camilla, afghan hound And baskerville hound's redesigns, I Said that i'll now post my headcanons for the muppets! =^///^=

And for the sake of enjoyment And creativity, i'll risk it for all my besties/Brothers And Sisters/pen pals And for some more muppet fans =^_^=

And also im still thinking about more headcanons for them, just give me time to think ^///^; And i'll post the part two either tommorow or later! =^v^=

Lets start!

Kermit the frog:

• he is 22 years old in my AU, but he acts very mature for his age

• he is pansexual And polyamourous, he is dating miss piggy And fozzie

• he likes little jingle Bells, so thats why he has some on his Boots

• Uses prounouns he/him, but some muppets call Kermit an "it", mostly Constantine

• his parents AND over 3000 siblings have been seen in some episodes, but some of his siblings dont have lines

• he plays his banjo on the top of the boarding home And sings the rainbow connection song

• he still has his iconic And polite personalities, but he sometimes gets annoyed when some insults him, but not always

• he sometimes accidentaly calls Clifford a "she", but Clifford actually doesnt mind nor does he care about any prounouns that the muppets call him

Fozzie bear:

• he is 24 years old in my AU, but he still acts goofy And silly like always

• he is queer, pansexual And polyamourous, And he is dating Kermit And miss piggy

• he doesnt only use Rubber chickens, he even uses any circus-related stuff

• he uses his water flower to spray others as a prank, oh! And he LOVES april fools Day

• he secretly likes hello Kitty and any silly cartoons, And he has an hello Kitty pin on his hat

• his jokes can SOMETIMES be funny, but theyre most of the time horrible And bad, And others always groan, roll their eyes And get annoyed by fozzie

• he likes anything thats colorful And that has rainbow colors in it

Miss Piggy:

• she is 23 years old, but he acts just the same And mature like on the muppets

• she is bisexual And polyamourous, And she is dating Kermit And fozzie

• she LOVES the 70s, 80s And even 90s women Fashion, especially if they have Pink shaded colors in it

• she has her pet Foo-Foo the dog, but she even has Gloria estefan as her pet

• she likes any bracelets And necklaces that have pearls on them, but even any kind of Crystals on them

• she is french-british in the Group, but she mostly says "moi" like always And speaks some french words in her sentences

• she practices karate, And she always tests it on one of the muppets in the boarding home, except for the children/kids

Gonzo the great:

• he is 22 years old in my AU

• he is pansexual And non-binary, And they is dating Camilla the chicken

• gonzo uses any prounouns, but most of the muppets call him by "he/him/his" but gaffer the pirate Cat calls him an "it" And by "they/them"

• they likes doing their nails, he has his nails colored in a non binary colors flag

• he even does acrobatic tricks, not only anything thats dangerous, even sometimes Circus tricks

• gonzo has an tail, with an blue fluff on the end of it, just like how Clifford now has an tail

• he isnt only interested in girl chickens, but sometimes roosters (not in an zoophilic way.)

Rowlf the dog:

• he is 29 years old in my AU

• he is bisexual, And he is dating selena the brunette haired whatnot, who is a straight Lady but she supports rowlf being bisexual

• he sometimes gives Texas vibes to other muppets

• baskerville And Afghan hounds are his most close friends in the boarding home, but he gets annoyed by baskerville And his singing

• he is pretty much interested in any classical music that have piano music in it, like Mozart

• rowlf can sometimes be pretty sarcastic in the Group, like for example when someone tells him something exciting, he says: "okay, And?" And he Chuckles, but doesnt mean it in a rude way

Pepe the King prawn:

• he is 21 years old in my AU

• he is pansexual, genderfluid and polyamourous, And he is dating Rizzo And yolanda

• he has an childhood toy named topo sticky, even tho topo sticky COULD sometimes talk in the muppets, on TMS:LITBH he doesnt talk nor move. And Pepe sometimes gets embarassed when some of the muppets see him with his childhood toy topo sticky

• his actual name is Pepino Rodrigo Serrano Gonzales, because he had two mamas And one Papa (IN MY AU.), but some of the muppets found it hard to remember his real name, so Pepe just told them to call him "Pepe". But some of the muppets call him by his real name, like Mildred huxetetter And some other pretty much older And mature muppets in the boarding home

• he likes doing ballet, but not wearing male clothes for the ballet, only female clothes for the ballets like what ballerinas wear

• he sometimes does his acts with Seymour, but not only that, he even hangs out with him

• Pepe has an short wavy red hair unlike an spiky hair

Rizzo the rat:

• he is 21 years old in my AU

• he is bisexual And polyamourous, he is dating Pepe And yolanda

• he has an colorful hair with neon rainbow colors, but his actual hair color is either Dark Brown or blonde

• they has an patch on his tail because he Got Hurt when he was Younger, he was probably bitten by a cat And he even Got stitches because that Cat nearly ate off his tail, but only the top of it

• he is even a demiboy, And he uses he/they prounouns

• he infact does have hair in here, And before in the muppets his hair was NEVER shown

• he sometimes Chuckles And laughs at pepe's ballet, but he still loves him

Yolanda the rat:

• she is 21 years old in my AU

• she is bisexual And polyamourous, And she is dating Rizzo And pepe

• she has an puffy And more longer blonde-yellow hair unlike in her original version

• she is an perfectionist for makeup And Fashion, just like miss piggy

• she had an EX-boyfriend named William the rat, but then he wasnt Hanging out with her And he secretly had another girlfriend And he was clearly cheating on yolanda. It is pretty Unknown what happend to him, but here is an picture of William on yolanda's door of her room And it has an knife on it. And in the first episode of TMS:LITBH, she told Pepe And Rizzo this (read the scenario):

Pepe: "I dont know if deadly's asleep, okay?"

Rizzo: "how do you not know if deadly's asleep!?"

Pepe: "I dunno."

Yolanda: "you two are stupider than my EX boyfriend."

Rizzo: "wait! You have an EX?"

Yolanda: "well... I had him, I had that idiot named William. Now he is in his grave."

• so yolanda probably either joked about that William's in his grave, or she either really killed him, And its based on this comic I made on second of november 2023

• she loves colorful bracelets, And she has three of them on her tail, And one on her wrist

• she likes baking muffins, cookies And small cakes

• she likes doing hairstyles, makeup, putting dresses on and any iconic And fashionable clothes, And she likes reading magazines And being with Rizzo And pepe

• she is british-american

Dr bunsen honeydew:

• he is 27 years old in my AU

• he is pansexual, And he is dating beaker

• he likes any weird And strange science And Experiments, just like the ones he makes

• bunsen actually does have eyes, And he sometimes Opens them but as if he is squinting his eyes

• he always wears safety glasses whenever he is doing one of his Experiments

• bunsen sometimes tests his new Experiments on beaker, but beaker doesnt get hurt or anything

Beaker:

• he is 28 years old in my AU

• he is bisexual And he is dating dr bunsen honeydew

• he sometimes gets nervous And scared when bunsen wants to try his Experiments on beaker, but he doesnt get Hurt nor does anything bad happen to him

• he sometimes even says: "beep!" Or "boop!" And sometimes even "hello!" And "bye-bye!"

• he likes gently petting small Animals, like kittens, bunnies, parrots... Etc

• he doesnt now wear an Scientist suit on TMS:LITBH

Thats now all my headcanons for the first two parts! I'll make the other parts tommorow =^_^=

#my arts #traditional art #the muppets #the muppets show: life in the boarding home #kermit the frog #miss piggy #fozzie bear #gonzo the great #rowlf the dog #pepe the king prawn #rizzo the rat #yolanda the rat #dr bunsen honeydew #beaker muppets #TMS:LITBH headcanons and stuff

[eemcintyre]

"Stretch" (2014) review

Aka ✨ why this movie is one of the most underrated ones I've ever seen and why it is some of Patrick Wilson's best work ✨

"If you like stories about chance and coincidence, here's one you've never heard" gives me the chills every time 😮‍💨

Patrick Wilson is one of the most underappreciated actors of his time, like, not only do his other projects demonstrate that he has drama, romance, instruments, and singing down ✨, but here he is finally given a chance to flaunt his impeccable comedic timing, vocalizations, and expressions

Idk maybe I just love movies with narration (ex., "Heathers," "Jerry Maguire," "Amelie," "Eloise at Christmastime," "Megamind," "American Made," "The Outsiders," etc.)

But jokes aside, I will defend Patrick Wilson's narration throughout the movie no matter whAT ANYONE SAYS YOU CAN PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGIES; IT IS AT TURNS FUNNY AND RELATABLE AND PROFOUND AND WE GET TO KNOW THE MAIN CHARACTER BETTER 😤😤

It does start a bit slow, especially if you aren't as invested in Patrick Wilson as I am 🙃🫠 but if you stick with it and pay attention to the subtle comedic elements in the meantime 👌🏻

This movie is not afraid to be a bit irreverent, which is a modern and mainstream rarity

Stretch and Charlie are so cute together; I wish more of their interactions had been kept in the final cut because when I think of the quality content that we missed 😩💖

"Who gains weight in their neck?" "Sexy people." "Three months of Rosetta Stone- I HATE THE FUCKING FRENCH." "We was gettin' all romantic, watching Titan-tic..." and so, so many more

Honestly, Karl is an integral part of this film as well- he may seem overtly cartoonish to some, but again, we get to know the main character better through him, as his presence gives us a visual of Stretch's inner struggle; he contributes to the dark humor vibe, and Ed Helms was clearly having the time of his life (as was the entire cast)

Speaking of which, stellar casting all around, especially those who were cast against type; love when directors give that stuff a chance. Everyone was made for their role

Dark humor, satire of Hollywood, homage to 80s films

The Navstar scene. If you know you know

Same goes for the post-Candace club exit scene with the valet, the wannabe rapper, and the sex club exit scene (there's a man wearing only balloons. need I say more). I mean, the whole movie is basically the best part and I'm trying not to make this review me just naming every scene and going "yes. this is good" but these are some of the most standout parts

The soundtrack may be atrocious overall, but the exception is the song at the end (although I was disappointed when I read that it was originally supposed to be "Telephone Line" by ELO but they didn't have enough in the budget because that would have gone so hard) 😩💕

Speaking of the ending, why is it so incredibly pure and sweet to me that it would almost make me cry if I weren't medicated? 🥺 Something about the setting of the diner, exuding vintage charm and glowing in the sun the quiet morning after the previous night of chaos, and the serendipity of how Stretch and Charlie finally reveal how much they've obviously liked each other for a while, and after all of the danger and depravity, everything ends soft and gentle and alright 😊💖

This film is somehow so sleazy and wholesome at the same time- against the backdrop of drugs, sex clubs, threats of violence, and constant swearing, it's ultimately a story about overcoming cynicism and self-destruction, getting your "mojo" back, taking control of your life, and allowing for the possibility that things happen for a reason ✨ Honestly? 10/10

#patrick wilson #stretch 2014 #joe carnahan #chris pine #ed helms #jessica alba #brooklyn decker #action film #action movies #cult classic #cult film #cult movies #underrated movies #underrated #underappreciated

[nation-of-bros]

Interesting point of view; I guess the Moroccan didn't look exactly harmless and he certainly wasn't alone. So his heroic act was probably pretty stupid to attack such a predator. And yes, he won't have received more than a thank you from the cunt.

Hero or Fool?

The moral, heroic part of me would of course say: That can't be the solution if everyone looked away! Someone had to intervene! And courage also means being willing to accept the consequences, even if it implies your own death. This is definitely a very noble male trait that we particularly appreciate in warriors who die for their cause. But we no longer live in the time of Germanic or Asian tribes, where men fight for their volk, with whom they form a strong unity; but in a "pluralistic postmodern society" of the 21st century. Therefore, showing such courage today is more stupid than heroic.

Above all, this incident proves that others will rarely help you; firstly, because they are not real men, even though they may look like one; and secondly, because you don't know each other well enough to forming a strong pack, a tribe. Bros at your side, on the other hand, would always support you and together it would never have gotten to this point. Especially since things happened so quickly when the foreigner pushed the broken glass into the face. Would he have done that if he knew that there were other men at your side?

Ultimately it has to be said, we are not responsible for the fate of others. You should help where you can, but your own safety comes first. In addition, this woman will most likely have voted for the established parties that support this illegal mass immigration of criminals to this day. Society as a whole is simply stupid and has accepted these conditions for reasons of ignorance, guilt complex or other sheep args; and when I see the voting behavior where 80% continue to vote for the shitty parties that caused this madness, I lose all sympathy for these victims of asylum seeker crime.

Criticism of uncontrolled mass immigration

Everyone, absolutely everyone, with common sense warned back in 2015: Not only war refugees from Syria are coming to us, but also people, or rather MEN, from other countries who are just taking advantage of the opportunity. Anyone who criticized this policy of open borders was insulted as a right-wing extremist or Nazi. And even today, 9 years later, this failed mass immigration is still not being questioned; but the majority and the mainstream in particular never tires of defaming dissenting opinions as “Nazi”.

It is even known that the overcrowded prisons in Africa were opened at that time in order to get rid of their own scum to Europe. However, from 2015 onwards, everyone was simply allowed into the country without any control. Many refugees registered several times using false information. In one particular case, a refugee even came up with 16 different identities and collected a lot of social benefits from the German state in this way! A German soldier who speaks French was even able to successfully pose as a French-born Syrian from colonial times and collect benefits accordingly.

And even those who became criminals were never deported. It's so incredibly stupid. The police simply do NOTHING because they are not allowed to, as that is what the elected established parties want, including the conservative party under Merkel, which was in power at the time. I mean: EVEN THE CONSERVATIVES WERE FOR OPEN BORDERS! So, rationally speaking, there is absolutely no reason to have a piece of glass shoved in your face for this degenerate human waste.

Sheep laws as an invitation to wolves

And when I googled to confirm this incident, I discovered: "However, the Munich police are also investigating Tony for assault; he is said to have head-butted the Moroccan." EXACTLY THIS! The state does not protect its own citizens and often even swaps perpetrators and victims!!! Our society simply no longer functions properly. Many here in the West were upset about Russia's treatment of the terrorists who recently carried out a horrific attack. It was seen in the courtroom how the police had previously beaten the terrorists and even cut off one of them's ear during interrogation. I think that's right, even if it's barbaric; but these terrorists decided to kill people en masse, so they shouldn't expect any mercy.

In the West, however, harmless things like a dissenting opinion or a mere comment on social media are already prosecuted as “hate speech”; whereas real crimes such as robbery, assault or even murder are punished very leniently, if at all. There is no deterrent! We live in a cruel world where wolves have to be shot so that they don't lose their fear of humans! What is our cuddly society doing? They punish the hunters who shoot wolves; because the green ecco state considers the settlement of wolves as an “endangered species” more important than protecting humans. It is not surprising at this point that a small child has already been mauled by a wolf for exactly that reason!

That's why I don't get upset about such stuff anymore. Most of those targeted by criminal illegal immigrants will also most likely have voted for established parties that caused these conditions, even though it was obvious that very many dangerous criminals were entering the country illegally. In the original countries, these asylum seekers would have been punished harshly. But in Europe, they know, they are treated with kid gloves and receive extremely lenient punishments, if any. They feel like they can do whatever they want here. So just throw the cunt who once welcomed illegal mass immigration with a refugee welcome sign at the train station to the predators. Don't intervene! It's natural selection!

#politics #essay

[lxdymoon0357]

Hello hello

I need some good old Jimmy and Alex content, so how about a reader who really likes to cook and draw?

Stay hydrated,eat enough and stay ssfe bestie☆

(Hello, my love Moki!!!)

Tsundere Delinquent Bully X Reader HCs:

S/O who really likes to cook and draw

Jimmy Santos

⌘ Well, he didn't know how good you are at cooking and drawing at first, but once he snuck in your room while you were in the shower and he ended up seeing a sketch book named 'Jimmy, bby <3' and curiosity won over him as he flipped through the books to see various sketches of him, all bringing out his beautiful features.

⌘ He didn't tell you he saw his drawing, but he he nearly ended up fainting due to being so flustered. But every once in a while, he sneaks that notebook out to see now sketches of him all the time, each in various moments, him eating, sleeping, laughing, smiling, zoning out, and who knows what.

⌘ He also only learnt about your talent in cooking when you were once eating food in the cafeteria and he ended up taking a bite of your tiffin and he was amazed and when he asked who made it, you replied that you made it yourself, he nearly pissed himself thinking you were joking but when you didn't laugh, he was READY to wife you up there right then and there, a ring for you all ready!

⌘ He would often have cooking dates with you, where you both cook something together and then he will play video games while you sketch something or more specifically him!

⌘ He also learnt cooking a bit from his aunt who was trying to earn his forgiveness and so when he requested her to teach him how to cook, she immediately agreed and also his cooking are quickly catching up, you have to do something to get better!!!

⌘ He also buys you as many art supplies you need, whenever you need, he uses his uncle Billy's card, which is kind of full 80% of the time, because he doesn't remember how much he earns and only uses a bit to buy alcohol....

⌘ Oh! Speaking of his uncle and aunt, they meet you and ended up liking you more then Jimmy in an instant, uncle Billy only stops drinking when you are included in the conversation and he loves you like his daughter and so happy you take Jimmy off their hands...

⌘ One thing you both do as dates is that you both cook a dish where one if guiding the other and the other has to follow all the rules given by their guider to make the dishes and so often you both end up ruining the dish and then finally make it together which tastes heavenly after you both are horribly tired!

⌘ He won't admit it, but he loves when you draw him and how focused you are when you're either cooking or drawing, painting or whatever you like to do..

Alex Bokarov

⌘ Alex as normal boyfriend is something I crave on nights when I feel "risky"....*wink wink* iykyk, but if one thing is true it's that he is amazing boyfriend as a normal persona and not when he is mentally insane.....

⌘ Honestly I don't approve a relationship with him, but if he was perfectly okay up there in his head, he would quite a good boyfriend...Again I'm saying this...

⌘ But if you had a talent in art, he would feed into your hobby as much as he can, bringing you model, motivating you, bringing you supplies, giving you ideas, posing as a model and what not you want him to do.

⌘ He loves to sketch along with you, you both acting as each-others models and try to see who can do better, you always win....But he's always happy to spend time with you, doing something you love, even though he's more of a person who leans more on painting and digital art I think...

⌘ He would love to cook for you, he loves your cooking, don't take him wrong, but hates getting you tired or or maybe you cut your hands cutting something or burn your hand while cooking, he's kind of overprotective...

⌘ He loves to make foods from different cuisines like Hispanic, French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, German and many other different cuisines cause we have many cultures and he's always happy to try new recipes...

⌘ He didn't grew up with good parents or like his parents just never paid attention to him, because they were horrible workaholics and since he was kind of a rich boy, he has many things and gadgets for you to try in your drawing and cooking....

⌘ He spends so much time, trying to draw better just so you both can draw together and spend more time with each-other...He will literally spend hours and has completed three books in only two months...

⌘ He helps you cook as well!!! You can doing anything and he will be helping you in anything you want...Like boiling water, mixing spices, cutting vegetables, frying foods or whatever you want him to do...

#navi⌗writes⌗ #tsundere delinquent bully headcanons #tsundere delinquent bully x y/n #tsundere delinquent bully x reader #tsundere delinquent bully #tsundere deliquent bully series #jimmy santos headcanons #jimmy santos x reader #tsundere delinquent fanfics #alex bokarov heacanons #alex bokaravo x reader #alex #jimmy #jimmy santos X reader #jimmy santos x you #jimmy santos x y/n

[cristalmystery]

which languages do you know, are you learning and which would you like to learn?

Skipping at last one you sent because that one needs to marinate for a bit, there’s so many options.

Anyway, kinda depends on what you count as knowing a language. My native language is Dutch, so I know that one. I have at least a C1 in English at this point. Also it’s a 50/50 if my thoughts are in Dutch or in English at any given moment.

I have been learning French since I was like 7-8 years old. You’d think that mean I know the language. To someone who doesn’t speak French or speaks it really badly, I do. To a native French speaker I don’t. Like if I say my French isn’t very good, people, are always surprised by how good my French is. But if I say my French is good, or that I speak French a native speak will be perplexed at my butchering of French. That’s mainly, be I’ve just never been confident since I grew up surrounded by a lot of native speakers (and I have been laughed at as a kid many times). It’s also because I rarely use my French. I don’t watch shows or YouTubers in French, nor do I read (all of which I started doing in English when I was around 14-15. It made a very big difference).

I also speak a bit of German. But like French, I kinda can’t produce anything but understand like 80% of everything I hear. In French it’s a cumulative knowledge. In German it’s because Dutch stems from German so we understand a lot of it, because to use it’s very similar (somehow this only works one way and not the other way around, the perks of speaking a language cobbled together from other languages).

Technically I know some Italian, by which I mean that I had to drill all the music terms (which are in Italian) into my head as a little kid because music theory, I guess? Though I could achieve very little with those if I actually went to Italy.

Which languages would I like to learn? All of them! I’m currently doing French on duo lingo to help myself memorise (mainly to hear, speak and read some French every day. Hearing and seeing the words at the same time actually helps me cope with the dyslexia a lot (French is hell for dyslexic, why are there so many silent letters) though it’s purely formal French, not familial French). I have German also, but I can kinda only focus on one at a time (I have a friend who writes in German and some day I will read her stories as they were writing instead of the version she translates for me).

I want to do Esperanto after that, because that should be the lingua Franca instead of English actually. Oh and one of the Arabic languages, but I still have to choose between Turkish , Berbers and Riff. I know a few words, but honestly I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make all the phonemes. Fun fact: the babies can actually produce every possible phoneme in any human language when born, but they lose that ability when they don’t use it. So you start out ready to learn any language. Also, I kinda want to learn the Slavic languages because I have a lot of friends who speak those, but I also know that Bulgarian grammar is even worse than French, so maybe not. I’m like to learn, Japanese or Chinese or Korean and such too one day.

I’m a huge language nerd and thus had to be nerfed by my dyslexia or I would have been too strong.

#the askers #jiksvokrat #oops that’s long #I just like languages okay

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Flake's podcast - Stars (Sterne)

podcasted 2023-01-10

This edition of Flake's podcast is about Stars, both in the astronomical object, and the famous persons way (and coincidently the word 'Star' is also a particular kind of bird in german (which in english is called Starling), which is the most seen bird so basically the Star (bird) is the star (famous) under the stars (heavenly objects) 😊 (if i may add a note by myself which Flake maybe would appreciate, it's that the german word for 'star' is 'stern', and in dutch a 'stern' is another kind of bird, a 'tern' in english, in german that one is called 'Seeschwalbe, so that's where the wordfun ends 😄).

Anyway, no elaborate anecdotes this time, but a couple of snippets.

At 0h07 he plays 'Die Ärzte' song 'Zu spät' which is about one day becoming a star, a really early Ärzte song (Flake says 1981, wiki says 1984, so let's go with early 80's), and Flake mentioned they also sang it at the time when on tour in their broken-down van (must be Feeling B era). And like the song Flake also knows ladies who he liked back in the day, but who didn't notice him at all, and now they want to get tickets to shows, claiming they liked him all the time after all (Flake never noticed it). Unlike the song Flake doesn't think about taking revenge though, because revenge always hurts both sides. 🌺

Another variety of 'seeing stars' is in comics when a character gets a blow on the head and stars pop up, well, Flake has experienced that too (0h44): in school they used to have really slippery floors, and Flake let himself be pulled, on his socks, by a classmate gliding across the floor, which was fun, until they came near a wall, and Flake didn't quite make the turn and crashed with his head against the wall, and yes, that made him see a whole lit of gold stars falling down from above (he describes it extensively, clearly a vivid memory for him).

After that anecdote he plays Depeche Mode, and their 'DM' sign leads him to musing on commercials, eventually ending up (0h53) with and old commercial (when he had a tv after 'Die Wende') he liked with the Ukrainian boxing brothers Klitshko, who he likes anyway, but thought especially funny in this commercial (for chocolate bar Milchschnitte), and whenever Flake wants to take a break, he still says "Pause Vitaliy" 😊

Tiny mention of Rammstein (1h06) at the very start of their career being send on a couple of concerts for musicbusiness representatives with a few other bands, the biggest name at the time was the band 'Die Schande', and a very active announcer trying to get the audience excited about the bands (at 1h08 you can hear Flake mimicking the announcer 😊).

Flake talks about the movie 'A fish called Wanda' (from 1h31), and a particular scene with a german play on words. Flake always watches movies in the German version (the original voices are replaced by German speaking voice actors) because he wants to know what a movie is about. Some of his band-colleagues tell him off for that, saying that you can only understand the emotion of a movie in the original language (note: i can think of more than one bandmate who'd argue with him about it 😄), but Flake thinks understanding it is more important and if they watch french movies, they don't watch the original either, so there (Flake 'huh huh's them at 1h32 😊)! Anyway that movie was very important (apart from a entire generation of guys being in love with Jamie Lee Curtis), at the start of the movie one of the actors says 'Ich bin entäuscht' (I'm disappointed) and that phrase actually made it into a Rammstein song: Bück Dich. 😊

and on that note...see if you can spot the 'Ich bin entäuscht' (any excuse to share a Rammstein live video 😄)

🎹

More of my takes on Flake's podcasts

#flake's podcast #des tastenfickers podcast #flake lorenz #rammstein

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Number 6

Welcome to A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes! During this month-long event, I’ll be counting my Top 31 Favorite Fictional Detectives, from movies, television, literature, video games, and more!

SLEUTH-OF-THE-DAY’S QUOTE: “I did not know the bank was being robbed because I was engaged in my sworn duty as a police officer.”

Number 6 is…Inspector Clouseau, from The Pink Panther.

It is difficult to say where the trope of the “Bumbling Detective” began. Some would point to the various Scotland Yard officers in the Sherlock Holmes stories…although, to be fair, in many of THEIR cases, they weren’t so much total idiots in the books, so much as just constrained by their inability to look beyond what they saw, so to speak. One character who I think doesn’t get enough credit for the beginning is Inspector Fix from “Around the World in 80 Days,” who felt like a more slow-witted Inspector Javert. There are probably still other characters one could credit for the concept…BUT, regardless of where it all began, I would venture to say that the concept reached its absolute zenith with the creation of this guy: Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

Originally played by Peter Sellers, Inspector Clouseau is the quintessential bungling Inspector. Speaking with an over-the-top French accent (which grew increasingly more cartoonish as the films went on), he is a clumsy buffoon, completely oblivious to his own ineptitude as a police officer. In the first film, Clouseau was actually a case of a Heroic Antagonist, depicted as an honest (but thoroughly stupid) detective, trying to apprehend his arch-nemesis: a mysterious jewel robber known simply as The Phantom. At the end of the film, the Phantom – a.k.a. Charles Litten – and his allies defeated the bungling clod by framing him as the true culprit. This was not the end for the Inspector, as he somehow was able to clear his name, and would continue to have a life in many other films in the “Pink Panther” film series. For those who don’t know, the actual Pink Panther is a pink diamond, not the cartoon character, who was more of a mascot for these movies, and became popular in theatrical cartoons that came later…but I digress.

Whenever I think of comical and incompetent detectives, Clouseau is the first character I think of. And, in a way, out of all the doofus detectives in the world…Clouseau is actually the closest to BEING competent you may find. Make no mistake, he SUCKS as a sleuth, but what’s interesting is that, in most of the movies, Clouseau still manages to win! He’s able to catch the criminals, whoever they are, and escape without much of a scratch. He’s also, despite his inherent clumsiness, surprisingly skilled in martial arts, although he rarely uses this fact to great advantage. A lot of this is because of Clouseau’s single greatest character trait, in my opinion: he follows a code that his creator – Blake Edwards – called “The Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Give Up.” Clouseau’s greatest strength, AND his greatest weakness, is that he is ALWAYS very confident in his own feelings and decisions. If he feels somebody is honest, absolutely NOTHING will convince him otherwise, no matter how high the decked is stacked against that fact. Similarly, if he feels he can handle a situation, no matter how ludicrous or perilous, nothing will stop him from doing it. This gets him into a LOT of trouble, as you can imagine, as he seems totally shocked when people who very obviously despise or distrust him cause trouble for him, and he is always startled by his own slapstick buffoonery. But at the same time, on many occasions, his instincts about what is going on and who is or is not responsible for a crime DO turn out to be correct.

While Sellers absolutely made the character, there have been other attempts to portray Clouseau since. The most successful, in my opinion, was a cartoon series called “The Inspector”: the title character was never CALLED Clouseau, by name, but the series was made by the same people (and apparently in the same universe) as the Pink Panther cartoons of the time, and it’s pretty darn obvious that’s who he is. I also have a personal soft spot for the first of the Steve Martin “Pink Panther” reboot films, even though I’ll acknowledge it isn’t that great. I actually initially wanted to put Clouseau in the Top 5, but after revisiting some of the Pink Panther movies, I no longer felt that was entirely fair. For one thing, his incompetence DOES have to be taken into consideration: he still counts for the list, but he’s obviously NOT a good detective in the truest sense. For another, the other detectives above him have all, in my opinion, weathered the test of time much better than Clouseau has: they have survived through numerous incarnations, and even a lot of the older stuff with them still holds up today. The Peter Sellers films have some rather dated bits of humor that haven’t aged well (though I should point out the majority of the jokes DO still hold up), and aside from the aforementioned cartoon series, most takes on Clouseau that AREN’T Sellers just haven't been quite as grand. So I think it’s unfair to place him TOO high. But, for being by far the most iconic COMEDY detective – at least in my mind – Inspector Clouseau still gets a big thumbs-up from me. A pity he gets a thumbs-down from anyone with half with a brain. (I’m certain he only has about a quarter.)

Tomorrow, the countdown enters the Top 5!

CLUE: “Let's vote on it: mystery, or pizza pie?"

#list #countdown #best #favorites #top 31 fictional detectives #gathering of the greatest gumshoes #number 6 #inspector clouseau #peter sellers #the pink panther #a shot in the dark #comedy #mystery

[pebblysand]

[books of 2022]

this is long overdue (i mean, it's april, but sure look) but i wanted to hop on here and do a little bit of a wrap-up of the books i read last year. i will say this: i am not (at the moment) a "voracious" reader. since the pandemic, i've struggled to find time to read - partly because i used to read whilst traveling, and i didn't do much of that in the past few years, and partly because i've been writing a lot, and i've always found it hard to do both at the same time. i must admit i find the #booktok girlies who read hundreds of books a year particularly unrelatable, but i did get through ten books last year (and DNF-ed three) so, i'll happily talk about those.

READ:

enfant de salaud by sorj chalandon (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: this isn't in english i know no one on here will read it, but sorj chalandon is and will always be one of my favourite writers in the world, and honestly the only french writer whose books i actually read voluntarily. i think what i like about sorj chalandon is that he's not only a fantastic fiction writer (his style - omg! his style ❤️), he's also a war reporter. as such, there's always a lot of "wars" in his books, either figurative or literal, which is obviously a topic i find incredibly interesting. this book is set in the 80s and centres on a reporter who is covering the klaus barbie trial in france, as well as coming to terms with his relationship with his father, who is a pathological liar. i really liked both aspects of the book. the klaus barbie trial story gave me a lot of food for thought for castles at a time when i was planning/writing the wizarding war trials, and the personal story was super interesting. i gave this a four-star because it's not my favourite book of his (retour a killybegs is) but i thoroughly enjoyed this.

au guet-apens by maître mô (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [non-fiction]: another french book (sorry ^^) but this one was probably my favourite read of 2022. it made me laugh, it made me cry. maître mô was a french lawyer specialising in criminal law who got somewhat "twitter famous" in the 2010s for talking about the reality of his criminal law practice (the good, the bad, the ugly) - always with a lot of empathy, humour, and humanity. he passed away from lung cancer in 2020 and a compilation of his best blog (he also had a blog) posts was published, and i was very glad to be able to read it. there are so many funny and tragic human stories in there, and a beauty in the idea that everyone (yes everyone) is owed a criminal defence. i would so very much recommend it to anyone who has ever wanted to ask the question: 'how can you defend them?' the writing is gorgeous and i think it's the kind of book that strangely gives you faith in humanity again.

men explain things to me by rebecca solnit (⭐️) [non-fiction]: i hated this book so much i wrote a tumblr rant about it. i'm still angry i wasted my precious time skimming through it until the end. i refuse to give it another minute of my time. the one star is for the quality of the paper it was printed on.

none of this is serious by catherine prasifka (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: i picked this up in the shop a bit at random, but i really, really liked this book. it's a bit of a concept (the main character never speaks out loud, all you ever get is her internal monologue), but it's a concept that works. it also tackles very well that awkward time between finishing university and getting your first job, and how powerless and scary it all feels. minor tw for sexual assault there, but i truly enjoyed this. the writing style was very much my jam (present tense and not trying too hard) and again, i really loved the concept. i do feel like it could have done without the sci-fi element but i liked how chronically online the main character was (#relatable). i loved how there's just so much talk around her, and while you always know what she thinks, you never know what she actually says. would definitely recommend!

we had to remove this post by hanna bervoets (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: i've spoken about this book on here a lot already but again, i really, really loved it. this was probably my runner-up favourite, the only thing i have against it is that it felt Too Damn Short. broadly, the book is about the tech world and particularly the job of content moderators, which is a massive ethical can of worms. as someone who works in tech and in the "trust and safety" space (although i've never worked in content moderation myself), i found the book very faithful to reality, very well-researched, and deeply fascinating. the characters are incredible and the end twist was... a twist, to say the least. absolutely loved this.

an american marriage by tayari jones (⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: it took me three years to finally finish this book. i should have DNF-ed it. i kept picking it up and putting it back down again. i think i stuck with it because everyone said it was an Important Book about the mass incarceration of black people in america, but honestly, it wasn't really a book about that. it's a book about three people who are all equally unbearable and cannot make decisions to save their lives, and the fact that one of them happens to be in prison for a crime he didn't commit is, frankly, secondary. i really want to read a good book about racial issues in america, particularly regarding the justice system (if anyone has recs, please hit me up!) but this was not it.

bullshit jobs by david graeber (⭐️⭐️⭐️) [non-fiction]: this was both incredibly funny and incredibly triggering. really makes you realise how much of the corporate world is just bullshit, and i definitely include my own job in this category. most of us just serve zero purpose lol. that man is dead right. giving this three stars because while fine, the writing wasn't mind-blowing, but honestly, i'm glad i read this.

vox by christina dalcher (⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: like, idk. this was fine. i read this on the beach and had a good time. the romance was a bit nonsensical and the end a bit "blah" but i liked the premise. basically follows the life of a woman in a society where women are limited to saying 100 words a day. it was trying a bit too hard to surf on the handmaid's tale mania in the same way we had all these vampire books after twilight, but still, it was good. a fine summer beach read.

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: everyone and their cousin has read this book and recommended it so i'm not going to reinvent the wheel. i promise, it is a great read. i very much enjoyed it. someone sent me an ask about it a few months ago, in which i shared a few more thoughts, if you want to head over there to find out more.

station eleven by emily st john mandel (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) [fiction]: this is a fantastic book. it's a masterpiece. it also fucked up with my mental health so badly i considered going to therapy again and totally messed with my brain for months. i think i'm on the tail end of it now. but, if you're an artist who has anxiety about dying before you manage to finish whatever it is you're working on, don't read this. honestly.

DID NOT FINISH:

i had a whole period of my life where i thought I Must Finish All Books, but that is no more. as that fake german heiress said: 'i do not have time for this, i do not have time for you'.

a brief history of the future by stephen clarke: it pains me to say because i really loved the merde series, but i've been dragging this book around for years, trying to finish it, and i think it's time to say goodbye. i just couldn't even tell you what the plot is, or what the point of the whole teleportation machine was... i'm just ... confused. i suppose one cannot write great books 100% of the time.

1984 by george orwell: look, i tried. but i think the issue with this book is that while it was the first in its genre, it was far from the last, and as a result of having read a lot of the dystopia that came after it, this just felt boring and stilted. the misogyny is also rather off-putting. i have read 100 pages and that was sufficient.

la peste (the plague) by albert camus: fuck, i love camus. i really, really do. the stranger is the only book that was assigned to me in school that i actually read. and, having now lived through a pandemic, la peste is strangely prescient. probably too prescient. i think the reason why i gave up on this is because 1) i "read" it as an audiobook and i think i'm just not an audiobook person and 2) i started this in the middle of the pandemic and it was just too much. the bubonic plague lockdown in the middle of the covid lockdown was hard to handle. so i just stopped listening to this on my walks and began listening to music instead. i don't think it's abandoned forever (i'll probably pick it up in book format again some day) but at the moment i just can't lol. no need to repeat the station eleven experience lol.

#book recs #2022 round up

[denimbex1986]

'Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers made a splash at the Telluride Film Festival in the summertime. It became an immediate critical hit for audiences and was quickly purchased for distribution by Searchlight Pictures. The film is itself a remake of a Japanese film The Discarnates which is itself an adaptation of the 1987 Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada. This tale of love found and dealing with grief may have been a critical smash, but does it hold up for us mere mortal film fans? Find out below and be sure to give it a watch on Hulu or make a digital purchase wherever you buy digital films!

Film 4/5

Adam (Andrew Scott) is a TV screenwriter living in an apartment highrise in London. He is visibly lonely, clearly struggling not just with his writing but something else. What is that you say? Adam lost his parents when he was very young. While he is now somewhere in his 40’s, Adam is still trying his hardest to find ways to cope and move on. When a fire alarm goes off in the building, Adam sets his eyes on a handsome young neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal), who asks him if they can spend some time together. Adam says no, and then interestingly, Adam begins to “visit” his parents. They see him as his adult self, but his parents seem to be frozen in time, apparently not far from their age when they died around 1987.

After seeing his parents in a dream or hallucination, Adam happens upon Harry again and this time, they strike up a conversation that leads to sex and the connection is secure and comforting. Harry has his own secret, which we don’t learn until the end of the film, and I won’t give away here. In their time together, Adam frequently sees his parents at his old home, and is warmed by the memories and their conversations as they get to know the adult Adam. They accept his as a gay man, learn about his new love and help Adam build his own coping mechanisms as he goes through his days.

All of Us Strangers is an interesting character study. The film plays out in ways of vision. Adam, still un-recovered from the grief he has experienced since his parents died. He survived the rest of the 80’s, had a career in the 90’s and 2000’s and then now in modern times, he is alone, missing pieces of a complete life. Harry comes to him disheveled and mysterious. He looks lost even if he’s where he’s supposed to be, and even seeing Adam in his own lost state, together the pair are very much in sync together. As their relationship evolves, Adam has to figure out how to let his parents move on from their limbo state, and he has to also learn to live with that loss so he can keep on living.

Video 5/5

The 4K digital presentation of All of Us Strangers is an excellent one. I watched the film via AppleTV and immediately was taken with how gorgeous the color grading is on the film. Filmed on 35mm with a 4K DI, the film looks tack sharp and is framed beautifully in 2.39:1. Andrew Haigh is a thoughtful filmmaker, and he has treated this film with love throughout. The colors are beautiful, the detail is immaculate, and the skin tones are natural, right down to the ruddiness of characters who are touching one another with intensity. There are no instances of noise in the digital transfer.

Audio 4/5

Audio is offered in English 5.1, and French with available English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Dynamically speaking, it’s a streaming mix, so even if it’s supposedly lossless, there will be moments where the sound degrades naturally. There isn’t a great deal of surround activity, with those rear channels mostly grabbing ambience and music. Dialogue sounds excellent as that’s the main draw of the audio mix, and the subwoofer comes to life when music comes into the fold.

Extras 2/5

Extras for All of Us Strangers are short, totaling 12 minutes in length. Roots of the Story is a quick piece on the creation of the film’s roots, from novel to screen and how the changes made for this version are personal to the director. Building Adam’s World takes the first piece a step further and we learn that scenes with Adam’s family are filmed in Haigh’s childhood home. These two featurettes are interesting, but far too short.

Summary 4/5

Overall, the film is a varying movement on emotion. Loss and grief play a huge part in the story and love and acceptance do too. The story is sometimes muddied by the dreams or hallucinations of Adam, and we feel for him as he continues to grieve 36 or 37 years later. Loss doesn’t have a timeline and Adam’s story proves that. All of Us Strangers is a sad film. There are fleeting moments of happiness, but knowing Adam is speaking to the spirits of his parents is sad and the reveal at the end could be gutting to viewers. But even in sadness, you can find beauty, and Andrew Haigh has done that in this film.'

#Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #Telluride #Paul Mescal #All of Us Strangers #Strangers #Taichi Yamada #Searchlight Pictures #The Discarnates