#i do not like arguing ir talking about heavy stuff but nobody else is and im the guy thats here

[jatlokgwo]

upset race/ethnicity rambling again sorrryyyyyy

i hate the way that people darken genshin charaters skin color to make them poc (cant think of a better way to word that benefit of the english is not my first language please) its the combination of the charaters that ive seen get darkened are almost always liyuen (asian) and the only time ive seen a genshin charater with textured hair was 1 drawing of xinyan and my doodles + in real life everything ive seen about racism is a dichotomy your black or your white asians like me that are to light to be black dont get mentioned until something bad happens to us (and its to late to help) or were usefull for a point (and our skin is not mentioned) and then we go back to the to pale to be black not white either limbo i can find blm and black positivity posts on accident but i have to look for stop asian hate by myself and ive never seen or heard of asian positivity

i want more poc in the game to but why are the popular charaters to "turn poc" already poc from a nation that litteraly shares a border with whitewashed india it kinda gives the vibes that some of you see us as white lite

[thetriggeredhappy]

angst&hurt/comfort, where scout is anxious and doubts his skills, so he tries to calm himself by holding/hugging/whatever his plushie (or something else, idk), whilst someone is trying to get to him, to make him confess what is bothering him? idk if you wanna make it a ship ir maybe dad spy, ily -🦂

oh dude you already KNOW dad!spy hours are 24/7 up in here. welcome to “projecting RSD onto Scout TF2 episode 85″

-

Stupid summer, stupid break, stupid losing streak. Stupid everything.

Usually Scout was excited about breaks. A week or so of getting to be off work, heading home to visit family or going on a road trip or whatever was happening. It was nice, he loved it. But this time they had explicit orders from their boss not to go anywhere or do anything. To stay on base or to go specifically exclusively to the store in the nearest town for food or whatever. He hated it. The base was too small to hang out in for more than a few days at a time. He hated it.

And not to mention that they’d finished off work on a bad note. A day of losses turning into a week of losses, half the team scrambling to try and pull together enough to get one last good push in before the break and the other half deciding to just accept the loss and do better once they got back.

And every day after battle Soldier would single out someone who wasn’t on top of their game and lecture them. And all week, instead of going for the people who were largely slacking off and not breaking their necks to try and get them some actual wins, he went after Scout, who was so frantic that he kept making stupid mistakes.

And he just... usually he argued about it, and got in a fight with Soldier, but he just... didn’t have the energy for it. The day was over. They’d lost. And Scout knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, but it kind of felt like it. Maybe if he’d tried just a little bit harder, pushed himself just a little further, he could’ve gotten the rest of the team motivated. Maybe they all would’ve picked things back up and tried too. But he couldn’t do it.

It was frustrating. He knew his job, beyond what he did on the field, was trying to keep morale up. He kept music playing, he was always up for hanging out or playing a few hands of poker or headed into town with someone to get shitty fast food. And he tried really hard to be funny and to keep things lighthearted, tried so fucking hard to keep spirits up. And he knew if he said anything about it, pointed out how literally like all of his time was spent trying to make sure everyone was feeling okay, it would...

He didn’t know. Maybe they’d just tell him off for being whiny or whatever. Maybe it would stop working so well, if they knew he was always doing it so extremely on purpose, so intentionally. He didn’t know.

But at that moment, he was feeling so much like utter garbage that he knew he had to just avoid the team so he didn’t drag the mood down further. Usually they didn’t really miss him anyways, other than idly asking if he’d gotten into any trouble while he was off doing “whatever he did”. All he knew was that him feeling like shit around everyone else would just make them feel bad too. And it was break anyways—maybe they’d just end up feeling better on their own. Especially since he wasn’t around to interrupt them.

He had plenty of food in his room, mostly chips and candy bars and stuff like that, stuff he didn’t want the guys stealing. And he’d totally share if they asked, for sure, but for that moment he was mostly just digging through the hoard for himself and doing not much of anything else.

He felt like kind of an idiot, sitting alone and eating his feelings like some kind of angsty teen in a movie or the chick in the romcom who just got broken up with. But there was nobody there to ridicule him except himself. And he did, but... the point stood.

A few days passed like that. He had food, he had the little bathroom connected to his room, he had comics to entertain himself. He slept a lot, mostly. Felt like garbage. Read some comics. Ate chocolate about it. Slept some more. He left a few times to do a few assorted things—called home like he did every week, went into the common room late one night to grab some of his records back so he could listen to them.

At one point, he got a knock on his door. He didn’t answer, couldn’t seem to find the energy to. A second knock when the first was unanswered after about twenty seconds. He still didn’t move.

The next day, another knock. This one was accompanied by words. “Scout? I know you’re in there,” Spy called, sounding annoyed.

To be honest, Scout was pretty sure he didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever Spy was about to lecture him about. So he just rolled over.

“You’ve missed every team meal for almost four days. You’re being rude,” Spy declared.

Scout reached off the side of the bed and picked up a plushie that had fallen down. It was a big, chunky pig, and he’d won it when he and Pyro had gone out to a fair and he’d knocked the ball toss game out of the park. Pyro had taken three of the plushies he’d won, and insisted he keep the fourth for himself.

He felt like even more of a dumb baby, sitting there cradling a stuffed animal like he was scared to head off to his first day of kindergarten, but he was already too tired and filled with vague unrest for it to get to him much.

At some point he heard a heavy sigh and the clack of fancy shoes moving away down the hallway, and Scout relaxed.

Twenty minutes later, a knock.

“Scout, let me in,” Spy said firmly.

“Fuck off, Spy,” Scout snapped.

“Scout, if you don’t open the door, I’m going to,” Spy declared.

“Bullshit.”

A heavy sigh, and then a few moments later the door swung open.

“What the fuck?” Scout asked, lifting his head to glare towards the door as Spy stepped inside.

“I know how to pick locks, Scout. You know this.” Spy squinted to try to get used to the light, the blinds having been drawn. “I’m turning a light on.”

Scout just grumbled, dropping his head back into the plush pig. In his periphery, the light was indeed turned on. There was a beat of silence.

“I brought a plate from dinner. I was concerned you would get scurvy, since you now apparently have the diet of an eight year old child who was given a hundred dollars and left unsupervised at the grocery store,” Spy said dryly.

“I don’t want your fuckin’ handouts, Spy,” Scout muttered, muffled.

“It’s not a handout, it’s the fact that I refuse to have anyone on the team besides me whose teeth are falling out. Take the food.”

“Fuck off.”

Spy sighed again, and after a moment he moved to put the plate on the bedside table. Scout prickled at the proximity, but didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up.

“I noticed that while you haven’t been at dinner, you still took the time to leave a thumb tack on my chair. Usually when you do that it’s because you’re angry with me. What exactly have I done?”

“I’m not mad at you, I’m just mad,” Scout grumbled.

“You know, it’s very childish to refuse to look at someone when they are trying to talk to you.”

“Guess I’ll just keep being the dumb idiot kid of the team then, huh?” Scout snapped.

Silence for a moment. “Scout. You’ve locked yourself away in your room and refused to come out again for several days. I know that something is wrong. The team does too—they’re starting to worry.”

“That might just be the most obvious lie you’ve ever fuckin’ told me, Spy,” Scout practically spat, and was glad to have his voice muffled, because suddenly it went a little tight.

“Is it that hard to believe that perhaps your teammates care about you?” Spy asked, a little sharply.

“It’s me, in case you haven’t noticed,” Scout said next, getting his voice back under control. “People don’t hang around me on purpose. They put up with me. And then they stop putting up with me at some point.”

“That’s not true,” Spy said, tone leaving no room for argument, but Scout elbowed some argument in anyways.

“All seven of my brothers, every fuckin’ date I’ve ever been on, the standing ban sayin’ I can’t go in Engie’s workshop or in Heavy’s workspace down by the boiler or the infirmary unless I’m actually seriously injured—“ Scout listed off, ticking off on his fingers, keeping his face hidden. “My own fucking dad decided he couldn’t fucking stand me and I was two years old, Spy, what the hell does that tell you? I’m an annoying little piece of shit and that’s all I’m ever gonna be and then one of these days I’m gonna die for real out in this hellhole desert and ain’t a single damn person out here will have ever even bothered to learn the name that’s supposed to go on my gravestone.”

Dead silence in the room. Scout’s arm fell back down by his side. His voice was shaky when he spoke again.

“Nobody’s ever even asked,” he managed. “Demo’s real name is Tavish, Heavy’s real name is Mikhal but his sisters call him Misha. And plenty of you guys get asked about it all the time but you don’t wanna say. And nobody’s ever even fuckin’ asked me.”

Silence for a few more seconds.

“I’m a whole person,” Scout said next. “I’m really into sci-fi. I’ve read every mainline issue comic book ever published after ‘35. I know how to cook and draw and I know the all the stats of every person on every major league baseball team. I was in theater in high school between track and baseball season in the winters and I and got a lead role on some Shakespearicles thing before it got cancelled because of budget cuts. I bet you didn’t even know that.”

“I didn’t,” Spy admitted.

“And why would you? Who the fuck cares? It’s just dumb scrawny idiot Scout, who the fuck cares what his deal is? He can barely do his job and read any word that’s over four syllables, who cares what he does? He ain’t nothin’ today, he must never have been somethin’ in the first place.”

“Scout—“

“Tell me I’m wrong, Spy,” he snapped, voice cracking down the middle.

“You’re wrong. Scout, what’s going on?” Spy asked, and his voice sounded closer, like he’d taken a knee. “What happened?”

He understood, logically, that telling Spy damn near anything was a bad idea. He sold information for a living. But logic hadn’t ever been much help to him, and anyways, he was pretty sure he was about to break down either way, and he could either cry like a dumb little baby and Spy could go to the rest of the team and tell them about stupid Scout and his crying for no reason, or he could at least sort of maybe a little bit sound justified and a little bit less completely unhinged.

“We lost all week because I fuckin’ suck at my job, and we don’t get to go off base for some goddamn reason, and I miss my family, and I—“ God damn it, he hoped to at least get to a second sentence before he broke, but here came the waterworks. “—and I know the team doesn’t give a shit, and if they even noticed they probably think I’m being some idiot baby, and I’m just so fuckin’ tired of all of this, alright? I’m just so goddamn exhausted, all the time, and no matter what I do I can’t make my own stupid, shitty, broken-ass brain shut up, and I...”

There was a hand on his shoulder, now. For some reason that’s what unstuck the sob in his throat.

“And I just miss my mom,” he managed, and sobbed again. “And I know that just makes me a stupid fucking baby—“

“Scout, it doesn’t,” Spy said firmly.

“Bullshit.”

A sigh, less exasperated than the others. “Scout, I miss my own parents. Often. Heavy writes to his mother, the Bushman calls home once a week and stays on the phone for an hour at a time. Do you think they would do that if they didn’t miss them?”

Scout couldn’t seem to find his voice, and just sniffled a little.

“If anything, it’s good that you miss your mother. You are appreciating her now, while she’s still part of your life, rather than later on when she’s gone. That’s a good thing.”

“Here I am cryin’ over dumb shit—“

“The fact that you’re even capable of tears shows that you haven’t completely sealed yourself off from your emotions like several of our testosterone-puppet teammates. I’m fairly certain that Medic surgically removed his own tear ducts. I think Soldier is so dehydrated that he’s incapable of it. And rather than sweat he needs to cover himself in liquid-like food products or else he’ll die of heat stroke.”

Despite everything, that made Scout laugh, just a little. More of a hiccup than anything else.

“Admittedly, you have greater social needs than several of our team, and they need to take breaks. Not just from you, but from everyone. It’s part of being human, everyone requires some amount of time alone or else they start losing their minds. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you—value the things you do for this team, even. Every time someone would like company when going in to town for any reason, they always ask me where you are. And you’ve given good film recommendations to everyone except for the Sniper.”

“Guy hates movies,” Scout defended weakly.

“You keep recommending horror films. As it turns out, he is a fan of romantic comedies.”

“Fuckin’ what? Seriously?”

“I was shocked too. His complete lack of taste in all areas of his life continues to amaze me.”

Scout scoffed at that. A beat of silence.

“What I am saying is that the team doesn’t simply put up with you. You’re impossible to simply put up with, you take up too big a part of everyone’s life here. Instead, they must like and respect you.” A pause. “And your father must have truly been an idiot. Anyone with two eyes would be proud of the challenges you’ve faced and overcome with all of the disadvantages you’ve been dealt over your lifetime.”

Scout sniffled, wiped his eyes with his forearm, finally managed to look up at Spy. “Anyone with two eyes? You sayin’ you’re proud of me, then?” he asked, even if it was a little shaky.

“I feel no strong emotions,” Spy deadpanned.

“Alright, nevermind about earlier. That’s the most obvious lie you’ve ever told me.”

Spy rolled his eyes, standing, brushing off the knee of his suit.

Scout looked at the plate, made a face. “Aw man, what the fuck, is that asparagus? Is Medic back on trying to make us eat healthy again?”

“The Engineer cooked it, stop complaining and just eat it,” Spy said, quickly falling back into his role of naggy just on the near side of patronizing.

“C’mon, it couldn’t have been like, mashed potatoes or broccoli or somethin’?”

“You always douse those things in salt and butter. That combined with the energy drinks means you’re going to get a heart condition before I do.”

“Just get the fuck outta my room, Spy,” Scout huffed, putting the stuffed animal aside and moving to pick up the plate and utensils.

“Very well. And go talk to Demoman at some point, he’s been whining about nobody wanting to go get fast food with him for two days,” Spy said as he walked to the door. “And you can’t borrow my car to go.”

“Fuck you, Spy,” Scout said flippantly, waving him off.

“Fuck you too,” Spy said just as casually, and made sure to close the door behind him.

[borntorun75-blog]

30 Most Underrated Springsteen Songs: #27. Queen of the Supermarket

Working on a Dream (2009)

"I move through the heart of a sea of fools so blissfully unaware that they’re in the presence of something wonderful and rare...”

Springsteen takes a bit of an odd creative leap in this widely hated song from his playful 2009 record - and it may not hit the mark perfectly, but it’s better than it gets credit for! More thoughts below the cut.

Okay, let’s get one thing clear right now: people fucking hate this song. Like, there’s virtually no question that this is the most unpopular Springsteen song of them all, and that’s even including that time he inexplicably closed an album with a cover of “Froggie Went A-Courtin’”. Standing in the pit at my fourth Bruce show, waiting for it to start, I said I didn’t think this song was that bad, and I got angry looks. Like two people were mad at me for just being okay with this song - that’s the level of ire here. Critics variously slammed this song as “unintentionally ludicrous”, “unbelievably melodramatic”, “like a parody”, and “accidentally a Meat Loaf song”; multiple explicitly panned it as the worst song he’s ever written, while the others more or less implied it; hell, the Chicago Tribune went as far as to say that this song single-handedly takes WOAD out of contention as one of the best Springsteen albums (and I bet the only reason most people would disagree with that is that most people aren’t big on the album anyway.) It’s to the point where it’s outright infamous: Bruce once played this song by sign request at a show solely because he was amazed someone actually brought a sign for it... and then the band had no idea how to play it since they’d blocked its existence out of their minds, so he just sang it solo.

So if you’re a non-Bruce fan stumbling upon this post, and you listen to this song and wonder “huh. ...that’s the artist he’s so passionate about?”, know that most people who are passionate about Bruce are equally passionate about hating this song. Or if you are a Bruce fan who’s utterly aghast at the idea that this song is underrated, know that that’s the reputation I’m railing against here - that when I say this song is underrated, I’m not saying it’s great, I’m not even saying it’s better than any other song on this list (it’s certainly not better than Meeting Across The River) - but dammit, I think it’s a good song, and it at least deserves some credit!

Here’s how Bruce himself described the song in 2009:  “They opened up this big, beautiful supermarket near where we lived. Patti and I would go down, and I remember walking through the aisles - I hadn't been in one in a while - and I thought this place is spectacular... it's a fantasy land! [...] In the States they're sort of shameless, the bounty in them is overflowing [...] There's millions of them, so it's kind of a song about finding beauty where it's ignored or where it's passed by.”

And you know what - I think that’s a pretty Springsteen-esque concept for a song.. even if it’s coming in the form of a song called “Queen of the Supermarket”. “A song about finding beauty where it’s ignored or where it’s passed by”... isn’t that what so much of Bruce’s work comes down to? Finding beauty in the everyday, romanticizing the mundane - that’s what he’s been doing for decades. It goes all the way back to New York City Serenade off the second album: “Listen to your junkman: he’s singing...” - the idea that everyone has some kind of music within them, that everyone has a story, whether it’s the old guy grabbing your trash - or the bored woman behind the counter at the grocery store. It goes back even further than that, really; Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street? off the first album is all about the giddy 22-year-old Bruce having his mind blown by all the different people he sees around him on a bus in New York City for heaven’s sake. And more broadly, Bruce’s m.o. is looking at the people or stories or events that nobody pays attention to and finding in them some kind of artistic inspiration.

And okay, sure - when he’s talking about serious emotional struggles that often go unseen and gives us songs like The Promised Land, The River, Spare Parts, etc., that’s obviously much better. But there’s something to be said for a song like this, too - a song that comes from a place of looking at something everyone else passes by, finding it to actually be pretty extraordinary or impressive, and being uplifted by it. That has a place, too.

And hey, he’s not even wrong - “the bounty in them is overflowing.” Now, I can’t say I’d ever thought about this before seeing that quote - but after reading that and thinking about this song, I can see how there is something kind of quietly special about a grocery store or a supermarket - about the luxury of having so many different kinds of meals and treats there for the taking. It’s definitely a privilege even today, and it would have been unthinkable to anyone on the planet not too long ago, too. (Of course, it’s even more of a privilege for Bruce to have gone so long without visiting a grocery store that he considered it some foreign paradise once he entered one rofl.)

That said...  I’m not gonna say Queen of the Supermarket is some eye-opening philosophical work, either. Because it’s not. It’s... it’s Queen of the fucking Supermarket. It’s not a very serious song. Indeed, much of the song focuses a lot less on the supermarket itself and more on one particular girl who works there (which I’ll come back to in a little bit.) So let’s take a look at the rest of that interview - with a warning that it gets.... interesting:

“They opened up this big, beautiful supermarket near where we lived. Patti and I would go down, and I remember walking through the aisles - I hadn't been in one in a while - and I thought this place is spectacular... it's a fantasy land! And then I started to get into it. I started looking around and hmmm - the subtext in here is so heavy! It's like, 'Do people really want to shop in this store or do they just want to screw on the floor?' *laughs* In the States they're sort of shameless, the bounty in them is overflowing. So the sexual subtext in the supermarket; well, perhaps, it's just twisted me. I'm telling you, it's there! So I came home, said: 'Wow, the supermarket is fantastic, it's my new favorite place. And I'm going to write a song about it!'”

...“do people really want to shop in this store, or do they just want to screw around on the floor?”

Oookay - I have no idea what the fuck Bruce is on about there, and I think we both know the answer to that question. People in the grocery store want to buy their damn groceries dude what. But with him laughing about it and saying “I’m telling you, dude, it’s totally there!” (and with the song not really being sexual in itself), something about his bizarre take on the supermarket becomes kind of funny in how weird and harmless it is.

More than that, though, I love that last quote. I love the image of an excited, 60-year-old Bruce Springsteen coming home and being giddy about the fucking supermarket of all things - and... I mean, you can’t really argue with “Wow, the supermarket is my new favorite place. I’m gonna write a song about it!” Like alright Bruce, you do you. Ultimately through all of the dark times in his life and pained songs he’s written over the years, I’m kind of happy that for some amount of time in 2009, Bruce Springsteen was in a place where his life where he could just say “Fuck it - I like the supermarket, so I’m gonna write a song about it! I’m Bruce Springsteen and nobody can tell me not to!” idk, in addition to there being some decent thematic stuff here in the over-the-top opening lines, yeah the song’s entire existence is so quirky and impulsive but I think that’s fun <3

And like I said, much of the song isn’t really about being in awe of the supermarket; that’s how the song came to be, and that’s what the opening lines are - but ultimately, the song focuses mostly on a crush on some random supermarket employee, and the singer working up his courage to eventually talk to her. I will admit that the line “[She’s] sure she’s unobserved” accidentally ends up a liiittle creepy and prevents me from regarding this song as positively as I otherwise might - but I don’t think the song taken as a whole is creepy. It’s just an ode to being attracted to someone you don’t really know but keep coming into contact with, a song about a fleeting little crush - and to whatever extent it plays up that attraction (which it certainly does), I think it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way, with the guy knowing he’s blowing this up to be a little bigger of a deal than it actually is.

Musically I think the song does start off a little flat, but it pulls me in more and more as it goes - especially once we hit the 2-minute mark. Once we hit the “Guidance from the Gods above / At night I pray for the strength to tell the one I love...” section, man, I’m totally on board with this song. Everything from 2:00-3:00 is definitely melodramatic but I love it, the song gets bigger in a really satisfying way that plays perfectly with how over-the-top the guy’s passion is and I totally dig it.

And like, maybe that’s the disconnect here between me and some other fans - is this song over-the-top in a way wildly uncharacteristic of Springsteen? Yes! Is it melodramatic? Fucking obviously - but like, I don’t think those are flaws. I think those are the point. Like, if you giddily think “I’m gonna write a song about the grocery store!” and come home and write something called “Queen of the Supermarket”, you’re probably not going to take it super seriously. So to me, this isn’t some unintentionally over-the-top “parody of a Springsteen song”; it’s a melodramatic but playful song that taps into some legitimate emotion and inspiration while still being tongue-in-cheek about its own silliness - and I think it lands. To me, this song is fun - and again, it has pretty good stuff going on musically as it goes along.

So personally, I don’t mind this song, I outright like it and think it’s one of the most effective songs on the album. I don’t know that I expect most people to enjoy it, and it’s definitely weaker than most if not all of the other songs on this list... but still, I think it has a little more going on than people give it credit for, I think it’s a little misunderstood, and the absolute hatred with which the song is almost invariably met and its typical status as the de facto “Worst Springsteen Song”.. I get it, but I think it’s more extreme than it should be, so I think it deserves a spot on this list. Kind of the opposite of Meeting Across the River: Meeting is better than most of the songs above it, but gets enough love that it had to rank lower; Queen is worse than the songs below it, but it’s so hated that it still belongs here.