#automatuck9

Please know that no one hates me more than me over this. So, I mean, I think you have basically won the "Doc liveblog lottery" that most people I think hope to win when they have me do something. i have lost my mind. I have gone ass over teakettle. FMA is both good enough to care, but sucks enough for me to want to mess with it, and has compelling characters who are sketched out just enough to have spaces I want to move into with them to play with. I have McLost it.

Old me would be so shocked, embarrassed, and humiliated by the fact that this show I hated on principle is now one of my all time favorites and more insultingly there is a MAN in the DOLLHOUSE. I don't know man, adults compel me, and the situation as they've constructed it manages to give me space for empathy without excusing it all. It's so complicated when it comes down to it, and also whatever weird thing Hawkeye and Roy have going on is just apparently CATNIP to me. They're so deeply damaged. If they kiss I'll riot.

Oh my god, I don’t think I can do this because 

The feelings are running so high about the goddamn Odyssey right now, I would be calling down the curse of the gods on my head. I’m not interested in :faithfulness” and even if I was, I’m not arguing with people who think Epic is the “faithful” representation. 

Apparently other people are reevaluating this movie and come around to claiming it is good, actually? Lol. Lmao even. Say you love garbage trash that sucks like a real adult. 

You have both an INCREDIBLE memory and THIS IS YOUR THING, so I’m gonna say something off hand and you’ll be like, “Actually that was only in Virgil and even critics of the time took it to be massively out of character, it slips mostly in as a misremembered line from this translator..” and then I’ll have to be like “Well. I guess I have nothing.” ahahah

90% of what I have to say about Troy is that it got me to read the Illiad as an eighteen year old out on my own, despite my to that point total lack of interest in Classics outside of what I knew I would have to endure to get my Lit degree someday. I saw the movie and was like, “This kind of fucks, actually” in a way that I can only assume is what is happening with sales of “The Odyssey” right now. It was an open door that led me to reading stuff I thought was completely separate from my understanding of how to be a person and was the beginning of my passionate ideas about the way that we are all very similar and the choices we make are impossibly shaped by our time and place, and life is fucking complicated. I can mostly thank Troy in the way you thank the base coat of your nail polish. 

Also Eric Bana’s big, sad brown eyes.

Truly, I am going to miss Greed deeply. He was so much fun and he broke out of the usual mold for Critters, I ADORED that he was actively opposed to the rest of them, it added so much spice to a pretty silly "Sin-named naughties" situation. And I loved his guys! And how he actually cared about his guys, despite all his "being Greed" ness. Something something 'A broken dish is just broken, but put enough together and you get a mosaic'.'

But yes, his death episode is a fantastic one. Actually, I'm going to say that both times this show killed a character I really liked (RIP Hughes) they had a really excellent send off episode, and more than that, their final episodes say so much about them as people. Greed was done in by his own spite, dying in the only way he could think of that would inconvenience as many people as possible. Hughes made mistakes borne of trust and love, a man who is not stupid but can be extremely naive. Both of their episodes, while not taking anything away from them and I would actually argue their last episodes are some of their best, display how a fatal flaw can be a lot of things, and it falls not only to the good or evil. Time and chance happen to us all, etc.

And both of their deaths act as major turning points for the characters they affect the most! Roy stops just hanging out in his office drinking coffee and sitting in the rut of his life because then he doesn't have to deal with anything, remembering, "Oh shit to become Fuhrer I probably should like, display leadership lol" Ed now knows that he is not above killing. If he ever imagined himself a child, well, not today. This was his fucking Bar Mitzvah, Greed gives the worst gifts. He now has to carry the knowledge that not only CAN he kill, but he is only one who knows how to kill these things.

Guys I do not really remember watching this and I am so glad for that fact ahahah. I assume I was embarrassing and I'm too much of a coward to look so I don't even know if the video we have has sound. Or like, video. i have to go back into to find another way of posting it but I managed to have it all done without looking last time ahahahah.

Uh, I did re-find-out that Sloth is the name of Dead!mom! Which I had forgotten or lost track of somewhere. I remember Elicia's part was much more upsetting in English, that was firm, clear, "I don't like this thing" and I remember dragging Jetty into the camera because I refused to go through all this alone.

Haruka is obviously a Jock Girlie and she will watch almost any sport. She's the kind of person sports cars were made for, she can think of nothing more enjoyable than sitting down and having a cold, weak beer and watching Sport. I think she follows racing--F1 and rally, probably--but I also think she likes baseball despite not being great at it, and keeps some tabs on what is going on in the soccer world. But she'll watch almost anything on TV and will see absolutely anything live. Let's go to the curling competition!

Lena is a massive soccer fan, particularly of her team, the Hammers. She goes to games all the time and is particularly annoying about it, Winston cheered her up about the fact that she was going to spend the rest of her life having to wear her accelerator by making the light blue so that she could at least be on theme when she went to games. She's also the biggest Three Lions believer whenever the world cup is on despite the fact that there is no reason to be that hopeful ahaha.

Hawkeye, at least in Coffee, I think would be a basic bitch football-and-hockey watching lesbian, but I don't know that I thinks he'd follow it closely or anything, it's more sheer enjoyment of watching physical activity and also when she tries to socialize it's easier if everyone is looking at something else instead of staring at her expectantly. She's happy to sit on the couch and watch a game at home but then she has to deal with Roy's fucking commentary.

Fareeha would say she does not care about sports, and that any benefit to be had in sporting activities is in the actual playing of them. It's about physical activity, and discipline, and training. There's no benefit to being a spectator. She comes closest to finding religion every world cup when all she's asking for is for Egypt to beat England ahaha.

Minako cares about sports a lot when it comes time to fuck someone who is currently into a sport. Or playing a sport. She loves to be an 'athletic supporter'.

Michiru is more than willing to humor Haruka in all of her enjoyment, but she has standards, and she is only willing to bend so much. She is happy to accompany Haruka to F1 races, but they are not going into the grandastands, they are going into the paddock club where she can have champagne and air conditioning (In MaS she plays this off as a loving wife concerned about the level of accessibility in the Grandstands) But for her own self, sports are not a thing that interest her. I think it's hot garbage in the anime that they put her as a competitive swimmer. Lol no.

It never snowed in Tokyo. Well, perhaps not never--a few days a year they got a light dusting that rapidly turned grey and muddy and hideous, all the city covered with evidence of its grime. It was, quite frankly, better without the reminder. 

Michiru was not given to any kind of magic, Christmas or otherwise, and though time and love had softened her, certain things still remained true. There was a part of her mildly relieved that her children were all out of the house this year, finally, on Christmas Eve. M.A. with her husband, Kimi off on a premed winter program to try and boost her already-brilliant chances of a well-regarded international medical school. 

To top off the sense of winter cheer, Mina had decided to take Rei to Bali for Christmas, whether or not she would enjoy relaxation, with the promise of shoving her cell phone in certain orifices if she didn’t stop working for a few days. Not in a sexy way, she had clarified. 

So it was the two them in a house that felt rambling in these quiet moments, with nothing in particular to do on a Christmas Eve. Michiru had long unburdened herself of the requirement to attend most family functions, and while Haruka had insisted upon calling the girls and making sure they were having a truly magical time (though what sort of magic could be had in a dorm in Cambridge, Michiru was unsure) she was now contentedly snuggled on the sofa, surfing through a bevy of movie options. 

It had been so long since Michiru had no demands in particular upon her. It was, in a way, it’s own sort of suffocating burden. All that freedom and nothing to do with it. Since she was a child, there had been expectations, and she had followed all of them. With her children, there had been reasons to participate in all the things she never cared for, finding joy in the joy they felt. Now, she was free to do as she wished, on Christmas. 

She was not entirely sure what that could be. 

“Babe!” Haruka called to her from the living room, “Would you bring me that box of cookies on the counter?” She affected a sweet whine. “I’m already on the couch.” 

Michiru smiled, but picked up the pink box of cookies, overfrosted and smelling of a newly-stocked bath and body works. She considered a moment, and then grabbed a bottle of wine from holder, nimbly balancing the box on her other arm. Haruka was vassilating between two options, both of which looked to be some horrifyingly cheerful claymation affair. Michiru set the box down on her lap, and Haruka smiled warmly. 

“Thanks!” She opened the cookie box and looked at it seriously. 

“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” 

Haruka looked up, eyes sparkling. “Of course not! I’ll scooch.” 

“Oh, don’t bother,” Michiru turned quickly, “I will manage quite easily. If you’ll allow me a moment.” 

She went upstairs, quickly pulling on a pair of silk pajamas. Maybe it was silly, the notion of watching some ridiculous movie and smelling Haruka’s terrible shortening based nightmares, but Michiru had no Christmas traditions that belonged to her, and so, there was no reason not to create her own. Mincing quickly down the stairs, she took two wine glasses out of the cabinet and headed back over to the couch. 

“May I suggest cremant as a pairing?” She snuggled in next to Haruka and handed her the bottle. 

“Oh, a very good year.” Haruka grinned as she deftly removed the cap, and poured her the bubbly. 

The wine was not vintaged, but Michiru did not see the need to bring it up. Haruka began to explain the intense complexities of the children’s cartoon on the television, and Michiru nuzzled into her. Years, they had been going forward, and the years had been happy, but here, in this moment, she wanted nothing more than to enjoy the slow passage of time, that paused breath everything seems to take the night before Christmas. 

It never snowed in Tokyo. It was never anything but a way of framing the dirt of a city. And yet, as the two of them snuggled in a quiet and empty house, big flakes began to fall. The city would be shut down for days.