#ruth phelps

[incorrectsnuggfordquotes]

I really feel like history peaked with my birth and subsequent existence.

Ruth Phelps

[reybeeze]

10 Characters, 10 Fandoms

thank you so much for the tag @eviebane !!!

Aziraphale - Good Omens

Constance Contraire - The Mysterious Benedict Society

Whizzer Brown - Falsettos

Ruth Jamison - Fried Green Tomatoes

Chris Chambers - Stand By Me

Richie Tozier - IT

Beedle - The Legend of Zelda

Travis Phelps - Sally Face

Eleanor Shellstrop - The Good Place

Connor - Detroit: Become Human

no pressure tags - @ninja-grace @sc4tt3rbr4inn @the-chesapeake-dipper @justobsessedwithlove @yet-still-just-a-moth @eddies-real-second-fannypack

and anyone else who wants to join!

[sirfrogsworth]

If someone is allowed to compete, they should be allowed the chance to win.

These stories only happen when a trans athlete gets 1st place. They never run stories when they place 45th--which Tiffany has done.

I think all any athlete wants is fair competition.

They don't want to be matched up with someone they could never ever beat.

Despite the wish for people in sports to be competitively matched, there have always been outliers. People with such amazing athletic ability they can rarely be touched. And as far as my research has shown, all of those outliers have been cisgender.

People like Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Babe Ruth, Mike Tyson, Shohei Ohtani, Usain Bolt, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, etc. They all have various biological advantages that helped them dominate their sports. Yet people do not try to ban them from playing--rather they praise their genetic luck.

Biological advantages like extreme height, insane lung capacity, giant wingspan, and whatever speed force Usain Bolt is tapped into... these advantages pop up all the time for cis athletes.

I have yet to see a trans athlete completely dominate in the way some of these outliers have done. And I don't know of any transgender athletes that have not lost to their cisgender competitors at some point.

I could only find two people who came close to outlier status with decent winning streaks. Fallon Fox did win 5 of 6 fights, but that is such a small sample size I'm not sure she could be considered an outlier. And Laurel Hubbard did win a bunch of Olympic gold medals in weightlifting, but she was only ranked 7th in the IWF's +87 kg division previous to that. Which makes me think she just put in the work and earned those gold medals through grit and determination. An Olympic story we've seen many times with cis athletes.

So you have one or maybe two trans athletes that did well above average for a short period of time.

And that means "the end of women's sports is nigh"?

The fact that no trans athlete has consistently dominated any sport as of yet, and that they are routinely beaten by their cisgender competitors, makes me think trans athletes have held up to the standard of challenging yet fair competition.

The very thing spectators and athletes crave.

[pumaloafing]

This was a difficult to put together list because in most sports choosing a single #1 is very difficult. However, the reason I made this poll is because there was one sport where a player was so dominant they were an easy pick, and I'm curious of Tumblr picks them.

PS. Sorry for not including your favorite player in this poll. I hope I don't get too many notes telling me I'm crazy for not including x.

Edit: In hindsight, Michael Phelps should also be up there. Swimming didn't occur to me when I made the poll.

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey *Shining Vale*

I watched both seasons of Shining Vale late last year right before it was cancelled and removed from Starz streaming service. I loved it, but thought that if it had been more popular it would have inspired some kind of backlash where it would involve jeering at the fans for clearly being bad people for cheering for such a harmful  leading character and not careful depiction of mental illness. It would also likely have staunch defenders, though I am not sure I would have been vocally there. But it's not, so I should say how much I liked it and wish there was more.

So let’s talk about the cast which is headed by Courtney Cox (also a producer), Greg Kinnear respectively as Pat and Terry Phelps, all of whom I’ve lived for a while. I’m a more recent fan of Gus Birney, who was great on Dickenson as Jane, (the young hot widow) as their daughter Gaynor, and Dylan Gage who plays their son, Jake.

This is the story of Phelps family that moves from Brooklyn to Shining Vale, Connecticut in the aftermath of the mother Pat’s affair with a contractor. Terry found the house and purchased it without the any of the rest of the family’s input. This does create suspicions especially in regards to the real estate agent Robyn Court, who is played by Sherilyn Fenn (always a joy to see). Also delightful to see Merrin Dungey as Pat’s editor/friend who balances these rolls in funny ways. And then the alway delightful Judith Light shows up as Pat’s mother, who has her own history with mental illness and creates more interesting mirrors between Pat and Gaynor. 

But I’ve been neglecting the series other star, Mira Sorvino! Sorvino plays multiple characters over the seasons starting with Rosemary, who’s a ghost, a demon or figment of Pat’s imagination who “helps” write her long awaited second novel. Her first was an erotic romp with the goal of self definition. The second novel, which is released early in the second season is very different, though still have some filthy bits because that’s Pat’s “brand”. 

The house is TARDIS like in that they keep finding new rooms that were otherwise hidden, most notably a tiki bar that becomes an important location for many scenes, as well as a harbinger of the kinds of substance abuses. It also hints at the building’s secret history as an insane asylum in the 19th century. This history was only partially unraveled in the two seasons that were made.

In addition to liking the cast, I like the series creators Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan. Astor created the two season true crime parody sitcom Trial and Error which I still wish had more time. Horgan co-created and started in Catastrophe and Bad Sisters, both of which I’ve written about here. I kind of want to divide the qualities of the series between the two creators, though I know that it is at best misleading. The series has a melange of horror films reference that was like the  melange of true crime narratives that Astor worked with in Trial and Error. All the things about the dysfunctional married couple and parental relationships with children I associate with Horgan’s work. (Not to mention her treatment of Pat’s alcohol abuse is similar to that of her character’s on Catastrophe)

The references to other horror films are direct, and what I saw of how they add up to something intriguingly different. First as the title and concept of a parent-writer loosing their mind over their latest writing project and the history of their new home suggests, there are plenty of references to The Shining. At least in the first season. The second season, in which Pat’s menopause is reversed by new neighbor Ruth’s (also played by Mira Sorvino) herbal tea, is more inspired by Rosemary’s Baby. There are also liberal references to The Omen and The Exorcist, among other films. And plenty of opportunity to wonder how “real” what we are seeing, especially in the second season where there is an increase in cartoonish-ness. Over the course of the season multiple people get hit by a bus and explode while the bus doesn’t stop. It gets funnier every time. Going in the opposite direction from funny to startling is a gag involving a mysterious Walkman. Three members of it find it at random times, put it on, each hearing a different song, but all doing the same dance. I will forever wonder where they were going with this. 

Tonally the closest comparison I can think is Evil. Sad there will be neither of them soon. 

[indiejones]

THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN THE ENTIRE KNOWN HISTORY/COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THIS WORLD! (@INDIES)

ie. THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN WORLD HISTORY! (@INDIES)

Rajesh Khanna

Lionel Messi

Leonardo Da Vinci

Online Indie

Muhammad Ali

Joan of Arc

William Shakespeare

Vincent Van Gogh

J. K. Rowling

David Lean

Nadia Comaneci

Diego Maradona

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Meena Kumari

Julius Caesar

Harrison Ford

Ludwig Van Beethoven

William W. Cargill

Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche

Samuel Curtis Johnson

Sam Walton

John D. Rockefeller

Andrew Carnegie

Roy Thomson

Tim Berners-Lee

Marie Curie

James J. Hill

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Roman Polanski

Samuel Slater

J. P. Morgan

Cary Grant

Dmitri Mendeleev

John Harvard

Alain Delon

Ramakrishna Paramhansa (Official God)

The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste & Louis

Carl Friedrich Benz

Michelangelo

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Ramana Maharishi

Mark Twain

Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri

Bruce Lee

Bhagwan Krishna (Official God)

Charlemagne

Rene Descartes

John F. Kennedy

Bhagwan Ganesha (Official God)

Walt Disney

Albert Einstein

Nikola Tesla

Alfred Hitchcock

Pythagoras

William Randolph Hearst

Cosimo de’ Medici

Johann Sebastian Bach

Alec Guinness

Nostradamus

Christopher Plummer

Archimedes

Jackie Chan

Guru Dutt

Amma Karunamayi/ Mata Parvati (Official God)

Peter Sellers

Gerard Depardieu

Joseph Safra

Robert Morris

Sean Connery

Petr Kellner

Aristotle Onassis

Usain Bolt

Jack Welch

Alfredo di Stefano

Elizabeth Taylor

Michael Jordan

Paul Muni

Steven Spielberg

Louis Pasteur

Ingrid Bergman

Norma Shearer

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Ayn Rand

Jesus Christ (Official God)

Luciano Pavarotti

Alain Resnais

Frank Sinatra

Allah (Official God)

Richard Nixon

Charlie Chaplin

Thomas Alva Edison

Alexander Graham Bell

Wright Brothers

Arjun (of Bhagwan Krishna’s Gita)

Jim Simons

George Lucas

Swami Sri Lahiri Mahasaya

Carl Lewis

Brett Favre

Helen Keller

Bernard Mannes Baruch

Buddha (Official God)

Hugh Grant

K. L. Saigal

Roger Federer

Rash Behari Bose

Tiger Woods

William Blake

Jesse Owens

Claude Miller

Bernardo Bertolucci

Subhash Chandra Bose

Satyajit Ray

Hippocrates

Chiang Kai-Shek

John Logie Baird

Geeta Dutt

Raphael (painter)

Bhagwan Shiva (Official God)

Radha (Ancient Krishna devotee)

George Orwell

Jorge Paulo Lemann

Catherine Deneuve

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Bill Gates

Bhagwan Ram (Official God)

Michael Phelps

Michael Faraday

Audrey Hepburn

Dalai Lama

Grace Kelly

Mikhail Gorbachev

Vladimir Putin

Galileo Galilei

Gary Cooper

Roger Moore

John Huston

Blaise Pascal

Humphrey Bogart

Rudyard Kipling

Samuel Morse

Wayne Gretzky

Yogi Berra

Barry Levinson

Patrice Chereau (director)

Jerry Lewis

Louis Daguerre

James Watt

Henri Rousseau

Nikita Krushchev

Jack Dorsey

Dev Anand

Elia Kazan

Alexander Fleming

David Selznick

Frank Marshall

Viswanathan Anand

Major Dhyan Chand

Swami Vivekananda

Felix Rohatyn

Sam Spiegel

Anand Bakshi

Victor Hugo

Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Official God)

Steve Jobs

Srinivasa Ramanujam

Lord Hanuman

Stanley Kubrick

Giotto

Voltaire

Diego Velazquez

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Ford Coppola

Michael Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Mario Lemieux

Kishore Kumar

James Stewart

Douglas Fairbanks

Confucius

Babe Ruth

Raj Kapoor

Titian aka Tiziano Vecelli

El Greco

Francisco de Goya

Jim Carrey

Mohammad Rafi

Steffi Graf

Pele

Gustave Courbet

Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi

Milos Forman

Steve Wozniak

Georgia O’ Keeffe

Mala Sinha

Aryabhatta

Magic Johnson

Patanjali

Leo Tolstoy

Tansen

Henry Fonda

Albrecht Durer

Benazir Bhutto

Cal Ripken Jr

Samuel Goldwyn

Mumtaz (actress)

Panini

Nicolaus Copernicus

Pablo Picasso

George Clooney

Olivia de Havilland

Prem Chand

Imran Khan

Pete Sampras

Ratan Tata

Meerabai (16th c. Krishna devotee)

Queen Elizabeth II

Pope John Paul II

James Cameron

Jack Ma

Warren Buffett

Romy Schneider

C. V. Raman

Aung San Suu Kyi

Benjamin Netanyahu

Frank Capra

Michael Schumacher

Steve Forbes

Paramhansa Yogananda

Tom Hanks

Kamal Amrohi

Hans Holbein

Shammi Kapoor

Gerardus Mercator

Edith Piaf

Bhagwan Shirdi Sai Baba (Official God) .

[indiesole]

THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN THE ENTIRE KNOWN HISTORY/COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THIS WORLD! (@INDIES)

i.e. THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN WORLD HISTORY! (@INDIES)

Rajesh Khanna

Lionel Messi

Leonardo Da Vinci

Muhammad Ali

Joan of Arc

William Shakespeare

Vincent Van Gogh

Online Indie

J. K. Rowling

David Lean

Nadia Comaneci

Diego Maradona

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Meena Kumari

Julius Caesar

Harrison Ford

Ludwig Van Beethoven

William W. Cargill

Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche

Samuel Curtis Johnson

Sam Walton

John D. Rockefeller

Andrew Carnegie

Roy Thomson

Tim Berners-Lee

Marie Curie

James J. Hill

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Roman Polanski

Samuel Slater

J. P. Morgan

Cary Grant

Dmitri Mendeleev

John Harvard

Alain Delon

Ramakrishna Paramhansa (Official God)

The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste & Louis

Carl Friedrich Benz

Michelangelo

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Ramana Maharishi

Mark Twain

Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri

Bruce Lee

Bhagwan Krishna (Official God)

Charlemagne

Rene Descartes

John F. Kennedy

Bhagwan Ganesha (Official God)

Walt Disney

Albert Einstein

Nikola Tesla

Alfred Hitchcock

Pythagoras

William Randolph Hearst

Cosimo de’ Medici

Johann Sebastian Bach

Alec Guinness

Nostradamus

Christopher Plummer

Archimedes

Jackie Chan

Guru Dutt

Amma Karunamayi/ Mata Parvati (Official God)

Peter Sellers

Gerard Depardieu

Joseph Safra

Robert Morris

Sean Connery

Petr Kellner

Aristotle Onassis

Usain Bolt

Jack Welch

Alfredo di Stefano

Elizabeth Taylor

Michael Jordan

Paul Muni

Steven Spielberg

Louis Pasteur

Ingrid Bergman

Norma Shearer

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Ayn Rand

Jesus Christ (Official God)

Luciano Pavarotti

Alain Resnais

Frank Sinatra

Allah (Official God)

Richard Nixon

Charlie Chaplin

Thomas Alva Edison

Alexander Graham Bell

Wright Brothers

Arjun (of Bhagwan Krishna’s Gita)

Jim Simons

George Lucas

Swami Sri Lahiri Mahasaya

Carl Lewis

Brett Favre

Helen Keller

Bernard Mannes Baruch

Buddha (Official God)

Hugh Grant

K. L. Saigal

Roger Federer

Rash Behari Bose

Tiger Woods

William Blake

Jesse Owens

Claude Miller

Bernardo Bertolucci

Subhash Chandra Bose

Satyajit Ray

Hippocrates

Chiang Kai-Shek

John Logie Baird

Geeta Dutt

Raphael (painter)

Bhagwan Shiva (Official God)

Radha (Ancient Krishna devotee)

George Orwell

Jorge Paulo Lemann

Catherine Deneuve

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Bill Gates

Bhagwan Ram (Official God)

Michael Phelps

Michael Faraday

Audrey Hepburn

Dalai Lama

Grace Kelly

Mikhail Gorbachev

Vladimir Putin

Galileo Galilei

Gary Cooper

Roger Moore

John Huston

Blaise Pascal

Humphrey Bogart

Rudyard Kipling

Samuel Morse

Wayne Gretzky

Yogi Berra

Barry Levinson

Patrice Chereau (director)

Jerry Lewis

Louis Daguerre

James Watt

Henri Rousseau

Nikita Krushchev

Jack Dorsey

Dev Anand

Elia Kazan

Alexander Fleming

David Selznick

Frank Marshall

Viswanathan Anand

Major Dhyan Chand

Swami Vivekananda

Felix Rohatyn

Sam Spiegel

Anand Bakshi

Victor Hugo

Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Official God)

Steve Jobs

Srinivasa Ramanujam

Lord Hanuman

Stanley Kubrick

Giotto

Voltaire

Diego Velazquez

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Ford Coppola

Michael Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Mario Lemieux

Kishore Kumar

James Stewart

Douglas Fairbanks

Confucius

Babe Ruth

Raj Kapoor

Titian aka Tiziano Vecelli

El Greco

Francisco de Goya

Jim Carrey

Mohammad Rafi

Steffi Graf

Pele

Gustave Courbet

Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi

Milos Forman

Steve Wozniak

Georgia O’ Keeffe

Mala Sinha

Aryabhatta

Magic Johnson

Patanjali

Leo Tolstoy

Tansen

Henry Fonda

Albrecht Durer

Benazir Bhutto

Cal Ripken Jr

Samuel Goldwyn

Mumtaz (actress)

Panini

Nicolaus Copernicus

Pablo Picasso

George Clooney

Olivia de Havilland

Prem Chand

Imran Khan

Pete Sampras

Ratan Tata

Meerabai (16th c. Krishna devotee)

Queen Elizabeth II

Pope John Paul II

James Cameron

Jack Ma

Warren Buffett

Romy Schneider

C. V. Raman

Aung San Suu Kyi

Benjamin Netanyahu

Frank Capra

Michael Schumacher

Steve Forbes

Paramhansa Yogananda

Tom Hanks

Kamal Amrohi

Hans Holbein

Shammi Kapoor

Gerardus Mercator

Edith Piaf

Bhagwan Shirdi Sai Baba (Official God)

[jaredmorehus]

"what do you think about juliet?" "she's a bit young for you, mike" "what? i'm not talking about— ...what about ruth phelps?" "oh i definitely wouldn't go there if i was you" jared morehu and dss mike shepherd S02E02 "To Die or Not To Die"

[cvrc11]

Friendly reminder that when they let 17 year old Jackie Mitchell play baseball, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in a single match, to which Ruth lost his goddamn mind and went on a crusade against allowing women to play the sport, and just a few days later the head of the MLB banned women from playing because they were “too delicate”. They then spent a lot of time and effort saying that it was a “stunt” that Ruth and Gehrig were in on and only done for publicity, something Mitchell denied to her dying day, and continued playing alongside, and against, men in unofficial matches.

I am not saying that there aren’t sports where cis men have the statistical advantage over cis women, but I AM saying that maybe part of the reason for the segregation of sports is to hide the fact that this advantage is not as big as men would like to think.

Also, Michael Phelps is a genetic miracle who has as much, if not more, of an innate biological advantage over other cis men as someone like Lia Thomas could possible have over cis women, but he’s not only allowed to swim competitively, his dominance in the sport is widely celebrated. So innate biological advantage DOES play a massive role in sports performance - it’s just not delineated along the arbitrary lines of the gender binary, unlike our sports leagues, which are. Seems like a problem that has multiple possible, and very obvious solutions, none of which are “you only get to play sports with your AGAB.” But those other solutions might require us to confront that the sexes are simply not as different in ability as we are taught, and a LOT of cultural, legal, and social institutions currently rely on that underlying belief to one extent or another, in order to justify male dominance.

crazy that in the 1970s they were like, "fine, women can play sports. but because they're innately less athletic than men, only in a special ghettoized League For The Frail And Delicate where they get paid less 😊". And not only is that still the system in 2023, but viciously lashing out at the smallest challenges to that system gets framed as Feminist Praxis

[electriqueboutiqueradio]

ELECTRIQUE BOUTIQUE #7, 1/26/24

Download/stream above

If I sound a little rushed, it's because I was due to go birdwatching right after I finished recording. Important stuff, you know. Listen live every other Friday 6-8 PM at hollowearthradio.org.

Our intro music is “Michael Jackson” by Negativland and our theme music is “The Taxi” by Young Marble Giants.

0:03:14 Victrola - The Mutant Glow (1983)

0:08:45 Sympathy Nervous - Polaroid (1980)

0:12:26 Frank (Just Frank) - Child Play (2011)

0:15:48 AK-47 - Stop! Dance! (1981)

0:19:03 Jeff Phelps & Antoinette Marie Pugh - Don't Fall Apart On Me (1985)

0:27:06 Konrad - Ethereal Sequence (1981)

0:29:22 Time Statues - Statues of the Night (1983)

0:32:33 Jeff & Jane Hudson - Help Me (1983)

0:37:17 Aksak Maboul - Un Caïd (2020)

0:42:40 The Gist - Yanks (1980)

0:48:00 Fall of Saigon - Blue Eyes (1983)

0:50:03 Maii & Zeid - Mourib (2017)

0:52:43 Rain Dogs - Perilous Woman (2021)

0:56:27 Jupiter Prophet - Sayanata Vondata (1986)

0:59:40 Adreas Dorau - Rainy Days in Moscow (ft. Güner Künier & Brezel Göring) (2024)

1:05:12 Ruth - Mots (1985)

1:10:29 Hard Corps - The Bell (1984-87)

1:14:48 Ciaran Harte - Love is Strange (1980)

1:17:29 Foyer Des Arts - Ein Haus aus den Knochen von Cary Grant (1986)

1:21:52 Operating Theatre - Queen of No Heart (1986)

1:28:10 The Soft Moon - When It's Over (2010)

1:32:33 Ne Noya (Daphni Mix) (1973/2011)

1:38:03 Dinner - Going Out (2014)

1:42:00 Delroy Edwards - I Love Sloane (2016)

1:43:10 Blancmange - Holiday Camp (1980)

1:46:14 John Foxx & The Maths - Evidence (ft. The Soft Moon) (2012)

1:53:43 Frederic Mercier - Station 713 (1978)

[letsplaypixeldolls]

Ruth Phelps

Self-Assured | Outgoing | Genius

[misshyperbolemakes]

TITLE: Honesty is the Best Medicine RATING: G ARCHIVE WARNING: No Archive Warnings Apply CHAPTERS: 2/2 WORD COUNT: 2,060 PUBLISH DATE: June 4, 2017

FANDOM(S): Heart’s Medicine, GameHouse Original Stories RELATIONSHIP(S): Allison Heart/Connor McCoy CHARACTERS: Connor McCoy, Allison Heart, Ruth Phelps, Chance Foley ADDITIONAL TAGS: Canon divergent, fix-it fic McHeart style

SUMMARY: In which Ruth takes matters into her own hands after she hears about Allison and Connor's breakup.

[incorrectsnuggfordquotes]

Sophia: Are you okay?

Ruth: I’m going to start charging people money to ask me that.

[astrognossienne]

What celebrities can you think of that have managed to develop their sun or reach its highest potential if that makes sense? Like how you said Betty White is one of the few developed Capricorns, do you think there are others who have done the same with their sign?

aries: lady gaga, kristen stewart, reese witherspoon, jennifer garner, selena, jessica chastain, bette davis, marvin gaye, gregory peck

taurus: malcolm x, audrey hepburn, george clooney, leonardo da vinci, elizabeth II, penelope cruz, cher, william shakespeare, daniel day-lewis, stevie wonder, orson welles, tchaikovsky, socrates, jimmy stewart, laurence olivier

gemini: lauryn hill, lenny kravitz, jfk, marilyn monroe, stevie nicks, johnny depp, prince, paul mccartney, naomi campbell, judy garland, jean-paul sartre, marquis de sade, michael j. fox, anne frank, miles davis, josephine baker

cancer: robin williams, princess diana, meryl streep, diahann carroll, prince william, elon musk, solange, dalai lama, nikola tesla, tom hanks, nelson mandela, angela merkel, mike tyson, alexander the great, frida kahlo, liv tyler, ernest hemingway, anthony bourdain, julius caesar, natalie wood, franz kafka, ringo starr, richard branson, malala yousafzai, debie harry, elizabeth warren, chris cornell, missy elliott, marcel proust, antoine de saint-exupery, cat stevens, helen keller, kawhi leonard, lena horne, michael phelps

leo: jackie kennedy, jennifer lopez, arnold schwarzenegger, robert de niro, coco chanel, kate bush, helen mirren

virgo: michael jackson, keanu reeves, mother theresa, karl lagerfeld, elizabeth I, jeremy irons, ray charles, mary shelley

libra: desmond tutu, rita hayworth, cardi b, brigitte bardot, gwen stefani, catherine deneuve, kim kardashian, oscar wilde, bruce springsteen, christopher reeve

scorpio: lisa bonet, grace kelly, vivien leigh,alain delon, pablo picasso, winona ryder, marie curie, hedy lamarr, rupaul, chloe sevigny, robert f. kennedy, carl sagan, sylvia plath, joni mitchell, anna wintour, albert camus

sagittarius: jimi hendrix, zoe kravitz, brad pitt, bruce lee, tina turner, frank sinatra, ludwig van beethoven, edith piaf, maria callas, jane birkin, adam clayton powell jr, marina abramovic, jane austen, gianni versace

capricorn: david bowie, aaliyah, betty white, dolly parton, mlk, ralph fiennes, michelle obama, francoise hardy, kate moss, sade, marlene dietrich, joan of arc, benjamin franklin

aquarius: abraham lincoln, jennifer aniston, shakira, mozart, oprah, megan thee stallion, paul newman, fdr, thomas edison, virginia woolf, kelly rowland, brandy, michael hutchence, peter gabriel, eddie van halen

pisces: sidney poitier, anais nin, albert einstein, kurt cobain, liz taylor, drew barrymore, juliette binoche, edgar cayce, jon bon jovi, johnny cash, chopin, michelangelo, nina simone, fred rogers, ruth bader ginsburg

[palmett-hoes]

I like your meta and I got to thinking about all the stuff in these books that requires the suspension of disbelief to roll with and tbh the biggest thing Nora ever asked us to overlook is Riko's entire schtick. Tell me who in real life looks at a short, West Virginia college freshman, even the ones who are good athletes, and says 'oh yeah they are definitely the authority on who should be thought of as the best players in the league, the tattoos are normal, he's normal' Like !??? Hello???

yea i personally have a lot of questions about the moriyamas as they’re presented to us in canon. i think they’re a very confusing detail, and also a not-exceptionally well-considered one on account of the unfortunate racial implications

personal take: the moriyamas should have been russian bratva instead of japanese yakuza. it would change absolutely nothing about the story, but would fix a dozen small details that i’ve been leaping through flaming hoops to justify watsonianly in how i flesh out the extended universe

nora is VERY much a character writer, not a world-builder. her characters are SO nuanced and life-like, but her world-building often feels random, disjointed, and unaddressed

that being said though, i don’t think riko’s schtick is really one of these details

calling riko just a “short, West Virginia college freshman” is very uncharitable to exactly what he is. riko is a celebrity, the ward of a celebrity, and he’s been in the media eye since he was born. it would be accurate to compare him (and kevin) to people like blue ivy carter and north west kardashian, children of a-list, instantly-recognizable celebrities who got added to their guardians’ brand as children. blue ivy is nine-years-old and has already won a grammy

(i don’t want to imply that either the knowles-carter or the kardashian-west family, or any other celebrity i might mention here are abusive like the moriyama family. while there are plenty of concerns about the psychology of child stars, i’m not talking about their personal lives or the way these children are being raised, because that’s none of my business. i’m talking about them from the perspective of their media visibility and the legitimacy that gives them with the public)

journalists LOVE celebrity kids. every argument and wardrobe choice is headline news in a-list houses, and why some celebrities (like famously michael jackson) have to go to such extreme measures to give their kids even a modicum of privacy, because they're hounded by reporters and photographers every time they step outside.

tetsuji, however, took much more of the joe jackson approach and turned his nephew and ward into a public brand and set them loose on the media circuit as soon as he was able

you have to think about exy as a global movement, one with two distinct figureheads at the helm. it came out of nowhere and completely reshaped the world of sports in an extremely short amount of time. think of kayleigh and tetsuji as being like mark zuckerberg or steve jobs: innovators and figureheads

and even if they’re “just” sports celebrities, they’re sports celebrities on a tier with people like babe ruth, michael phelps, tom brady, serena williams, usain bolt, lance armstrong, the rock, muhammed ali, john cena. people whose sports celebrity is SO great their names enter the mainsteam. that’s the MINIMUM level of fame and influence they have

it's no stretch of the imagination for me to think that the Princes of Exy brand was inextricable with the rapid growth and popularity of the sport. kevin and riko were mascots, ambassadors, and symbols, not just for the ravens but for exy itself. the sport viewed as coming of age alongside them

even if it seems ridiculous to us from outside their universe, inside it people have been hearing about the Perfect Court for over ten years. it’s something their sportscasters and news anchors talk about. you’ve heard it on every early-morning and late-night talk show. it’s a tagline on the covers of magazines and up on billboards. every little league kid who picks up an exy racket dreams that they’ll be the next pick and wear that three or four on their jersey

riko and kevin may have been two of the most famous children in the world

and with celebrity comes extensive forgiveness of... “eccentricity.” remember when jared leto started a cult and everyone just,,, let that happen? gwyneth paltrow’s new age wellness pseudoscience brand? tom cruise is literally a scientologist? even if it’s absolutely ridiculous, it’s okay if a celebrity does it

in-universe, riko isn’t just a “good athlete,” he’s a house-hold name with a consistent vision, every tool at his disposal to get it done, a massive platform of people listening to his every word, and the mainstream media spreading it for free

some tattoos at 16? that’s nothing. ESPECIALLY if they’d been drawing them on for years before

once you think about these things in the context of things that are familiar to us, rather than strange and random and contextless the way they (admittedly) come across in canon, riko starts to make a little more sense

also, while i think it could have been pushed more, i think that nora actually did a pretty decent job of conveying this idea of Celebrity as a theme in the books. there are a lot of very consistent references to kevin and riko’s fame and influence. however, because of how much of an unreliable narrator with such a narrow scope of interest neil is, it’s a detail that can slide past you especially if you haven’t read the books in a while and you mostly engage in the fandom. fandoms tend to be character driven, not theme driven, so a lot of the recurring themes and imagery of a work tend to get lost over time

however i try to keep in touch with the canon. the last time i fully read the books was less than a year ago (and i’ve been in the fandom for like,, 5 years?) and i fact check it often for posts, meta, and fic beta-ing. at some point i’d really like to do a series of scene breakdowns and literary analysis of the lesser-acknowledged themes bc ideas like Celebrities In The Public vs Private are interestingly approached and i think we’re missing out a bit by only talking about them from a character-first perspective

i think one thing i would LOVE about getting some kind of visual-media adaptation of aftg (animated series or visual novel preferred) would be all the passive worldbuilding we could get that neil declines to describe to us. things like billboards and magazine covers and t-shirts and commercials for exy and the Princes of Exy in particular. i really think it would push so much more dimension and context into the story for us to really SEE these things

[sarcasticcynic]

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled South Dakota Legislature passed a sweeping bill banning transgender athletes from girls’ and womens’ sports. Republican Governor Kristi Noem was reluctant to sign it, however--not because she disagreed with it in any way, but because legal experts (correctly) opined that it would be unconstitutional.

Noem asked the Legislature to make some changes to the bill, but “major conservative backlash” immediately ensued. So Noem decided to skip the legislative process altogether and just do it herself. On Monday--just two days before Transgender Day of Visibility--Noem issued executive orders purporting to ban transgender athletes from all girls’ and womens’ sports.

“The Department of Education and the Board of Regents will need to ensure that K-12 school districts and colleges and universities restrict participation in girls' and women's sports to athletes who can prove their assigned sex at birth.”

Because it’s only “executive overreach” when the other side does it.

“Since 2013 South Dakota has had a policy that any transgender athlete wanting to play school sports must acquire documentation from their physician that they identify as transgender. Then, an independent hearing officer determines if the athlete has any competitive advantage.”

Hey, remember when they banned Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Ty Cobb from playing baseball because they had such a “competitive advantage”?

Remember when Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps were banned from swimming?

And remember when Roger Federer and Serena Williams were banned from playing tennis?

Remember when Muhammad Ali was banned from boxing?

Remember when Usain Bolt was banned from running?

Remember when Michael Jordan was banned from basketball?

Remember when Wayne Gretzky was banned from hockey?

Remember when Tiger Woods was banned from golf?

...You don’t?

Gosh, why not?