Snippets of...

Learning about flyovers and pyrotechnics at American games being a thing

Non-americans discovering the size of American football stadiums....for high schools in texas. Also the size of our stadiums in general.

Going to baseball games as a side treat! Lmao.

Non-americans losing their minds over "like, 100 petrol pumps," at buc-ees.

Related: Americans often forget how huge target and Walmart is.

People discovering American BBQ

Non-americans being obsessed with mid American restaurant chains like Golden Corral and Taco Bell

A lot of them really did feel god in this chile's apparently

The rightful obsession with waffle house

New understanding of American Big Drink With Ice supremacy as summer creeps in

Begrudging acceptance of mandatory water breaks during games

Americans realizing we have a Team USA and we are not, in fact, just "hosting our friends" from around the world — mostly because we won our first match and our team is decent??? Not amazing but not the worst.

Side rant: us women's football team is legendary good and we should care about that more like. Hello???

Admitting Americans are right about air conditioning

Related: the english team did warm ups in Florida RIP, and also the there's a video of the French team just being like fuck the heat, fuck the sun, this is so hot...

Americans who do not normally care about international football but fucking love a sport and cheering so we're just hyping whatever team is nearby, like we see a party and just show up and learn the chant. Like sorry many of us don't know shit about soccer but if we see a bunch of people in viking helmets or kilts or holding a bunch of flags and cheering we're game.

TAILGATING!!!!

I already said this but American yellow school bus is an international celebrity

The Scottish drank Boston dry of beer apparently, like they quadrupled what Boston normally sells for fourth of July weekend. SAM ADAMS HAD TO GET AN EMERGENCY BEER DELIVERY.

Also the English team fans got kicked out of The Londoner pub in Dallas after drinking 5,000 beers and going over max capacity lmao

Free refill drinks, tortilla chips & salsa.

So many non-americans are going to be here for the 4th of July for our 250th anniversary which is going to be great and hilarious

Non-americans discovering ranch as a beloved condiment

Non-americans understanding American obsession with hamburger now

Japan's homebase is in Texas and the cultural differences are frankly great and also the Japanese fans are SO NICE and helped clean up the stadium after a match???

You go to the bathroom in the middle of the day and are like “I should brush my teeth” DO IT!!!! Don’t listen to the other half of that sentence that says “shit but it’s not the right time” 

I don’t care if you’re about to eat, or get coffee, or whatever. 

I’m a big fan of the 2 PM shower. spend a whole morning feeling lazy and guilty, then just decide to start the day over again, even if it is lunchtime.

# no really I mean it it's fine

# I wouldn't have written it that way

unfortunately I don't know enough about programming to make a decent snake-themed programming pun so here's a literal python programmer misunderstanding what kind of "mouse" they had

here, I did the shipping dynamic thingie

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

the original post

If you’ve never seen it, it’s on YouTube, but the upshot is that Madonna is comparing her lover to a divine being and the video heavily implies she banged Jesus.

According to my mom, people weren’t pissed that it was heavily implied Madonna banged Jesus. They were pissed because the Jesus in the video was Black, and that meant Madonna wasn’t just banging Jesus, she was race-mixing.

I think also of Lady Gaga’s video for Judas, in which Judas is Black and being in love with him is called “foolish” and “cruel.” I remember more controversy over the lyrics, before the video came out, than I do over the video.

And then I think about the video for Call Me By Your Name and how the Devil is Black and the narrator is Black and we’re being told he’s a devil worshipper and destroying our children and what-the-fuck-ever else, and like....

What is dat *aggressively scuttles* 

In CotBP, where the criticism that James is boring is most likely to come up, we can see in his introductory scene that James is head over heels for this woman by Regency standards. I mean, the unflappable, highest ranking Naval officer in Port Royal is reduced to a stammering, awkward mess around Elizabeth. If this were an Austen novel, y’all would be fucking swooning.

And what of the deleted scenes? (Don’t even get me started on this, I will rant for hours about how salty I am that they cut them.) We see James agonizing over the fact that he believes Elizabeth has only accepted his proposal as a means to an end. His stony veneer cracks, and we get to see him vulnerable!

‘Is it so wrong that I should want it given unconditionally?’ is such a fucking incredible line, and in a period drama, would be seen as a declaration!

But James isn’t in a period drama. He’s in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride. The film is an unapologetic mishmash of genres, and he has committed a cardinal sin by falling in love with Elizabeth, a modern character. She practically rolls her eyes at his heartfelt confessions! She wants nothing to do with his subtle emotional advances!

While, in a Austen novel, James Norrington would have been the clear hero and most obvious choice for Elizabeth to make, she is completely uninterested because he’s made the mistake of being period appropriate and not a product of the early 2000s like the rest of the main cast.

And the worst part is…once James changes so that he fits into their world…he is killed.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

COTBP is a film written by men that thinks it’s a story about a girl being forced to choose between reality and romantic fantasy, and it’s very clear that Elizabeth knows that Norrington is an appropriate match for her.  Even though she does, in the story, accept his proposal as a means to an end, her acceptance is still fully serious.  (And for all I might joke about her dumping him or whatever - the proposal doesn’t get a big, dramatic rejection.  He sees her standing beside Will and asks if this “where [her] heart truly lies”, and she confirms it.  The breakup is implicit, but he instigates it, seeing this is what she wants.)  Elizabeth’s heart might belong to another man, but there’s no sulking or anger or even too much reluctance when she accepts James; she might even know they could be happy together.

When Will reminds her that her fiancé will want to know she’s safe after the climactic battle, as much as it hurts her, Elizabeth leaves.

tl;dr Elizabeth isn’t so much of a Spunky Modern Heroine Rejects All Trappings Of Period Drama stereotype that she doesn’t compromise on what she wants as society, her family and her fiancé dictate.  She accepts James’ proposal and is prepared to marry him; she never tries to run off with Will; it is James who breaks their engagement for her happiness.  There is no indication that Elizabeth particularly dislikes him; he just isn’t Will.

Then I just really really love their relationship dynamic in DMC and AWE because it’s not founded on expectation or obligation anymore and it isn’t hindered by propriety.  As soon as those things go away, they actually relate to each other like two people who have known each other for ages.  Elizabeth isn’t an unfriendly sort of person, but she doesn’t just go around relating to the other characters she doesn’t know very well.  The bits of conversation she has with James Norrington in Dead Men’s Chest are more real conversation than she and Will ever have in the entire film trilogy.  Will and Elizabeth get these pining, lovelorn speeches and bits of drama, but James and Elizabeth just talk like old friends.  You already know about the deleted scene where they casually strike up conversation on Isla Cruces; I love the moment where he makes a comment suggesting his dark mental state, and she gives him a look I can only describe as Suddenly Interested.

And she holds his gaze for a couple of frames!

So, not like, romantic interested. But like. Realizing this guy she’s known since forever has depth, and she wants to see it.

They’re interrupted by Jack, who is in this film particularly (a lot more than I realized, actually, but on the writers’ commentary Ted and Terry cannot stop bringing it up) is hoping to get Elizabeth to himself, and clearly picks up on this moment as infringing on that hope.

Curse of the Black Pearl was consciously written to frame Elizabeth as the protagonist, and when she chooses Will at the end, it’s because he and he alone among her potential love interests embodies her romantic dream.  Torn between the reality of Norrington, a man she’s always known might propose to her, a lawful man, a good and honest man, but embodying the smothering sense of obligation that comes with her class and gender role - and the reality of Jack Sparrow, a pirate she’s read about with eagerness who shows her that pirates genuinely are pretty scummy people, dirty and disloyal to everyone - Will appears to offer her a third option: someone who breaks the law, but only for the right reasons; someone who defies social convention, but only to better society. 

Except Ted and Terry are men and what seems obvious to me is that the third option Elizabeth really needs is to graduate from the damsel role life appears to have slotted her into and become the romantic hero she dreams of.  Sure, I buy that she loves Will, with a sort of infatuated and light-hearted love that could develop into something more but could just as easily not - but most importantly, what Will represents to her is a projection of the life she wants for herself.

And acquires, in the next two films.

Elizabeth’s narrative arc, if it weren’t tucked underneath or behind everybody else’s, is the most well-developed narrative arc in the trilogy, well beyond the first installment which is the only one that they actually wrote to particularly revolve around her.  Jane Austen heroine?  Maybe.  Probably not.  But the protagonist we deserved, most definitely.

And as much as I do like Will as a character - I actually think his storyline would have gotten the resolution and impact it deserved if he hadn’t been treated as the protagonist, as much as I think hers would have been, but this post isn’t an excuse for me to air my grievances lol - the character whose storyline most follows hers is Norrington.  

Her arc is about finding her place in the world, rejecting the specific oppressive reality she believes is inevitable as a well-bred 18th century female and embracing the heroine swashbuckler she’s wanted to be all her life but projected onto male love interests.  And this arc is a microcosm of the larger plot in a way no one else’s is - Beckett’s threat to end the age of piracy and keep the entire ocean under his thumb threatens her specific character growth and reflects the world she’s trying to escape in a way that is not half so resonant for anybody else.

Will’s story is, excepting turns of the plot in which he’s trying to save Elizabeth, entirely about his relationship with his father, and how that affects his identity.  It has nothing to do with society beyond the tensions in the first film where he wants to be respectable but has learned his father really was a pirate all along - after that film, there is no thematic or actual connection to society in Will’s plot, which is why it gets so exclusively connected to the supernatural storyline.  But Norrington’s arc is also about his place in the world.  After the first film, in which he and Jack and Will  operate as foils to one another, each of them demonstrating one of the paths Elizabeth may follow as she grows increasingly experienced and consequently disillusioned, Norrington has his fall from grace and subsequent identity crisis.  His maintaining the wig and coat while a drunken, miserable wreck on Tortuga, and his willingness to throw everything away to regain his former standing, implies that the role of Naval Officer was the whole extent of his identity.   So, yes, the man lacks a viable personality in COTBP - it works out to seem intentional by the sequel, because it becomes clear the role he was inhabiting was the only person he knew how to be, and without it he discovered how little of a person he was.  This is a grim inversion of Elizabeth’s storyline.  Elizabeth becomes more and more her true self, including symbolically casting off and manipulating her wedding gown, while Norrington symbolically clings to the relics of his former life and wallows in existential despair.

By the time of AWE, Norrington has discovered that his is not, in fact, nothing, without his social role - as evidenced by his willingness to betray all that he must stand for when that role has been resumed, to “choose a side”, and to choose Elizabeth’s.  But yes… then he dies.