listen: fight club and pulp fiction are good movies, i love them both personally, but if a guy (and you KNOW the type of guy i mean) says they are his Favorite Movies then u need to run. RUN. plan ur exist exit strategy now. if ur texting him then just make something up. “haha i gotta go now. it was nice talking to you. bye!” if you’re somewhere with him just leave. do parkour if you have to. run like the wind. get away from that man
Even David Fincher, who directed Fight Club, agrees with this:
“My daughter had a friend named Max. She told me ‘Fight Club’ is his favorite movie,” he said. “I told her never to talk to Max again.” (link)
i’ve never seen pulp fiction but some people are asking ‘why’ about the Fight Club thing so here goes, from experience:
fight club, as a cult movie, has a trail of heterosexual dudebros following it because they think it’s superior to essentially take cult movies with nonconventional themes as their own and twist the messages in them to fit their particular ideals and nobody can really stop them (if you read the fight club novel, where the narrator repeatedly professes his actual, romantic feelings about the other main character who is also a dude and meets the dude on a nudist beach and goes on to talk about his glistening abs for like a full page it’s a lot more obvious than in the movie, but it’s still there either way) …
the author who made it, chuck palahniuk, is gay. he’s married and has been for over 20 years now. the narrator in fight club is definitely 100% not straight whatsoever. do you ever hear about this when some dudebro is excitedly explaining how deep and cool fight club is? lol no. the straight guys who watch it see the guys in the movie fighting and beating each other up for fun and they’re like ‘ha! no way could this ever be a thing about Anyone Else… this is ours now. because it’s about manly men. (that means us) and we must reclaim it by, like, fucking with it or something. that’s what tyler durden would Want us to do, guys’.
the reason you hear ‘wahahahha first rule of fight club is…. xD you don’t TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!!!’ is because of straight guys. in the book/movie, the official first rule is don’t talk about fight club. are the characters actually supposed to do that? fucking no lol. they’re supposed to tell as many guys as they possibly can that fight club exists so you can get them into the club too so they can spread their* power all over. the point is to think you’re rebelling and get a thrill out of telling people about the Secret Fight Club. you’re not supposed to follow rules, because in post-consumerism america, there will be no rules. better get prepared for that shit.
*sorry i mean tyler durden’s power. tyler durden, the leader of fight club who bosses all these guys around and gets them to put bombs in buildings and shit by telling them fake deep shit. tyler durden, the literal, actual personification of a whiny man who feels entitled to like, whatever he wants if he wants it when he wants it. there’s a tyler durden in ~all of us~ and by all of us, it’s pretty much just meant to be about guys obsessed with masculinity. that’s why the book is fight club and why there’s only one girl character.
also, tyler durden (the guy spewing philosophical shit all the time) isn’t an idol. he’s praised by dudebros as the Enlightened Individual but he never helps the narrator (main character) actually do anything that helps anyone or his situation but boy does he ruin it beyond repair. he’s just an extremist who believes that destroying credit card companies and reverting everyone back to anarchy is what needs to be done for everyone to be free of Consumerist Hell forever. he doesn’t really want everyone to be happy, he just wants anarchy and every man for himself, etc. because then he could do whatever he wanted without getting told ‘no’. he wants things to be simple again and let people just go hogwild. of course, the straight white dudes who watch it take everything he says as ‘oh my god he is So Right, let’s go… destroy art pieces, let’s go graffiti things and be a general nuisance wrecking shit and littering and pull a bunch of shenanigans to get back at The Evil Consumerist Overlords’ even when all they’re doing is complicating the days of low-pay workers because they want freedom from having to think about Those Darn Politics and Society!!! which Are Bad. Politics are Bad and Scary… i wanna run in the jungle naked and wrestle lions and shit to prove how Manly i am and i can take care of Myself.
tyler durden is like, the whiny alter ego of a guy who actually gets paid pretty fucking well to be able to afford so much damn furniture who’s frustrated with his “slavery” to consumerism because he just can’t stop himself from buying all this damn ikea furniture that he’s never satisfied so of course the solution is to destroy society
and, well, guys did try. people tried making fight clubs all over the world to be Like Tyler Durden, in real life. they caused a nuisance in real life for people just trying to live their lives, doing general dudebro shit but now their excuse was that they were Enlightened, Blessed, by their overlord Tyler Durden who will Liberate them from the evil progressive society that enslaves them as white heterosexual men… except tyler durden isn’t someone you should be following after. it’s pretty fucking clear.
TLDR; straight dudebros think creating a terrorist organization to overthrow society and release us into anarchy hell is a good idea because brad pitt with sunglasses and spiky hair said something along the lines of ‘why can’t we just get everything we want whenever we want without repercussions, men?’ and they were all like ‘god true though’ when the movie is literally calling out that hyper-masculinity is absolute garbage.
Lmao yesssss
- i saw something earlier about Iroh also serving boba tea so that’s also a thing that’s happening here
- Zuko personally hates it
- But there’s this cute boy that keeps coming in and loves black milk tea with tapioca pearls
- and Zuko feels like he has to act like that’s not the most disgusting thing he’s ever had in his life
- bc this gorgeous guy that’s around his same age loves it and Zuko doesn’t want to scare him off by insulting his favorite drink
- But also Zuko is a gay disaster + a socially awkward turtleduck and has no idea how to flirt or even really talk to other people
- and he’s almost about 60% sure that Sokka’s been flirting with him
- considering Sokka always, without fail, brushes his fingers against the back of Zuko’s hand when he takes the tea
- And he’s definitely caught Sokka staring at him before while he was working and Sokka was studying
- once when Zuko glanced over and caught Sokka’s eyes, instead of ducking his head back down Sokka held eye contact and gave him the most beautiful smile ever
- (Zuko had to go take a break after that to catch his breath and make sure he wasn’t actively having a heart attack at the age of 21 - the gay panic is real here)
- and Iroh told him that Sokka’s been a regular but never stayed there to study before Zuko started taking on more shifts
- and that Sokka asks about him when he’s not there????!?!?!?
- And Iroh’s been watching these two kind of dance around each other
- and it’s so painfully obvious to literally everyone besides Zuko that Sokka is trying very hard to initiate conversations and flirting
- but Zuko just doesn’t get it and has himself convinced that he’s making it all up bc he wants Sokka to be gay and flirting with him
- and so he starts acting stupid and anxious and hiding from Sokka bc he’s falling so hard for this guy and he’s going to be absolutely heartbroken when Sokka breaks it to him that he’s got a girlfriend or something
- and Iroh has had it by now so on one of the days that Zuko isn’t working and Sokka comes in he strikes a conversation with the kid
- just general stuff - what he’s studying in college, offhandedly does one of those ‘well your significant other must be very proud’ or something like that
- just to dig a little - and it pays off bc Sokka like laughs and shakes his head and is like ‘nah, don’t have one of those right now’
- and that’s when matchmaker Iroh strikes with a ‘well in that case, you know my nephew Zuko is also single right now’
- which Sokka is kinda shocked by how straightforward Iroh is about that but he’s been trying so hard so, blushing and cringing a little he’s just like ‘yea i think i might’ve come on too strong and scared him off - he’s been avoiding me’
- and Iroh is just like ‘no, i’m afraid you didn’t come on strong enough. ask him out next time you come in. Zuko’s here until 5 tomorrow.’
- and Sokka’s like super nervous but also giddy and excited
- and comes in a few minutes before Zuko’s out to get his usual order, and trusting Iroh, comes in smooth like ‘so… when’d’you get outta here?’ as if he doesn’t know
- and Zuko plainly answers that his shift is almost over and tries his damned best nto to get his hopes up but
- Sokka grins and it’s blindingly beautiful and zuko is just so gay and really needs to get outta here now but then sokka leans on the counter and is like ‘in that case why don’ tyou make that two teas and we can drink them on our way to dinner? there’s a cute little place downtown that we can walk to from here’
- and Zuko, in hardcore gay panic and possible cardiac arrest, just like stands there in shock like an idiot before just nodding silently
- and then, like even more of an idiot, Zuko on instinct just makes two black milk teas with tapioca pearls
- and tries to tell himself he can deal iwth it if it’s for Sokka until he actually tries to drink it and gags the moment the first tapioca pearl hits his tongue and has to admit that he fucking hates boba tea
- and Sokka thinks it’s the funniest, most adorable thing ever that Zuko accidentally made himself one bc he was so flustered about being asked out
Ok that got a lot longer than I expected but… I couldn’t help it. I really like this idea. I might write like a full-length story about it eventually but I have so much other stuff going on so… here’s this for now. OR if someone else wants to take this and run with it then uh PLEASE DO. I will read the fuck outta it.
EDIT: I had the thought directly after posting this that’d be 100% funnier if Zuko forgot he put tapioca pearls in his own tea and that it’s normal black milk tea until he sucks up a mouthful of tapioca pearls and like instantly spits them out in disgust and shock.
