oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too.
one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.
“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.” (mikko harvey)
i’ve been thinking about hobie spiderverse since i came out of the movie theater, about how on a superficial level he acts like every other stereotypically alt character, stealing and instigating and bantering and being chaotic and rebellious and looking Cool™ but on a second look it’s so so clear that every single thing he does is motivated by kindness and compassion towards his friends in general and miles in particular, and that’s so viscerally truly punk of him
the already famous palm suggestion that makes miles break out of miguel’s containment thing. miles initially reads this as condescending but hobie’s genuinely trying to help
already he’s looking out for miles by trying to keep him away from hq, a place where he knows miles isn’t welcome and might be in danger
now, they get to hq and he immediately starts lifting stuff to homebrew a watch for miles, a guy he’s known for five minutes (bc you can’t convince me he didn’t already have a bunch prepped for gwen and the other spider-people he trusts). he even lampshades it with the line above.
he’s questioned miles’ motives to join the spider society and he knows they’re the same as his own: it’s literally just to get a watch, to have a means to travel dimentions, to see his friends, to build community. he’s already made the decision to grant that ability to miles without subjugating him to the oppressive restrictions and requirements of the spider society. at this point we know he’s strongly ideologically opposed to the society and he later in this scene admits he’s only there to look out for gwen, just like miles
this one makes me insane. it’s a “are you safe at home in your dimension? do you have one? do you need a place to stay?” bc we know he’s given one to gwen, who’s not safe and does not have nice parents and has been crashing in hobie’s dimension for the previous months
and then he tries again to warn miles off the spider society
and when push comes to shove and all the other spider-people are set on stopping miles from going home and changing his timeline he’s the only one in miles’ corner
btw notice how the palms thing is the first and last thing he says to miles in this film?
anyway. he was in this movie for like 15 minutes tops, showed up exclusively to hype up his friends and protect them by whatever means necessary, adoption papers and illegal interdimensional tech included, and he looked that cool the whole time while doing it. most character ever.
I also want to note that the exact moment that Hobie went from “Oh sure I’ll help this guy” to “This is someone that I will finally blow this place up for” is when Miles saves the police commissioner and disrupts a canon event. Miles doesn’t know what will happen, but he DOES know that someone he trusts (Gwen) tried to stop him from saving someone, and rather than listening, his immediate reaction was “No, someone needs saving, I’m going to save them, I don’t care what it costs me.”
After that, Hobie goes from just friendly banter and helpfulness to being on Miles like glue and hyping him up at every possible moment.
He saw Miles in action for a whole five minutes, and immediately goes “This is what it’s about. THIS kid understands what it means to be a hero fighting an oppressive system. He IS willing to make sacrifices, but refuses to sit back and be told he HAS to make sacrifices. THIS is what Spider-man should be.”
Hobie has a line about the Quantum Mold, saying “It’s a metaphor for capitalism” that is clearly meant to be a joke. But, as you pointed out, all his stuff that is ‘meant to be a joke’ is still actually genuinely sincere. And he is RIGHT, actually. It kinda IS a metaphor for capitalism. The Spider Society has basically gone “These are people that have to die for the greater good. In order to keep the system working. If we don’t stand back and just let them die, the whole system falls apart.” and when that happens, it takes the form of the Quantum Mold. That uh…. that very much IS (or at least can be read quite easily as) a metaphor for Capitalism.
I have no doubt that Hobie is sitting there thinking “If we can contain this stuff, why are we still just letting people die?”, and he sees in Miles someone asking the same question, and willing to fuck around and find out because saving the life of even a single person is far more important than maintaining a system that allows them to die.
As a fine dining cook, I found work in a union workplace around a year ago.
My 40 hours a week are guaranteed except for Jan/feb/mar when there’s not enough customers, I get paid almost twice what I did at any other restaurant, if I work overtime, (more than 8 hours in one day, or more than 40 in a week), I actually get overtime pay, (and it’s 1.5x my normal rate!).
I get holiday pay, and in addition I get to either bank or pay out my holidays if I work those days, (either a paid day off when I want it, in addition to the holiday pay, or I get paid an add’l 8 hours at 1.5x that week). I also get two floating holidays, 4 paid random sick days, 2 paid family sick days, and 4 paid “doctor’s note” sick days, (paid out by our health insurance), as well as general allowance to take as many unpaid sick days as I want without worrying for my job security. (I’ve been told that taking multiple months off is where we start to be concerned about abuse, so if I want to do that, I can go through our leave of absence procedures instead, where I’m allowed three 2-week periods a year generally for whatever reason I want, (If my manager wants to disagree, he has to get the union president’s approval), and after that it’s up to my manager to decide if he’ll accept them).
I get two weeks of paid vacation time a year, and an add’l week per year for every 5 years I work there.
We get our legally mandated breaks, which, I know that sounds like a low bar, but taking anything other than a smoke break in a kitchen?!?! Unheard of! I get two 15′s and a lunch every shift! I get to sitdown and rest my legs and not get flak for it!
I get a bonus at the end of the year, there’s official procedures for if my manager isn’t happy with me or wants to get rid of me, (three meetings, during which my union representative has to be present), (and getting rid of my classification doesn’t work, there’s rules for how someone ‘bumps’ other people if classifications are gotten rid of), and severance pay for when full-time employees that are downsized out of the company, there’s a pension plan, like … Guys, I have a 40-page handbook which details all of the rights my union has won me, and believe me, I’ve never had any of these at any prior workplace.
And you know what my union dues are? $4 a paycheck.
Of course I’m going to pay my union dues for all of those benefits.
Reblogging for this incredibly thorough explanation of what it’s like to actually have a contract in place at a union workplace. I reblog a fair number of posts about how people should organize, but if you’re like me, you might not know exactly what that can get you until you’ve actually gone through the process. Every contract is different because you bargain for what makes sense for your particular workplace, and every few years you re-negotiate with the employer to improve things in the next contract, but some things (like the right to have union representation when you talk to your boss about leave or discipline) are universal.
A monster is used to people running, screaming, frozen in fear begging etc. But someone sighing cracking their neck, rolling up their sleeves, and walking towards them is new.
A monster is used to people running, screaming, frozen in fear, begging etc. But someone sighing, cracking their neck, ‘welp’ *unzips*, and walking towards them is new.
me: *walking toward the monster, shedding clothes as i go* ‘welp, someone’s got to do it!’
the crowd behind me: ‘no, nope, no, you literally don’t, no one has to, you need to run.’
me: ‘someone’s got to!’ *gets to the monster, bats my eyelashes, twirls my hair* hiiiiiiiiii
you need to be earnest. you need to tell people that you love them. you need to speak on how you’re feeling honestly. you need to be sentimental. you need to stop letting the fear of other people laughing at you have so much control over how you express yourself. you need to get over yourself. you need to be embarrassing but true.
Has anyone made any “Support the WGA”/“Support The Strike”/“Support SAG-AFTRA” banners or post dividers yet? If so please @ me!
The WGA has a social media toolkit here with icons and infographics. The SAG-AFTRA website doesn’t seem to have a similar page yet but might add one soon!
