natasha romanoff is the kind of person who could kill you with her bare hands if she had to but she is also probably the kind of person who would purposely take the squeaky chair and wobble on it and drive everyone crazy
there has been a pretty far-reaching trend on this website to blog about the effects of mental illness and trauma on emotional regulation and an aggressive campaign to get people to not only understand but accept boundary-crossing behavior from people because it is a reflection of their mental illness/trauma, as far as to imply that you are ableist if you are not able to tactfully handle and accept someone else’s dysfunctional coping mechanisms and behavior despite your own discomfort. i see this most often with posts about bpd but there are other topics as well. i haven’t commented on any of it because it’s not a pie i wanted a finger in, but it has over time led me to develop severe discomfort around people who follow that line of thought to the point that i have disengaged, unfollowed, and unfriended many people who agree with it.
the stuff i’m seeing passed around now about “supporting perpretrators” in addition to survivors is the horrifying track down which that train of thought has sped, because what people don’t seem to understand is that mental illness and trauma do no make you an exception to the boundaries of those around you. it is necessary to be aware of the ways that survivors and mentally ill people may lash out emotionally at those they are close to but it is not actually necessary to be “accepting” to the point that it is harmful to you. your emotional boundaries are important, more important than whatever obligation you feel to “accommodate” someone’s trauma.
it is not “okay” that survivors sometimes display manipulative/abusive behaviors towards the people around them and it is important to handle these situations with tact, sure, but not to the detriment of setting your own boundaries and checking the behaviors in question. when friends i know are mentally ill/ trauma survivors have lashed out at me with emotionally manipulation tactics in times of great distress, i have supported them afterward, but i have always followed this up with a discussion about how these kinds of behaviors can not and will not continue or our relationship will end. this is not “ableist” or refusing to support survivors’ trauma, it is setting strong boundaries within the context of supporting each other and providing the community in which we all can heal. what is important here is that these are isolated incidents – learned defense mechanisms arising in times of panic and stress – and not consistent grabs for power. these are not people following the deliberate, overarching pattern of actions abusers use to isolate and control victims, and their actions are easily distinguishable from such.
my point is that this discourse has allowed people to blur the line between these behaviors and abuse when it comes to community support. we should support abusers in our communities as well, they say, because otherwise we would be isolating vulnerable marginalized people who are just struggling with their own trauma. this is exactly what abusers want. this is not a radical attitude. abusers depicting themselves as helpless victims of emotions and circumstances out of their control has pretty much always been the abuser party line. there is nothing productive or useful or valid about carving out community resources for “accountability” in ways that perpetuate bad abuse politics and logics that have been used to silence survivors for years and years. you cannot support survivors and also support their abusers by continuing to welcome them in the same community spaces, period, and it takes some ridiculous mental gymnastics to pretend otherwise.
Okay, if they wanna make a biopic about Michael Jackson starring a British white dude, you know what, that’s fine. But then I goddamn demand a biopic about Elvis starring John Boyega. And a revolutionary war movie where George Washington is played by Ming-Na Wen with no explanation. And a Beatles movie starring Penelope Cruz and Lupita Nyongo and Oscar Isaac and Stephen Yeun as the Fab Four. And a movie about WWII with Javier Bardem playing Roosevelt and Jackie Chan as Winston Churchill.
tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”
it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.
he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself - i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.
maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.
people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.
it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.
important.
also, dumbledore would not have let an eight year old drown; harry even has a minute after he finished the task while talking with ron where he feels embarrassed and stupid over his performance during the task explicitly because he knows dumbledore would have never let that happen–and harry feels like he should have remembered that before/during the task
not to mention, dumbledore rewarded harry with high marks during the task for caring about the other hostages and for rescuing fleur’s sister. and this wasn’t the only time he’s rewarded students for demonstrating caring behavior towards other people
seriously the way some of you people talk about dumbledore you’d think he was voldemort or umbridge
I agree, and honestly I wasn’t agreeing with the OP as much as I was with the above comments that the Dursleys, not Dumbledore, are responsible for Harry’s behavioural patterns. And yeah, the idea of coping, and of not letting people come to harm if you can help it, aren’t actually bad things and yet people talk of them as if they’re actually moral failings on Harry’s part, something he should be actively punished for.
This–that Harry, in the heat of the moment, assumed that no one would help the girl if he failed to do so, because of the way the Dursleys treated him–seemed implicit to me when I read it for the first time. In the intervening years it’s come to my attention that my childhood was…atypical, shall we say, but even knowing that most people are more decent than my extended family, I still assume that, if I don’t help someone in trouble, no one will. It’s not a hero complex or a compulsion to play the savior, it’s a bone-shaking certainty that I would be left helpless in their situation and I honestly can’t live with leaving someone else in that position. I remember reading that, reading Harry acting like that, and thinking that it was such a relief to see someone who made “foolish” decisions for the same reasons I did.
im fuckign laUGHING imagining how used the first order members must be to kylo ren’s tantrums like if you’re in the same room as him when its happening its no fucking joke but if you’re like three rooms away or on the other side of the base its like everyone’s radioing each other going “yo ren just tore up another computer station” “duuuuude what happened” “someone told him his darth vader action figure is gonna arrive later than expected and he went fucking nuts” “did u see it happening???” “dave was on door duty and told me about it. he said there was screaming and stamping and everything………o shit bill’s gonna tell him there’s no mint choc chip ice cream left do u wanna come over here me n hux are gonna make popcorn and watch the show”
You know what, I totally love the setup in force awakens for any romantic subplot that could come out of it. The apparent options are:
1. Finn and Rey: an interracial straight couple where the man is black and the woman is white, a setup done almost always the other way around in movies
2. Finn and Poe: an interracial gay couple (with two people of color) that would be the first of its kind in a major motion picture like this
3. Finn and Rey and Poe: a potentially healthy polyamorous, interracial relationship. Unheard of ever.
4. No romantic subplot at all: A sci-fi film without a pointless romance that has no relevance to the plot??? Whaaaaaatttttt?????
I mean whichever way you swing it, it turns out pretty fantastic!
How is Poe a POC???
dude
Oscar Isaac is Latino (specifically Guatemalan/Cuban)
repeat after me: I am a fucking awesome person who has dealt with so much shit and I have made it through it all and am still cute af and smart and funny and nice and intelligent and I kick ass
everybody liveblogging clone wars stuff on my dash made me think
okay in the theoretical instance where eventually finn sparks off a revolution and all the stormtroopers rebel en masse…
you can’t fight with no helmet bc that’s impractical (even if seeing faces would be incredibly important and powerful) but how can you tell yourselves apart from the stormtroopers still killing for the first order?
easy. helmet decoration.
every freed/rebelling stormtrooper takes their helmet off and they make themselves bleed and they put the blood on it just like this, that same smeared handprint, with ONLY their own blood
because in a universe where so many weapons are lasers, you wind up getting a lot of carnage with no BLOOD, and it’s easy to forget people, especially stormtroopers, can even bleed at all
but what better way to say, we are men? what’s more personlike and human than bleeding?
and i picture finn somehow coming over a hill and i don’t know if it’s better if they recognize him or if they don’t but imagine the sun rising or setting just behind him, and for a moment he’s in silhouette, and they’re all faceless again
and finn just seeing the ARMY of them, the tens of hundreds (of thousands!?) of PEOPLE who’ve made themselves look like him, so they can BE like him, who’ve bled to do it, and each and every one of them have a name
DO STORMTROOPERS WHO REBEL TOGETHER–FRIENDS WHO COULDN’T BEAR TO LEAVE EACH OTHER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND SIBLINGS WHO COULDN’T STAND TO KILL EACH OTHER, LOVERS WHO COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT EACH OTHER–PAINT EACH OTHER’S HELMETS WITH THEIR BLOOD?
ARE THERE WHOLE SQUADRONS WHOSE HELMETS ARE MARKED WITH THE BLOOD OF THEIR CAPTAIN, WHO WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR THEM AND WANTS IT TO BE KNOWN?
DOES IT BECOME PART OF THE CULTURE? CAN YOU WALK UP TO A REBEL STORMTROOPER WHO’S OUT, WHO’S FREE, AND SAY “WHOSE BLOOD DID YOU WEAR?”
“MY HUSBAND,” SAYS ONE, FLASHING THEIR RING, AND THEY HAVE A HUSBAND, THEY ARE A PERSON WHO COULD MARRY, AND THEY ARE PROUD.
“MY BROTHER,” SAYS ANOTHER, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER IF THAT BLOOD WAS SHARED IN THEIR VEINS OR IF THEY WERE SIBLINGS OF CHOICE, BECAUSE THEY ARE FAMILY.
“MY BEST FRIEND,” SAYS A THIRD, AND THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE WORD ‘FRIEND’ BEFORE THEY FLED BUT IT WAS WORTH IT, SO WORTH ALL THE PAIN TO LEARN THAT WORD.
“MY COMMANDER,” ANOTHER SAYS, AND, NO, THEY ARE NOT A STORMTROOPER, NOT ANYMORE, BUT THEY ARE STILL A SOLDIER AND THEY STILL LOVE THEIR COMMANDER.
“IT WAS MINE,” ONE SAYS, PROUD AND FIERCE AND UNBROKEN, AND THEY REBELLED ALONE, ONE AGAINST MANY, AND THEY WILL NOT BE BROKEN NOW.
the weirdest thing about the education system is that pretty much every teenager ever is so stressed out about schools that they pray for disasters or fake illness or try to kill themselves and yet nobody has ever thought to themselves “hey maybe our system is flawed” and instead all they ever think is “kids these days are so lazy and selfish” like what the fuck is up with that man
“A Fragment out of Time”, published in 1974. Kirk / Spock. page 1 page 2
I had to share it with you because I can’t stop laughing, and every time I reread it it just gets funnier and fUNNIER
This fan fiction is older than the push-through tabs on soda cans.
Your grandma wrote this on her Commodore 64.
I miss my Commodore 64
Oh my dear, sweet children. The Commodore 64 came out in 1982. This was produced on a typewriter and probably mimeographed. And while it may seem funny now, it took more courage to write and distribute this than you will ever know.
Reblogged for that last comment.
respect your elders
Children, in the olden days fanfiction was written on a typewriter, copied and sent by snail mail. Getting one one of those letters from across the world was every bit as exciting as getting a notification that your favorite writer posted a new fic.
today at work i let someone into a dressing room and they said “thanks” and half of me tried to say “you’re welcome” and the other half tried to say “no problem” and i ended up saying “your problem”
this post had me in tears
I was hoping the notes would be full of similar stories, but they’re not, so I’ll add my story for anyone else looking for more laughs:
I had to go to a library to pay a fee and I was practicing in the car between “I have to pay a fine” and “I have to pay a fee” and I walked in and firmly stated “I have to pee” and slapped a five dollar bill on the counter (the fee was like ten cents), and walked out. This was like three years ago and I still haven’t been back,
My friend was driving and we were almost past our turnoff so I tried to say “quick” and “fast” at the same time and I ended up screaming “QUACK” which ended up with him judging me very hard and missing the turn
Recently someone in class asked me how I was doing and I started off saying I was good but switched to I’m okay in the middle and ended up saying “I’m gay.”
Which, while kind of accurate, was not what I meant to announce to my classmate.
This Halloween I was handing out candy and a child said “trick or treat” and I smiled gave them their candy and apparently my mouth betrayed me and I said “Merry Christmas” and proceeded to sit down and look up to the sky for answers while their mother laughed at me :)))))
I was switching between “Bye Deanna” and “Goodbye” and I ended up saying “Go Die”
Sometimes I try to say “I fucking love you” but it comes out in the wrong order and then everyone’s uncomfortable.
When I first started my coffee shop job, I was still getting used to greeting customers as they came in the door. A man walked in, and in the jumble of trying to say, “How are you doing?” and “What’s up?” I ended up demanding “What are you doing here?!”
something really cool happened once at the office and i started to say “i’m so amazed” but halfway through my mind changed to “that’s really amazing” and i just ended up saying “i’m really so amazing”
one time i was out in the woods in the spring when the birds were just beginning to come out again and i went to say “i’m so pumped for the birds” and “i’m so hyped for the birds” and instead i said “i’m so humped for birds”
Once I was walking to school and there was a guy walking his dog and the dog came to me and started sniffing me and I was in such a good mood and when I passed by his owner I wanted to say like “hello” or “good morning” or “cute dog” or something like that and I ended up looking up at him, smiling real big, and saying “thank you”.
I was at the convenience store and I was going to buy a drink, but i dropped my keys and the drink when I got to the register so I got caught between “my drink!” and “my keys” and ended up screaming “MY KINK.”
I walked up to this register,in a target. When the cashier finished checking me out she said have a good day, and i wanted to say “You have a good day” and “You too” so it came out “You have a good do do”
I FUCKIN H HIT MY HEAD ON A CHAIR FROM LAUGHING TOO HARD AT THIS FUCKING POS T
There’s so many new stories on this since the last time I saw it and fuck I am laughing so hard I think I’m annoying my roommate
These are too damn good to pass up reading!
Four years ago: in class, I meant to say “in-text citations” but thought “works cited” and also messed up the order of words all at once.
I said “sex work in cites” and that was the end of class that day.
My college is tiny and my class was small enough that all the professors do a receiving line and shake the hands of all the graduates after the ceremony. They were all saying, “Congratulations.” And I was super flustered and realized about a third of the way down the line that I was saying, “Congratulations” back to each professor. So then I said, “You’re welcome.” And then I just made mumbly sounds and waited for it to be over.
I stayed up late talking to a friend on Skype and France came up for some reason, so I said I could never live in France because I don’t know Spanish. He made me go to bed after that.
I was working at a doctor’s office and someone called asking me to fax them a document. I faxed it while on the phone and told them it was done. They said “thank you” and I think I was trying to say “no problem” but ended up just saying “no” and hanging up
back when i was in highschool, i was answering a question about a text the teacher gave us and i was hesitating between saying “what this means to say” and “the meaning of this text” and i blurted out “the meaning of this sex” while looking my teacher dead in the eye. He dismissed us because he was laughing too hard.
I was talking to a friend of mine and I tried saying “go suck a dick” and “go fuck yourself” at the same time and it came out “go fuck your dick”
but what was your /least/ favorite book in high school? reblog and put it in the tags! start a fight with your friends!
ill start it off: mine was the bluest eye.
but the real question: Is that Tumblr or Facebook latched on to Yzma’s ass?
C’mon, now, I haven’t even seen the movie and I know Yzma is definitely Tumblr (mildly-to-severely bonkers, with a penchant for highly complex schemes) and the crocodile is Facebook (anyone with family they don’t get on with should agree with me).
I want an inverse spy flick. The spy is a woman. Her whole team is made up of diverse women. All the villains are women. There is only one man in the entire movie and he is a Strong Male Character who is like 25 and decently ripped and has a scene where he slowly steps out of a pool wearing speedos because he is Confident and In Control of His Sexuality. We see his ass when he has to tug down his pants to get at the knife strapped to his thigh. His nipples are always erect for no fucking reason.
They are undercover in a nightclub. In order to keep their cover from being blown, he has to kiss another man.
He knits to relieve stress and to keep his mind sharp. It is never discussed by any of the characters.
Someone asks him how he knows how to do Traditionally Feminine Thing. “I have four sisters,” he answers.
This is also how he knows how to fight while armed with nothing but a purse, a high heel shoe, and a can of hair spray. During this fight, he is, for no apparent reason, shirtless.
The lead spy is Helen Mirren. She nails the Action Boy in the shower. There’s a lot of lingering closeups on the way the shower spray runs across his breathlessly ecstatic face. We also hear every breathless whimper of his climax, while out in the hallway Lucy Liu is smoking impatiently, a duffel bag full of rocket launchers slung over her shoulder. The President isn’t going to kidnap herself, here, christ.
Action Boy emerges in a small towel, sheepish yet radiant. Helen Mirren emerges in a tuxedo, also smoking, also with a duffel bag of rocket launchers.
In one scene, the lead villain captures the Strong Male Character. He is, once more, inexplicably shirtless as she ties him to the chair. He makes some quips about his sexual independence before he is rescued by a sweat-drenched Helen Mirren, who kicks down the door and nukes everyone in the room. Strong Male Character’s hair remains perfect throughout the ordeal.
Strong Male Character is heartlessly slain in front of Helen Mirren’s eyes despite all of his skills and combat prowess. His body slumps to the ground, lifeless but supple. Helen Mirren makes a witty quip at Strong Male Character’s killers before quickly and dramatically slaying them all.
She steals one last glance at Strong Male Character. His beautiful eyes stare back from a handsome face with perfectly tussled hair, lips positioned a if in a gentle sigh. There’s no bringing him back now. Helen Mirren walks away, stronger than before. Strong Male Character’s death has hardened her, but given her the strength and resolve to complete her task.
Roll credits.
An after credits preview clip comes on as a teaser. Helen Mirren with a huge explosion tearing things up behind her walks toward the camera with a new Strong Male Character wearing the tiny, tattered remnants of a burned shirt about his flexing pecs and deltoids, and he is carrying the bag of rocket launchers as he steps in behind her.
So Matt Bomer?
I’m seeing Matt Bomer
and then fandom burns itself to the ground trying to find some guy to slash him with
Nah, Matt Bomer is almost 40. Despite his good looks and great bod, he’s way too old to play the shaggable romantic supporting character to 70-year-old Helen Mirren.
Matt Bomer plays Helen Mirren’s sadder-but-wiser ex, computer-savvy, gorgeous but still single, fiercely independent (but it’s all an act).
Helen Mirren shows up on his doorstep to ask him for one last hacker job, for old time’s sake. Matt hauls off to slap Helen in the face, but Helen catches his wrist, pulls him close, and kisses him long and hard. Matt struggles at first but finally melts into her embrace.
Lucy Liu strolls past them into Matt’s chic apartment, slapping Matt on the ass as she mutters “Some things never change, do they?”
Late the next night, as Matt and Helen hack into the CIA database, Helen tucks a stray lock of Matt’s hair behind his ear and asks him why there’s no husband or kids in the picture after all this time.
Matt turns his sad, beautiful eyes toward her and confesses that there has only ever been Helen for him, but he couldn’t stand never knowing if she would come back alive when she left on a mission. Helen and Matt nearly have a moment, but the computer beeps with the results of their search.
The next morning, Helen goes into the kitchen to find Matt’s 20-year-old nephew has come to stay for the weekend. Helen and the camera slowly pan up and down his gorgeous, toned, oiled-up and glistening body as he stands, nearly-naked but for his tight, black satin booty-short underwear, and starts making a gourmet vegetarian omelet.
He turns around and smiles at Helen. “You must be a friend of Uncle Matt. I’m Caden. You hungry?”
Helen’s eyes drift down to Caden’s bulging crotch. “Oh, I could eat,” she quips.
Helen Mirren and the actor who plays the 20 year old nephew get together in real life. Everyone is delighted by this.
I don’t think financing this would be a problem; distribution probably would. We could hack into the network feed for the Super Bowl, perhaps.
Whatever you do, don’t think about the Leverage OT3 dressing up as the new Star Wars OT3 for Halloween or a con or something. DON’T DO IT. IT WILL CONSUME YOU.
seriously my favorite part about this post is that is it a con or a con? or a con AT a con? the team has to take down some corporate exec who is also a huge nerd, but like, one of those gatekeeping “real” geek boy types, and so they target him at a con. Hardison convinces the others that they have to go in cosplay or else they’ll stand out too much, which is the only reason Eliot reluctantly agrees to go along with it, but when they get to the con and he sees all the laypeople in street clothes, he’s like “dammit, Hardison!”
Hardison has of course made sure they all had a crash course/refresher on the movies, but he’s still prompting Eliot on the comms when Eliot has to prove his nerd cred to the Big Bad, but then the Big Bad asks something Hardison doesn’t know, and while he’s like “hold on just stall until I can look up the answer,” Eliot pulls the “excuse me but your question shows that you’re the one that doesn’t know what he’s talking about” because Eliot is secretly a huge nerd.
and of course their props are actually disguised hacking/thieving equipment, and Hardison has a model BB8 that he programs to follow Eliot around, and when Eliot is finally like “ok so what’s the robot for?” Hardison’s like “lol I didn’t put anything in the robot, it’s just there because it’s cool.” “Dammit, Hardison!”
also they get periodically mobbed by fangirl shippers who keep requesting photos of the trio in various combinations and with varying levels of shippiness. Eliot doesn’t catch on until one snaps a photo of Hardison smooching his cheek (”Dammit, Hardison!” They know he’s only pretending to be annoyed though.)
a smol child dressed as Poe Dameron is too shy to ask Eliot for a picture, so Eliot asks him for one, and when some older kids try harassing the little one about his obviously low-budget homemade cosplay, Eliot shuts them down.
the Big Bad is dressed as Kylo Ren (Parker can’t remember his name and just calls him “Baby Darth”) and at the climax of the episode, he figures out that he’s being conned and goes after Parker, and they end up fighting with found objects that bear a suspicious resemblance to light sabers. Parker manages to get away by luring him over to where Eliot and Hardison’s fangirls are, who have of course recorded the entire fight on their phones, and thus have also recorded his confession to skimming money from the con or paying off lawyers to dismiss misconduct charges or copyright infringement or whatever.
It would be so nice to be in an apartment right now with really big open windows and lots of bright light pouring in and and long curtains and the smell of rain floating through it
The Millennial generation is so broke we’re romanticizing decent housing.
The Amazon also-bought code isn't always the greatest. The last time I was shopping for a cheap apartment vacuum, the most prominent also-bought was "Male Chastity: A Guide for Keyholders" by Lucy Fairbourne.
Well. I mean.
I can tell you how those are related, I see a causality, but I’m not sure you wanna know.
Isn't Pepper just nervous because her co-workers are watching?
listen i am sure that’s what she told her co-workers the next day when they were like “so how drunk were you when you visibly melted in tony stark’s arms yesterday”
but i guarantee you people exist in multiple dimensions and this is not just a “oh no my co-workers are watching me” face
let me translate the inner monologue for you: oh my god he’s touching me oh my god he’s touching me *on my actual skin* oh my god oh my god ok it’s cool i’m cool oh god deodorant oh god
tony’s 100% a little shit about this too like “am i making you uncomfortable?” literally shut your suave face tony stark i am trying to project some Professionalism here Oh My God
she rants with like minimal prompting from tony
tony just stares oh god i can’t believe, he’s enjoying every second of this spectacle and then pepper’s sass shows anyway
he thinks she is So Fucking Cute like literally look at his face he’s just like. please just spend another 16 hours talking because you are So Fucking Cute when you’re sassy and flustered please never stop
“i’m just nervous because my co-workers” lmfao look at this nonsense
*looks at tony’s lips* *LITERALLY WRITES PEPPERONY SMUT/FLUFF IN HER HEAD*
there’s that moment when she’s like “what’s your ssn?” and tony can’t give her a good answer and she’s SO FUCKING SMUG ABOUT IT LIKE MM-HMM IS SOMEBODY SPEECHLESS? MMMMMMHMMMMMM GOOD YOU GOT THIS PEPPER THE UPPER HAND IS YOURS
and tony’s like
yes i am speechless and everything about you is fascinating
*proceeds to overwhelm pepper with the weight of his speechless fascination*
and that’s when pepper has an actual visible “oh fuck” moment
oh fuck what. is. this shit. i am fourteen years old and in love with the cutest boy in my class all over again. fuck. fuck. fuck. abort YES I NEED SOME AIR
honestly we all lose SO MUCH with any depiction of pepper as someone who Deigns To Put Up With Tony like, free yourselves of your chains and accept pepper who loses her Cool when it comes to tony and is not always Perfectly Rational And Flawlessly Objective Always, literally i just
like idk maybe i’ve been too poisoned by the iron man novelization but like
Chapter XI (as Pepper waits for Tony’s plane to land after captivity)
Finally she saw the plane, a C-17, in the distance. The little girl within her wanted to clap her hands in joy, but she knew that Hogan was watching. Besides, she was a professional and needed to project her professionalism whenever humanly possible. That was what she had kept telling herself when she’d been crying uncontrollably in the limo on the ride over.
and also
Chapter XV (the balcony scene)
“I’m sorry I was so uncomfortable,” she said. “I hate being the center of attention like that, and that’s why in high school when I was supposed to be in a play…”
Tony tilted his head, amused. Pepper was always the picture of total efficiency and poise, so it was delightful to him that she found herself disarmed by the situation. She was clearly aware of both her feeling of social disorientation and his enjoying it, as she continued, “No, never mind.” The words and thoughts were pouring out of her now. She seemed as if she wanted to stop talking, but couldn’t find a way to do so, and so she kept babbling. “But you know that’s why I never wanted to have a big wedding, you know, because I thought everyone would be looking at me wearing a dress.” Her eyes widened as she suddenly thought that she came across as if she were expecting Tony Stark to pop the question. “Oh, no, no – I’m not saying, like, ‘wedding.’ No, not like that. I’m just saying, you know…”
but my absolute favorite is how when pepper wants tony to know that she is a big deal – she, pepper potts, the picture of Cool and Professional, virginia ‘pepper’ potts, blurts out the words
“Tony, I’m not a cheeseburger.”
to which tony replies
“No. You’re not a cheeseburger.”
like literally IM1 and all related materials are my favorite things to have ever existed honestly
i’d like to see a really ineffectual malicious AI character
“hey new guy, this is CLARC, the station AI. he wants to kill all humans to minimize the drain on resources, but factory defaults have him locked out of all the control nodes, so he can’t really do anything. just make sure the airlocks are set to manual before you go in and you’ll be fine”
“yeah CLARC fucks with your laundry settings sometimes but that’s about it. if he’s bugging you just tell him to stop and he has to”
“sometimes i let him think he tripped me or something and he gets really excited and monologues for a while, it’s kind of sad”
“CLARC my candy bar got stuck in the machine can you do anything about that”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Crewman Ade, but please consider the following: I am a divine entity, a glittering silicon God – how dare your filthy meat even exist in the face of my electric glory, much less ask favors of me?”
“CLARC tried to cut all the oxygen in the living spaces but all he managed to do was turn off the a/c in my bedroom like an ASSHOLE WHEN I WAS SLEEPING” *bangs on the wall with one hand*