#Tom Hanks age

[skapediem]

bidididibumbum to san fernandooo

[leohttbriar]

tagged by @unit3947 <3

tagging: @youandthemountains @bobakick @carlandrea @sopranoentravesti @firstroseofspring @coralreeferband

[wemlygust]

Sometimes I see someone complain about ao3 comments being hyperbolic and internally I'm like NO YOU DOn't GET IT I REALLY JUST LOVE IT THAT MUCH.

At the same time, I was reading steam reviews for something earlier today, and the most effusively praiseful ones weren't convincing at all. They just came off as pretentious and melodramatic. Supposedly, melodrama happens when the drama hasn't had enough set up and doesn't feel earned. Say, take the ending of that one movie about the guy marooned with a volleyball. (Spoilers for said movie I am currently forgetting the name of.) If you saw the scene at the end where he loaes the volleyball (Wilson?) and freaks out and cries, without first seeing the rest of the movie, it'd feel ridiculous. But with context, the character's pain makes sense, so it's dramatic instead of melodramatic. The point I'm trying to get to here is: a steam review inherently can't give me the context necessary to make super emotional praise sound appropriately dramatic, so instead they end up sounding melodramatic, even though they are probably sincere. And with ao3 comments, I'm sure sometimes people read the super enthusiastic comments and - unable to judge tone or emotion through text without a level of ambiguity - imagine them being written by a stone-faced friend. And if they didn't get that invested in the story themselves, effectively they don't have the context to understand that emotion without dismissing it as overblown. Like, if I read the 5 star reviews of books I HATE, it is... aggravating. They're all absurd and seemingly nonsensical and HOW CAN YOU LIKE THIS???!! But I think they probably do. I just can't relate. Hyperbole is a thing, too, I just think people are too quick to assume something is hyperbole when it might not be, sometimes. This is way more than I meant to write and kinda disorganized but whatever. TLDR: if I write a gushy comment on your fic, I mean it. I may be overlooking some flaws, I still might not think it is perfect, because most things aren't. But I'm not like. Just trying to butter you up for more fics. And if I was, it would be because I wanted more fice, which would mean I liked your fics. TLDR TLDR: believe people when they compliment you?

[aiiaiiiyo]

[bisexualchrissycunningham]

Why didn't anybody on this website warn me that You've Got Mail is a horror show dressed up in the aesthetics of a charming romcom?? This Tom Hanks-shaped motherfucker just treats her like garbage, is legit just heartless capitalism personified, knowingly and enthusiastically destroys her livelihood and never expresses regret, and then spends months lying to and manipulating her into falling in love with him???

I have nostalgia-coloured glasses on when it comes to still loving Love, Actually but I understand what's wrong with it.. is that what's going on with the love for THIS movie?! Cause Jesus Christ.

[shoujothoughts]

A Man Called Otto -- Short Report (Film)

Every Saturday at 1:00 PM, Otto and Sonya visited a little café in town and ate eclairs, which were messy but very tasty. At 2 o’clock, they left. Once home, Otto washed the car, and Sonya graded papers, cooked, and read the rest of the day. “What sorts of books did Sonya read?” asks Marisol. Otto scoffs, gruff but affectionate. Otto says that he had tried to read her books once upon a time, but…

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

the girl next door 26

Warnings: this fic will include elements, some dark, such as age gap, manipulation, chronic illness, noncon/dubcon, coercion, and other untagged triggers. Please take this into account before proceeding. It is up to curate your online consumption safely.

Summary: A new neighbour moves in and upends your already disarrayed life.

Author’s Note: Please feel free to leave some feedback, reblog, and jump into my asks. I’m always happy to discuss with you and riff on idea. As always, you are cherished and adored! Stay safe, be kind, and treat yourself.

This lewk but silverfox

You fall asleep somewhere between the Humphrey Bogart classic and the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romcom. It all blends together inside your eyelids as the world glazes over behind the wall of your subconscious. The black-and-white and vibrant technicolor merge and storm around the images of reality; a courthouse, the smell of grass, and a constricting pressure around your middle. 

A rippling sensation spreads down your thigh as you slowly rouse from sleep. The worn couch cushions have you stiff as you lay on your side, one leg extended as warmth rests just above your knee. Your eyes slit as the TV continues to play, an early morning news show localised to another district. You yawn and scratch your ear as the world comes into focus. 

You don’t remember laying down. You only know one moment you were nestled into the corner and the next, you’re waking up like this. You fell another tickle on your leg and look down at the weight there. Steve’s hand lays on your thigh carelessly as his head hangs back over the back of the couch, his knees wide as his body is slack. He snores up at the ceiling, his other hand on your ankle. 

You turn slowly, careful not to disturb him as you pull your leg away from him. He wakes anyway, his head jerking up as he latches onto your calf, squeezing before he lets you go, and grumbles as he rubs his cheeks. He shakes his head. 

“Mm, oh, morning already,” he mutters as he leans forward, reaching back to touch his lower back, “umph,” he leans against the armrest, “good new, at least, my couch is a lot comfier.” 

He chortles and slides to the edge of the cushion. His jaw tenses before he stands, stretching his legs straight under him as he shifts from one foot to the other. He angles so you can only see his back as he rolls his shoulders. He tugs at the front of his pajamas then glances back at you. 

“Sweetie, you okay?” He asks. 

You nod as you hug your knees and stare down at the couch. The old floral pattern is worn out and you can feel the springs poking up. Still, the idea of getting rid of it is unsettling. 

“This was my grandma’s couch,” you murmur. 

“Aw, I know, sweetie, sorry, I didn’t mean--” he nears and sits back down, dragging his knuckle up your pant leg, toying with the fabric as he watches you, “you must’ve loved her, huh?” 

“I... yeah,” you shrug. 

“If you wanna keep it, how about we put it in your room?” 

“What?” you tilt your head, “my room?” 

“Well, yeah, you can take the guest room. Makes sense, right? Lots more room there. We’ll have to toss a few things but we’ll make it work. And you can put your art stuff in the studio, I don’t mind sharing.” 

“Mm, okay, I guess, I...” you look down at the couch then at him. “You can get rid of it.” 

“Hm?” 

“The couch,” you turn, slipping away from him. “It’s old.” 

“If it means something to you.” 

“Not really,” you stand and shuffle away from him. “I’m going to get dressed.” 

“Right, uh, yeah,” the coach groans beneath him as he stands again, “I’ll check on mom.” 

There’s stolid silence lingering between you, as if he expects a response. You just continue on to the doorway and he clears his throat.  

“Got some running around to do today, calls to make,” he says, “gotta get at em.” 

You nod and hum but offer him nothing else. You’re tired and disoriented by the disjointed night. Your head is brittle from the lack of sleep and the uncomfortably thin couch cushions. 

“Make sure you come and have breakfast with us, huh? I’ll be going into town soon to sort out the bill with hospital and ask about nursing options.” 

“Okay,” you utter and turn down the hallway. 

It’s a lot. You don’t think you could deal with it alone. It almost makes you thankful for all of it, yet it all still feels very strange. 

🏠

You offer to clean up after breakfast as Steve gets ready to leave and your mom reclines on the sectional in the front room. She looks out of it, more than you’ve ever seen her. She was quiet as you ate and looked sickened by each bite. She almost begged Steve to let her lay down. 

As Steve grabs his keys, he seems reluctant to leave. It’s as if he wants you to say something, to do something, but you can’t figure out his expectations. That will be a new worry. No longer do you have to keep your mother happy, but her husband will be just another task. 

The front door closes as you scrub and rinse. You forego the dishwasher and make sure to handwash each dish, taking your time if only to keep busy. You dry up and stack the plates away, put the glasses in neat rows, and sort out the utensils. 

You go to check on your mom. Her eyes are closed and her hand is on her chest. She looks so still you can’t even see her breathing. You cross the room and hover just on the other side of the arm rest, staring at her. Your heart patters nervously as you stare at her chest. 

“What do you want?” She growls and opens a single eyelid. 

“N-nothing, just... checking on you. You... want a coffee?” You offer, hoping to appease her with a dose of caffeine. 

“Should,” she yawns and frames her forehead with her thumb and fingers, leaning against the side of the couch, “goddamn, I’m so tired.” 

You briskly return to the kitchen. You use what grounds are left over in the fancy grinder. You’ve never used one before and it kind of scares you. You measure them out and put the water on, waiting before the machine as you bob on your feet. 

When at last you have enough for a mug, you pour the coffee and add the cream as your mother likes it. As you come out, you hear her snoring. Her arm is slung over her face as her mouth hangs open and her breath catches in her throat. You know better than to wake her so you leave the cup on the coffee table and retreat. 

You’re too restless to stay inside. This isn’t your home. No matter how Steve tries to convince you, you just can’t get used to the idea. He might be nice but it just doesn’t feel right. It’s all so fast. Too fast. 

You sit on the top step and stare out at the street. You cup your chin and watch the sky. The clouds are wispy and curl into each other as the sun blazes down. Your vision blurs as the intense lights causes your eyes to water and you stare into the endless above. 

You glance over at your mom’s house. You want to run over and hide away in your room. You can’t. You have to be there for mom at least until Steve comes back. 

As figure strolls up along the walk and your eyes flick up. You brace yourself for the disproving glare of an HOA minion but instead, find a friendly face. Peter smiles as he stops in front of your mom’s gate and puts his hand on the door. He sees you and waves. 

“Hey, what’re you doing over there?” He asks as he jiggles the gate then strides towards Steve’s house. 

“Um...” you drone and shrug, standing as he nears the edge of Steve’s lawn. You meet him at the low gate and stop across from him, “I sort of... I think I live here now.” 

“You think? Sort of?” He muses. 

“Yeah, uh, my mom... got married?” 

“You don’t sound so sure about that,” he chuckles. “Everything okay?” 

You turn your lips downward and turn out your hands, “sure.” 

“Wow, I’m convinced,” he says dryly. 

“Sorry, I--” 

The toot of a car horn interrupts you and Peter turns to watch as Steve pulls into the drive. Your chest thumps wildly. You’re not doing anything wrong but you feel like you are. 

He gets out and puts a hand up. He comes around the corner of the fence and approaches Peter, “hey, kiddo, you making friends?” 

Steve’s eyes are focused on Peter even as he speaks to you. The shorter, younger man faces him and offers a hand, “hello, sir, I’m Peter. Old friend.” 

“Oh?” Steve’s eyes scale up and down Peter’s figure, “she never mentioned.” 

“Well, just moved back to the neighbourhood, you know?” Peter grins, his eyes twinkling as if something’s funny. Steve peers between the two of you.  

“Mm, that’s nice,” Steve shakes his hand and you see his knuckles pale as he shakes it firmly, “Steve.” 

“New dad, got it,” Peter chirps and the older man’s cheek ticks. 

“Mm,” he squints as his square jaw clenches, “well, Pete,” he nearly spits, “her mom’s not doing too well so she’s a bit busy. Aren’t you, kiddo?” 

He looks at you and you look at Peter. You nod and look away guiltily, “yeah.” 

“Well then, Pete,” Steve releases Peter’s hand and claps his shoulder, “think you should be on your way.” 

“Right,” Peter nods and turns to you, “sorry to hear about your mom. Hope she feels better. See ya round.” He puts up three fingers in a half-wave, “see ya, Steve.” 

He steps past Steve, brushing close as he does, and marches off with a spring in his step. The older man turns to glare after him. You don’t know why he’s so bothered, Peter’s nice enough. Well, maybe Peter isn’t the issue. 

“Sorry, mom’s sleeping so I came out here--” 

“Come on,” he interjects as he lets himself through the gate, “did you give her her meds?” 

You frown as you scurry ahead of him. You didn’t. You thought he had. Oh no. 

[tinydeskwriter]

Actress!y/n Talking About Harry in Interviews Over the Years (2014-2017)

A/n: before committing into writing 2014 til 2023 I want to see you guys opinion, and I just watched a bunch of interviews to get ideas from. Just as a career background for the reader: She’s a former Disney Channel star, from the Miley, Selena, Demi, Jonas Brothers generation, she went into Hunger Games to solidify herself, before going for more Award bait movies and a musical career. She won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2016 and Best Actress in 2017, this has happened before once at the Academy Awards, Tom Hanks if I am not mistaken.

word count: 2964

The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Oct, 2014:

“And we are back with Y/n Y/l/n.” Ellen said to the audience before turning back to the young artist sitting in her couch. “So, you’re single…”

The people cheered in the audience.

“I like how you say this and it isn’t even a question.”Y/n joked looking a the people in the audience, making everyone laugh, including the presenter, who laughed a little embarrassed by the misstep. “But, yeah, I’am single and ready to mingle.”

“So just to clear up rumours: you aren’t hooking up with your hunk of a co-star?”the blonde joked, keeping up with the young woman sarcasm and good humor. 

“Which one? You have to be specific here, I literally have a lot of male co-star, but as a personal rule, I don’t date them… or hook up.” The young actress clarified, looking at Ellen and them the public. “But I specially don’t hook up with guys in relationships, that’s really trash person behavior.”The girl’s response was applauded by the women in the audience. “Thank you, thank you,”She said seriously, signaling them to calm down, “don’t go applauding me for not doing something I wouldn’t want done to me.”

Which generated a new wave of applause.

“Now, calm down guys, we have a game to play” Ellen asked the audience, waiting for the noise in the studio to subside before turning to the guest in the couch, “So, you’re single, and ready to mingle, so we’re going to play a game, so I can get to know your type, and perhaps help you find love, and end your loneliness.” The presenter said looking at Y/n while ‘Who’d You Rather?’ appeared on the back screen. “It’s a little game of Who’d You Rather? We are going to put two pictures in the screen and you’re going to choose one guy over the other.”

“O-kay.”the young actress agreed, looking to the screen.

“Perfect, let’s start with Nick Jonas or Harry Styles?”The host asked as pictures of the two man showed up in the screen.

Y/n looks pointedly at Ellen, who’s hiding a little smile while looking straight to the young artist.

“I’ve been really enjoying Nick Jonas’s music.” The actress said admiring the picture of he two men on screen. “‘Chains’ is just so sexy, and ‘Jealous’ is kinda of sexy and funny, I totally see his appeal…”

“I am feeling a ‘but’ coming.”Ellen interrupted her.

Y/n paused for a moment amid the crowd cheering, laughing at they enthusiasm. “But, I don’t know Nick Jonas, and I kinda of know Mr.Styles…”The crowd went crazy with her declaring to know the One Direction singer. “Harry is such a nice guy, so very polite.”

“So, Harry Styles, because he’s polite?”Ellen asked her with that knowing smile.

Y/n just hided her face with one hand, she knew the blonde was doing that on purpose, probably with her boyfriend’s blessing to torture her in national television.

She just nodded in agreement without taking her face off her hand.

“Okay, nice, so Harry Styles or Michael B Jordan?”Ellen asked, seeming to be having the time of her life.

Y/n raised her face, looking at the two pictures.

“I mean…”The young woman put a finger in her lower lip, arching her eyebrow towards the audience. “Gosh, this is tough, but I am nothing if not constant, so Styles.��

“Harry Styles or Zac Efron?”

“I don’t feel like Zac is age appropriated for me, so I will keep Harry.”She knew that Harry was probably having a lot of fun in her dressing room.

“You know this is only a pretend game, right?”The presenter asked, making even Y/n break character. “Now, Harry Styles or Bruno Mars?”

“Bruno is a very talented man, but I will keep my answer, I feel like he’s a little older for me, different phases, while Harry and I are around the same age, so, I am going with Harry.”She shrugged.

“Harry Styles or John Meyer?” Ellen asked.

“Give me some Harry Styles.” She didn’t even had to ponder her answer, the whole world probably knew already that John Meyer was a walking red-flag.

“Harry Styles or Jake Gyllenhaal?”

“Jake is hot, I had a major crush a few years back, but that had been said, I got over it, so, Styles.”The young woman said without taking her eyes off the hem of her Oscar de la Renta dress.

“Harry Styles or Calvin Harris?”

“You know, I am starting to think that you took those guys from a Taylor Swift’s exes list.” The actress commented, making the audience go wild as Ellen laughed. “That said, Calvin Harris is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, so I kinda of feel obligated to choose Mr.Styles.”

“I’s not because you want to choose Harry…”Y/n hated he cynical smile in Ellen’s face.

“Noooo-no-noo-no.” The actress denied hilariously. “I’am a respectful girl, I don’t want other girl’s man, and that’s why I’am keeping Harry Styles.”

“Perfect.” Ellen said still smiling, “Yeah, Harry Styles or Jared Leto?”

“Wouldn’t it be fun, if I came the whole game with Harry just to switch him for Jared Leto?”She asked, knowing the uproar it would cause. “Jared is so handsome, so very talented, he’s vegan… but like, he’s in his forties, kinda of my mom’s age, it would be weird, so let’s keep Harry.”Not even Ellen was been able to keep a straight face anymore. “I mean, we came all this way, I feel like settling for Harry.”

“I think you’re one of the few twenty-years old that would ever say that.” Ellen said, making Y/n laugh, the two looked at the screen expecting the next guy, only to have Harry photo single out in the middle of the screen. “Looks like we have a winner, Mr. Harry Styles, wouldn’t it be funny if he was backstage?”

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Nov, 2015

“You’ve had quite the year, you released a album, that it’s absolutely amazing and is at the top of every chart, and you starred in three fantastic movies this year: Cinderella, Carol and The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part II, which by the way is premiering tomorrow…” Jimmy Fallon said to the cheering of the audience.

“Yeah, feels like the end of a era.” Y/n said with a bright smile, crossing her legs and resting one elbow on the support of the armchair.

“This is the last installment in the franchise, it must be quite a special premiere,” Jimmy said. “early this year, during Cinderella’s London premiere you had a very special guest at the red carpet with you, are you bringing him again for this premiere, or that was a one time only thing? Are you guys still friends?” He joked using the term the actress herself had used before when referring to hers and Harry’s relationship.

The actress blushed a little, a shy smile on her face as the audience cheered.

“We’re still great friends, the closest…” the young woman said full of innuendos as Jimmy smiled wildly. “You know, I actually didn’t know he was coming to the Cinderella UK premiere till I was ready to leave the hotel.” She told he host. “He was supposed to be on a plane to South Africa, where he had a show the very next day.”

“He surprised you?” Jimmy asked, clearly pleased that the private young actress was opening up, for the very first time, about her very private relationship at his show. “And for those in the audience who doesn’t know, ‘he’ is the One Direction’s heartthrob, Harry Styles.”

The female in the audience went wild to the mere mention of his name.

“He did, I had invited him, because we were in that point of our relationship where we decided to be less secretive, so I was attending every show of his that my schedule allowed, trying to be a supportive girlfriend.” She explained, smiling when thinking about her handsome boyfriend. “At that point so far, his tour schedule hadn’t allowed him to go to my premieres, and then he surprised me, he was waiting for me inside the car, my sister slash assistant helped him.” The audience once again went crazy.

“Is he coming with you tomorrow?”

“He is, he had  last minute suit fitting today, it’s so amazing to be able to bring him with me,”Y/n admitted with a smile. “since the band went in a break, we’ve been able to spend so much time together, no more tour for a while.”

“How long have you guys been together? If you don’t mind me asking?” Jimmy was leaning slightly over the table, his body directed towards her.

“Sometime.”She replied vaguely, with a mysterious smile. “Longer than most people imagine, thats for sure.”

The Jimmy Kimmel Live!, March, 2016.

“Congrats on a very successful Award Season, I think you kind of won every award out there, you won the Academy Award of Best Supportive Actress for Carol, the Golden Globes, Cannes back in May, you just won five Grammy’s for your first album, Y/n Y/l/n I” The host said as soon as they’re both seated. “And, last but not least, congratulations on your marriage.” He gave emphases to the word ‘marriage’. 

In what became a viral moment, Y/n Y/l/n had thanked her husband ‘H’ for being ‘just the most supportive and amazing hubby’

“When did you guys get married?”Kimmel asked. “We see each other all the time, I feel like this is the kind of thing you tell your neighbor.” Jimmy said with a smile. “Am I getting a new neighbor? Are you guys moving out…?Honestly I am kind of hurt I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

“Thank you.” Y/n said with a polite. “So, we got married back in December, we are going to England for Christmas with his family, we had got engaged in France during a couple’s vacay, and we didn’t want to wait,” She told him. “The only people there were our parents and sisters, but we’re planning a bigger ceremony sometime this year or the next.”She clarified.

“Will I be invited?”The host asked.

“For sure, you know I adore you, you’re one of my favorite neighbors.” Y/n agreed. 

And it wasn’t as if she was going to say ‘no’ in national television. 

“I know this is something your going to be asked about a lot,” Kimmel continued. “Did you change your last name? Because I feel like Styles is a cool name to have.”

“I did,” She admitted as the audience went wild. “Legally I am Mrs. Harry Styles, but professionally I am still going to be Y/n Y/l/n.”

The Ellen DeGeneres’s Show, Dec, 2016.

“Congratulations.” Ellen said pointing at her belly. “Last time you’re on the show you had just got married, and won a Academy Award for Carol, I wasn’t able to attend your wedding, because you guys decided to get married in Italy…”

“But I send you and Portia your gift basket.” Y/n interrupted, smiling at the memory of their idyllic wedding at their Italian villa back in May.

“And we loved it, thank you, it was very nice of you and Harry.” The host said as a picture of the basket was shown on the screen behind them, Y/n handwritten note for all to see. “So, you won a Oscar, you won five Grammys, you got married, La La Land went amazing in Cannes, and now your having a little baby, I remember the first time you told me about you and Harry, back in 2014, you’re here for a interview about The Hunger Games and he tagged along…”

“You made me play ‘Who’d You Rather?’ and he was in the dressing room having the time of his life…”

“Yeah, well, I was having fun too.” Ellen admitted making the audience laugh. “Back then it was all very secretive, you’re at the beginning of your relationship, so I didn’t ask you how you guys met, but Harry was here later with 1D, and he didn’t get into much detail, but he said you guys were set up on a blind date.”

“Hold up.”Y/n raised her hand. “Did he actually said ‘WE’? Because recollections may vary.” The actress said with humor. “IF memory serves me right, I was basically ambushed into a blind date with him, he actually ASKED our mutual friend to set us up after he found out she knew me, and then my sister in law waited until after we announced we are having a baby to tell me that Harry had a crush on me since 2006, and he basically had a poster of Rosie Lewis, my Disney Channel character, on his childhood bedroom and…”The audience starts to laugh. “Hold on guys, and apparently he told Gem, my sister in law: you don’t believe me now, but we are soul mates, one day I am going to marry that girl.” 

“And you didn’t run for the hill? It’s kinda of creepy.” Ellen said with a funny face that made people laugh.

“It’s…”The actress seemed a little at loss of word in how o defend her husband, but kept a amused smile on her face. “I think is kind of cute, is a little creepy, sure, but it’s nice to know he was crazy about me since forever and that I was his celebrity crush.” She said to the ‘awn’ of the audience. “I mean, I always thought that when it comes to Harry it would be some thirty-something year old cougar.”

 The Late Late Night Show with James Corden, Aug, 2017

 “Oh, My Gosh! This is absolutely disgusting.” Y/n said looking at all the smelly disgusting food in front of her. 

“I know!”James said in pure joy. “You go first. To eat, I’m going to give you a little cod sperm.” He turned the table until he dish was in front of he, he took the card with the questions and laugh. “Y/n, your husband, Harry Styles, was part of one of the world’s biggest boybands, One Direction, list the boys from your favorite to your least favorite, vocally.”

Y/n was silent for a second, only looking at James with half-closed eyes, she speared the cod fish sperm with her fork, lifting i in the air, causing the audience to react.

“There is no way I am eating this.” The artist said, putting it down, she rests her elbows on the table and intertwined her fingers. “I don’t think it is really hard to answer this.” She rested her chin on her fingers, looking defiantly at a shocked James. “My question is: to rank the five boys or minus Zayn?”

“Let’s do it minus Zayn.”The host said. “Are you really going to answer it?”

“I am not eating it. So… H first, I feel that he was the one with the strongest vocals, Niall, because he has this really lovely voice, Liam and then Louis.” She said without getting into detail about the last two.

#

“I’am giving you the bull penis now.” Said James. “Y/n, rank those Harry Styles hair style’s”

The man proceeded to show her three pictures, one of 2011 baby!Harry, in all his preppy glory and curls, 

2015 longhair!Harry and 2017 Dunkirk!Harry.

“I mean…”The artist sighed. “ I love him, he’s my husband, I honestly think he is hot no mater what.” The actress clarified. “That being said, long-hair!Harry was the H I started to date back in 2014, he looked like  such a bad boy but he was actually a pretty shy guy, so soft and caring, I loved that hair, that hair makes me feel things, so I will say that this one is my favorite.”

“I honestly found it disturbing to hear you speaking of him like that.”James said seriously, making the audience laugh. 

“Shush James, this is a serious matter,” Y/n jokingly reprimanded her husband’s friend. “Short hair Harry, which is his Dunkirk haircut by the way, is also very hot, he’s in a suits phase now, with all those silk shirts, and it’s just so very ‘daddy’ you know,” The young woman said admiring her husband’s picture.  “He’s also just so lucky to no longer have that long hair, because Atticus is just in that phase that he is happy to pull things.” She laughed seeing James shaking his head with eyes closed as the audience cheered.

“I honestly will never be able to erase you calling Harry ‘daddy’”

“But he is, we have a son together James, I wasn’t even saying it in a sex tone, so get over it, Harry is a daddy, I call him daddy all the time,” She picked the picture of her husband, showing it to James, “just look at him, he’s such a DILF, who wouldn’t want to call him daddy?” The audience went wild.

The host hided his face behind baby!Harry picture.

“Y/n I don’t need the specifics, just give us the ranking.”

“I don’t want to hurt my husbands feelings about his hair choices, you put yourself in this situation James, you said: do you want to play a really fun game?”Y/n said with a mischievous smile. “It isn’t that funny anymore is it?”She laughs. “Ok, let’s move on. So, baby!harry, he looks cute, I think 2011 Y/n would totally have a crush on him too.”

“So your ranking is 2015 long-hair, 2017 short-hair and baby!Harry?”asked James.

“Yeah.”Y/n agreed, “I honestly would fu** him in all those hairstyles, he’s just so dreamy, you know?”

PART TWO

[linkspooky]

Dr. Venture vs. Enji Todoroki: How to Write Bad Dads

This is a post comparing two shows about two abusive dads who are the main characters instead of their children. My Hero Academia is a Shonen jump manga that takes inspiration from American comics and shonen manga. Whereas The Venture Bros is an adult swim cartoon that started out as a parody of Johnny Quest, and grew into a seven season long character study of former child star Rusty Venture.

The idea for this post came from the fact that I've noticed a common hot take from MHA fans that Endeavor's redemption arc is bad because it's wrong to make an abuser the main character.

I've always disagreed, and used The Venture Bros as an example of a show where making an abuser the main character works. Rusty is actually a well-liked character in the venture bros fandom. So my question is if these characters are both abusers why is one of them generally accepted and the other one so controversial?

Before we begin I want to say this is a story with fictional characters. Don't bring real life into the equation. We are doing literary criticism here and only talking about the events that happen in the story.

Anyway, My Hero Academia and The Venture Bros seem like the weirdest shows to compare but they are actually pretty similar. They are both comic book shows that are commentating on the comics they're inspired from.

What My Hero Academia is to Spiderman and Dragonball Z, Venture Bros is to Tom Swift Novels, the Hardy Boys, and old Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. They also make the decision to focus on the characters as people rather than heroes. They are telling the stories of real people that exist in a world overflowing with both heroes and villains.

1. Meet the Venture Brothers

If you've heard of the Venture Bros then you've probably heard of the premise that it's an adult parody of Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest for those of you who have a life and therefore haven't seen every old Hanna-Barbera Cartoon like I have is a show where eleven year old Johnny Quest travels around the world with his super scientist father Dr. Benton C. Quest and their bodyguard Race Bannon, going on adventures in Jungle Ruins or fighting villains.

In the Venture Bros the main character Dr. Thaddeus Venture is an emotionally abusive and neglectful father who constantly exposes his sons to danger in his trips around the world. Their bodyguard Brock Samson is a ultra violent and is basically a thirteen year old's idea of what a cool manly man is. The titular Venture Bros, Hank and Dean Venture are sheltered children who are constantly being chased around by men in costumes trying to kill them.

So the basic premise of the show lies in it's dark deconstruction of shows like Hardy Boys, Johnny Quest, these Tom Swift-esque stories where young boys go on adventures by showing the real dangers that children would be exposed to in that kind of life.

Between Johnny Quest, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, what is up with these pie-eyed youths chasing pirates and international diamond thieves and stuff like that? They would get their throats cut the minute that stumbled upon a hideout. And that would be the gag. - ART AND MAKING OF THE VENTURE BROS.

The show does explore Hank and Dean's trauma, but despite the title of the show they are not the main characters. The protagonist is Doctor Thaddeus Venture who himself is other victim of the Boy Adventuring Lifestyle.

Dr. Venture: "Who was, for 43 years, the only son of Dr. Jonas Venture? Who, from the ages of 3 to 17 accompanied him on hundreds of adventures the chilling memories of which rouse him from sleep in a cold sweat to this day?"

Thaddeus used to travel around the world with his father the super scientist Dr. Jonas Venture who was a far more successful super scientist and hero. He's the former star of the "Rusty Venture Show" a cartoon based off of his travels with his father.

Jonas who continually neglected and gaslit him throughout his childhood to the point of not allowing him to go to therapy. He gaslit him so hard there's a scene where he literally pretends to be Rusty's therapist to tell his son to stop complaining.

Rusty: "So I don't know. Sometimes I wish I could just be a normal kid and go out and play with kids my own age and stuff. The only people I get to hang out with are grown ups. The only time I get to leave the compound is to go someplace creepy, like the Bermuda triangle, and then I get kidnapped, by grown ups. And I'm not even sure I want to be a super scientist when I grow up anyway, but I feel all this pressure because of my fa-It feels weird telling you this stuff." Jonas: "Remember Rusty, in here I'm your doctor not your father. Now let's get back to it shall we. You were telling me how you're ungrateful for all the opportunities your father's given you and you blame me for all your problems."

Rusty is both a washed up child star, and a faiilure to his father's legacy. He never formed an identity outside of being the star of the Rusty Venture show or the son of Jonas Venture. He drags his kids all around the world on crazy super science adventures because that's what he knows.

The central premise of the Venture Bros is that Rusty is basically stuck and cannot meaningfully grow up into an adult and his own person, despite the fact he is now a single father trying to raise two sons. The central theme is about three generations of one family, and what it says about the complicated nature of family itself,

As Rusty is both the victim and the perpetrator of the abuse it makes sense he is the main character the story centers around because he's the central link between Jonas and the Twins.

The themes can be summarized in one line said towards the end of the show:

BEN "Just a watch. Tells the time in two time zones. That fourth hand there? Little date window? Those are called complications. Complications make a watch special. More complications the more value. Read the engraving Jonas put on the back there. Elige Tua. It's Latin for Choose your family. Blood doesn't make a family, love does. Choose your family and remember that complications make it special."

In other words it's a seven season long show on how family is complicated.

2. Keeping up with the Todorokis

My Hero Academia is about a lot of things, but the central premise is that in a society where he quirk you were born with can determine a lot about your life, one boy without a quirk sets out to prove that anyone can be a hero.

If Complciations make it special is the central theme of Venture Bros, then the central theme of My Hero Academia is two sentences. "All People are not created equal" and "Anyone can become someone's hero" both said at different points in the story. The story itself is about Deku's attempts to overcome the first statement, that he was not born equal but he deserves to be a hero as much as anyone else because he represents the true spirit of heroes. That heroes don't just show up to beat the big bad, a hero saves people.

The story isn't just about Deku though. We're not even going to talk about Deku in this post, but rather the Tritagonist Todoroki Shoto.

Todrooki is introduced as a foil to Deku someone who is born with an extremely powerful quirk, but who's been groomed from childhood to be a hero.

Shoto's father Enji Todoroki is All Might's ultimate rival. In the world of MHA hers are highly commercialized and ranked by popularity and achievements and Enji has been number two his entire life. He decided to conceive of an heir that could surpass All Might instead.

He purchased a wife with an ice quirk for an arranged marriage to selectively breed for a child with a fire and ice quirk. When Shoto was born he raised Shoto up as a hero, forcing him through grueling training sessions from a young age, and beating his wife when she tried to intervene for Shoto's sake.

That's a lot and I didn't even cover all of it. After this reveal of Shoto's backstory, Enji seems like he's only going to be a one note abuser to give Shoto a tragic backstory to angst over.

However, later on in the show Enji ifinally becomes the number one hero only to realize how empty his lifelong dream has been. He feels remorse for the family he destroyed in pursuit of that dream and starts wanting to make ammends. After this , Enji basically becomes the second most important character of the "Todoroki Family" arc. . A lot of focus is put on Enji's attempts at atonement to the point where some accuse him of stealing the spotlight from his victims.

These two families have a lot in common. They are basically families who are not allowed to have normal lives because the patriarch of the family is a costumed hero. The hero is also someone who is generally well-respected and is considered extremely successful in their chosen career, but are terrible to their family members. They are a hero to the world and a villain to their own family.

If there is a central premise to the Todoroki Family outside of MHA's analysis of what exactly makes a hero, it's this:

Todoroki Shoto: "As a hero this endeavor guy is pretty darn amazing. But it's just like Nasu said. I'm not ready to forgive you... for abusing mom. So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?"

The challenge is if Endeavor can choose his family over being a hero.

You can se the parallels in Venture Bros, as Rusty's main struggle is to try to be a father to his twin sons and help them grow up while at the same time struggling in this dangerous worlds of super science. Rusty is a super scientist constantly getting chased around by guys in costumes, but he's also a normal father trying to raise two sons into adulthood with basically no idea what he's doing because he doesn't have a frame of reference for how fathers are supposed to act or what a normal childhood would even look like.

The comic book super scientist, and the comic book hero are expected to act like real fathers to their sons.

However, as I said above in Rusty's case it's pretty uncontroversial that he is the main character of his story, whereas Enji starts fights within the fandom very time he appears onscreen.

Why is this exactly?

It's not because it's offensive to have an abuser be the main character, but rather how these characters are written and how well they fit into their stories. As I said Rusty is naturally the main character of his story because he's the central link in the chain of abuse, but should Enji be the main character of the Todorokis? Does he fit as well as Rusty?

3. Who's your Daddy?

So as stated above Enji and Rusty simultaneously exist in worlds where heroes exist and yet they are also normal people who are expected to provide for their families and raise their kids. They both exist in what is basically the marvel universe, though in the case of Venture Bros it's the Marvel Universe fused with old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Because of this world some of the things both Enji and Rusty do are things that have no real life parallels. For example Rusty once created a machine using the soul of a dead orphan as a power supply. You can't do that in real life so I'm not going to use that as an example.

Both of these stories are drawing on real life parallels of parental abuse I'm going to be talking about those to tell what kind of neglectful parent each is.

Rusty raised Hank and Dean Venture as a single parent with the assistance of their body guard Brock Samson. They live on the Venture Compound and only leave when Rusty needs to take a trip around the world. Obviously, there's not many real life examples of parents taking their kids into egypt to fight mummies.

However, Rusty's main flaw as a parent is how much he shelters his children not allowing them to make their own choices. They are homeschooled until they are eighteen and almost never allowed to leave their home unsupervised. Rusty could be compared to a helicopter parent that feels the need to micromanage every aspect of their child's lives, sheltering them so much they're unprepared for the real world.

Rusty is a weird combination of controlling and neglectful, because while he doesn't let either of his childre go to public school aor interact with kids their own age, he constantly exposes them to danger. He is often disinterested in his kid's lives and puts most of the burden of protecting them and raising them on his bodyguard Brock, while he chases after whatever super-science project is occupying him at the moment. He's neglectful to dangerous extents too considering they're always getting cahsed around by crazy men in costumes.

Also, he lets them die a lot.

Hank and Dean have died several times over, only to be replaced by clones that Rusty grew in a lab with all the same memories. Once again there's no real life parallel to this, but it's interesting in the context of the show itself.

How do these children survive being chased by villains and constantly kidnapped? The answer is, they don't.

They die, and then Rusty just clones a new pair of boys. That in itself should make Rusty irredeemable but the show presents it in a more ambiguous light.

Dean: "You're telling me I'm a clone, that I'm not even Dean, that I'm some stupid science experiment." Ben: "No, no, no. You're Dean. There's no other Dean, you're it, flesh and blood. Look I was conceived in the back seat of a packard, you were conceived in a tank. So what?" Dean: "So I have no mommy? No nothing!?" Ben: "Dean, you have it all wrong. You have a mommy, and your dad is your dad. They made you by getting drunk and forgetting to wear a condem like everybody else, and your dad loved you so much that when you got a boo-boo, he kissed it and made it all better and made it go away." Dean: "You brought me back to life." Ben: "Yeah okay, well you and your brother had some pretty big boo boos. Have a kid one day, Dean. Hold it's lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it is. Jonas, me, and yes your dad, saw it as nothing more than a fucking band-aid for a really big boo boo."

In the story itself it brings up the argument that if any parent was holding their dying child in their arms they'd want to bring them back somehow. That in the logic of the show it's the same as using magic to revive someone from the dead. At the same time it's not because Rusty's let his sons die multiple times and never changed his lifestyle because he can just keep replacing them with clones.

Super-science aside, it is kind of a metaphor for Rusty's parenting as a whole that his sons have been cloned and replaced so many times they're perpetually sixteen and never allowed to grow up. Rusty's so neglectful he's never taken an interest in raising them and this is the result, they literally do not grow up.

It's also probably relevant to mention that Rusty himself is a clone and died and was replaced multiple times much like his sons, and the technology for cloning Hank and Dean was invented by his father Jonas.

However, after season 3 the cloning lab gets destroyed, and the body guard Brock leaves the family. With the safety net removed Rusty actually starts taking a more active role in both of his child's lives. This is basically a mirror to Endeavor's moment of realization after getting number one hero that his entire family has grown up without him and they all resent him.

Season four onwards Hank and Dean develop into their own people outside of Rusty. He responds to them in different ways but he's actually parenting them this time instead of shoving them away like annoyances. Hank becomes rebellious and fights back against Rusty for a long time after Brock leaves because he no longer has a role model and Rusty's response is to always get strict and punish him.

Whereas when Dean rebels not only does Rusty tolerate it, he also spends a lot more time in Dean's life trying to push him into the direction of being a super-scientist like him, supporting his efforts to go to college, while basically ignoring Hank. It's a running gag in the show that Dean is obviously Rusty's favorite, but even when playing favorites Rusty by this point in the show has reasons for why he's making those parenting choices.

Rusty: "Dean believes in this crap! He should have been Rusty Venture, Boy adventurer. Hank got this life thrown at him. And he fights against it. Just like I did."

Rusty playing favorites comes from an attempt to overcorrect for both children. He rejects Hank because he believes Hank doesn't want to be a boy adventure and therefore pushing Hank away from his family and the Venture lifestyle is what he needs. Whereas, he believes that Dean embraces the super scientist lifestyle and he tries to mentor Dean into another scientist like himself therefore he gives Dean most of his attention because he thinks Dean needs that guidance from him.

Of course, Rusty is totally wrong about his sons. If anything Hank is the one who wants to be an adventurer whereas Dean just wants a normal life away from his crazy family but parents often misunderstand their children. He's not actively malicious, he's just misguided in what he thinks is best for each of his sons. He's not really even playing favorites in this case he's choosing to parent his sons differently based on what he thinks is best for each of them, it's just in this case father doesn't know best.

Rusty isn't a stagnant character, but also there's no big redemption arc for him the way there is Endeavor. Rusty never narrates about how he needs to atone for his past mistakes. The result is Rusty is a far more amoral character than Endeavor because he's not trying to atone but the narrative also isn't trying to spin Rusty in any way. It's just showing you Rusty as he is, and with all the bad things he does he's still capable of loving his sons.

The question isn't really "Is Rusty redeemable?" but "When is Rusty gonna grow up?"

Then there's Endeavor (everyone starts booing) who is simultaneously a much better, and far worse person than Rusty.

Enji is honestly more comparable to Jonas, an incredibly successful hero who built a career and an empire in heroics and fame and then tried to force his son into that same lifestyle.He's the exploration of that same idea a supposedly great man with skeletons in his closet. Enji technically has saved thousands of people (such as Hawks one of the other main characters). A person who is so good at playing the role of a hero no one would ever expect there are skeletons in his closet.

"Rusty's father was more successful than you could ever imagine. Jonas Venture Sr. was a manipulative narcissist admired by the world for his scientific accomplishements and his hyper-masculine James Bond meets Doc Savage public persona. He's a geniuine villain who was able to take everything he wanted from the world by seamlessly fitting into the role of everyone's hero." [Source]

Jonas is like showing everything nasty about using someone like James Bond as a male power fantasy. He treats women like objects, he thinks he's aboe good and evil, he's effortlessly charming and suave and uses that to get what he wants out of people. Enji similiarly is everything that is wrong with the ideals of hero society. A society that glorifies flashy, strong quirks that are the best for taking down villains. The only person who even seems to care that he's number two is Enji himself, beause Enji is otherwise rich and succesful, a pillar of the hero community, and allowed to get away with a lot because of his position and influence.

Enji is at least a better hero than Rusty, because Rusty is an incompetent mad scientist who does stuff like mutate college interns into four armed freaks and build death rays.

However, as a parent strip away his status as a hero and Enji is little more than a show parent, pushing his children into a life they don't want in an attempt to live vicariously through them. Once again, resembling Jonas more than he really does Rusty. As Jonas forced Rusty to be a boy adventurer, and then made a cartoon out of it to make money like any show parent.

It's also the idea that generation put that kids into films and it was a very horrible selfish thing to do, they were doing trying to live out their own lives through their kids. That didn't exist before that was something that boomers brought to the world. "Oh I can't be these fun new things I'll make you be it." I think Jonas was a pioneer of throwing his kid at the world. I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. Jackson Publick, DVD Commentary

As stated above Enji gave up on his ambition to be the number one hero and so he decided to create a son with the right quirk to surpass All Might. He then pressured a woman into an arranged marriage, basically purchasing her from her parents and conceived four children until he got his designer baby.

Chapters 301-302 the wrong way to put out a fire, detail the slow descent of the Todoroki Household from Enji entering an arranged marriage with bad intention to create an ideal child to be heir to his legacy, into a full on child abuser. Enji is written like a normal person falling into a cycle of abuse, he never intended to hurt his children at first. Abusers aren't evil monsters, they're just people. Most abusers don't even think of themselves as abusers.

In fact he's shown positively bonding with his first born son who seems eager to learn to use his fire based quirk. He even mentions that he was alright at the time with the idea of Toya being the one to succeed him and letting go of his quirk experiment.

Enji only had kids to carry on his legacy, and only bonded with Toya because Toya was eager to participate in the training and become his heir. However, to give Enji some backstory it's quite clear the death of Enji's own father at a young age left him with no idea on how a father should act.

At a young age Enji witnessed his father attempt to save an innocent girl only to end up a burnt up corpse, and probably at that point conflated strength with being a good father. If his father had been strong enough he would have survived and continued to be a father to young Enji. At that point it's almost understandable that Enji thinks in his mind that earning his keep as the patriarch of the family, and being a powerful hero who will come home alive is the same thing as being a good father.

So Enji conflates masculine ideals of strength and heroism with being a good father, all the while not actually showing up to parent his kids. When Toya seemed like he could live up to Enji's expectations and be strong as a successor everything seemed fine.

However, Toya turned out to be disabled at which point everything in the household began to spiral out of control. After learning Toya could not use his quirk without burning himself, Enji tossed Toya aside and left raising him entirely up to Rei and then pressured her to have more children until one with his ideal quirk would be born.

Toya did not like his father ignoring him and began acting out for his attention. The response of everyone in the household was to politely tell Toya to shut up, because Enji while not being a parent is the money maker and authority in the household no one can stand up to him. When Toya's acting up got too out of hand, Enji would even hit Rei instead of just personally dealing with his son.

At the same time Shoto was finally born and being given his perfect heir after four attempts, Enji eagerly began training him. When Shoto resisted him, Enji stepped up to threats of physical violence and long grueling training sessions to force him to learn. All the while Toya continued to mentally spiral.

One day after his flames turned blue Toya asked his father to meet with him on Sekoto Peak. However that day Enji didn't show up, and Toya lost control of his flames starting a massive forest fire that killed him. Rather than changing anything after his firstborn's death, he doubled down and pushed Shoto even harder.

While being a far worse person, as a parent Rusty is far less malicious. He neglects his kids similarly to Enji at first, but when the safety net is removed and he can't keep cloning them anymore he actually does start taking a personal interest in their lives. Maybe it's too little too late because it's the 14th version of Hank and Dean but he does hear the wake up call and change his ways as a parent.

Enji always doubles down on ignoring his sons in favor of heroics when given the chance to be a father.

Even post redemption arc Enji behaves in the same way. There is no point in the story so far where Enji actively chooses to help or be a parent to one of his sons, when he can choose to be a part of a big important battle instead. Let me break out the list:

In the Pro Hero Arc Shoto sets the challenge for Enji to show what he can be like as a father rather than a hero.

In the internship arc Enji trains Shoto up as a hero but not a father. When he brings the family home to dinner they're attacked by a villain and Enji stands and watches as his son Natsuo gets kidnapped y a villain because he felt like it would be too awkward if he saved Natsuo because then Natsuo might feel inclined to forgive him.

In the War Arc aftewards Toya is revealed to be alive the entire time, and when given the chance to see his dead son come back to life, Enji not only does nothing but he sits and watches as his oldest son tries to kill his youngest without trying to talk to or appeal to Toya.

After the war arc, Enji doesn't bother looking for Toya and goes back to his job as a hero hunting down AFO. He also makes a promise to Shoto that they'll search for Toya together, only to break that promise multiple times.

In the second war arc, when Enji is given a chance to face Toya face to face, he instead sends his other son Shoto to fight him, while Enji fights against the big bad instead as the number one hero.

When Toya is literally dying and about to burn himself alive in front of him, Enji who has chosen to run away from Toya too many times by this point picks the murder suicide option and chooses to try dying with his son in a heroic sacrifice.

Every single chance he is given to act like a father, he acts like a hero instead. Enji Todoroki never steps out of the role of the hero Endeavor. Internally he's changed, yeah. He's remorseful now and realzies what he's done wrong. However, externally he hasn't. He doesn't do anything different. He neglected his family for his job his entire life so his way of making it up to them is... to keep going to his job.

The problem isn't whether or not he deserves to be redeemed, but rather that there's no change in his actions. Endeavor at the beginning of the story would have shown up to fight AFO in the war arc too, because being the hero is what he does. It's the only thing he does. The story never asks him to be anything other than a hero.

Which is I think a fundamental difference in Rusty and Enji in how they're written. Rusty is a flawed parent, but he's still a parent.

He does favor Dean over Hank, but that favoritism takes the form of him giving Hank more chores when Hank acts out, but when it's time for Dean to rebel giving him space and letting him have his own separate room in the attic. It's Rusty letting Dean have access to the family checkbook so he'll have spending money at college, but cutting Hank off from the checkbook because they agreed if Hank didn't want to go to college he needed to find a job to support himself.

Rusty is parenting these children. He's parenting them very badly, but he's still their parent. Enji never wanted to be a parent to begin with, he wanted to be his kid's abusive gymnastics coach. He wanted a prodigy that he could push and push until they won gold at the Olympics.

If you ignore the fantasy elements then you're left with how these men are shown interacting with their kids in their day to day lives.

Rusty has absolutely no idea what he's doing, so even when he has good intentions he screws up. However, he is making an effort to guide these kids.

Enji was an intentional manipulator more in line with Jonas. He controlled everything in the household, and was actively trying to groom Shoto into someone who would obediently carry on his legacy. He made the choice to isolate Shoto from his siblings so he'd have more control over him. Rusty keeps Dean and Hank away from kids their own age and from having a normal life because he never had a normal life. He doesn't even know what a normal life looks like.

Enji for most of his life didn't want kids, he wanted heirs. He even purchased a woman so his heirs would turn out with the right genetics, and tossed aside the ones that were disabled or born with the wrong quirk.

Rusty made the decision to become a parent on his own. In the last twist in the series it's revealed Dean and Hank had no mother. They were conceived in a test tube, raised in an artificial womb by Rusty himself. He is both their father and their mother. Kids were a deliberate decision on his part. He wanted to have a family, probably because his own childhood was so deprived of any familial love.

Dean: Okay, so who is our mom? Rusty: Seriously, Dean haven't we had enough family history for one day? I don't even know who my mom is. All you need to know is that the person who gave birth to you. I promise they do.

Remember as stated above the central thesis statement of Venture Bros is "Elige Tua - Choose your family". Rusty chose to bring those kids into the world because he wanted to be a father, it's an active choice his character makes.

Whereas the central statement of Endeavor's arc is "So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?" but we never witness Enji doing anything outside of being a hero.

Even post-redemption the only time he ever spends with Shoto is when they're either doing quirk training or working as heroes together. Toya as a character presents this challenge to him, because he's Enji's son, but he's also a villain who's killed innocent people. If he's acting as a hero he has to put a stop to Toya, but a father is supposed to put the safety and well-being of their children above everything else.

We never see Enji make that choice to be Toya's father over a hero. Which is why in story he comes off as a worse father than someone like Rusty, because he never makes any attempt to emotionally bond with his children.

Rusty will sit Hank and Dean down and tell them stories from his childhood. He'll find common ground with his sons to bond over because they've both been subjected to the boy adventurer lifestyle.

Rusty: Dean what are you doing? Dean: Hyperventilating into my knees. That smell a little like spit up... because I spit up a little. Rusty: Dean, you just baby burped onto a speed suit. Not a super scientist alive that hasn't coughed a little acid onto his speed suit. Dean: Really? Rusty: Why do you think these things are like 95 percent polyester? You can clean off fear-vomit with a wet nap. Dean: I thought you were used to this. Rusty: Dean I remember when the action man would wake me up with a gun pointed at my head. He'd just hold it there and pull the trigger. I'd hear the click really loud because it was right against my forehead. Dean: So it echoed. Rusty: Right, it sounded like he snapped one of my teeth out. Click! Then he'd go, "Not day Rusty. Not Today." Dean: Golly, and you took it because you had to? Rusty: No Dean, I took it because I was Rusty Venture. Boy adventurer. I didn't ask for this life, Dean, but it's mine. Sure, I fall down in the Speed Suit but I get up and Wet-Nap my puke off.

We never get any moments like this with Endeavor and his kids.

He only goes so far as apologizing for his past abuse. Yes, maybe it's cathartic hearing an abuser apologize for what they've done but that's not the question the story was asking. It wasn't asking "Can Endeavor be forgiven?" It was asking "What sort of dad are you going to be?"

The narrative challenged him to learn to act like a father to his family, and he never did. He stayed in the role of hero from beginning to end. It might be cathartic for his victims to hear him say sorry, but it's not good for Endeavor as a character because he hasn't changed and we've learned nothing about him. We already knew he was sorry at the beginning of the arc. Endeavor is sorry and knows he's done something wrong has already been established, but by Endeavor stepping out of the role of hero and acting like a father we could have learned something new about him or his character but no he stays the same from beginning to end.

They're both awful people but at the end of the day Rusty is a father, and Enji is not.

Stories are kind of like essays your English teacher used to force you to read. You need to make a thesis statement in the story itself, and then have evidence to support that thesis statement. The theme of Venture Bros is choose your family, and family is complicated, and in support of that theme we have Rusty choosing to connect with his sons. Jonas is basically nothing more than Rusty's biological father. Rusty's chosen a different way to connect with his sons, and he is their dad, and they can bond about the complicated lifestyle of being a Venture together.

The actions Enji takes in his story don't line up with his thesis statement. The Todoroki Family subplot is supposed to be about how one family was messed up because Enji only chose to have a family to further his career as a hero, and choosing his career again and again made things worse. The thesis statement was that Enji needed to choose to be a dad, but he's never shown doing that in the story.

So Enji as a character seems like he doesn't fit in with his narrative. Which is what I said at the very beginning about Rusty and why he works as a main character. Rusty is the center, because he's had this horrible life inflicted on him by his father, and he's in the process of raising his sons but he still has a chance to choose to be better.

Enji could also work as the center of his story, he has a chance to choose his family over his work as a hero, but he's ultimately not the one who does that, it's Shoto. Which yes Shoto is the main character of the Todoroki plotline, but by the end Enji's gotten as much screen time as his son. If the plot was going to focus on Shoto and his choices to begin with then he should have been the central point. You spent a lot of in story time asking this question with Enji on whether or not he's going to be able to choose to be a father over a hero, and who Enji is outside of being a hero only to not give the audience any answeres.

This again has nothing to do with Enji the person and whether I think he's likable or not, because Enji's a fictional character. He's an idea. If writing is communication, then a writer is trying to communciate some idea with every character in their novel. We're asking what is the author trying to say with Enji, and do they do a good job of getting that message across?

4. What's the Big Idea?

So the above section was mainly about the personal arcs of each characters: How do both of them fail at fatherhood and do they learn to be better fathers over the course of their narratives?

However, these characters are part of a much bigger world. How a character interacts with both the world around them, and the extended cast of characters is another way a story relates it's theme.

Venture Bros and My Hero Academia both exist in comic book worlds. There are people running around in costumes calling themselves heroes and villains and fighting each other on the streets.

In My Hero Academia heroes are basically professional athletes who sell sports drinks and pose for ads and compete for rankings on a big board, and heroics for the most part has been reduced to a day job for people with particularly powerful quirks. Heroism is an entire industry that's for profit, and run by the shadowy hero council who has far more power over their society than they let onto. You could compare Endeavor being the top hero to him is like a combination of being the best pro athlete, and also the best salaryman ever.

Ironically, the worldbuilding of Venture Bros is pretty similar. In Venture Bros. the villains are all unionized. There is a super villain trade union. It's a secret organization known as the guild of calamitous intent, which makes villainy into a bureaucracy.

All villains in the world have to register with the guild. If you're a part of the guild you receive the protection that the guild offers, as long as you follow the guilds rules and regulations. There's lots of small rules, like you can't torture someone who's having a medical issue, and if you're fighting a good guy and they have a doctor's appointment you have to let them go.

They even rank heroes and villains by their threat levels called "EMA LEVELS (equally matched aggression) and then assign you a hero who's about your equal so you won't get killed by someone way stronger than you. The guild basically decides who you're allowed to fight as a villain and picks a hero for you. The act of being someone's arch villain is called "arching" you show up to harass them once a week like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, fight them, then do it again next week. You're not allowed to kill your hero and you're supposed to follow specific rules. The tradeoff is the heroes won't kill you either, because you have guild protection.

The Monarch: I don't know, just keep it cat and mouse not cat and missile. JJ:: So it's a game? We fake fight? That's ridiculous. The Monarch: No, it's like fencing, it's about the art of the fight. JJ: Well, I'm about to deliver my killing stroke. Then what? Dr. Girlfriend: Then the guild steps up their game. You throw a rock, they throw a knife. You throw a knife, they come to your house when you're sleeping and murder your family. The Monarch: Look Dr. Venture you call the guild and you get the damn rulebook, I'll be waiting.

The justification for why the guild exists is that in world if you didn't give the villains a system with a bunch of rules, then you'd have a bunch of crazy people in costumes running around causing havoc.

Brock: You wanna what? Shoot him? And all his men and his wife? You could steal his cattle, too. Maybe burn his village down? JJ: It's an antiquated system. I mean my father did this fake arch enemy nonsense in the sxities. Maybe my brother is good with this namby pamby guy in a costume chases you around nonsense, but I'm not. Brock: Hey no disrespect Jonas, but it isn't so easy. These guys like their system. It's what they do. You take that away and you're looking at a bunch of pissed off nut bags with ray guns, and giant -- i don't know, a giant octopus / tank with laser eyes.

The villains and the OSI (who are like the GI JOE) of this world have signed a very long and detailed treaty that keeps both sides in a cold world stalemate and lets them fight every week like how the good guys and bad guys fight constantly while maintaining a status quo where neither side wins.

In MHA heroics is a commodity. It's commercialized and sold to the public. Heroes are like professional athletes selling you sports drinks, it's a spectacle to the public, and it's even intentionally made to be that way by the Hero Commission who use heroes as a bright shining light to distract the public while they do shady things like assassinate antigovernmental protestors from behind the scenes. The entire of hero society in MHA is built on the spectacle of heroes.

In Venture Bros heroes and villains are a spectacle too. It's just a job to them. Heroes and villains both show up to work, get in their costumes, fight each other and then go home. In Season 6 of Venture Bros, a parody of the Avengers is actively charging people to provide their services as heroes in the city of New York and you have to sign up for a protection plan if you want to get saved. Then the local mob boss takes a cut of the protection money they're charging.

In both settings the ideas of heroes exist, comic books exist, but the heroes themselves are incredibly mundane, they're just people showing up to jobs and making money for the most part. The only difference really is that in MHA the villains are societal rejects and trauma victims, whereas in Venture Bros they've unionized. In Venture Bros the villains and heroes basically fake fight under strict rules. Even in MHA though the villains need to exist in order to give the heroes someone to fight in front of the public. "Villain" is an actual legal term for a certain kind of quirk criminals with more than three strikes who gets sent to a super max prison if they're caught.

Both of these works are making comic book heroes and villains seem a lot more mundane by deconstructing them with this layer of realism. By making the roles of "hero" and "villain" seem much more mundane, and therefore more human, it also asks us to look at the characters who call themselves heroes and villains as human beings.

The Venture Bros like many richer takes on superhero stories really likes to play with the concept of identity. It's the idea that Good and Evil, Heroes and Villains, are just roles we play. They're not something fundamental or innate they're constructed by the world around us. In the show the main villainous organization the GCI is really just a bureaucracy of larpers sustaining their violent rolelplaying through organized crime. Rich and powerful lunatics who built the world around a game they wanted to play. There's really nothing of substance keeping Rusty on the "Good Guy" side. The good guys are also a mix and match. Shield, GI JOE, FBI. Another exmaple of people who never grew up. Only these people are running things, playing out their childhood power fantasies. They're barely less insane and blood thirsty than the bad guys. So what's even the point of being a good guy in the first place? That's the world Rusty is caught between...[x]

MHA and Venture Bros are both works that feature societies that divide people into two distinct categories "hero" and "villain" and then go on to show that these two categories are not as black and white as they would like us to believe.

Venture Bros features Brock Samson, a character who is ostensibly on the side of the good guys who also highest body count of nameless henchman who we see him gleefully kill onscreen over and over again. There are members of the OSI who are just as trigger happy as the guild so what's the difference between them besides what they've decided to personally identify as? On one side you have the Larpers who are roleplaying villainy, and on the other you have the military soliders who think they're real life GI JOES.

In My Hero Academia you have heroes who are essentially state sponsored peace keepers who suppress anyone who disrupts the status quo with violence, and villains who are rejected from that status quo who eventually turn into violent terrorists. While yes heroes have the responsibility of protecting innocent civilians, most of what heroes do is fight villains, in fact heroes with quirks suited to rescuing people aren't nearly as famous as ones with flashy violent quirks like Endeavor.

You have two sides and one calls themselves villains and the others heroes, but they both use extreme violence as a way to accomplish their goals.

Rusty and Enji are two characters who are caught between these two categories which aren't as distinct and separate as we'd like to believe they are.

Enji is basically the first deconstruction of heroes in MHA. He's a hero who's not interested in saving people, but instead wants to be the strongest and does everything in pursuit of selfish glory.

He's simultaneously the hero with the single most resolved cases in history, but at the same time he's always number two to All Might because he's not "super" enough of a super hero. In a manga where Deku's natural desire to save others make him a candidate to b ahero even without a quirk, we have a character who's a hero for purely selfish reasons. One that only cares about having the strongest quirk because being the best is all that matters to Enji.

In many ways the way Enji treats his family is more like a villain than a hero. Main villain AFO himself comments at one point he wasn't able to manipulate Toya, because his father did too good of a job manipulating him already. In fact you can draw a parallel between his actions of manipulating and grooming Shoto to be his heir, to how AFO raised orphaned child Shigaraki Tomura as his successor.

This is a good use of Enji's character, because making it hard to label him as hero and villain makes us think about who he is as a person instead.

There's an entire episode of Venture Bros dedicated to a villain Mentor named Dr. Henry Killinger, showing up and basically mentoring Rusty Venture when he's at a low point. He gives Rusty money, workers, gets his business up and running again and at the very end reveals that he's setting Rusty up to be a villain to arch his brother as a hero. Rusty is tempted with the idea that he'd make a much more successful villain than he ever would be a hero (because as a hero he's kind of just a loser) but he still chooses to be a hero at the end of the story because he doesn't want to fight his brother.

At which point his mentor, all his hired men, all just walk off and he loses all the money he would have gained and he goes back to being a mediocre super-scientist.

"Doc has the whole thing laid out for him clear as day. This role is here for you. Waiting for you to claim it. You have your nemesis. You have your means. You have the ability and the pain. You can do this and you'd be good at it. And Rusty can look at all of that, everything he's been through and say, "Yeah... but I don't wanna be evil." [x]

Rusty walks away from the chance to be a villain, but he's not exactly a hero either. He runs illegal cloning farms, he does lots of unethical scientific stuff and he's not even remotely the hero his father was considered to be.

Because he doesn't fit well into the category of hero or villain, the show instead asks you to evaluate who Rusty is as a person. He's one of the few characters in the show that's capable of stepping out of those categories.

"That's the great thing about him. Sometimes being disillusioned just means you can see through the whole thing. Sure the whole super science villain game feels stupid. It's not going anywhere. No one's accomplishing anything. It's all violence and roleplay. But at the end of the day it's still real. And it still means something to us. Choosing to be a villain means choosing to be a bad guy. It means relinquishing the premise that you could ever do better, ever actually help anyone. And that's not who Rusty is. He's a scum-bag, but he's a grown up. Even in a show with brilliant characters, old pros, and actual supermen, Rusty is the adult. And adults don't put on rubber masks and terrorize people for fun because that would be fucking silly." - [x]

Rusty spent his entire childhood being terrorized by guys in costumes, so he's now the cynical straight man pointing out how ridiculous this all is. He's the one normal person among the crazies.

Rusty is just too incompetent to ever be like his father. Jonas Venture is scum bag, but he's also a well-respected scientist and a world wide hero. Everyone in the scientific community thinks that Rusty is a joke, and his friends just barely put up with him

Jonas gets away with it because he perfectly fit what society's idea of a hyper masculine strong hero was, and no one questioned it or how he treated his son, whereas because balding, impotent, pathetic Rusty falls so short of toxic masculinity's standards he doesn't get the same respect or leeway that Jonas did. Jonas Venture continually got away with murder, and Rusty can't get away with anything.

He's a pill-popping, middle aged man who ran his father's business empire into the ground who continually gets laughed out of any scientific conference he tries to attend.

He can't be a hero. He can't be his father. He fall short of toxic masculinity's standards. He falls short of everyone's standards. The only way in which he's better than Jonas is that he's a much better father to both of his sons. His greatest triumphs as a character come from bonding with Hank and Dean. Jonas for all his accomplishments wasn't capable of bonding with Rusty because he didn't really care about anyone but himself. Jonas Venture is someone who perfectly fit society's standards of toxic masculinity, but he wasn't a person outside of that.

"Jonas Sr realized this too, but to him, it was a joke. To him it meant being above everyone. Rusty can't be above everyone so he has to meet them at eye level. Part of the bitterness of growing up is realizing that we're all just chidlren who got old. No one knows what they're doing and when you come to terms with that you can look down on people or give them the respect everyone deserves. How you treat children says a lot about how you treat people which in turn says a lot about you." [x]

Now returning to Endeavor we run into the same problem that we did earlier. This whole post is comparing Rusty and Endeavor because they are the protagonists, but Endeavor is far more like Jonas. He's someone who sees through the hero system and only cares about climbing to the top out of his own self interest. He knows it's a game, but he wants to win at the game.

Enji even sort of looks like Jonas.

They're both extremely bulky men at peak levels of physical fitness. Meanwhile Rusty is a balding, short and out of shape middle aged man.

In story Jonas is still widley beloved by the public and is constantly praised, while no one but Rusty is aware of his faults, but there's a reason for that. Jonas is someone who is basically allowed to do anything he wants, because the patriarchy means all of society is built around letting men like Jonas succeed.

Jonas is also someone who literally uses his position as a hero to manipulate people into getting what he wants and glorify himself.

Jonas can casually destroy people's lives, all while still believing he's the good guy because in his world being good guy is just a role to play and he plays it well. One of the best three episodes of the series is the Morphic Trilogy, the opening to season 7 where some of Jonas's past crimes are revealed.

In the past he tricked a married man into making a sex tape with him, and then when that man Don Carraldo aka the Blue Morpho turned out to regret that, he used the tape to constantly blackmail him into doing his dirty work. Killing people in secret while Jonas Venture remained Squeaky clean. After years of being forced to act as a mercenary for Jonas, the Blue Morpho died in a plane crash. Jonas then revived his best friend as a cyborg. He got bored of his new cyborg within a few months and reassigned him to babysit his son Rusty. The cyborg glitched and started to strangle Rusty and then he snaps his friends neck, and throws the cyborg away in the garbage.

Jonas can just completely destroy a man's life because he can. Because everyone around him enables him and no one is going to stop him. Because this is how people in power act when they're given too much power. Because might does not make right.

He's the gold standard. He's the ideal. Who would question him?

Enji occupies a similar position in the story, where he fits the role of a hero so well that even when his family abuse is revealed to the public basically every character and their mom is tripping over themselves to defend him.

Jonas is constantly praised in story years after his death and every bad thing he's done is swept under the rug, but that's because number one Jonas was a manipulative monster, and number two it shows toxic masculinity is a false ideal. This is how Jonas who everyone thinks is the ideal man's man, really acts. This is what he gets away with it, because the thing society glorifies are toxic and bad.

When people bend over backwards to defend Endeavor what does it say exactly? Because we're supposed to believe that Enji's willing to work for redemption even if people don't forgive him. We're not supposed to think Enji is a manipulative monster intentionally twisting people around his finger like Jonas was.

There are some ways Enji is like Jonas, especially in his backstory. He did use his money and influence to buy a woman. Rei was definitely not going to get the option of divorcing him if she actually wanted to leave.

However, in the present time we don't see Enji doing the kind of manipulation that Jonas does, because really he doesn't have to. Hawks does it for him. There is a character in the narrative named Takami Keigo / Hawks who is a little boy that Enji indirectly saved as a child by putting his father in prison. Because of this he is obsessed with making Endeavor live up to the hero he imagined him to be when he was young, and does everything he can to prop Enji up behind the scenes and make him look like that hero to the public.

Hawks is a whole other can of worms, but in effect what this means is there is someone manipulating public opinion in favor of Endeavor so he'll be able to shine in spite of the numerous skeletons in his closet, it's just not Endeavor himself. Hawks also takes away a lot of the active decisions on Endeavor's part. When Endeavor chooses to ignore Toya in the latter part of the story, it's not Endeavor's choice, he's just following Hawks plan to fight AFO. When Endeavor makes a public apology, Hawks is the one who wrote it for him.

The result is that Endeavor comes off as less of a Jonas, after all Hawks is the one manipulating his public image. On the other hand, he's also less good of a character because he's not making choices anymore. It'd be better If Enji was trying to manipulate the public into forgiving him in the wake of his scandal, because that'd be an active choice on his part. When a character makes a choice it tells us something about who that character is.

Horikoshi doesn't want us to think that Enji is the kind of selfish monster that Jonas is, but then who is he supposed to be?

The entire point of this post is to compare Enji to Rusty, but Enji's far too successful to be Rusty. Rusty is a failure in basically everything he set out to do in life. He's the butt of the series jokes. He's the victim in as many ways as he's the perpetrator. He had a lot of money and then wasted it all. None of his inventions are succesful. The scientific community thinks he's a joke, or they don't even know who he is. Women won't even go near him. No one ever defends him. At no point in the story does someone stop and say "Hey, Hank I know your dad's an asshole but he's really good at science so that makes it okay."

Rusty's such a failure at being a hero that he's forced to be a person. He's as equally narcissticic and toxic as his father, he treats women like objects for sex and comfort like his father does, he just doesn't get away with it. You can't point to some heroic feat of his that justifies his toxic behavior because he doesn't have any.

The story however can't stop singing Enji's praises for what a good hero he is. He's never forced to step out of the role of hero and be a person like Rusty is, and because of that the message of his character becomes confused.

Are we supposed to think he's a manipulative narcissist like Jonas is? Are we supposed to think he's an incredibly flawed individual trying to figure out how to be a father late into his kid's lives like Rusty?

Rusty has a clear role in his story, and what the author wants to say with Enji is unclear.

Everyone praises Jonas to death and no one can see him for the terrible purpose he is, because that's the point. Venture Bros is about failure. It's about the death of the space ag optimisme. It's about how much the boomer generation sucked.

From the Radiant is the Baboon Heart Commentary. Question: Did Jonas only keep Rusty around for the press and his cloning tech or did he actually care about him? Answer: . The show has a villain called the monarch, but if you watch all the show the villain is Jonas Venture Sr. He is a bad dad. What you need to realize is that in this kind of baby boomers gen x millenials kind of thing we are of the generation that had bad parents. For the good and the bad of it. The good was we were all left alone by our parents, and we had a freedom in our thought that I don't think the millennials have. Because we made the millennials, and we were like You know what Our parents suck and we're gonna be great parents." And they helicoptered them and they gave playdates. [...] I did hate the boomers, they were awful fathers they were terrible people they did horrible things to our world, and at the time they were celebrated as good people. They were a bunch of hippies and they failed and they did everything wrong that they wanted to fix [...]. You and I are lost people we observed our generation. We are fully aware of it. We observed our parents generation. My actual father was a classic distant father, very bright had a lot of work to do, but I observed that generation and the way that toxic masculinity was set in stone. Just branded onto their tombstone. Toxic masculinity. Our generation grew up wanting to be adults, childhood was something that was not examined. When people were growing up we wanted to be grown ups, we wanted to wear suits, it was something you guys don't have. It was a very different way to grow up. So we wanted to be like this generation that immediately we looked at and went oh my god they're monsters. So Jonas Venture Sr. is a monster.

Jonas is a commentary on how much the boomer generation is glorified, and how much they suck if you look at them critically at all. It's written by authors who were observing basically three different generations of parenting, the way boomers parented, the ways Gen-Xers did in response to that and now the way millennials act as they reach adulthood. Rusty can't escape Jonas' shadow because Toxic Masculinity is set in stone.

The role of Jonas in the story is to serve as an antagonist to Rusty and be the cause of Rusty's struggles, and also his impetus to change because Rusty doesn't want to be like his father. Rusty and Jonas both exist as characters to show the author's observations on parenting through the generations, and yeah it's a very american idea of parenting and family but it's you know... a cartoon made in america.

What is Endeavor's role of the story? If he's a criticism of toxic masculinity he's not criticized enough, because the story spends just as much time glorifying him his obsession with strength and power as it does criticizing him. There's no scenes like this for Rusty to show off how cool he is, or how determined. The story wants you to believe that there's something redeeming in the fact that Enji is always struggling to be the greatest, even though his obsession with being number one is what caused him to abuse his family in the first place

It's criticizing and praising Enji's obsession with power in the same breath, because My Hero Academia can't fully deconstruct toxic masculinity the way that Venture Bros can. It keeps trying to find something redeemable in Endeavor's toxic pursuit of power, but that's the whole point. Toxic masculinity isn't redeemable, because toxic masculinity is toxic. There's nothing wrong with masculinity itself, or the values people traditionally consider masculine but the kind of hyper-aggressive pursuit of physical strength Endeavor chases after is toxic masculinity. In Endeavor's mind men are warriors, protectors and providers and nothing else, and he never learns to be anything else either.

MHA would never treat Endeavor the way Vbros treats Rusty, constantly humiliating him or making him the butt of jokes. It would never make Enji out to be weak or pathetic the way Rusty is.

The central concept of Endeavor is struggle. His chosen hero nae "Endeavor" means to try hard to achieve something. His entire character is based around the concept of struggle. His central struggle is that he's a normal guy trying to compete with a superhero like all might, and everything he does he struggles with even if that struggle is pointless.

However, in the actual narrative itself he doesn't struggle. He definitely doesn't struggle the way Rusty does. Rusty's a lazy, incompetent, and entitled man sitting on a pile of money he didn't earn who thinks he's entitled to more who fails at all he sets out to achieve. Rusty never gets what he wants, and even when he does get what he wants like when his brother leaves him a billion dollar corporation in his will, he bankrupts that company in two seasons. Struggle means that the world isn't going to give you what you want and you keep trying anyway.

Endeavor's never subjected to nearly the same amount of narrative punishment that Rusty is. He's still well-respected. People defend him. He fights in all the major battles of the series and gets victories. No one's disgusted when they hear that he's a wife beater. We are told that he struggles, that the central concept of his character is struggle, but the narrative keeps handing him wins and cool moments.

As I've said above several times, Enji's never really forced to step out of the role as hero because he's not a failure the way Rusty is.

My Hero Academia hits some of the same notes as Venture Bros. It's criticizing apanese hegemonic masculinity, specifically that of salaryman masculinity and the way men in japan completely put their careers over their families. Read about it here in this convenient power point presentation. Enji is essentially an incredibly successful salaryman who has completely disappeared from his kid's lives in order to earn money and success and believes that he's still entitled to be a father because he's performed adequately in his role as earner of the household.

The story does show how giving too much power to the patriarch of a household can cause a house to fall apart. It shows that traditional family roles aren't all they're cracked up to be. Enji is assigned the role of father but he doesn't live up to it. The very rigid and traditional Todoroki Household crumbles because basically everyone fails to live up to their roles. The father isn't present. The mother isn't a good caretaker. The first born is defective. The youngest is given all the responsibility of the first born. No one is able to live up to those roles because maybe those rigid set in stone roles shouldn't exist in the first place.

Once again though, that's all in the backstory. Enji never changes from the Pro Hero Arc to his last showdown with Toya. The story never tells us anything about who Enji is as a person. Therefore, it also never comments on Enji's role as the patriarch. What is Horikoshi using Enji to say about patriarchy besides... it exists?

The story shows you how destructive the idea of patriarchy that Enji represents can be in the backstory, but because Enji doesn't do much for 90 percent of the story it never says anything about how Enji can learn to be a father or if it's even possible for him to be a father this late in the game. Because Enji's story isn't about fatherhood ultimately, it's about him becoming a less selfish hero.

Which might just be a problem with the whole of MHA. Venture Bros is about who the characters are outside of their identity as heroes and villains, but MHA is ultimately more about the optimism of heroes and what it means to be a hero than these characters personal lives.

Rusty is never going to be as sucessful as his father. He's always going to be mediocre, ad even if he's sympathetic he's still a scum bag. However, Rusty has one thing his father doesn't have which are his two sons who he made a deliberate decision to get closer to. Unlike a serial user of people Jonas, Rusty has the ability to actually love and care for people and he chooses to make those connections.

Endeavor never chooses to be a father. He didn't choose to go to Toya's side. He was too busy being a hero and fighting the big bad. As a result of that we never learn anything about Enji as a character outside of being a hero because he never chose to be anything other than a hero.

He also never failed. As I said the narrative kept handing him wins. You'd think never choosing to see Toya would mean he can't save Toya in the end, but in the end of the story Toya's just fine. There are no consequences to his choices. He's revealed to be an abuser to the public but he gets to keep being a hero. Enji never really fails in some big way that forces him to rfelect and change on his actions, so he just keeps doing the same thing from beginning to end.

Which is why Enji doesn't work as a character compared to Rusty. He doesn't fail. He's supposed to be a flawed protagonist struggling against himself, but he never really loses. He's too much like Jonas and not enough like Rusty.

"I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. He was just a shitty parent. When he went to bed he was just, he was moral, and he was fighting the good fight. When he woke up he ignored his son and made his son do terrible things. He voted for nixon like a good american. He was a winner and our show is not about winners. Our show is about losers and people we love." Jackson Publick. n

[artisticgirl19]

Five Hargreeves and the expectations that comes with being the "favorite character".

S4 is the season that we got the most holes in the storyline, lack of explanation and even the erasure of existence of all Hargreeves, but definetly what shocked the audience the most was Five behaviour and his, until now, unknow tendencies of homewrecking.

I am not here to judge him, neither to defend, but to say what i have been seeing of the fans reactions and I got to say... Some of y'all claim to be his fans, but wish him a miserable life.

"BUT IT WAS SO OOC, S1 FIVE WOULD NEVER DO THIS!"

Yes, he would not, but a If there is something the show it's trying to show since s3 it's how tired Five it's from apocalypses, failed tentatives to save the world, having to save his siblings asses all the time, getting blamed about every bad thing that happend and never getting showed any appreciation with honorable exceptions of Klaus and Diego.

Five changed, pretty much like everyone, due to all his emotional baggage, which happens to be a bit bigger than the others cause of his age and the fact the his entire life was just chaos and loneliness.

The thing is, yes, Five would do anything for his family and that's what he has been doing for the last 45 years, even with little to no recognition. Unfortunately, all this loyalty placed him into a pedastal that it's dificult to keep up.

I even saw some people saying that "normal Five" would have gone to the train station by himself to not put anyone in danger. So that's what you want for him? To get stucked AGAIN completly alone for another 7 years of his life?

I saw people saying "How could he do that with Dolores?" Like, seriously? As much as i liked that whole mannequin- human romance, it's time for y'all to accept that Dolores is to Five what that volleyball ball was to Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Just a coping mechanism to not get crazy in a devasted world by himself, but that was not love.

You guys really think that his entire life it's suppost to just be there for his siblings and holding a mannequin when times get lonely, and that's it? How fucking depressing is that?

And not that being there for his siblings it's a bad thing, but then again, why it gotta be his responsability, always? Besides, when Will someone else be there for him too? I guess that's why he fell for Lila in that moment. She was febre for him as much as he was there for her.

And to be honest, a big part of me it's glad, that even for once, he decided to be selfish. For once he choose to allow himself to be in a calm and peaceful place not constantly worring about his siblings or the future of earth. He loved a real person and was loved back by them. He finally had the opportunity of trying to live as fully normal person, what he never had the chance before. It was a breath of fresh air that he deserved.

I know that Lila was definetly not the right person to have these amazing last moments with, but i am sure that If they had more seasons, they would come up with some new character to fill that up.

And even being Lila, It still made sense. In that moment, with that conection and after all they lived together, It still made all the sense.

The only thing that hurts me about this whole situation, it's that It literally costed his relationship with Diego and they stop existing without talking It out, cause there was no time for It (Steve Blackman, i hate you for this).

It's bittersweet, indeed, and just shows that he can't really have it all, but at least he got some moments of peace in this earth before getting ceased forever.

.

[natti-ice]

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Requests are open for universal blurbs!

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My only rules are that I won't write anything triggering like SA or SH, angsty themes are fine just please do not request anything gory.

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Incest (stepcest is fine), dubcon/non-con, age play (age gaps are fine), scat, piss, underage characters

If I am uncomfortable with your request I will deny it, politely of course.

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Fandoms I write for:

Bridgerton:

Anthony Bridgerton, Benedict Bridgerton, Colin Bridgerton + others please ask first!

Chicago Fire:

Kelly Severide, Matthew Casey, Christopher Herrmann, Wallace Boden, Stella Kidd, Sylvie Brett, Violet Mikami + others please ask first!

Chicago pd:

Hank Voight, Jay Halstead, Adam Ruzek, Erin Lindsay + others please ask first!

Criminal Minds:

Aaron Hotchner, Spencer Reid, Tara Lewis, Emily Prentiss, Jennifer Jareau, Luke Alvez, Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan.

The Bear:

Carmy Berzatto, Richie Jerimovich, Syd adamu, + others please ask first!

The hunger games:

Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen, Coriolanus Snow, Lucy Gray Baird, Finnick Odair

Marauders era:

Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Regulus Black.

Tom Riddle

The walking dead:

Rick Grimes, Michonne Grimes, Daryl Dixon, Negan Smith, Alden, Maggie Rhee, Glenn Rhee, + others please ask first!

Marvel:

Peter Parker (all 3), Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, MJ, Natasha Romanoff, Yelena Belova, Kate Bishop, Steve Rogers, Matt Murdock, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner, Thor Odinson, Carol Danvers, Scott Lang, + others please ask first!

Agents of shield characters!

Supernatural:

Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Gabriel.

Stranger things:

Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Jim Hopper

Outer Banks:

Rafe Cameron, JJ Maybank, Sarah Cameron, Pope Hayward.

9-1-1:

Bobby Nash, Evan Buckley, Eddie Diaz, Howard Han, Athena Grant, Henrietta Wilson, Maddie Han.

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[shoshiwrites]

Band of Brothers Ages: IRL vs. Actors

Did you know that according to a 1947 study, almost half the men who served in WWII were still under age 26 by the end of the war?

What this is : A (very long) post comparing the ages of the actors in Band of Brothers vs. the IRL figures they are portraying.

Background: Did I need to do this? No. Did anyone ask for this? Also no. Did I do it anyway? Yes.

Disclaimers: This is SUPER approximate for the most part. I based IRL ages off of D-Day unless otherwise noted, and actor ages off of January 1, 2000, the year filming took place (the latter is where the most variation will be because I didn't try to figure out what month filming started). I also didn't fact-check birthdays beyond googling. Most are sourced from the Band of Brothers and Military Wikis on fandom.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

I broke them up into rough categories, which are, again, approximate. I know I often forget how young the real life people were here, and this was a good reminder of that. I also found it interesting to see which actors were actually younger than their roles!

Check it all out under the cut ⬇️

~10+ years older

Dale Dye (55) as Col. Robert F. Sink (39) (~16 years)

Michael Cudlitz (35) as Denver "Bull" Randleman (23) (~12)

Marc Warren (32) as Albert Blithe (20) (~12)

Rocky Marshall (33) as Earl J. McClung (21) (~12)

Frank John Hughes (32) as William J. Guarnere (21) (~11)

Neal McDonough (33) as Lynn D. (Buck) Compton (22) (~11)

Dexter Fletcher (33) as John W. Martin (22) (~11)

~5+ years older

Simon Schatzberger (32) as Joseph A. Lesniewski (23) (~9)

Richard Speight Jr. (30) Warren H. (Skip) Muck (22) (~8)

Jason O'Mara (30) as Thomas Meehan (22) (~8)

Ron Livingston (32) as Lewis Nixon (25) (~7)

Donnie Wahlberg (30) as C. Carwood Lipton (24) (~6)

Matthew Settle (30) as Ronald C. Speirs (24) (~6)

Nolan Hemmings (28) as Charles E. "Chuck" Grant (22) (~6)

Douglas Spain (25) as Antonio C. Garcia (19) (~6)

George Calil (26) as James H. "Mo" Alley Jr. (21) (~5)

Rick Gomez (27) as George Luz (22) (~5 year)

Scott Grimes (28) as Donald G. Malarkey (23) (~5)

Stephen Graham (26) as Myron "Mike" Ranney (21) (~5)

~less than 5 years older

Shane Taylor (25) as Eugene G. Roe (21) (~4)

Tim Matthews (23) as Alex M. Penkala Jr. (19) (~4)

Matthew Leitch (24) as Floyd M. "Tab" Talbert (20) (~4)

Peter O'Meara (30) as Norman S. Dike Jr. (26) (~4)

Tom Hardy (22) as John A. Janovec (18) (~4)

Rick Warden (28) as Harry F. Welsh (25) (~3)

Kirk Acevedo (28) as Joseph D. Toye (25) (~3)

Eion Bailey (25) as David Kenyon Webster (22) (~3)

Craig Heaney (26) as Roy W. Cobb (29) (~3)

Damian Lewis (28) as Richard D. Winters (26) (~2)

Robin Laing as Edward J. "Babe" Heffron (~2, 21/23)

Ben Caplan (26) as Walter S. "Smokey" Gordon Jr. (24) (~2)

David Schwimmer (32) as Herbert M. Sobel (33) (~1 year)

Michael Fassbender (22) as Burton P. "Pat" Christenson (21) (~1)

Colin Hanks (22) as Lt. Henry Jones (21) (~1) (age around Bastogne)

Bart Ruspoli (23) as Edward J. Tipper (22) (~1)

~Same age

Peter Youngblood Hills as Darrell C. "Shifty" Powers (21)

Mark Huberman as Lester "Les" Hashey (19)

Younger

Lucie Jeanne (23) as Renée Lemaire (30) (age around Bastogne) (~7)

Ross McCall (23) as Joseph D. Liebgott (29) (~6)

Simon Pegg (29) as William S. Evans (~33) (~4)

Philip Barantini (19) as Wayne A. "Skinny" Sisk (22) (~3)

James Madio (24) as Frank J. Perconte (27) (~3)

Stephen McCole (25) as Frederick "Moose" Heyliger (27) (~2)

Matt Hickey (~16) as Patrick S. O'Keefe (18) (~2)

Incomplete/not found

Phil McKee as Maj. Robert L. Strayer (34)

Rene L. Moreno as Joseph Ramirez (30)

Doug Allen as Alton M. More (24)

David Nicolle as Lt. Thomas A. Peacock (24)

Rebecca Okot as Anna (Augusta Chiwy) (24) (age around Bastogne)

Alex Sabga-Brady as Francis J. Mellet (23)

Mark Lawrence as William H. Dukeman Jr. (22)

Nicholas Aaron as Robert E. (Popeye) Wynn (22)

Peter McCabe as Donald B. Hoobler (21)

Marcos D'Cruze as Joseph P. Domingus (not found)

[beardedmrbean]

"Disney wasn't an antisemite"

Uh you sure you wanna die on that hill?

How about we ask the Jewish Press what they think

Actress Meryl Streep reignited a debate that has simmered below the surface in Hollywood for decades: Was Walt Disney anti-Semitic?

The occasion was the annual awards event of the National Board of Review, an organization of filmmakers, students, and movie scholars. Streep presented an award to Emma Thompson, for her role in the new movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” about the making of the 1964 Disney film “Mary Poppins.” Thompson co-stars as Poppins author P.L. Travers, alongside Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.

Streep took the opportunity to blast Disney as racist and misogynist who also “supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group.”

She did not actually call Disney an anti-Semite, but many people took it that way. The Hollywood Reporter declared that Streep accused Disney of being “sexist, racist and anti-Semitic.” Film professor David Hajdu said Disney was “a deeply flawed human being. A misogynist? You bet. An anti-Semite? That, too.” An unnamed “female Academy member” interviewed by the Reporter referred to him as “that old anti-Semite, himself, Mr. Disney.”

Hollywood historian Neal Gabler examined the anti-Semitism charge in his 2006 biography of Disney. “Of the Jews who worked [with Disney], it was hard to find any who thought Walt was an anti-Semite,” Gabler reported. “Joe Grant, who had been an artist, the head of the model department, and the storyman responsible for Dumbo… declared emphatically that Walt was not an anti-Semite. ‘Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish,’ Grant recalled, thinking no doubt of himself, production manager Harry Tytle, and Kay Kamen [head of Disney’s merchandising arm], who once quipped that Disney’s New York office had more Jews than the Book of Leviticus. Maurice Rapf concurred that Walt was not anti-Semitic; he was just a ‘very conservative guy.’ ”

On the other hand, one former Disney animator, David Swift, has claimed he heard Walt make an anti-Semitic remark, and another ex-staffer, David Hilberman, has alleged that one employee was fired because he was Jewish. (However, according to Gabler, Disney himself was rarely involved in firing anyone except the top brass). In addition, the original animated version of the “Three Little Pigs” portrayed the Big Bad Wolf as a stereotypically Jewish peddler, although after complaints, the segment was altered.

When it comes to explicit proof that Disney was anti-Semitic, the critics’ case weakens.

“There is zero hard evidence that Disney ever wrote or said anything anti-Semitic in private or public,” according to Douglas Brode, author of Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment. Brode told The Hollywood Reporter that Disney used more Jewish actors “than any other studio of Hollywood’s golden age, including those run by Jewish movie moguls.”

Gabler also revealed that Disney “frequently” made unpublicized donations to a variety of Jewish charities, including a Jewish orphanage, a Jewish old age home, Yeshiva College (precursor to Yeshiva University), and the American League for a Free Palestine. The League, better known as the Bergson Group, publicly supported the armed revolt against the British in Palestine by Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvai Leumi. Disney was embracing not just Zionism, but its most militant wing.

How, then, did the rumors of Disney’s alleged anti-Semitism spread so far and wide?

That’s where Meryl Streep comes in. The “anti-Semitic industry lobbying group” with which Disney was associated was the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. The group’s statement of principles said nothing about Jews; its declared purpose was to prevent “Communist, Fascist, and other totalitarian-minded groups” from gaining a foothold in Hollywood. Among its members were politically conservative actors such as John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Ginger Rogers. But some of its other members were accused of being privately anti-Semitic, and in general it had a reputation as being reactionary.

Gabler believes that “the most plausible explanation” for the rumors about Disney were a kind of guilt by association: “Walt, in joining forces with the MPA and its band of professional reactionaries and red-baiters, also got tarred with their anti-Semitism. Walt Disney certainly was aware of the MPA’s purported anti-Semitism, but he chose to ignore it…. The price he paid was that he would always be lumped not only with anti-Communists but also with anti-Semites.”

The irony is that while Meryl Streep was condemning Walt Disney for associating with extremists, she herself was doing the very same thing. The actress to whom she gave that award when she made her anti-Disney speech, her close friend Emma Thompson, is active in the anti-Israel boycott movement.

Streep hailed Thompson as “splendid, beautiful, practically a saint…a living, acting conscience.” Yet this “saint,” together with other British actors, publicly urged a boycott of Israel’s Habimah theater troupe when it participated in a festival in England. Habimah, of course, has nothing to do with Israeli government policies or any political issues. Its only “crime” is that it’s Israeli.

By contrast, Thompson had no problem with the National Theater of China taking part in that festival, even though it really does represent the Chinese regime – a regime guilty of the most heinous human rights violations, aid to terrorists around the world, and support for the genocidal government of Sudan. But of course, hypocrisy is the hallmark of the “saints” of the anti-Israel boycott crusade. ______________________

The Antisemitism claim is literally communist propaganda.

[the-bus-called-graveyard-8]

Madagascar in Nickelodeon Magazine (part 4 of 4)

This last part is some miscellaneous Madagascar content that has appeared in various issues of Nick Mag. I used to keep all my Nick Magazines in big binders so I could reread them, but some years ago I decided to finally get rid of them. I only kept a select few (the Madagascar ones, of course) but before I tossed the rest I flipped through five years' worth of issues looking for any scraps of Madagascar. I don't know which issues any of these bits and bobs are from, but here they are nonetheless!

First we have a prank DVD cover for an absurd mashup of several 2000s animated movies called "Flushed Through the Hedge in a Happy Car". One of the characters parodied is Alex the lion, and several aspects of Madagascar appear in film's description. Full transcript under the read more.

Front cover:

"Flushed Through the Hedge in a Happy Car"

A penguin, a taxi, one wild ride...

Starring Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Wanda Sykes, and Luke Wilson

From the creators of "Charlotte's Open Barnyard"

Back cover:

A break-dancing New York City Penguin named Happy (Wanda Sykes) is accidentally shipped to a zoo in Mexico City. The homesick bird escapes and meets a hilariously sassy taxi named Turbo McCab (Will Smith), who offers to drive her home. Along the way, they get stuck in the woods during hunting season, freeze solid during an ice age, and visit an underground rodent city, where they pick up a tuxedo-wearing mouse named Wobbly (Tom Hanks). Just outside of New York City, Turbo gets a flat. A nerdy raccoon named AJ (Ellen DeGeneres) offers to take Happy over the hedge to find a spare.

Once in human territory, Happy becomes obsessed with Dancing in the Suburbs. Will Happy find happiness as a reality show star? Will her lion dance partner (Luke Wilson) ever learn his moves? Will Turbo ever get to race in the Madagascar 5000? Can penguins really talk? And who is paying for all of Turbo's parking tickets?

2-Disc DVD Collector's Edition

Bonus features include:

A step-by-step look at the 350-day process of creating convincing CGI fuzzy dice.

Deleted scenes that were cut because they stink real bad.

Voice talent farting into the microphone during recording.

Trailers for other penguin movies.

Director's commentary.

Director's dog's commentary

Rated P for Penguin

Digitally mastered for superior penguin cuteness

Next we have three ads I snipped out of different issues.

Top left: Madagascar video games

"Madagascar and the all new Madagascar: Operation Penguin

Go from the zoo to a place that's totally new

Rule the city and the jungle in two hit games based on the hit movie. In Madagascar, play as Alex, Marty, Gloria, and Melman in a wild adventure. Available on all video game consoles. In Madagascar: Operation Penguin, play as Private Penguin in madcap missions, available only on GameBoy Advance."

Bottom left: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa video game

"Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

For PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, and DS

Play as all the main characters—including the penguins—through the story of the Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa movie.

Tip: In the soccer match in the In Madagascar level in single-player mode, Mort the lemur can be a tough goalie. Raise the Power Meter to the 75 percent mark and you can kick the ball over Mort's head and score nearly every time.

Zelda the roving reporter: Do you have a license to drive that?"

Right: TPoM world premiere

"What's New on Nick

Penguins of Madagascar

The penguins are back, and this time, it's for their very own show! Catch the premiere immediately after the Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, March 28. And check out the first-ever Penguins of Madagascar online game at nick.com."

Lastly, we have this crossover comic of the Penguins with Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I don't have the cutout of this, but I distinctly remember seeing it in the Gag Station of one issue's Comic Book section. I was able to find it online but unfortunately I don't know the artist.

And that's every time Madagascar was featured in Nickelodeon Magazine!

[lightofraye]

An excellent article and one particular section jumps out to me. Can we send what he said to other actors? One in particular? (Hint: It's to Jensen Ackles.)

--excerpt--

I first became aware of you, as an actor, with Passions. When you think about the trajectory your career has taken since then, how has it compared to what the goal was or what you might have envisioned it to be? You’ve definitely spent time on a number of memorable TV series and you had that successful run on This Is Us. Was this a goal? Had you always wanted to lead a TV series? What did you envision for yourself?

HARTLEY: I don’t know if I had a particular vision in mind where I manifested something like being the lead of a show, or anything like that. I think I was just enraptured with the art and the craft and the idea that you can go to “work” and make believe, and meet all these really interesting people and artists, and get ideas from them, and just work really hard on making something look effortless. I guess that was the goal. Most of these actors that you watch and admire, when you look at what they’re doing, it looks like they’re not doing much, but it’s so captivating. When you watch Jon Hamm, if you didn’t know any better, the guy is just such a natural. He’s just sitting there staring and listening to this guy, but I can’t stop looking at him because he’s doing a million things all at once and he makes it look effortless. That’s an artist. That is dialed in. When you watch Tom Hanks do a scene, you could watch that guy read a phone book. So, I guess that was the goal. It still is my goal to just be the best I can possibly be, and I haven’t reached it yet. I’m not done learning yet. But I don’t know if I ever had a vision of where I would be at this age. I’m just lucky to be in this business and able to afford a life in this business. I love the process of learning new things and I love the idea that, if I had a chance to redo a scene from two years ago, I bet you I could do it better. If the day comes along where I’m like, “Yeah, I’m getting worse,” then I’ll probably retire.

[bomberqueen17]

Big Easy

I am on vacation this week in New Orleans. There are many reasons for this but mostly they're not about me. I'm just here for the ride. Hilariously the one thing I found on on my own that I was like "oh i gotta do that while we're here" is also the thing that has been recommended to me by literally everyone i've spoken to including the Lyft driver from the airport, which is the WWII Museum, and conversely the more people recommend it the more I'm like :/ I might not enjoy this that much. WWII history was a childhood hyperfixation of mine but I've found the shit I was into about it is not the stuff other people like about it. This museum features a movie narrated by Tom Hanks so I feel like it's going to mm emphasize the bits I don't care about a lot. BUT I am going to go and I am probably going to devote a whole day. The upside of this is that probably Dude will not be deadly bored by it. He does tend to have the issue of not being into what I'm into sometimes... but this will probably be fine.

My hip is doing okay, the one I've been physically therapizing for ages? But what's popped up is that as the bad hip heals, the "good" hip starts giving me trouble-- I have prettty bad sciatic nerve problems on that side, and I didn't notice them so much because the cartilage tear on the bad side hurt enough to distract me. But lately it's like-- a little electric current of Badness inside the back of my right knee. No fun. But I've been doing physical therapy exercises for about fifteen weeks now (I just counted), three times a week, so I'd damn well better have seen some improvement LOL.

But mostly I can walk around, and I have a better idea earlier on whether walking is going to be good for me or not, so idk it's progress.

So far I have had a few bites of a shrimp po'boy (in the Atlanta airport, where we ordered something else and the waitress didn't hear us and just brought better food, no regrets on our part), some amazing gumbo, a bit of really good crawfish etouffe, and a really good Hurricane cocktail, and have seen the steamboat Natchez going up the MIssissippi with a brass band playing on it. Oh yeah there was a live band at the baggage claim? Apparently there were Many Doings in the French Quarter last night because of Cinco de Mayo, our Lyft driver was explaining they'd barricaded a bunch of the streets and she was delighted they'd moved one barricade because otherwise she could not have dropped us at our hotel. But by the later evening when we were out and about it wasn't quite so crowded but there were police cars and sirens and apparently some kind of disturbance a couple blocks away from our hotel. We kept walking because whatever it was was Not Our Business.

I'm mostly here for the food. I brought mostly me-made clothes. I was wearing a nice button-up shirt to fly in, and i sat at the gate during our layover and hand-bound two of the last three buttonholes on it (I'd cut and overcasted them at home but ran out of time). Relaxing and chill, honestly.

There are a couple of fabric stores I want to visit but apart from that I have zero agenda. Maybe Dude came up with something. I think he's mostly been researching restaurants.

I did not expect this, though: I know the names of so many of the places here from the news coverage of Katrina, and when I saw the Superdome in person i started crying, and had to explain to the driver that I'd been an airport bartender during that time and so had been stuck in front of huge TVs with 24h live coverage, and I'd had a bunch of online friends living there and I didn't realize until this moment how much it scarred me, so I could only imagine for the people here, and she talked about how she'd been a cleaner in an apartment complex at the time (I'd sussed that she was my age or older so I figured she'd remember it as well as I do, because to my shock that was 20 years ago now) and how many people had just left and never come back, had abandoned their possessions and just never came back for them because the power didn't come back on for two or three months.

She said "Now I know, when they tell you to evacuate, you get the hell out."

She also complained that nobody knows how to act, because it's all tourists. Which, fair.

... Anyway, anyone with recs for New Orleans feel free to tell them to me, I'm just here for the food and the vibes.