Screw gender norms. Women can definitely fight too.
I know I’ve reblogged similar stuff before, but I suck at consistent tagging so u can’t find the other commentary.
But yeah, maybe my favorite part of how this keeps happening is that some earlier researchers actually found it easier to believe that all the adults buried at a given place must have been high status men. (Maybe that earlier society was even more backwards, and didn’t bury women at all? Maybe those women were really immortal? Who knows. They didn’t have any graves.)
Rather than even starting to question their own assumptions around findings like not nearly as much variation in people’s heights and grave goods–and access to resources in general–as they would expect based on their own society at the time. When yes, it turned out to be a fairly even mix after all.
I have read about a number of cases around the world where exactly that has happened, but somebody did reexamine the evidence and reevaluate those conclusions later on. And there are probably many more which haven’t gotten another critical look. (No doubt plenty of cases I haven’t learned about, either. Plenty.)
This is one of those interesting examples where the media went in a very different direction from the research. Even though I would like this headline to be 100% unqualified truth, I feel like it’s important to note some important stuff before we proceed.
I am very sorry about all this stuff. IT IS A ROCKY FUCKING RIDE.
We have to differentiate between Vikings and the Norse. Everyone has heard of Vikings, and we have a really clear idea about who the Vikings were and what they did, so “Viking” is used to refer to seafaring Norse culture (and that’s fine – language evolves, and if you say “Viking” you can IMMEDIATELY communicate what you’re talking about.) However, “Viking” is more of a professional term than the name of a culture – going viking is kind of like going hiking, or biking, but with more quaffing and stabbing. There were NOT entire civilizations consisting entirely of male berserker warriors pillaging their heads off, with maybe one or two shieldmaidens and a drippy ethereal blonde waiting nonspecifically back home, and if you think about it for about five seconds, you will see that this is a silly idea. After all, what’s the point of pillaging and conquering and raiding the locals in soft green fertile countries if you don’t… settle in the nice soft fertile area you have just conquered, and colonize it and keep it?
So while there were Vikings crashing around Europe/Africa/North America, frightening the livestock, their families also existed, and they were just plain Norse people. The Norse invaded and settled in plenty of places, and while we all prefer the sensational headline (”THE VIKINGS INVADED BRITAIN”) there is also the historical truth (”Norse families settled down and farmed in close-knit British communities for many generations, and practiced extensive trade along their famous sea routes.”) The 2011 paper this headline appears to be based on is not about Vikings, it’s about Norse migrants. It’s calledWarriors and women: the sex ratio of Norse migrants to eastern England up to 900 adand it basically says “Yes, the Norse people who seized Eastern England were a balanced mix of men and women, BECAUSE THAT IS HOW HUMAN COLONIES USUALLY WORK.”
Now that being said, we do have to recognize that our concept of Vikings = warriors = men is false, because evidence suggests that even the original campaigns to conquer eastern England had a balanced mix of male and female people from the very beginning. And presumably they had a fair mix of farmers/crafters/diplomats/holy people/healers as well, on account of how they then proceeded to establish English colonies that traded and thrived for generations. But there was no reason to ever think otherwise, apart from our own weird beliefs that colonizing is an exclusively militaristic and violent enterprise, which can ONLY ever be done by warriors, who can ONLY ever be men. And that is a weird, convoluted, and frankly inefficient train of thought. Like clatterbane says, we’re just riffing off some of the silliest assumptions you can make about cultures. Think about it for five seconds. WHY WOULD YOU THINK THIS? DO ROLEPLAYING PARTIES EVER CONSIST ENTIRELY OF BERSERKERS? HOW WOULD THAT EVEN WORK? HOW WOULD THIS WAR PARTY THEN POPULATE AND INFLUENCE AN ENTIRE NATION? FOR GOD’S SAKE. “Ooh, I found a skeleton with a Nordic sword in England, ooh, he must have been a ferocious Viking who pillaged and raped his way here and was killed in battle” OR MAYBE IT WAS A NICE NORSE MATRIARCH WHO LIVED HERE ON PURPOSE, SHE ONCE CUT A ROBBER’S HEAD OFF IN HER YOUTH BUT WAS LATER KICKED IN THE HEAD BY HER OWN COW. GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME.
I should demand to be buried in a bathtub in Kirkwall, wearing a bulletproof vest, with the skeleton of Myrtle the Fruit Bat clutched in my hands so that future anthropologists can be like “Oooh yes this is the famous Batman we’ve heard so much about, half man, half bat. He colonized the Orkneys in his famous porcelain boat and practiced a vampiric religion. He was a famous warrior who did a lot of nonconsensual pillaging, and that’s why everyone in Scotland is so grim and dark. Preps stared at him, that’s why he’s putting up his middle fingers”
ANYWAY
that leads me to
Sexing from graves is not super reliable. So the paper that explains how Norse migrants included women did so by examining the bones of Norse graves. They concluded that many of the skeletons were female, rather than male, as had been previously assumed as the default. (NB: MOST OF THESE WERE NOT WARRIOR GRAVES – THEY WERE THE GRAVES OF NORSE MIGRANTS IN GENERAL. THERE WERE SOME MIXED GRAVE GOODS BUT NOTHING PARTICULARLY SUGGESTIVE OF GENDER, EVEN IF YOU BELIEVE THAT GENDER IS STRICTLY DETERMINED BY MALE SKELETONS HOLDING SWORDS AND FEMALE SKELETONS HOLDING, IDK, FRYING PANS. TO COOK PANCAKES FOR THE DEAD. LIKE WOMEN DO.) Like Clatterbane says above, we are FAR too used to making ridiculous assumptions just because we found some skeletons. “ooh, these were high-status men from a fierce and amoral warrior culture that reproduced by kidnapping native women, and all the women and female children of the population were removed by evaporation. You can tell because the skeletons were buried with clothes on, and looked kinda cool.” Because sexing from grave goods is just a series of foolish, unfounded decisions. If you assume a skeleton is male because it was buried with weapons and armor, you are not making publication-worthy decisions. Many of these “X skeleton discovered to be female!” papers are based on osteological sexing, in which people with training in forensics or anthropology actually looked at the skeleton and went “Hey wait, these are lady bones.” Which is what this paper is about – examining the bones and seeing that they are a balanced mix of male and female bones. But that is in ITSELF problematic because…
Sexing from bones is hard work. Osteological sexing is just not as clear cut as it sounds on CSI, or in archaeology, where people declare with total certainty that a rotting skeleton is a young white female, by holding up a fragment of bone and squinting at it. (Trans and intersex people will also argue that sexing humans from our squishy flesh bodies, with genitals attached to them, is also unreliable. They are correct.) The only real areas in which gender can be suggested from bones is the chin sort of area (unreliable) and the pelvis. The pelvis usually wins. You can get a PERFECT male skull on a skeleton with a TEXTBOOK female pelvis, and in that case you would probably call your skeleton a female. She probably had a fierce strong chin in life, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The thing that you are looking for in the hips is the characteristic wider bowl shape of the pelvis, that allows most cis women to give birth via the vagina. Men’s pelvic bones theoretically make a circular hole, and womens’ are supposed to suggest more of an oval. Men should have a pointier bit like a v-neck sweater where the bones join in front, and women should have more of a scoop neck. And while the difference looks clear when you’re looking at the Textbook Examples in Gray’s Anatomy…
Figure 1. “ooh, this is easy! the male is on the left. You can tell because the textbook says the male one is on the left.”
… The real world is often not quite so obliging. After all, plenty of the women you know don’t have curvy hourglass figures, with textbook female hips that are as broad as their shoulders. There are definitely women with “masculine” builds – and men with wide hips, too! There are slim, snake-hipped women whose narrow “male” hips were historically associated with complications in childbirth, but women with that bone structure still exist today. In great numbers. Which we know because female pelvic bones are of IMMENSE interest in the field of…
OBSTETRICS. Childbirth. The whole “ooh the female pelvis is DESIGNED by NATURE to be the PERFECT BABY DELIVERY CHUTE” that skeleton-measurers will try to sell you? “Oh this was definitely a lady skeleton because of the thing and the widget, which are Designed that way Because Childbirth.” Well, that does not stand up well against the filthy reality of childbirth. If you study obstetrics, or are carrying a fetus, you don’t get the cutesy Male And Female pelvises. You get handed the Four Pelvic Types (“Good luck, bitch”) and if the screaming pregnant lady in front of you has an Android (male) pelvis, then this is going to be A Fun Experience for all.
Figure 2. “Fuck me. Sorry, Ms Viking Lady, we haven’t invented c-sections yet so my book says you’re fucked. I … don’t suppose it will cheer you up to know that you’ve secretly been a man all along? I mean, when we bury you tomorrow, your skeleton will really confuse future historians. WHOA PUT THE SWORD DOWN”
This is called the
Caldwell-Moloy Classification and you are welcome to google it. In the 1930s up until very recently, this chart was used to suggest whether a woman should have a C-section (we use ultrasounds for that now.) Only about half of women are said to be gynecoid (female) in shape, but I would LOOK THAT UP before quoting it. It’s just something that stuck firmly in my head in college ten years ago, and I remember it clearly because I went and measured my hips in anxiety.* If you really want to get to grips with “how many women have textbook male pelves” then….
HEY GUESS WHAT KIDS, GET READY FOR RACIAL DIFFERENCES because you’re going to see casually mentioned things like “Oh yes, about 30% of white women have male pelves. And half of WoC have anthropoid pelves.” And you’ll be like SHIT WHAT?! DOES THIS… DO PEOPLE KNOW? And then there will be some throwaway fact like “Oh, BTW, with an anthropoid pelvis, people just won’t be able to achieve a flat butt and stomach with dieting or whatever, the bones just won’t allow that look. The female skeleton can really only get that ‘ideal’ modern model figure with an android pelvis – it’s fairly common in white women, presents a challenge in childbirth, and the skeleton looks male. Anyway, moving on -” And you’re still going WAIT WHAT, GO BACK. DOESN’T THIS CHANGE, IDK, ALL OF DIETING? ANTHROPOLOGY? HISTORY? FORENSICS? HELP? DO THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE KNOW THIS?
How many men have “female” (or anthropoid, or platypelloid) pelves? Well, traditionally cis men do not go through childbirth, so they’re less interesting, so… I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I have no fucking idea. Go find out and then tell me.
How many skeletons that we pronounced female were male all along? Who knows. How many skeletons assumed male are actually female? Who fucking knows.
Because childbirth isn’t actually very interesting to most people, it’s hard to work out exactly what the fuck is going on, but apparently in 2015 researchers published a paper called Female pelvic shape: Distinct types or nebulous cloud? in which they concluded that female pelves are actually a nebulous cloud. A NEBULOUS CLOUD. FORGET THE NEAT AND TIDY LITTLE GRAY’S ANATOMY DRAWING, WE HAVE OFFICIALLY ENTERED THE REALM OF THE NEBULOUS FUCKING CLOUD. These researchers argue that Caldwell-Moloy is way too simplistic to be practical, and rather than clustering conveniently as obviously masculine, obviously feminine and ‘other’, all female pelves actually exist on a nebulous spectrum across all of the four pelvic types. There’s no point in trying to sort women’s pelvic bones into ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories, these researchers say – women’s pelves are unique and unknowable, combining features from all of the known types in an “amorphous, cloudy continuum of shape variation.” OH GOOD. THAT’S GOOD. THAT’S A DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE ABSTRACT. I’M SO GLAD THAT WE ARE IN COMPLETE CONTROL AND KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING ON
Anyway. It isn’t super easy to sex skeletons by their pelvic bones. It’s a best guess sort of thing.
Maybe the only way you can identify a skeleton as female with 100% certainty is if its pelvic area is not a textbook ‘female’ shape but a NEBULOUS FUCKING CLOUD.
So if you would like to re-write this headline to accurate reflect the findings of the paper, it should read
“Some Norse colonists in England had pelvic bones, and the rest had nebulous clouds. Nobody is driving this fucking bus and we should all be TERRIFIED”
* I can relax – I have Official Childbearing Hips, and my midwife agrees! ** Anthropologists will enjoy my skeleton, but the makers of jeans believe I don’t exist. Isn’t that weird that forensics people and historians are convinced that 100% of women have splendidly gynecoid hips, while jeans manufacturers think that 0% of women do?
** EDITED TO ADD: I shouldn’t have said this so flippantly. If you don’t have wide gynecoid hip bones, and you plan to birth your own children, DON’T WORRY!!! This is FINE!!! Hipbones are meant to loosen and separate during labor, so people with ANY variation of hips are usually equipped to deliver a child through the vaginal canal. You can birth a baby with ‘male’ hips – we know this because childbearers with ‘male’ hips aren’t extinct and people of all races manage to reproduce despite the variation in bone structure and you will be FINE. We have modern nutrition now, and bigger stronger bones, and better healthcare – so it isn’t as much of a problem as it was in the past, and ANYWAY, YOU WILL BE FINE. I’m sorry, I should have said. YOU ARE FINE, YOUR SHAPE IS FINE, AND IF YOU CHOOSE TO BIRTH A BABY, YOU WILL BE FINE.
Or, you know, you can have a textbook gynecoid pelvis on which your OB comments approvingly every time you see her, and you can get to one push away from giving birth, and then, because your son decided to wear his umbilical cord as a hat, they can take you away and slice you open anyway. Life is full of delightful surprises!
HURRAY!
no seriously I don’t want to freak anyone out, but please don’t get Bone Anxiety about your bones, especially because of one of my posts. NOBODY IS IN CONTROL AND YOUR BONES CAN’T SAVE YOU. TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT. IT WILL BE FINE
“
NOBODY IS IN CONTROL AND YOUR BONES CAN’T SAVE YOU.
“
OH YES, SUCH A FINE THING TO SAY AS THE SKELETON WAR APPROACHES.
Really. UGH.
Either these sorts of anthropologists are not up to date with the field or my department’s bio anthropology expert is uniquely good in the field and gave me the wrong idea. I’m under the impression that while Intro to bioanth teaches a simplistic distinct double bell curves distribution of pelvis types, the field of Bioanth recognizes that it is difficult to accurately sex from bones.
My partner and the aforementioned bioanth professor did a cross disciplinary project together using algorithms to try to sex 13 samples using 117 data points. The results were “This is nigh impossible with only 13 remains. There’s too much overlap to make any certain claims. Really, we’ve tried everything.” All the while I was talking at my partner against such an essentialist approach sex and assumptions about gender.
Most academic papers won’t say “This is definitely a lady because of the shape of her pelvic bones.”
They’ll
say “We suggest that other researchers should view this specific skeleton as potentially female, based on the distance of X
units between pelvic point A and B [refs 1,2] and the span of Y units of
point C [3,4] which suggest a 60-70% rate of accuracy [5,6] although it
is not conclusive [7] without DNA evidence [8].”
The press release, on the other hand, will go “Mythical Warrior Woman Revealed By Science!” and a press officer at the university will knock together something like, “After hundreds of years of identification as a male, the famous Dead Warrior found in Greece is probably a lady, say researchers at the University of Funk…”
The mainstream press will then take the press release, strip out the “probably” and delicate phrases the press officer sweated over, punch up a quote from the researchers, and will straight-up go “SHE IS NO MAN! Scientists slam sexist historians with sexy Xena skeleton – A LADY ALL ALONG!”
The secondary press (as pictured above) will go “AMAZON WARRIOR WOMEN PROVED REAL BY SCIENCE.”
Social media will go hog-fucking-wild.
Tumblr will go “I KNEW IT! MURDER ME, BEAUTIFUL AMAZONIAN WARRIOR WOMEN!”
And Elodie will rewrite the headline so that it goes, “This single skeleton is Greek not South American, and probably – though not certainly – female.”
And Tumblr will go “THAT’S COOL TOO!”
And that is science communication in a nutshell.
References:
1. Seminal Paper On How To Suggest Biological Sex In Humans By Measuring The Proportions of the Pelvis, 1920.
2. Reference 1 is Problematic And We Know Better Now – USE THESE MEASUREMENTS INSTEAD, 1976.
3. Updated Guidelines on Sexing The Bones: Perspectives from the Global Medical Community on Pelvic Measurements, 2012.
4. The Author Wrote This Paper On Pelvic Measurements And Citing It Will Boost Their H-Index, 2014.
5.
Pelvic Measurements Acquired From The Methods Reference 3 Are Found To
Have a 60% Rate of Accuracy At Predicting Sex In Living Women, 2012.
6.
Update To Reference 5 That Just Came Out While Your Paper Was In
Revisions – We Can Get up to 70% Rate of Accuracy If We Do The Math
Better, 2016 (epub ahead of print.)
7. Remember The Part Where Women’s Pelvic Bones Are More Like Nebulous Clouds, 2015.
8.
Reviewer 3 Demanded To Know Why We Didn’t Use DNA Evidence To Confirm
Our Findings And We Were Like FUCK OFF These Bones Are 1000 Years Old
And Were Found In The Warm Mud, Have You Ever Tried To Recover DNA From
Rotten Ancient Bone For Fuck’s Sake, FINE, We Are Citing This Paper On How
DNA Evidence Is Honestly the Most Reliable Way To Sex Human Remains And
Yes Our Paper Has A 40% Chance of Being Completely Wrong, We Just Have To Be Okay With That, 2013.
There’s a seriously delightful conversation in one of the LARP fb groups about adventuring over 40. Many of us aren’t 20 anymore, and it seems silly to have our characters not be our own age (or close to it). But they’re still starting characters (as it’s a new campaign), which implies they chose this path recently.
That thread is mostly joking around, but I kind of love the idea of hearing The Call when you’re not a teenager, and starting your in-game adventuring life later as some kind of mid-life crisis, religious epiphany, empty nest reaction, etc.
Which got me to some ficlets, and here’s the result.
—
“Well, your mother always wanted to be an adventurer – she was a hell of an archer when we were your age – but we got pregnant, and your grandmother needed some help, so we put that life off for a while. But now that you’re off at university, it seems like a good time to pick up the bow again, and go fight evil.“
—
“There was just something missing, y’know? I mean, I liked being a toymaker, but one day I realized – I really wanted to put on some plate mail, and go fight demons. So here I am, livin’ the dream.“
—
“Sometimes, relationships don’t work out. She got the business, I get to start the life of adventure I’ve always wanted. Did you know I minored in alchemy? It’s good to get back into it again.”
—
“Your Aunt Maribel and I had always talked about doing this, when we were girls, but it just never seemed like the right time. But now that Uncle Haro has passed…Mari just wants to get out there and do it. I can’t let her go alone, can I? Someone has to watch her flank on the line, and remind her to keep her shield up.“
—
“What can I say? Sometimes you fall in love with a mage. When you do, you grab your hammer and you go where he goes. Someone has to keep cute Dukes from flirting with him. Back off, gentry! He’s all mine.”
“Kevin, you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to fall in love with some Duke.”
“Whatever. I’m not taking any chances. It took me this long to find you, and I’m not letting you go without me.”
—
“I’m your Dad. If you’re going to go and fight evil, I’m going with you, ‘cause I support your choices.”
—
“Er…Mom’s heading off to check out some evil gate she heard about. Someone needs to go with her, ok? I squired for her last time, but I just can’t right now. It’s your turn. Make sure she does her exercises, ok? Her back is going to be horrid if she doesn’t.“
“Fine. I’ll handle the evil gate with Mom. But the next time she heads into the swamps to fight some lizard thing, you’re doing it. I freaking hate swamps.”
—
“His husband left him for an elf. He’s got some anger issues that he’s working through, ok? Better that he work through it on some bad guys.”
—
“What was that?” “Undead again.” “Oh, for the love of..look. They’re a freaking plague, and it’s getting worse. If we don’t want to keep dealing with this, we’re just going to have to go to the source.” “But….the carrots…!” “Hang the damned carrots. I’ll hire that nice boy down the street to take care of our field while we’re gone. Clean yourself up and grab your holy symbol. We’re not putting up with this for one more week.”
—
“Well, I always wanted to see the world. I got a small inheritance recently, and thought, why the heck not? No time like the present, right?”
—
“If that Sorcerer thinks he can just waltz in here and take over this town, he’s got another think coming!” “Doris, calm down. We’ll write to the King, and…” “I WILL NOT CALM DOWN. Sally, I swear, you drive me nuts sometimes.” “I’m just saying – there’s diplomatic solutions to this.” “The hell with diplomatic solutions! I WILL END HIM. ” “Fiiiiiine. Do it your way. End him with fire.” “Thank you!” *smooches* “Love you. Back when I’m back. He has NO IDEA who is coming for him.”
—
“What can I say? Adventuring pays the bills. I have a family to support, and turnip farming doesn’t make money like it used to.”
—
“Hey Phineas – for guys’ night, I have a thought. Rather than just going down to the pub like we usually do…I found a gate. No idea where it leads. Let’s go check it out. Could be fun, right?” “A gate?” “Yeah!” “This is a terrible idea. I’m in.”
—
“Um….well, this is awkward. You know that Goddess who spoke to me last spring?” “Oh yeah! Your whole conversion thing. Nice to see you found faith. It’s been good for you, I think.” “Well, she has something she wants me to take care of.” “What, like…a message delivered or something?” “Noooooooo?” “Seriously? You’re a florist. What does she want you to do?” “Well, now when I sing, things blow up. That’s good, right?” “This can’t end well.”
—
“We left for THREE WEEKS, and Barbarians razed our village. I swear, do I have to do everything myself? I JUST RE-DID THE ROOF, YOU JERKS.”
—
“He doesn’t think our family is good enough for him? I’ll show him who is good enough for him! My little girl is going to live in a castle, even if I have to conquer it myself!” “I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.” “We’ll see what he has to say when I walk into Summertide with a demon’s head on a spike! Who’s good enough now, you two-bit merchant?!?”
—
“Your Aunt recently found out that Throgg the Destroyer is that brat she couldn’t stand at the Academy. She’s not taking it well, so we’re going to be off on a trip for a while…”
—
“So….funny story. You know that favor I owe the Countess? From like 20 years ago? She finally called it in. She remembered that I’m really good with Ancient Runes, and apparently there’s something she needs checked out.”
—
“I thought you said this adventuring thing was just a hobby, Brianna. Something we did on the weekends.” “Well, but…y’know…I really like it. I think I could be good at it. I’m getting better with the spear, you know?” “I don’t even know you anymore!” “Can’t you just be supportive?” “Well, but where does it end? First hobgoblins, now orcs…what’s next?” “I heard about this cursed tomb…” “Absolutely not. I draw the line at tombs. NO TOMBS.”
—
“I told you not to date that vampire. Didn’t I tell you? I told you!” “Let me live, Sergio.” “Let me unlive, you mean.” “Ok, that’s just rude.”
—
“Oh, sure – one good healing spell, and you think you can conquer the world.” “I can! I have the knees of a teenager again!”
—
“Grandpa, you’re embarrassing me.” “What, I can’t visit my grandson while he’s adventuring?” “Well, I love having you here, and everyone knows you’re a good healer, but…” “I’ll be fine. I like it here. I think I’ll stay.”
—
“C’mon, let’s do it. We’ve always wanted to.” “But…we don’t know what we’re doing.” “We do! We’ve each read The Book, what….15 times? I know you basically have it committed to memory.” “I don’t think ‘To Catch a Rogue Lord’ was really meant as an instruction manual.” “C’mon…how hard can it be? You’ve seen the adventurers who come through here.” “Excellent point. I’ll get my herbs.”
—
“Honey? There’s a kid at the door. He says you’re the Chosen One.” “Arrrrgh. We talked about this! Come back later!” “He says the stars are aligned?” “Not doing it! Tell him to go away.” “Oh, and the seal broke. The seal broke, Stephen. It sounds important.” “But…” “I’ll pack you a lunch.”
“Call Sharon. She and her stupid birthmark are coming with me.” “I thought you said that translation of the prophecy was incorrect? Something about a miss-translation of verb.” “…well, at least if we fail, I won’t have to listen to Karl talking at Guild Meetings about how he was right.”
these are perfect and everything is perfect and nothing hurts
@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.
“Parker, if he so much as gives you a bad feeling I want you to get the hell out of there as fast as you can.”
“What?” Parker looked back over her shoulder at the man currently adorned with three blondes, five brunettes, and a redhead. “Why?”
“Something’s not right,” Eliot said, which wasn’t an explanation at all.
“Think you can maybe give us a little more to go on than that?” Nate asked, the kind of sardonic authority that was easy to pull off when he wasn’t even in the building.
“No,” Eliot snapped. “I don’t know what the hell it is, I just know it’s bad news.” MI6 in the way he held his champagne and CIA in the way he stood and a soldier in his shoulders and Interpol in the way he looked around the room – no, CIA again – no, FBI – League of Assassins? Obviously not that, couldn’t have been that, so what exactly was it that had him wanting to grab Parker and get the hell out? If he could get closer he might be able to tell, the mezzanine might as well have been a different building entirely for all the good it did him. All forest, no trees.
“Not distinctive enough?” Hardison asked, but it wasn’t a real question.
“Too distinctive,” Eliot answered, even though he knew Hardison didn’t actually care. “I’ve just never seen it before.”
“If you’ll pardon the intrusion, sir,” said a voice not in Eliot’s ear, and he did not make it obvious how he stiffened at the address. Eliot turned, let harmless confusion and interest soften his face.
The butler, the one he’d seen before. Pennyworth. That familiar combination of MI6 and Interpol, muddied with domestic service but present all the same.
“May I have your name?” the butler asked, his hair was white but his eyes were sharp.
Mr. Pennyworth exuded serene amusement. “So sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re not Mr. Easton.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Sophie said in Eliot’s ear before he could respond. “He couldn’t make it so he told you to come.”
“You caught me,” Eliot said, sheepish. “Turned out he had some kind of a family thing, said I could use his invite. Didn’t think anyone’d notice if I used his name. He’ll be flattered you remember him.”
It was unclear if Pennyworth bought this story, as placid as before. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “But I’ve always made it a point to examine the guest lists personally. If there were meant to be a former green beret in attendance, I would know about it.”
Eliot was, for the most fleeting of moments, stunned.
The butler smiled. It was not kind. “The way you watch the crowd,” he explained. “It’s very distinctive.”
Eliot froze. He frowned. His brow furrowed.
If Hardison laughed any harder, he was going to hurt himself.
lady bracknell, i admit with shame that I do not know. i only wish i did. the plain facts of the case are these: on the morning of the day you mention, a day that is for ever branded on my memory, i prepared as usual to take my virginity out in its perambulator. i had also with me a somewhat old, but capacious hand-bag in which i had intended to place the manuscript of a work of fiction that i had written during my few unoccupied hours. in a moment of mental abstraction, for which i never can forgive myself, i deposited the manuscript in the basinette, and placed the virginity in the hand-bag. and i left it, god forgive me, in the cloakroom of one of the larger railway stations in london. victoria.. the brighton line. i lived for that regret ever since. i would never forgive myself.
Dean O’ Gorman and Aidan Turner ( Fili and Kili in The Hobbit trilogy ) cosplaying as Miguel and Tullio from the dreamworks animation movie : The Road to El Dorado.
After seeing this all I can say is : WHY IS THERE NOT A LIVE ACTION MOVIE OF THAT AWESOME CARTOON ?
Where has this been hiding that I’ve never seen it before?!
Kimchi and Justice 