stringingwordsalong replied to your post “[[MOR] I just had a dude I went on a single date with in 1999 or...”
Ran this by gf, who agrees. This is only rom com if he goes on to say he desperately needs a date to a wedding and was going back through an old date book. Hit your name and went, is this creepy/bad idea? While socially oblivious friend gives him the double thumbs up so he goes ahead and does it. So, you know. Let us know if wacky hijinks occur that aren't an escalation of creepiness. If the latter happens, I vote we see if we can sic your old ghost on him.
I laughed so hard. TIME FOR THE GHOST TO EARN ITS RENT.
So, how’s everyone else’s Friday afternoon going?...
What the ever loving hell. What does bitchy lipstick even look like? Just tell them that’s the lipstick you wear when you have to bury people.
I told him, switching from perky Midwestern twang, to "someone's about to get glassed" blunt Scots as I went, that it wasn't the lipstick that was the problem, and didn't elaborate, continuing to stare him down when he laughed, at which point I started to count, and he fled.
I find ominously counting numbers can help. It makes them wonder what the fuck is about to happen and usually they don't stick around past three to find out.
Soooo, I feel like this is the obvious question... Steve or Tony?
Which then leads to the next obvious question: WHICH Steve or Tony :D
So the short answer boils down to Tony in MCU and 616, but for very different reasons because the writing and characters are very different.
cut for length and to spare dash discourse
I mean. In MCU, hands down, Tony. Though I have a lot of sympathy for Steve’s feelings, I don’t have a lot for some of his post TWS actions, and fan discourse/factionalism has hardened that in what I fully realize is an irrational way, but the bones of my reasons are still what they always were. I also think, though uneven, Tony’s been given more solid writing and development over the films, and Steve’s been largely shortchanged by writers and directors, especially post TFA.
I don’t always approve of Tony’s choices in the MCU, but I always believe that during and post-Afghanistan he’s trying his best as he understands it and that he is treading a line between his feelings, his demons and his responsibilities, and his responsibilities to others are something he takes seriously even if he cultivates a facade of rejecting that.
I *adore* TFA Steve, but I feel like his movies have largely all been the same basic arc, which does him no favors, and his character progression, if any, has largely been his rejecting his responsibility to others as the world lets him down --same arcs, but increasing arguments for unilateralism and lack of accountability to the people he putatively is protecting and it honestly freaks me out. It wouldn’t bother me if his lack of responsibility meant he was going to stop intervening (the actual offer he’s given in CW), but he actually argues that he should be able to intervene when and where he wants according to his personal judgment of when things are going south, with no outside oversight because he can’t be sure that oversight by 117 nations doesn’t have agendas, when the crux of this film is based on how a decision of his was based on a personal agenda). Basically Steve wants to be able to point the most powerful weapons in the world whereever he wants and expects the world to just trust *his* motives and his judgments, when they are the ones who will bear the costs--while he tells them that he will trust no one else’s. That’s a lack in reciprocity which I think is only tolerable in fandom bc of personal investment in the character. Any of us as civilians in that world... could we really accept that? Particularly if we weren’t American?
Much as in 616, once the genre takes seriously the concept of vigilantism and superheroes in an international and legal aspect, Steve’s arguments make it impossible for me to identify with him, even though I feel for him and his obvious suffering. I guess how I’d explain it is that as the arc goes, neither Steve nor Tony are perfect or like authority but Tony believes that in order to be responsible to the people they’re protecting, they have to accept some limitations placed on them by an imperfect but the only available body of people who represent their interests and Steve ... basically says since that body is imperfect he’ll decide what people need whether or not they like it or want it because ‘our hands are the best’ for deciding how the Avengers’ power is deployed and that just. As a political argument, I just can’t and it colors my sense of Steve and casts a shadow on everything he says and does post TWS for me.
In 616, I love both of my boys, but again, I identify much more strongly with Tony, both in his flaws and his struggles. But again, I think Tony is given much more frequent opportunities for character nuance, if inconsistently maintained, up until about vol 4 (after which point, I honestly largely wash my hands of it all), whereas Steve has great moments but many writers tend to write him very flatly, and give more nuanced moments to his companions.
Idk-I think a lot of Cap writers want us to respect/look up to/worship Steve more than know or empathize with him, and that’s a burden Tony to some extent doesn’t carry because while he’s presented from the beginning as a sort of capitalist fantasy of wealth and glamor, in the first panels, it’s revealed to be a false fantasy which hides a reality of tragedy (inviting empathy that his peers won’t know to share bc of his image).
I don’t know if I am explaining this right, but from the beginning, Tony’s setup in 616 invites the readers in on the secret that Tony’s good fortune is largely a facade which enables his heroism but keeps it from being recognized and also keeps people from really knowing him like the reader does.
Somewhat in a parallel fashion, Steve’s status as an icon and a symbol as well as a man keeps other characters somewhat at a remove through idolization of CAPTAIN AMERICA and keeps them from treating him fully as Steve, which isolates him in many ways as much if not more than his ‘man out of time’ status.
Both of them are in pain for structurally similar reasons, but I’d argue that the narrative framing invites a different kind of reader response, and also I think the *writers* to different degrees treat them differently as well.
Both Tony and Steve grapple with the relationship between their civilian and superhero identities and how the relative authenticity of each plays into the other, but I feel like the writers of CA have more of a tendency to conflate CAPTAIN AMERICA the icon with Steve Rogers/the character/Cap at times, and to also use him as a ventriloquist’s dummy for their own moralizing/viewpoints because of the weight of his moral status in the universe–which, again, can make it harder for the reader to identify rather than to idolize–and it plays out really unfortunately when writers appear clueless about Steve’s privilege, or wade into social discourse which ages very poorly.
Tony doesn’t carry that particular extra layer of baggage, so, at least for me, it’s easier to identify with him.
@nikexiphos @stringingwordsalong
I realized later it’s even better than that– The kitchen has no outlets that aren’t above the counter so instead I’m going to have to run around 30 feet of cord between the coaxial and an extension cord between my bedroom and the jack which is above the door at the end of the hallway so it’s actually gonna have to go over the door frame down the hall around the corner into my bedroom past the closet around another corner and up to the closest outlet which is approximately 30 feet away. All of the appropriate electronics have been purchased and an unrelated mallet has also been purchased so that I can beat on other furniture. The upshot of this is that at the earliest I will not have Internet until Friday other than my phone.
@stringingwordsalong replied to your post “The only weird or scary thing about my twin is how he got to be a...”
My dad has an identical twin and I think they would have qualified as scary as kids just for their penchant of trouble making. Like, blowing holes in coffee tables sort of trouble making. Or shooting fireworks at navy ships.
omg. Yeah, we didn’t have any of that. We did have a shared language that no one else knew, so we didn’t talk to other people until later than usual. And apparently we didn’t have “terrible 2s” because we entertained each other.
He was a surprise baby bc it was the 70s and you didn’t do ultrasounds unless it was an emergency. So he was an 8 minute pregnancy, according to my mother. SURPRISE. Have two premie VERY underweight children!
@stringingwordsalong replied to your post: @kettish replied to your post “Soon, my desire...
… I didn’t realize you had a sideblog for your cookies and it suddenly hit me as I was scrolling that I started following you because of the Jareth cookie. (Also, my phone want a to autocorrect Jareth into safety and I don’t even know what to do with that.) Anyways, yay cookies! XD
Ha! I do, and omg, let us just reflect that the Jareth cookie was ...4 states ago! Thank you for sticking with me this long!
@stringingwordsalong replied to your post “I have had A DAY. I forgot my wallet at home. got hit on at work and...”
I admit to being pretty curious how the olive oil scene happened.
Heat expansion. I had a large tin of oil, and it was on the top of the oven, so when I baked a thing it apparently expanded the metal so that the seals were very slightly breached and it leaked, but apparently contracted when the oven closed, so after I cleaned the mess, and checked the oil, there didn’t appear to be a leak, it didn’t continue to leak. The next time I baked, I noticed a slight leak coming from it.
The floor ... the only thing I can figure is that the floor isn’t even, the oil fell through the oven and traveled along the grout grooves to the middle of the kitchen to puddle in a low spot? And ... the trail absorbed into the floor? idk but I’m going with it.
@stringingwordsalong replied to your photo “Apparently I never get rid of anything because I just found the rest...”
I love all the X-Files, my college dorm was decorated in an obscene amount of faeries and dragons.
Ahhhh that sounds like loads of fun! My roomie and I pretty much wallpapered our dorm with 85% X-Files. In retrospect, guests probably were a bit claustrophobic, but we loved it.
