#don't do that: barry

[yardsards]

"i don't ship laios and marcille-" oh yeah same, their relationship is so much more compelling to me viewed through a platonic lens than a romantic one

"-like, marcille clearly hates laios" are we reading/watching the same series??? did you just stop after the first couple chapters??? look at their relationship development, that's her friend! her bestie, even!!!

[elspeth-catton]

[saltburn characters + text posts]

[politedemon]

It really, really, really could happen.

[finemealprompt]

DP x DC Prompt #13

When Danny decided to move to Central City, he wasn't sure what he was expecting. He just knew he wanted to move somewhere he could be useful.

He had been a vigilante for so long, he wanted to help people a different way. Working at the morgue was a way he could help souls find rest.

Plus, the forensic scientist (chemist?) he got to interact with sometimes was a nice benefit. Now, if he can just figure a way to ask him out and eventually tell him he's technically dead, he'd be set.

[junespriince]

Little Chickadee meet little Sparkle au

8yo Dick, picks up 3yo Wally: so this baby kid flash?

Barry: yeah, this is apparently him at three years old according to Iris.

Dick, looks at the tiny boy in his arms: and his dad hated him!? Adults are useless.

Bruce, sighed: can't wait for Constantine and zatanna to fix this... Alfred where's the leash? *Leaves*

Dick, gives Barry, Wally back: I will make sure nobody hurts him again.

Barry: aw, that's so sweet of you.

A few hours later

Bruce: I told you to watch him, how could you let him get away!?

Barry: he said he went to the bathroom, how was i supposed to know he would leave, the time I knew him he listened in Central!

Wally, fussy because people are yelling:

Bruce: where could he have gone to, all his usual hits are protected.

Barry: ... Oh my god, OH MY GOD HE'S AFTER RUDY!

Bruce: Rudy?

Barry, grabbing his things: Wally's shitty bio dad, he read Canary's file on Wally and asked me questions.

Bruce: AND YOU GAVE THEM TO HIM, FREELY!?

Barry: I'm sorry I forgot he was blood thirsty as a child, okay!

Jason, holding a now crying Wally: hush it dipshits, and he's like eight how far on foot could he have gone.

Tim: he knows about the zeta tubes.

Jason: oooo, yeah that mother fucker dead dead.

Cass: I also saw him grabbed Barry's phone and called up Iris.

Barry: SHIT MY WIFE GONNA GO TO PRISON! I GOTTA GO!

[coldflash-corner]

I've said it before, I'll say it again, obsessed with the concept of Snart not introducing Barry (as Barry) to Mick bc he's worried that Mick won't like Barry and will do something drastic, or vice versa

And then Mick and Barry meet without Snart being around and become best friends

[jerreeeeeee]

more and more i find myself interested in the period of time where barry and lup were best friends and sort of both knew they were starting to have romantic feelings but also were both not ready to act on them and continued to be close friends.

like so often i’d resist that sort of story, because they end up in a romantic relationship, and so it feels like that feeds into that narrative of “inevitability,” it feels like it retroactively cancels out the “platonic explanation” for how close they were before, but i don’t think that’s actually true for them? the “inevitability” isn’t that they’d develop romantic feelings, because any friendship that close must eventually become romantic, rather it’s that they happen to develop romantic feelings, and so it’s inevitable that they trust and love each other enough to take their time and change their relationship as they want to, because their friendship means so much to them.

there was a platonic explanation for how close they were before they started feeling romantically and before they started labelling their relationship as romantic, because before all that, their relationship was platonic. they were close friends who loved each other and then they fell in love romantically. they still loved each other equally as much when they were “””just””” friends. if they’d never developed those romantic feelings they’d still be close and love one another. (case in point; their respective relationships to taako, or at the very least lup’s relationship to taako, which is equally close and deep and loving, yet platonic, and in fact directly mentioned as remaining just as important to lup) (and really, case in point their relationships to everyone on the starblaster. in the monologue about lup and barry, griffin takes care to mention that the relationships between everyone on the crew had become indescribably close, and never positions their romance as being “more” than any of the others’ friendships).

the reason i dislike friends to lovers is because usually those stories imply that romance is the inevitable end to a close friendship, that romance is a deepening of a relationship, but taz balance so pointedly does not say that about all its other myriad deep and profound platonic relationships; the narrative, at every turn, fully respects its friendships and platonic bonds, so this one happening to be a romance doesn’t actually bother me. it does actually feel like a choice people made because they felt like it and wanted to, rather than being forced in, and it doesn’t reinforce amatonormative bias, because the story doesn’t.

their ending up as a romance doesn’t invalidate the friendship beforehand, because the friendship was already so deep and valuable to both of them. and honestly, from the way the monologue goes, it seems to me that they weren’t exactly pining, they weren’t longing to deepen their relationship, they didn’t experience distance before becoming a couple; they were together every step of the way. it was already deep and close and loving before they decided to change it, and they took their time because that was how they wanted to do it. not being together romantically never stopped them from spending time together or valuing their relationship or loving one another.

[anistarrose]

The possible explanations for why the fuck Barry could've felt the need to open that scene with "are you afraid?" have been analyzed by this fandom for basically ever since the Red Robe identity reveal, and a lot of people have brought up good theories that I've adopted bits and pieces of from each. But one thing that I haven't actually seen proposed as a factor is this:

Talking to Tres Horny Boys through the facade of the faceless "Red Robe" might've just been Barry's backup plan. Plan A was, quite possibly, to sneak Junior's ichor out of Lucretia's private quarters, be able to actually inoculate THB, and actually have them recognize him. (A proper reunion, with no cryptic warnings. With no dancing around static — just Barry and Tres Horny Boys, actually trusting each other innately.)

Why do I think this is plausible? Let me clarify the timeline a little: at the start of the Petals arc, before THB leave the Bureau, all is normal with their soon to be ex-roommate Pringles/Robbie (Ep. 18). Upon return, THB are informed that at some point during their (overnight, so 24 hour-ish?) absence, Pringles was thrown in the brig (Ep. 28).

It's eventually revealed by Pringles and Barry, in The Suffering Game and Reunion Tour respectively, that Barry possessed Pringles to do "reconnaissance" on the Bureau, specifically on where to find the second Voidfish (ie, Lucretia's private office, which is where Pringles "woke up" and was "arrested summarily").

I will note that Barry describes this as just recon — implying information gathering, and not necessarily a Voidfish ichor heist. However, this was an explanation he gave through a recorded message in the coin, where he was likely choosing his words carefully to confuse THB the least amount possible. And moreover... I just find it hard to believe that Barry wouldn't let himself hope, leading up to and during this infiltration, that he could make it out with the ichor he so desperately needed.

After all, Barry may be Going Through It during the podcast, but he definitely knows that as much as he needs information, it's going to be a lot harder to pull off his eventual heist if Lucretia catches him in the act, and winds up knowing that he has that information. Barry also chose to make his infiltration attempt while the Bureau was distracted, monitoring the Gaia Sash — in a lot of ways, this might've seemed like not just his first chance at the ichor, but also his best chance at it.

Barry's both an incredibly determined and opportunistic, calculating guy. I don't think Barry would've left Pringles' body unless/until he was absolutely cornered; no hope left of getting out with the ichor this time. He wouldn't pass up a chance to restore his family's memories — because of his deep, deep emotional and practical stakes in restoring those memories, first and foremost — but he even feels kinda bad about possessing Pringles (calling it "unfortunate collateral damage"), and would certainly prefer for his unsavory tactics to be, you know, worth it.

So when Barry fails? When he comes away from his mission he's no doubt been planning for weeks, waiting intently and single-mindedly for his chance with the right Relic-based distraction — and it turns out he has information, but no ichor, to show for it? When he fails, Barry's left on the back foot.

He'd dared to hope it might turn out better than this. He'd dared to hope this might be a turning point, and the world might remain in danger, but at least he'd have his family back. He'd dared to hope he might be able to speak to them, in his right mind, with his memories, and be recognized for the first time in a decade.

So when none of that comes to fruition? When he knows his boys won't recognize him yet, no matter what he does? Yet he still needs them on his side? He still needs them to be prepared for the horrors coming?

Well, he just fucking improvises.

"Are you afraid?"

[mattzerella-sticks]

[pumpkinrootbeer]

say what u will about barry allen but no other superhero has had a worse time. you come in, take up another heros mantle, be a hero for however many years, DIE!!! actually die not comic death but die to the point you are functionally irrelevant for 20 years you completely cease to be that character and the vast majority of people grew up with a different flash, get resurrected you're back now (yay?), writers don't know what to do with you because there's already another flash and there has been for the past two decades so the entire universe kinda hems and haws about what to do with you until they take you out of your main comics and just have you chill in the justice league, then you lose your powers and are once again no longer the flash.

I need a "where are they now" but for Barry Allen flash. dead for Twenty Real Life Years. come back to life. reset the universe. just to lose your powers and be booted again from the superhero title. God himself hates this man

"Oh wally got erased from existence" "well x happens to Batman" it's not even about what happens in the narrative it's like. you're the only mainstream superhero ever that stopped existing for two decades and when they do decide to bring the character back they have no idea what to do with you so you're eventually forever relegated to the sidelines And also you're not the strongest or the most skilled or the fastest flash and they keep retconning all the special stuff You did in specific and refuse to let your narrative exist beyond Dead Mom. bartholomew baby I'm so sorry

[tavolgisvist]

The boat called Yoko and The boat called Paul

accidental - more or less - coincidences

1 To look in the eye

You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away…

(Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 1997)

“This is sort of what went on the ’60s a bit. You thought, Well if I’m going to go with this person for the rest of my life, like John and Yoko or me and Linda, I really ought to look them in the eye all the time. And John and Yoko really did spend a lot of time (stares manically). And it got fairly mad, they’d sit there looking at each other, going It’s gonna be all right, it’s gonna be all right. After a couple of hours of that you get fairly worn out.”

(Paul McCartney, interview with Paul Du Noyer, 1989)

2 David Bailey photo session January 1965

and

Susan Wood photo session 26 November 1968

3 White walls

'Paul had a nice idea about opening up white houses, where we would sell white china, and things like that, everything white, because you can never get anything white, you know, which was pretty groovy…'

( John Lennon , December 1970, Jann Wenner interview for Rolling Stone magazine)

It's difficult starting write from scratch with Yoko there. 'Cause I start writing songs about white walls. Just 'cause, you know, just 'cause I think she…I think John and Yoko would like that, you know. And they wouldn't.

(Paul McCartney, Get Back sessions)

.

4 Tittenhurst

"I knew the house, because John and I had been to look at it with the other Beatles couples a year ot two earlier. [...] For a crazy moment we's considered buying it and all move in together, in a kind of Beatles commune. How strange that now it was John and Yoko's home."

(Synthia Lennon, John, 1988)

5 Chalk and cheese / Cows and cheese

‘When I caught sight of him, when John brought him home for the first time, I thought “Oh-ho, look what the cat’s dragged in,”’ Mimi later recalled. ‘He seemed so much younger than John–and John was always picking up waifs and strays. I thought “Here we go again, John Lennon… another Shotton.”’ Even Paul’s immaculate manners could not thaw her. ‘Oh, yes, he was well-mannered–too well-mannered. He was what we call in Liverpool “talking posh” and I thought he was taking the mickey out of me. I thought “He’s a snake-charmer all right,” John’s little friend, Mr Charming. I wasn’t falling for it. After he’d gone, I said to John, “What are you doing with him? He’s younger than you… and he’s from Speke!”’ After that, when Paul appeared, she would always tell John sarcastically that his ‘little friend’ was here. ‘I used to tease John by saying “chalk and cheese”, meaning how different they were,’ she remembered, ‘and John would start hurling himself around the room like a wild dervish shouting “Chalkandcheese! Chalkandcheese!” with this stupid grin on his face.’”

(Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman, 2016)

Q: "Why did you collaborate with Yoko on this LP?" JOHN: "It's like a play and we're acting in it. It's John and Yoko - you can take it or leave it. Otherwise (laughing) it's cows and cheese, my dear! Being with Yoko makes me whole. I don't want to sing if she's not there. We're like spitiual advisors. When I first got out of the Beatles, I thought, 'Oh great. I don't have to listen to Paul and Ringo and George.' But it's boring yodeling by yourself in a studio. I don't need all that space anymore."

(John Lennon, The September 29th 1980 issue of Newsweek)

6 Names

.

.

7 Two lovers on the beach

PAUL: ...We just write the songs first, and then uh, just shove ‘em in anywhere, as George said. Especially in the uh, sunset scene at the very end of the picture, where the two lovers – that’s George and Ringo – are coming towards each other on the beach… [general laughter] And they just finally meet – well, actually they don’t quite meet, they just run past each other, and both dive into the sand and as they do... JOHN: [in background] They both light a cigarette. PAUL: [laughs] Yeah, that’s it. The sun goes down

(May-June, 1965, Twickenham Film Studios, interview with Elliot Mintz)

gifs by thebeatlesordie

8 Paris

1961

John and I went hitchhiking. George and I did it a couple of times too. It was a way to get a holiday. Maybe our parents booked holidays, but we wouldn’t have known how to. So we would head out, just the two of us, with our guitars. John was older, but I was in on the decision about where we might go. He’d got a hundred pounds from his uncle, who was a dentist in Edinburgh, for his twenty-first birthday, and we decided we’d hitchhike to Spain by way of Paris.

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present , 2021)

John: "Paris has always been the object of English romanticism, hasn't it? I fell for Paris first of all, even before Hamburg. I remember spending my 21st birthday there with Paul in 1961 . . ." <…> Aunt Mimi told the Liverpool Echo that she remembered the time that John slipped off to Paris to "sell his paintings" and that some unsuspecting Frenchman has a Lennon original on his wall.

(The Beatles Diary. Volume1.The Beatles Years by Barry Miles, 2001)

Gustafson [Johnny Gustafson of the Big Tree] happened to bump into them the day they left, Saturday, September 30. “They both had bowler hats on, with the usual leather jackets and jeans. They said they were off to Paris, so I walked down to Lime Street station and watched them go. They were an incredible pair: always great fun, irreverent and so close.

(Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years by Mark Lewisohn, 2013)

I remember, we tried to hitchhike to Spain once, but we only got as far as Paris. We liked it so much, we stayed there, just the two of us. We were in this little hotel in Paris; it was so cheap it had fleas. My mum was a nurse, we were very hygienic, then you end up there – bloody hell! Those things bring you together.

(Paul McCartney, January 2021, UNCUT)

In October 1961 John turned 21. That was the big birthday then. Mater came down from Scotland to celebrate this special day with the family at Mendips. I remember her fussing over John, ruffling his hair and saying how wonderful he was. Her present was a gift of £100, which she told John was ‘from Mummy’. I had the same myself, on my 21st, and used it for a deposit on a house. John spent his on a trip to Paris with Paul. They meant to hitch-hike to Spain, but only got as far as Paris. They wore leather jackets and bowler hats to hitch rides, as a gimmick, to show people they weren’t ruffians. It worked. They got rides and had a wild, drunken time for ten days.

 (Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon by Julia Baird, 2007)

As Jürgen says, “It sounds conceited but it’s the truth: they really wanted to look like me.” At their request, he took them to the weekend flea market at Porte de Clignancourt, at the northern end of Métro Line 4. Searching through the racks, John bought a green corduroy jacket like Jürgen’s, Paul found an eye-catching patterned polo-neck, and they looked for—though didn’t find—the Vollmer style of shoes, “like half-boots.” Their most daring purchase was two pairs of flared trousers, similar though different to the bell-bottoms worn by sailors—but the first time John and Paul wore them was also the last. As John would explain, “They were flapping around, and we felt like fools in anything that wasn’t skintight, so we sewed them up by hand that very night’—a comment that conjures up the quaint image of Lennon and McCartney working away with needle and thread under a murky light in a Montmartre hotel room. But alteration was essential: they knew precisely how the trousers, if left unchanged, would be received back home. What was OK in Paris would not be OK in Liverpool; the Beatles’ audience was mixed male and female and they didn’t want to alienate either by, in John’s words, coming across queer.’

(Tune In by Mark Lewisohn, 2013)

PAUL: We went to Paris – we were supposed to be in Spain, but we couldn’t get past Paris, we enjoyed that so much – on the strength of his hundred quid [given to him] when he was twenty-one. We went hitchhiking. We kind of said, “Well, look, I mean, we can get to Spain on this,” you know, a hundred quid, and he was kind of um… I mean, I don’t think he was funding me as much as he was spending. JULIA: Yeah, yeah. PAUL: And I’d be there for the banana milkshake. [Julia and Paul laugh] You know, I’d just happen to be there while he was spending. I think I kind of paid my own way. But we hitched, we hitched out. And we used – we realised that in – hitching, in those days, was much safer, obviously, than it is to hitchhike now – and we realised that we had to have a bit of a gimmick. So we both had these leather jackets and we had bowlers, we got bowler hats. We thought that’ll take the edge of the kind of hoodie look, you know, that sort of ruffian look, in these bowlers. And you kind of go, “Hey!” and people would stop, you know, because this is just a couple of daft guys in bowler hats, they don’t look like a threat. So we hitched down to Hoek van Holland or somewhere, Harwich, Hoek van Holland or somewhere like that, got over to Paris anyway. Got a bit drunk on the French beer, which was great, ‘cause we’d been drinking beer, the British stuff, and we felt we could handle that, but it was this foreign stuff, it really went to our heads. So we had a quite fun crossing there… It was great, it was so adventurous. I’d never done anything like that, I know I’d never been out of Liverpool. I’d been to Pwllheli, Skegness, and Leamington Spa. That had been the whole of my travels, you know. So it was very exciting to get off on your own with a mate like John.

(Paul McCartney interview with Julia Baird, 1987)

We knew what it was like to go on the cross-channel ferry; we knew what it was like to try and hang out in Paris. We would walk for miles around the city, sit in bars near Rue des Anglais, visit Montmartre and the Folies Bergère. We felt like we were fully paid-up existentialists and could write a novel from what we learnt in a week there, so we never did make it to Spain. We’d been together so much that if you had a question, we would both pretty much come up with the same answer.

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present , 2021)

1969

'Between us,' Yoko says, 'we were very psychic. We knew all the time what the other was thinking, what was going to be said by the other, our responses, everything. It was sometimes unnerving.'

(Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman, 1993)

John and Yoko, still in Paris, had tried to get married on the cross-channel ferry but were refused permission to board The Dragon at Southampton because of “inconsistencies in their passports”. Peter Brown at Apple found that they could get married on the British-governed island of Gibraltar. <…> John: “We chose Gibraltar because it is quiet, British and friendly. We tried everywhere else rst. I set out to get married on the car ferry and we would have arrived in France married, but they wouldn’t do it. We were no more successful with cruise ships. We tried embassies, but three weeks’ residence in Germany or two weeks’ in France were required.

(The Beatles Diary. Volume1.The Beatles Years by Barry Miles, 2001)

"On March 19, 1969, I saw John Lennon again in Paris, late in the morning. He had arrived at the Plaza Athénée during the night accompanied by his new girlfriend, Yoko Ono. They left with me in a taxi to visit the Puces. Once on rue des Rosiers in Saint-Ouen, John asked me to show them this place that he found "magical". That was the word he used."

(Henry Pessar)

John and Yoko perusing the stalls at the flea market, Porte de Clignancourt, in particular purchasing jeans from an old lady who appears oblivious to the stature of the person she is serving (photo by Henry Pessar)

Their [John and Yoko] wedding was unconventional but romantic. Based in Paris for a couple of weeks in March 1969, they decided to charter a plane and marry in Gibraltar. <….> 'We are two love birds,' he said. 'Intellectually we didn't believe in getting married. But one doesn't love someone just intellectually. For two people, marriage still has the edge over just living together.' <…> They had their honeymoon, he explained, before the wedding. 'Just eating, shopping and looking round Paris. In love in Paris in the spring was beautiful. We're both tremendous romantics!' <…> Back in Paris after only a seventy-minute stay in Gibraltar, John and Yoko went to the Plaza Athenee Hotel. <…> John said that from then on they would do everything together, as artists and as husband and wife.

(Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman, 1993)

9 Number 9

He believed the sign of a marriage 'written in the stars' was that the names of John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon together featured the letter 'o' nine times.

(Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman, 1993)

…And nine was a hugely significant numeral to the Lennons, a magic integer that seemed to mysteriously recur throughout John’s life. Yoko would rattle off the number’s many repeated appearances: John was born on the ninth of October. She was born on the eighteenth of February (one plus eight). The first home he lived in—his grandfather’s house—was at 9 Newcastle Road. Paul McCartney’s last name has nine letters…

(We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me by Elliot Mintz, 2024)

10 Two Virgins and Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

Two Virgins

recorded 3-4 (or 19–20) May 1968, released 29 Nov(UK), 11 Nov 1968 (US)

August 31 Private Eye announced that John and Yoko’s forthcoming album would have a full-frontal nude cover. September 15 Around this date, John and Yoko photographed themselves in the nude, from the front and rear, intending to use the shots as cover artwork for their rst collaborative album. November 11 John: “Originally, I was going to record Yoko, and I thought the best picture of her for an album would be naked. So after that, when we got together, it just seemed natural for us both to be naked. Of course, I’ve never seen my prick out on an album before.”

(The Beatles Diary. Volume1.The Beatles Years by Barry Miles, 2001)

Autumn 1968:

As the meeting was drawing to a weary close, John, not this day with Yoko, who hadn’t seemed particularly connected with what was going on, said he wanted to play us a tape he and Yoko had made. He got up and put the cassette into the tape machine and stood beside it as we listened. The soft murmuring voices did not at first signal their purpose. It was a man and a woman but hard to hear, the microphone having been at a distance. I wondered if the lack of clarity was the point. Were we even meant to understand what was going on, was it a kind of artwork where we would not be able to put the voices into a context, and was context important? I felt perhaps this was something John and Yoko were examining. But then, after a few minutes, it became clear. John and Yoko were making love, with endearments, giggles, heavy breathing, both real and satirical, and the occasional more direct sounds of pleasure reaching for climax, all recorded by the faraway microphone. But there was something innocent about it too, as though they were engaged in a sweet serious game. John clicked the off button and turned again to look toward the table, his eyebrows quizzical above his round glasses, seemingly genuinely curious about what reaction his little tape would elicit. However often they’d shared small rooms in Hamburg, whatever they knew of each other’s love and sex lives, this tape seemed to have stopped the other three cold. Perhaps it touched a reserve of residual Northern reticence. After a palpable silence, Paul said, “Well, that’s an interesting one.” The others muttered something and the meeting was over.

(Michael Lindsay-Hogg (filmmaker), Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond, 2011)

Inevitably, many people bought Two Virgins for the cover alone: for some of the Beatles’ younger fans, it was to be their first ever glimpse of grown-ups in the nude.

(Craig Brown, 150 Glimpses of the Beatles, 2020)

Paul: So what’s the point behind Two Virgins? <…> Paul: Is there any need to do this in public, Mr. Lennon?

(Get Back sessions, January 14th, 1969)

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

recorded 9, 10 October 1968; released 22 Nov (UK), 25 Nov 1968 (US)

designing the White Album poster during Sept-Oct 1968

I was up on the flat roof [in Rishikesh] meditating and I’d seen a troupe of monkeys walking along in the jungle and a male just hopped on to the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular. Within two or three seconds he hopped off again, and looked around as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me,’ and she looked around as if there had been some mild disturbance but thought, Huh, I must have imagined it, and she wandered off. And I thought, bloody hell, that puts it all into a cocked hat, that’s how simple the act of procreation is, this bloody monkey just hopping on and hopping off. There is an urge, they do it, and it’s done with. And it’s that simple. We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don’t. So that was basically it. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? could have applied to either fucking or shitting, to put it roughly. Why don’t we do either of them in the road? Well, the answer is we’re civilised and we don’t. But the song was just to pose that question. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? was a primitive statement to do with sex or to do with freedom really. I like it, it’d just so outrageous that I like it.

(Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 1997)

PLAYBOY: “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” LENNON: That’s Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room. That’s how it was getting in those days. We came in and he’d made the whole record. Him drumming. Him playing the piano. Him singing. But he couldn’t—he couldn’t—maybe he couldn’t make the break from the Beatles. I don’t know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still, I can’t speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that’s just the way it was then.

(John Lennon, 1980, All We Are Saying by David Sheff, 2020)

The song’s (very) slightly risqué lyric, all two lines of it, heightened the vague air of controversy surrounding the album. McCartney was already in trouble with the press for allowing a minuscule nude picture of himself to be included on the set’s free poster.

(The Beatles Diary. Volume1.The Beatles Years by Barry Miles, 2001)

“All this work, all this talent — and what [the press] fixate on is one small picture.”

(Derek Taylor)

To be continued, I suppose

[keyh0use]

shitpost number (your guess is as good as mine)

[ftl-faster-than-life]

Bart gets the ability to throw hands with God from the Allen side of the family. Bart gets the desire to throw hands with God from the Thawne side of the family.

[hug-kiss-marry-kill]

RETRIAL

[doverstar]

Ironically, when you think about it their attempt to make Peter Pan feminist UNDERCUT the story's main (female!) lead.

Wendy wanting to be a mother is arguably a hint that she's already more mature than the boys and is ultimately meant to grow up, even if she doesn't recognize it yet. Her crush on Peter is important because it shows how his world of neverending youthful adventure is something she does want, but which she later realizes can't give her what she ultimately wants (because Peter's too immature to reciprocate). All of these lead to her returning and embracing growing up.

In short, the very traits they cut out to be more "feminist" in the modern term undercut Wendy's development as a character, and weakened the core themes of the story.

I agree with much of this! But- Peter does reciprocate. That's part of why Wendy brings changes into his life. He doesn't know (or remember) what a kiss is until she kisses him. He's never been fond of a girl before Wendy. He flirted her out the window, brought her to Neverland to be the Lost Boys' mother, and played at being married to her, all of which is something he has never done before. Peter goes to Wendy's home and tries to shut the window their mother has kept open for them, so that if she ever decides to leave Neverland, she'll think her parents don't want her and will go back to Peter (he can't quite make himself do it, though, and chooses not to). Peter forgets his men, John and Michael, Tinker Bell, and even the threat of Captain Hook multiple times in the story, but he does not forget Wendy. When Tink tells him the boys and Wendy have been taken by the pirates, Peter's heart "bobbed up and down as he listened", and his only reactive thought is that Wendy is bound. When he goes to save the day at the climax, he says "And now to rescue Wendy!" without a mention of the other kids he's responsible for on that ship. She's taking up his brain space the entire story. Peter Pan has a finite memory, so when something sticks, it's written that way for a reason. His mother replacing him stuck, and Wendy stuck, and that should tell the reader something about those relationships. He forgot Tinker Bell, who drank poison for him, long after she was gone, but he remembered Wendy for years after her departure from Neverland, and even when he stopped coming for a while, he remembered her again, and by that time she was "ever so much more than twenty" and had a walking, talking daughter during his latest visit. He doesn't remember Hook, Tink, the Lost Boys, or anything else from the time the Darlings were on the island, but he remembers Wendy. Peter reciprocates. I will die on this hill. It was very intentional, the way that relationship was written.

And as for Wendy, it's not that she's more mature than the boys and that that's her 'strength' - she's still just a little kid, too, and the only reason the boys needed her was because of who she is regardless of age, mental or physical. Her most admirable quality, and the one that brings changes to the Neverland, is that her reasons for wanting to grow up are rooted in love and in selflessness. That's who Wendy is. She wants to be a mother. She wants to be a wife. She wants to take care of people and take care of business, she loves everything to be 'just so', and she knows her own mother will miss her and that she made the wrong decision, leaving home, and has to go back no matter what. Who she is and what she does affects everyone from Tinker Bell to the Lost Boys to Hook to Peter himself. Not because she's this powerhouse independent hero. She didn't need magic or a sword. And because of Wendy, Peter has a good influence and someone to take care of him for generations afterward, even if he didn't decide to stay with her.

[coldflash-corner]

Barry probably has showed up so often to Saints and Sinners to talk to Snart, debate with him, ask for help, etc. (with a complete absence of the fear anyone else would have) that it's basically common knowledge that Cold has a boyfriend that will show up and scold him like a Missus