oh wow, I did not process before that when Breq comes to bail Seivarden out of the space drunk tank and Seivarden sees her in her new clothes… it’s Seivarden’s first “oh no she’s hot” moment and oh my god, honey
‘ “you look…” she took a ragged breath, “different” ‘ honey
honestly, i think jyn erso gets a bad rap over the whole “it doesn’t matter when you don’t look up” business. like, honestly? she spent her whole childhood as a soldier in The Most Hardcore rebel cell, Saw Gerrera’s Partisans, only to be abandoned by them at 16. that mix of trauma and devotion, only to lose them like her first family and home? to know nothing for years except the fact she was ultimately expendable to the rebel cause?
yeah, no wonder that the first firefight we see her in on jedha, her priority ends up being a civilian child.
also, Jyn never really put that line into practice. she was mostly saying that to get under Saw Gererra’s skin, to get back at him. in actuality, she was willing to fight a squadron of stormtroopers for something as minor as a little girl’s cat, and she wasn’t exactly a law abiding citizen of the empire to end up in an imperial prison camp.
she may have spent several years as a criminal, disconnected from the rebel alliance, but like…so did han, guys. he was older than her, too, before ever joining the rebellion, and we all still love han solo. so why give jyn so much shit for it?
you can’t say “i know batman” and get away with it in gotham. “i saw batman last night”? plausible. he uses roofs and balconies more than actual solid ground so yeah, you probably did see him. “he was only five feet away from me at the central plaza when the bomb got defused”? so was half of the city because the joker decided christmas eve was the best time for an explosion. but, “i know batman”? are you sure? are you sure you know batman? does anyone really know batman? maybe batman doesn’t know batman, the layers of secrecy on that guy are thicker than that time the gotham river got filled with dense tart sauce but the authorities thought it was blood
meanwhile in metropolis, “i ate a burrito with superman” is probably met with “you didn’t bring him to your grandma’s for that sunday roast i know she rocks? what is wrong with you? i baked him cookies while he was telling me about his mom’s cooking. how could you treat him like that, jennifer, the guy saves us from brainiac every two weeks”
Anyway I just finished the Imperial Radch series and it changed my life and on the one hand I objectively recognize the myriad issues in the Radch and with this desire but on the other hand.
Can I please just be a ship so that I never have to worry about gender again and I can just take care of people and be all knowing all the time?
Anyway so I’m calling Rep. Farenthold later to accept on Sen. Collin’s behalf and I’m choosing Fists. Can take place in Iowa because if two parties agree to mutual combat, under state law it is totally legal here.
And if he accepts yes I will stream that shit live don’t be silly.
And after I beat his ass once for Collins, I will duel him again on Murkowski’s behalf.
Square up, bitch.
OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH GOD CSPAN BOUT TO BE LIT
SO I CALLED HIS DC OFFICE AND SAID BASICALLY THE SAME THING I SENT VIA EMAIL.
After about 20 seconds of dead silence, the staffer let out kinda a little laugh and said “Well ma’m, I’ll be happy to pass on your…”
“I’m not joking.”
“Ma’m?”
“You think I’m joking. I am dead serious. You want my address? Or I’ll meet him at the airport. I am absolutely serious about this. Oh, and as the challenged party, I get to pick weapons. I choose fists.”
Another 20 seconds of somehow even deeper silence.
“I…I’ll pass your challenge on to the congressman.”
“No. He issued the challenge. I’m accepting. Unless he’s backing out like the spineless coward he is.”
More silence. “I…I’ll let Congressman Farenthold know, ma’m.”
“You do that.”
ANYWAY SO HOW DID YOU ALL SPEND YOUR LUNCH BREAK TODAY.
You are my hero
I’m in south Houston and I’ll be your tap in.
HOUSTON!!!! I WILL FIGHT TOO
I’m in Los Angeles and I will be there with a bat. Just in case.
sign me up too. I swing a decent hammer, and I have an entire laundry list of unresolved anger issues.
Did anyone share this with the news outlets yet? Because I think more people need to know about this.
I actually just left a message with his Texas office accepting the duel, weapon of fists, and I encourage you all to do the same. His Corpus Christi office is at 361-884-2222.
Well first of all there’s 7 band members, not 5. That’s not why I don’t trust them, I just think it’s weird.
Now getting to the point, do you know how many top 100 hits Maroon 5 has had? A lot. They’re even on billboards top 100 artists of all time (ALL TIME). And it’s understandable, because pretty much every song they put out is fucking awesome. Sugar, Don’t Wanna Know, Moves Like Jagger, Payphone, This Love, She Will Be Loved, Cold, Animals, Maps, Misery, Harder to Breathe, Never Gonna Leave This Bed… to name a FEW.
These shitheads have been popping out jams since I was a little kid. Well over a decade worth of killer music. Every other song I hear on the radio is Maroon 5. It’s always Maroon 5. And I fucking love it. I love all their songs. Everyone does, they’re awesome.
But here’s the thing. They’re never the top selling artists. On the top 100 list, they’re only in the 40s. They very rarely have a number 1 hit. They’re considered good, I suppose….. but not great. Not the best.
How many people have you heard say Maroon 5 is their favorite band? For me it’s zero. For many of you, it’s zero. If you’re thinking to yourself “what? No I love them, they’re my fave!” Are you sure? Are you really sure? They’re your absolute complete FAVORITE band ever??? I doubt it. You’re just saying that because the band is on your mind now. If I asked you your fave band any other time you’d come up with another answer. Everyone always does.
But they SHOULD be everyone favorites. Look at all of those songs. They’ve got so many top hits. Everyone loves their music. Everyone sings along and knows the songs. They should be my favorite band, I think I like more of their songs than of my actual favorite artist. But they are not my favorite. They are no ones favorite.
I think they made a deal with someone. Satan? God? A dude down an alleyway? Who knows. But I believe they made a deal to ensure everyone would love their music. And we do. It’s great music.
But the twist is that they’ll never truly be recognized as one of the best. Sure, their songs will play on the radio and everyone will sing along. They’ll have sold out concerts. Plenty of fans. But not enough. They’ll be just good. Never great. Never the best. Even if they should be our favorite, they never will be. They’ll never sell enough albums or have their songs reach as high on the billboards as they should. Everyone loves their music, per the agreement. But no one loves them.
I hope Adam Levine knows I’m on to him. I know what he did.
Diana:
So yeah, that's my story of how I got to this world.
Barry:
So Steve died in the plane.
Diana:
...thanks for your subtlety Barry but yes, he did.
Barry:
*looks around* hmm... I see... would you mind waiting here for a sec?
*theres a flash of lightning, a thunder and for a split second the room is filled with white static. When it quiets down Barry is standing in the middle of the room, holding a very disoriented Steve Trevor dressed as the last time Diana saw him, still holding the smoking gun that shot the bullet at the mustard gas*
I would like it noted for the record that throughout all of this, all the different bills, the procedural votes, the amendments and so on, not a single Democrat broke ranks once. If you genuinely think they’re neoliberal sellouts, this should mean something to you.
Sarah, I just managed to hunt down the Confessio for the first time since I had to stop taking Latin (my Latin teacher taught us the twelfth stanza as a drinking song to improve our frankly tragic pronunciation and I LOVED IT) and I'm just incredibly thrilled about it and I want someone to understand why I'm so pleased about hunting down some random Latin poem so I'm telling you.
that’s such a good feeling, i’m proud of and happy for you
no one ever talks about the part of adhd where everyone in your class has got their group of friends and you’re just there, mindlessly tagging along with anyone who is willing to put up with you for a few minutes. either you’re too loud or too quiet. if you’re lucky, it won’t affect you much. you’re a loner, so what? but then the moments come around where you find yourself yearning to be like the others. you’re not depressed, why would you be? you’re a child who just happens to be a little different. sure, you’re usually the last choice when it comes to groups and you’re rarely, if ever, invited to birthday parties but… it’s alright. everything is fine. or is it?
for the people questioning whether this really is part of adhd or not
when ppl act like leaving gifts for fairies is to get the fairies’ attention so they’ll be kind to you~~ when really leaving gifts for fairies is the supernatural equivalent of a mafia protection racket
You mentioned Castlevania, so: Trevor Belmont for the headcanon meme?
Buddy
you have answered the call and here are some headcanons about this
disaster for this headcanon meme. Disclaimer that I know NOTHING
about the games and this is 100% based on the show. Also, welcome to Latin Hour.
A: what I think realistically
Here are a set of three related headcanons
that are my ride-or-die Opinions about this show.
First of all, the Belmont family was
quite sizable—Belmont family proper, I’m sure there are any number of
illegitimate children and/or other branches scattered around Europe. They were close, most of the family living on
the hereditary estate with the exception of the transient full-time hunters,
but tough love was very much the word of the day. It had to be, given their family duty and the
sheer death rate. Technically the
Belmont family motto is Numquam Retro,
arched over the ancient family crest.
But for as long as Trevor can remember, the real family motto has been
this: no matter how good a Belmont is, there is always something just that
little bit better. Aut cum scuto aut in scuto, reads the legend over the family mausoleum,
either with shield or on shield, and
it is much truer. Belmonts come home
victorious, or they don’t come home.
Second of all, Trevor was the crowning
jewel of the Belmont family—a talented warrior from a young age, well-versed in
the bestiary, and devoted, so
devoted, to the ideal. No one becomes as
bitterly disillusioned as Trevor without having a long, long fall to get there.
Third of all, the Belmont family took
their excommunication as they had taken every attempt to stop them from serving
their duty: with stoic, stubborn disregard.
They received the Bull informing them of their banishment and replied
with a politely immovable “thank you but we’re rather too busy to be excommunicated
right now.” The Catholic Church
responded as was highly typical in the 1400’s.
Trevor was returning from an utterly
mundane errand into town, seeking some small gift for his baby sister’s first
kill, when he saw the smoke start to climb.
He reached the estate just in time to watch the fire bring the roof down
and cut the screaming short.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
For the first little while of their
journey, Sypha and Alucard are relatively sure that their third member is the
muscle, the street-smarts, to their formal education.
Then Trevor busts out some fluent Latin
to translate a book and adds a snide insult for good measure, o salvator somnelente mi.
They are both dumbfounded, and Trevor rolls his eyes at them.
“The Belmonts weren’t just a bunch of
country drunks,” he points out, and tosses the book carelessly at Alucard. “We were scholars too. Carry that, would you?”
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
The three of them have been on the move,
hunting for Dracula’s castle, for a full month and a half when Alucard finds
Trevor sitting on watch outside the ransacked farmhouse they’ve claimed as
shelter from the weather. Normally, even
if he’s drinking or on watch or distracted, Alucard struggles to get the drop
on Trevor, which is far more of a statement about Belmont House’s skill than
Alucard suspects even Trevor himself realizes.
This time, Trevor jolts, even though Alucard takes care to make noise so
as not to alarm Sypha.
“Belmont?” Alucard asks, crouching down
to be on eye level with him. “Are you
all right?”
Trevor doesn’t respond—in all honesty, seems
to barely hear the question. “I had a
baby sister,” Trevor says distantly. “Older
twins, too, but my baby sister—she just killed her first werewolf about a year
and a week ago. I got back just in time
for the celebration.”
Alucard sits down beside him,
cautious. “That is quite an
achievement. How old was she?”
“Fourteen.” Trevor blinks, takes a deep breath and lets
it out, studies the moon with uncommon concentration. “She burned, a year ago, with my brother, and
my elder sister, and my parents, my cousins…”
“Ah,” Alucard says quietly, and does the
math. “Your family must have been quite
large.”
“Forty of us,” Trevor confirms. “And every single one of them died in that
fire.”
Alucard nods, and tucks his knees up so
that he can wrap his arms around them, and they sit there in the quiet for a
while. If there’s a trace of moisture
beading on Trevor’s lashes, neither of them mention it.
“I cannot imagine what it feels like,”
Alucard says at last, barely a whisper, “to lose so many loved ones to the
fire.”
“No,” Trevor confirms. “But you have a better idea than most.”
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
There’s not really enough canon to make a judgement one way or another, but.
I really fiercely want the more
intelligent demons—it’s clear that some, if not all, of the Night Horde are
human-level intelligent—to start to…remember.
Once upon a time the House of Belmont was the most feared force in Hell,
the levee that held back the tide of the supernatural from washing over the
majority of the populace. Now the levee
has been broken (burned) and the tidal wave is rushing in and the demons are
running free—
And some of them, meeting a
stubborn-jawed man with alcohol on his lips and the ancient crest on his chest,
think twice.
Thinking twice is, more often than not,
the last thing they do on this plane of existence, before the silver of Alucard’s
sword or Sypha’s power strikes them down, or before the last son of the House
of Belmont lashes out with whip and blade and holy water.
Those that escape spread the word:
despite the Church’s best efforts, there is still a Belmont abroad in the land,
and he has allies, and he is doing his
family proud.
Strange, perhaps, that the last Belmont
would be flattered by the rumors of a demon horde.
people in fanfiction are so good at identifying v specific smells. I literally struggle to identify vanilla when I’m sniffing a candle labelled “VANILLA” how are these kids getting woodsmoke, rain, mint, and a whiff of byronic despair from a fuckin tshirt
Once I read a fic where they were like “he tasted like” and I’m expecting the typical formula (1 cooking ingredient + 1 natural phenomenon + “something uniquely [character name]”) but instead they said “he tasted like mouth” and it was one of the greatest fic moments of my life
click and drag to find out what your shitty fanfiction kiss tastes like
all the reviews for atomic blonde are like “its an empty aesthetic film where charlize theron just dresses up in nice clothes, kicks the shit out of dudes, and has random sex scenes with women” as if that wasn’t my dream action movie
You did Nyota for the headcanon ask meme, can you do Bones?
Headcanon meme. Bones is my one true saltmate, okay, it’s
like a soulmate but with bitterness about the world. Also, this is a little bit gonna be the Jim
& Bones Friendship Hour.
A: what I think realistically
Bones actually has a very real phobia of
space. Like, he manages it. He does a good job managing it. But.
Listen.
In order to successfully graduate
Starfleet Academy, every student must take and pass a shuttle piloting class. In case of emergency. Pass proficiently,
not just scrape by on a wing and a prayer.
Bones fails twice and scrapes that pass the third time and honestly he’s
thinking about just giving up. He knows
all the settings and controls—Jim drilled him silly after that first fail—but getting
into the simulator and seeing all that black, and the pressure, he just. He locks
up. It’s all he can do to control his
breathing, never mind controlling the shuttle.
He can’t go back to Georgia and he can’t do this and where does that leave him?
Jim finds Bones in a tiny-ass little bar
the day before his fourth retest date and drags him protesting out the door,
about eight whiskeys down, and bundles him into bed and listens to him mumble
about how he’s never going to pass and he’s never going to graduate and
honestly fucking good because space
is the worst and Jim’s crazy for wanting to go there but also Jim’s going to go
into space without him and Bones
doesn’t have anywhere else to go and it’s all just really awful, you know what
I mean, Jimmy?
“Sure, buddy,” Jim says, propping Bones
up and pushing a glass of water into his hands.
“Drink something, okay?”
The next day, at 1500 hours, Bones
stumbles into the simulator room with—well, not the worst hangover of his life, but probably top ten. And lo and fucking behold, instead of the usual gaggle of students looking to (re)test,
there’s James Goddamn Kirk, hands stuffed in his pockets and a sunny-ass smile
on his smart-ass face. James Goddamn
Kirk, who passed his pilot’s test with glowing
scores on the first try.
James Goddamn Kirk, who somehow lied and
cheated his way in here so that he could sit in the simulator while Bones
sweats his way through a passing grade.
It doesn’t cure his phobia, obviously,
but the first time Bones does
actually have to pilot a shuttle, it’s James Goddamn Kirk bleeding out in the copilot’s
seat and Bones barely even notices his heart race.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
Leonard McCoy, day one of his term at
the Academy as he stumbles, shaking and panting, off the shuttle, swears to himself
that he’s going to pry this blue-eyed limpet off him on the spot and also
sedate anyone who addresses him as Bones.
Day one of his second year at the
Academy, Bones McCoy gets half-tackled by Jim, who’s already talking about this badass new Tactics class they’re
offering, I’m gonna take it and I’m gonna destroy everyone, it’s gonna be
awesome and he has no idea how this happened.
What would have been day one of his
fourth year, Bones is fuck knows how
far into the black of space, listening to his crew tattle on Jim’s delinquent
ass.
“Doc, I don’t think he’s taken an off
shift in, like, a couple days maybe,” Sulu says as he passes through for an
antihistamine.
“I’ll work on it,” Bones says, and jabs
Sulu with a hypo. “Stop poking plants
you don’t recognize.”
“Doctor McCoy, Alpha shift told me to
tell you that the captain forgot to eat today,” Chekov reports, sticking his
head inside. “Can I get another screen?”
“I’ll deal with that,” Bones says, and
waves the kid in. “Stop sleeping with
people you don’t know.”
“Doctor, I would appreciate it if you
intervened in the Captain’s opinion that holodeck safety protocols are
optional,” Spock says evenly as Chapel checks him for broken ribs.
“I’ll do my best,” Bones says, and gives
Spock a bitter wave with the medical tricorder.
“Stop getting in fistfights,
you have a damn phaser.”
“Doctor,” Uhura starts as Bones sprints
past her. “I think the Captain might be
allergic–”
“I’m on my way!” he yells back over his
shoulder. “Stop Spock from causing a
diplomatic incident!”
“Doc,” Scotty starts, leaning into the
medbay and squinting painfully.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Bones snarls,
and gives Scotty a vengeful jab with a hangover hypo (actually a calibrated mix
of thiamine, folic acid, and magnesium sulfate, but listen, it’s a hangover
hypo) as he marches past toward the bridge.
Bones has Regrets.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Bones keeps expecting to get to a point
where he’s…like…past being horrified and shocked when one of the crew rolls in,
near death or already dead.
It wears on his soul like acid, every
time. He decides very early that he’s
going to leave Starfleet when Jim dies. The
longer he spends on the Enterprise, the more names he adds to that list (when
Spock dies, when Uhura dies, when Chekov-Sulu-Scotty dies).
Bones is a doctor, not an
adventurer. He’s not built to outlive
these people. When they are gone, he will never leave orbit again.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
Read an AU once where Bones was a
humanitarian aid volunteer at like 21/22 who went to Tarsus IV and met furious,
half-starved, 13-year-old, fresh-off-a-genocide JT Kirk and it was my favorite
thing. It was also abandoned after like
two chapters. But like. Any intersection of my infinite feelings
about Tarsus IV and my infinite feelings about Bones & Jim (& Spock)
friendship is My Favorite Thing and I believe in my heart that this is true. Bones didn’t recognize him at the time and it
takes him years to connect the emaciated murderous kid with the electric blue
eyes to his buoyantly brilliant best friend, but he does, eventually. He asks Jim straight up, very late one night,
and they have one single conversation about it before they vow to never discuss
it again.
There is a 1970s horror movie that is about giant bunny rabbits
now it was 1972 so they didn’t have green screen or anything like that so they just had build Rabbit sized models for them to mess up to seem giant. If you’ve ever seen Rabbits you know that while they’re pretty destructive little guys it’s rarely very showy so there’s a lot of moments where they’re meant to be destroying things and it’s just a bunch of rabbits half-heartedly standing around and giving a little hop.
Oh did I mention that one of the film’s stars is DeForest Kelley?
That’s right Doctor Bones McCoy was once in a movie about giant bunnies
Sophie is highly suspicious of Maggie a
while. Not because of Nate, just
because. Because Maggie is Maggie. Because Maggie is good and honorable and
honest and Sophie is…Sophie is not those things. Sophie is a criminal and her thefts might not
have hurt anyone, but sometimes she thinks about little children with stolen
artifacts, about the look on her team’s faces when they realized she’d played
them, and wonders what the fallout pattern of her life looks like. Maggie surely doesn’t have to think about
that (Sophie is wrong about this) and Sophie cannot understand why someone like
that would willingly put herself in the middle of all this.
Sophie gets past this, of course. Maggie, she comes to realize, is just. Maggie.
She is good and honorable and honest, and just as furious and steely and
brilliant and cold-eyed as her ex-husband.
So obviously Sophie sleeps with
her. It’s a good fling, all intimacy and
affection with absolutely no romance, and Sophie is lying in bed when Maggie
bends down to kiss her forehead and say, “I hope things work out with you and
Nate. You’re too good for him.”
“Of course I am,” Sophie sniffs. “We both are.”
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
To be COMPLETELY clear, Nate gets Sophie’s
wedding ring engraved with ‘Your Name Here’ even though he knows! He fucking knows! He knows her real name! He knows all her titles and ranks and everything
(you’ll never tell me that Sophie isn’t actually
a British noblewoman okay) and yet!
Fucking! Your Name Here!
They have to pause the service so that
Sophie can stop laughing.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Sophie really wants to be in love, but she’s…she’s afraid of
the part between being strangers and being in love. It’s so vulnerable, putting little bits of
yourself out there one at a time and waiting to see if the other person is
going to slap you down. She wonders,
every time she sits down with a new person, what they would think of the real
her, and she opens her mouth to say “my name is Sophie Devereaux” and instead
some other name pops out. And in the
end, inevitably, she slips up, gets too comfortable and shows a bit of the
wrong self and…
Well, there she is again. Wanting to be in love and sitting down to
introduce herself and giving the wrong name.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
Um…I honestly have no idea, so instead
here’s an AU I want.
I want a mutant AU where Sophie is a
metamorph a la Mystique, and her ‘Sophie’
face isn’t actually…her real face. Like,
she thinks of it as her real face. It’s
the face she always wears when they’re not doing a con. Even when they are doing a con she doesn’t like to depart too far from it. But when she was a kid she had a different
face, and she shifted whenever she could, into whoever she wanted, and then one
day she was standing in front of a mirror and shifting back and she…couldn’t
quite remember what color her eyes were.
Hazel, or mahogany? Black lashes
or brown? Did her skin have pink or
yellow undertones?
Sophie Devereaux wears a face assembled
out of her favorite features. She takes
a picture of that face, the moment she fixes it the way she likes it, and keeps
the picture beside her mirror so that she can always get it right.
Yo if you live in Alaska, WV, Maine, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, or Louisiana, or Arkansas, please please PLEASE call your senator and tell them not to vote to defund Obamacare. There are calling scripts at the following link. A vote is planned today or tomorrow.
i’m cursed. cursed for a year until the new season of castlevania comes out. and i guarantee you there aren’t enough fan fics or fan art in the internet to satiate my hunger
As of three days ago there were 48 fics on AO3 and I know because I read all of them.
Headcanon
that Thor and the Guardians become great friends in Infinity War and once
everything is over, Peter has one thing that he wants from the Norse God –
And Thor is
a bit surprised and a bit confused but he relents easily enough, thinking that
it’s just humans being weird again.
So he hands
Peter his red cloak and watches with great amusement about how happy the other
is about showing off with it.
“I look
like Superman, guys!”
“Humans are
quite joyful, aren’t they,” Thor laughs at Peter’s antics, and laughs even
louder as Rocket grumbles something that sounds a bit like “They are just friggin’ weird.”
“You’re
probably both right,” Gamora smiles, barely hiding it behind her hand.
“I do not understand who this Superman is,” Drax muses - and the whole thing dissolves into a discussion as Peter tries to explain, Mantis and Drax ask question after question and Rocket just makes one snarky comment after the other.
It’s weird, it’s fun, and it’s a great distraction from everything they had to see.
“How good are they?” Diana asks them. No Man’s Land, hah, the things some people will name their bands to make them stand out in the crowd.
“Watch and see,” says Gail, head tilting towards the stage. Diana turns, and sees—
—Steve.
He’s grown a beard, and his hair is longer and more artfully disheveled than it was when she knew him, but she would know him anywhere. She would know his eyes anywhere, that striking shade of blue that she hasn’t been able to find since.
“Look who just came in,” says Gail fondly, unmindful of Diana’s internal crisis. “Steve Howard, late as hell, again.”
Diana’s tongue is suddenly too heavy in her mouth for her to respond. She lifts her glass of red wine to her lips, takes a sip, and watches this ghost of Steve Trevor tap the microphone, wincing at the feedback.
“Hey, folks,” he says. He sounds exactly the same. “Sorry I’m late, my watch broke and I haven’t gotten it fixed yet.” He coughs, and says, “Anyway—I’m Steve, we’re No Man’s Land, and we’ll be your entertainment for tonight.”
I’ve been contemplating for several days something, and I’ve been trying to distill it into meaning, and put nice little bullet points on how this relates to things that have been bugging me about some common Discourses I’ve been seeing, but at the end, I only really have a story. So here, have a story.
About ten years ago, sometime in the eventful 2006-2007 George W. Bush-ruled hellscape of my identity development, I was just starting to figure out how I felt about my conservative upbringing (not great) and whether I was some brand of queer (probably, but too scared to think about what brand for too long). I was working as a server at a popular Italian-inspired sit-down restaurant that was the closest thing my tiny South Carolinian town had to “fancy” at the time but isn’t really fancy at all.
The host brought a party of four men to one of my tables. It was hard to tell their ages, but my guess is they were teenagers or in their early 20s in the 1980s. Mid-40s, at the time. It was standard to ask if anyone at the table was celebrating anything, so I did. They said they were business partners celebrating a great business deal and would like a bottle of wine.
It was a fairly busy night so I didn’t have a LOT of time to spend at their table, but they were nice guys. They were polite and friendly to me, they didn’t hit on me (as most men were prone to do – sometimes even in front of their girlfriends, a story I’ll tell later if anyone wants me to), and they were racking up a hell of a tab that was going to make my managers happy, so I checked on them as often as I could.
Toward the end of their second bottle of wine, as they were finishing their entrees, I stopped at the table and asked if they wanted any more drinks or dessert or coffee. They were well and truly tipsy by now, giggling, leaning back in their chairs – but so, so careful not to touch each other when anyone was near the table.
They’re all on the fence about dessert, so being a good server, I offered to bring out the dessert menu so they could glance it over and make a decision, “Since you’re celebrating.”
“She’s right!” one of the men said, far too emphatically for a conversation on dessert. “It’s your anniversary! You should get dessert!”
It was like a movie. The whole table went absolutely silent. The clank of silverware at the next table sounded supernaturally loud. Dean Martin warbled “That’s Amore” in some distorted alternate universe where the rest of the restaurant went on acting like this one tipsy man hadn’t just shattered their carefully crafted cover story and blurted out in the middle of a tiny, South Carolina town, surrounded by conservatives and rednecks, that they were gay men celebrating a relationship milestone.
And I didn’t know what I was yet, but I knew I wasn’t an asshole, and I knew these men were family, and I felt their panic like a monster breathing down all our necks. It’s impossible to emphasize how palpably terrified they were, and how justified their terror was, and how much I wanted them to be happy.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I said, “Congratulations! How many years?”
The man who’d spoken up burst into tears. His partner stood up and wrapped me in the tightest, warmest hug I’ve ever had – and I’ve never liked being touched by strangers, but this was different, and I hugged him back.
“Thank you,” he whispered, halfway to crying himself. “Thank you so much.”
When he finally let go of me and sat back down, they finally got around to telling me they were, in fact, two couples on a double date, and both celebrating anniversaries. Fifteen years for one of them, I think, and a few years off for the other. It’s hard to remember. It was a jumble of tears and laughter and trembling relief for all of us. They got more relaxed. They started holding hands – under the table, out of sight of anyone but me, but happy.
They did get dessert, and I spent more time at their table, letting them tell me stories about how they met and how they started dating and their lives together, and feeling this odd sense of belonging, like I’d just discovered a missing branch of my family.
When they finally left, all four of them took turns standing up and hugging me, and all four of them reached into their wallets to tip me. I tried to wave them off but they insisted, and the first man who’d hugged me handed me forty dollars and said, “Please. You are an angel. Please take this.”
After they left I hid in the bathroom and cried because I couldn’t process all my thoughts and feelings.
Fast forward to three days ago, when my own partner and I showed up to a dinner reservation at a fancy-casual restaurant to celebrate our fifth anniversary. The whole time I was getting ready to leave, there was a worry in the back of my mind. The internet web form had asked if the reservation was celebrating anything in particular, and I’d selected “Anniversary.” I stood in the bathroom blow-drying my hair, wondering what I would do if we showed up, two women, and the host or the server took one look at us and the “Anniversary” designation on our reservation and refused to serve us. It’s not as ubiquitous anymore, but we’re still in the south, and these things still happen. Eight years of progressive leadership is over, and we’ve got another conservative despot in office who’s emboldening assholes everywhere.
It was on my mind the whole fifteen minutes it took to drive there. I didn’t mention it to my partner because I didn’t want to cast a shadow over the occasion. More than that, I didn’t want to jinx us, superstitious bastard that I am.
We walked into the restaurant. I told the hostess we had a reservation, gave her my last name.
She looked at her screen, then looked back at us. She smiled, broadly and genuinely, and said, “Happy anniversary! Your table is right this way.”
Our server greeted us, said, “I heard you were celebrating!”
“It’s our anniversary,” Kellie said, and our server gasped, beaming.
“That’s great! Congratulations! How many years?”
And I finally breathed a sigh of relief, and I thought about those men at that restaurant ten years ago. I hope they’re still safe and happy, and I hope we all get the satisfaction of helping the world keep blooming into something that’s not so unrelentingly terrible all the time.
what’s the betting that potterwatch was just a radio project lee jordan was doing in his spare time and never actually stopped after the war
“Harry Potter was spotted at the local farmers market today, good choices in produce Harry! Gotta love the organics”
he’s the only reporter harry will talk to other than giving official statements when he has to as an auror
“I’m speaking to Harry Potter today after the long-awaited conclusion of the trial of quadruple murderer Waldorfus Grenoble. Harry, may I ask you a question regarding the trial?”
“Sure, Lee, I have to be back at work in ten but give it a go.”
“What is in the curry you had for lunch yesterday during the recess? It smelled fantastic and I have to know.”
“Thanks for asking, Lee. I’ve recently come across a book of my great-grandmother Priyanka’s notes on her Punjabi cooking and I’ve been trying to recreate her food. I liked that one but Ginny said it was too sweet so I’m making adjustments.”
“Fantastic. Great stuff. Next up we have an update on You-Know-Who’s whereabouts. Not Voldemort obviously– he’s six feet under, it’s been around 2500 days now and he’s still going strong, no sign of him being not dead any time soon.”
“You’re correct, Lee, he’s dead as a doornail and he’s going to stay that way. You do realize you don’t need to refer to your infant daughter as ‘You-Know-Who,’ right?”
“Sophie starts screaming if either of her dads talks about her and we don’t know why. Any suggestions, and any idea where she is now?”
“Oliver was walking her up and down the hallway outside the World Cup Regulatory Office last I saw her. As for the screaming, with James we gave him the miniature dragon from the Triwizard in ‘94 and that entertained him pretty well.”
“You heard it here first folks, Harry Potter thinks dragons are an appropriate substitute for pacifiers! Thanks for your time, Harry.”
“Any time, Lee.”
“Next week’s password is anything that will make our six-month-old go to sleep for longer than four hours. Signing off, this has been Potterwatch with River and the man himself, Harry Potter.”
pour one out for all the people who’s messages went unanswered because i told myself i’d answer them later but when later came around i decided it was Too Late
I’m curious– What style of clothing would y'all wear if public ridicule, financial limitations, and general inconvenience weren’t a thing?
I’d wear ball gowns; I’m talmbout big, flowy, fluffy chiffon and taffeta 1980s prom night sequined nightmares. Catch me buying Hot Pockets at the Wal*Mart looking like Jennifer Connelly’s hallucination in Labyrinth.
