I just remembered that up until 5th grade, all of the sports teams I was in weren't separated by gender. I played basketball and baseball with boys. And we did just fine.
It wasn't until 6th grade when they segregated it by gender. It didn't make sense to me. I was now in softball because of baseball, because "softball is for girls" and "baseball is for boys" (which confused me bc my dad was on an adult softball team).
Now, my brother's all-male team didn't win a single game. My all-girls team won every single one.
They presented the boys' team with this HUGE trophy, and if you wanted replicas of it, they were $30 each.
My team was presented with a very small trophy. Extras were $5.
That's when I decided gender-segregated sports were bullshit.
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Just to be clear, when I say steddie dads
I mean Eddie is the dad who is gentle and loving in his support for his girls, because he was raised by Wayne, and Wayne was all of those things to him. He’s the one who cuddles with them when they have nightmares, soothing them back to sleep and reassuring them it was just a dream. He’s the one putting notes in their lunch boxes and worrying if kids might be mean to them that day and feeling his heart drop into his stomach when they fall and scrape their knees.
Steve, on the other hand, had to fight for his life with a pack of feral teenagers in the midst of a horror movie, and he learned that kids are resilient and tough and all that shit, so, yeah, when his five-year-old who's like 90% of the way to being able to swim independently wants to be hurled headfirst into the pool, he's the one catapulting her into the deep end, and if his kid wants to be held upside down by the ankles and swung back and forth like a pendulum, he's her guy.
He’s the one saying, “if you ever see a kid sitting alone at lunch, you go sit with them. got it?”
He’s the one who found out that Moe had trash-talked a little too close to the sun during a basketball game and had the coach bench her for a month.
He’s the one calling the girls on their bullshit when it’s needed (and as they start to hit middle school, they need it all. the. time).
Granted, this DOES NOT HOLD when the girls are babies. Steve was terrified of his daughters when they were babies – he barely slept his first six years of parenthood because of how worried he was that something might happen while he’s asleep. Eddie was the one who's like "What is she gonna do? Cry forever? No. Eventually she'll start talking and can yell this shit at us instead."
And the thing is, he's totally right.
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Music I think Roy Kent likes and why
Madonna. In season 3, episode 3, Roy said, "[Pre-Madonna] means before Madonna, female vocalists didn't have to work that hard." This implies a great respect for Madonna and her craft. Also, it's an example of a very specific kind of queer guy misogyny that I find very humorous and implicative (of him being queer).
The Sex Pistols (and other punk rock). Two of their songs are in the Ted Lasso soundtrack. One of them specifically plays when Roy is about to do some pundit work for the first time. I think it's meant to be his hype up music. They're also, of course, anti-fascist and anti-monarchy, which I think Roy would vibe with. He's giving punk.
The music of the Muppets. Canonically (not that I necessarily consider this kind of thing canon, lol) a Muppets fan, I think he'd love the soundtracks to the movies, as well as the numbers they do on the original show.
Rap; Salt-n-Pepa, Queen Latifah, and Beyoncé. I just think he would like them. In season 1, episode 6, Keeley mentions that he has rapped, implying at least some interest in the genre.
Leonard Cohen. I think Roy's Jewish, and he's a broody, sensual bitch. It adds up perfectly. Sidenote: while "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones was a great choice for the song he runs home to football to, I think Cohen's "Ain't No Cure for Love" would've fucking slayyyed..."I loved you for a long, long time / I know this love is real / It don't matter how it all went wrong / That don't change the way I feel / And I can't believe that time is gonna heal / This wound that I'm speaking of" "I've got you like a habit / And I'll never get enough" "I don't need to be forgiven / For loving you so much"
Klezmer. Again, if Roy is Jewish, and we know he loves and misses his grandad...it's simple. He HAS a record player and a dope sound system, and on his shelves there ARE old klezmer records that he remembers dancing around to with his grandad in their old flat.
Amy Winehouse. Again, if Roy is Jewish, and we know he is broody and bitchy, it is a given. "Rehab" is his anthem when his knee gets bad and he is reluctant to treat it.
Disco; Donna Summer and Jessie Ware. It's just great workout music, and it slays, and if he's queer, well, yes, of course he likes disco.
Pop rock; Elton John and Queen. If he's queer...it's a given. I think he particularly likes "I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself" and "Rocket Man", as he is suicidal (I can't find the interview where Goldstein said this) (it's just Word of God anyway), and the most rocket man motherfucker ever.
The music of the people he loves; Led Zeppelin, Cream, Tina Turner, and Stevie Nicks. Phoebe, Keeley, and Jamie like these musicians. He's a caring uncle, boyfriend, and friend. He is listening and learning. Also, I think Phoebe would be into some weird stuff, like outsider music - maybe some Tiny Tim. I think Roy would also enjoy the music of other friends, from plenty of other genres.
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episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.
kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.
taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).
in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level).
kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.
taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him.
both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand.
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