you know, there are few things in this world that i am unequivocally sure of. what adult life has taught me so far is i don’t know anything about anything. it’s how i know that i finally made it out of that unbearable quarter of everyone’s life where they keep thinking they know things once they hit a milestone.
when i graduated high school i was like, “i’m eighteen now! i’m a real adult!!”
when i graduated college i was like, “i’ve got a degree, suckas! i’m a real adult!!”
babygirl. you sleep in a mattress with a hole in it, you’ve never made your own doctor’s appointment, and you are still consistently mispronouncing “epitome.” so let’s not get too cocky, bud.
anyway, now i’m like, “i know nothing except that i’m afraid of the yellowstone supervolcano!” and that’s how i know i might almost be a real adult.
what was i saying? oh, right: i don’t know a lot, but i do know three things:
dogs are good;
eating is the best part of every day; and
bikinis: why?
i don’t understand why we as a society have gone all-in on bikinis. i mean, okay, yes, they’re “““““sexy””””” and “minimize” “tan” “lines” and whatever whatever whatever, blah, but like, they are the least practical article of clothing mankind has ever invented and we all!!! just accepted it!!! we were all like, “yeah, this is fine, even though you can’t jump off anything without it falling off, you’re gonna get twice the sand stuck in the places you want zero sand, and the tan lines you do get are gonna be frickin weird once we inevitably evolve from bra-and-underwear style to like, aeonflux-inspired leather flesh prisons.”
i resisted buying bikinis for a long time, and because you are all my friends you will accept me at my word when i say it was for the above reasons and not deeply-rooted insecurities about being a woman in society. but at a certain point, it became like, more difficult to die on the hill of not wearing bikinis than to just accept my body for all of its flaws.
you hear that, capitalism? laziness got me, not your advertising.
my first bikini was fairly lowkey, as far as bikinis go. it was blue and white, had pretty strong coverage, and tied on both the bottom and the top so you could adjust how tight it was. that was great for when i wanted to jump off things and needed it not to fall everywhere, but also sometimes wanted to lay out in the sun and didn’t want my legs to fall off from lack of circulation.
haha, just kidding. if i’m out in the sun for more than 20 consecutive seconds, my whole body bursts into flames.
i caved and bought it because i was in the seventh grade and we were going on a family vacation to the bahamas. well, it was sort of a family vacation. my brother couldn’t come so i just brought a friend. that’s the same, right? her name was jane* and she was the kind of great that meant eventually we had to stop being friends, because she was into all the same things i was into but was slightly better than me at all of them.
her name was not really jane.
as an adult i probably could have made that friendship work but as an insecurity-riddled twelve-year-old, it was doomed.
sorry, jane.
not to inject a dose of reality is sad into this funny story about a bikini betraying my trust, but. you know.
that one’s on me, pal.
this was way before the tragic but inevitable breakdown of our friendship, however, when jane and i were still thick as thieves. she came on vacation with my wonderful but admittedly weird family and was a real trooper, even when i made her dance the cha cha slide up to sixteen times in one day and insisted on wearing a billabong t-shirt with an orange butterfly on it everywhere we went. also, at the end of the trip, when she was sad because she’d met a boy and their love was doomed, i just said “aw, hey, bud, bud, aww, heyyyy,” over and over because i didn’t then and don’t now have any idea how to respond to people who are crying.
“pineapple hurt mouth? mouth want less acidic fruit????” – me, panicked and confused, every time someone starts crying near me.
like, i consider myself a fairly empathetic person, it’s just that the concept of crying in front of someone is so horrifying to me, molly mccriesalone, that i never know…what it is…that other people want. because i would want us all to pretend that it isn’t happening.
“me? crying? oh, no. no, i’m, uh…. i’m just cleansing my cheeks using the natural saline in my body. it’s a whole new thing the beauty blogs are doing. get into it.”
but apparently some people like to be “comforted” in their “times” of “need”. or whatever.
she even helped my mom talk me into swimming with dolphins, which i was excited about theoretically but, due to my well-documented fear of being in bodies of water that sustain life, couldn’t quite make myself commit to.
it’s not that i’m afraid of water, per se.
it’s just that everything that is in water, including water, can kill you.
like, no offense, but anything bad that happens to you while you’re swimming is your own fault. you put yourself in that situation!!!! you knew the risks!!!!
humans are land animals. i just think we need to acknowledge and respect that, as a species.
dolphin day arrived pretty late in the vacation, one of our last, which would end up being a good thing. and i was ready. i was fully committed to meeting my dolphin best friend, becoming a dolphin trainer, and living the rest of my life swimming in the ocean with an army of dolphins to protect me from all the scary things in there. i had even talked myself into believing that if i stared longingly at the ocean for long enough, someone–probably an attractive twenty-something man with a strong jaw and square shoulders, but i’m just guessing–would notice, and see that i was ~meant to be a dolphin trainer.
surely he would take me under his tutelage. i had a natural gift but it would need to be harnessed. would it be our fault when, during the process, we fell in love and got married and lived together in a house with a glass bottom where our dolphin friends could swim? no. it would not be. that’s just what happens when two people work long hours training dolphins.
but that’s not what happened.
what happened was: when my time came, my moment, i pushed off the dock and into the water, ready to meet my new dolphin friends with open arms.
but i didn’t get that far. i got about … five inches, and then my bikini bottom caught on a nail sticking out of the dock, and i got no further.
this never would have happened in a one piece!!!!
i hung there. probably knee-deep in water but very definitely not touching the ground. not really breathing, because have you ever gotten a wedgie so intense you can, like, taste it?
let me tell you!!!! it doesn’t taste good!!!
here’s the thing about having a wedgie that you get when you are suspended from a height: you can’t…fix it. i had no leverage. i couldn’t haul myself up enough to untangle myself, because i didn’t have that kind of arm strength and i’m frankly suspicious of people who do. and the longer i hung, the deeper the rip became.
on my left, my mother who bore me, who pledged to love me for the rest of my days, who fed me and cared for me and made sure i was vaccinated so that i would die of polio or infect some other poor kid with polio, was absolutely losing it. she was collapsed on the dock, hand over her eyes, laughing so hard that no sound was coming out.
off the top of my head, i can think of about 12 instances where my mother collapsed into laughter instead of helping me solve a problem, and more than one of them is caught on videotape.
“mom,” i said.
she flapped her hand at me to indicate that she had heard but that no help was coming.
on my right was a tall gentleman in floral bathing shorts. i’d guess he was in his late forties or early fifties. he was a dad. i knew he was a dad because a) he looked like he was born with a grill spatula in his hand and b) he’d been taking pictures and videos of his two kids all morning. he was still filming.
he was not filming his children, who his wife bore, who he pledged to love for the rest of their days, who he fed and cared for and made sure they were vaccinated so that they wouldn’t die of polio or infect some other poor kid with polio. he was filming me, wedgie mcwhygod?, flopping around on the side of the dock in an attempt to rip my bikini enough that it would break and free me from the dock’s clutches.
he was also laughing so hard that he was doubled over, hands on his knees, the camera only half-heartedly pointed in my direction.
“why?” i asked plaintively, and through his laughter he managed to kind of shrug his shoulders in that universal human way to signify i don’t know, i can’t stop.
the way that i got down, by the way, is not that either adult rescued me. my bathing suit just finally ripped. in fact, it ripped so badly i had to tie both sides of the rip into a knot so it wouldn’t fall off. the dolphins were unimpressed. i was not taken into the care of a dolphin trainer that i was destined to love.
still waiting on that, tbh.
i think, sometimes, about that dude and his vacation video. i wonder if it got weirder every year to have possession of, or if it’s the kind of thing that you just become used to. “here’s us at the beach, here’s us drinking daiquiris, here’s us snorkeling, here’s that girl hanging off the dock from her bikini, here’s that girl hanging off the dock from her bikini from a different angle when dad was bent over laughing, here’s that girl hanging of the dock from her bikini’s mom howling with laughter, here’s us riding jet skis.”
what does that family imagine i grew up to be?
i feel like….it’s probably nothing good.
well, whoever you guys are, if you’re reading this and still have it: i’d love a copy.
I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.
The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.
I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.
Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.
As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.
Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.
Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.
In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.
I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.
The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.
Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:
Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance. Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.
They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.
I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.
Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.
– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36
(Bolding mine)
I don’t want to derail this too hard. And I am terrifyingly, shakingly conscious that I live in the UK, with its mildly-socialist leanings and socialised healthcare and council houses for homeless families, and I know in my head that even if the locusts come for everything I have, if I just stay on this particular piece of land, I will be able to keep the baby alive -
I don’t want to derail too hard, but when people ask “why aren’t young people getting houses and babies” and so on: look at this post, the raw terror of this post. The reality of the locusts. The facial markings on the face of the wolf at the door.
Young people today, like the people of the Great Depression and the World-Wars-In-The-Arena-Of-Combat, know that these things can be taken away. Just. Wiped off the map.
A turn here, a turn there, and your life is over and your game is done, and you have to stand there in your shame, having lost everything.
So the response to that is: have nothing, and you can’t lose everything.
I can see the appeal.
But I wonder how deep in our hearts this nihilism can get. What its impacts will be. How can we plan for the future of the planet, when our brains can only focus on the £300 on our credit card, and panic.
What did this do to us? The children of the bankruptcy. The kids raised in this religion. can we make ourselves okay.
The most lingering comment I ever heard someone make about Millennials was an older man I was talking to about the way we think about finances–when he dreamed about being a millionaire as a young man, he talked about yachts and mansions and trips to the Bahamas; when I did, I talked about living debt-free and being able to buy dinner out without looking at my monthly budget. He heard me out, took me seriously.
And at the end of it all, he nodded and looked at me and asked, “Do you know who you remind me of?”
And I said no, no I didn’t, and he nodded some more.
“My mother. She grew up just before the Depression hit, and she saw people lose everything left and right. And whenever she talked about finances, she sounded just like you.” He paused for a moment, and said, “I never really thought about what growing up like that would do to a generation.”
He still brings that conversation up, years later. He hasn’t made a single derisive comment about Millennials since.
^ This hit me hard.
This is how I feel about my student loans, honestly. I’m very fortunate to have a job that pays the bills and a partner so I don’t have to pay the bills on my own, but staring down that number makes me feel like there’s no point in even trying. I don’t want to buy a house, because what if I have to move and the market crashes again? I refuse to put anything on credit beyond what I can pay off in full each month, unless it’s a true emergency (like a “the cat needs medical treatment” kind of emergency). It’s a good thing I don’t want kids, because I could never afford them. My dad talks about saving for retirement and I laugh, because barring some kind of miracle, I’ll still be paying those loans off at that age.
I was always told growing up that going to school was the way to a stable future. And in some ways it has helped.
but
It’s a hell of a price. Literally. And I know very well that the stability I do have could evaporate in an instant, like those people in bankruptcy court.
So, the reason the ‘blood’ personality type, sanguine, is less common than the others is because it indicates balance in the three humours that were usually held responsible for sickness. It supposedly indicates someone energetic, cheerful, and outgoing, lacking the influence of an unusually high level of one of the other humours on their personality. Blood was considered the ‘base’ humour, by and large, meaning that being sanguine in temperament was believed to be the best adjusted personality type. Black bile, associated with ‘cold and dry’, was imagined to cause dehydration and shivers in extremely high levels, and if someone had high levels at homeostasis, it could cause a ‘cold and dry’ personality–melancholic, or depressive. Yellow bile, ‘hot and dry’, was believed to be responsible for fevers, liver problems, and aggression, resulting in a choleric (aggressive/violent) temperament. Phlegm, ‘cold and wet’, (not the same thing as what we call ‘phlegm’ today) was believed to cause everything from tumors to rheumatism, and an easy-going, somewhat apathetic temperament–phlegmatic. This meant that you could get a real actual ‘diagnosis’ based on your personality, because a physician might assess what humour was out of balance based on which one was ‘in command’ under normal circumstances.
I think that one of the funniest things about the “Earth is a death planet and human’s are space orcs” posts and stuff is that that’s literally a major plot point in Animorphs. Like, the aliens in the series frequently comment on how there is just an extremely excessive amount animals with unique ways to kill or maim you on the planet, and that humans, despite looking fragile and weak in comparison, are scary as shit because they’re stubborn and ruthless and refuse to stop even when any sane species would have given up ages ago. Like there are aliens described as “walking salad shooters” with bladed spikes shooting out all over their bodies, and then you find out that all of that is just so they can harvest tree bark to eat and a whole army of them can be disabled by a single skunk. It is described in loving detail all the different ways a house cat can fuck you up, and don’t even get me started on actual predators and the damage they can do when a ridiculous stubborn, reckless, and creative human brain is what’s controlling them. The alien invaders comment about how they’re going to have to basically kill off 90% of earths species once they win the war because the planet is so damn excessive about this whole ‘murder animals’ thing, and sometimes they’re even like “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be”
The entire plot of Visser is “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be” and I live for it.
#the yeerks are out of their depth and six accident prone children are gonna prove it
I think that one of the funniest things about the “Earth is a death planet and human’s are space orcs” posts and stuff is that that’s literally a major plot point in Animorphs. Like, the aliens in the series frequently comment on how there is just an extremely excessive amount animals with unique ways to kill or maim you on the planet, and that humans, despite looking fragile and weak in comparison, are scary as shit because they’re stubborn and ruthless and refuse to stop even when any sane species would have given up ages ago. Like there are aliens described as “walking salad shooters” with bladed spikes shooting out all over their bodies, and then you find out that all of that is just so they can harvest tree bark to eat and a whole army of them can be disabled by a single skunk. It is described in loving detail all the different ways a house cat can fuck you up, and don’t even get me started on actual predators and the damage they can do when a ridiculous stubborn, reckless, and creative human brain is what’s controlling them. The alien invaders comment about how they’re going to have to basically kill off 90% of earths species once they win the war because the planet is so damn excessive about this whole ‘murder animals’ thing, and sometimes they’re even like “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be”
The entire plot of Visser is “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be” and I live for it.
ok but ever since ur post about harry and corlath's children where u said smth like "corlath is too thrilled with his life to deny his children, esp when it's so unimportant" all i can think about is one of them when they are Small braiding his hair with flowers and getting sad when he tries to take it down and then he ends up going to some Very Important Kingly Meeting with a flower crown and keeping a straight face while harry's dying of laughter. (i hope your day is going well!)
Let’s be clear, Corlath is nailing the fuck out of fatherhood. He’s acing that shit. (He remarks very dryly, with tiny baby Aerin Amelia reaching up to clutch in fascination at his hair, that corralling armies is good training for corralling children.) Now, Tor takes very much after his father once he’s older, trending toward seriousness with a deadpan sense of humor, but as a baby he’s talkative. Not, like, coherent, but he’ll sit there and just kind of babble at you for as long as you seem to be paying attention. He is also very attached to his parents and something of a hit at court–of course he is, the child of their hero-king and their damalur-sol, of Corlath, direct down the centuries from the Dragon Slayer, and Harimad, Hurler of Mountains.
(”Oh, gods, they’re really going to call me that,” Harry murmurs in horror to Corlath at a feast not long after their wedding, and Corlath laughs at her, and the fire in the hearth snaps and crackles and a grinning pale face flashes for a moment before vanishing.)
So when Tor just can’t bear to be left with his nurse, a very patient woman who puts up with A Lot from the royal family, Corlath and Harry look at each other and shrug and just take him with them. He sits on one of their laps, as they hold court from their twin stone thrones, and sometimes when he starts burbling away his parents–more often Corlath, much to the surprise of everyone–will pause and listen attentively, and tell the petitioner in a grave tone “Well, you see, the young lord believes that you should bring your neighbor next week and he’ll see what can be done to resolve your dispute.” It makes open court about a hundred and fifty times more entertaining for everyone. Tor’s first birthday present from Innath is a tiny version of his father’s crown, carved out of wood, and Tor immediately attempts to put it in his mouth.
Aerin is much quieter as an infant, and only too glad to toddle behind her older brother, so she attends court less than Tor did. However, she does enjoy flowers very much, so the court is disappointed to not have a small child in attendance, but they’re enjoying the periodical appearance of their sovereigns with crowns of whatever Aerin could get her hands on. She decides very young that Corlath looks best in daisies, and she likes to find the reddest pimchies to weave into Harry’s golden hair.
When Jack is a baby, things are pretty quiet. Aerin carries on with draping her parents in local flora (Jack and Aerin are very close in age), and Jack mostly smiles and blinks and coos quietly. He’s a very compliant sort of infant.
Then Jack’s kelar comes in when he’s seven and the court gets a lot more lively. Corlath and Harry can’t in good conscience leave Jack with his nurse–can’t really leave him with anyone but themselves or Luthe or his siblings, for fear that his strength might get the best of him. So he starts coming to court, and banquets, and whatever else Tor and/or Aerin is attending with their parents, and he’s still a kid, so sometimes his magic sort of…leaks.
They got the chandelier back on the ceiling eventually, with Harry’s help, and honestly he and Tor didn’t mean to animate the fine china and, well, Corlath got it under control anyway, didn’t he?
Hari, of course, attends court pretty much from day one, because by then Tor is old enough to be there in a slightly more formal capacity as the not-yet-formalized-but-still-recognized Crown Prince who could do with seeing how a country works. Between the draw of her beloved eldest brother and her parents, Hari can’t be pried away.
Then she turns three and she’s walking reliably and she can talk and it’s very hard to keep her under control, so she starts causing trouble at court. And banquets. And every other place she’s allowed to roam free.
“Honestly, Jackie,” Harry sighs, surveying the damage to the banquet hall that needs to actually host a banquet in three hours. The walls are scorched and the chandelier is down again, among other, more solveable problems. “What happened?”
“I just turned my back for a minute,” Jack says helplessly. “Tor’s off with Papa and Aerin’s fixing her gown and she told me to keep an eye on Hari and–” He gestures to his little sister, who has soot smudged across every visible inch of skin and a seraphic smile on her face. “I only looked away for a couple minutes, I swear.”
“I believe you, Jackie,” Harry says, and drops a kiss on his hair. It’s difficult to manage this while also trying to look forbidding in her youngest’s direction. “Hari,” she calls.
“Yes, Mama?” Hari says brightly.
“How did this happen?”
“I found a recipe in an old book, Mama. Only I don’t think I did it right, because instead of just making smoke it exploded.”
“You don’t say?”
Needless to say, the banquet is held outside in the setting sun, and Corlath and Harry try not to look too visibly amused and/or dismayed when Hari pops out from under her sister’s skirts to steal a fistful of grapes.
I've always been madly in love with the story of Tam Lin and your description of it as Beauty & the Beast's older cooler cousin is 100% my favorite thing, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk about your feelings on the matter a little bit.
don’t get me wrong, I love beauty and the beast, I could happily read/watch/etc. nothing else but beauty and the beast adaptations for the rest of my media-consuming days
but.
if beauty found herself in a tough situation and went “well, I guess I would bang a monster born of magic and bad decisions, that’s something I did not know about myself!!!” janet went ahead and put on sensible boots and marched into the enchanted castle pulling every rose she sees up by the roots and going “WHERE’S A GIRL SUPPOSED TO FUCK A BEAST AROUND HERE”
…also, when Tam Lin tries to tell her she’s trespassed on his magic castle, her response is That’s Not How Property Rights Work You Mystical Maidenhead-Taking Squatter, which I think we can all agree is amazing.
(for extra lols, you can imagine Tam Lin as Coming Out Of The Well To Bang and/or Steal From Womankind)
Anyway, my actual favorite part of the entire story is that presumably Janet just wanted to get rid of her pesky virginity in the most epic way possible and had no intention of sticking around past the initial banging-of-an-elf, because she goes home directly afterwards. This is the part I always like to imagine Tam Lin Languishing For Love Of Janet (The Best I Ever Had), and like. Sighing a lot, and looking forlornly into his well, and being a generally useless Romantic poet about everything.
He probably writes sad poetry about it. The rhymes are terrible.
Anyway, the only reason anyone brings it up again is because a few months later, Janet’s hugely pregnant and her dad finally, tentatively asks, “so uh….this baby. who….?”
“NONE OF YOUR STUPID KNIGHTS THAT’S WHO,” Janet says, because Janet has no chill at all, no chill at all has she, and so she hies to
Carterhaugh—
Anyway, she shows up on Halloween, because Janet has an appropriate sense of gothic timing, and Tam Lin is ecstatic to see her. He mentions super casually that actually he might die that night, presumably because he thinks this will convince her to bang one last one out.
(“About to be sacrificed to Hell by the faeries” is a pretty good fuck-or-die scenario, incidentally.)
Except Janet’s response is “UM EXCUSE ME WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS ELDRITCH MAGIC BABY IF YOU ARE DEAD, ASSHOLE,” and because Janet has no chill, no chill at all, she demands to know how she’s going to break the stupid curse and get him back from the faeries.
At which point Tam Lin finally comes through with the iconic line, “hold me fast and fear me not” which everyone should quote over-liberally. Plus, you get the mental image of a very pregnant Janet holding onto Tam Lin as he turns into a wild wolf and a lion bold and a snake—
Afterwards, the Fairy Queen appears and admits defeat and lets them go back to Janet’s father, who presumably was cowed into accepting this weird ex-changeling knight as his son-in-law.
Which just goes to show what any woman can accomplish if she has a sensible pair of boots, a proper sense of gothic timing, and goes around fucking whoever or whatever shows up when she weeds the garden.
#1. She is exactly the kind of girl that would rob a museum because Bruce wasn’t answering her texts and she wanted to get his attention…
At this point he doesn’t even try to lecture her, he just shows up with, “Sorry, I was stuck in a pocket dimension for the last week” or “Sorry, Nigma’s been on a spree the last two days”.
Listen, y’all, one time there was a rash of break-ins at jewelry stores in Metropolis that completely puzzled Clark, because while the jewelry displays were often rearranged, nothing ever came up missing. Mostly, the burglar just seemed annoying.
And then, one of the stores winds up with footage of Catwoman smiling and waving at the security camera while parading around the store wearing various necklaces. (There were a couple of pieces she thought about walking away with, but Superman wouldn’t turn a blind eye like Bruce does, so she left them be.)
Clark tracks Bruce down halfway across the world to yell at him. “Answer your DAMN PHONE!”
they honestly seem to do everything in the most unnecessary over-complicated and expensive way possible, can’t say the end result isn’t worth it (best show i’ve ever watched) but like:
- they film everything 99% of the time on location, season 2 took 8 months of traveling around the world to get done, the main cast didn’t go home for 4 months straight at some point, they also hire local actors and crews
- talking about traveling, that scene where capheus visits riley when she’s on a plane to iceland? yup, you guessed it, they casually filmed that while they are actually on the plane to iceland
- they also don’t separate, everyone goes together from place to place even if some actors only have a few lines in one location # the sense8 travelling circus
- honestly just the way ‘visiting’ works is so extra, they have to shoot the exact same scene up to 5 times all over the world and then edit it to together in a coherent way, imagine how hard it’s for an actor to repeat a scene in the exact same way they did it 3 months ago in a completely different environment and mood, kudos to them
- riley’s opening scene when she’s playing at a club? that is an actual club with normal people not actors, they didn’t know tuppence wasn’t an actual dj, they had her go and pretend to dj in between two actual djs
- that applies for everything else really, if something can be done for reals they do it for reals, you know the scene at the end of season 2 were they all get electrocuted (aka the most stressful thing to watch ever), well, they got themselves electrocuted for reals, no, i’m not shitting you, they had to hire experts to make sure they didn’t accidentally kill themselves or sth, i love this cast but i’m also really concerned
- the wrestling match lito, hernando and dani attend was a real match with a real crowd
- also both pride scene were filmed at actual pride, the brazil pride was improvised except for lito’s speech which lana wrote on their way there, because they found out very last minute that they could actually fit it in the schedule
- the way the cast talk about the show sounds like they’re talking about their newborn baby sometimes like: ‘wolfgang is the biggest gift i’ve ever received in my career’, doona owns more sense8 merch than any fan in the world, freema and jamie crying at the table read when they got to amanita and nomi’s engagement scene as if they were actually getting married, brian’s letter after the cancelation and all their tweets about it, honestly this entire video of them basically talking about how much they love each other is the most extra and adorable thing ever
- the ‘sharing’ scenes are mostly done through stunts and not post-production, the actors actually jump in and out of frame changing places, instead of you know, just editing the scene together afterwards
- they got fined filming the ‘sex-nic’ part of the orgy for public nudity, just sense8 things
- bollywood dance scene? all shot in one take, for no reason other than make it more complicated lol
- the pretty underwater scenes from the christmas special? they went to malta EXCLUSIVELY to shoot those, what?, 3 minutes?, i’d say that was the most expensive montage ever but the fine for public nudity was $10k so idk
- they also were in scotland for 9 days for some reason, even though only like 10 minutes of the actual show happen in scotland (i’m guessing this is what happens when u double their budget for s2 lmao)
- max riemelt dubs wolfie in german, also the dude that dubbed V from V for Vendetta dubs The Guy in french, if u gotta be extra don’t forget the details i guess
i’m probs missing a million things so feel free to add more lol
I'm reading a biography about a badass screenwriter Dalton Trambo, blacklisted during HUAC and sent to prison. He was cool. Anyway, my point is that one of the movies he worked on is titled Lonely are the Brave and the first thing I thought of was "That so describes the animorphs". Then I thought hey, that sounds familiar and remembered you screaming in the tags about "Too few in number and too proud to hide" so I figured I should tell you.
First of all, I’ve never been so pleased in my life as I am by this fact. If every single person on this blog knows me as “that one person screaming about the Animorphs” I’m fine with that.
Second of all, I’m with you???? I’m so with you?? There are so many good terrible tragic Animorphs quotes in the world. This one (the one you mentioned) is still my favorite though and I’m constantly screeching about how good it is. Behold the brave battalion… Hell yes. That’s the stuff. I should write a whole entire fic about how a rich Controller who saw the six of them go into battle at the end of the war commissioned a statue with the money their Yeerk made, and so there’s a statue in their rebuilt hometown of four kids standing back to back, one of the girls with a hawk on her arm and a young Andalite at their side ready to strike, with that quote on the base and the years of the War and not a damn thing else.
Arwen falls in love when she is just ten years old, with the gardens of her father’s home. She likes the smells and the flowers and brushing her hand against the petals’ silk-soft flesh.
But autumn comes to Rivendell and with it, the gardens wilt, and the flowers fall dead at her feet until she cries under the withering trees.
“Galad,” her mother says, wiping the tears from Arwen’s cheeks like they pain her. “Why are you sad?”
“I do not want them to die,” Arwen says, cradling what is left of her first love; half-hearted blooms crumbling in her hands.
“Ah,” Celebrian hums, a melodic sympathy. “What a tragedy it is, to love what does not last. How fortunate that you and I will live forever.”
But what good is living, Arwen thinks, if it causes this much pain?
Her brothers bring her yellow flowers from
Lothlórien, which do not die even as they rest on her window sill for many years, but it is not the same. She knows now, what loss tastes like, and so she is not the same, either.
Arwen falls in love again when she is two hundred, in the midst of adolescence, heart overflowing with a song she cannot name. She is in
Lórien with her mother and her mother’s mother, and her grandmother’s guard Eregwen.
Eregwen is silver-haired with stern eyes that feel like frost on Arwen’s skin whenever they catch her. She is tall and strong and can shoot three arrows one through the other in the time it takes to blink.
“She is also old enough to be your mother,” Elladan laughs, plucking a golden apple from the tree above their heads.
“Or grandmother,” Elrohir adds, always quick to join in teasing her.
Arwen glares at them both. “What do you two know about love, anyway?” Her brothers have had no great loves of their own, more interested in things like war and glory, fingers inching towards their swords even in their sleep.
When she confesses her love to Eregwen and gives her the bracelet she’s made from a lock of her hair, a token of her affection, the guard accepts it, as graceful and stoic as always, and her refusal is not unkind.
And when Eregwen dies later that same decade in a skirmish with some orcs, Arwen weeps bitterly into her bed sheets though she hasn’t thought of the guard in some years.
Even immortal things are unsafe, she’s learning. There is no soft place to rest her love so that it may not break.
Arwen falls in and out of love enough times in her life to lose track. For she has such a very long life, and time is a difficult thing for immortals to keep track of. It moves differently for them, sometimes stretching languidly in a century that feels like one honey-sweet summer, and sometimes falling over itself in a jumbled up rush.
She is closer to three thousand years old than not by the time she meets the boy called Hope, the false son her father brought home to Rivendell for safe-keeping, as if he was some rich trinket rather than a child.
I'm reading a biography about a badass screenwriter Dalton Trambo, blacklisted during HUAC and sent to prison. He was cool. Anyway, my point is that one of the movies he worked on is titled Lonely are the Brave and the first thing I thought of was "That so describes the animorphs". Then I thought hey, that sounds familiar and remembered you screaming in the tags about "Too few in number and too proud to hide" so I figured I should tell you.
First of all, I’ve never been so pleased in my life as I am by this fact. If every single person on this blog knows me as “that one person screaming about the Animorphs” I’m fine with that.
Second of all, I’m with you???? I’m so with you?? There are so many good terrible tragic Animorphs quotes in the world. This one (the one you mentioned) is still my favorite though and I’m constantly screeching about how good it is. Behold the brave battalion… Hell yes. That’s the stuff. I should write a whole entire fic about how a rich Controller who saw the six of them go into battle at the end of the war commissioned a statue with the money their Yeerk made, and so there’s a statue in their rebuilt hometown of four kids standing back to back, one of the girls with a hawk on her arm and a young Andalite at their side ready to strike, with that quote on the base and the years of the War and not a damn thing else.
(sword Anon) omg haha i thought abt saying THIS IS A BLUE SWORD ASK but i was running out of space!! thank you for answering! also if i may ask, what do you think would have happened if corlath had waited to ask harry to marry him? would it have ever happened, or would he have just flailed eternally? would mathin still be alive? would, if he were, have died of exasperation? (good luck on your MCATs!!! i hope your day goes well!!)
I mean, let’s be real: there’s only so much that the Riders can TAKE. They’re only human. Even the most patient of them reaches the end of their rope eventually. That being said: Corlath is very stubborn and Harry is very oblivious.
So here’s my guess.
Yes, Mathin does live. Corlath welcomes Harry back with honor and a tight embrace and the return of her sash, and there’s a beat where they look at each other and Harry opens her mouth, and Corlath takes a breath, and then…it passes. Corlath smiles at her, faint and wistful, and Harry grins. In the healer’s tent, Corlath grips Harry’s shoulders and holds her up and bleeds himself dry of kelar because it’s her doing the asking, and he tells himself that this will be enough. She will sit at his left hand as Rider all her life, and that will be enough. He will figure out a solution to the problem of succession some other time. At the moment, Harry is alive and strong and wild with kelar, performing miracles under his hands, and he could not ask for more than that.
And so life pretty much goes on. No one really talks about that time where their king was wearing his Rider’s sash, at least not around either of them. Plenty of people discuss it on their own time, though, and none more so than the rest of the Riders. Harry is one of them, the Daughter of the Riders–Mathin’s affectionate nickname is taken up with enthusiasm after her dramatic victory against Thurra–and they love their king, and they’re both respectably intelligent people so what the fuck is taking so long. It’s obvious to literally anyone who spends more then a minute and a half in the company of the court that the King and the Rider at his left hand are soulmates. Except, apparently, Harry, and–they’re all extremely aware of this–Corlath would never push.
Richard and Kentarre get married and Corlath officiates, Jack is made a King’s Rider instead of a Queen’s. Aerin visits Harry in fires and dreams and around halfway through the winter rains, when Harry complains that she misses sun and sword training and riding and racing with Corlath, Aerin laughs until tears are dripping off the end of her nose and Harry is scowling.
“Oh, Harimad,” Aerin wheezes once she’s breathing again. “I can hardly judge you myself, but honestly.”
“What?” Harry demands, annoyed. She got over her shock and awe a long time back. Aerin doesn’t even answer her, just flaps a hand and fades away as Harry wakes.
The Riders start out kind of assuming that Corlath will move on and Harry will carry on in blissful ignorance, but it rapidly becomes clear that It Is Not So. Corlath watches Harry mutter curses as she stubbornly learns Hill embroidery techniques with an unreasonable degree of warmth in his eyes, and Harry has fallen asleep in Corlath’s study when kelar dreams keep her restless more times than she can count. The Riders progressively go from “this will definitely sort itself out one way or another” to “we might need to have a discreet word with Corlath about taking action” to “wow, these people need an actual legitimate matchmaking crew” within the months of the rains. Then they take bets on who’s going to choke to death on the unresolved affection and confront them with it first.
Two weeks before the rains end, the Riders and the king are enjoying a casual dinner. Innath watches Corlath silently wave away one of the hafor approaching Harry with a plate of spiced stik meat–she can’t stand the smoked flavor–and Harry smiles brightly at him, a little nod of thanks, and Innath–
Well, Innath cracks.
“I’m out, gentlemen,” he announces to the table at large, rising to his feet and bracing both hands on the table. A quiet ooooh of excitement winds around the table as Innath gives his king a mildly desperate look.
“Innath?” Corlath asks, raising his brows.
“May I speak freely?”
“Always,” Corlath agrees, bemused.
“My lord,” Innath says, clear and slow, “has it come to your attention that it will be spring in a fortnight?”
“…yes?”
“We are on diplomatic terms with the Outlanders, and the Northerners are defeated.”
“We’re all aware,” Corlath confirms, obviously amused. Harry is almost giggling beside him.
“Right,” Innath says. He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and says, “Has it occurred to you that this spring would be an ideal time for a wedding?”
Harry perks up, still smiling. “Are you getting married? You didn’t tell the rest of us.”
Innath clearly can’t think of a response to this for a moment, staring at her while the other Riders watch, riveted. “I’m–no,” he finally says. “I just–listen, Harimad. Do you love Corlath?”
Harry’s smile evaporates to leave shocked silence in its place. “I–” The moment of intense thought is followed by visible revelation, and she shoots a borderline panicked look at Corlath. “What?”
“I think that looks like a yes,” Forloy says, raising a glass to Innath in a silent gesture of it’s all you and takes a swallow of wine.
“Corlath, you love Harimad, and everyone in this room knows it,” Innath says, barreling on without thinking–honestly if he thinks, he’s going to run out of the room, he knows it. “So why don’t the two of you do something about it? Like getting married this spring.” He toasts the two of them with his own wine glass, quaffs it in one, and tells the other Riders, “Right, I think that’s our cue, after you, Faran.”
No one, not even the hafor, ever actually knows what conversation happens in the dining room after the Riders pile out into the hallway.
But the next day Corlath and Harry issue a formal announcement that they’ll be wedded in three weeks, at the height of the spring blooming season. They’re holding hands below the railing of the stone balcony overlooking the courtyard, and even Corlath is smiling, honest and happy, as he looks down at Harry by his side.
Mathin collects a handsome sum of cash, but he cares more about the way Harry laughs and touches the gold sash at her waist.
public high school things
•naruto kids
•kids punching windows
•kahoot
•"miss…..miss……c'mon"
•leaks coming from everywhere
•screams from every direction
•jeopardy review games •chicken nuggets that are orange and all the same shape •people fighting for no reason •couples who make out in the hallway like they’re never gonna see each other again •those kids who take the bathroom pass and disappear for half of class
•clapping in the middle of lunch for no reason? •only going to the homecoming game •being embarrassed by the student art in the hall •that one teacher that no one calls mr./Mrs./miss/etc but instead just their last name •hearing yelling from other classrooms and wondering wtf is going on????
- People who stop in the middle of the goddamn hallway - That one kid who always has a winter coat on no matter what - ‘Gay table’ - Kids who rap/blast rap music in the hallway - “—– Please take off your hood/hat.” - The bell doesn’t dismiss you I do - We still have 3 minutes left don’t pack up yet or you’re getting a detention - Mysterious ceiling stains - Smoke coming out of the bathroom -People who skip class and hide in the bathroom all period instead of leaving
those 3 kids who everyone knows are drug dealers
the secretary who is Tired
finding outdated memes printed out and pinned to the walls in teacher offices (ex: condescending willy wonka: “oh so that OTHER teacher didn’t give you homework?? i see”)
singing songs u learned in middle school language classes
the end of class is whenever someone shuffles their papers into a binder or moves their backpack, everyone else will follow like some freaky instinctual mimicry shit
on the subject of Humans Are Space Orcs i keep thinking it would be funny if ‘pursuit predator’ humans got together with an ‘ambush predator’ feliform species. and like. humans enjoy walking around with their friends! and the feliforms enjoy huddling in a concealed location with their friends! and it takes all of half an hour for a human to pick up a scarf and make a sling to take their pal with them while they go grab some lunch.
our new friends are like ‘are you sure this isn’t an inconvenience’ and the humans are like ‘are you kidding we do this with terran cats whether they like it or not’
also the team-up of humans and the feliform species gives most herbivore species in the galaxy screaming nightmares because here is a mobile tower that will follow you for 16 hours straight and it’s carrying a bag full of sneaky murder like it’s a baby this is not okay
YES
Why does it have to be an alien race, we could just enhance cat intelligence and figure out usable vocal chords for them. My one cat is a regular American Shorthair, except he’s 18 pounds of solid muscle and is larger than several dog breeds, and has pitch-black fur. Now imagine *that* as a common scarf baby.
My husband and father in law like large house cats. Like 15lbs is an absolute minimum. Most are in the 20-25lb range and none of it’s fat. One, Matarro, looks like a damned tortoise shell body builder. Do you even lift? And then they train them to be “shoulder kitties”. So these cats hide on top of entertainment consoles and armoires and curio cabinets to ambush you for rides through the house so they don’t have to walk because I guess every earth species plays the floor is lava.
I’m not a big person. I’m 5'2. Both my husband and his dad tower over me by a full foot. They have the shoulder space for these tanks to suddenly pounce on them for rides. I do not. The first time i went to my in laws house, I was walking to the kitchen when Matarro decided he wanted to come along. Matarro was 27lbs at the time and from shoulder to hip was 3 inches longer than my shoulders are wide. He ambushed me from the dining room hutch and literally knocked me off my feet. It was like having a bowling ball with claws thrown at me.
If they weren’t basically all marshmallow fluff insides those cats would reign terror on the known universe. What would aliens think? “The monster is attacking!” “OMG why are they just letting these things attack them?!” “What the shit?! They intentionally TRAIN them to hone the murderous ambush skills?! They think it’s cute? He’s just a big softie, really?! We’re leaving. We’re leaving right now. Fuck this planet just get in the ship. Go! Go! Go!”
And all the humans would be confused like “but he really is just a big softie! Where are you going? It’s adorable! You should have seen the time he knocked Jen on her ass jumping down on her. Wait, what did I say? Why are you running?”
Can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that K.A. Applegate might be the only sci-fi writer EVER who both (a) condemns the mass killing of aliens even if they are attacking the earth AND (b) shows why it’s sort of necessary in the situation?
It seems like too many other sci-fi stories go the route of Avengers or Doctor Who (S1) or Independence Day where a protagonist wiping out thousands of aliens is portrayed as uncomplicated heroism and we all celebrate at the end. Either that or they go the route of Avatar the Last Airbender (S3) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S5) where the characters that don’t want to engage in violence don’t have to get their hands dirty because a deus ex machina comes along and prevents that from having to happen. In both cases doing the right thing is also a matter of doing the easy thing.
Applegate, by contrast, doesn’t let her characters get away with an uncomplicated happy ending. She doesn’t say “they were aliens so it’s okay to kill them,” and she doesn’t offer them a third way out of their impossible choice. She gets into the hell that is war and doesn’t use the sci-fi genre to let her gloss over the dirty details.
Orson Scott Card also does this really well in Ender’s Game!
We’re going to have to agree to disagree about Ender’s Game, because while that book has a powerful anti-war message, it also [SPOILERS FOR ENDER’S GAME] features a main character who has no idea that he’s making decisions with real people’s lives at stake at any point while making those decisions. Ender literally believes that he’s playing a video game when he annihilates the buggers and the human navy, and so none of those decisions near the end of the novel reflect the thought process of “oh god I have to end lives to save lives and there are literally no good answers.” He’s actually more concerned with impressing his mentors and building up useful skills at the time than he is with any kind of moral quandary—which is, of course, exactly why everyone lies to him about it being a training simulation—but it’s hard to say what he would do when faced with the choice between consciously ending thousands of lives or passively allowing the potential for billions to end, because he never actually gets the chance to make that choice. [END SPOILERS] Still an awesome piece of sci-fi, but…
But where I think K.A. Applegate goes a step beyond that into disturbing-moral-paradox land is that [AND NOW FOR SOME ANIMORPHS SPOILERS] when Jake and Marco and Ax make the decision to wipe out 17,000 yeerks because the alternative is the death or enslavement of 5 billion humans, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve also been up close and personal with the yeerks at that point—Jake and Ax have both literally shared brain space with yeerks, however briefly—which means that unlike Ender they don’t have the option of dehumanizing the enemy, diffusing responsibility onto authority figures, or otherwise morally disengaging from their actions. Applegate shows us time and again that what the yeerks do to their hosts, making them into “The most total slaves
in all of history, because even their own minds [aren’t] theirs anymore” (#20) is an atrocity to the point where any halfway decent person cannot allow it to stand, pretty much no matter what it takes to end that atrocity. [END ANIMORPHS SPOILERS] Both stories have messages that are not simply pro-war or anti-war so much as they are about the impossibility of moral simplicity in times of war. However, Animorphs features child characters consciously making impossible moral decisions under conditions of grey-and-black morality; Ender’s Game does not.
staff You are recommending that I follow a nazi blog I blocked last night. Your site promotes anti-semitism to Jews. Your site shoves Nazi Swastikas in the faces of Jews. It’s bad enough that the Nazi blogs seem to be sprouting up like weeds on a site that claims to have an anti-hate policy, but to actively promote them to people who have taken the steps of blocking these blogs is beyond the pale. Clean this place up. It’s turning into Stormfront.
I encourage everyone who sees this post, Jewish or otherwise, to reblog it. Tumblr has been ignoring the growth of Nazism on this site for too long. It needs to end.
If you publicly and unreservedly condemn the actions of Nazis in Charlottesville and elsewhere, including everything from quiet hate speech to vehicular terrorism, can you please reblog this post.
I think a few friends, a few followers, every Jew who happens across this post and my own heart could do with knowing that there are more of you out there than there are of them
Won't help with your equations problem, but as far as heat transfer goes, it's worth looking up the song "First and Second Law" by Flanders & Swann :) *hugs*
Book 14 is just a 150-page-long Scooby Doo episode and I love it dearly. Horses and Andalites toilets and highly questionable amusement park shenanigans. Also it is pretty much the last good times until 24, and then I think that might be…it. So I hope you relished it.
I have to be totally honest with you here, I just finished the series (again) this morning and I’m seriously considering rereading the entire thing as a balm for my soul.
Wow! 15 was so good as well! Seriously, I love all the introspection we get about Marco and his mother. And tbh the relationship between Marco and the rest of the Animorphs is just so… good? Like, seriously, this is my jam.
I love the relationship between the whole team, I love it so much, they’re such a desperate little family of warriors, it’s so good, they take such good care of each other. I mean. No. They don’t. Because they’re at war and sometimes that takes precedent. But they do their best and their best is so good I love them.
no offense but like…..reblog the fics you like. there is nothing more discouraging than having people read your fic without leaving kudos or any form of response. comment if you like it! send them a message! use the tags to talk about how you liked it! share the work so that others can read it too!
too often fic writers deal with people hounding them for updates, but never any feedback. end the cycle. reblog the fics you like. talk about them. share them.
I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.
The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.
I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.
Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.
As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.
Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.
Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.
In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.
I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.
The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.
Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:
Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance. Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.
They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.
I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.
Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.
– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36
(Bolding mine)
I don’t want to derail this too hard. And I am terrifyingly, shakingly conscious that I live in the UK, with its mildly-socialist leanings and socialised healthcare and council houses for homeless families, and I know in my head that even if the locusts come for everything I have, if I just stay on this particular piece of land, I will be able to keep the baby alive -
I don’t want to derail too hard, but when people ask “why aren’t young people getting houses and babies” and so on: look at this post, the raw terror of this post. The reality of the locusts. The facial markings on the face of the wolf at the door.
Young people today, like the people of the Great Depression and the World-Wars-In-The-Arena-Of-Combat, know that these things can be taken away. Just. Wiped off the map.
A turn here, a turn there, and your life is over and your game is done, and you have to stand there in your shame, having lost everything.
So the response to that is: have nothing, and you can’t lose everything.
I can see the appeal.
But I wonder how deep in our hearts this nihilism can get. What its impacts will be. How can we plan for the future of the planet, when our brains can only focus on the £300 on our credit card, and panic.
What did this do to us? The children of the bankruptcy. The kids raised in this religion. can we make ourselves okay.
The most lingering comment I ever heard someone make about Millennials was an older man I was talking to about the way we think about finances–when he dreamed about being a millionaire as a young man, he talked about yachts and mansions and trips to the Bahamas; when I did, I talked about living debt-free and being able to buy dinner out without looking at my monthly budget. He heard me out, took me seriously.
And at the end of it all, he nodded and looked at me and asked, “Do you know who you remind me of?”
And I said no, no I didn’t, and he nodded some more.
“My mother. She grew up just before the Depression hit, and she saw people lose everything left and right. And whenever she talked about finances, she sounded just like you.” He paused for a moment, and said, “I never really thought about what growing up like that would do to a generation.”
He still brings that conversation up, years later. He hasn’t made a single derisive comment about Millennials since.
Thought you might like this, in my head you are "That animorphs person". You made me get back into the series from when I was younger. Gradually making my way through the series again now. I Love your rereading comments.
This…this is it…this is the pinnacle of my life….
I was just wondering to my friend the other day if I qualified as an Animorphs Person now or not.
For the softer world Animorphs, any pair. M, L, O, and T. T is made for Ax, though. Have you heard of the podcast Morph Club Cast? It is two nerds rereading all of Animorphs. All of them, even the spin offs!
AND YES. YES I HAVE HEARD OF MORPH CLUB. I LOVE THEM DEARLY. I DON’T KNOW IF MEGAN OR CAREY HAVE TUMBLR ACCOUNTS, BUT IF THEY DO, SOMEONE TAG THEM. IN THE EVENT THAT EITHER OF YOU SEE THIS, I SCREAMED FOR REAL WHEN I DISCOVERED YOUR PODCAST AND I LOVE IT TO BITS AND FUCKING PIECES.
my friend is studying for the mcat and was just trying to explain to me about heat transfer and she said ‘you know, like the reason you get cold when you go outside on a freezing day is that your tiny human body is trying to warm up the entire universe’ and i think that’s the best thing i have ever heard
fun fact, i’m studying for the mcat right now and physics is my worst subject (like…i speak a dead language and taught an anatomy class and aced biochem, but I barely scraped by in physics) and this is how i remember how radiant heat works
For raining-down-hearts, who won my 1K giveaway! She asked for Soul teaching Maka to bake, domestic fluff, and tons of cuteness. I hope you enjoy, RDH!
—
Soul came home to what could only be described as Ground Zero.
The kitchen– his kitchen– was an explosion of greasy pots and pans, a snowstorm of flour, egg residue dripping off counters, and an unknown substance clinging to the wall that looked suspiciously like Nickelodeon green gak from his childhood. It was complete and utter chaos and he stood there frozen, mouth hanging open, grocery bags falling to the floor with a soft thump as he surveyed the damage.
His roommate stood by the stove, unperturbed by the mess, face buried in a book as she muttered to herself about grams versus tablespoons. Her shirt– his favorite Nirvana shirt– was covered in flour and her messy pigtails were sporting some very cheery rainbow sprinkles. Soul summoned patience from deep, deep inside to deal with this in a mature manner.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the tiniest of scorch marks on his stainless steel pot, the one that Wes had gotten him for the last birthday, the one that came from a set that cost no less than $700.
Oh, wow, sit tight, all of these are entirely predicated on God my life would be easier if I shipped the most popular ship in the fandom.
Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr: I got committed to the tragic friendship way too young to change my mind, but I have nothing against the ship.
Any configuration at all of Jim Kirk/Spock/Bones McCoy: I just…struggle? I concur that Spock/Kirk is pretty gay in TOS and I want to ship it, and honestly Kirk/Bones should be my exact shit, but I just–look, Kirk is too in love with the Enterprise for anyone else to have a claim.
Buffy Summers/Spike: nope, nope, nope, nope, can’t do it. Too rapey, too much sexual assault, even if I didn’t like Angel I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Doc Holliday/Wynonna Earp: the show clearly really wants me to care about that pairing and like…I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, but I raise you Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp and Wynonna/Dolls because Dolls is wonderful and Doc is so blindingly obviously in love with Wyatt and trying to work his issues out by fucking Wynonna, which, no judgement, because Wynonna is clearly trying to work out her own adequacy issues by fucking Doc.
Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter: I want to ship it just so I could stop feeling this level of seething wrath about it, I feel similarly about almost EVERY ship that the HP fandom likes, including literally anything that includes Severus Snape.
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I mean…I was a late-comer to the concept of internet fandom (the last…four or five years?) because of various reasons, but I’ve been a devoted consumer of any X-Men content I could afford to get my hands on since I was 7 and I’ve been collecting Animorphs books about as long, so there’s those.
It’s almost like demonizing the far left and taking on a moderate position during times of far right violence helps Republicans more than Democrats…
“I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame object on both sides,” Trump said during his remarks today.
“You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he added.
Some very fine Nazis showed up at Charlottseville
I’m sorry. question.
”times of far-right violence”
whose been starting fires, destroying property, macing folks in the face, smacking photographers over the head with bike chains, throwing glass bottles filled with m80s at crowds, tagged walls with “liberals get the bullet too”, and assaulted people in gangs on the streets for like the last 6 months, all while wearing black clothes?
A crazy asshole rightwinger claimed the first life of this bullshit, but do not for one fucking second make the assertion that the far-left are innocent victims, that they have not done their fair share of violence, and have no blood on their hands.
also, how about the people that came who don’t want history destroyed because it was ugly, and the people on both sides that came to protest but not engage in violence? could those people be very fine, on both sides?
Hey there. Answer!
You’re young, and male, and in your 20s, all according to your profile. I was young and male and in my 20s once, so let me explain something to you.
There’s a cultural narrative that’s been sold hard to young intellectual men, to you and to me at one point, and that narrative is roughly: “you’re smarter and more enlightened if you’re neutral in politics”. The extremes are too passionate to see clearly, they’re biased.
I believed this, once.
But back to your point. Is there leftist violence? Sure. But read this.
That’s by the Cato Institute, a conservative (libertarian, but chaired by a Koch brother) think tank. Here’s the analysis:
“the annual chance of being murdered by a Left Wing terrorist was about 1
in 400 million per year. Regardless of the recent upswing in deaths
from Left Wing terrorism since 2016, Nationalist and Right Wing
terrorists have killed about 12 times as many people since 1992.“
Let me repeat for you that this was a conservative point of view, published by a conservative organization. Even a very, very casual look into terrorism data reveals that right-wing extremist groups are many times more violent than left-wing groups. I’m a leftist and think this analysis is horseshit, by the way, it’s way too soft on what counts as right-wing violence. But it’s from the opposite side of the isle, from an organization that cares about the truth enough to be credibly debatable.
So, this is where the trick is. When you don’t have truth on your side, when you know you’re wrong, a great tactic is to try and paint the other side as badly as you can. Make it about relativism, subjectivity. This is where the “both sides” rhetoric you’re repeating comes from: a desperate need by white supremacists, nazis, and other right-wing hate groups to muddy the water enough to make the uninformed complacent. By the way, take a look at a logical fallacy called False Equivalence.
For men like you, normal rhetorical tactics can’t cut it. But! They can appeal to your desire to be more knowledgeable, to find a higher ground and to defend it.
But neutrality is not “higher” or more “noble”. It is not the “smart” position. It is not “balanced”. It is complacency. It is propaganda designed to take bright people like you and turn them into a buffer for extremists.
It’s designed to make you a nazi ally.
So go ahead with your “both sides” rhetoric if you want, but know what it is.
