#this is from chicago I think

[ambrosykim]

i genuinely believe that the only reason shapiro didn't believe grace about clivesdale students being responsible for max's death is bc she's from chicago and not hatchetfield

you just know that if the head of investigation was from hatchetfield, they would have done anything to make sure all of clivesdale was found guilty, even if they didn't do it

#one of my fave running jokes is the collective hate for clivesdale <3 #i think thats why it was emphasised so much that shes from chicago btw #nerdy prudes must die #npmd #npmd spoilers #starkid #nett rambles

[emerging-jew]

Okay here's my spicy take:

It's really convenient for white westerners, especially Americans, to have the stance that being indigenous expires a certain time after colonization and I think that stance isn't pushed back against nearly often enough. And to go a step further I think the take is itself a subtle act of colonization

#like if we apply the logic they use for Jew to north america #then there will come a time the Lakota or Dine will not be indigenous #but Caucasian Jeff from chicago will be #like dont get me wrong i see how people call it out for antisemitism which it is #but its also testing the waters to further invalidate native north american indigenous rights #and i think that needs to be acknowledged more often

[notbecauseofvictories]

My best friend and I had a call recently---she’s back with her family for a bit helping out with some hometown stuff. As part of the stuff, she’s been going through a (deceased) relative’s scrapbook, compiled in the American Midwest circa 1870-1900 and featuring mostly cut-out figures from the ads of the day.

She talked about how painstaking this relative’s work was. (Apparently the relative was careful to cut out every finger, every cowlick; this was by no means carelessly or hastily assembled.) But she also she talked about how---the baby on the baking soda ad is ugly, it is so ugly, why anyone would clip this heinously ugly illustrated baby and paste it into a scrapbook? Why would you save the (terribly told, boring) ghost story that came with your box of soap?

(Why include these things in the first place? we asked each other. ”There’s a kind of anti-capitalism to it,” she mused.)

And we discussed that for a bit---how most of the images, stories, artists, and ads were local, not national; they’re pulled from [Midwestern state] companies’ advertisements in [Midwestern state] papers, magazines, and products. As a consequence, you’re not looking at Leyendecker or Norman Rockwell illustrations, but Johann Spatz-Smith from down the road, who took a drawing class at college.

(College is the state college, and he came home on weekends and in the summer to help with the farm or earn some money at the plant.)

But it also inspired a really interesting conversation about how---we have access to so much more art, better and more professional art, than any time in history. As my bff said, all you have to do to find a great, technically proficient and lovely representational image of a baby, is to google the right keywords. But for a girl living in rural [Midwestern state] of the late 1800s, it was the baking soda ad, or literal actual babies. There was no in-between, no heading out to the nearby art museum to study oil paintings of mother and child, no studying photographs and film---such new technologies hadn’t diffused to local newspapers and circulars yet, and were far beyond the average person’s means. But cheap, semi-amateur artists? Those were definitely around, scattered between towns and nearby smallish cities.

It was a good conversation, and made me think about a couple things---the weird entitlement that “professional” and expensive art instills in viewers, how it artificially depresses the appetite for messy unprofessional art, including your own; the way that this makes your tastes narrower, less interesting, less open.

By that I mean---maybe the baby isn’t ugly! Maybe you’ve just seen too many photorealistic babies. Maybe you haven’t really stopped to contemplate that your drawing of a baby (however crude, ugly, or limited) is the best drawing of a baby you can make, and the act of drawing that lumpen, ugly baby is more sacred and profoundly human than even looking at a Mary Cassatt painting.

And even if that isn’t the case....there was this girl in [American Midwestern state] for whom it was very, very important that she capture every finger, curl, and bit of shading for that ugly soap ad baby. And some one hundred years later, her great-something-or-other took pains to preserve her work---because how terribly human it is, to seek out all the art we can find that resonates with us, preserve it, adore it.

It might be the most human impulse we have.

#I of course went on a tangent about henry darger because I love darger and he was also pulling/tracing/finding inspiration in local ads #I was also thinking of the scenes in banshees of inisherin where gleeson plays the fiddle in the bar and the woman sings #clearly not professional! nowhere near mozart. #but you know what? those people are making art. they are engaged in the most human thing you can possibly do #my mother once talked about how when she was growing up in the chicago area the irish immigrants would sing and play at parties #and her mother (one generation removed from immigration) would scoff #because who did they think they were! they weren't professionals. they were making a spectacle of themselves. #''and then it died out. no one sings and plays at parties anymore'' she said quietly #celestial emporium of benevolent knowledge

[mickeym4ndy]

the road not taken looks real good now

#gallavich #gallavich edit #ianxmickey #Ian x Mickey #shameless #shameless edit #Mickey Milkovich #Ian Gallagher #this kinda got away from me #but I kept thinking about that scene and the ‘warmest bed’ lyric #so I had to make it #an ode to 7x10 & 7x11 I guess #shameless 7x10 #why is it impossible to get a good quality vid of the border scene #once again #Taylor swift #gallavich taylor swift #this is becoming my brand #there’s missing lyrics that I wanted to add that fit but the scenes just didn’t look good in there #also is it lame that I changed LA to Chicago #Taylor swift lyrics #my stuff

[ullybug]

acts of god by heather mchugh, poetry february 1981 issue

(x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x)

#sorry for calling wayne gretzky a dead god over betting ads do you still think im sexy. etc #why am i listing the publication of this poem? bc there is another by the same author bearing the same name from a different collection #why is that? no idea. #jack hughes #wayne gretzky #alexander ovechkin #connor mcdavid #connor bedard #chicago blackhawks #sidney crosby #john tavares #<- uh. in essence #that's what its meant to be about anyway #hockey poetry #mine own edit #edit²¹

[whollyjoly]

in those heavy days in june, when love became an act of defiance

song - june by florence + the machine

special thanks to @xxluckystrike for getting me back into f+tm and to @panzershrike-pretz @ronald-speirs for giving me feedback/hearing my rambling brain thoughts as i made this!

#this song actually kills me for them #bonus lyrics include: “hold on to each other” and “im always down to hide with you” #fucking kills me #i love them your honor #winnix #otp: we'll go to chicago i'll take you there #(bonus chicago reference in the song lyrics!!) #dick winters #lewis nixon #so at first with this song i was thinking of doing it from lew's pov to dick but #that last image with the “i can see an angel” of dick looking up at nix came to me in a dream #and i knew i had to do it the other way #there's also something so precious and pure about the love and care and devotion dick has for nix okay #anyways it felt right and sparked joy #band of brothers #bofb #hbowar #em's edits

[cruciomione]

headcanon for sydcarmy that I've had for months now that i was reminded of rewatching Fools Rush In yesterday (rip Matthew Perry) and reading @ambeauty 's new fanfic.

i love the unplanned pregnancy trope with them and also the idea that they would do every milestone backwards or hit them super fast in terms of their relationship. hear me out

what i love about sydney and carmy is how intense they are about each other while not knowing each other for that long. carmy spends braciole acting like a heartbroken widower and ends the episode by planning on revamping his family restaurant with a girl he's only known for a couple months. the restaurant dream he thought died with his brother, the person he loved the most (woah). while sydney is her most emotionally vulnerable with a guy she barely knows (and physically too, i.e the hug after the fire suppression test and the table scene) and constantly gives him second chances when he doesn't deserve them.

they are weird and intense about each other even with all these platonic and professional boundaries they put in place.

in my mind that is rotting from tumblr and ao3, when those boundaries disappear they will do the relationship shit on speed drive. oops they get pregnant after a few months of dating or a situationship. whats having a baby when you have a restaurant? they are already the mom and dad of the bear!

they would elope randomly on a tuesday afternoon after dating for a couple months bc they practically eat sleep live and breathe each other every single day anyways? carmy tells syd he doesn't want to wait when he already knows she's it for him. syd says he's crazy but she may just be crazier for agreeing (also grew up with hearing her parents love story who got married super young and fast so why cant she?)

oh they just started dating a few days ago? syd moves in or they start looking for new places. shes already here all the time when they menu plan. carmy already buys her fave snacks, subscribes to a couple streaming services for the first time bc syd loves to binge-watch shows, and has a couple of her scarves laying around.

and i love that this could go really bad, how intense and how much they love each other (bc im an angst enjoyer) or most likely really great bc these two losers want to practically live in each other's skin and make each other better.

side note: after watching fools rush in again...need a sydcarmy au bc the premise of two people from different cultures, values and perspectives foolishly rushing into a big thing like opening a restaurant having a baby is so them!

#the bear #sydcarmy #sydney x carmy #no no like hear me out #the berzattos are rich and affluent family who own a chain of fine dining restaurants all around the world and carmy has to go back #to chicago to open up another where he meets sydney #they have a one night stand syd runs off after and come back after 3 months bc shes pregnant! #i think a lot of the story would have to be changed in this fic since their personalities are different from alex and isobel but it can wor #....i have ideas #alex and isobel also elope in the movie they get married at one of those elvis chapels dksfhksfj #everyone should watch this movie its underated and matthew is hilarious

[froget-me-nots]

you came to take us (all things go)

#caption from chicago by sufjan stevens (i love that song so bad) #i could not stop thinking about the OVER iterations last week. i hope they had a nice road trip #woe.begone #woe.begone spoilers #i wouldnt call this “finished” but im trying to be less picky about that these days #my art :D

[8bit-mau5]

Update

Hey guys I didnt mean to disappear the way I did this month, but especially in the more recent weeks. I've been in an UNBEARABLE amount of pain with migraines almost every day for over a week and I may very well have a sinus infection (': Like I WAS diagnosed with chronic sinusitis last year iirc but this is unbearable. My throat hurts, my teeth hurt, my face hurts, I can't breathe out my nose. I feel miserable tbh.

Another reason for absence and being so slow on work is because I came really close to calling the cops on my mother in the middle of a fight not too long ago. I'm certain it would've gotten physical if Popo hadn't walked through the front door when he did. Thankfully things DIDN'T get physical, but I'm still very shaken up about it. I'm in no danger, but I'm getting around to making an official post for my [GoFundMe] that's been successfully published now. That was the last straw I just cannot handle how my cats and I are treated. It's seriously affected my workflow for far too long.

Anyway I could really use some positivity and distraction. I missed this place and I missed you guys, home life has just been.. a lot. And I'm exhausted.

#abuse #abuse tw #animal abuse #animal abuse tw #i think thats everything? #okay to reblog #since it has my GFM link? #i had to call my shitty hardly-present in my life father to calm me down but like. the way he talks to me aint great either #the treatment ive gotten from mom has gotten exponentially worse since my sister moved out just like we all expected tbh #ive NEEDED to move out for ages but now i have like. a plan #i just need to make the money for it now #honestly id be happy to even reach 7k. the deadline is just in a few months so.. i'll be keeping it up for rent and move costs. but id like #to raise a bit to properly PAY popo for driving me up there and back. so $ for gas. food. hotel stays. etc. and paying for a rental truck #8bit beeps #god i wish i just had a friend i could move in with RIGHT NOW just to weather out the storm and work on raising more money #to go to chicago w/my boyfriend

[heartbreakfeelsogood]

joining the war against the midwest on the side of the midwest

#op #i move this week. hold my hand #i feel like i’m actually going to be the biggest hater 😭 i’m a new england girl through and through #you can pry the word rotary from my cold dead hands #also i am not friendly enough people over there smile too much /lh #if we come back to new england when taylor finishes school i think i’ll be acting the way patrick does over chicago #🎶take me hooooooooooome🎶

[ricketybonez]

for the record i would die at barricade again. without hesitation

#.txt #.jpeg #my chemical romance #mcr #gerard way #riot fest #ive been trying to fidn a fourth goddamn picture for this for mONTHS. i started this the day i got back from chicago #milfs from new jersey will have you thinking well sure that was one of the most stressful nights of my life and i nearly got pulled #to the ground like six times. but what if i could do it again

[hibiscuslynx]

has ben ever made ny make the argument about nyc pizza being better than any other pizza because of the tap water because i was just introduced to this concept today and im obsessed

#lynx rambles #i love watching literally anything about cultural/regional differences in the US and thinking immediately about wttt #BUT I LOVE THE PIZZA DEBATE!!!! #thank u ben brainard for introducing me to it. #it fascinates me. it entertains me #i love seeing new yorkers mad at the rest of the country #i love seeing people from a certain place having to concede that pizza from another place is good #currently reading the comment section of this video abt nyc pizza like its the juiciest gossip you've ever seen #this commenter thinks upstate ny gas station pizza is better than highly specialized CT pizzerias' pizza #and im fucking obsessed. tell me more #i need videos about pizza from CT and jersey and chicago and whatnot #lynx rambles in the tags. fork found in the kitchen

[pigtailedgirl]

Due South and a Canadian White Girl North-ish

I'm so nervous. Addition: Perhaps some trigger warning for abuse and illness talk?

So I read this great Due South fanfic.

BLESSED

I think it's going in my top ten. And I have a bunch I like that deal in the same theme. In Fraser's fit of himself in the city versus northern Canada and how he finds something in the contrasts.

Still this fanfic, though it does a neat re-examine overall, and others, have an image I guess that is put out by Fraser, by the narrative, of Canada that just does not work for me.

EXAMPLE

***

"Think about being somewhere else," Cleve told him as the strings began to vibrate again. "Anywhere but here."

And he did. Where did he want to be? Anywhere but here. Yes, Cleve had indeed answered the question for him.

The MacKenzie River, strong and swift, slicing through the spruce and pine, cutting a path between the snowcapped mountains.

The frozen, inhospitable Beaufort Sea, where a man could see his own breath turn to ice on the air and blow back to his face, clinging crystals of ice on his skin and lashes.

The mighty forests of tamarack and poplar that covered the western slope of the coastal mountain ranges. The warm, gentle breezes of heady lodgepole pine scent. The soft hiss and crackle of campfire, mellowed by a handful of cedar bark.

"There you go," Cleve decided at last in a quiet, satisfied voice.

Ben smiled until his face hurt, not quiet ready to open his eyes and let go his vision just yet. The strings felt good, like the strips of cedar bark he had imagined for the fire, the neck of the guitar a more than adequate rendering of the canoe paddle the MacKenzie demanded. The smooth, time worn wood of the box pressed into his belly, a body that complemented his, perfect in its unyieldingness, yet matching his every bend and twist.

Stella the True.

Ben would have given her another name.

His eyes opened then, noticing first how the world seemed to have blurred in more ways than one, and that the smile had faded away as the memories had faded in upon him. The world was only blurry for a few seconds more, until he realized that once he blinked the beginnings of tears from his eyes, the world became amazingly clear. So much became amazingly clear.

"Don't give up on yourself, son," Cleve Abernathy's voice came from somewhere very, very far away. Fraser gave his saturated eyes to the man who had spoken.

***

"Where I come from, people help one another. If one goes without, then all go without equally, so that everyone has a chance. You don't let your neighbor's coal run out in January. You don't let their stomachs go empty when your kill is plenty. When their children don't return from the trail, you go looking for them. That's just the way it is."

***

It's beautifully written, but feels wrong to me. Feels like lies to my lived experiences. Being from a small place like Fraser, this is a beautiful sentiment, and not at all true to it's realities.

When Fraser, Due South's narrative and comedy, and fandom view the otherness of the wilderness or northern Canada, make big deals to study it, never mind just mark Canada different in broad... It feels othering. Othering in a way I think is really important to how Fraser doesn't fit in if he's got this perspective too.

I've grown with stories about people and family who lived the same kind of lives as the Fraser family. In modern ways my home here still is like this. I even lived some like this and I'm baby in comparison.

Remote and isolated. Lots of nature to be in. Law, education and medicine as tiers in the community that are mostly outsiders to the community either brought in short-term or recurring.

Even those who live here permanently now, have founded themselves career wise, and have to, going away to do it or having been born and raised elsewhere. Christ, we have to basically leave after high-school more than 1000km away. HAVE TO.

And there is a definite disconnect between this group who are outsiders and the what I would call settled persons in the emotional connection to the place and town and the ability to fit in.

If it's a truism to me, this idea of grand north, natural beauty or isolation in a small town, with the people, to get in touch with an emotional growth is the biggest lie I have ever witnessed done by people to themselves. And this is an idealism of outsiders. You don't come out into isolation or live it to get NEW emotional needs met. You don't grow yourself thinking this is something special or the true way or will fix you.

Those that say living like this is a personal spiritual ride are:

1. High on their own supply as it were, aka, either tapping what they had dormant before or pretending.

2. Doing so off the backs of those who just don't think too much about it and are where and what they are.

If I had a dollar for every doctor or therapist I met who came here and were enamored by the place, the seas and freedoms and kind people and opportunities in solitude, expected it to change the people here and them, and then ran wild because they were always dumbasses, or took advantage, or after a year of seeing it day to day still wouldn't or didn't understand how to live with it and ran or got burnt out...RICH.

Because the truth is that small communities and remoteness don't make special or perfect people or places. We aren't magic, we aren't even that different, we just face a different or smaller reality.

I'm struck by the story One Good Man paints of Fraser's grandmother, who faced early trauma, and to me tells a reality you maybe don't want to embrace fully but should reflect on before concluding the nature of life here. A young woman who saw her town burn, who saved some of the children in it, but watched the others and adults die and was also horribly physically and probably emotionally scarred by it. Who only had an idea, and with it, bravery in the face of that moment, and after the strength to hang on as her backbone tip of surviving. Any wonder then, the tough it attitude and gift of wisdom was maybe her main survival and emotional mantra. That what tied her there to keep trying to give knowledge to people and how she pushed that above emotion on her grandson was this.

I think canon does a good job of highlighting an undercurrent of why Fraser and family still didn't fit in and why Fraser and Due South is a story of growth as a person and finding his home/community is going outside. His emotional needs weren't here. That's alright to find elsewhere when you need it.

@juniperpomegranate made a really great point of difference of Fraser's north, so often idealized in show or fic, and how it isn't actually like a town. It's not imagined or filled or understood in the reality of a community. Which is hella important. Because your community and relationships is how you really fit in a place like that or in my home.

And that's people. People to connect to. People who aren't wildly different. Experiences only seem wild to outsiders. Perfection or an image of better peeps is only lauded to cover in my opinion.

We face hardships and issues. We don't face them mythically. Nature is pretty and it requires work and understanding of it, learned only from experience and listening or knowing others who have, to survive and thrive in.

The reason we have outsider law or medicine or education come in is...

Well it can be real fun when the town is faced with say influenza and has no resources, or knowledge about it. Where you have to be cajoled to get immunized by your sister dressing up in the nurse's coat and leaving, to trick you into coming out of hiding. Where Dad tells stories of my great-grandma who plastered everyone with coal oil for cures as the rock of the town. Or where, when you have criminal stuff or domestic violence or mental illness and you can't treat or stop. A woman who hurt her family for decades because she was sadly untreated and unknown Schizophrenic. When another woman my dad's age wrote of her harrowing experience of childhood, of her mom dying from cancer and her father putting her to work as a teenage girl to care for the siblings and home, and then not providing any of his income or the support people gave him for them, until she and her siblings were literally found starving. Cause he fucked off to the neighbors. Cause the whole town knew it was happening, but there was no alternative, this was just their monetary and work survival versus that family and that family's lack of social capital paired with no place to go. Where solution was when law finally came in an forcefully moved the minor kids to different fosters in villages 100s of kilometers away, this was just a daily continuation of life though for most here.

See law, as external resource, can't even do much beyond come in twice a year and judge people. Punishment for crimes is more social than moral and depends on taking a person out of the community most times. Bob Fraser, Mounties and cops who ship around to different spots, if they are good get then respect sure, but they were and always have to stay detached to not bias too. It's a hard one. It's you can have impact and respect, for example the priest use to come a couple times a year and get the good dishes out for him, but you don't build the emotional connection of say staying for the weddings after-parties of music and dancing all night. Of people crossing islands to visit each other at the end of weeks' work.

In this vein I'm not surprised Bob had a great reputation and a lot of "friends" he didn't know.

And education. Where it's people come to knowledge at you, or knowledge from you. Where it's students come to study you like you are a tropical native of the 18th century. Write their papers and go back and take your history and skills to sell and forget the here left behind. Or come dodging the drafts of the States. All our stories or archives are in a "local" museum we can't even get to without a plane ticket yo. Or again those who come to give wisdom like they are the holders and we are heathen plebs. With maybe a one in ten being someone or something honest or decent. Though I'm a little bias here. My mom was a teacher who came here in the 70s and spent her whole life teaching grade school. Literal one room school house start. Who met and married and stayed with my Dad here. Some people do catch. Some, I think like maybe the example of Fraser's grandma, which I have soft feeling for probably because of this, just really want to impart shared knowledge and get happiness from seeing it grow and having that personal shot to help it. In a small community that seed growing outwards, to see it, is freaking awesome. But key is shared. You got to learn from too.

Finally, small isolated communities need and foster their connection through the people. Who you know. How you are all related. The meme of does everybody know everyone in Canada hits lol. But that's got the inverse too. There is no privacy. Loners be seen and judged. Again, social fit and capital being supreme.

That's why the nature loner or lover is myth too. Drop you off on a pretty snow covered lake. Pretty yes, magical and just for you, no. You still need the community knowledge to know where the fish, which direction is inland or sea, where is best shelter, where is Indians in the country to help you trap, when does the supplies boats and airdrops come. Nothing is done alone okay, trust me on this. You go out to snowshoe alone on a clear day, and weather strikes and you die.

I guess my point I keep trying to rope back into is maybe the experience or place or people sound different, or magic, but it's superficial. It's no different than how stories of history or cities sound to some. Emotionally I think we run the same. I think the true beauty is in seeing that reality. That you can't be the best stuck in an unreality or hiding from finding your fit. And again the true charm of Due South and Fraser, is his going south grows himself to see it. The show gets us to play and have fun seeing it.

And that the best of people or place, Canada or States, small town or city, outsider or no...is accepting and acknowledging that difference and sameness is the way to grow. Is the best beauty.

It's how my community did grow out of most of it's struggles imo, and hopes to go further I tell ya.

So here are my recs on the wonder of difference and sameness in Due South. Again like the fic above, can't rec enough.

Here are a small sampler of finding yourself near and away.

Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall (squidge.org)

Smaller Gods - arrow (esteefee) - due South [Archive of Our Own]

Our Dancing Days - sdwolfpup - due South [Archive of Our Own]

Also, does anyone have a link to an old ds flashfic of Fraser wandering Chicago in a power outage? I loved that one.

#due south #due south meta #personal life i dont know how much to put in honestly #fic recs #fraser is example of you can emotionally or physically survive a place and enjoy or be accustomed to it's nature #but does that mean you fit it? #i think there is a pretty good argument his longing for emotional contentment beyond his isolation inside himself means no to the north #his lack of friends or family up there #his dad's and grandparents as well #and their lack of ability to give him emotional happiness or get him tied to the towns #even if it doesn't mean yes always to chicago either #which would have lots of overwhelming differences to see and grapple with and explore #also this hits what i think meg thatcher could have touched on as a character #as a canadian city woman trying to entice or grapple with fraser #a fun idea of othered but from your country to play with #benton fraser

[commsroom]

you know eiffel is texan because he has zero discomfort handling firearms even though he is the most scared man in the world

#wolf 359 #w359 #doug eiffel #on the other hand he loses points for the way he pronounces pecan. but that's on zach. #half joking. but i do think he considers himself texan #his whole life was there. the only parts of his backstory that are actually in the show. #whenever i call him texan i feel like i have to cover my bases and be like YES i KNOW he was born in boston. but he's not from there. #you guys need to stop cowboyifying kepler when eiffel is there #kepler doesn't even have ties to a yeehaw state he's just from chicago #and anyway eiffel is just like obnoxiously american. it's funny to me.

[davidtennantpussytulpa]

people who say starkid is a good entry point for people getting into musicals i feel like youre insane. like just bc its parodies of popular stuff still doesnt mean people will find it appealing

#i think its more like something rotten where half of the enjoyment comes from already being familiar with musicals #and how they are structured and referencing other musicals #any other genre ppl are like oh if you wanna get into horror or comedy or a decade of movies here are the classics! #and for musicals people arent like hey maybe watch the academy award winning 50 years and still golden sound of music #or maybe a modern favorite like chicago. or an engaging album like hadestown #instead youre saying how about you go to the far reaches of theatre nerdery. ITS INSANE #i sound much more heated than i am about this im not upset i just find it confounding

[mindyourownbiscuitss]

HAPPY CHICAGO FIRE IS BACK DAY!!!!

We get to see an engaged Sylvie Brett tonight!

#😭 #andrea is still get the side eye from one of her latest interviews #i still think it’s going to end well for us because it’d be just cruel and ridiculous otherwise but i’m a little more realistic now #brettsey #chicago fire