Knowledge Comes with a Price - Pay it Forward

After succumbing to a fever of some sort in 1705, Irish woman Margorie McCall was hastily buried to prevent the spread of whatever had done her in. Margorie was buried with a valuable ring, which her husband had been unable to remove due to swelling. This made her an even better target for body snatchers, who could cash in on both the corpse and the ring.

The evening after Margorie was buried, before the soil had even settled, the grave-robbers showed up and started digging. Unable to pry the ring off the finger, they decided to cut the finger off. As soon as blood was drawn, Margorie awoke from her coma, sat straight up and screamed.

The fate of the grave-robbers remains unknown. One story says the men dropped dead on the spot, while another claims they fled and never returned to their chosen profession.

Margorie climbed out of the hole and made her way back to her home.

Her husband John, a doctor, was at home with the children when he heard a knock at the door. He told the children, “If your mother were still alive, I’d swear that was her knock.”

When he opened the door to find his wife standing there, dressed in her burial clothes, blood dripping from her finger but very much alive, he dropped dead to the floor. He was buried in the plot Margorie had vacated.

— Emma Thompson in the commentary for Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Doesn’t straightwash queer characters! this was a big one. (marvel movies have a huge problem with straightwashing*)

Deadpool is canonically pansexual, and the movies reflect this! Reynolds doesn’t shy away at all from Deadpool’s sexual interest in men.   

(head injuries bring out deadpool’s romantic sexy feelings it seems. in the first movie, knife to the head = romantic montage with vanessa. in the sequel, fencepost to the head = deadpool sensually trying to go down on Colossus.) 

(semi-related, both movies have some cute references to deadpool enjoying being on the receiving end in the bedroom.)

(yeah, it’s canon, Deadpool enjoys being pegged)

Oh hey, a healthy romantic relationship based on mutual respect and love! and with a fully developed female character with personal agency! A love interest who doesn’t just function as a plot device. 

POLAR OPPOSITE OF TOXIC MASCULINITY. This really shines through in their marketing

(yes that pillows says “FEMINIST”) 

(yes that is deadpool in heels dancing to celine dion)

Diverse casting! Characters who are poc just because poc exist! 

Hey look, a cute lesbian couple treated with respect and one of them’s asian!

 Holy crap i don’t say this enough but i love Domino. What a badass. Sexy-but-not-sexualized black female action hero who is probably the coolest person in the movie. 

Deadpool 2 took a run-of-the-mill white character design and made her interesting! 

Her trademark eye patch is now vitiligo! She has awesome natural hair. And look, body hair exists! On a person who is a woman! Which shouldn’t be unusual, but here we are. Also, she’s fun

Portrayed by the talented Zazie Beetz. Did I mention how much i love this character?

Oh look, another much improved character design!

We’ve got your humdrum blondie cleft-chin stereotype replaced with a heavyset maori teen actor (Julian Dennison, who incidentally was in Taika Waititi’s indie movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople).

Overall themes: The movies have a lot of dirty humor and innuendo. But the overall takeaway is actually pretty sentimental. The Deadpool 2 themes in particular gets to me: 

Not repeating the mistakes of the previous generation. “Kids give us a chance of being better than we used to be.” 

The loss and recovery of family. Accepting friendship in the midst of tragedy. See also: Cable’s story arc. 

Letting go of loss and bitterness to try to save a child who’s been abandoned by the world. 

I’m honestly so excited about the choices the director & producers have been making for this franchise. They’re setting the narrative standard for modern superhero films. Can’t wait to see what the next movie has in store. 

*see more on straightwashing in the mcu below

Also, the married women are not paid (and therefore can’t qualify for assistance if they should ever divorce, etc). And worth “of course” less than a man.

“ In the Army’s case, the agreement for compensation is that the officer allowance be paid jointly to the husband—the check is written in his name. Officially, the wife is a “worker without expectation of remuneration,” and her husband receives 40 percent more of an allowance as a married man than he would as a single man. “

When you go to a haunted house, it may seem like you’re being funny by trying to scare the actors or jump out at them when you go through a second time, but guess what? ITS NOT FUNNY.

You pay us to scare you. It is your choice to go, so don’t fucking go through if you’re going to ignore the rules and get too close to the actors as a ‘joke’.

These bruises happened because over the course of 4 hours, several people ignored the instructions that CLEARLY stated that they were to wait in the front room until told otherwise. Rather than listen, they ran into the next room and slammed into me- effectively throwing me into the wall. This didn’t only happen once. It happened ten times at LEAST.

Then we had this asshole who thought that once I ‘died’ for the haunt, he could pretend to kick me to see if I’d moved. I, being used to people abusing me- jumped back and slammed my head into the concrete wall.

YOU ARE NOT FUNNY BY BEING RUDE AT A HAUNTED HOUSE. WE ARE PAID ACTORS THAT YOU CHOOSE TO COME AND SEE PERFORM. YOU PAY US TO SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU, SO DONT HIT US WHEN WE DO

I work at a Haunted House every October, and have been for the past few years. Our house in particular is staffed by Volunteer workers who are either earning credits for Graduation, or people who know the Family that owns the haunted attraction. In our City, we’re one of two Haunted Houses, so while we open in late September, we tend to get incredibly busy during the month of October and often work from 6pm until 2, 3am on weekends. 

We do not get paid to help out. Due to our location, we get a lot of drunk guys coming through, and a lot of ‘funny’ teenagers. In my several years working there, I’ve seen Actors get grabbed and thrown, stomped on, kicked, bitten, everything. A lot of the Actors at this attraction are young teenagers, Middle and Secondary School students, so this kind of abuse is terrifying and potentially emotionally scarring.

There’s a position half-way through the house we call ‘Psych Ward’, and it’s essentially a jump scare. The scare is a corner-room, boxed in with walls and broken windows, that the Actor pops out of and shouts and taunts the people going through. October, 2012, a couple were going through the Psych Ward corner and the scare went off as per usual. The girlfriend of this couple got very startled but laughed it off and continued on. The boyfriend, however, back-tracked and went up to the broken window and punched the Actor in the face for scaring his girlfriend. The Actor, who I’m going to call Tracy, had a black eye for a good two weeks solid and the couple had to be escorted out of the house and were banned from the property. Ever since we’ve ruled that Veteran Actors (someone who’s been there for 3+ years) are the only ones allowed in this particular Scaring Spot.

He paid to get scared and then got violent when we delivered.

There are so many stories I can tell of ignorant customers banging back on scares and injuring the Actors inside, grabbing props from the actors and hurting them with it, destroying props because they thought it would be ‘funny’. 

I just want to raise awareness that the ACTORS ARE STILL PEOPLE. We’re instructed to get the best kind of scare out of you, sometimes with no pay at all (like this particular attraction), so please respect our work.

I work at a haunted hayride and a guy tried to dropkick me in the chest and knee me in the face because he thought it was funny.

I got in trouble for breaking character to tell him to fucking stop.

Ive been hit so many times this season it has left cuts and bruises. Back in 2015 I was fucking choked and dragged behind a wagon because a lady was drunk and her son had to pry her hands off me because IM NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH YOU OR FIGHT BACK.

Most recently, a customer groped my breasts and twisted my fucking nipples. Apparently, she did it to AT LEAST twenty other actors.

THAT IS SEXUAL ASSAULT YOU ASSHOLES. ITS NOT OKAY.

Most recently a customer fucking kicked me and sent me to the goddamned hospital.

WHEN YOU GO TO A HAUNTED HAYRIDE / HAUNTED HOUSE, REMEMBER YOU LITERALLY PAID US TO SCARE YOU.

THE ACTORS ARE REAL PEOPLE.

If your family or friend(s) force you into a haunting, be upfront as best you can and tell actors as they come up “please do not scare me i am too anxious / scared” and 9.99/10 times we will listen and leave you alone. just communicate with us even though we most often cannot communicate back.

We may be playing monsters, but we are NOT monsters.

Also, please remember to keep your hands off of us during your haunting, and also please try to step in or speak up if you see people trying to touch us, assault us, or talking about planning to touch or hurt a staff member.

We cannot do anything and will most likely get in legal trouble for touching you in defense.

I mean they should know you’re…justacting.

You paid for a ticket which means you consented to be scared!

Fifty years ago this month, hundreds of feminist activists, most of them from the political-resistance group New York Radical Women, arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to protest the Miss America pageant. Marching along the boardwalk, the activists expressed their dissatisfaction with the pageant’s objectification and sexualization of its contestants—and, by extension, of women more generally.