Greatest hits of FIFA cultural exchanges thus far:
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???
All the short videos with the eagle screech (which I think is actually a hawk but whatever)
Like yeah America's government is literally the Legion of Doom, but we generally aren't that bad. I'm glad the world is seeing the little things that there are to love in America.
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project hail mary and interstellar crossover fanfic hear me oUT.
(edit: btw i just saw that somebody thought of this before me so it’s technically not an original thought 💔)
reader is on a mission to save earth and she goes through the worm hole (interstellar) but it kinda takes her to another dimension instead.
anyway, she ends up alone cause it was a though mission and the crew died or whatever, doesn’t matter.
she doesn’t know where the worm hole took her until she finds another spaceship, ryland.
it’s a whole confusion when they meet cause they are both on missions to save earth for different reasons so, different earths??? it takes a while to understand and accept that reader traveled dimensions through the worm hole.
anyway, it could be after ryland met rocky or reader and ryland met rocky together.
since reader’s mission was also a one way trip and she’s not even in her dimension anymore, she decides to help them.
now focusing on ryland and reader, they were both on suicidal missions, both spent a long time alone and never expected to see another human again.
there’s a clear and inevitable need for connection, I just feel like as human beings we naturally yearn for that. so after they both had no hopes of ever seeing another human, finding each other was something BIG.
so that’s a lot of quiet yearning since they’re both kinda trying to hold back??? idk man, I’m just guessing that not having contact with humanity for so long makes you extremely socially awkward so they really don’t know how to act with one another.
and then there’s those domestic moments where they tell each other about their lives on earth and maybe try to compare both earths to find what’s different.
oh and they’re so touch starved and sensitive that every little thing like accidentally bumping into each other, touching each other’s fingers while passing around something, creates tension. #lovethat
ANYWAY!!!
a relationship development and almost death experience later…
maybe when they’re in erid, one day rocky says the scientists are doing research to try to get her back to her dimension, but that is such a non explored field that it would take time.
reader is 100% sure she doesn’t want to leave ryland anytime soon.
as a quantum physics enthusiast, thinking abt this gives me so much joy but I can’t write it cause writing is not my thing.
It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
Tim woke up with a jolt upon feeling something on his bed, it wasn’t long ago that he went to sleep after getting some good shots of Batman and Robin so his sleep was particularly light. He sat up just to see a startled glowing, white haired teenager about his age floating over his bed and the fluffy orange cat he was clearly putting besides him.
Tim blinked.
Danny blinked.
The cat yawned.
Danny then straightened up, leaving the cat in Tim’s bed, and “explained”.
“You have a cat now” he said doing jazz hands. Tim blinked owlish, what do you even say to that? “There’s cat food in the pantry and the litter box is in the room besides yours. There’s also a cat bed this fellow will never use at the foot of yours and a cardboard box in the corner.”
More blinking.
“Peace!” Danny made a peace sign and then slowly faded from visibility, like an unhinged hallucination brought forth from sleep deprivation and too much coffee. Tim swore to himself to limit how much he drinks, it’s clearly starting to affect him.
Tim looked at the cat. The cat looked back, then it went to him, laid on Tim’s side and got comfy, purring like a motor.
Tim shrugged and laid down, going to sleep cuddling his supposed new cat. Making sense of things is Future Tim’s problem and he doesn’t envy that guy.
I am trying to imagine future Tim explaining to the future bat family how he came into possession of his cat. That would be a wild conversation to me.
I could see Tim casually dropping it into a conversation. How he use to believe that the cat distribution system people used to talk about was a glowing white hair teenager delivering cats to people because that's how he got, "Marmalade." (What name do you think Tim picked?) The conversation halting and all the Bat Family just staring as Tim.
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Danny is a founding member of the Justice League, he 100% believes/knows Tim is right about Bruce still being alive. After everyone else is done telling Tim he's wrong Danny grabs him and the 2 of them go on a road trip through time to save Bruce.
Tim's hands were shaking. He just overheard Dick tell everyone that he was losing it, and no one defended him. No one doubted for even a second that Dick was wrong.
After everything they all dealt with daily, he had hoped that one, just one, would believe the near impossible idea that Bruce was alive and lost in the timeline. His team had accidentally killed Santa Claus and delivered his gifts for goodnes' sake!
But no. Nothing Tim did made them think he was right. Not even have the decency to look.
Well fine!
He didn't need the Justice League or anyone. He was going to save Bruce on his own! He required resources and connections, and only one person could provide them all. Ra's Al-
A loud crash from behind him has Tim leaping to his feet, bo staff in his hand, ready to fight away whoever Dick sent to take him to Arkham. When the cloud of dust clears, he is left standing in front of an RV, covered in armor and the hero Phantom at the wheel, wearing pineapple sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt covered with pink flamingos.
"Red Robin! I heard you're crazy now, and know where Batman is. I've been waiting for the moment one of your bats goes crazy, too! Welcome to the family. Now get in the car, loser, we're going rescuing!"
Tim considered his options and found only one reason less to support Phantom's superiority over Ra's in the matter of the teams. Bruce had him marked as the most dangerous member of the Justice League because he was the only hero for whom he could not think of a single contingency plan, since Phantom was so random that Bruce couldn't predict his actions.
Sighing deeply, Tim picks ups his bags. "Alright....let's do this."
"Jason turns out to be half-ghost, and that's used as an excuse for the Well's wrath."
"People mention Bruce's 'adoption problems'"
"They turn Jack and Maddie into horrible monsters (or kill them) so that Danny can keep the Batfamily"
"They turn Danny into the father of a rejuvenated Dani (and/or Dan) and make it seem like Danny was abused by Vlad (how disgusting)"
"They portray Vlad as a saint who cares about Danny, Dani and/or Dan, and they portray Jack and Maddie as monsters who only care about their work."
"Mom Jazz"
"They portray the Bat-family as a perfect family as if all the horrible things that were done (specifically by Bruce) never happened.".
"Danny, the Ghost King, the master of space and/or the most powerful ghost to date, is afraid of Batman, a mere human who doesn't even come close to him."
"Danny admires and/or is intimidated by the Justice League"
"The Justice League bribes Danny with the offer to let him see or be at the Watchtower so he can observe space."
"Bruce Wayne, portrayed as the perfect, understanding, and stable father, which he clearly is NOT and never will be."
I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.
My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813
*electric guitar riff*
And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like
My friend. My colleague. My brother my captain my king. I too have been pondering this question, and in my mind there can be only one ultimate outcome.
Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.
Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.
Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.
Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.
American Girl stories have always featured the very harsh realities of America through the years. But they’re always presented honestly, yet in ways that kids can understand. They just go to show that you don’t have to live in a perfect time to be a real American girl.
Dont you fucking dare disrespect the American Girls in my house. ESPECIALLY Addy!! That was my first REAL contact with the horrors of slavery, as I read about her father being whipped and sold and her mother escaping with her to freedom, but also how freedom was still a struggle.
Don’t forget Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who had to deal with balancing her own culture and learning the english language and customs of her classmates, or Kaya (full name Kaya'aton'my, or She Who Arranges Rocks) , the brave but careless girl from the Nez Perce tribe, or Josefina, the Mexican girl learning to be a healer.
And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.
These books, these characters, are fantastic pictures into life for girls in America throughout the years, they pull no punches with the horrors that these girls had to face in their different time periods, and in many cases I learned more history from these series than social studies at school. And that’s without even mentioning the “girl of the year” series where characters are created in the modern world to help girls deal with issues like friend problems, moving, or bullying. We do NOT disrespect American Girl in this house.
American Girl is probably going to be the only exposure young girls are going to get to history from a female perspective. This is actually kind of important considering that in history classes we dont really get that exposure. We dont hear about what women felt and endured during these time periods cause schools are too busy teaching us about what happened from the male perspective, which is not unimportant, but we need both. Girls need both.
These books were such a crucial part of my childhood and shaped my love of history, which still ensures today. These books can be a young girl’s first lessons in diversity and cultural awareness (hopefully burying that insensitive “we’re all Americans” tripe) and looking at history from more perspectives than just that taught in school. They also are an example of how women have ALWAYS been part of history, which some people would rather us not believe.
I think Kit and Kaya were the newest American Girls when I started “aging out” of the books, but hearing about some of these kinda makes me want to revisit them!
OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.
I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:
And they departed from the norm in Kaya’s doll to fit her culture! The other dolls all show their teeth, and Kaya does not because that is considered rude in the Nez Perce culture!
It is absolutely true that these books covered the stuff in history that was absent from our history books. I still distinctly remember reading about Addy being forced to eat bugs she missed on tobacco plants, and that started me out from a different perspective and made it easier for me to know to reject the sanitized version of the slave trade we’re taught in school. And these books are targeted at ages 8+, which is a pretty critical time for developing your own thinking and morals.
when i was in 3rd grade i was reading the Meet Addy book at school & a couple boys made fun of me for reading a “doll book” - my teacher overheard & started reading Meet Addy to the class after every recess. everyone became extremely invested & by the end of the year we had read the entire collection of Addy books & did a presentation on the civil war at the end of the year that we all presented to the class one by one.
i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.
i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.
we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.
i’ve since gotten rid of majority of my childhood toys, but i still have every single one of my dolls & all the books that i plan on gifting to my future children.
I’m white and my first real introduction to slavery and the underground railroad was Addy. She was a young girl like me I could connect to and care about her story. American Girl does a great job of making history relevant to kids.
Also American Girl sells all sorts of books unrelated to the dolls. The Care and Keeping of You books were super important as I started puberty and were the most comprehensive, non judgemental account of what was going to happen.
They also have “the smart girls guide” series which covers topics like crushes, worry, middle school, drama and gossip, sports, friendship, the digital world, communication, money, confidence, etc.
I want to say I think there was an American Girl Doll magazine series that came out, but don’t quote me on that. there were lots of helpful girl guides that used the American girls as examples for doing good or learning lessons or trying to understand why girls did what they did
I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.
I remember being very invested in Molly, Addy, and Kaya. Mostly cuz I look like Molly, and the other two had a lot of information on two of my favorite time periods. But I owe a lot of my personality to these lovvely girls
yo don’t forget my girl Caroline. Her father was captured by the British during the war of 1812 and she basically learned how to sail and rescued him herself.
I can confirm that they really do their research - during the creation of Caroline the company called a museum I was associated with and quizzed them extensively about what sort of food kids would have eaten at the turn of the 19th century.
When i was like ten I wrote a letter to the American Girl magazine saying that the girls in their magazine were all really skinny and it made me, a chonk, really sad because it was showing that I couldn’t wear any of the outfits they suggested, and I got a personal letter back from the editor apologizing for making me feel that way and saying they would work on that. Dunno if they actually did, i can’t remember, but they did promptly personally respond to a letter about something that was not exactly on the radar for girl’s media in fucking 2002. So there’s that.
I’m happy to report that the messages from American Girl have only gotten better in recent years.
These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:
They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.
Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.
Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.
The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.
Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.
I’m not claiming American Girl as a company is perfect, but I am saying they’re important. Girl perspectives, girl stories, and girl communities are IMPORTANT. If there are kids in your life who would benefit from these stories, or if you’d like to read them yourself, you can find any American Girl book for pretty much dirt cheap on eBay, and libraries usually stock tons of them!
The fact that the Superman bots claim to not have feelings despite clearly having feelings feels a lot darker when you take into account the message left by Jor-El and Lara.
Gary bemoaning over having failed his mission sounds a lot more panicked when you take the message into account.
I wonder if Gary only felt truly comfortable/safe with Clark after he switched which parents he'd watch while healing.
Do you also think the robots purposely didn't try to retrieve the other part of the message that was missing? I mean a human meta human that hacked into the computer was able to retrieve it and them piece it back together. I don't know why the Kyptonian robots weren't advance enough to do that.
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Jason Todd (having died, come back, and acquired the All Blades, but not yet having returned to Gotham) meets the Rainbow Mafia of KHR. It starts with Skull. Little dude complaining aloud to himself about the Stupid Curse and Stupid being shrunk while he's working on his motorcycle - which is too big for him now. As is the rest of his gear.
Jason (who can see the Acorboleno Curse because All Blades) offers to help get gear that fits Skull, and help him build a motorbike to fit his new stature while still having all the power of the full-sized bike. They bond. Jason learns more about the whole Flames dealio, figures out how to activate and use his own - the act of which slowly burns off the corruption of the Pit and incidentally improves his ability to use the All Blades.
Then he meets Xanxus, who has just learned about not actually being Timoteo Vongola's son, but the Cradle Affair hasn't happened yet, and they bond over shitty father figures and boss-ass grandparents (Daniella and Alfred respectively).
What flame type do you think jason would have if/when he unlocks it in this AU? I can see it going many directions!
Lmao Jason gonna be rocking back into gotham with his soul fire bonded Mafia Assassin bestie and said besties squads of soul powered mafia Assassins :D and also The cursed Stuntman :>
D
Bruce and Tim arnt sure how to take this, but Alfred is meeting his old colleague's grandson for the first time and its going swimmingly.
Okay so this is crazy but. Just go with it. Because it's fun.
Jason's a Sky. But he's not a Sky because he's got Sky Flames. He's a Sky because he's got all the other Flames in about equal portions, and once he's got the Pit purged they're all in Harmony within him, so he can combine them into Sky Flames.
The KHR Mafia are used to Flame users having one main Flame type, sometimes with a Secondary and rarely a Tertiary. But Jason's got all of them. None of them are particularly strong (at least to begin with, but he can work on that), but what he lacks in Flame strength he makes up for in Flame diversity and bodily strength (because he can bench Skull's old, full-sized bike), and also All Blades, which continue to freak out every Mafioso who has cause to encounter them.
So Jason can be Guardian and have Guardians. And Jason is super community minded, but specifically for Crime Alley (his Territory, in Cloud terms), so that's where he's collecting the rest of his own Guardians from (because Skull is absolutely his Cloud Guardian, they bonded over motorcycles and crazy stunts ... and asshole men in black suits who think they know everything).
Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler, becomes his Sun pretty much by accident and it's a snap bonding the first time they meet. They were both tracking some child traffickers, from different angles, but they found them at the same time and worked together to a) take down the traffickers and b) help the kids after, and they just clicked. Even if Jason objects to Steph being a kid doing the vigilante thing (because kid plus vigilante can equal dead and he does not approve of that). But she explains to him how she got into it and he's like "Okay. But I'm giving you backup and training. Because you are still a kid and this is dangerous shit. Also, I'mma help you with your homework, because your education shouldn't suffer because of this shit."
I dont know what your talking about this is a sick concrpt!!! Would Jason form a bond with Xanxus? Or are they just friends?
Do you have other gaurdian/bond candidates for Jason? With Skull and Steph that leaves a bunch of potential slots open. I can see Babs as a Storm and Dick as a Rain!
I think you've got Dick and Babs backwards there. He's the Storm, and she's the Rain. But actually I think Jason is more likely to Bond with Roy than Dick. (Outlaws, yay!)
I'd say he would also Bond with Kori, but she's an alien princess and, though we know from Kawahira that Flames weren't a human thing at first... I'm gonna say they are an Earth thing, so Kori absolutely would be Jason's Lightning except that because she's a Tamaran she doesn't have Flames at all. Which is probably for the best, given all her other super powers. Same with Bizarro - the one who was a member of the Outlaws - who is a Supes clone and as a Kryptonian rather than an Earthling doesn't have Flames.
So Roy is Jason's Rain, and Artemis (she's an Amazon, but she's also of Earth, so she gets Flames) is his Storm.
Then after Xanxus kills Joker (part of him courting Jason to be his Cloud) Harley becomes Jason's Mist. And if Harl is going Active, then so are Pam and Selina. Pam, aka Poison Ivy, is a Sun/Cloud, which makes her plants even more dangerous because Activation and Propagation. Selina, aka Catwoman, is a Rain, and 100% the Adult that Jason turns to when he needs An Adult. But they're not Bonded. Pam because Jason's already got both a Sun and a Cloud, and Selina because she's too close to Bruce for Jason to Bond with her. But they're all close and adjacent because Harley is one of Jason's Bonded now, as his Mist.
That just leaves an open spot for a Lightning, which I figure is going to be someone from Crime Alley. Maybe a member of the Goonion, maybe one of the tougher Working Girls, maybe one of the old Mamas who feed everyone and tell Jason he's too skinny (completely ignoring that his shoulders are 3ft wide, he's over 6ft tall, and he's built like a brick wall), maybe it's one of the kids who is just like Jason himself used to be. Maybe Jason stumbles across Verde and pulls in another Arco, much to Skull's initial pouting.
Oh! No! I know! Waylon! Jason's Lightning is Waylon Jones, aka Killer Croc.
I think Skull's backstory is that he grew up in a circus before he became a famous stunt driver and then an Arcobaleno. Would be interesting if Skull was somehow related to Dick or knew Dick's family while he was in the circus.
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Reincarnation is a documented phenomenon, if an uncommon one. It’s been recognized and recorded for years, with around 0.03% of the population being reincarnated. Out of that percentage, only 0.05 were important in history. Most reincarnate’s memories are triggered by reading history books of important events during their first lifetime or from seeing items from their past in museums.
Jason had always had a way with words. Even as a kid, he’d been smart and trying to get his hands on every book he could. He was smart, something that most forgot. His life was fast paced, and there were very few times life seemed slow enough for him to ponder the odd feelings.
(He didn’t think about how his mind had broken whispered not again please when he found his mother’s dead body. He didn’t focus on the familiarity of the words “I’m not your son” when he yelled them at Bruce. He tried not to focus on his own fascination with guns, how he always seemed to fiddle with the trigger of a weapon that had taken so much yet done so much good.)
Danny always remembered his/her old life. It helped him/her sometimes (s/he remembered his/her experiences with whispers about him/her in the past) and was a hindrance at other times.(How was he supposed to explain his/her unending hatred for Monroe without revealing who s/he was?) Still, despite the hardships, s/he clung to the memories and refused to forget.
(Sometimes s/he selfishly looked for his/her sisters in others. S/he relished the moments s/he could see Angelica in Jazz and how Dani reminded him/her of how much of a spitfire Peggy had been.)
(No one could ever be like Alexander. No matter what s/he tried, none compared to their Alexander.)
Danny found him at a ball (oh the memories that flooded back.) S/he couldn’t help himself in grabbing Jazz’s arm and whispering “that boy’s mine.”
S/he wasn’t about to lose his/her Alexander after all these years, but s/he wanted to make sure he remembered.
What if Fire Lord Zuko got reincarnated into Westeros? As a Targaryen? As Daemon's little brother? The one that their mother died birthing, and who himself died a year later - according to the wikia. What if that particular Aegon Targaren (and they really do overuse that name in their family, they really really do) lived and was Zuko.
And now he's been reborn into a family with questionable marriage practices, he's got a familiar flame-shaped birthmark over one eye, a big egg covered in scales just got settled into his crib with him, and everyone is calling him Aegon.
Once he's up on his feet he's practicing his firebending forms and his dual dao forms, he's got a little dragon to visit every day as they both grow, and as soon as they're big enough to go on unsupervised flights Zuko is going to start re-incorporating actual fire into his firebending, which up until that point had just been forms and no flames.
Not where anyone could see, anyway. He still does candle meditation every dawn in his bedroom where no one will see.
Zuko (Aegon) is born in 84 AC, he is 3 years younger than Daemon (born 81 AC).
7 years younger than Viserys (born 77 AC).
13 years younger than Rhaenys (born 74 AC).
4 years older than Alicent
8 years older than Leana (born 92 AC)
13 years older than Rhaenyra (born 97 AC).
6 yr old when Rhaenys marries Corlys
8 yr old when Aegon dies (92 AC)
17 yr old when Bealon dies and the King calls the great council
Thoughts of possible events...
Being a dragon rider is not a new concept for Zuko. In Legend of Korra he rides and flies around on a dragon, Druk. It would be fun if Druk is the dragon that hatched for him. He followed Zuko into his next life.
He is not a fan on the incest he also doesn't quite get why this practice is followed. It was known that interbreeding would cause bending strength to weaken. In the Avatar world the Fire lords and other fire bending nobility could marry outside their class if it was to a strong bending family. Zuko's own mother was not noble she was actually according to the wiki a former actress who lived in a village. But because she was a granddaughter of Ruko, an Avatar, she was considered to be of a strong fire bending family.
I don't see Zuko having a close relationship with his brothers. Its not like he didn't try but Viserys is probably disinterested in him due to age and then has some resentment later on like he does with Deamon, with Zuko probably out performing him in martial activities and then also being smarter. Deamon I could see having resentment towards Zuko for being the cause of his mother dying, for having a dragon before him, and for keeping up with him in is martial training.
Zuko had tried to form a relationship with Viserys but got disgusted by him for marry Amma when she was 11 and just waiting 2 year before bedding her. I think after that he was indifferent at best with him.
It would be great if Zuko had a great relationship with Rhaenys and Corlys
After Aemon died and Rhaenys is put aside for Bealon, she and her family leave court. The queen in some sort of recompense, sends Zuko to Corlys to be fostered. He is 8-9 when this happens and that is not too young for that to happen
Rhaenys teaches him dragon flying and Corlys teaches him how to sail. Which Zuko is love it reminds him of his memories when he was sailing around the Avatar world.
Zuko actually goes on several voyages with Corlys, he especially like the country of Yi TI, it had elements that reminded him of his life as zuko
Zuko would for sure support Rhaenys becoming Queen. His daughter Izumi inherited the his Fire Lord title after him. I see him supporting Rhaenys during the great council. Which is probably another reason he doesn't get along well with his brothers.
I don't know who to pair him with because he would definitely not like Rhaenyra in that way. She is his niece and he is to old for her. He would probably be disgusted with Daemon once Zuko find out he is interested. Leana would again probably be seen a too young and maybe he feels familial with her having grown up around him. I don't thing Alicent is a good chose either, she doesn't seem like she would challenge him and she is always doing what her father wants.
If anything I would probably pair him with an OC or very background character from Dorne. Dorne where female can inherit, also female martial training is not looked down on. He could be what brings Dorne into an alliance for Westrios when they are fighting in the step stones
