#the whole piece except the horse tack because I am me & I happen to have a lotof horse tack ressources in my files like any normal person d

[mllenugget]

Gardian Miku

She says that if you support bullfighting in any shape or form then vai t’en cagar a la vinha e pòrta me la clau

France → Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur → Bouches du Rhône → Camargue

[veliseraptor]

the endgame reaction post

I know you’ve all been waiting for it. It’s 3:30 am right now so this may not be totally coherent and I’m almost certainly going to forget things, but here goes.

HERE BE SPOILERS. LIKE, PLENTY O SPOILERS.

I went into this movie with one main question and that was “is Marvel going to stick the landing on what they did in Infinity War?” my answer?

sort of. I...didn’t dislike it? I liked parts of it a lot. but mostly my reaction, frustratingly enough, is kind of a “shrug, with a few ‘into it’ and a handful of ‘oh no thanks.’ I cried a couple different times but overall my emotional response is very...muted. 

this could be a function of my being depressed right now, but I also think it’s because this movie...just didn’t hit the right notes, for me. it did a lot of things right, technically, and it had a lot of character moments, but it felt...I don’t know, something indefinable was missing for me. 

I’m going to try to unpack that later, but let’s break things down a little.

the good

NEBULA, oh my god, Nebula in this movie was fantastic. her moments with her younger self (I’m always going to be here for older/younger self confrontations with characters with her specific brand of issues) especially, but also...in general, I felt like this movie did very well by her. and ohhhh god “you can change” “he won’t let me” my feelings. 

i’m gay for Carol’s new hair and that’s that.

WAS THAT A FUCKING FLYING HORSE? WHERE DID VAL GET A FLYING HORSE. IS THERE A FLYING HORSE FARM IN NEW ASGARD

Thor and Frigga’s conversation. I...did not like almost anything else having to do with Thor in this movie (more on that later, and I know everyone and their mother has already written about this), but that conversation was...so lovely, and I’m glad Frigga got that after her fridging in The Dark World, and the “I was raised by witches” line obscurely delighted me.

this is the SECOND time we’ve seen Loki transforming into Steve onscreen and I’m just saying that Loki being obsessed with Steve? #confirmed

also, Loki taking advantage of chaos to bolt with the Tesseract is golden and while it is seriously unclear what happened to the timelines altered by intervention (more on this later too) I’m going to assume that this means there is at least one Loki out there having the time of his goddamn life

more on this later, but there were some great Natasha moments in this movie as far as character work, and I am still very into her “five years later” hair. also lots of good Clint and Natasha stuff like we haven’t seen since the first Avengers movie, so that was nice. (the arrow necklace!!)

while I have caveats about it, the ending they gave Steve was pretty much what I was expecting and the best I could hope for, so I think that’s a solid “good”

I have absolutely no caveats about Steve giving Sam the shield, and everything about that scene passing it on was delightful, and Steve and Peggy dancing made me cry, so there’s that. 

STEVE’S WORTHY CAUSE OF COURSE HE IS

the whole concept of a time heist is super neat.

SO WE ALL SAW THAT A-FORCE TEAM SHOT, RIGHT? THAT’S SETTING US UP FOR AN A-FORCE TEAM, RIGHT?

wanda fucking wrecking thanos yes girl

the bad

the big obvious one first: the stuff with Thor. as a whole bunch of people have explained: it’s not the weight gain, it’s how his character change after the five year jump is treated. it’s the fact that roughly 75% of the character beats for him in this movie are weighted for humor, that even the emotional moment with Frigga is undermined by the “eat a salad” line, that while he gets moments with his grief they tend to be undercut for a laugh. 

also the fact that he...doesn’t get anything back? I mean, while it’s true of Bruce to a certain extent, and obviously Natasha, Thor really doesn’t have any of his losses ameliorated. Tony gets Peter back, Steve gets his life with Peggy, and Thor...? I just...it feels like his character arc in this movie wasn’t, and I’m severely uncomfortable with how much of a fatphobic undercurrent (overcurrent?) it felt like there was in his scenes.

and while I love the idea of Queen Valkyrie, it doesn’t really feel earned, and feels like it shackles her to a role where she doesn’t really fit.

the final battle felt...tacked on. it felt like there was a feeling that “oh, we need an epic battle where there’s a whole army on both sides” and I...didn’t need that? it felt like a Lord of the Rings battle in my superhero movie and something about it felt very...mmm weird. I mean, I’m almost never one for Big Final Battles With Armies (with the major exception of the ones in Lord of the Rings) and it didn’t work for me here. 

though I did enjoy “keep away with the Infinity Gauntlet”, that was a fun game.

Gamora and Nebula should have been given the chance to face Thanos again together at the very least, and preferably strike the killing blow. The fact that that was given to Tony...annoys me. I mean, I can see why they did it - they needed him to have a big hero moment for his big hero sacrifice, and it was emotionally effective (I assume, if you weren’t me), but...that victory should have belonged more principally to those two, and I’m disappointed that it didn’t.

so I guess all that “foreshadowing” in Loki’s death scene was...nothing? that was just...what it looked like? I mean okay I’m not surprised but I am disappointed

the ugly

SOMEONE DATE THOSE CARS IN THE END SCENE WITH STEVE AND PEGGY, HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN WORK, so, like, is that an alternate timeline? did Steve live a seriously down low undercover life with Peggy and that’s why it never came up that oh yeah, she was married to someone who looked exactly like Steve Rogers? how does this fit in with the Winter Soldier!Peggy? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

basically this movie did the time travel stuff but didn’t really think all of the time travel stuff through as much as it needed to, imo. time travel plots are hard, and messy, and very quickly get confusing, and this was definitely one where they were doing some “don’t look too close!” prestidigitation to keep the holes from showing.

but I’m thinking about it and the holes are showing and I want to know how this works, are the Disney+ shows going to be alternate timelines? I assume because Vision’s going to be in one? and if Sam’s still Falcon then he’s probably not Cap in that one? BUT I DON’T KNOW it’s all very confusing.

Natasha...Natasha. I was spoiled for her dying, though I didn’t know the circumstances, and I...gah. I wrote in my notes on my phone “I wanted Clintasha BUT NOT LIKE THAT” and that’s...kind of how I feel about it? I honestly thought she was safe, is the thing. of all the characters I was worried about, she wasn’t one of them. but in retrospect...I really should’ve been. if they’re trying to shuffle the original six out of the line up then...but I felt like “surely they won’t kill their only original female Avenger, surely the optics of that...” but no, nope.

and while she wasn’t fridged per se it did feel like a lot of the energy of her death went toward providing five male characters with angst, which... [squints]

...and now I’m thinking more and if it’s been five years then all of Peter’s friends should have graduated high school. or were they not going to high school? was school suspended for five years because of the apocalypse? are we going to get fallout from this in Far From Home? 

I’M TELLING YOU THERE IS SO MUCH HERE THAT JUST DOESN’T MAKE SENSE maybe it will moving forward but...I really don’t get how they’re going to sustain this five year jump forward timeline...

GUESS WE’LL FIND OUT

basically I think what I’m coming out of this movie with is “end of an era and that makes me emotional, also there is some stuff here I like but mostly....eh” and honestly I think I’m okay with that being where I land. 

I said last year that I was going to hold off on my final verdict for Infinity War until I saw Endgame, because it seemed like they were, whatever they’d said, setting up a two movie arc. I thought there was some possibility that what they did in this movie might “save” Infinity War for me, or make me think it was worth it. 

part of the reason I don’t feel like I can say Marvel did really stick the landing here is because it didn’t. they stuck a landing. they had, like I said, a lot of the pieces in the right place. 

but I’m still feeling vaguely dissatisfied. 

[prorevenge]

Owner screws me over, screws up(s) his business.

To start, I won’t be saying the name of the shipping company franchise I worked for, suffice to say the title is very telling. This is a rather long story, so buckle in. You can skip the backstory and look for the revenge near the bottom. TL:DR at the end.

The Backstory

About five or six years ago I was relatively new to the workforce, having worked one minimum wage job at Mickey D’s. I had been there almost two years, but had little experience elsewhere. Well this one lady always came through early every morning to order a large Diet Coke, and would take a few minutes to talk to me. I mentioned to her that I was displeased with my bosses and the working conditions, and she invited me to come apply for a job at Not FedEx because they were always running low on employees! That should have been my first red flag.

The second red flag went completely over my head, because at this point I was 17 with no previous job experience. When I walked in for an interview, the boss (who I will call Jeph, because it sounds close enough to his name to allow him to remain anonymous) told me it would take five minutes. I wasn’t asked about my relevant experience, my goals within the company, or even told what position I was applying for. I assumed all interviews were different and went along with it, and started the next week with training. Everything went well for the first month. I basically just packed boxes, took down customer information, and sorted mail into the mailboxes we managed. The real trouble started after I was given my one month performance review.

I was deemed to be a valuable asset to Jeph’s franchise, and rightfully so. At 17 I was able to lift more and work better than the 20 and 30 something employees, and due to the work ethic my parents drilled into me I was never slacking off while at work. I was then informed that I would be swapping between Jeph’s two franchises, roughly 30 miles apart. (For context, the franchise I APPLIED TO WORK AT was roughly a mile from my house, so I could walk if I couldn’t get a ride.) Every other day I had to drive out to the location and somehow justify this with my slightly above minimum wage job. ($7.50 for those not in Texas.)

Overall my boss was a massive douche. His physical appearance could best be described as “troll like” with a shirt almost bursting, the top always undone to showcase his aging chest hair, and a face not unlike that of A&F owner Mike Jeffries. He openly cheated on his wife, bragging to coworkers about it constantly. He charged people one dollar for any amount of extra tape they needed on their package, despite the fact that we got roughly two rolls for that price in bulk. He had a special price calculator installed on the computers that charged people roughly 10% more than the package would be elsewhere. He would push employees (who he insisted didn’t work in customer service but sales) to never offer anything less than three day shipping even though we offered standard 7+ days and even cheaper options. I watched him actively lie to customers, claiming it was the price they had to pay blah blah blah, and almost yell at them to go to another store if they didn’t like it. But I digress.

Now here was the first dickish thing that my boss did to me specifically. Until this point, I was only working around 20 hours. After I graduated to working at both stores, Jeph had me sign a brand new W-2 for his second store, which was under a different company. (He owned both, naming one Blue (name for a .44 caliber bullet) and Blue (proper name for visible light)). Again, I had very little idea that this wrong because I had never had to deal with this before. He proceed to add another 20 or so hours to my schedule, bringing me up to 40 hours or more. But since I worked for two separate companies I never earned a dime of overtime or benefits of any kind.

At this point, I started accruing more and more duties, as my boss and coworkers started to trust me more and more. Buy my fourth month of employment (out of a total of eight) I was performing managerial duties such as: opening the store, counting the registers, closing the store, ordering product such as boxes and tape, and preparing shipments for transport. The work alone justified a raise, not to mention the hours I was being asked to work. However when I floated this idea by my boss, he very rudely insisted that since he had a manager for each store already, I was just doing my job and couldn’t earn a cent more.

Then came the second dickish move. We had a large company contract some drop off stuff with us, a telecom company we will say rhymes with Hey Tea and Tea. Customers would bring in their old cable boxes, wires, remotes and the like, and we would scan them and ship them back to Hey Tea and Tea, the company THAT LEGALLY OWNED ALL OF THIS HARDWARE. The customers would not pay us a nickel, but the telecom company would pay almost double what it actually cost to ship the package. There is no way Jeph could look that gift horse in the mouth and decide he was still owed the stable and all the horse’s tack as well, right? Surprise, surprise, Jeph had to take it one step further. ANY and ALL parts/cables/WiFi adapters/USB drives the customer returned to us that didn’t have a scan tag on them, Jeph would pull aside and either strip for copper or sell on eBay. And he would force us, the employees to package his eBay sales or copper wiring into boxes and ship them for him. He even popped batteries out of remotes and recycled them somewhere to get a tax credit. None of his employees ever saw a penny of this money (not that I would have accepted it). We estimated he raked in roughly three to four thousand a month just from stealing alone. For those of you bad at math, that is the price of TWO brand new 2018 Honda Civics.

The Revenge

The third (and fourth) final dick moves are what solidified my hatred for this boss, and my desire to strike back. They both came in the same week, roughly the same time, and both viscerally repulsive. My favorite coworker had recently gotten pregnant, and although the father got the hell out of dodge when he found out, she was doing very well for herself. She and I frequently closed together, and she promised she would bring the baby to sit in the back for the dull hours we had to kill from 6-10. We also had an annual store review from corporate that week, so our boss called a late night meeting after we closed one day. Our boss started out by saying that he was proud of our pregnant coworker for working so hard even with her “disability.” (Yes, even his sense of humor was slimy.) Then, in front of all fifteen employees, HE FIRED HER. He told her that because the Christmas season was coming up, and she would only slow down the store being pregnant and all, he had to let her go.

After she left, hatred seething in her eyes, he turned back to the fourteen of us who were left stunned, and continued on like nothing had happened. He proceeded to tell each of us our jobs for this weekend, leaving mine for last. My job, because I used to drive a decently sized mini van, was to ferry the corporate required supplies, cash for the safe, and OUR ONE WORKING FIRE EXTINGUISHER between the two stores while he kept corporate distracted between visits.

At this point I had taken enough shit from this guy, and I formulated my plan. I started by calling the Hey Tea and Tea fraud department, and telling them everything I knew. I took pictures and emailed them directly to the rep I was talking to, who seemed a little too excited about fraud being committed. I then scheduled a visit from a Hey Tea and Tea rep at the same time corporate was supposed to show up. My next step was to call Not FedEx and explain exactly what I just told y’all, with a few extra things thrown in that I couldn’t share for privacy reasons. They promised to send a rep as well, to the same store, at the same time.

The final step was put into action that Saturday. I dutifully loaded up my van with the supplies, cash (upwards of $4000 if I remember correctly), and fire extinguisher, and headed out. Except I did the exact OPPOSITE of what Jeph wanted. I took the crap to the first store he owned, which was the second one to receive a visit. After he texted the team saying they were moving on, I packed up all the shit and drove it to the other store they just left. Now I am unsure exactly what happened at the other store, but from some coworkers I pieced together that the Not FedEx rep showed up right after I left, but didn’t stay long, and the Hey Tea and Tea rep showed up just before Jeph had arrived and had time to hide his ill gotten gains in his office. The one coworker who was close enough to the office during the corporate meeting said there was lots of angry words being thrown and threats being made towards Jeph and his position as a franchisee. He also lost his franchises the ability to ship for Hey Tea and Tea, at least for a period of time.

Regardless, the very next day I was off because I was (and as cliché as this sounds I swear to God it’s true) helping my grandfather who just got out of the hospital. I receive a call from Jeph, saying I needed to come in right away, and work a double shift as well as close the store. I told him I couldn’t do that, and I was taking a personal day. He fired me right then and there, citing my usage of the work computer to run a photoshop business during work hours. (I’m assuming he was referring to the graphic design work I did FOR HIM, FOR FREE, which he asked me to learn how to do.)

The sad epilogue to this whole story is that he is currently still in business, and still running the same scams he was before. He WAS however fined for not having proper supplies in his stores, as well as forced to use corporate’s package rates rather than his own. So in some small way my revenge worked. He currently has a two star review on Yelp for both of his his businesses, and I hope to have a party outside his store one day when it goes belly up.

TL:DR: Boss is a total douche bag to me and customers, steals from a contract company, fires a pregnant woman for “slowing down the store” then gets his ass reamed by corporate and loses the major contract.

(source) (story by Chewbacca_Q_Wookie)