Don't Worry About it Bro~

but what would be even funnier is if the Doctor was actively aware of him doing this and just….letting him have his fun instead of complaining about secrecy like normal 

2014: you are absolutely not allowed to take pictures of me on the moon and post them to tumblr, it’s dangerous! 

2019: “THE DOCTOR DOES OUR MAKEUP WHILE BLINDFOLDED AND FLYING THROUGH THE TIME VORTEX CHALLENGE!!!!”

guys. 

he’s not a slum lord or a bloodthirsty debtor or a slave laborer.

he allows you to purchase a house with no money, lets you work off the basic payments with a half-hour of quick chores, and then leaves you to take as much time as you need to get the rest of the payments to him whenever you can with no deadline, interest, or repercussions for putting it off.

he’s basically just a cool friend who lets you borrow money and says “yeah no worries pay it back when you can” except he also gives you a house.

We said hello to each other as I scanned his items (diet coke and a nature valley granola bar- $2.69), me sounding more interested than usual just because he sounded so out-of breath and very engaged in his purchase. Also maybe because I could not see his shoes.

“How’s your life going?” He suddenly asked, swiping his card, not casually but almost pleadingly curious.

“Uhm, all right I s’pose” I said, too startled to think of a more cheery lie. 

He nodded somberly. “Me too… I guess.” He paused and looked at me for a minute and then just said “it’s a Monday, ya know.”

“Mondays are like this sometimes” I supplied, feeling like we were having a really weird conversation hidden under the one that was actually taking place.

Honestly I had no idea that I would ever have the privilege of writing a sequel to this post. I considered it an odd moment, an interaction that changed me in a way, but a fleeting one. I automatically assumed our paths would never cross again, there was such a finality to that window of time on Monday August 22nd of 2016. And yet.

He returned.

I didn’t truly notice him come in, glancing up from whatever menial and already forgotten task I was busy with, but not registering who it was or why he seemed to put out an aura of familiarity. It had been weeks and I haven’t even caught a glimpse of him; the memory of Monday August 22nd of 2016 had faded like a dream. But lo he appeared before me, dressed in exactly the same fashion that made him look like he had just crawled out of carwash (albeit with a pink shirt and purple tie this go-around.)

His face lit up when he saw me, again holding a diet coke and a nature valley granola bar. ‘How is your day going?’ He asked earnestly.

‘Pretty well.’ I said, professionally containing myself, “how are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good” he said, sounding more cheerful than before but just as harried. When I handed him back his change and items and he looked like he was going to cry. 

“Thank you” he whispered with a look of reverence I have only seen on the faces of ancient church members receiving the eucharist.

“It’s no trouble,” I promised, trying not to look perplexed.

He bowed (LITERALLY BOWED) and then made a hurried exit stage left, reminiscent of Lear just before the second act, halfway into madness.

Okay I’m not even bothering with the pretentious Hemingway style for this one; I’m still reeling over the fact that he came back after four months AND on a Friday instead of a Monday no less.

Notes:

He was wearing literally the exact same shirt and tie he had on from part one, only with an orange sweater and fancy jacket over the ensemble to indicate that it was winter

He bought Lay’s sour cream and onion potato chips this time instead of his standard granola bar, but the diet coke was as usual

He told me that he always felt guilty for buying snack food but ‘you have to do what you have to do’

He then smiled sadly at me and said ‘enjoy your weekend… If you can.’

I sat in stunned, unblinking silence for about six minutes until a customer came up and looked me over worriedly

Who is this man

First thing’s first,

Probably about two years of wear on them but otherwise well cared for. Socks were white, which I was only able to notice because this human being has zero clothes that fit and his pant cuffs were hovering about 3 inches away from his shoes. I keep thinking his outfits can’t possibly get any better, but this one takes the cake:

Crumpled white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, gigantic scarf that looked as though it were made out of mouldy carpet, neon orange striped tie, and a matching neon orange plastic digital watch that probably came out of a box of honeycombs back in 1988.

He did not grace me with his odd conversational charm today, but I received something better. A clue. 

Today he was buying a red notebook and three ballpoint pens instead of snacks (which was questionable but this is a Thursday we’re talking about; the day that falls on the chaotic spectrum and which I am known for my overzealous distrust of), and when he pulled out his luxury black Mastercard to pay for his items he said eight words which shook me to my very core.

“I do get a staff discount on these.”

This has never come up before because discount plans don’t apply to food items. I have no need to ask the identity of a man buying a granola bar and a diet coke. But now.

I didn’t speak as I handed him his receipt, just nodded courteously. Only staff members know about the specific discount so I had no real need to ask for an ID for proof, and I was cursing my mistake in not asking for it anyway. 

Not an ending of any sort, but a very brief update from the field. My work schedule has changed since January and I was honestly beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t see the man again until the fall, as it’s been more than two months now. He startled me quite a bit when he literally blew in as if by a gust of wind right as my shift was ending. 

He was in quite a hurry and only bought a diet coke ($1.50) before blustering(?) off, giving me no chance to run an investigation or perception check, but if fashion checks were a thing…

Please imagine, if you will, a man wearing a yellow polka-dot tie that was not even tied, an orange scarf, the watch mentioned in my previous entry, khakis, a bright periwinkle shirt… and an impeccably matching woolen periwinkle cape. He was also carrying a very large black satchel with tartan lining, every single pocket of which was unzipped.

He looked like a hedge wizard.

I found him.

Masters in theology from Harvard 

Distinguished professor of philosophy

God-tier identification photo; I cannot believe that I have not been hallucinating this man for the past 12 months and 41 days.

Americans:

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.

Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf  when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage. 

The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have. 

The title screen, which is around a minute long, is constantly flashing

The end scene, which is around 10 minutes, is also filled with flashing, almost without a pause

There are several instances of flashing during the movie as well, either because of the animation style or because the of the plot (sometimes both)

But just like in incredibles 2, the plot relies heavily on flashing and there’s a LOT more than in incredibles

PLEASE be careful because there is a LOT of flashing lights in this movie (and no warning)

Aasimar: So, what’s your name? Elf: *introduces self in druidic. rolls again. introduces self in elvish. rolls again. then elvish, then druidic, then elvish, then elvish, then druidic, then curses in druidic, then introduces self in elvish, then curses in elvish, curses in druidic, this goes on for a good couple of minutes before he finally rolls a language that my character speaks, it’s celestial* My name is Riley! Aasimar: …I’m not even going to question again how you learned celestial, I’m just glad I understood you. *turns to the hermit’s high elf friend* Is he ok???