Maybe a person, but definitely not a bot. Australian. Somehow, I have a degree, which frankly surprises me when I consider the absolute lack of smarts up in my noggin.
dedederedeconstructivist.carrd.co
i hate the way fat antagonists have their weight moralized and used as a metaphor for greed and corruption and i hate the way it's overcorrected into fat people being "soft squishy friend-shaped cupcakes who look like they give incredible hugs" and i long for the day we have nuanced, interesting, and complicated fat characters and most of all i long for the day people are normal about fatness
Like they tried to change Reblogs and people rightfully got up in arms, this is a LOT worse. In order to have access to any sort of thing dubbed mature, and We haveALL seen what they think is mature, Everything from a black and white photo of a black woman's arm, to posts about IUD recalls, to a nude painted by a 17th century artist, to anything involving the word Trans; you have to send your personal information to a third party site that WILL get hacked, and you will be doxxed. And they can say "Oh shit, well it wasn't us who sent your name address and gender identity to Moldovan teenagers, here's a couple extra minutes in the ball pit.
That's bad enough!!!!!!!! But the entire idea of needing permission from state authorities to access anything labeled mature by our friendly AI overlords is some fucking Boll shit. Die Gedenken Sind Frie baby. This is all a reaction to people getting uppity about their lowly lowly rights and is being propped up by the same bad actors tht have made life unlivable. Fuck that shit.
"Well it's only being rolled out in Brazil and UK" Yeah, to start. "Well they're being forced to do this by laws." YOu know it's always really funny when these tech giants (Or whatever you call owning tumblr dot com) get really antsy about laws considering they pick and choose which ones they abide by.
This is a breaking point and it's going to be very interesting to see how we proceed from here.
Where's the fucking. The form. The fucking form. Hang on, lemme find it.
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
This! Please fill out this! Select "Feedback" and fill out the form! They won't necessarily be paying attention to us complaining in posts, but they will read these forms!
Something I really like about Toji's arc: His weary acceptance of piloting. I like to think its in part because he's been having nightmares about being in Shinji's place since episode 3. But, whether he has or not, he knows exactly what it's like in there, but only from the position of a passive observer who can do nothing. Then his time to take the active role comes, and unlike the other pilots, he knows what its actually like under real field conditions: confusing, chaotic, brutally violent, painful, and yes, heroic. He's psychologically prepared to face it in a way none of them, not even Asuka, were.
And then the tragic irony strikes where he is again rendered into a passive observer who can do nothing as the giant creature he is inside wages an unfathomably destructive battle. Thanks to the injuries he receives, he must become that observer for life.
The poor fella's entire arc is about having to accept what we are powerless to change, because even when he has the power to change it, the universe intrudes to go 'no.' And his last appearance that isn't in Shinji's head is, I think, really powerful in that light:
'Would you tell my sister that there's nothing wrong with me?'
We can read it as 'look just let her know I'm okay so she doesn't worry', but I don't think that's necessarily the right reading. During this conversation, he focuses on others - on Shinji, on Hikari (with a double 'I know you're here as the class rep' and 'I didn't get to eat your lunch' while looking away and smiling, which to me reads as him acknowledging exactly why she's there while giving her the opportunity to gracefully decline now he's maimed), on his sister. Then he says he's fine, really, and that's the last we see of him.
I don't think its coincidental that this takes place in the half of the episode named A Man's Battle. Toji's entire arc is that struggle in what it means to be a powerless man and how to live well with that self-knowledge, and the answer he finally comes to is the same one that pervades Eva: connection with and kindness for others, and an acceptance of and kindness to the self in whatever form it has.
There's nothing wrong with Toji in the end because he can do that now. He's lived what was probably his worst nightmare and come out the other side alive and, seemingly, better for it. He gets to know that he was prepared to face it, that his conditions for doing it were noble (the improved medical care for his sister), that he didn't run away from the terror, and that he could take it, as it were, like a man. I rather doubt that Gainax had The Impossible Dream in mind with Toji, but there's something about it that applies to him in his final appearances.
huh, that's odd. a tumblr made after a specific date that won't shut up about a very specific take on a very specific issue while claiming a certain identity but with absolutely nothing to say about two of the most serious events concerning certain public gatherings and a lot to say about leftists. huh. yeah. that seems like it's legitimate. yup. totally.
Points of interest (or at least I found them interesting) from Fer-de-Lance (Bantam edition, if you're interested in looking up the page numbers):
Fritz calls the office “the library” (page 1).
Fritz drives the roadster to go out and buy beer for Wolfe, who, now that Prohibition has ended, is switching from barrels of bootleg beer (six quarts a day) to bottled beer (five quarts a day...or so he keeps promising) if he can find a brand he likes (page 1, 3).
Many characters are introduced and primarily referred to by their last names, such as Fred Durkin (page 3) and Theodore Horstmann, who doesn’t get his first name until page 83 (Fritz is an exception; he receives his last name at the same time Theodore gets his first).
Wolfe has been hit by the Depression, having to cut Archie’s weekly pay as well as that of Saul (who apparently receives a regular paycheck from Wolfe (a retainer?) regardless of whether his services are required) (page 4).
Fred also previously received a weekly paycheck from Wolfe, but Wolfe can no longer afford to do so due to the Depression and so Fred only gets paid when his services are required (page 4).
Wolfe has lived at the brownstone for twenty years and Archie a third of that (page 16); Archie later specifies that he’s been living there for seven years (page 25) (by The Rubber Band, the number is updated to eight years (page 21)).
The only girl Archie has ever considered marrying chose another man, and this story is somehow connected to how he met Nero Wolfe (page 25).
Archie's bedroom consists of a bed ("big and good"), a desk ("with plenty of drawer-space"), and three chairs ("all roomy and comfortable"), and no rugs (by a later book, though, he does acquire a rug or two). He specifies that the pictures on the wall are all his (which is interesting because in later books he takes every opportunity to state that all the furniture in his room is his rather than Wolfe's) and include one of Mount Vernon, one of a lion's head, one of "woods with grass and flowers," a big photograph of his (deceased since he was a child) parents, and one in the bathroom called September Morn of a naked young woman with "her hair hanging down in front," which is interesting because whenever I google it, I get a painting of a naked woman with her hair up, but maybe I'm finding the wrong picture (page 25-26).
Fritz is the one in charge of answering the door (page 29); in later books, that always seems to be Archie’s job unless he's otherwise engaged.
“Wolfe’s voice was clear and low, with a tone he didn’t use very often; he had used it on me only once, the first time I had ever seen him, and I had never forgotten how it sounded; it had made me feel that if he had wanted to he could have cut my head off without lifting a hand” (page 30).
Archie drinks plenty of milk throughout the book, but he keeps a bottle of rye in his room and drinks plenty of that when he’s in a bad humor, such as when Wolfe begins his “relapse” (see below).
The phone number of the brownstone is Bryant 92828 (page 45)
Wolfe never misses the program “Joy Boys,” which Archie does his best to miss unless it happens to coincide with dinner because Wolfe will indeed listen to it at the dinner table (page 52).
DA Anderson does not remember Archie from whatever previous dealing they had (five years prior), which I personally find hard to believe (page 61, 64).
When Archie goes in to talk to Wolfe during breakfast, he describes the black silk making up the covers and the retractable canopy over the bed rather than the yellow silk of Wolfe’s pajamas as he does in later books (page 62).
Wolfe is “elegant” with women, but Archie states that he cannot explain what that means (page 69).
Wolfe suffers what Archie calls “relapses” where he seems to lose all interest in the case and either takes to his bed, subsisting only on onion soup and bread, or he parks it in the kitchen and spends days on end instructing Fritz on how to cook various dishes so he can then eat them (page 75-76). During these relapses, Wolfe doesn’t even go to the plant-rooms (page 77). These relapses disappear completely in later books.
Archie claims to have only quit Wolfe once, when he sent him to get some ingredient from a ship during one of these relapses and was beaten by the crew for his trouble; he was so surprised when Wolfe came personally to pick him up from the hospital the next day that he forgot he’d quit (page 76). In later books, Archie and Wolfe frequently take turns terminating Archie's employment, though neither really truly means it.
Archie: “I would have got drunk that evening if it hadn't been Sunday” (page 80).
“And how” is the only slang Fritz uses (page 82).
Wolfe owns a house in Egypt that he has never seen, given to him a little more than 10 years prior (page 84). This is mentioned again in The Red Box, In the Best Families, and I'm sure others.
Wolfe: “Mr. Goodwin is a man of discretion, common decency, and immeasurable valor” (page 96).
In chapter 9, Archie records all of his questioning in his notebook; in later books, the notebook plays a much smaller part, as Archie is able to rely on his memory alone to be able to recite conversations back to Wolfe verbatim.
“Wolfe always thought he had a handkerchief in the breast pocket of his coat but rarely did, so I went to a drawer where I kept a stack for him and got one out and handed it to him" (page 162).
Re: Wolfe's refusal to leave his house: "But Wolfe had once found out that I had told a man he was infirm, and I didn't want that to happen again" (page 183).
"He had only one drawer in his desk, a wide shallow one in the middle, and since he had begun having his beer in bottles instead of brought up from the basement in a pitcher, he had formed the habit, every time he opened a bottle, of pulling the drawer out and dropping the bottle cap in there" (page 185).
Archie has his own shorthand (which he can covertly use while puttering around his desk looking like he's not), but again, relying on written notes rather than memory (page 186).
Nero Wolfe on religion: “I refrain from contributing to certain Christian causes because I think that no man should be saved by coercion” (page 189).
Wolfe’s mother lives in Budapest and receives remittance from Wolfe monthly (page 191).
Archie wears a panama hat (throughout).
Archie keeps referencing Saul Panzer's catchphrase, "lovin' babe!" (expanded to, "lovin' babe, what a feed!" on page 208). I think mentions of this catchphrase appear more than Saul himself does and is never mentioned again after this book.
Wolfe's handwriting is described as "fine" and "slender" (page 208).
Purley Stebbins makes his first (and only) appearance on page 209. In exchange for a drink, Stebbins accompanies Archie to the Times office for some info.
"There were times when Wolfe's awful self-assurance gave me a touch of a dash of a suggestion of a pain in the neck, but there were other times when it was as good as a flock of pure and beautiful maidens smoothing my brow" (page 227).
At one point, Archie is so pleased with the way things are developing that he finds himself singing in the roadster on the way back to the brownstone (page 232).
Re: Orrie Cather: "We hadn't been together on anything for over two years, and it seemed like old times to see him again twisting his thin lips and looking around for a place to squirt his tobacco juice" (page 244).
"...I didn't mind because it gave me a chance to doll up in the dressing gown Wolfe had given me a couple of years before which I hadn't had on more than about once" (250). This dressing gown shows back up in The Rubber Band (page 109).
Nero Wolfe can't whistle: "Wolfe was whistling; that is, his lips were rounded into the proper position and air was going in and out, but there was no sound. I loved seeing him do that; it never happened when anybody was there but me, not even Fritz. He told me once that it meant he was surrendering to his emotions" (page 266).
"Fritz came from the part of Switzerland where they talk French. He had a paper of his own every morning, but it was in French and it never seemed very likely to me that there was much in it" (page 272).
Wolfe wears two canary yellow shirts a day (page 273).
Wolfe winks at Archie on page 273; I've gotta say, there is a lot of winking in these early books. From Wolfe, Inspector Cramer, Saul Panzer...everybody's always winking at Archie.
Something that I find really interesting in general about Fer-de-Lance is the way that the cast of characters is so complete from the get-go (with the notable exception of Inspector Cramer, though he shows up in the next book). These characters might not have yet taken the shape that they later will, but they're all there, which is pretty impressive, especially given how brief some of these appearances are. Saul, Fred, Orrie, and Bill Gore all play small parts, Theodore Horstmann is there, even Purley Stebbins makes a (brief) appearance (though I can't say I could easily imagine him willingly taking Archie to a newspaper office so that he can ask some questions).
As a side note, I would love to read an annotated version of this book. I don't usually have issues with slang and other period-specific references in these old books, but this one has quite a few that remain out of my grasp (such as Saul's "lovin' babe!"). This issue disappears entirely from The League of Frightened Men on.
tabletop game where you fight duels to raise your eros rating and when you hit your threshold must declare love, vengeance, or suicide
no i will not elaborate
I have no stake on whether Eva is a deconstruction - as I haven't watched enough of the giant robot genre to know - but this is your period friendly reminder that 'it's a love letter to the genre' is just describing deconstruction. Pretty much all sincere deconstruction begins with deep appreciation.
'Born too late' guy but he's very specific about wishing he was born on the first of august 1975 specifically so he could turn 18 and immediately go see The Fugitive in cinemas in its first screenings
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
romaincrisis
