all these people out here complaining about classic Disney princes being “flat” and “undeveloped” as if the utter refusal to let the male lead take over the narrative isn’t the single best thing Disney ever did. “The Prince doesn’t even have a name!” Bitch it’s Snow White’s story he doesn’t need a name he just needs to look pretty.
You’re right and you should say it.
I watched the Nostalgia Critic’s review of classic Cinderella vs the recent live action movie last night, and I was *flabbergasted* by his claim that the prince’s extra screen time fleshing out his personality & motivations in the new version made him the better version of the prince. It seems to me that all of that is extraneous! We don’t need that information! Why are we with the prince instead of with Cinderella or with someone who will give us more insight into Cinderella, eg her animal companions? (In due South fandom, there are discussions about Dief representing Fraser’s id, and I think similarly a Disney princess’s animal companions, and Cinderella’s in particular, can be viewed as representing aspects of her personality…but I digress.) The prince is *not* a major player in the narrative, he’s a reward. He doesn’t need a well rounded personality or character arc, he just needs to be handsome & nice. Even Sleeping Beauty uses Phillip’s relatively extended screen time as a way of telling us more about Aurora & moving forward her narrative.
I think dudes who have trouble identifying with a female character just can’t accept that they are not the intended audience for the princess genre.
all these people out here complaining about classic Disney princes being “flat” and “undeveloped” as if the utter refusal to let the male lead take over the narrative isn’t the single best thing Disney ever did. “The Prince doesn’t even have a name!” Bitch it’s Snow White’s story he doesn’t need a name he just needs to look pretty.
@cerulean-beekeeper ok but. More modern au where Elaine and RayV make Fraser a grindr account and that’s how he meets RayK. @jackymedan@wagnetic @ legit everyone else in this fandom pls fill in the details my shift is about to start.
RayK, drunk and freshly divorced, gets a Grindr to experience all the Queer Life he missed out on by getting married fresh out of highschool, because he is Over Stella and Embracing His Identity As A Bisexual Man and Thirty Six Isn’t Dead *sobs a bit into his whiskey*
He finds it… a bit of a disappointment.
*six different dick picks with just a ‘hey’ afterwards*
And when not disappointing, scarringnly bizarre
After about three months, the entire thing is a long learning experience in Men Are Scum (something he already knew because hello cop) but he keeps the app out of boredom, and it’s a welcome ego stroke when he’s especially depressed (Herself might not want me, but cchokemedady35 does! God he’s pathetic)
And then Ray finds… The Account.
oh my gosh….
keep going, please!
I know nothing about Grindr guys!
Buuut
***
It’s Ray Vecchio’s fault that Fraser has a phone in the first place.
“It’s 2018, Benny. The Pope has a Twitter now. You need a phone. You don’t want a gun? Fine. Stupid, but fine. But a phone is non-negotiable. If you’re my partner I need to be able to lay hands on you 24/7. I want know where you are at all times and the only way of doing that is a phone.”
They’re at the AT&T store.
“Well, if you insist Ray. These look acceptable and quite reasonably priced. And quite similar to my old one.”
“You’re looking at the flip-phones. The only people who use flip phones are drug dealers and hit men, Benny. No. Your old phone was an antique. It belonged in a museum. The purpose of today is to modernize you, Benny. No flip-phones. You my friend are getting a smartphone.”
“I don’t know about this, Ray. It seems… frivolous.”
“Are you the one paying for it? No, you are not. I am paying for this, therefore what you think does not matter here. And a smartphone is not frivolous, it’s a fundamental component of daily life.”
The clerk comes up to them with a customer-service smile that turns a bit more genuine when confronted with Ray’s Italian charm and Benny’s beautiful face.
“Hi, Leticia,” Ray says as Fraser hovers awkwardly in the background trying to erase his eyebrow with his knuckle. “I’m due for an upgrade, and I’d like to give my old phone to my friend here and add him to my family plan. Also, is there a way to activate that parental lo-jack? You know, that gps thing that’ll tell me where he is all the time? Also, is there a way to waterproof this? I mean, really waterproof. I’m talking a dive into Lake Michigan here, not I spilled some pop onto my screen.”
YAS QUEEN
There are a lot of things I love about this, but Fraser being on RayV’s family plan is actually taking the cake rn!
😀 😀 😀
I’m sure Fraser will come around to the idea when he realizes that he can now keep an entire library in his pocket.
There was a picture of a man in suspenders sitting in a diner booth. A dog sat on the floor next to him, evidently trying to get some of the man’s burger. They were arguing about it, and based on the way the man was pinching the bridge of his nose, the dog was winning.
The profile read:
“A handsome fellow looking for love.
That guy wearing pants is Benny. He’s an old romantic who likes hiking, dog sledding, and justice.”
I was going to write about RayK finding his profile, by then I got sidetracked on how he got signed up for it to begin with and well…
***
It was Elaine’s fault that Fraser had a Grindr.
“It’s a meeting people app.”
“An app,” Fraser said the word the same way her grandfather did, like he was speaking a foreign language. From behind them, Ray Vecchio snorted; he was 70% sure Fraser knew what apps were and was putting on an act. 60% certain. Okay, fine, it was a coin flip. For a guy who never bluffed, Benny had a damn good poker face.
“Yeah, Fraser, an app. You did ask how people got to know each other in the big bad city.” Elaine continued.
“I simply made a comment that, with the amount of, of electronically and internet enhanced disconnectedness of the average citizen, that a sense of community was a rare thing to find in modern American urban centers.”
“And all I’m saying is that there’s some value in being able to screen people online before meeting face-to-face. It’s safer, for one. And you can establish that you have things in common. less chance of going all out, shaving your legs, booking it across town to share shitty appetizers and then learning he votes republican or something.”
“It encourages vapidity. Take Tindr for example. Approving or rejecting a possible partner simple on looks, with less thought given to the matter than you would in ordering said appetizers.”
“Ah!” Vecchio broke in. “So you do know about hookup apps.”
Both Fraser and Elaine ignored him. “It’s not all like that. A lot of people meet their soul mates using these things. Or at least make some interesting friendships. I bet that if you tried a dating app for a month, you might change your mind.”
Fraser looked stricken.
Vecchio laughed. “Come on Benny, time to put your money where your mouth is.”
***
this is gorgeous and i needs moar, precious
I also have no idea how Grindr works, so. Keep that in mind.
**
So sometimes Ray trawled Grindr, especially late at night when he was feeling extra lonely and Turtle was just not as much company as she usually was. And okay, he’d gotten an additional four dick pics and at least three more skeevy messages ( “Hey pretty, can I choke you while you suck me off?” was the least disturbing of the lot this particular time he’d checked) but sometimes a guy wanted to feel wanted, even if it was by someone who was probably a borderline domestic assault case waiting to happen. It wasn’t like Ray bothered reaching out much anymore.
Ray just called it The Account, because he wasn’t sure it was real. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d reached out to a fake account, or to a guy who looked too good to be true, only to have something like “Would you be my naughty schoolboy” pop up after a simple “Hey.”
(Not, Ray would point out to anyone who asked, not that anyone was asking, a “Hey” preceeded by a dick pic. He wasn’t high-class enough for Stella, maybe, but he had some goddamn manners, and being married for well over a decade managed to cement the ones his mom had laboriously taught him. He might not be high-class, but he had some class, thank you.)
If The Account were even real, what were Ray’s chances? He had a decent enough picture on his profile, okay, but he wasn’t going to lie to himself that he was pretty enough for the handsome guy on The Account. And, maybe, some of it was trepidation; The Account was probably the most wholesome guy Ray had seen on Grindr thus far, and if he responded with anything like the usual responses Ray got, then Ray honestly just felt he might give up on the world entirely.
The Account haunted him, though. Mostly it was the way the guy looked with the dog, like they were having an argument and the dog was winning. There was a lot packed into that body language, on both sides, and that made Ray kinda melt a little. (He liked dogs. So what? Lots of people liked dogs.) And justice, hey, Ray was all about the justice. How many people on Grindr put down “justice” as an interest? (Okay, Ray, he told himself, walk that back. That way lies kinks you’re not sure you’re interested in.) And suspenders. But the pants looked like some sort of uniform–they had yellow piping up the sides. And that dog looked really damn expressive.
So maybe Ray had had just a liiiiittle too much to drink that night. Stella had come into work again for a case, and had shot him down again, and he didn’t blame her, because he was well aware that they were Over and Not Getting Back Together, Ray. But he still tried, like some sort of old training he couldn’t shake, and it still hurt when she shot him down. And she’d tried to be nice about it today, and sometimes that just made it worse.
But damn, Ray was really empathizing with that poor dog. The Account Guy seemed a lot like Stella–clean, classy, maybe a lawyer or something too, who knew. He seemed like the kind of person that would be really smart. Ray didn’t have any evidence for that–just a hunch. So he finished the last of his latest beer, flicked open the message box, and wrote “Aw, just give him the burger. He’s probably earned it.” and sent it before he shut his phone off and stumbled off to bed.
The Account Guy probably wouldn’t read it. Maybe he would, maybe he’d just show it to whoever he was dating and laugh about the lame ass who wanted to talk more about the dog than the pretty man in the Account. Who cared? Ray was going to go to bed. The worst thing he could wake up to was another pic of another dick.
***
PS if anyone wants to do a different take on Ray’s reaction to the Account, feel free! Do it! I just wanted to stretch my writing muscles on this.
I don’t know how grindr works either and I’m op so you’re doing fine. An excellent addition!
This is the kind of shit people did back in the Depression. When mortgage holds would try to sell a farm, everyone in the community showed up and strong armed any serious bidders away. They had the ‘penny auction’ tactic, where farmers would bid absurdly small amounts on farm equipment and land (while glaring intensely) until the auctioneer realized they needed to take what they were getting, or get their legs broken. This kind of stuff saved so many farms, they’d buy off 500+ dollar mortgages (which were huge amounts back then) for less than 100 dollars and give it back to the farm owners.
The lesson to take away is that only direct action and community organizing can help in such dire times.
Sarah aynn: “no one understands me I hate you Mom for making us move out here in the middle of no where there’s not even cute boys” *runs away and finds mysterious farm*
Old man wilkinson: “this right here lil lady is a hourisey if yer can tame t it’s yoires if not it’s goin back to the horse factory”
Sarsjh: *walks up to horse and starts to pet its nose* “see girl? You and me aren’t so different after all”
Old man wonka: “why I don’t believe it she done tamed ol’ misery I reckon she ought to sign her up for the horuse show and save the farm”
*cut scene of Sarah sneaking out the house to ride her horse everyday until her mom finds out*
Mom: “young lady you are GROUNDED!!!! You are not allowed to compete in the horse show”
Staryah: “no Mom please” *runs away and almost gets hit by car but then the horse pushes the car out the way"
Mom: “fucjkfidnb maybe that’s a good horse after all”
One of my favorite tropes is “Villain Decay”. It’s not a redemption or reformation – the character themself doesn’t necessarily change morally or behaviorally, but the as the stakes become higher and more serious antagonists are introduced, the original villain seems harmless and friendly in comparison.
So Mary Poppins Returns is gonna have extended sequences with 2D animation which makes me both incredibly giddy and incredibly mad at Hollywood for basically abandoning it
missionlameturtle 