“Three years ago,” short guy said, “you reviewed a brewpub in Portland.”
“Oh my God,” Bucky said.
“It was newly opened,” short guy continued doggedly, unaware of Bucky’s incipient melt-down. “The menu was experimental. It wasn’t perfected yet.”
“Oh my God.” Bucky could not believe the pissed-off chefs had found them before the spies. He’d fucking told Steve not to underestimate the kind of enemies a Michelin inspector made, their knife skills were usually better than assassins’. “You’re the chef?”
“Chef and proprieter.”
“Co-proprieter,” tall guy interjected, now poking around the other side of the panic room panel.
“Co-proprieter,” short guy amended. “But the menu’s all mine.”
“Look,” Bucky snapped, blitzed on enough adrenaline to make a corpse do jumping jacks, “I don’t care what you threaten me with, I stand by that fucking review, okay? There was potential, but it was unpolished. The minestrone lacked zest! And the monte cristo was soggy! You can’t have a soggy monte cristo, it defeats the whole purpose of the dish!”
“I get that,” short guy said, holding up a hand palm-out. “I do. It was a fair review. But I’ve made some changes since then that I think you’ll like. If you don’t, that’s fine. I’m just looking for honest feedback.”
“You broke into my house and hacked my panic room to cook me dinner?”
“Wasn’t planning on breaking in,” short guy growled. It was a little more embarrassed than his previous growls. “I did knock.”
“Only after you bypassed the perimeter security!”
Short guy and tall guy exchanged a look, then both shrugged. “Force of habit.”
Okay internet, fashion advice please!
Yukio, friend of the X-Men, needs an Oscars level formal outfit.
It needs to be punk, formal, and appropriate for a 30 year+ Japanese woman whose wheelchair keeps her from leaping off buildings but not from beating people up.
I just realized that Ororo would attend with Callisto on one arm and Yukio on the other. Callisto’s suit isn’t hard to design, but I don’t know enough about Japanese fashion OR high fashion to figure out Yukio.
In 2012, North Carolina’s Coastal Resources Commission studied the
question of sea-level rise and the likelihood that coastal areas would
be inundated by severe weather, concluding that the seas were likely to
rise by 39" over the century; the Republican legislature, backed by
property developers building in low-lying coastal regions, passed a bill
prohibiting any such research and decreeing that the seas would rise at
the same rate that they had through history, without regard to any
science about accelerating rates fueled by climate change.
Today, the regions that were greenlit for development by the move are
square in the path of Hurricane Florence and stand to be some of the
hardest-hit in the nation, thanks to sea-level rises that outstripped
the legally decreed limits on what the ocean was allowed to do.
sea-level rises that outstripped the legally decreed limits on what the ocean was allowed to do
And King Canute, late in his years and full of the memory of defeats and victories, took his courtiers with him down to the sea, and there placed a chair within the surf, and sat upon it, crying aloud, “I command the tide to halt!” But the tide did not halt, and it rose about him. Then he rose from his chair, and turned to his courtiers, and said, “You see, now, the limits of my authority. There are some things even a king cannot do.”
And up from the ranks of the courtiers spake a North Carolina Republican, saying, “Hold mine ale and watch thusly.”
Captain America: Iron Man, you have to switch off the machine NOW
Iron Man: I’m trying but it’s fitted with some sort of defence mechanism that I can’t shut off!
Cap: what’s it doing?
Iron Man: .. It keeps saying ‘please don’t switch me off, I’m scared’ in this tiny little voice.
Cap:
Iron Man: iT SOUNDS LIKE DUM-E’S SAD BEEPING OKAY DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS-
This is hilarious because now I’m just imagining DUM-E being nearby and he literally does not give a SHIT about this tiny robot voice, he is OFFENDED that someone is MANIPULATING HIS FATHER’S FEELINGS, and also he’s a little pistol anyway so he just rolls over, beeping cheerfully, and slams his claw down on the ‘off’ switch repeatedly, while Tony watches on in horror.
What parts of Canada are Wade Wilson and Logan actually from tho? This is an important part of Thier relationship that’s really overlooked.
Like, Thier canadianess in general is overlooked, but if Logan is supposed to be from NWT or something and Wade is from, IDK, Vancouver, there needs to be an inter-canadian smackdown.
Responses from The Canadians so far:
Logan: Multiple canon sources and Actual Canadians agree he’s from somewhere in northern Alberta, (Fox Lake and Cold Lake have both been cited)
Wade: True to form, there are multiple conflicting canons about which part of Canada Deapool is from, but all the Canadians agree that in order to get Like That ™, Wade Wilson is 100% definitely for certain from Winnepeg.
How Dare You!!!
I wanted Wade to be from Toronto! No! I do not claim him as one of mine! I don’t!
i would like to take this opportunity to present my headcanon about that infamous “language!” line: steve and the howlies had such dirty mouths that they had to be constantly reminded to clean it up for the reporters that followed them around. so steve heard a swear word over the radio and had a kneejerk stop that we’re being filmed for the folks back home reaction.
in other words, he said “language” not because he never swears, but because if he’s not on guard he swears way too much. 😀
“the word ‘fucking’ came to function as no more than “a warning that a noun is coming”
And the interesting thing about actually dealing with people who do swear to that degree, which I have, is that eventually your brain completely tunes the word fucking out.
You basically don’t hear it. It becomes unimportant noise.
I was actually just talking to someone last night about how when I was a kid (the 80s), no one said “fuck” or “shit,” ever, but people casually tossed slurs around like nobody’s business. Now people use “fuck” and “shit” like punctuation, but slurs are increasingly taboo–and that’s exactly how it should fucking be.
You can tell we were kids in the 80s in different places…
OH MY GOD I FOUND THE POST AGAIN!!
When I first saw this post go around, I was traveling, but I had something I wanted to say and I could never find it again.
Okay, so, this post isn’t wrong, but what the original gifset doesn’t take into account (though some of the commentary touches on it) is how incredibly situational swearing was in the 1940s.
So, yes, men swore a lot – around other guys, in certain contexts. But they were very heavily conditioned not to swear around women and kids.
I think this might be one of the big reasons why a lot of people my age and younger got the idea that people didn’t swear during the 1940s. Most of us fell into the “kid” or “female” categories, or both, and guys our grandparents’ age would never, ever say “fuck” around us. And those words weren’t usually used in media of the era for similar reasons, so we got the idea that people that age were very prim and polite, when it’s more that they were prim and polite around us.
I remember as a young woman walking in on groups of old blue-collar guys talking among themselves, with profanity flying freely, and then noticing me in the room and immediately clamming up and apologizing to me for swearing around me.
There’s a bit in the Douglas Bader biography I was reading a month or so ago that demonstrates this in a WWII context. According to the book, the squadron pilots swore freely in their radio chatter to each other in the field, to the amusement of the WAAFs (female service personnel) who were listening to the radio in an ops room as they moved counters around on maps (much like we see Peggy doing in TFA) and the embarrassment of their commander:
After awhile, to the regret of the Beauty Chorus [the WAAFs], Woodhall disconnected the loud-speaker in the Ops Room, feeling that some of the battle comments were too ripe even for the most sophisticated WAAFs. (“They laugh, you know,” he said, “but dammit I get so embarrassed.”)
… so, right, even in the middle of a war, pilots saying “fuck” over the radio was something the female staff had to be insulated from.
Say what you will about the baby boomers, but they largely demolished that wall between “swearing around men” and “swearing around women”. Most guys my dad’s age don’t do it anymore, at least not to that much of an extreme. By the time you get to my generation (I’m 40), people might swear or they might not, and they usually don’t swear around young kids, but swearing around men but not around women is just not a thing anyone does anymore. At least I don’t know anyone who does it specifically and consistently who’s not elderly.
It’s not really an individual-sexism thing, more of a socialization thing – sexist on a societal level, sure, but I don’t think Steve would balk at swearing around women, kids, or in a refined or professional social setting because he’s a sexist or a prude. It’s just something you didn’t do as a polite person. Like blowing your nose on the tablecloth in a fancy restaurant. I think he could and probably would unlearn that, but it’d take time.
So, to me, about half the examples up there work just fine (“now why the fuck would I do that” to Bucky – absolutely! Or “Is everything a fucking joke to you?” to Tony) and several jar horribly, because they’re not the right context (like the “there’s only one God ma’am” bit – noooo, you aren’t going to get “fuck” and “ma’am” in the same sentence! not for a Steve fresh from the 1940s! – or “we have our fucking orders” … in a polite, professional context like that, no). Steve would never. Or, I should say, someone from Steve’s culture – who tries in general to be a polite and respectful person, as Steve does – would never. Maybe after he’s had a few years to acclimatize to the more relaxed social climate surrounding swearing in the 21st century, but I think it’d take him awhile; he would sort of instinctively jerk himself back from doing it in all but the most relaxed sort of “palling around with your teammates” environment.
(Headcanon-wise, I could see Steve very quickly incorporating someone like Natasha into his mental schemata as “one of the guys” – not consciously, but on a subconscious level: like, he doesn’t hold back from swearing around her pretty quickly – but taking a LOT longer with someone like Wanda or Pepper.)
tl;dr disclaimer: not a historian, was not alive in the 1940s, so please correct me if I’m wrong on things here.
I’m so glad someone said this, because this is something I think a lot of the Steve meta about swearing misses. Situational profanity, exactly! He wouldn’t cuss in anything he’d consider ‘polite company’, because you didn’t do that. I’m absolutely sure he’s capable of having a very foul mouth in some circumstances (he was a soldier who grew up in working-class Brooklyn, so… yeah), but in the cultural context where he grew up, you sure as hell didn’t say ‘fuck’ in front of a lady, not if you had any manners to speak of.
/speaking as someone who cusses like breathing, even.
This is the best explanation of Steve’s ‘language’ line I’ve ever seen.
There seems to be some sort of fairytale Steve-Tony thing going on right now, and may I just recommend that somebody uses the Swan Maiden as a prompt? And that they also read this post first. And then come back and tell me that any MCU character other than Steve “I Will Fight God Barehanded” Rogers would be the swan in this scenario.
Picture this: Tony, young heir to the Stark dynasty, who never satisfies his father’s high expectations and never sees his mother outside of balls and galas. He’d much rather be inventing than glad-handing politicians and society members, but Howard locks him out of the workshop when there’s networking to be done. So instead Tony usually goes out into the Manor grounds, away from the noise and people, where there’s an old, barely-maintained koi pond that’s mostly been taken over by nature. There’s a pair of swans that likes to swim there, and an old bench. Tony sits there sometimes. Usually he’s quiet, but sometimes he talks to the swans, tells them stuff he can’t talk about to people.
Steve and Bucky are swans. Always have been; Bucky’s the ideal of the species except for a wing injury that keeps him from flying long distances, and Steve’s awkward and small, before he hit a growth spurt and turned into the biggest male anybirdy had ever seen. They spend most of their time together, usually in a small, undisturbed pond mostly ignored by humans. There’s a scrawny young human who comes there sometimes, and he talks. He’s not bad, for a human. They like him well enough, but frankly the food he sometimes brings is more interesting.
Except one day Howard has had enough of Tony’s dodging out of social events, and storms off onto the grounds to find him, Stane trailing behind. He finds Tony at the old pond with the swans, and immediately starts yelling at him. Stane joins in with commentary. Tony gets up from the bench and opens his mouth to respond, and Howard hits him so hard across the face that he falls to the ground.
That was a bad move.
There is a blur of white feathers, honking, and thunderous flapping across the surface of the pond. By the time Howard has turned to see what it is, it’s already turned itself into a six-foot-two shirtless slab of muscle, and Howard goes down with a single punch. Bucky, trailing behind, gets Stane with a second hit.
Tony, on the ground, assumes he has a concussion. Because that is the only explanation for the two enormous men standing in front of him, wrapped in feathery capes and looking like they wish Howard and Stane had put up a better fight.
(Steve and Bucky really would like to punch more things, please, but clearly the injured little guy takes priority.)
….and then they go up to the house and fuss, probably, and Steve and Bucky eat the entire salad course that was supposed to be served to the guests at dinner, and Tony continues to wonder if he’s hallucinating. Howard and Stane eventually wake up and come to the house, only to find that Tony has acquired a pair of bodyguards that won’t let them within ten feet of him. Who keep…hissing?
It’s weird, but Tony’s happy with the arrangement. And Steve’s happy with Tony. And Bucky, longsuffering, puts up with them both (Until he meets Tony’s socialite friend, Natasha, and then there’s a little less suffering involved.)
I’m so proud of you! You almost shipped! (I remain convinced that non-shippers write the best fic, even shippy fic. There is the proper focus on friendship and relationship, and the appropriate lack of icky kissing.)
kiragecko 