This bugged me the first time I saw this, but now it REALLY bugs me.
Women knitters outnumber men knitters like 99 to 1. (OK, maybe an exaggeration, but at least 40 or 50 to 1.) There are TONS of geeky women knitters out there. Why did Marvel hire a dude to knit for them over all the incredible women out there? Even for an activity that’s stereotypically feminine, they hire a man.
And then I actually went and read it, and I saw this:
“I’m a big ‘Project Runway’ fan, so for me it’s about that
unconventional challenge,” Bennett says. “You know, give me some plastic
bags and let me knit something out of it.”
Dammit, dude, THAT’S ALREADY AN ENTIRE FUCKING THING. It’s called PLARN (plastic yarn). People cut up plastic grocery bags and turn them into yarn and knit or crochet stuff with it. Reusable grocery bags (which is awesomely meta), bedrolls and sleeping mats, all-weather things, hats, purses, shoes, pretty clothes, Christmas tree angels, Easter baskets… This is not radical. There are hundreds of hours of YouTube videos on this shit. Here, have a Pinterest board.
STOP PRETENDING TO BE A GODDAMN MAVERICK OUTSIDE-THE-BOX THINKER FOR DOING SHIT TONS OF OTHER PEOPLE ALREADY DO.
And Marvel, goddamn it, go find a TRULY radical knitter to do awesome superhero shit. Shit. You don’t even know what truly awesome knitting looks like.
Oh, goddammit. Now I’ve looked at the sweaters. They will fit precisely one (1) shape of man (but at least comes in five sizes), and will look horrible on anyone who is NOT ALREADY shaped like a carrot/Dorito/triangle-food-of-choice. They’re not particularly interesting, although they do use very nice yarn and patterns that actually require significant skill (stranded colorwork, cable knits, designing the patterns to begin with). And they start at $1,095.00. And go up to $1,495.00.
Let’s say that again. They start at Eleven. Hundred. Dollars. For something that, yes, takes skill to make, and yes, the creator should be compensated appropriately for the time and skill that went into it. But how many women do you think could get away with charging that much for something many grannies can make? (Not because what grannies do is automatically easy! Because we devalue what they do.)
This is SO MUCH white male fucking privilege.
I am SO FUCKING PISSED.
Also, those sweaters are….
Dull.
The Okoye Hoodie and the Heimdall Hoodie are functionally the same sweater. Pattern Panel / cable / pattern panel. Not even particularly interesting cables or pattern panels. They’re made piece-wise, so the maker doesn’t have to do math for doing things in the round for increases (and creating seams).
And, bluntly, i’m pretty sure ALL of these are ripped off from Ravelry and not his own designs, and I cannot WAIT for the shit-show to start on that one.
The ONLY thing this endeavor got right was the price of the finished pieces.
Because now, see, we FEMALE fiber-crafters have a benchmark to set our prices by.
You want me to make you an XXL sweater, not in the round, with a crew neck and maybe an Aran fisherman’s pattern? 100% wool?
That’s $500 down, $500 at the half-way point, and $500 on completion.
And you even get to pick your OWN color, not that choice of dull grey, blue, orange, or burgundy.
A big part of why I don’t knit ‘for profit’ is because there is no way in hell I would be able to get someone to pay the actual worth. I have a hard enough time getting that with my stitch markers and jewellery, and I feel that I am fairly generous in making them reasonably priced. Maybe if I grew a dick, neh? :p
Imagine you’re a pro hero who hates the media, you hate it so much and you avoid it whenever you can. Because of this no one knows who you are, and you like it that way, cause if people haven’t heard of you, villains will be caught by surprise when fighting you. You try very hard to make sure your image and information on you doesn’t get out.
But there’s this one blog.
This one blog from some hero fanatic, that has profiles on ALL the heroes, including you. How?? You avoid attention like the plague. They must have scraped together every moment you were fleetingly caught on camera, every one-word interview you got cornered into. The ravings of villains as they were taken away. This, one, GODDAMN blog has pulled it all together to put it on the internet and jabbered all about your quirk and your capture techniques and fighting style.
And you hate it. You stalk the profile and you can tell it’s obviously just some rabid hero fan who doesn’t mean any harm, the stuff on All Might is about 20x longer than anything they have on you. But it still pisses you off that this person could collect so much information on you and fling it up for everyone to see. And you almost want to track this person down to make them cut it out but you know it’s not worth it.
Then, cut to the beginning of the school year, and you’ve got your new students. You’re ready to put them in their place, lay down the rules, so you use your quirk on this one shy kid you know isn’t going to last the year.
And this kid takes one look at the goggles around your neck and is like “Those goggles, you’re Eraserhead!!”
And you realize.
THIS
GODDAMN
KID-
Midoriya at the USJ: Wait Aizawa-sensei! You’re specialty is sneak
attacks against single enemies! You’re at a disadvantage here-
Aizawa: Hey kid could you perhaps SHUT THE FUCK UP??
Clark doesn’t dress as Superman for the Daily Planet’s annual Halloween party just for the sake of irony.
He also does it because he knows that Bruce will find out, because Bruce always finds out, and he thinks it’ll be hilarious.
Well, that plus Bruce is always getting on his case about the fact that he doesn’t even bother to wear a mask as Superman. Clark has tried to explain it, how posture and body language can change people’s perceptions, how he keeps his Midwestern drawl as Clark, but drops it for Superman, how he wears intentionally ill-fitting clothing as Clark to hide his body shape…
Bruce believes him, but only begrudgingly. After watching the fifth talk show where Bruce has to comment about how “Do the butts match?” Clark has to wonder if Bruce isn’t also maybe a little bit jealous. It’s a good thing that Clark isn’t the petty sort, (Except maybe he kind of is, just a little bit.)
He almost buys the “Stripper Superman” Halloween outfit because it makes him crack up; only the fact that it’s a work party dissuades him. Instead he goes for the one that has fake muscles in it. They’re so awful, and so anatomically incorrect that he has to go for it. The fabric is shiny, and the “S” stretches funnily across his chest when he tries it on; the fabric is, after all, also cheap. The cape only goes down to his waist, and he has to buy the tights separately. It doesn’t comes with shoes, only boot covers, and he immediately decides he’s going to wear crocs.
Because he’s Superman.
He can do what he wants.
Bruce finds out about his plans (…because of course he does), and tries to talk him out of it. Clark listens politely, then mentions politely that he’s been watching episodes of drag race to get tips on how to make a fake derriere for his costume. After all, he’s got to make sure that the butts match.
Bruce leaves him alone after that (except to mutter darkly that Clark’s secret identity is going to be blown, and is Clark really-?)
When he gets dressed for the party, Clark makes sure not just to slick back his hair, but to make it obvious it’s slicked back. He parts it to the “wrong” side, like he was looking in the mirror when he did his hair, and forgot everything was backwards. He puts on the ridiculous, ill-fitting costume, the crocs, the boot covers, and adjusts all the foam “muscles” so that he “looks like Superman.”
He wears his glasses, because everyone knows Clark Kent can’t see without his glasses. He makes sure to slouch at the party, to keep to the mannerisms that scream to the world “I Am Clark Kent And Definitely Not Superman Nope.” And if his drawl is a little stronger that night then normal? It’s probably the available drinks.
Funnily enough, he’s not actually the only person to dress up as Superman; Superman is a popular figure at the Daily Planet, and there are enough costumed fans to have a “Superman look-alike” competition.
When Bruce finds out that Clark came in last place… Well, it’s hard not to act smug.
So in lore, vampires have this trait that I’ve almost never seen used, and that’s the fact that vampires are OBSESSED with counting things. Like, the Count on Sesame Street was almost certainly created specifically as a vampire because of this piece of lore.
Like, I read this vampire book years and years ago that explained that a surefire way to protect yourself from vampires getting into your house was to spread a ton of seeds on your doorstep–poppy and mustard seeds were particularly recommended for the purpose. Basically, if you suspected someone to be a vampire, all you had to do was drop a sackful of seeds on the ground in front of them.
If they didn’t immediately start counting them, they were not a vampire. However, if they WERE a vampire, they’d be seized with the urge to count all the seeds and they would not budge from that spot until they knew how many seeds there were in total. The point was to keep them there until the sun came up and killed them, because if they hadn’t counted all the seeds by sunrise they wouldn’t be able to leave. Presumably you could just go about the rest of your evening as normal, though no word on whether it’s possible to make them lose count and start over.
Having remembered this piece of lore, I want fewer stories about brooding tortured Edward Cullen-esque vampires. I want to start seeing more stories about math nerd vampires.
Vampire accountants who are an honest company’s best asset and a corrupt company’s bane because they are frighteningly accurate with the accounts and will not hesitate to blow the whistle on a CEO scamming money because fuck you for making the numbers wrong.
Vampire cashiers that don’t need to look at the register screen because they already mentally calculated your total. 10-items-or-less vampires who know goddamn well you have 20 items in that basket and NO, you cannot just slip in with the rest.
Vampire math tutors who are constantly in high demand and have to hold lotteries to see who gets to be tutored by them.
MATH NERD VAMPIRES
If anyone would like the term for this, it’s arithmomania.
“But sir, he’s a vampire!!!”
“Vampire or not, he’s the best damn accountant we have here, and i’d let him drink my blood before i fire him!”
“still less of a leech than Matt in legal. Fuck matt”
Okay but also, vampires as drug dealers- a profession that requires extremely quick, extremely accurate counting. “You’re 5 dollars short.” “There’s 50,000 dollars in there at least, how the fuck did you count that fast-” “Pay up or I will drink you like a slurpee.”
24 hours after I brought her home, I got a mindblowing job offer. Since I adopted her nine years ago, my life has become an amusement park. She has brought me good luck ever since I took her into my home.
I’m telling you, there’s something about this animal. Good fortune follows her everywhere.
I don’t want to be selfish. I have everything I need and then some. So, I’m sharing her with you.
Reblog Brigitte and you’ll receive fantastic news in the next 24 hours.
And when you do, please remember to help your local SPCA and support them in the difficult work they do for wonder animals like Brigitte. Any donation helps your SPCA, even if it’s just five bucks.
Kitties like Brigitte are counting on you to give back when they bring you good luck.
theclumsiestninja 