#2002 - 2009

[90s-2000s-barbie]

It’s Happy Bunny

Designed by artist & writer Jim Benton in the 1990s. Happy Bunny gained popularity in 2001 after stores like Hot Topic and Spencers began selling its merchandise.

[cronennerd]

Valentine’s Day horror pairings

Can’t let you go - Hellraiser (1987), Frankenhooker (1990)

I came back for you - Candyman (1992), The Crow (1994)

BYOB (build your own boyfriend) - Possession (1981), May (2002)

Rose colored glasses - Audition (1999), Stranger by the Lake (2013)

Vampire romance - Ganja & Hess (1973), Thirst (2009)

[undertaker-gifs]

[naivesilver]

Once Upon A Time Appreciation Week 2024 - Day 5: Best (Not Just Disney) Parallel/Adaptation

Of course. Pinocchio. Explains all the lying.

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #8: El Goonish Shive

Pages read: 1/21/2002 – 12/27/2002 & 4/14/2009 – 12/29/2009; about 300 pages (including author’s commentary)

Reason for selection: To be honest I just wanted to read it. It’s best known for its real-time exploration of transgender themes via science fiction technology as author Dan Shive (along with many others on the internet) explores his personal experience with gender.

Current status: Ongoing since 2002 with no major hiatuses; update schedule has varied but is currently three times a week for the main comic.

Content warnings: nonconsensual gender transformations, non-explicit sexual themes with 16-17 year old characters, cultural appropriation (Japanese language; dreamcatchers), period typical sexism and homophobia (early strips only)

Note: To the best of my understanding, Dan Shive uses he/him pronouns, but if anyone has a recent source stating otherwise please let me know and I’ll revise this post.

Overall thoughts:

‘And then Susan was all like "I am NOT your strawman", hit me with a hammer, and developed into one of my most favoritist characters ever in anything.’ (Commentary for 5/29/2002)

On August 1, 2014, as part of a Patreon goal, Dan Shive began going through the archives of his already long running webcomic, adding author’s commentary to early strips. In the twelve years between making and commenting on his 2002 comics, Shive has gone from being a teenager with no formal artistic experience who’s absorbed the sexist attitudes of his culture, to an experienced artist and writer with a vision for his project and an honesty about his process who’s ready to be both excited and critical about his early work.

Shive states several times that his commentary isn’t designed to be read on a first read of EGS, but I personally disagree. Around May 2002 in the archives, I realized I was reading for the extremely compelling commentary and not the then-fairly mediocre comic. Shive’s clear excitement for future storylines and regular references to his improvement as an artist and person gave me the drive to keep reading, knowing the upward journey ahead of me. The commentary also provides an alternate, twisting path through the narrative, frequently linking back to previous comics when they’re relevant to help the reader notice foreshadowing and continuity, which is really helpful for a new reader taking in lots of information at once – and I like seeing an author clearly proud of himself for his hard work foreshadowing, where some creators might be dismissive of the feat or ignore it altogether.

EGS – named for the ‘goons’ hired by supervillains - begins by focusing on regular(ish) high schoolers Tedd, Elliot and Sarah, and top-secret lab experiment squirrelgirl Grace. Tedd has a mad science laboratory in his home where he creates questionable technology, including a laser gun that can change the target’s species and biological sex. The characters form relationships and experiment with this technology. When Elliot gets ‘stuck’ in a female form, an adventure to restore his original form ends in his male and female forms becoming two separate entities, after which point Ellen, the female version, explores her existence as essentially the human form of Elliot’s removed curse, and achieves self-actualization while fighting a giant pile of goo.

Ellen’s identity exploration in October 2002 was when I began to connect emotionally with the comic itself, and I started noticing improvement in the art in November. Shive improves massively in the first year, and even he’s surprised by it – a character casually mentions that he’s gay in June 2002, and Shive’s commentary says that he doesn’t remember this happening so early. 2002’s ‘Sister’ arc, which runs for around nine months, uses a board game metaphor to describe the story beats – it’s a little clunky in places, but I like what it’s going for. By 2009, Shive is far more confident with complex emotional arcs, and with balancing serious/comedic and magic/realist elements in his story, which can only come from those first efforts to improve.

‘You look in the mirror, but someone else looks back. You remember a life you never had, one that cannot be yours. You are the piece that does not fit, you don’t belong in this game. The board has been knocked over, you shall be swept away…’ (Strip title (!!) for 10/02/2002)

Shive is an anime fan and former martial artist, and the comic assumes a knowledge of anime – especially anime fight scenes – that I just don’t have. However, Shive is good at citing his influences, mentioning Ranma ½, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon and The X-Files as inspiring specific choices, among others. With the exception of an excruciating ‘how dare you not get that reference’ in-comic moment in June 2009, knowledge of Shive’s influences isn’t necessary to enjoy EGS; he’s just giving credit where it’s due.

EGS begins with a typical newspaper format – a horizontal black and white four-panel strip, with a full color A4 strip on Sundays. Although Shive never experiments with animated or interactive elements, he plays around with the strip format and panel size in the early years. In July 2002, Shive uses three-panel strips describing the actual continuity, with a fourth horizontal panel below containing events that ‘don’t actually happen’. Shive also tries out using the comic’s title for extra information, as in May 2002’s ‘Jeremy is Juggling Dinner Plates Off-Screen in the Last Three Panels’. By 2009, the majority of comics fill an A4 page in shaded grayscale, a format that carries through to this day. In an August 2009 author’s commentary, Shive considers how a scene would look if animated, but doesn’t express any desire to actualize on this.

My favorite thing about EGS is how Shive discusses his characters. In his commentary, he addresses ‘past me’ with criticism like ‘you should at least have a decent reason if you're going to make Grace upset like that’, or says he ‘honestly didn't want to write commentary’ for a strip where Ellen was upset, showing a really strong emotional connection to the leads. He also addresses the characters directly in commentary, and discusses them as though they have agency beyond his own, for example, ‘I gave Tedd access to something he could totally abuse without anyone knowing, and he didn't’. He’s very interested in alternate universes of his own story, claiming to be an Elliot/Tedd shipper since 2002 despite their not being canon in the main comic, and creates the EGS: NewsPaper subcomic for non-canon storylines.

Among literary writers and critics, it’s very unfashionable to discuss characters this way, but a lot of mainstream and hobbyist writers (including me!) have had these experiences. I think it’s human instinct to connect with other people, and it’s a strength that we’re able to create the idea of a guy and see them as real, like when we see a face in the clouds or in raindrops running down a windscreen. It helps with having compassion for real people we’ve never met. And while it’s definitely not the only way to look at characters, an author being so excited and invested about their own OCs definitely helps me get excited about them too.

The first villain introduced in the comic is a sentient pile of goo, accidentally made by Tedd in science class. The goo, which can mold and change shape, becomes a recurring enemy – an ultimate shapechanger for a story that’s so deeply focused on transformations. It’s a story about malleability and getting the chance to physically shape yourself into the person you want to be, and at its start, it’s definitely a wish fulfilment comic. That applies to lots of things that a young person might think is cool – the existence of an ‘anime martial arts’ class, getting a squirrelgirl gf who walks around your house naked, breaking in to government facilities to steal jewels – but applies especially to the transformations.

Actually, no, the title of this comic [‘The Real Reason for the Male/Female Options on the TF Gun’] is such a liar. It is lying super hard. I don't care if that's a spoiler. I'm just gonna say it. Liar liar, metaphorical pants on all SORTS of fire. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is yet another example of me basically saying "not that that sort of thing interests me and has been on my mind for nearly literally as long as I can remember" (and only "nearly" because I think my earliest memory involves looking out at a porch or something and I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about being stuck as one sex at the time and how that was not a preferred state of being). (Commentary for 5/28/2002)

Relevance to Homestuck: [spoilers for Act 6]

‘Alright, someone send a message to past me to send a message to his past me telling past-past me to get back to me in regard to…’ (Commentary for 8/28/2002)

Both Homestuck and EGS are known for causing fans’ queer and transgender awakenings, which leads to a particularly powerful personal connection between the fans and the comic. Both feature characters with uncommon experiences of gender and sexuality, and characters who begin life as regular humans but develop animal traits. Both also feature multiple versions of the same character spread across different timelines and universes, and both even use the terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ to distinguish between these versions. They explore identity in similar ways, including a focus on whether one version of a character can ever be the ‘true’ version, and the different potential versions of ourselves we all have the power to become depending on what choices we make, thereby exploring free will as it relates to identity formation. In both cases, this broader theme is explicitly connected to how characters choose to express their genders.

Also in both, the theme of gender is obvious from early on – before the authors themselves were fully aware of it. The exploration of this theme does date both comics, as understandings of gender among online queer communities have radically progressed in the past decade, but both are attempting to reflect changing understandings – Shive uses sex and gender interchangeably in early EGS strips, but becomes attuned to the distinction as time passes – and both are radically ahead of the mainstream media of their time. I’d also argue they better represent trans peoples’ real experiences of gender, instead of the ways we might describe our genders to cis people – but others might disagree.

Both comics start off with a very fast update schedule, which rapidly slows down over the course of the story in response to the author’s changing schedule – in both cases this dramatically affects the pace of the story, and storylines which would finish in months instead take years. EGS’ ‘Sister’ arc includes 158 comics released over 9 months in 2002-2003, while ‘Sister II’ includes 133 pages over 21 months in 2008-2010. This means that in-universe time passes far slower than real time, Homestuck famously taking two and a half years to cover a single in-universe day, and EGS taking nine years to cover eleven in-universe weeks. In Homestuck, Hussie is already much older than the characters at the story’s start, but in EGS this has major implications for an author who began as a peer of the characters aging much faster than they do – this has been softened by an in-universe timeskip.

Both comics contain occasional author-driven retcons; while Homestuck’s famous examples concern the characters’ race, EGS’ concern better characterization, and Shive is more open about them. A June 2002 comic contains an altered line of dialog from Susan, as well as a link to the original version, and the explanation ‘If I had to somehow explain how both the new and original version could be canon, my explanation would be this: The original was what Tedd imagined Susan was saying!’ (commentary for 6/27/2002).

There’s also some clear differences. While Homestuck becomes a collaborative project over time with Hussie moving into more of a director role, EGS continues to be one person’s very weird, unedited vision, with little outside input. It also primarily contains actual foreshadowing, instead of the ‘retroactive foreshadowing’ described by Hussie in their end of Act 2 Q&A.

Q: Is Tedd REALLY a guy? A: Yes! Well 99-- um, make that 95% certain. 90%. Yup. 80% certain he's a guy. Totally. ...65% certain. (EGS FAQ, archived on 2/13/2002)

Continue reading? Definitely. It’s not without problems, but I think EGS is important to the trans community, and I think Shive is an attentive, dedicated and gifted storyteller with a deep love for his own work, which is rare to find in something so long-running.

[lyadrianalima]

Adriana Lima backstage for the VSFS 2002, hair & makeup in NYC

[officeobject]

Hey so like my aunt mightve thrown out my old Barbie phone, not knowing how much it meant to me until it was too late, and it's NOWHERE on the internet, so could someone please help me find a picture or anything? I wish to have it back, in memory if not physically.

It was some flip-phone, 2000s based on the style, pink + white, had a charm that was the Barbie logo head which had a white string, candy used to be inside, I don't remember the outside, but on the inside, it had pressable buttons, and there was an oval mirror that could open (which was where the candy originally was). It would not play "Butterfly", but would instead play a different tune (though would also say "hello, I am Barbie"). It looked similar to this:

I'm desperate to have it back, I have memories of the emotions and whatnot, and I used to keep seeing it whenever I came back to my old apartment (used sometimes by others, currently lived in by my aunt).

2000s Lithuania by the way.

[sarahth2]

Happy 15th Anniversary Coraline 💖

[90s-2000s-barbie]

Club Libby Lu (2000 - 2009)

[zimmer-zupastar]

[vampireatheart]

[rosalie-starfall]

Catherine Zeta-Jones out there following Bebe Neuwirth around to do her Stage roles on screen

Velma Kelly - Chicago (1996 & 2002) Morticia Addams - The Addams Family (2009 & 2022)

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[2014lovepink]

in my past life i was a Victoria Secret Angel *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

[luegootravez]

Kat Dennings in 'Without a Trace' (2002 - 2009)

[batsplat]

i really want to hear your opinion on this. I feel like some people underestimate pecco a lot. most of the people I’ve seen on here are talking like it’s certain that marc will do better than pecco next year, but I’ll be surprised if it’ll be actually like this. pecco has way more experience on the ducati and nobody understands the ducati like pecco does. see race weekends like assen or mugello, he’s literally unstoppable and I feel like he’s even holding back. plus pecco is 26yo and he’s in his prime and probably will be for at least two more years before the decline inevitably begins, and he’s injury free! but the real advantage he has over marc, in my opinion, is that he literally lives under pressure and he already knows that marc will try to hit him on the track and above all mentally. he knows what he is getting into. when he talks about wanting to maintain harmony in ducati it’s because he’s already aware that marc will ruin it. like yeah ppl r saying a lot that marc is going to destroy pecco and all that, but right now the facts state that pecco is a 2 times wdc back to back (probably 3 by the end of this year) and right now on the ducati he’s the best rider of the grid. marc won his last wdc in 2019, it’s been years since he won, and he got his arm fucked up in the process. so yeah marc will try everything to destroy pecco but he needs to be careful to not destroy himself in the process. (this is not marc hate, I’m just tired of seeing people understanding pecco)

first of all, I'm broadly with you on a lot of this, anon, though I wouldn't quite as far as to say I'm predicting pecco to beat marc. second of all, I do think I have a bit of a problem where I have my rational sports brain - but I also have the other less rational bits of my brain. and some of those irrational bits are currently stuck in this mode where I have two different fundamentally contradictory mindsets that are kinda... mental blocks in terms of me predicting what will actually happen next year

mental block #1 is 'you've been following sports all your life and you know how this goes'. like, I've kinda been conditioned to think if you aren't a wunderkind, one of the talents of the century, already a megastar when you were in your nappies bla bla, you're basically fucked? certainly fucked when you are going up against one of those prodigies. you may get close and trick everyone into thinking it's actually possible, but... idk. this is a mindset that broadly stood me in good stead when I started watching motogp, like you just don't bet against fuck you talent. something like 2017, I never really thought marc was going to lose that title. so when I look at marc and pecco, however much I rate pecco there's a bit of my brain that automatically goes 'yeah but marc will win anyway'. it's that kind of... sometimes things that look slim differences in sports, margins that should be small aren't actually small at all, and in a way the end outcome feels like it was always kinda inevitable. I get that same sense when I'm watching 2005 last lap duels between sete and valentino - these are situations where you both parties should have a decent shot, but somehow you know that if you ran the simulation one hundred times, it'd basically always go one way. it's the illusion of competitiveness. one guy's always got something a little bit extra in the back pocket

mental block #2 is that it's actually been really fucking long since I've seen marc win and there's been a lot of false dawns on this front. I thought he'd win the title in 2020. I kinda thought he'd win the title in 2021. I was at least open to the possibility he'd win it in 2022. okay, in 2023... but you could still go 'yeah but he's finally physically fit now' (or, well, you could until the first race weekend was done). and honestly? gut feeling, I was feeling pretty bullish about 2024, partly because I didn't think the gap between the bike specs would be this noticeable. so by now it's a bit? you know, I kinda need to see him win again to believe it? which he probably does too, just a touch, and that makes it a completely different proposition from all those other titles... within this sport in particular, it's really not that easy to recover from years in the wilderness. you never really know if he can get close to handling the field like he did in his prime until he does it again. and... however impressive I've found him this season, which I really, absolutely have, I still haven't seen that from him. I also feel like currently... the magic is still there but his pace is so fragile, and that used to be the really scary thing about him - the relentlessness of his pace. this year, it's one lap pace, it's weekend to weekend, it's how sometimes he's slower in races than you thought he'd be - and yes, there are all these other explanations, but... well, again, if the bike is holding him back, if it's the ducati adaptation period, then that's all well and good. but I'm not really going to feel that's true until I actually see the next step

now obviously both of those things can't be true - and the fun thing about next year is that I don't actually feel it's a done deal. because, yes, people do underestimate pecco. and also because, yes, there's still some real question marks about the version of marc we're getting. just look at this sachsenring situation... obviously 'someone could get injured' is quite a depressing way to look at future title fight permutations, but you can't really treat it as a certainty that it won't happen, no? I feel like one element of last year that doesn't quite get the attention it deserves is that pecco was winning that title a whole lot more comfortably before a bike ran over his leg. the race right after that was misano, where pecco had won the two previous years and there's zero reason to believe he couldn't have done so again rather than take two laboured p3's. that's not a title fight anyone's primarily remembering as an injury arc (cf too the le mans crash) - but it clearly did play a big role and could easily have been decisive, without actually taking out one of those two contenders of competition. marc used to win his titles with a whole lot of throwing himself down the road to find the limit of his bike, but he can't afford to do that any more (if he ever could). we still need to see what version of marc we're getting, if we're getting a version who can just be fast anywhere come sunday - or a very good version of marc who isn't quite that. who knows exactly how much worse the gp23 is than the gp24! who knows how much more there still is to come in terms of ducati potential from marc! we have rough indications, but it's far from definitive. maybe one of them doesn't click at all with next year's bike! we'll only know when we see it play out!

and yet I still expect deep down that marc wins that. it's just kinda supreme belief in his fuck you levels of talent, the belief that he'll figure it out somehow because I've seen him do it so many times. and of course, the other big problem is we don't know what version of pecco we're getting! I have talked before about how historically unusual pecco is as a champion in many ways, which for me always makes it quite tricky to figure out what he'll do in basically any situation. like, where is his ceiling? is he still going to get better? is he going to get his act together? my problem is that I feel like I enter every single season going 'yeah I reckon this year pecco will get his act together, ugh he's going to dominate the field' and then it's just a bit? is this just who you are as a rider, or is this something you can still change?

the thing is, with my fullest respect to pecco's titles, however much I enjoyed those train wrecks, obviously you cannot do this against a version of marc marquez that is remotely up to scratch. like, you just cannot. pecco cannot do a 2022 and expect to win the title. against an even slightly serious version of marc marquez. on the same bike. pecco can't really do a 2023 either. I'll give him a pass for some of those late season results, but if you're chucking it down the road that often early on then, yeah, no

that being said... low key if you ignore all the little numbers, this year is actually a serious title fight...?

like I am always aware that acknowledging this could make them both dnf five times in a row but...? there's one sunday race one of them haven't won, and cota is its own thing. everything else...? whisper it softly but this is a good title fight? 2022-23 were sort of accidentally good because everyone's errors and runs of good forms and performance trajectories just kinda coalesced so you got late season drama, but this? consistent high level of performance from both blokes, decent wheel-to-wheel action between both title rivals at several different races (definitely more than in 2015 and everyone remembers that as a classic, also on course to be more than in 2013 and most years 2007-12). idk, at what point do we just have to acknowledge these guys are pretty good at what they do? sure they're on the strongest bike, as are the vast majorities of blokes who win titles historically. but bastianini's reasonably highly rated and he's not even gotten particularly close to winning a sunday race this year on the exact same bike - one p2 on merit snagged on the last lap and another one less on merit when vinales was highsided to the moon for mechanical reasons right ahead of him. yes, the title contenders have had some howlers... pecco's portimao and catalunya sprints were... well, y'know, and martin's jerez race and mugello sprint were also... y'know. but apart from that?

idk man... we can cry over photos of casey on his gp7 all we like, but at the end of the day these twits have come out with some class performances these last two years. and at a certain point you've just gotta hand it to them. they've become more experienced at how to manage a title fight, which is how you get a version of martin this year who is still fast but is less likely to phillip island it. some of those performances late last season were great! for every martin qatar and pecco india, you also get a martin thailand and a pecco indonesia. maybe they'll stop chucking it down the road so often, or maybe they'll keep chucking it but so will marc, because these days they have ridiculously many opportunities to do so! I also think it's worth pointing out that minus some questionable early season form from pecco, those two are basically always on the pace! they're always there or thereabouts! that's how marc used to kill his title rivals, not necessarily by winning a bunch of races but by making sure he was always picking up points - because he didn't have any truly slow weekends. these guys don't either at the minute! we are seeing them actually get better in front of our eyes, it's great

the other stuff... oof, I don't know what pecco's prime will end up being - remember, actually he's low key already edging out of title-winning age. he's now 27. this century, only two riders have won titles when they were older than 26 - valentino twice and jorge once. obviously, that's partly happenstance, and you don't suddenly get struck down by 'being washed' lightning when you turn 27... plus on the flip side, I also think the fact that pecco has only reached his prime relatively recently means he could have quite a few more years to go. who knows! who knows if marc being increasingly more breakable becomes a big factor! recovering from injuries gets tougher the older you get and the more knocks you've taken! on the other point, the ducati is a bike pecco knows very very well and has a lot of time riding... but broadly speaking I do trust marc with a year's worth of experience get as much out of that bike as he ever will. just the fuck you talent again. we don't know what that performance level looks like, but I don't think it'll be a question of familiarity any more at that stage

so where does that all leave us? do I really want to be making motogp predictions this far in advance? yeah, sure. if I had to put money on it, I'd still back marc, I think? but I really do hope we get a proper fight, and I really do think we might! I'm far from convinced in writing off pecco. basically *grabs the crystal ball, aka checks the races we've literally just watched* let's say pecco absolutely dogwalks the field at a few circuits. like maybe a mugello, an assen, a cute qatar, even a catalunya now he's faced down his demons (though maybe jorge on that aprilia goes bye bye at montmelo). then give marc his races where he laps the field twice in cota and sachsenring. and we're going to get a few classic duels, for the fans. if those duels happen at the mugello's and catalunya's of this world, pecco's might be in deep shit. if they happen at the misano's and aragon's and maybe even jerez's, we can get something going. they both have at least one silly early season crash (also kinda tradition for marc outside of his peak peak seasons lbr) and everyone gets to call pecco a bottler and crank out the good ol' crashquez. and then hopefully we can massage those numbers enough that pecco isn't crashing three times to marc's one and we actually get a proper title fight. and hopefully they don't get injured too badly. I've said this before, but I could easily see a title fight where pecco wins most of the big duels but his inconsistencies let him down. if his bad days are p3's, however, or if marc himself is a bit flaky at times, then we're suddenly having a very different conversation (also don't feel that comfortable in writing off aprilia/ktm and their respective star riders, especially in year two of the factory ducati partnership)

one thing about pecco (that you do also bring up anon)... if there's one trait in his competitive makeup that most reminds me of marc, it's his resilience. he's very good at bouncing back, he's very good at dealing with adversity, a lot of the times he's at his best when he's under ridiculous amounts of pressure... if anything, he's worse when he has reason to feel confident. it comes through both in what a class defensive rider he is and how good he is at dealing with title fight pressure. if there is ever a time where he mentally gets his act together at the very start of the season, surely it's going to be when he has the famous marc marquez in his garage. if that doesn't do it, literally nothing ever will. and listen, knowing marc will try to mess with you isn't quite the same as being able to stop him from messing with you. wanting to maintain harmony doesn't mean your chances of maintaining harmony are necessarily great. but... you know, pecco got his first ever win by defending against marc lap after lap, facing essentially the most stressful situation imaginable with the 93 on his tail. marc made him a better rider that day. marc might make him a better rider next year too... you never know