#btw this is Typical Steve behavior

[vestigesofperversion]

Random ND/disability rant but I hate when someone takes an opportunity in your brief moment of self-doubt to act like a know-it-all because they realize that if they speak with more confidence than you were no one will question them, even though you were 98% sure of what you said and they are like 37% sure. Makes me feel like I’m being tutored by someone I never vetted nor payed… Real-life example:

Me, as a DM, to my players: “You hear something… it sounds like it’s coming from below the kitchen, in the larder — the larder? — the larder.”

One of my (cishet male) players: “Mmhm, yes, the larder. Larder is correct.”

Me, in my mind: [How would you even know since you don’t know what I’m describing?? But thank you for the unnecessary validation, Steve…]

I would bet money that Steve either 1) has heard that word one time before and doesn’t really remember what it means, but is seizing upon the opportunity to seem like he knows because what confidence I did have in saying it tells him it’s probably correct therefore the stakes are low and by “confirming” it will make him seem smart, possibly even smarter than me, or 2) definitely does know that word and what it means because he’s obsessed with accruing obscure medieval knowledge, and will not only take every opportunity to make me aware of that, but is silently judging me for “trying” to use words he thinks I don’t know or have any right knowing even though the only reason I spoke with any doubt in the first place is not due to my lack of vocabulary but my disability and a general lack of self-confidence that he’s actually actively contributing to by acting like this.

[If you are the kind of person who does this, I know sometimes the intention is good and you’re just trying to help move things along or validate me, but I really only appreciate it if I’m having a hard time recalling a word entirely and you help by making guesses/suggestions, since my difficulty with word recall is one of the more disheartening aspects of my disability and part of the reason I don’t DM more often, and each word I fail to find (with or without help) just brings me down more. This is why, when I do manage to say the -exact- perfect word I was trying to find, albeit with slight lack of certainty because I’ve surprised myself by finding it, I don’t need you making me feel once again like a special needs kid by “confirming.” In the given example, the one person at the table (not Steve) that I was 100% sure knew that word responded with a gentle and supportive “yeah, that sounds right,” and I appreciated it way more than Steve’s über-confident man-splaininess.

[ars0nistalex]

Jay Hong Backstory Theory

Almost anyone who reads Lookism would probably agree that Jay is one of the most mysterious characters in the series. He’s silent, shy, and has strange interactions with his family. We don’t even know what his eyes look like. I’ve developed a theory about what could have happened in Jay’s backstory and I’ve analyzed him as much as I can to make it as accurate it possible! So I decided I’d share that with some of y’all 😊 btw, there was someone that helped me come up this theory, but they don’t have a tumblr so i can’t really credit them. So just know that this was the work of two brains, not just mine 😆

Previously Given Information

Most of what I’ll be discussing in this section is Jay’s family life and pretty much all the information on that they’ve given so far. I’m gonna start talking about something that happened very early in the series around episodes 40-45. Towards the beginning of the “Pavlov’s Dog” arc, Jay was talking on the phone with someone who was probably a relative. The told Jay that they couldn’t see him for Thanksgiving because everyone involved, including Jay himself, would feel too uncomfortable. Afterwards, Jay somehow communicated to the person that he would be going on a solo trip and the conversation ended very quickly after that. This interaction gives off the impression that Jay definitely is not close with his family.

The next notable detail is a very long jump ahead in the series and it occurred during the “Picnic” arc. Not long before the arc, Jay’s little sister Joy Hong (Hong Jae-hye) was introduced and the elder brother Kitae Hong was introduced much before Joy, at some around episode 60 if I’m not mistaken. Despite this, it was only revealed in the picnic arc that Kitae was related to them even though it had been hinted at before and it was very obvious that Jay is much closer to Joy than he is to Kitae. He openly engages in physical touch and playful quarrel with Joy, which is something the timid and silent Jay does with no one else. On the other hand, he seemed tense and distant around Kitae, even moreso than he does around anyone else. In addition to that, the eldest brother was openly rude and discriminatory towards his brother and clearly prioritized his sister’s happiness and wellbeing over Jay’s. Kitae told Jay he should be “living quietly” and asked him why he “dragged Joy” to the J High, which is a very low-end school. Joy defended Jay, but Kitae’s behavior was suspicious nonetheless. What’s even more suspicious is that when Crystal arrived, she thought that “they don’t seem close at all!” Furthermore, she had no idea that H Group had a second son. This is something she definitely should have known as the daughter of the chairman of HNH, an organization that H Group works closely with. Kitae’s remarks and Crystal’s observations only make it more obvious that Jay isn’t close with his family at all and brings a new idea to light: Jay’s presence as a higher-up in his company is strongly concealed from those outside H Group itself.

Moving forward, Jay’s relationship with his father is the strangest one I’ve seen. Before I start, I’ll mention that we don’t know anything about his mother so it’s hard to assume anything about his relationship with her or if he has a mother in the first place. However, what we do know is that his father, Steve Hong (sorry y’all i have no idea what his korean name is), is the CEO of H Group, a group that works closely with HNH. He’s a pretty suspicious man based on how blunt and and strange he is, and the fact that he often passive aggressively threatens people like the HNH Chairman, Charles Choi (Choi Dong-soo), or Jay himself. During the epilogue episode of the “Runaway Fam” arc, Jay met with his father and they discussed the fight Jay had with people from the organization that impersonated Joy (btw that organization was Hostel A, Steve just didn’t know that). He was clearly disappointed in Jay’s actions and told him not to call him again. But remember, Jay only fought with these people to protect loved ones (and Daniel, but in my mind he’s definitely one of Jay’s loved ones ;]]]]]). Of course, fighting isn’t the best way to handle any situation, but Jay took care of it. It would make sense if Steve was a bit disappointed that Jay got in a fight, but shouldn’t he have been more grateful that Jay did something about it rather than just letting the situation go unattended to? It almost seems like he didn’t want Jay to stand at all.

At this point, most of you are probably wondering why all of this is happening to our sweet Jay. After a lot of thought, I think I’ve come up with a pretty good answer to the question 😁

The Backstory Theory

I imagine that Jay grew up in a rather strict and potentially lonesome environment due to the fact that his father runs H Group and it has been hinted at that he’s been a businessman for a long time. He was most likely close with his siblings as a child, but he seems to have distanced a lot from Kitae since then.

Jay displayed shock when he first saw Daniel Park (Park Hyungsuk) in the series and has gone to many extents to get Daniel’s attention and put a smile on his face. After endlessly protecting him and doing just about everything to get closer to Daniel, even obscure things, (i.e. trying to buy Daniel from the slate auction in the festival arc), I can assume that Jay has romantic feelings for Daniel. In the past, he probably knew that he was homosexual and most likely hid it from his family for a while because people in South Korea typically aren’t very accepting of the LGBTQIA+ community.

This information leads perfectly into the main theory. Jay most likely came out as gay to his father, who was most likely homophobic and completely disappointed in Jay (which is very wrong by the way 😾). Remember when Jay couldn’t see his family for Thanksgiving because it would be “uncomfortable”? From this point on, Steve probably took all of Jay’s happiness away from him, forcing him to move away from home and go to a cheap high school and made him grow his hair over his eyes to avoid association with the company. Remember that Crystal had no idea H Group had a second son? That was because Jay’s presence was concealed. Since Kitae is one of the main representatives of H Group, we can assume that he was either forced to distance from Jay or just didn’t support his brother altogether. This explains why Kitae told Jay he should be “living quietly” and why they seemed so uncomfortable around one another. However, Joy doesn’t seem to represent H Group as much and hangs out with Jay whenever they get the chance to be together. She even finds a way to communicate with him despite his mutism (I have a small theory about Jay’s mutism and a few other things about him, but that’s too unrelated to put in this post). So, we can assume that Joy was probably one of he only people in the family that was accepting and supportive of Jay. This is probably why he seemed much closer to Joy and was comfortable with touching her physically.

Conclusion

In short, my theory states Jay’s freedom was taken away from him after coming out as gay to his family. He distanced a lot from people who he was close to before and had to hide his identity so he wasn’t associated with H Group because Steve felt ashamed of Jay. However, Jay still has Joy left, who is a family member who never rejected him and accepted him no matter what.

a/n

this theory actually sounded a lot better in my head �� it ended kinda abruptly cause i really don’t know how to end it.. well, if you’ve made it this far, thank you very much for reading! this is my first post like this so tell me how I did and if you have any additional thoughts 😁

i would also like to hear input from @prompt-disaster @jaeyeolla and @biigdeal who are some awesome lookism comrades x3

[moontheoretist]

I am watching What IF...?

Episode 1: What if... Captain Carter were the First Avenger?

You know... when I saw that it started from the breach in Captain America timeline and saw Peggy become a super soldier, I was pretty sure that Steve will resent her for what she did, because his portrayal in the First Avenger movie even before the serum indicated that he would be, just like he was of Bucky for being drafted while he was left behind. It’s canon behavior for him as far as I noticed.

What If..?’s Steve however is a better man. I dunno when exactly he changed, but he did. He doesn’t act as if he resented Peggy, and he seems quite ok with how everything turned out. Which is like, wow, I didn’t expect that. Also, Peggy has a far better story as Captain.

Like, she isn’t put into USO, she is denied being a soldier even, because she is a woman, the only thing she seems to share with Captain America is murdering punching bags and throwing stuff when angry, which is kinda a bad sign, but ok, everybody needs coping mechanisms. ANYWAY, when she learns where Hydra went, she quickly figured out what they were after, but the guy in charge (John Flynn), the same one who told her that she is a woman not a soldier, doesn’t want to send her there even though they still have a chance to get it back in time. So Howard steps in and her whole rebellion against the military is about not endangering everybody with a stupid ass decision made by a general who doesn’t get how important the cube is, instead of about saving just one man and accidentally saving 400 others by extension by literally going AWOL and endangering his friends like MCU Steve did. Everything about the mission which makes her recognized is about retrieving the Tesseract. And Howard gives her a uniform and a shield to do just that. All in British colors, because American military sucks.

(I love their “she just reaped the bars out, holy shit” faces xD)

AND THEN they go SAVE BUCKY. That makes much more sense story wise. And also Howard is showing Steve that technology can aid him when the serum now can’t, because Peggy is the super soldier instead, literally building better foundations for Steve’s attitude towards technology and the future. He will not be stuck in ice and come back for the Avengers, but at least he is getting better development not only in relation to this topic, but also to his hatred towards his body and his masculinity. Peggy still wanting him despite him being small and frail and now also disabled even more after he was shot and has to walk with a cane, literally builds in Steve the idea that his masculinity is not weak or bad, because he is not a macho muscly type and that his body isn’t something which he should hate or which makes him less than others. AND he is literally Tony now! I did suspect that the technology he got was a suit, but damn, is Steve in this universe fated to be the first Iron Man and then Tony second?

Lol, they named him “Hydra Stomper”.

And now Peggy teaches Steve the most important lesson “the Suit is nothing without the man inside”, which he as much as Tony needed to learn to finally feel free and not less than the others, because they rely on something. The only difference between Steve and Tony here is that Iron Man without Tony is truly nothing, because he made it, while Steve's suit was given to him, so anybody can technically pilot it. Anyway, I like this Steve so much more than MCU one.

(Which when I think about it now creates a pothole in the later part of the episode. Like why Hydra and Red Scull let the suit hanging instead of use it against Peggy? Why put Steve in chains next to it? It kinda looks like damseling him for literally no reason. I wonder why they didn’t kill him right away? Because what? Because he had blonde hair and blue eyes? Or what? Scull liked him? And we cannot even say it was done for the sake of Peggy saving him, because Peggy never sees Steve in chains. She went the other way, so why is he there? To save for whom? Bucky? It would be more logical if Red Scull just killed Steve and put the suit himself and fought Peggy in it to hurt her. Then at least space squid wouldn’t kill him, lol... ah wait. OH, yeah, Tesseract was inside the suit, so he just took it out. Still, he could power up the suit with something else and put one of his people inside to fight Peggy anyway, just in case she came for him).

AND OF COURSE HE HAD TO TRAGICALLY DIE WHEN I FINALLY STARTED LIKING THE WEASEL! LOL, we know what will happen next. He will become the new Winter Soldier, I suppose? If he survived the explosion.

Oh, they brought the original castle storyline back! It never appeared in the Captain America: The First Avenger, even though I personally remember a castle being a main stage for the whole “Steve sacrificed himself prelude” thing, so it’s nice to have a castle and an interdimensional portal back, instead of a plane battle.

“I am up for anything, but this is crazy”.

“And so is Steve Rogers”

Me: *wheezing*

Anyway, he survived. There is no Winter Soldier in this universe and Peggy gets lost in the portal, and she is brought back to 2012 by I suspect Project Pegasus as it is the “Loki’s arrival” scene.

I think that now, if we assume that everybody else is still present in this universe, meaning that Tony became Iron Man and all, Steve becoming a Hydra Stomper and working with Peggy gave Captain Carter an experience in fighting alongside someone in a metal suit. Plus her friendship with Howard means that she won’t have any bad disposition towards Tony and hence Avengers team will actually work better, and if there is Civil War it would be different and about something else, because Captain Carter knows her way around learning political related stuff, so she wouldn’t really kick Accords in the ass unless it was a Hydra plot. I also suppose that without her making Project Paperclip, Hydra would not infiltrate SHIELD, or someone else does that, and Captain Carter would notice something is not right with SHIELD, and she would root the Hydra out herself.

Also, I wanna point out that the scene in which Peggy is shown to be “smarter than Howard” is there only to establish the difference between her and MCU Steve Rogers, who doesn’t know shit about technology. It’s not that Howard isn’t smart anymore. He is a civilian, who is not a brawling type, in a room with a huge octopus which crushed Red Scull like a wooden stick. It stands to reason that he would be panicked enough to not be able to articulate properly. It also establishes that no “it runs on some kind of electricity” will happen in this universe during the Avengers storyline, where she ends by the end of the episode. It comes out a little out of the blue, that’s true, but this is not a line which only “genius” or “science type” can say. It’s just a typical sci-fi approach to the problem with anything, which also sounds smart at the same time. She could even take it out from a sci-fi novel. But I agree that they didn’t establish where that knowledge comes from in any of the previous scenes.

Episode 2: What if... T’Challa became a Star-Lord?

Lol, a vastly different reaction xD

And this was the moment when young T’Challa thought, “who needs to tell their baba that they’re going into space, anyway?” and just went and disappeared. I don’t even wanna know what Wakanda did after the prince vanished. Though it means that Shuri can become a queen and the Black Panther now, HELL YEAH!

And this is the proof that anybody who says that we have to murder someone else to “save the planet” from overpopulation is wrong. (Because they are wrong, just go and check studies about that). T’Challa just showed Thanos the benefits of equal share of the resources and saved the universe with logic and diplomacy.

And my hopes for Queen Shuri just went out the window. BTW, why Nebula turned into a living example of “blue space babe” (from feminist studies which pointed out that alien women are just human women painted colors and shown in sexy clothes or portrayed as dancers and prostitutes for the benefit of the male gaze). She got sexy hair, sexy dress, and she is later shown to be some kind of spy by the clothes she wears and her general attitude. She reminds me so much of Natasha that I am tempted to say she is a sexy spy cliché.

It’s kind of degrading after the whole episode which centered around a woman being denied being a soldier, which in the whole militaristic and male dominated setting was pretty much conveying feminist messages, while here in another male dominated setting we have only two women shown with any lines and one of them is Nebula sexy spy. It just comes across weird after the previous episode, tbh.

She even speaks like Natasha from the MCU... and she betrays just like our dear russian friend, Natasha. Anyway, it looks like Queen Shuri is still on the table! Wakanda prevails! It was not destroyed!

Ok, nevermind. She is a space Black Widow, but in this way that she plays every side just like Natasha does. Apparently... betrayal was part of the plan, lol. What is with this idea that women named with a name starting with N are good spies in this universe?

Carina the badass! GO CARINA! SHOW THEM!

At least in this universe, she doesn’t foolishly die for “drama”. Or, in MCU’s case, for exposition to show “what happens to those who touch the infinity stone”. I gotta say, her revenge was sweet.

[therealmofadisneyfangirl]

I watched You Wish for the first time which originally premiered on January 10, 2003 on the Disney Channel so uh 17 years ago. It was based on a Children series book. It stars Lalaine as Abby, Abbs, or others known as Abigail, AJ Trauth as Alex, and Spencer Breslin as Stevie.

It was not boring at all.

I never grew up with this stuff. I was 2 when this movie came out so I was watching little kids stuff; So I technically watch reruns.

But since Disney + recently got release; I’m finally caught up.

Let's talk about the main characters.

Their parents are clueless and hardly there.

Alex’s friends are cool.

Anyway back to the parents: The parents let their youngest child get away with murder like having a turkey for a pet?!

I understand why the oldest child is always annoyed with the youngest child.

I only had a normal pet which is a cat.

The Lansing brothers are opposites being only six years apart, Alex is 16, while Stevie is 10. Alex is more hot-tempered, stubborn, rebellious, awkward, and independent, while Stevie is child-like, clingy, and spunky. Which makes them clash at times which makes the siblings rivalry interesting.

Alex does have a soft side which happens many times; one of the highlight moments he was playing toy football with him later on before the chase scene after he kicked Stevie out of his room, after seeing Stevie’s puppy dog eyes he left him back in to watch a horror movie with him. I guessed it was Stevie’s weird way of saying sorry. Then he gave him a noogie; he ruffled his head several times in the movie.

Alex is a bossy big brother which is shown many times. He lists the items that includes

Telling him to not touch his stuff or not allow him to go in his room without permission etc. Stevie is a typical annoying little brother type; he likes to mess with his big brother and get under his skin;. Eventually, they do learn to get along in the end.

Bonus: Alex was pissed off in this scene because today was his game, and Stevie got jelly on his skates. I thought it was funny these two were giving me older brother and younger brother vibes. Then he tackles poor Stevie on the bed; then he pins him on the bed and got the skates off his feet, to be honest, Stevie deserves it. Alex, specifically told him several times to stay out of his room though I admit the position Steve is in looks like it hurts because Stevie kept moaning in pain trying to get his mom to save him from Alex’s wrath.

I laugh at the little chase-out scene between Alex & Stevie. I started to laugh when Stevie was scrambling for his life. Then Alex has his hands out for him to lunge at him if his mom didn't interfere Stevie would have been a football tackle again this time on the floor. Stevie ran away from Alex since he was chasing him after their mom intervened.

This was pretty much this scene:

After Stevie denied he was snooping in his room. I think Stevie does look up to Alex in a big brother worship way; because at any age, you look up to your older siblings.

Like he even said Go raiders! even if he was wearing Alex’s skates. Alex dismissed this as normal pesky younger brother's behavior. Coming from being the youngest in my family: I am just aware of these behaviors.

And also btw I was laughing at their facial expressions: during the chase scene

Alex: (thinking.) when I get my hands on you why you little runt-

Stevie thinking probably: Mom!!!

Yup because he yelled at Mom afraidly.

But I’m glad he got Stevie back as his younger bro. They both learn to be better brothers and now get along.

I love Alex teaching Stevie how to skate at the end. Then Stevie wishes for the coin to be a better skater and Alex’s I’m proud of you bro moment. He does have a big bro instinct which is shown several times.

You wish approval rating: 100/100.

Plus A+ for awesome acting between mostly AJ and Spencer; their bond looked realistic like they were actual brothers.

Credit to camera crew: As someone who loves camera work, and into photography. As a writer myself, The screenplay and script were good too.

When it shows Alex’s pissed off face, and Stevie’s I’m so in for it face. I thought it was good timing and hilarious. And bravo for a good music score. This movie was great and enjoyable for the entire family to watch in Quarantine.

Edit: the movie is 18 years now still good.