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brawltogethernow · 3 years

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@mirrorfalls submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

#me every time i read a comic book article by a rag not exclusively about comic books: i know more than you.#marvel #spidey #DCU #MCU critical #mirrorfalls #asks answered #submission #unearthed this and bashed it out in one sitting ... i have not been working on it since you sent it last year XD

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throughtheglassdarkly · 5 years

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Roadblocks, part 1

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” – Anne Lamott

Hey, you’re back. Welcome to hell.

So, after Pam got the note from Cassi, we all settled into our usual routine for a couple of days, but all of us were on edge. Bella ended up going back to work but asked us for some space. I started doing a little digging into some questions I had about what happened after I was taken. The others focused on getting their own projects done.

Our next big adventure started on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning. After the blowup with Day’s and Bella’s Fetches and hearing from Yova how her Fetch went bonkers, I realized I couldn’t ignore my Fetch anymore and I needed to track it down. My Facebook page gave me a few hints. Before I was taken, I had posts set to private, but check-ins and some photos were public. My Fetch hadn’t changed the security settings, so I was able to see that it was still doing things. I figured the best way to look for it was to simply re-trace my steps and go to the places I used to go before I was taken.

I ended up striking gold at my old apartment building. I was waiting around for about twenty minutes, trying to see some sign of life (the fading “O’NEILL, D.” sticker next to the buzzer at least let me know it hadn’t moved on) and was about to give up, when I saw it coming down the street carrying a couple bags of groceries. As it got up to the front of the building, it dropped its keys and sighed, kneeling down to pick them up. I steeled myself and stepped up, asking, “Need some help?”

It looked up at me and its eyes went about as wide as I’ve ever seen. Looking down at it was – unnerving. It was just like looking at myself before I was taken. A couple of years older, but the same messy hair, same beard growth, even the same glasses. The feeling passed after a moment, but for a second it was like I was questioning who I was. The Fetch started freaking out, trying to grab its keys and telling me it didn’t want any trouble.

I let out a sigh and reached out, jiggling the doorknob to the front door of the building in the way it used to let you open it even if you forgot your keys and propped the door for the Fetch. It looked wary but picked up its groceries and stepped inside. “Thanks,” it said, still looking like it was going to bolt at any second. “So why are you here?” I shrugged and said, “I got back. Wanted to see what was going on. If you were still here.” It shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Well, I’m here,” it said. “You still doing data entry?” I asked. “Yeah,” it said. There was a minute of silence. I exhaled and asked the question I didn’t really want the answer to: “Let me guess, mom and dad haven’t reached out to you at all, have they?” It paused for a second and said, “No. And I feel like I should be pissed about that… but I’m really not.”

I didn’t know how to react to that. I haven’t told you a lot about my life before I got taken, but cliffs’ notes version is that my entire extended family is blue-collar Catholic mill workers and my folks didn’t react well at all when I came out. Not in the “Get out, we’re never talking to you again” routine, but in some ways that would have been easier. They just had a blow up and then refused to ever acknowledge it again. And over time, that turned into not really acknowledging me at all. When I learned that they hadn’t tried to contact me for the entire two and a half years I’d been gone, it… felt like something broke. Like it was just more confirmation that they really hadn’t cared about me at all. They didn’t even notice I was gone because they’d barely even noticed I was there.

My Fetch was waiting for me to say and do something, so I shook my head and told it that it could have my life, that I didn’t want it back. It slammed the door to my old apartment and I heard the deadbolt turn. I turned and started walking off. As I did, I saw a sleek red Mustang across the street, definitely a car that was out of place in my old neighborhood, with a driver wearing a scarf over her head and giant sunglasses, but she drove off before I could get a good look at her. My hands were shaking, so I put them in my hoodie pockets and just kept heading away.

While this was going on, Day was fixing up his office. He’d gotten a new ID and name, Lance Wilde, which I’d helpfully pointed out was also the name of several fine performers in man-on-man pornographic features. His office was nicely decorated, courtesy of Yova, but he’d been having trouble getting clients to come in. He heard a knock at the door and opened it to see Brenda standing there with some coffee. They had banter about his terrible new name and how she’d make a good wife someday. She ribbed him about not having any clients and he said, “Hey, it’s gonna happen! I just need a few high-profile clients!” “High-profile clients. In Albany,” she deadpanned.

It turned out that Brenda hadn’t just stopped by to give him a coffee – Bella’s parents were in town from Chicago and they’d filed a missing persons report. “They say she’s been missing for something like a few days now,” she said. Day took in a deep breath and said, “Oh, shit. That’s a big problem.” Brenda told him that she couldn’t dissuade them from looking for their kid, and that they were not going to just go away.

“Can’t we fake it by sending a note or something, make it look like she’s okay but going to be away for a while?” Day asked. Brenda scoffed and said, “You haven’t met her parents. And there were at least three siblings waiting outside while I was talking to them.” “Man, when things go wrong,” Day said, downing his coffee. Brenda said that she had to go to work and he asked if she wouldn’t mind going out to breakfast with him. “Do you actually want me to hang out with you?” she asked. He scoffed but admitted he missed their banter and she agreed to go get a breakfast sandwich with him. “Yes! You’re paying, right?” he asked. “Dude, I still have your tab from before you got grabbed,” she kvetched as they headed out.

Bella and Yova were having quiet mornings. Bella was at work, selling crystals, sage, and delicate hand-blown glass pieces that were totally not bongs to anyone who was stopping in. Yova was in DIY mode, hunched over her sewing machine and making a very fancy outfit for the upcoming Winter Formal. (She’d shown me some sketches and I told her that Marigold was going to be completely swept off her feet.) Both of them, however, were about to have things turned completely upside down, as were Day and I. And who was responsible for this? Dear, sweet, I-don’t-wanna-be-a-bother Pam.

Pam was having a rare lazy morning, sleeping in well past the time she’d set her alarm for. Changelings have pretty much near-control over our dreams: we can make them just how we want them to be, featuring anyone and anything we want in them. Pam was dreaming about the wonders of space, sitting and watching the stars and the expanse of the universe, while sipping a nice apple cider that maybe had just a touch of brandy in it. And that’s when the trouble started.

As Pam was enjoying her stargazing, she felt a ripple in the air and suddenly saw mossy greens growing up into her dreamscape. The path of stars she was sitting on became a forest floor and the comets started to become vines. She saw a small figure walking ahead, looking confused and walking around. Pam stood and walked toward the figure, closing the distance a lot quicker than she should have been able to, and greeting whoever it was. The hood the figure had on fell back and Pam saw Cassi, an absolute shit-eating grin on her face. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe that actually worked!” she said.

Pam gave Cassi a huge hug and told her how good it was to see her. Cassi squeezed back and said, “You would not believe the crap that’s been going down. There’s not a lot of time to explain, I don’t know how much time I’ve got here. Crap, where do I start? Quick, ask me a question.” Pam was a little startled, but asked, “How’s everyone doing?” “I’m fine, I think Adrian and Luca are fine, Belle’s probably not fine, but she’s never really been fine, so that’s not new. But yeah. Amberleigh’s still a bitch and everybody else is just trying to keep her happy, as far as I know. It’s been a while since I’ve been at the keep.”

“And you said you’re working on getting out, right?” Pam asked. “Yeah, actually, that’s a work in progress,” Cassi told her. “It’s more I’m trying to bust them out. When you guys left, Amberleigh went, like, shit hit the actual fan and she wasn’t too happy about us letting you guys go. I managed to get away, but she’s got the others locked up somewhere. I don’t know. I can’t get in, they shut off that cave entrance. There’s not a lot in the way of safeness for one changeling in the whole of Arcadia. So, I’m working on it.”

“And how did you find out about your dad?” Pam asked. “Well, I’m not exactly good at getting things in, but Adrian’s good at getting things out,” Cassi said with a sly smile. “He finds a way. I don’t know how he finds me – well, that’s not true, psychic, but that’s not important – the thing is I need help.” Pam promised to help and asked her what she needed. “I need people here. I need some sort of allies or tools or something to be able to get back in, but I don’t want – I can’t actually get back here if I leave. It’s weird, like only the fae know how to get back to Arcadia. Or only the people they let know. So, any way you guys can try to get back here would be great.”

Pam thought for a second and said, “I think Yova might know something about this.” She told Cassi about the Summer Court and its ideals, which Cassi thought was awesome. “But I don’t have a lot of time. I bought this dream teleporter thing off some weird guy and it’s probably going to blow up if I use it too much.” She told Pam to tell the rest of us she missed us and that when we got in, she was hiding near the border between Scáthach’s and Lamashtu’s territory. “Amberleigh’s been doing what Scáthach did, trying to snap up whatever she can. She’s actually doing a lot better job of it than Scáthach ever did.” With that, she vanished.

While Pam was dreaming a little dream of Cassi, Yova got a text from Marigold, asking her if Brenda was free for the interview she was hoping for that day. She signed off as she always did, “Best regards, Marigold.” Yova cooed a little over that, then told Marigold she would check in with Brenda. She called Brenda, who was halfway through Day eating the restaurant they were in out of house and home. Brenda told Yova that she could meet Marigold around dinnertime because she had a long shift ahead of her.

While Yova was on the phone with Pam, Pam sent out a group chat message to all of us, giving us the skinny on what her dream had been about. I was a few blocks away from my old apartment when I felt my phone buzz, pulled it out and stopped dead in my tracks, my head feathers sticking up and out in every direction. Day got the message and swallowed a sausage roll whole, making his way over to Pam’s quickly. Yova grabbed her work clothes and sped over in her new car (RIP her crappy Jeep, which met an ignoble end after it wouldn’t start in the Arby’s parking lot). I decided to run, burning up the pavement as fast as I could go. Day saw me coming down the street and started saying, “Hold up there, I don’t see a coyote.” I was in no mood, so I just kept going straight at him and jumped with all my force, barely clearing his head and continuing on up to Pam’s door. Yova pulled up just after this. Day seemed nonplussed.

You might notice that there’s one of us who didn’t react much to what was going on. Bella was at work and just kept going about her business, not responding to Pam’s text. It wasn’t long after this that she heard the bell chime and saw two uniformed police officers come in. Trying to play it cool, she said, “Oh, welcome! Can I offer you something from our selection of frankincense or sage? They’re very good at warding off malevolent spirits.” The cops looked like they wanted to say something snarky, but one of them said they wanted to talk to her about a missing person. Around this time, Professor Fauxlawney came in and asked what was going on. The cops filled her in and Fauxlawney asked Bella on the DL if she needed an immigration lawyer. Bella managed to keep from punching her in the face, suggesting that she spread some lavender. One of the cops asked Bella if she would be willing to come down to the precinct to answer some questions about a missing person she resembled. She agreed to go if they would let her call “her roommate.” She dialed Day’s number.

Back at Pam’s apartment, she was finishing up telling those of us who made it over what Cassi had told her. I would really love to say that I was keeping calm and collected, but I’d needed a paper bag to breathe in and out of since about halfway through her story. Yova and Day both came up with the idea of going to the Summer Court and asking them for help, though Yova also pointed out that Aurora could be a way to get back into Arcadia, and that we had the list of locations Buck had provided us about where she might be. Day’s phone rang and he got the call from Bella, who was trying to let him know how much shit was about to hit the fan. He got her to describe the cops and realized he knew one of them from his time on the force. “Okay, listen to me. You are obviously not who they are looking for, so just go along with them and we’ll figure some way to get you out of this,” he told her. They hung up and she agreed to go along with the cops. We all piled into Yova’s car and drove off to the station, putting a pin in our rescue planning for the moment.

On the way over to the station, the cops were trying to talk to Bella about who she was with the usual gentle coaxing they do to try and convince you that you aren’t in trouble. She managed to stay clammed up the entire time, so they just escorted her inside. And then the trouble started.

Bella saw her oldest brother, Antonio, arguing very heavily with one of the beat cops. And Bella, beautiful idiot that she is, immediately cracked. She called out to him and he ran over, scooped her up, and gave her a huge hug. She started crying. He asked her where she’d been and she pulled the classic little sister move by crying so loud the glass in the station windows started cracking. Through her hiccoughing and crying she asked him if they could go somewhere else and he practically dragged her outside.

In the car, we were discussing the various ways in which we might try to get Bella out of this mess. And it was around then that I heard my phone ding. I looked at it and saw a message from Bella. “Hi, Derek! I’m with my brother outside the station right now!” along with a couple of happy emojis. I paused, staring at it for a few minutes. Then when Yova came to a stop at a red light, I said, “Hey guys? I just got a text from Bella. She’s hanging out with her brother right now.” All the oxygen got sucked out of the car. Yova wordlessly reached over to the Bluetooth and changed the song playing to “O Fortuna.”

I texted back, “Just stay where you are, don’t say anything crazy, and try to stay calm so that when we get there, we can strangle you properly.”

Antonio and Bella ended up sitting in a park outside of the station and he asked her what the hell happened. “Why did you guys freak out so bad?” she asked. He told her that she’d dropped off the face of the earth and hadn’t posted on Facebook or Instagram for two days and wasn’t answering her phone. “If you’re getting second thoughts, that’s one thing, but you can’t just leave and not tell anybody,” he told her. This, combined with the ring, finally made the synapses in her brain connect and she realized her Fetch did get engaged.

“No, I don’t want to get married,” she said. “Oh, thank God,” he said. He told her that he could cover for her until she broke things off with Carlos, but that they should get dinner that night and that almost their entire family was in town. “What? Why are they all here?” she asked. “We were worried,” he said. Bella wasn’t sure about dinner and was particularly worried about her dad, but Antonio told her that their dad was probably going to just be glad she was alive. “Carlos wasn’t… hurting you, was he? Because if I need to break some knees…” he said. She cut him of at the pass and said absolutely not, that she just realized she was not ready at all to get married.

“I’m just glad you decided on things a month in and not right before the wedding,” Antonio told her, much to her relief. He realized she needed some space and said he would head out, but made her promise to call him later that day. “I’ll talk to mom and dad, but you know we’re not getting out of dinner,” he said. “Maybe I can postpone it a couple of nights, but they’re going to want something for coming all the way out here.” As he was about to leave, he took a second look and asked, “By the way, when did this goth look happen?” She shrugged and said, “Well, it’s kind of always been in there, but when you have to be a certain way for everyone else…” He gave her a hug and told her he’d call her later before he made his way off.

We’d pulled up outside the park shortly before Tony left and Yova was the one to take the lead, heading up to Bella and sitting down next to her, asking if things worked out okay. Bella was still shaken but realized things worked out better than they might have. “And apparently she got engaged to somebody,” she told Yova. Yova gently tried to remind her that we told her about that the night of the rave. “I don’t remember any of it,” Bella said. She squared her shoulders and told Yova how Tony wanted her to go have dinner with her family. “Do you want to go have dinner with them?” Yova asked. Bella started crying, talking about how much she missed her family, and Yova hugged her, suggesting they go back to Pam’s and talk about something else so she could get her mind off it. Bella agreed and we all got back into Yova’s car, heading to Pam’s.

Our first order of business was trying to figure out who, if anybody, we could call about getting backup on storming the castle. Pam reiterated what she’d told Cassi about the Summer Court and Day and Yova both agreed that it sounded like something along the lines of what the Summer Court was all about. “Do you think the Autumn Court might also be able to help?” Pam asked me. I thought for a second and said, “I’ll try calling Stella. She’s not going to want to come, but she might be able to tell me who can help us. Or who can help us crack the riddle about getting them out. And I’m going to call Evain, too. He’ll definitely be on board.”

I stepped out onto the balcony for some privacy and called Stella’s number. It rang and rang and just as I thought it was going to go to voicemail, she picked up. “It’s Stella, state your business,” she said with her trademark warmth and sympathy. “Hi, Stella, it’s Derek. I was wondering if maybe you could help point me in the right direction of anyone in our Court who knows how to deal with a couple of things that might seem completely unrelated at first but actually have a lot more to do with each other than it looks,” I said. “Speak,” she told me. “First, anyone who might be able to help us get back into Arcadia and break out some of our friends who we had to leave behind when we escaped, and second, anyone who might know how to untangle contracts and agreements with the True Fae.” There was a single beat of a pause. Then she said, “As to the first inquiry, are you insane? And as to the second, possibly. I will look into it and call you back within the hour.” I got out, “Thanks, Ste-” before I heard the *click* on the other end.

The second call I made was to Evain. Like Stella’s call, it rang for a few times before he answered, saying, “Hey, Derek, what’s up?” I said, “Hey, buddy. Wanted to let you know we’re about to break back into Arcadia to try and bust Cassi and our other friends out and I was checking to see if you wanted in?” A full thirty seconds of dead silence went by. Then he said, “Yes. Yes, I do. Holy shit. I would be insulted if you thought I didn’t want in.” We talked for a few minutes about supplies or anything we might get and he told me that he’d ask around, but things were probably going to be difficult to find outside of the Goblin Markets. “Oh, and just so you know, Cassi says she’s punching you in the face when she sees you,” I said. He paused for a second and said, “Yeah, that’s fair. I deserve it.” “You totally do. Catch you soon, dude,” I said.

While I was doing this, Yova was calling the Summer Court. She only had the one number to contact and was hoping to get Cahir and not Dania on the line. However, she ended up hearing a new voice she hadn’t encountered before, a woman’s voice that was inviting and oily all at the same time. She introduced herself as The Red Lady and asked Yova what she could do to help. Yova explained the situation and the Red Lady said, “Interesting. I’d love to hear the story, but I’m frankly not sure what the benefit to our Court would be and the resources spent would be extreme, to say nothing of the risks.” Yova was grinding her molars by this point, but she had to admit The Red Lady had a point when she said, “We’re here to keep the Fae at bay, not to pick fights.” Yova did her best to schmooze The Red Lady by asking if there was any information or advice she could get, which The Red Lady seemed to think was fair enough. She thanked Yova for passing the information along and hung up.

Yova joined me out on the balcony, where I was white-knuckling the railing. She pulled out a cigarette and asked me if I wanted one. “No thanks, I don’t smoke, even though I would look so grown-up doing so,” I said. She gave me a look and held it out. I sighed and said, “Fine,” then took it and put it in my mouth, chewing on it. Pam, Bella, and Day came over to the frame by the balcony and we tried to figure out what our next step was going to be. “I hate to say it, but I think it’s time for us to pay an old friend a visit,” Yova said. “Yeah. She is definitely overdue on hearing from us,” I said. “This whole thing is freaking nuts,” Day said. “But what choice do we have? We can’t leave them there. We already left them there once,” Yova said.

I straightened my back, looking out over the city and thinking about what had happened that day. From the queasiness over talking to my Fetch to Bella actually managing to get her life back to the possibility of getting everyone – especially Adrian – back, it had been a complete roller-coaster of a day. “Yeah. We’re not leaving them there. I’m not going to leave them there,” I said.

And that’s as good a place as any to stop for now. Next time, war preparations and other shenanigans. Until then, stay safe and may you never get snubbed by your doppelganger.

#Changeling: The Lost #ctl #changeling #ic #recap #the answer is yes stella we are completely insane for even attempting this

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centerofstupidity · 7 years

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Twilight Chapter 1 Snark

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Interested in reading previous Twilight chapter snarks? They can be found here.

Chapter Summary: Bella shows that she is a shallow, gold-digging bitch. And she meets Edward Cullen, douchebag extraordinaire.

In the event that this gets flagged, here is another place to read the chapter snark.

Chapter 1 is titled “First Sight.” Which means that Bella will meet sparkledouche.

Bella’s mom is driving Bella to the airport. Personally, I would have killed Bella and dumped her body in the middle of the desert.

It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue.

Despite what Meyer wants us to think, Arizona is not the Garden of Eden. It is hot and dry.

I don’t get why Bella is so fond of Arizona even though she never goes out in the sun.

I was wearing my favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

I’m not sure why Meyer feels the need to tell us this. And items of clothing that you wear do not count as a “carry-on item.”

So Bella is going to live in a rainy town called Forks.

It was from this town and it’s gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I’d been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

We have our first sign that Bella is a selfish bitch.

I will bring this up whenever someone claims that Bella is an unselfish person.

Bella does not care that her mother LEFT her father because it keeps her from living somewhere she doesn’t like.

Bella’s father experienced the end of his marriage, the loss of the woman he loved AND never seeing his only child for many years.

But Bella doesn’t give a fuck because she isn’t only thinking about HERSELF.

And to add the cherry on top of the shit sundae, she doesn’t care if the time spent seeing her father is shorted to “two weeks”… as long as it is on her terms.

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself— an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.

You might be wondering why Bella is going to be living in Forks full-time. After all, Bella has bitched about how Forks is the third circle of Hell.

The alleged reason is that Bella’s mother and stepfather are doing something related to his minor-league baseball career.

Apparently, both Bella’s mom and stepdad don’t have any friends who could take care of a seventeen-year-old for a couple months.

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.

“Even though I’m whiter than snow and hate being outside.”

I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still…

It is bad enough that Stephenie Meyer is hell-bent on depicting Bella as a paragon of virtue. But now, Bella has to be “wise beyond her years”?

Oh hell no.

Are supposed to believe that Bella has been cooking, cleaning, and paying the bills since infancy? I find this unbelievable.

And if Bella’s mom has the IQ of a houseplant, then how did she travel from Washington from Arizona? Walking?

Bella’s mom tells her that she can come back to Phoenix at any time.

But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

Here’s an idea. Bella, stop acting like a martyr. And Bella’s mom, grow up.

Flying doesn’t bother me;

At least the bitching and moaning has stopped for a second.

Her Royal Pain in the Ass is wangsting how her father is very happy about her coming to Forks.

Despite Bella having the personality of roadkill, her father has registered her for high school and plans on getting her a car.

But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose,

For someone who is supposedly not verbose, she loves giving whiny blithering rants.

I’d already said my goodbyes to the sun.

Quit being so melodramatic! We get it, you feel like you’re descending into hell because you are going to be living in a town that you despise.

Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks.

Bella Swan…Bella—

Bella means “beautiful”. Stephenie Meyer gave her main character a name meaning “beautiful swan.”

Within the first chapter, we have a selfish, whiny, and melodramatic girl with a Suey name. The worst is yet to come.

My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

Whatever the brat wants, the brat gets.

God forbid Charlie says “Tough shit, Bells. You’ve got two options. You can ride in the police cruiser or you walk.”

Anyway, Bella arrives at the airport and Charlie awkwardly greets her.

I stumbled my way off the plane.

Evidently, Stephenie Meyer thinks being clumsy counts as a character flaw.

They make small talk during which Bella thinks about how she is not “allowed to call him Charlie to his face.“

Because calling him Dad would mean you are not in charge. Bella laments that she only has a few bags of clothes that fits into the trunk of the police cruiser.

Bella gets pissed off when Dad announces that he has found her a car.

“What kind of car?” I was suspicious of the way he said “good car for you” as opposed to just “good car.”

Fuck you, Bella. I’m not weeping over her Dickensian poverty.

Bella interrogates her dad where he got the truck and who owned the truck. It turns out that Bella’s car is a Chevy truck once belonged to one of Charlie’s fishing buddies who lives in the local Indian reservation. Bella then sneers that “would explain why I didn’t remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.”

Her dad says that the guy is in a wheelchair and can no longer drive, so Charlie got the truck at a low price.

Bella demands to know what year it is. He says that the truck is old but has a new engine. Bella starts getting all pissy, asking “How cheap is cheap?”

Bella finally calms down once her father tells her that she doesn’t have to pay a penny and it’s a present.

Charlie wasn’t comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I inherited that from him.

This is very hilarious since Bella has spent much of this chapter giving whiny rants. And she will be screaming her “luv” for Edward into a megaphone, having two MASSIVE emotional breakdowns in the sequel, and being an intolerable bitch to anyone who is willing to put up with her bullshit.

Bella thanks her dad.

No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn’t need to suffer along with me.

You are right, Bella. Charlie doesn’t need to suffer. When you are sleeping, he can smother you with a pillow.

So neither of them talk for a while. And since Bella whines repeatedly like a song stuck on replay, she detests the rainforest that surrounds her.

It was beautiful, of course; I couldn’t deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. It was too green — an alien planet.

Even if someone plopped El Dorado in middle of Forks, Bella would still kvetch that isn’t Phoenix.

Surprisingly, the one thing that Bella hasn’t complained about is the truck. Bella claims that she likes it because “I could see myself in it."

But the real reason is that she doesn’t have to either "walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief’s cruiser.”

There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact.

How dreadful! Everyone knows that a Mary Sue must have an en suite bathroom! You can’t honestly expect a Sue to SHARE! The horrors!

It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.

I don’t give a damn about selfish and whiny little brat who hates everything and complains about everything 24/7.

I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.

Bella would be devastated if she wasn’t the center of attention.

S. Meyer, this is not the 19th century. Transfer students are not freakish or peculiar. People moving into new towns are no longer a big deal.

Bella is so humble that she assumes that everyone will give a damn about her.

But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps — all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Here is another Sue trait: being different from mere mortals! She doesn’t fit anywhere! Feel sorry for her!

Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete;

Translation: she’s pasty white and is out of shape.

Because Bella is the author’s avatar, she must be beautiful but oblivious to it.

I like how she makes a BIG DEAL out of not being an athlete. I think this is S. Meyer’s subtle way of telling us that athletic women are mannish and undesirable creatures while “proper” ladies should sit and do needlework.

Apparently, Bella looks like this:

I wonder why…

I didn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself — and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.

Evidently, S. Meyer thinks being a mega klutz is a real character flaw in an otherwise perfect person. But it isn’t. An actual flaw would being dishonest, lazy, or selfish.

I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn’t just physically that I’d never fit in.

“Poor woe is me! I’m a lonely outsider! Nobody understands me!”

I believe Meyer thinks this makes Bella a complex and unique character but she sounds like every other Mary Sue ever written. All of whom are special, too clever, too misunderstood, and too intellectual for their imbecile peers… But with no evidence to back this up.

I didn’t relate well to people my age.

It’s because you are a cold-hearted bitch who sneers at others and whines 24/7.

Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period.

At least Bella has something in common with most serial killers.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs.

Yes, she’s a Special Snowflake and nobody understands her. Bella is just like every other whiny, bitchy, emo teen.

Bella cried all night and “pulled the faded old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too.”

If Bella had pressed down, the story would be finally over. Unfortunately, Bella is still alive. She whines about how Forks is making her claustrophobic and good luck avoids her. Bella then balks about Dad having her school pictures on the wall.

After complaining about how her Dad is a loser, Bella decides to whine about the weather. Upon seeing shrubs around the school, she remarks: “Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered nostalgically. Where were the chain-link fences, the metal detectors?”

Where were the shanks? Where were the drug dealers? Where were the rapes? After Bella wishes the school was a prison, she walks inside. There, she meets a helpful and kind woman whom she ignores.

Bella is happy that all the other students have old cars.

I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck.

See what Stephenie Meyer did? She talked about people biting her in a book about vampires! Truly Meyer has a dizzying intellect!

Bella tries her hardest to avoid people noticing her at all, short of wearing camouflage to blend into the wall.

It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I’d already read everything. That was comforting… and boring.

The public school system clearly failed to run the curriculum by Bella to make sure it met her standards. This is Meyer’s clumsy attempt to convince us that Bella is smarter than everyone else because she reads classic literature.

Even though those books are on the curriculum for many schools.

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me. “You’re Isabella Swan, aren’t you?” He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

And Twilight just got its first cliched nerd. I’m surprised that Meyer didn’t give Eric a pocket protector.

“Bella,” I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

Because Bella is a Sue, everyone looks at her. She talks to Eric because she needs to meet her politeness quota. Bella can’t stand him and is paranoid that people are staring at her.

Now, Bella isn’t worried that people hate her or think she is a weirdo. She just wants to be ignored because being obnoxious + antisocial= humility. Eric asks Bella about Phoenix and she immediately ignores him. Isn’t she so kind?

“You don’t look very tan.”

“My mother is part albino.”

When Eric fails to appreciate her Wildean wit, she whines “It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn’t mix. A few months of this and I’d forget how to use sarcasm.”

Bella, you need to have a sense of humor before you can lose it.

Bella complains that people spoke to her and were friendly. Bella meets a girl who she can’t be bothered remembering her name. At lunch, a girl tries to be nice to her and introduced Bella to her friends.

Bella sits with this girl and her friends at the cafeteria. And Bella doesn’t try to remember their names.

And then IT happens. She sees the sparklepires. Even though Bella bitched and moaned about people staring at her, she proceeds to gawk at the rich hot white people.

One’s a burly meatball, one’s a tall and wiry blond guy, and one’s lanky with “untidy, bronze-colored hair.” Since he’s a Gary Stu, I take it with a grain of salt.

She also remarks that they look like “they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students."

If that’s the case, then why are they pretending to be high school students for the billionth time?

One female sparklepire is tall and beautiful blonde while the other is pretty pixie girl who is supposed to be quirky.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town.

Which means they look exactly like Anita Blake.

Paler than me, the albino.

Bitch, please. You wish you were unique. You’re just whiter than toilet paper from staying indoors all day.

Bella is drooling over the hot people and muses "It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful — maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.”

I don’t look through rainbow-colored glasses and immediately interpret any character interaction as being potentially queer.

But considering the fact that Bella is ogling the sparklepires and Bella will wrap herself around Alice and sniff her skin in New Moon…

I’m confident enough to say Bella is not heterosexual.

Bella asks who are the rich and hot people. They are the Cullens, adopted teenagers who live with the local doctor. Their names are Edward, Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice.

Despite knowing nothing about the sparklepires, Bella is convinced that everyone is jealous of how rich and hot the Cullens are.

Bella is extremely fascinated with auburn headed boy named Edward who ignored her except for a single second.

“That’s Edward. He’s gorgeous, of course, but don’t waste your time. He doesn’t date. Apparently, none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him.” She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he’d turned her down.

Of course, Bella would never be so petty. She’s better than all these pathetic, stupid, and ugly girls. Bella is the only one worthy to date Edward Cullen.

Then she bumps into Edward in biology class and is shocked that he looks at her angrily. The horror! Then Bella has a klutz attack.

Edward is leaning away from Bella and is “averting his face like he smelled something bad.” Like a weirdo, Bella sniffs her hair which smelled like “strawberries.” Edward spends the entire class trying to be as far away from her as possible.

And why should Bella pay attention in class? She has more important things to do like lusting after Edward.

He didn’t know me from Eve.

The cover has a half-eaten apple and the epigraph talks about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And now, Eve is mentioned.

My tiny mind can’t believe how clever and subtle Stephenie Meyer is.

He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion.

Thankfully, Edward hates Mary Sues too.

I sat frozen in my seat, staring blankly after him. He was so mean. It wasn’t fair.

“He’s not worshiping me! HE DOESN’T LOVE ME ON FIRST SIGHT! HE’S A MEANIE!"

This is why I don’t believe Bella hates people paying attention to her. Only ONE person won’t touch her a barge-pole. She’s furious and says that he was "mean” and whines that it isn’t “fair”.

And considering the only person ignoring her is the richest boy in the entire school… It shows that Bella is a shallow, gold-digging bitch.

Bella walks to gym with a cute and nice boy named Mike. Of course, she gives him the cold shoulder because he is not Edward Cullen.

Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth.

Two things, S. Meyer. Brava for perfectly capturing the selfish, immature, whiny, and immature attitudes of girls like Bella.

And in regards to how you use the word “literally”:

We also find out that Bella has volleyballphobia. This is supposed to show that Bella is an adorable klutz. And like a proper damsel in distress, she hates any form of strenuous exercise.

Then she encounters Edward.

I quickly picked up the gist of the argument. He was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology to another time — any other time.

In a better story, there would be another reason why Eddy would want to change Biology to a different time.

But in bad fiction, everyone and everything revolves around the Sue.

I just couldn’t believe that this was about me. It had to be something else, something that happened before I entered the Biology room.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe the world does not revolve around you?

It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.

“I’m the most beautiful, kind, and selfless girl in the world. How can he resist my charming personality?”

Edward glares at her but was "absurdly handsome."

Bella walks to the truck. She describes the truck as the closest thing to a home in "this damp green hole.”

I headed back to Charlie’s house, fighting tears the whole way there.

“The rich and hot guy hates me! My life sucks!"

#snark #anti twilight #anti bella swan #anti stephenie meyer #Anti Twilight Saga #book snark #chapter snark #bad fiction

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oosteven-universe · 5 years

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Heroes At Large! #2

Heroes At Large! #2 Antarctic Press/ROK Comics 2019 Created by Matthew Spradlin & Jonathan Kendrick Written by Matthew Spradlin Illustrated by David Hutchison Things aren't really working out when it comes to "team-building exercises" for our newly revived heroes from the '40s. And they aren't doing so hot learning how to cope in this modern, politically correct world, either! One of the biggest draws of this is the fact that they are a team of “forgotten heroes” or public domain as the term is now. I was really looking forward to seeing these characters back in action once again. The boys here have other ideas however and the names and costumes are all that remains the same. The characterisation and dialogue here is something else entirely almost as if they took the joke way too far and almost ruined it. I wish this were more serious and not so SuperMansion, that’s already been done so why try to emulate it? Oh well as a huge fan of the Heroes of 40’s-60’s I am allowed to be kvetching if I want to. So now that that’s off my chest lets get to the story at hand. There is something inherently humorous about seeing them confronting bank robbers and telling em to drop the lettuce. I am not even sure that it is historically accurate but then again I am not sure it matters. I do like the whole out of time out of place concept that we are seeing. The opening is a perfect example of that and while Catman and Kitten have a more complex relationship than I was expecting to find out it’s the others that kind of made me cringe. The whole gun happy shoot em up was a thing for westerns not for these guys who while admittedly fought the Nazi’s shouldn’t be this gun crazed. I am a huge Airboy fan so I wish he’d get a least a little better treatment. And now thanks to the boys I want to see “whatever that is” as well. The perversion part of all this doesn’t go unnoticed and after a while you see how distorted and out there this is so it is a true parody of the real versions. So if you want to see SuperMansion style stuff park your ass on the sofa and peruse the book. The way the book is structured and how the action and the story itself flow is extraordinarily well done. The new characterisation for these folks as we discover them for the first time is often hilarious and dangerous, in that I could get used to them like this! Adult humour is like walking a tightrope as if you're not careful then it's freefall you'll never forget, Matthew proves he's adept at the circus that's for sure. The interiors from David are excellent. The way he’s able to manipulate the varying weights of the linework so create the attention to detail is very well done. The characters themselves and the discover new pleasures in this era are transformed by their facial expressions or nudity, which is a shame we didn’t get to see more of that considering how many were supposedly naked. The one thing I wish we’d gotten more of were backgrounds. Otherwise the utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show off a very talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is great as we see light sources utilised to create shadows, shading and a smidgeon of colour gradation in use. Cadillac and her tattoos were really nice rendered by the way. I may have complained a tad too much but the whole is a tad too much. It really took me a few readings before I really got into it, mainly because I wasn’t expecting it to be this way. Still you can enjoy this and think oh hell no it’s like Robot Chicken and SuperMansion had a love-child, a vulgar not potty trained mutant love-child. Which is more fun to watch. Then there’s the back-up story here. I am going to assume that it is an actual original issue and only the dialogue has been changed. I wish I knew who was lettering this because they deserve a shout out for the work here on this. The writing again merges the now with the then laying the groundwork for his characterisation and language. There is also something special about seeing this style of artwork again and how the linework is utilised and the techniques that were used to bring it to life that makes me happy. Raucous, a bit perverted and a whole lot of not for children humour has this one firmly in the not ready for prime time players. If you are easily offended this isn’t for you but you wanna be un-PC and like it then this is for you!

#comic books #comics reviews #antarctic press #rok comics

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pamagrimes-blog · 7 years

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Chicken Mom and The Big Eddy

“The River can kill you in a thousand ways.” ~ Paul Serone, Anaconda

As I stood on the banks of the Deschutes River in Central Oregon staring into the jaws of what I assumed would be certain death, it was Jon Voight’s voice I heard above the roar of the rapids. His infamous line from one of the worst horror flicks of all time, Anaconda, kept repeating over and in my head. There were other voices in my head that day, too, voices that screamed: “Run fool, run!”

Let me start by explaining that I’m a bit phobic when it comes to the water. I get nervous if the bathtub’s too full. But my desire to be a “fun mom” to our three sons forced me to set aside my phobia and book our family’s first white water rafting trip. So there I was, facing Class III rapids that made my heart beat faster than Trump can tap a tweet.

Our family had never been white water rafting, but our boys were anxious to try it. After some exhaustive internet research, I found Sun Country Tours in Sunriver, Oregon. They offered an entry level three hour excursion known as The Big Eddy Thriller. Sun Country’s website boasted rave reviews and photos of happy families giggling like fools as they plunged into the frothy white torrent. We, too, could be happy giggling fools, and all for the low, low price of only $60 each!

On the morning of the excursion, we arrived at the Sun Country offices in high spirits. Our boys spilled out of the van like happy puppies, anxious for the adventure ahead. At that moment it felt great to be the “fun mom.” The moment wouldn’t last long.

At the front desk, an athletic-looking young man greeted us with a stack of legal forms. “What is all this?” I asked my husband as we leafed through the paperwork. “We’re signing away our rights to sue them if anything goes hideously wrong,” he said.

Oh, snap! Shit just got real.

As I watched each of my boys sign away their rights on the dotted line, I felt my first tingling of trepidation. What kind of mother lets her kids do this? The fun kind, of course!

Once the paperwork was complete, we boarded a rickety school bus that would drive us 45 minutes north to the Deschutes National Forest. There we’d be paired with a guide and dropped into the Upper Deschutes River.

I watched the other passengers for signs of fear or concern. If anyone was nervous, they were covering it well. People chatted and laughed, seemingly unconcerned about what was to come. The sunny weather slowly gave way to overcast skies, and a light rain began to fall. I took this as an ominous sign.

I turned anxiously to my husband and asked, “Are you looking forward to this?” He pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “It’ll be a blast.” I found this of little comfort as the closest my husband had been to rafting was riding Splash Mountain at Disneyland.

After bumping our way through the forest for a few miles, the bus finally came to a halt. The driver pointed to a path and told us in broken English that we were to follow it down to the river.

Dutifully we tromped down the switchbacks to a clearing where a team of professional guides and six large yellow rafts awaited us. One young man was handing out life jackets, and I lunged at him as if we were about to board the Titanic.

We were assigned a tour guide and a raft. Our guide, Patrick, was a small, wiry guy who looked barely old enough to shave. I’d pictured someone more like Thor steering us down the river, someone who possessed the upper body strength to pull a hysterical woman from the swirling rapids. I gulped but said nothing, afraid to expose my chicken heart and lose my fun mom cred.

Our raft had a few seats left, so Patrick assigned two additional passengers to our group; Ava and her 19-year-old daughter Tiffany, or as I dubbed them; Sporty Spice and Baby Spice.

Dripping in Nike athleisure wear Sporty Spice was nothing short of an Amazon, complete with rippling biceps, perfect white teeth and a thick blonde mane. Sporty introduced herself locking my hand in a vice-grip. I tried not to wince as she crushed most of the 27 bones in my hand.

You know those buddy comedies where they match two physical opposites? That was Sporty Spice and me. I was the Jonah Hill to her Channing Tatum. Sporty was the alpha-female, a blond Xena Warrior Princess, while I was the poser in cheap aqua shoes and a tattered baseball cap.

Sporty Spice offered to take the bow position as she was an “experienced power rower.”

Of course, she was.

“These Class III Rapids are child’s play,” Sporty scoffed. “I’ve been down class V rapids; you wear a helmet for those.”

Our guide Patrick seemed overly impressed, confessing he’d never even seen Class V rapids. This exchange did nothing to boost my confidence in him. It looked as though our lives would be in the hands of Sporty Spice. I prayed she was as tough as she looked.

Before climbing into our raft, Patrick announced the middle seat was open. It was the safest spot in the boat and came with a panic strap. My hand shot up. “I’ll take it if no one else wants it!” I offered a little too quickly. My boys shook their heads.

Uncool.

I’d outed myself as the chicken of the group. I wanted to be the brave mom but let’s face it; Sporty Spice had that job locked down. “You’ll be fine,” Sporty said slapping me on the back so hard that I gagged on my gum.

We shoved off and eased downriver toward the first group of Class I Rapids. They were a snap. I began to relax and unclenched a little. Next up were the Class II Rapids. These were a little wilder but thrilling, and our team navigated them with ease.

Between rapids, Patrick pointed out various lava rock formations, Osprey nests and other local points of interest. My boys were having a blast, smiles all around. Fun mom comes through again! I was beginning to think this white water rafting thing was a piece of cake. But that feeling would be fleeting.

As we rounded the bend, Patrick announced we’d be going ashore to scout the upcoming Class III Rapids so that he could explain some necessary maneuvers. Securing our raft, we trudged through the water and hiked uphill into the forest to get a better view of the rapids below.

When I first laid eyes on those rapids, I froze. I was unable to conceive that my entire family, would momentarily be careening down them on what amounted to a flimsy rubber sheet.

These were nothing like the rapids we’d experienced. What lay before us was a churning, roaring torrent of water, a river wild, thunderous and dangerous with sheer drops at every turn. My stomach began to percolate.

As everyone eagerly gathered to view the river, I hung back reviewing my options. I could walk back to Sunriver, sure it was a 30-mile trek, and I was in the middle of the freaking Deschutes Forest but what was my alternative? Panic set in. I was trapped. There was only one way out, and it was over those churning rapids.

Suddenly I didn’t give a rat’s ass about being fun or cool or brave. I was the chicken mom and would embrace it wholeheartedly!

While I kvetched, Patrick explained how to stay afloat on the rapids if thrown from the raft. My mouth went dry, and I clutched Patrick’s arm. “Do you mean we might go down the rapids….without the raft?” Patrick patted my hand and assured me that many people claim it’s the best part of their trip.

What???

Nowhere on Sun Country’s website did it claim “You’ll have a jolly old time when you’re tossed from the raft and sail down the rapids on your ass.” To add to my anxiety, Patrick began checking our life jackets, because as he put it, “If not tightly cinched, the river could rip them from our bodies.”

Was this guy messing with us?

Suddenly our happy family rafting trip had turned into The River Wild, Anaconda and Deliverance all rolled into one. I could almost hear the strains of banjo music wafting through the breeze.

“The river can kill you in a thousand ways.”

“You seem a little nervous, Pam,” Patrick said cinching my life jacket. I nodded vigorously, unable to contain my mounting fear. “Did the profuse sweating, dilated pupils, and dry heaving tip you off?” I asked. Patrick merely smiled and reassured me we’d be okay.

Having no other option, I hoisted myself back into the raft, grabbed ahold of the panic strap, and put on a brave face. “Okay, let’s do this thing!” I barked.

As we shoved off the embankment, Patrick threw out one last warning. “Whatever happens — stay away from the jagged lava rocks, they’ll shred our raft.”

I threw up in my mouth. Just a little.

Oars poised we headed downriver and into the gaping maw of the rapids. Our group navigated the first two sets of rapids with precision, dodging and weaving through the heavy water. The last of the Class III Rapids lay before us. Every muscle in my body was clenched and ready for the drops and turns we were about to face.

We took the first drop and found ourselves heading directly into a solid wall of water. The wave crashed over us, drenching us and sending our boat directly toward the jagged rocks. The jagged rocks Patrick had just warned would “shred our raft.”

There was a moment of quiet panic as, collectively, we realized we were about to get deeply screwed. In a split second, Patrick was yelling commands. “Back, back, row back! NOW!”

Without an oar, I felt helpless and having nothing else constructive to do I repeated Patrick’s directives. “Back! Back! Back!” I shrieked. Sporty Spice sprang into action, rowing backward with the strength of ten Amazons, plus two!

Thanks to teamwork we narrowly avoided the jagged rocks. Once out of harm’s way we could relax and enjoy the rest of our tour. We bounced through the final group of Class II Rapids and pulled ashore where our bus awaited us. The trip was over. We’d made it.

Once ashore Sporty Spice asked me how I liked my first white water rafting experience. I had to be honest, as phobic as I am, it was unforgettable. And now that I was safely on dry land I could admit that it had been thrilling.

That day on the Deschutes I came face to face with my worst fear. I had no way out, no way back and no choice but to forge ahead. Fear is part of being human, but sacrifice is part of being a mom. In the end, my desire to create an unforgettable memory for my boys outweighed my chicken heart. I’m not saying I managed it with any amount of dignity or aplomb. But at least I DID it.

Now that they’ve had a taste, my boys can’t wait to go white water rafting again. They’re busy planning next year’s trip; a half day excursion down Class IV Rapids. Will I go? Of course! What else would a fun mom do?

#travel #family #adventure #parenting #humor

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