my mom just came to me and ranted about how everyone is making this facebook status that says, “raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree”. she was so baffled by this because she said, “you were pretty easy to raise as teenagers. all you did was sleep and eat.”
so to prove some point she’s going to nail a small cup of jello to a tree.
she’s so pleased with her self
incredible
parents are weird
yeah but this is about as accurate as it gets.
you say “nail jello to a tree” and most people think jello all by itself.
but if you put any actual thought into what you’re doing and then give it just a little support
So I just woke up and my first thought was “what if in the four horsemen of the apocalypse, pestilence was one of those anti-vax moms?”
quite frankly the four white suburban soccer-moms of the apocalypse would scare me way more
War is the one constantly screaming at retail workers
Famine is a diet nut, one of the really annoying ones who is all ‘OMG PALEO IS THE TRUE WAY TO EAT AND IF YOU DON’T EAT PALEO YOU’RE GOING TO DIE OF CANCER’
One time, because they’re wired after a fight and nobody else has a better idea, the Avengers get bored and decide to play True American.
It’s a drinking game. Except it’s also sort of like Candyland. There are stakes. The floor is lava.
When Steve first hears about it, he asks if there are actual rules. Natasha smiles at him and says, “Everything you hear in True American is a lie.” Thanks, Natasha.
There are a lot of jokes at first about how Steve is definitely going to make it through the Secret Order of the Circle beer cans and reach the King (a very nice Macallan scotch, courtesy of Tony) first, because Steve is the truest American there ever which was. This is, of course, a fabulous joke, because Steve wasn’t around for half the political imbroglios that are required knowledge just to move from one piece of furniture to another (the floor is lava, did we not mention this, Steve), and he has the loosest possible definition of a high school education. This is not going to be Steve’s game.
Several factors are not taken into account.
First is that Thor has even less of the cultural knowledge required, and it should have be assumed from the start that he would come in last. (This would of course be wrong. Not knowing anything about American history does not stop him from, during the course of play, gaining entrance through Ellis Island, finding all six hidden locations of the Union Rat, and stopping the 1911 shirtwaist factory fire. He gets third place.)
Second is that Clint’s schooling is not so much “worse” as “absent.” And as Clint’s strategy for True American is to emphasize the drinking side of it, with a healthy dose of outrageous cheating on the behalf of Natasha, his fourth place does not particularly bother him.
Third is that Natasha is a Russian ex-pat who, while admittedly well-versed in a large swath of Americana for reasons best left unmentioned, nonetheless is slightly off the mark when it comes to the key “American asshole” mental space required to be a true master of the craft. This bothers her, but she’s working on it. Add in Clint’s assistance, and what will be her easy slide into second place is completely understandable.
Bruce does not play. He sets a chair carefully away from all other pieces of furniture, declares himself a foreign nation, and eats snacks. He is designated a water hazard by the others. (There is absolutely not a rule saying that whoever’s closest to him can beg for foreign aid and get a cookie in return. Clint should shut up about that. Particularly if he ever wants another cookie.)
Really, of any of them, True American should be right up Tony’s alley. Drinking excessively while also maintaining balance and cognitive function? Check. Genius-level knowledge in a variety of subjects? Check. A deep-seated inferiority complex with an all-encompassing need to win? So thorough a check that it might as well fill itself out in cursive and add a ten buck tip for the waitress.
Tony is all about True American. It was his idea to play. Because maybe he wants to rub Steve’s nose in it. And it’s not like Steve can beat Tony at a game he’s never played before, with close to as much knowledge of the required history as Thor, and in the presence of teammates who he’ll probably feel obliged to help along in the spirit of team-captain-ness or whatever.
This will be great, Tony’s pretty sure.
…If not immediately narratively obvious, Steve beats Tony.
He beats him by a lot.
He beats him so hard it’s almost physically painful to watch, except obviously not, this is a great day in Avengers history, Bruce is recording it on Natasha’s phone and they’re going to have a play-by-play rewatch with Pepper just as soon as Steve stops chugging down the Macallan while maintaining constant, unwavering eye contact with Tony. Who isn’t anywhere close to second place, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because Steve knows who planted the idea for this game and he knows exactly what Tony was going to do if Tony won and he’d been damned if he was going to let some uptown rich kid beat him at a goddamned drinking game.
Tony comes in last. Steve is the True American. Everyone else eats cookies.
the comments on this post make me want a civil war au in an elementary school
idk third-grade tony wants to be class president? and steve says that’s stupid. and tony’s mad at steve for not sitting with him at lunch yesterday, so they get into a fight.
tony: ‘fine, this friday at recess, we fight’ steve: ‘bring it on, let’s fight now’ tony: ‘no, i want to play basketball at recess today’
steve tells his bff bucky about it, of course, so bucky says he’ll fight tony with him. which naturally leads to tony and steve going to everyone in class and trying to get them on their side.
steve sits with clint at lunch and asks nicely, and clint signs up, because steve asks first. tony immediately goes to the new kid peter and befriends him and gets him on his side. wanda goes to steve because tony pulled on her hair last week. tony bribes the weird kid vision with a hostess cupcake, and those things are damn valuable.
it starts to affect the class. scott lang wants to switch desks because he’s surrounded by tony’s people on all sides. steve leads his team to the other side of the lunch table, far away from tony as possible. tony tries to draw a picture of steve exploding in art class.
and then friday recess comes, and it’s like something out of a western, all of tony’s team on one side of the grass and steve’s team on the other.
tony: ‘so how does this work’ steve: ‘we fight!’ tony: ‘i know that! i meant like, on the count of three? last team standing wins? team that gets in the most punches wins?’ steve: ‘fine, we fight on on count of three! one, two, three!’
unfortunately, that’s the exact moment their teacher mr. fury shows up and breaks up the party. apparently he overheard natasha and clint apologizing to each other in advance for beating each other up.
mr. fury wonders why he chose this job, and brings everyone inside and a long talk about how we don’t solve interpersonal problems with punching. and then it’s an airing of grievances and trying to figure out solutions and sharon cries for getting in trouble and everyone decides they hate steve and tony for getting them into this mess. and into detention.
it’s a long weekend, and none of the kids will look at tony and steve on monday. it kinda sucks. steve sits next to tony at lunch because they’re both alone, and steve decides he should probably apologize like a big kid. he does. tony says he’s sorry too, and then shares his bag of potato chips.
so there’s a book in the madeline series called “madeline says merci” and I just misread that as “madeline sans merci”
In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines The smallest one was Madeline. Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.
But it’s surrounded on all sides by all those other small towns, and it’s where the courthouse is.
“You know how half the people from that seaside town always say the other half look a bit…off? Queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes? Well, we’ve finally got a discrimination case.”
“Alien mind control isn’t usually admissible, but if you can get one of their psy-beam operators to testify as an expert then we’ll talk.”
“I’m not signing a search warrant based on a dream you had, no matter how many people had the same one!”
“That case out of Punxsutawney has been on today’s docket every day for months. Did someone leave the groundhog on again?”
“Turns out a town made entirely of people who secretly worship Ba’al Berith might have some establishment of religion issues. Who knew?”
Kimchi and Justice 