Nerdsville

Massive Nerd | Math PhD Student | 1st year | 21 | He/they | can't stop procrastinating send help

[chronophobica]

what they DONT tell you about clarinets is that you have to fucking build the damn thing every single time. "what instrument do you play" fucking legos man idk

[alphabetizing-posts]

about build clarinets damn do DONT every fucking fucking have idk instrument is legos man play" single tell that the they thing time. to what "what you you you

[howverychaotic]

I really need to start reading the blog name because I thought I was having some sort of moment right there.

[demilypyro]

Y'all hear about this nuance stuff

[tsukinoinaba]

I've heard mixed things.

[demilypyro]

Oh so it sucks then, and you hate it

[charlesoberonn]

Mammu! Finius and Ferbingetorix built Rome in a day!

[charlesoberonn]

[charlesoberonn]

[asphor]

I feel like this also implies that rome is somehow being destroyed by the end of the day

[charlesoberonn]

The Emperor Constantine loves Finius and Ferbingetorix's "New Rome" so much that he makes it his new capital and names it after himself.

[asphor]

Yeah that checks out.

What's the doofenschmirtz contraption/scheme of the day?

[charlesoberonn]

Doofenric the Ostrogoth (insert jokes about his daughter Vanessa being "Goth" but in the modern sense) invented a City-Mover-Inator to move Rome across the Danube so his Germanic confederation could sack it.

Thankfully, Agent Pericles stops him by redirecting the Inator to Finius and Ferbingetorix's New Rome instead, moving it to the Bosphorus.

[charlesoberonn]

While Pericles and Doofenric are fighting over the controls of the Inator, it gets accidentally changed to paint remover mode and then fired at a random direction.

Somewhere nearby a painter just finished coloring the statue of the emperor when suddenly all the paint gets removed.

Painter: Aw...

Painter, giving it a second look: Hmmm... 🤔

[charlesoberonn]

Candysseia: What animal even is Pericles?

Finius: We named it "platypus", meaning flat-foot.

Ferbingetorix: On account of his feet being flat.

Candysseia: And where did he come from?

Febingetorix: We have no earthly idea.

[charlesoberonn]

Doofenric the Goth: Pericles the- wait, what animal even are you, Agent Pericles?

Pericles: *hands him papyrus*

Doofenric: *reading* A "platypus", meaning flat-foot... oh, on account of your feet being flat!

[charlesoberonn]

[post-credits scene]

Doofenric: Wait, you know a platypus named Pericles, too? Is every platypus named Pericles?

Ferbingetorix: As far as we know, yes.

[ampervadasz]

[bumblebeerror]

THE CASUALNESS OF THAT COLLIE SLIPPING RIGHT OUT OF THEIR COLLAR. That dude is a Willing Participant of this walk and by god everyone else is going to follow the RULES.

[roach-works]

im a fan of the moment where the husky is like 'wait you're not authorized to do that' and the collie is like 'THE FUCK IM NOT'

[spacelazarwolf]

unstoppable force (border collie) vs immovable object (husky)

[pankendev]

[weatherwhim]

yeah sometimes words are like that

[wanderingmind867]

(Legion of Superheroes in the 31st Century #20): Such a cool page. I don't remember the artist, but look at this. Trippy and beautiful and colourfully prismatic (i believe that's an appropriate word). Brainiac five's broken into the dimensional space-time continuum. I only recognize three of these designs, but one is Golden Age Superman, one is Curt Swan's original Legion of Superheroes cover (I think it was Curt Swan). And one of these is just Mon-El, trapped in the Phantom Zone. If this show ever got/gets a third season, they should address the existence of Mon-El. Poor man's been stuck in the Phantom Zone for god knows how long. The scenes on the left hand side, though... I can't place them.

[albondigyoza]

Top left is either Superman immediately after he recovered from his fight from Doomsday, or Superboy Prime during the events of Countdown, depending on when this comic released.

[voidambassador]

[voidambassador]

[voidambassador]

[critter-of-habit]

Yelena you had ONE job

[albondigyoza]

[ashblossomandjoyousspring]

[matcha-gh0st]

Several doodles I drew while reading through some animation blogs, then I decided to color them and put them together to make a comic because I like when Squidward is in situations.

[vacuously-true]

I have historically posted my annual mathblr roll call in late April, but I think it makes more sense to do it at the beginning of the year so it's clear which post is current. Accordingly, I now call the

🧮 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟝 𝕄𝔸𝕋ℍ𝔹𝕃ℝ ℝ𝕆𝕃𝕃 ℂ𝔸𝕃𝕃 🧮

Reblog/reply if you are a mathblr and/or mathblr adjacent. And tag the other (at least semi active) mathblrs & adjacents you know of!

"What counts as mathblr? Do I count?" If you want to! Math shitposters! Math academia aesthetic blogs! Math studyblrs! Math related gimmick blogs! Unthemed blogs owned by people who happen to be math fans! I want them all! I'm happy to see CS, stats, physics, and other math-adjacent folks too if they like hanging out with the math crowd!

Bonus: link to the LCM- Least Common Mathblr discord server. Come hang out!

https://discord.gg/q4nzuEqgFv

[endofunktor]

"What counts as mathblr? Do I count?"

If you count, you count!

[teasugarsalt]

[scribefindegil]

Lorraine Baines McFly and Female Autonomy

Hello. I have spent the past month slowly losing my mind about Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty's mom in Back to the Future, so I am finally trying to articulate some of the reasons I'm so feral about her.

There's a quote from Lea Thompson, the actress who played Lorraine, that goes, "The three parts that women usually get to play are virgins, whores, and mothers, and in Back to the Future Part II, I got to play all three." While this is commentary on Hollywood and the limited roles that fictional women get forced into, I think it's also interesting to think about it in terms of how these roles are reflected onto actual women and used to limit their personhood and confine them to a very narrow range of acceptable behaviors . . . and then in turn to think about how the character interacts with these roles on a Watsonian level. They're affecting not just Lorraine the character as she was written, but Lorraine from an in-universe perspective trying to navigate life as a woman in a patriarchal world. Some of the sexism she faces is a deliberate narrative choice and some of it is a result of the writers' blind spots, but for the purpose of this essay I'm less interested in teasing out which threads are which and more in looking at it holistically.

Because the thing about Lorraine is that she's aware of what the acceptable roles and behaviors for women are, and the versions that we see of her across the various timelines alternately fight against and capitulate to these constraints. What is a woman allowed to be? How much is Lorraine willing to break from those restrictions? How much does she allow other women to break from them? Does she resent her role or embrace it? I have a lot of thoughts specifically about how the different iterations of her interact with concepts of female agency and autonomy.

(Putting this under a cut because it is. Long.)

I started thinking about this when I was talking with my partner about 50's Lorraine. She's extremely active and driven and planning to Get What She Wants (in a way that is very scary, if you are Marty) . . . but at the same time she's clearly aware that she isn't supposed to be. A Good Fifties Girl is demure and passive. Lorraine isn't--but she's still trying to toe the line. I think constantly about the scene where she shows up at Doc's garage to be like "I followed you home . . . so that I can ask you to ask me to the dance." The girl can embrace borderline stalking but she draws the line at directly asking a boy out! She's exercising a lot of agency but views doing so as rebellious and subversive--and risky.

And I also want to talk about the whole "boy crazy" thing because like . . . society (especially in the fifties) tells women that the most important thing they can possibly do is find a good man and become wives and mothers, that this will define the success or failure of their entire lives (and given how many things were unavailable to single women at the time this is in many ways true) . . . and then relentlessly mocks and punishes anyone who actually takes an interest in pursuing this instead of just sitting back passively and waiting. She is trying to do what society says will make her happy! And even her desire for a white knight is very much based in the reality of her situation! She's getting sexually harassed at school and around town and she's doing exactly what she's supposed to and standing up for herself and saying no and fighting back--and this is not enough. She does need backup! Biff harasses her in the middle of a crowded cafeteria and Marty is the ONLY person who does anything! No fucking wonder she latches onto him as hard as she does! (There's. I promise this is related but there's a BttF parody musical on YouTube where when Strickland comes to break up the lunchroom fight he says, "Now, I can excuse sexual harassment, but LIGHT SHOVING?" and like it's a haha funny joke but also?? Yeah?? That IS how it works. The way Lorraine's being treated is so overlooked and normalized that the authority figure isn't going to step up the way he will when it's a physical altercation between two guys. Screams.) I wonder if part of the reason she stuck with George in the original timeline even though they didn't have a lot in common is that "I have a boyfriend" is a boundary that some people might actually take seriously whereas "I'm not interested" is not.

But. In general 50's Lorraine is very much about grabbing as much agency as she feels she's allowed to . . . and then Twin Pines Lorraine is what happens when she regrets the result of those choices (because while we don't see it, it's pretty obvious that in the original timeline she pursued George as aggressively as she pursues Marty in the new one), and so she decides to deny, not just her own agency, but female agency as a general concept. She leans so heavily on the idea that her relationship was "meant to be" because it absolves her of any culpability in creating a life she's unhappy with. She's rewritten her own past to view herself as a passive participant in something inevitable. (Exactly the view of womanhood that she was fighting so hard against in the 50's!) And she extends this idea of female passivity to the women around her: telling Linda that she should sit back and wait and a relationship will "just happen," actively resenting Jennifer for doing something as simple as calling Marty on the phone. It's a really interesting form of internalized misogyny, perpetuating these sexist ideas as almost a misguided form of self-defense.

And then for Lone Pine Lorraine this is completely flipped! She loves Jennifer for the same reason she disliked her in Twin Pines: because she reminds Lorraine of her younger self. And like . . . this is something of an extrapolation, but while obviously her husband and kids are still very important to her, it also feels like she has interests and friends and other things going on in her life, whereas part of the isolation of Twin Pines is that her life has shrunk down to the point where she's ONLY a wife and mother with nothing else to define herself by. And it also matters that in this timeline she has a partner that supports her, not just in the big dramatic moments (although also that), but you can easily see the dance as a catalyst for George actually learning to listen to her and stand up for her about smaller things as well. George McFly feminism arc. (I'm being slightly facetious but like. George starts off kind of shitty. The spying is actively Bad and I hope Marty chewed him out for it offscreen, but also his reaction to the harassment scene being "I think there's someone else she'd rather go with," implying that he sees what Biff is doing as like. Normal flirting that he expects to work. He doesn't GET it. Unsurprising because he is. A teenage boy in the fifties. But I do believe that saving Lorraine was something of a wakeup call and after that he listened to her about things that make her uncomfortable and gave her the support that she needed. Which would also give her a lot more freedom in this timeline because she has someone with more societal power who has her back!)

And then. Hell Valley.

If Lone Pine is the version of Lorraine who has the most freedom, the most opportunities to make decisions based on what she wants instead of What Is Expected Of A Woman, Hell Valley is the opposite. The things denying her agency in Twin Pines is largely societal forces (and herself); in Hell Valley she is actively being denied autonomy by her evil husband who functions as the personification of a bunch of sexist ideas.

She's been objectified to the point that she doesn't maintain control over her own body; Biff pressures her to get cosmetic surgeries so she can continue to look attractive to him because that's the only value he sees in her. Her physical appearance is entirely tailored to his preferences.

Biff's view of Lorraine is wife-as-possession. He treats her like a prize he's won and her kids like parasites. And he is NOT subtle about this. But Lorraine is still desperately clinging to the idea that she's wife-as-family. She calls Biff "your father" to Marty when he arrives, and talks about "our children" because she wants so so badly for this to be something different than what it is. It's especially terrible because this is a timeline where she got seventeen years of being happy with George, she knows what she's missing, and she keeps trying to force this new relationship into a similar mold even though Biff is openly contemptuous of her and especially her kids. It's been twelve years and she's still trying to pretend. To call back to that Lea Thompson quote: it's obvious where Biff thinks Lorraine fits on the virgin-mother-whore axis, while Lorraine is actively trying to centralize her motherhood partially because the kids really are that important to her and partially as a defense mechanism.

(And it's also such a bleak cautionary tale about how fragile women's stability can be when they're dependent on their husbands; Lorraine was happy with George and had a fair amount of freedom, but he was the only one with an income so when he died she was suddenly forced into a truly horrific situation because she had no other means to support herself and her three young children. Especially given that the Hell Valley universe is also worse in some broader political ways that mean there were probably even fewer social supports available than in real life 1973)

And god. It kills me the way that we see her lash out, the way she's clawing for autonomy when she threatens to leave . . . and then exactly how Biff levels all his axes of control against her. It's very interesting that his first tactic is consumerist (Who will pay for all your things? Who will take care of you?) and that doesn't work even though not being able to support herself is a very real concern. It's only when he threatens her kids that she folds. And then she immediately crumples and pivots to rationalizing Biff's behavior and blaming herself for her own abuse (in a way that is both HEARTBREAKING and also? surprisingly sympathetic and realistic for an 80's movie?). It's similar to the passivity we see in Twin Pines, but here we see exactly where it comes from. She doesn't have any way out so she has to pretend. It's the only way she can keep going. She has these flashes of rage but they're immediately snuffed out by despair and denial.

There's not a lot of talk about Lorraine and what there is tends to reduce her to "well she's Marty's mom" as if she's a boring character who doesn't have a lot going on. But even though most of her role in the movies has to do with her relationships with the various men in her life, those relationships are really interesting if you actually pay attention to them! She's not just (in the 80's) a wife and mother--she's someone who has a complex relationship with marriage and motherhood and the societal expectations surrounding them. She's not just (in the 50's) a vapid boy-crazy girl--she's doing her best to go after what she wants in a world that doesn't want her to (the fact that one of the things she wants turns out to be her time-traveling son from the future is unfortunate but not something she has any way of knowing!). She's stuck in a society that doesn't want women to be people, and she knows this, and because we see her across two different time periods and three different timelines you can watch how sometimes society grinds her down until she gives in and tries not to be a person. And also how, sometimes, she fights back.

[demaparbat-hp]

He's never happy

[sacred-portal]

[gravityjunior]

[petalpetal]

Shout out to people with auditory processing disorder!!!

[shalpilot]

what?

[petalpetal]

*holds up a sign that says “Shout out to people with auditory processing disorder!!!”*

[anonymous-ivplay]

*before the sign is fully up* Oh! Thank you for the support!!!