ME, A NORMAL CONTRIBUTOR TO FANDOM: So let’s talk about the pedagogical implications Thanos’s snap would have on the Sesame Street curriculum within the greater MCU.
I don’t know how pedagogical it is, but I guess now I’m thinking about Bert sitting alone in a room, missing Ernie.
That is absolutely the emotional core of what a post-Snap episode of Sesame Street would be about (I feel like Bernice would be missing too, and Bert would try to play chess with Rubber Duckie?), but for the episode to function there needs to be something they’re teaching the audience besides ennui, and that is where I’m really stuck.
Because the emotional core wouldn’t stick if it’s not supported by the structure of the show! But it seems like the Snap destroys basically all structures in place. But that makes the structure of Sesame Street that much more necessary. And then I spiral like this for a while.
Disclaimer: I have not watched a full episode of Sesame Street in a long time
Big Bird has been waiting for the store to open for a very long time now. He’s a patient bird, and he knows about waiting his turn, but his watch has the big hand on the three and the little hand on the nine and he’s pretty sure that Alan usually open the store when the little hand is on the seven.
Finally, when the little hand goes all the way to the four, the door opens.
“Hi, Big Bird,” Chris says, his eyes red and puffy. “We aren’t going to open the store today.”
Big Bird doesn’t understand; Hooper’s store opens every day. “Why aren’t you opening the store, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I need beakpaste, I’m all out.”
Chris just looks sad. “Big Bird, did you hear about The Snap?”
“No,” Big Bird says, and the way Chris is talking is very scary. He feels like he might need to sit down. “I don’t even know how to snap!”
Chris steps out form behind the door and gestures for them to sit on the stoop. When they’re settled, Chris takes a deep breath before he speaks. “Well, a bad man named Thanos came to Earth. Do you know about Thanos?”
“Yes,” Big Bird nods He heard some of the grownups saying that name. “He fought with the Avengers.”
“That’s right,” Chris says. “And the Avengers lost their fight. Sometimes, even when grownups try really hard, they can’t do all the things they want to do, and sometimes that means that bad things happen.”
“Did a bad thing happen?”
“Yes,” Chris says, taking Big Bird’s wing in his hand. “Because of Thanos, a lot of people are missing. And Alan is one of them.”
Big Bird has to think about that for a moment. He went missing one time, when he was a blue bird in a circus, but his friends found him and brought him home. But something about Alan’s face tells Big Bird that this isn’t the kind of missing where your friends can find you.
“Is Alan dead, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I remember when Mr. Hooper died.”
“The honest answer is that we don’t know. He might be. Or he might just be missing.”
Big Bird tries to understand that. “Missing?”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “He might come back some day, and he might not. We just don’t know.”
Big Bird wants to cry. He loves Alan, and he doesn’t want any of his friends to be missing. “Is anyone else missing?”
“Yes,” Chris says. “Some of your friends may be, or their parents, or yours cousins and uncles and aunts. A lot of people are. And it’s very scary.”
“What can we do?”
Chris is crying a little, a few small tears pooling at the side of his eyes, and Big Bird wants to do something, wants to say something, but he kinda feels like crying too, and doesn’t know what will help. “I don’t know,” Chris says. “I think the only thing we can do is be here for each other, and love each other, and take care of each other. When things are scary, and when bad things happen, the most important thing to do is look around at the people who are still here, and try to do your best for them.”
Big Bird nods. “Hey Chris?”
“Yeah, Big Bird?”
“Do you want a hug?”
Chris nods. “I would very much like a hug, thank you.”
Big Bird does the only thing he knows how to do; he opens his wings and wraps them around Chris, doing his best to be there for the people who are still with him.
hey. what the actual fuck and how fucking dare you.
I feel like I shouldn’t tell people that the only reason Big Bird doesn’t ask “am I going to go missing, too?” was that I didn’t know how to answer it without scaring kids. “IDK, dude. Maybe?” didn’t seem like the right answer.
hi i’m kitty i don’t know anything about star wars whoops
“What am I looking at?”
Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. “My taxes.” He paused, then gestured to Han. “Our taxes,” he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.
Leia squinted at the datapad. “Tax fraud.”
“Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” she said. “He’s a smuggler.”
“Hey,” Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.
“Legally, he’s a long-haul transport navigator,” Lando said, and Leia snorted. “Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession.”
“Wait, credits?” Han asked.
“Because he’s my dependent,” Lando continued, ignoring him.
“The hell I am.”
“That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that’s able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have.”
“But his transport isn’t legal,” Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren’t already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando’s shelves.
“It’s art.”
“What?”
“As far as my taxes are concerned,” Lando said, “Han transports art. They can’t prove that it isn’t. And I’m always careful to get the valuation right.”
“How do you know what I transport?” Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.
“They call me,” Lando said.
“No,” Leia gasped, delighted.
“Yes,” Lando said, grinning again. “They know I’m his partner. They know I can’t be sure I’m getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he’s getting. So they call me.”
“What!” Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.
“They might have been able to catch him smuggling,” Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.
“They would never,” Han sneered.
“But they’re never going to get him on tax evasion. There’s no way he would have been paying taxes on his own.”
“It never even occurred to me that he would,” Leia said.
“I’m right here,” Han reminded them.
“So you can see why I can’t divorce him,” Lando said.
“I don’t follow,” Leia said.
“My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this,” he said, pointing to the datapad. “I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses.”
“Collapses how?” Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Cloud City goes bankrupt.”
Han choked.
“How many people have you married?” Leia demanded.
“Leia, you know that you’re my favorite wife-in-law,” Lando said, “but I don’t think I’m comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life.”
The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.
The party came through the great gates of Skyhold dirty and bedraggled, hard-pressed to put a cheery face on two weeks of mud, blood, and the aftermath of a civil war that sapped their strength for the greater struggle. All Samhal wanted was a hot bath and a warm meal, alone in his quarters. When the spark of magic flashed in the corner of his eye, his first instinct was to tense for battle.
But there were no signs of fighting around the foot of the west tower. Instead, there seemed to be…a dance? Laughter, embracing. Magic flashed again, and this time he identified it as a harmless shower of colored sparks. It looked like the entire mage tower had turned out for a party.
“What’s going on there?” Samhal asked as Josephine and Leliana hurried up.
Josephine beamed happily. “One of the mages has had a baby!”
“What, and they’re all the uncle?” Samhal scoffed, scratching irritably at a healing blister.
Leliana caught his eye as she took the horse’s bridle.
“One of the mages has had a baby,” she said. “And there is no one to take it away.”
it’s an ideal height distribution tbh because then whenever bruce, as an adult, is talking about how larger-than-life his father was everyone just feels bittersweet about it because the last time he saw his father he was a tiny boy and it just seems like, “oh, bruce’s memory of his father is always trapped in this time when his dad seemed like a giant”
but no, that has nothing to do with it, bruce is being completely factually correct and thomas wayne was enormous
“I assume your dad’s going to be the one that looks like you,” Clark said, adjusting his glasses as he scanned the crowd beneath the mezzanine.
“Just look for the biggest guy here,” Bruce said flatly.
Clark fought a smile.
“What.”
“Nothing! Nothing.”
Bruce waited.
“It’s just—you know.”
Bruce said nothing.
“You haven’t seen him since you were twelve.”
“Correct.”
“You maybe weren’t the tallest kid.”
Bruce said nothing.
“I’m just going to look for the guy who looks like you, rather than going by relative size.”
“And you must be the fellows who were chit-chatting with my wife!” came a voice, booming and boisterous as arms were thrown around each of their shoulders. Clark jumped; Bruce flinched.
Thomas Wayne was a good two inches taller than Clark, who was himself an inch taller than Bruce. Thomas had a glass of champagne in his right hand, which he had not spilled on Clark. There was a ping-pong ball floating in it. He had a half-empty bottle of wine in his left hand, which he had not spilled on Bruce. Between the fingers of his left hand dangled a bag of red plastic cups, unopened.
No one in the ballroom was using a red plastic cup.
Thomas’ coat and the top buttons of his shirt were undone; his bowtie had not been a bow in quite some time.
“Martha wouldn’t tell me what exactly it is you were up to,” he said cheerfully, “which I can only assume means I’d hate it!” He paused, squinting at Clark. “Oh, she must have loved you.” He gave Clark a proper once-over, down to his shoes and back up again. “Were you raised on a farm or what?”
“Why does everyone keep asking—”
“Anyway,” Thomas continued, somehow managing to pound them both on the back as he disengaged despite still having his hands full. “You two go on ahead and keep not telling me what you’re doing, if you need me I’m heading downstairs to set up a game of wine pong. It’s like beer pong, but if you’re doing it right it costs several thousand dollars! And it’s good for your heart! I’d know. I’m a doctor.”
He downed his glass of champagne and caught the ball in his teeth. He then somehow managed to arrange the items in his hands such that he could shoot them both fingerguns, clicking around the ball and waggling his eyebrows.
They watched as he slid sideways down the banister.
“I apologize for doubting your memory,” Clark said finally.
“Hm.”
“I feel like this explains a lot about your sense of humor.”
“I’m not convinced that it does.”
“… does he look how you remember?” Clark ventured.
“Usually I remember the way he looked one specific summer when I was a kid,” Bruce said thoughtfully.
Clark softened, almost reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. Then he narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Hm?”
“I know what you’re doing, and we’re not doing it.”
“You asked.”
“I recognize that look.”
“This is just what my face looks like.”
“You’re going to make me think we’re having a moment so I let my guard down for the punchline,” Clark said, “and you’re not going to say it like it’s a punchline, so when I laugh, I look like an asshole.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not allowed to laugh about this. You know I’m not.”
They were silent, the sounds of the party surrounding them from below.
“He had a horrible moustache,” Bruce said.
Clark pressed his knuckles to his mouth.
“I think my subconscious is trying to make death seem like a mercy.”
Clark made a muffled and hideous noise.
“Clark,” Diana scolded, and they turned to see her frowning as she approached. “This is a very difficult mission for Bruce, you mustn’t laugh.”
Clark threw up his hands in disgust.
“Or—wait.” Diana looked between them. “Was he doing it again?”
Clark nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.
“I think I remember this party,” Bruce said suddenly, looking out at the ballroom.
“What?” Clark and Diana asked simultaneously.
“It’s the one where that senator got thrown out of a window.” He pointed toward a commotion downstairs.
“What is your father doing?” Diana asked, leaning over a railing.
There was a crash of shattering glass, a series of screams, and scattered applause.
And he’ll insist he’ll be fine, “cause he’s a doctor” ?
Thomas raised an eyebrow with a level of disdain achievable only by those born to great wealth, and not at all befitting a man in the middle of using a meat cleaver to cut the nozzle off a garden hose. “Oh, I think I can handle it,” he scoffed. “I went to Yale.”
In the galaxy, humans are known as the best allies you can have… and the worst enemy you can imagine.
+++
The Human Galactic Empire has a certain reputation that we tend to forget about.
See, humans are NICE. they’re cheerful, and curious, and mostly people treat them like overeager kittens, sticking noses and paws into whatever catches their interest.
And sure, there’s always those stories that go around. How the ship’s human crawled through ventilation ducts, and everyone thought they would die but it turns out they breathe waste-gasses.
About that one time when a ship crashed with no expected survivors, and when the recovery team got there, the humans were growing crops and splashing in the groundwater.
They survive. Everyone knows that humans are hard to kill on purpose and harder to kill by accident. They can live through things that are the stuff of nightmares, and only come out stronger.
But they’re CUTE. Cuddly and soft skinned with almost no natural weaponry. They’re small- lighter than almost any other race, and deceptively easy to break, even if it probably won’t actually kill them.
So when the Thraxxis invaded and the entire Galactic Alliance ran, because we were outmanned and outgunned, no one thought of the humans.
Unfortunately for them, neither did the Thraxxis.
First the humans fortified. Their own worlds were inhospitable anyway- they simply retreated to the parts where nothing else could live.
Next, they focused all their considerable determination on their allies. One by one, the alliance’s populated worlds became bastions for the humans to fight from.
We watched in disbelief. The only thing to do when the Thraxxis came was to flee. They devoured worlds and their armada was unstoppable.
Unless, apparently, you were human.
The humans took casualties- of course they did. The Thraxxis were four meters tall, had bone spurs and claws, and were feared for their skill in combat. Somehow, that only spurred the humans on. Every massacre turned into a homing-beacon and was quickly- ruthlessly- avenged.
They seriously underestimated both the humans’ terrifying ingenuity, and their startling territorialism. See, the humans are friendly. They are social. They are delighted to make friends with anything that holds still long enough to cuddle on.
They are also merciless, hard to kill, and traveled in packs of the strong, the fast, and the clever.
The invasion stalled. The Thraxxis couldn’t breach any the protected worlds, and yet still more powerful than anything the Alliance could field.
A call went out across the galaxy and farther. We did not understood why the humans would cry for aid so loudly- surely simple communication was enough? What need was there for a scream that reached even distant stars?
When questioned, the Human Commander showed his teeth, and said only, cryptically, “E.T. Phone Home.”
For months, the fight went stagnant. Only small frays and none of them much gain or loss for either side.
That was when something else appeared.
At first, we thought it was more enemies. The newcomers were massive- as big as a moon and filled to bursting with small, aggressive ships that swarmed anything that got near.
“That’s no moon,” The Human Commander told the Alliance, still cryptic, but eyes lit with the sort of smile the humans only made at their most deadly. He refused to explain, but the other humans seemed to understand nonetheless.
The moon-ship drifted into our occupied space, and when it was haled, a human face responded. A human, who wore a formal uniform. Who even the Commander spoke to with deference. His leader, from a galaxy the Alliance never knew the humans ruled.
Empire, we all remembered with sudden fear. The humans called themselves an Empire, and somehow no one ever questioned why.
Four more moon-ships arrived over the course of a week. With them came massive battleships, each capable of holding a world by themselves.
Humans breed fast, and suddenly we had cause to wonder just how many humans there really were, scattered here and there.
Trillions, the humans admitted casually when someone finally worked up the courage to ask. Spread over thousands of worlds and star bases. All emptied to defend the farthest wing of their sprawling empire.
The next battle would be forever remembered. It was the only time all five moon-ships fought together.
The Thraxxis looked at what they faced. At the moon-ships with their hives of fighters. At the warships, each a match for their own. At the worlds they lost, one by one as the humans rose up and tore apart their invaders.
The Thraxxis, wisely, fled with what little remained of their shattered armada.
The Alliance trembled. For so long, we believed that the silly pink monkeys were nothing, simply curious and cheerful.
The humans tried to reassure us. We were independent, they promised. They believed in the Alliance, and in the people, and in peace.
But we never forgot the might of the Human Galactic Empire. Our allies.
i'll apple your turnover 