i think the thing that bothers me about the “fake geek girl” myth is the fact that fake geek men actually do fucking exist.
there’s an artist who sells at a lot of events across the country who sells superhero art but doesn’t read comics or watch cartoons. he watches the movies sometimes, but actively thinks comics and cartoons are stupid and that the people who like them (and the people who make them!) are stupid.
i tabled next to an artist once who sold exclusively batman art, who does not like batman at all. he doesn’t like any comics really, he thinks this stuff is too nerdy for him, he just does it because he knows batman sells.
i asked a couple comic vendors if they carry comics from oni press and they had never heard of it.
i’ll comment on a guy wearing a mass effect shirt and he’ll look at me like i have two heads. he doesn’t play mass effect. he just bought it because it was at gamestop. happens a lot with the fallout vault boy shirts too, and occasionally that rick and morty shirt with the diagram of the portal gun
if we agree that these guys are all right, then i don’t want to hear a damn word about “fake geek girls”.
Sequel to Keep It Small (you don’t have to read that one but it would probably help!); 12k; RansomxHolster
Keep It Organized
Ransom knows that, to most people, his Excel sheets are a joke.
Well, maybe not a joke, but they aren’t meant to be taken seriously. They are just a thing that Ransom does to help plan events (mostly kegsters) or if someone has a particularly big life decision and most people assume that about half the time he informs them “Excel says,” he is making it up.
He’s not though.
Not ever.
Because he knows that people think he is bad at managing stress and, to be fair to them, he does tend to miscalculate and break down at least twice a year (finals) but, really, for how anxious he is all the time, he thinks he does a pretty good job.
The lists help. He keeps track of things. He might have too much to do, but at least he keeps it organized.
In middle school, before he has his own computer, his room is a mess of post-its and lists and his family is happy chaos, always has been, but for Ransom that means his parents aren’t the type to keep track of things, are content to go with the flow and Ransom…
Ransom needs structure. So the lists become a whiteboard calendar and when he gets a laptop for high school, Ransom goes digital.
He picks Excel for many reasons. Primarily because Microsoft Word is too unpredictable (especially with bullet points) and, once he gets more advanced (figuring out his average in each class before his report cards come out, keeping track of his summer workouts so he is in shape for fall, etc), he needs the math that Excel offers him.
But also because no one in his family uses Excel. So when one of his sisters borrows his laptop (Excel says Kels borrows it the most), there is no chance they will look in the “Recent” files and see just how much Ransom relies on Excel sheets. For everything.
I blame the fact that it has rained here for like 3 weeks straight for this one. Ransom/Holster ~3K; TW: Panic attack, canon-level alcohol use, unrequited love
Keep It Small
People don’t know as much as they think they do.
Throughout this whole thing, that’s the primary fact that Holster has learned for himself: People don’t know. And they aren’t good at guessing much either.
Freshmen year, everyone “knows” that Ransom and Holster have been friends for years (not true, they’d met first day of hockey pre-season, same as the rest of the team) and everyone “knows” by sophomore year that they are always down for a threesome (they’d only done it twice actually; twice before it got to be too much) and, when Junior year comes around, everyone “knows” that Ransom and Holster are “best friends for life.”
“The closest bros,” people say. “On the same wavelength.” “Downright freaky.” “Always thinking the exact same thing.”
Also not true. Well, partly true. Most of it could be true.
If it weren’t for the other thing.
Of course, that’s where people are the most incorrect. Not even just the other guys on the team. Everyone, from what Holster can tell. The entire human race.
Because people think being in love is this huge, all-encompassing thing. They think it takes over and colors all it touches and it’s a constant stabbing, shooting pain that makes the friendship not worth it.
I just realized the climax of the Lion King is kind of hilarious.
Because it came down to a showdown fight between Scar and Simba. And here’s something great about them: they are the weakest little shits.
Scar was this skinny twig of a lion who probably only got the 11th+ portion of any kill because nobody liked him, and the only way he could one-up anyone was through trickery, and/or by softening them up with a wildebeest herd.
Simba grew up without ever having to chase his prey or work particularly hard because he lived on a diet of insects and nothing else. Nala could kick his ass because she was a goddamn proper hunter.
So the final battle was the equivalent to a pasty-faced metrosexual teen slap-fighting a starving 60-year old
So, today, Marvel published issues of comics revealing that in fact the Nazis were always supposed to win World War 2, and the Allies invented the Cosmic Cube to rewrite history to prevent that from happening.
That was released today. April 19th.
The anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt during World War 2, the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe, begun when the Nazis decided to completely wipe out the Warsaw Jews on Passover eve. Instead, the Jews held out for nearly a month, with whatever they could fight with. They’re honored to this day.
And Marvel published their Nazi-stanning dumpster fire of a retcon today.
so how many people on Marvel’s editorial board are white supremacists?
Fucking ridiculous
But no, the reason we all bailed was too much “diversity.”
There’s something more insidious going on here than just “the Nazis were supposed to win” and I think it needs examination.
And by that I mean let’s talk about Steve Rogers, Straight White Cis Man.
A lot of the early superheroes were very explicitly invested in social justice – Wonder Woman fights sexist dictators and empowers women, Superman goes undercover to bust the KKK and advocates for the working class. And of course it’s not that surprising that Superman, the explicitly Jewish-coded immigrant, or Wonder Woman, the female superhero in a world of men, strike out against the power structures that oppress the groups they represent; they stand to gain greatly, after all, from the freedom and elevation of their peers.
But Cap is a little different. Cap, actually, is a lot different, because Steve Rogers is a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair. Steve Rogers is not just physically fit and able-bodied, but an outright ubermensch who can tough out gunshot wounds and knock around cars. Steve Rogers would be treated like a goddamn king in Hitler’s Germany, he is literally everything they claim to love and want and honor. Steve does not stand to gain greatly by fighting Nazis. Steve stands to gain greatly by joining them. The only thing he, personally, can achieve by his battle is personal loss; at best, of institutional privilege over basically everyone he’ll ever meet, at worst, of his very life.
If you think it is an accident that two Jewish guys made this character the dedicated, justice-loving ultimate enemy of the Nazi state, I do not know what to tell you other than that you are hilariously, incomprehensibly, obviously wrong.
This is a guy who could have the bad guys eating out of his hand, but opposes them instead because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. No matter the cost, no matter what anyone else says he in particular should care about due to his own station, he’s going to help people instead of hurting them. Steve Rogers is not just a guy who punches Nazis, he is a promise to Jewish kids that Gentiles, too, can and will punch Nazis, and a reminder to Gentiles that just because they’re not Jewish is no excuse not to. More than that, even. He is a promise to every marginalized fan that yes, there really are allies who will fight for you all the way to the end. He is an example to every privileged fan that real heroism means being that ally for others, that it is not only possible but important and even imperative to defend the less privileged. If Diana teaches us that we can fight for ourselves, Steve teaches us that we can fight for others. And that is a kind of hope and inspiration that most superheroes never even get to pretend to.
And so think about what Spencer is saying, when he says that that isn’t real.
In Spencer’s new Cap universe, it is natural, inevitable, that a smart, strong, authoritative white dude would ally himself with Nazis. In Spencer’s universe, if you want a person with privilege on your side, if you want that person to actually put themselves at risk fighting on your behalf, you have to literally rewrite reality. Are you a person with privilege? Great, don’t worry about it, you have no obligation to give a shit, because no sketchy minority rabble-rouser has brainwashed you with a cosmic cube. Are you a minority rabble-rouser? You’re on your own, good fucking luck. Straight white cis dudes are your natural enemy, and since you live in the real world without cosmic cubes, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Spencer has taken a character created by two Jewish guys to explicitly say “you don’t have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people” and turned him into a character that instead very aggressively says “actually you do have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people. Race war is the Real World and that Steve is a fantasy.”
So, you know. Fuck him.
Nick Spencer is a real life agent of Hydra and you’ll never convince me otherwise.
fortunately, superhero mythos is FULL of evil duplicates, and we know how to spot them.
spencer’s cap is a fake. the real cap would never, ever be like that.
I don’t know much about birds, so I looked this up – turns out, round cages like that one are bad for birds, because they only feel safe when they have corners so if they can’t find one, they become very anxious and scared and this can lead to health problems. That’s why cockatoos hate those cages and why this worker of the Saskatoon Parrot Rescue (Canada) is destroying it. So this bird (Pebble) isn’t upset at the loss of the cage, as some websites say, but is actually trying to join in by expressing its glee that the stupid thing is gone.
Another good thing is that the Daily Mail tagged this as WARNING: BIRD LANGUAGE and actually put ‘bleep’ sounds on every single fuck and fucking that comes out of that cockatoo’s beak.
1: yes those cages suck and good riddance to that one. You can make a round cage work by draping a sheet over the back half to give the bird a sense of shelter. But that cage is also WAAAY too small for a parrot that size.
2: you can get a good sense of that cockatoo’s previous owners and their behavior from the language that bird is using, and they probably should never have owned a cockatoo – BECAUSE
3: cockatoos are cuddly and intelligent but also very excitable birds who, very much like a three year old child, are prone to getting over-stimulated and then throwing fits and tantrums. This one is yelling because it’s getting worked up by all the crashing and noise – BECAUSE
4: screaming and mayhem are actually a bona fide parrot social activity! That cockatoo may indeed hate that cage, but also it’s getting excited at all the noise! and movement! and destroying! and pitching in with its own screaming and chattering because YAY IT’S SOCIAL NOISE TIME. (Social screaming hour is one of the things new parrot owners often don’t know about and are unprepared for. Parrots NEED to be loud sometimes.)
Notice this man quiets down after the crashing and banging, and de-escalates the cockatoo’s rising excitement by speaking to it in a normal tone, signifying to it that social screaming time is over for the moment. Cockatoos LOVE getting excited! But they aren’t always great self-soothers (especially if nobody ever taught it how) and sometimes you have to help them calm down to keep them from spinning up into a screaming fit. I have a feeling the cockatoo’s previous owners mostly just screamed back at it instead of soothing it.
If this all sounds weirdly high-level psychology for interacting with an animal, that’s because it is. That’s how smart the larger parrots are.
Part of me is very fascinated with the idea of mmo rping that’s this complex/multi-layered and the other part of me is concerned that this person dedicated the time to do something this Fucked Up
But I want to know how the others reacted. And if this person had a good in-character motive for this.
What’s the most simple thing you’ve ever had to explain to a fully competent adult?
That you cannot fax money to someone.
Had someone accidentally fax us some paperwork. They then asked if we would fax it back due to the paperwork being confidential…
I have received a fax in an envelope.
like… they took the documents, put em in an envelope, then faxed me a picture of the sealed envelope.
When I was a kid, I faxed my dad’s satellite office drawings of horses. I had watched my father send so many faxes that I had the process memorized. Except, for some reason I thought that I could fax things to grandma. I put in the numbers for the office every time, but was convinced that the faxes were going to grandma. I also didn’t think to inform my parents that I was doing this.
My dad visited the satellite office (three hour drive) one day and discovered their conference room white board absolutely covered in my drawings. The guys thought it was adorable that I sent drawings and letters to them, and didn’t tell my dad because they knew he’d stop me.
That’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever heard.
I like that this just turned into stories about faxing
fax machines do seem to be right in the middle of “people do not understand what is happening”. it’s easier if you spell the name out: facsimile machine. it’s a machine for making a thing that looks like another thing. the actual thing is not sent, just an image of it.
just moving along like everyone else 