#The late 90s/early 2000s were something else

[sleepy-hyperfixations]

im going in-fucking-sane, does anyone remember these coloring pages that when you colored the pages revealed that they had like texture/designs embossed on them. ive been trying to look them up for the past 2 hours but i don't remember what the hell they were called!

[justvora]

MOON KNIGHT IS A HERO

HEROISM BEHIND A LEGACY OF VIOLENCE. A Moon Knight essay, pt1.

Origin.

Nothing pains me more than the segmented view of Moon Knight, which seems to be anchored to the stale perspective of the 2000s, an era that destroyed this character. It meant too much that stage, one where he hit rock bottom, where he was at the lowest point in his life. And those moments were intrinsic in him, they do not define him or determine his present, but they did mean a turning point to want to change, to want to be something else.

Marc Spector has always been a violent person, from his childhood (The Vengeance of Moon Knight, Shadowland: Moon Knight) where he exercised excessive violence against those who harassed his brother, to his adulthood, where he was a renowned underground boxer (Moon Knight Vol1: #37 ; Shadowland: Moon Knight), being this a stage where he felt rejected by the passivity of his own father, a rabbi. Marc never understood why he always kept his head down, why he was so extremely peaceful at levels that did him more harm than good. He was a rebel, a lost cause to his family, but someone who fought against anti-Semitic hate crimes no matter how alien he considered himself to this religion. After that, he ended up in the navy, from which he was expelled for disobedience, insubordination and assault on a superior, in addition for the strange behaviors that can be seen in the flashbacks that Khonshu distorted from his past, in Jeff Lemire's run (2016, Vol8: #12). After that he spent some time in the CIA which is extremely difficult to define given the ambiguity of his chronology. But it is clear that from that moment on he went off track to the point of ending up being something worse: an assassin, a mercenary.

In his mercenary days he did horrible things. He was never a good guy, death was nothing alien to him, so ending anyone's life was no problem… Until he met Marlene. He rebelled against Bushman and died, being left to his fate, crawling through the desert day and night until he ended up in front of a temple where, in the vicinity, Khonshu was. This was a new point, one which allows us to see different ramifications of the interpretation of both Moon Knight and the god who brought him back to life, Khonshu.

There are those who define him as an abusive god who took advantage of Spector's catatonic state to coerce him, leading him to make a deal whereby he became his vessel, leading him down a path of false heroism solely to quench the bloodlust of a god, an evil one, who recreates the idea of protecting people as an excuse to exercise violence.

On the other hand, there is the interpretation that I personally like the most. Redemption. Marc Spector went through a catharsis or metamorphosis that allowed him to change. He could not eradicate his bloodthirsty past, let alone clean it up, but at least he could give a new purpose to his person, and that would be to become a hero, one who would protect people.

“I became Moon Knight to end the darkness; and I never had to look beyond my heart”

He admitted, within his thoughts, in the trial that was made for his war crimes in bosqueverde, during the stage of the late 80s and early 90s where the infamous series of Marc Spector: Moon Knight is developed, one that has so many lights and shadows. I have to say that it is a good comic in its initial form, perhaps too corny and intense, throwing to “waste” certain ideas that had been established; but on the other hand the comic was fruit of its time and the bad writing of the 90s affected the rest of its issues from the middle, leading to the introduction of harmful ideas and concepts, but that hopefully remained in oblivion.

“Moon Knight is a critical pastiche of superheroes that somehow managed to exist in a Big 2 lineup. Marc Spector was not kind, or noble, or an upstanding citizen. He was a violent asshole who rejected God. Rejected his father. Killed people for money. Marc had pain in his heart and suppressed that pain with violence. He did not enter into a pact with some ambivalent greater power to protect humanity because it's the right thing to do. Marc was afraid of death, and contracted with an abusive, vindictive, petty God who cursed his own followers and declared the night time world his domain. A God who drove him to more violence not as an act of charity but of supernatural domination. Marc does not grow linearly as a superhero - his pact with Khonshu saves him from death and he begins to indulge his love of violence under the guise of heroism. In some ways these impulses grow worse - and ‘protecting the innocent’ turns into mutilating criminals and lashing out at the woman he loves. Marc does not narrowly survive danger. He dies. Again and again and again. Gruesomely, painfully, traumatically. He's crippled. He is not returned to service by an indomitable will or drive to do good, but a curse that will see him reduced to a mindless husk who only knows violence - something Marc has been training for his whole life. Marc does not wear the mask to hide his identity or protect his loved ones. He's a fractured, broken person who at this point in his story has accumulated a lifetime of failure and trauma, and constantly externalizes it, driving away the few people he loves. He wears the mask to run away from his past and play pretend that he's secretly a good man. Moon Knight should be in The Boys, or Invincible. His stories are critical of the violent, aggressively over-masculine anger that perpetuates in the medium. He's a critique of batman, daredevil, the punisher - any super hero who portrays themselves as some dark and tortured herald of justice. He is the result of some of the industry's best talents looking at the tropes of the genre and admitting ‘Anyone who acted like this in real life would be a friendless, unlovable asshole’ And he has an arc! He seeks to exist beyond the sins of his past! Marc desires to grow and abandon the violence he's cultivated within himself. To treat himself with kindness, to find forgiveness, and atone for the hurt he's caused.”

—explodyboompow, “What makes moon knight stand out from from other superheroes” : Reddit comment from that post (2023)

Marc Spector, as much as he is someone who dresses completely in white, is a gray person, someone who exists within the moral spectrum and is incapable of transcending it. He could be considered, during his darkest period, as the very opposite of copaganda (a term used to refer to police propaganda whereby comic book superheroes are blurred from their anti-police discourse to support strict measures within the law); he acted outside the law with sadism, punishing villains in horrible ways, even exercising excessive violence, although with the law of superhero registration and all the authoritarian control that was exercised he saw that he had to relax, at least to keep a low profile, because he did not want to finish tarnishing his image, being something that Black Spectre (Carson Knowles) took advantage of to dirty the way in which the knight himself was seen. Since he checked in, manipulating the man who interviewed him, coercing him and subjecting him to extortion that led to his suicide, he was considered a high danger even without his powers, mainly because of how dangerous he was as well as his own “mental instability”, so, as soon as the alarms went off, S.H.I.E.L.D went after him, and the competition was not far behind, Norman Osborn considered him a threat, so in the same way he sent the Thunderbolts to liquidate him.

That's why Moon Knight's story works. It speaks to society and the power that context has over society to torture people. Spector fell into the big pit, forgetting what he was, who he was, and the company he kept. He was selfish.

Part of the paradigm of his heroism is based on the fact that he kills. Evidently, he is not, as a person, the best human being you can find, that is something quite clear, but still… He does not seek to be a good person, but a specter of vengeance that takes the grief of others to avenge them for their pain. To a certain extent we could define Moon Knight as an opposite of Cassandra Cain: an antithesis to that way that the individual depersonalizes his human facet to serve justice and help others. Cassandra wanted to detach herself from what her father transformed her into: a killing machine. She believed that, if she was born that way, anyone else could change, as she was searching for so long for redemption that she forgot she was Cassandra to be Batgirl, because her world needed a heroine: And she became a martyr on a suicide mission, because if she died, she wanted to die a heroine. This is not so different from Moon Knight, although the roots of the paradigm are completely different.

The true meaning of Moon Knight in a past stage whose vestiges fall into a reformulated present that we can see, encapsulated, in Jason Aaron's recent writing in Spector's appearance during the last issues of Punisher, specifically, when the latter has been defeated and our hero comes to give him a brief speech, one by which he believes that he, despite everything, can change; but that unlike himself, he recognizes, inwardly, that he would not want to change, and that is where his perception of things lies: In believing that, if he after all has had more than one chance to prove to the world that he can be a better person, anyone else could do the same, and that is a thought that rests with Frank himself.

One thing that sets the current Moon Knight apart from any other character is that he recognizes the sin he lives with himself, but this doesn't mean he gives up striving to be better, quite the contrary, he always seeks to change himself to an era of light and hope. He wants to be a hero, a beacon of light for the people, and yet, he does not force himself to take on or absorb the cultural beliefs of what is right, he does not seek to cling to the idea of others, but to what he believes is right.

Moon Knight resignifies his will, his mission and the way he works. Crossing the line of life is something morally questionable, but he frivolizes it. He is not sadistic, he, contrary to popular belief, does not enjoy it. Contrary to the misbelief held about him, Spector is not looking for an excuse to exercise violence and let off steam, no. For him violence is just another tool, one he uses to attack evil, those who harm his travelers. It is the paradoxical irony of using more violence; he knows he will not be able to extinguish the flame of his past, and he believes that, much less, he can exempt himself from it; that is why his fight against evil is not as Marc Spector, but as Moon Knight: The system composed by his alters. All this does not take away that Moon Knight does not reach levels that are worrying, but what he does is to play with fear and the mistakes of his past, because in previous stages he fell so low that he began to act like a monster, destroying the criminals he faced in inhuman ways that could very well make him look worse than the Punisher. But it is just all those legends that he uses to evoke fear in criminals, something that is addressed in the recent volume of Vengeance of the Moon Knight where we are shown the paradigm difference between the new user of the lunar mantle and our hero under the words of Soldier, his loyal ally:

“Anyone can be a psycho. It’s easy. All you got to do is take a machete to a guy who rips off ATMs dressed up as pinocchio or whatever, and presto, you’re a grim avenger of the streets. But the Boss was better than that. Smarter. he kept them scared. He had his rep, from his bad old days, and he kept them in hand with that fear. He was their fixer, giving them their hit. But he was careful. Because fear’s like any other drug. If they get too much in their system, they get unpredictable. Get stupid, get sloppy, get out of hand. You want them too scared of you to act. Not so scared that they feel like they got to.”

Vengeance of Moon Knight Vol2, #3, 2024. Jed Mackay.

The paradigm here is in working correctly by playing on fear, following Batman's mechanics of instilling fear in people so that they don't want to act rather than so that they end up acting in an unpredictable way by having an overdose that makes them want to break through their own fear, though this is something I'd rather talk about later in more depth on 'Zodiac's theory and vision of the new Moon Knight'.

Re-reading his first comics I could not help but cry with joy when I read the incredible and beautiful writing of the character and the way they were able to define him better than ever, contradicting, ironically, the way in which in the future they will portray the character as an absolute savage, when he is nothing but the opposite of something like that. What's more, Moon Knight to some extent takes different ideas and concepts that have been developed with the Batman character but gives them a twist. For starters there is the cycle of violence with which he acts and which, to his surprise, does nothing more than fan a flame in a city that never sleeps or progresses, reaching a feedback whereby pouring violence against crime only fuels it more, making him see that people need more than revenge, finding, there, a mission greater than that of his god: Justice and, with it, hope. And, on the other hand, there is the issue of the use of the enemy's weapons: violence and fear. He takes everything, as well as 'murder', to frivolize it and change its dynamics, taking it to the paradox of intolerance: He will not tolerate that the rights and integrity of those he protects are violated, so those who cross the moral line must be punished… Although not all those who do evil are people with malice, but other people who, just because of the system, have been oppressed and pushed to the limit by their circumstances. There are those who have no choice -better- and can redeem themselves -Moon Knight believes in the redemption of others-.

“You know what’s out there. It’s a world in which the savages all too often rule our cities, our streets, our souls. The good citizens– the Grants, the Lockley’s– they fight that tyranny as best they can- They aren’t always enough. Moon Knight is more than a good man. He’s a force that transcends the brutality and the fear that are the savages’ main weapons– because he can use those weapons himself. He’s a savage on the side of the angels… A protector of innocents… A symbol of vengeance and hope. And, god willing… If he does his job well enough… he’ll be the last savage.”

Moon Knight Vol1, #35, 1980. Tony Isabella

“Those who forget their past are condemned to forget it”.

The mask not only serves to protect your identity, or to flee from your past, which also serves to become something else, something better. If yesterday's violence served to hurt, isn't it more poetic to use violence to protect? That is its mission. Not to harm, but to protect. He puts on the mask because no one else needs Marc Spector (MK Vol9 #4, 2021, Jed Mackay) and because he has caused enough damage, because people need the moon knight, and putting on that mantle serves to destroy himself, to punish himself and become a martyr. This is something we will also see in Doug Moench's stories where it is emphasized that Steven Grant came about as a way to leave Spector in the background. What Marc longs for most, after all - in his early 80s - is to die to escape hell, because he is someone weak, a man who has shielded all his horrors in a hard shell of toxic masculinity that has driven him to rot, desensitizing him when, inside, he is dying. But this hell is not, if not, a purgatory to exonerate himself from his sins (MK Vol1 #29, 1980, Doug Moench). And everything suddenly becomes, all of a sudden, a self-destructive missionary for what he hopes to be destroying himself and eliminating Spector.

To be continued...

[circular-bircular]

(Want context for this post? Here's the full post that instigated this one!)

I've sent an ask to OP (as their pinned post said to) asking genuinely why my response was hidden. However, I find now that even my main blog (which was the only blog I could send an ask from) is now blocked as well. For those curious, I did forget to screenshot my ask before sending it, but I believe this is akin to what I sent:

Hello, This is circular-bircular. I was wondering if you'd be willing to clarify why my response to your post was hidden and why (I believe) I am now blocked. I've looked at your pinned post, and I am wondering if you consider me to be part of the groups you listed, or maybe you blocked due to my aggression, or perhaps something else? Feel no obligation to answer. Thank you for your time.

It's been frustrating, lately, how users on all sides of these debates refuse to engage with criticism of any kind. But I also acknowledge that it is nobody's job to engage with criticism. OP is in their rights to block, and I am not frustrated about that.

What I am frustrated by is the sheer amount of notes that post got, with not a single other person -- seemingly -- remarking on the ableism in many of the claims.

I want to be able to discuss these things and gain new perspectives. I want to be allowed to be angry and upset about ableism I see, and discuss that ableism clearly, and maybe even learn from others where the flaws in my thinking are. Instead, my responses are hidden, and I feel once more shunted into the quiet corner, never able to be heard, because clearly something I said was wrong -- but nobody sees fit to explain what.

The worst part being, that post was in the disordered tags. That post was in my home; my supposed 'safe space' (though I use that term very, very loosely). It wasn't even meant to be a syscourse post, with "syscourse" not even being originally tagged...

And yet.

In any case -- as the ability to view my impassioned response has been limited, I decided to make my own post, about all of the various thoughts that I have at the moment about everything. Time for yet another long ass post. Word count, ahoy!

Plurality, as we know it today, is a relatively recent term. Plurality formed alongside and well within the CDD communities, and came to be popularized as a term sometime in the mid 90s.

It was coined explicitly to distance from medicalized CDDs. Specifically, it was used by the coiner (whom I believe is the Vicki(s) but I could be mistaken in my timeline here) as an alternative to "multiple." However, many people simply used Plural and Multiple interchangeably.

Equally as important to this history is the fact that, around this same time, Astraea's Web reared its ugly head. Forgive my distaste; however, this is the basis of a lot of the harassment I have faced as a DID system. Astraea's Web is the source of the term "natural multiplicity," and dedicated itself to the idea that MPD was not a disorder at all. While this was more than likely a case of endogenic plurals trying to find a place in a highly medicalized environment, it came at the cost of severe ableism directed toward medicalized systems.

This led directly to the spawning of "survivor multiples" and "empowered multiples," with empowered multiples being the ones who were nondisordered, and survivor multiples being seen as lesser, weaker, and highly dysfunctional. This led to countless amount of pain and suffering for systems of any and all kinds: endogenic, traumagenic, CDD, plural, and anywhere between. The Natural Multiplicity Movement, which called for systems to boycott the DID diagnosis altogether, really kicked off in the early 2000s, and led to countless conflicts with medicalized systems who fought hard to be recognized with the disorder they had.

Therefore, the claim that the sorts of Syscourse Divisions we see in modern day -- pro-endo VS anti-endo, traumagenic VS endogenic -- is a problem unique to the last decade is false. This dichotomy has existed far longer than that. I still consider this a recent issue (it happened within my lifetime, sadly), but to say that it started with the change from MPD to DID is inherently erasing the history many systems went through. Again, on all sides; the ableism CDD systems faced was happening at the same time as the ableism endogenic systems faced. It was just different breeds of the same problem.

Now, it is correct to state that endogenic as a term was not popularized before 2014; it was coined that year by a system by the name of Lunastus Co (then the Trashcan Collective, if I recall correctly). While I have certainly been vocal about my feelings regarding the term endogenic, they really don't have a place on this post; it suffices to say that endogenic was popularized to indicate non-trauma based plurality at that time. Similarly, traumagenic was popularized to indicate trauma based plurality at this time.

As an aside... reading the post I've found on the coining of endogenic, it's something I genuinely love. It's an unfortunate circumstance the commonalities endogenous and, well endogenous (Freud) share, but overall, I'm supremely jealous I'm not an older system who got to experience the joy of the endogenic community, and instead experienced so much hate.

This did create an uproar in the community, with quite a large division between traumagenic and endogenic systems. Similar to when any label is created, to be honest. The term endogeinc was very clearly meant to replace natural/healthy multiplicity, as the terminology was seen as offensive to traumagenic systems striving for recovery, indicating they were somehow "unnatural." This created even further divisions and divides between communities, something I believe Lunastus has lamented in recent years.

The claims against endogenic systems are numerous; as are the claims against traumagenic systems. As the dichotomy has always been, seemingly, Disordered VS Non-disordered and Trauma VS Non-trauma, it became easy to classify every struggle under that lens. That is where my history in syscourse comes into play, where I was fakeclaimed repeatedly, but moreso by endogenic systems, simply due to being traumagenic.

I was told repeatedly that saying I had DID was ableist, because DID was coined by an ableist man. This has already been debunked -- here's the most recent debunk, done by our lovely pluraldeepdive, as always. I was also told repeatedly that I couldn't have DID, for many reasons: because I was born rich, because my parents loved me, because I owned a freaking gamecube of all things. All of those to say: Endogenic systems frequently told me I was not traumatized enough to have DID.

Don't worry -- anti-endos don't get cut slack here either. Being told "if you really had DID, you'd be put in a mental hospital and raped repeatedly by the staff" certainly did not help me get confidence in reaching out to my life-saving therapist.

But the fact is, I was harassed more my endogenic systems and/or pro-endo systems than by traumagenic and/or anti-endo systems. The fact that I was harassed by any of them is already sheer ridiculousness.

Alright -- why the trauma rambling? The point here was, the ableism I faced, simply for being openly a DID system (mind you, who identified as pro-endo at the time) is still running rampant today.

Reading through LB Lee's two essays that were linked on the original post (at the top of this ramble), I was shocked to discover the same rhetoric I had been faced with repeatedly in all my years of syscourse. That traumagenic VS endogenic is an "internal pecking order so as to feel superior to each other" (rather than origin labels many use as liberally as LGBT+ labels). That disordered multiples "have a culture of overly deferring to their healthcare team: never making a move without asking the doc’s opinion, treating therapists as their parent replacements, relying on their shrinks for things they should really learn to do themselves, such as taking care of their internal children" -- this idea that all traumagenic systems are completely dysfunctional and unable to care for themselves. Continued onto the next lines immediately with "I met multiples who had been in care for decades, never improving, never seeming to learn any skills, but still absolutely enamored of their brilliant therapist (who they apparently couldn’t function without). These weren’t children either; these were people old enough to be my parents or grandparents!" This constant idea that you can examine someone else's systemhood and determine if they are healing "correctly" or not...

"I have seen no indication that traumagenic multiples, actually want to do those things, despite all their blathering about ableism."

This ableism comes from somewhere. The ableism I "blather" about has a source.

Sigh.

I don't have the energy to go through all of the article again, but it's heinous. It was horrifically offensive to me, even if I DO agree with many of the points it made! And that's likely because I have seen the same rhetoric over and over and over again, used against DID systems.

And it is still used consistently today.

As recently as the past 4 years, one of the OSDDID subreddits -- a meme one I believe -- completely combusted because some people made memes that were against endogeinc systems. Yet again, more syscourse bullshit. One of the moderators posted a big long ramble about how all anti-endos are just experiencing "traumagenic embitterment." This idea that all traumagenic systems who hate endogenic systems are just bitter to see "someone else doing better than them." I see this take frequently in plural and endogenic tags.

As recently as last year I saw endogenic systems calling for the removal of DID as a label entirely. Don't believe me?

Abolish all diagnostic terms! They're harmful!!

<- Is a system who feels most comfortable identifying with diagnostic terms.

As recently as maybe 4 months ago, I had to convince an endogenic system that saying RAMCOA was just "trumped up Satanic Temple bullshit" and was often "moral panic" was horrifically ableist. This was while another endogenic system bemoaned how they "couldn't believe anyone could ever do something so horrible" as RAMCOA.

As recently as last month, a friend of mine was rewriting an article about fusion, the original wording of which is firmly against final fusion and demonizes it. Said friend has repeatedly been called a sysmed for... defending final fusion and the ToSD for CDD systems.

As recently as yesterday, I was working on my debunk of a Power to the Plurals article that someone sent me in April, one that depicts the ToSD as inherently ableist and bad because... reasons? Mind you, the ToSD is the most prominent theory of how DID forms.

And then, as recently as today, I am trying to explain to someone who posted in the dissociative identity disorder tag with tags that I agree with, with points that I agree with, why the post they made about the "Bible of Psychiatry" was ableist and offensive. What a shame they've blocked me and likely will not be seeing this post, continuing to be ableist elsewhere.

All in the name of activism.

Ableism against DID systems is alive and well. I wish people would understand that. I wish people would see how pitying me in the plural spaces I'm in comes off as infantile. I wish people would see how "debunking" the most prominent theories and healing methods of DID is only hurting those of us who do align to them. I wish people would be willing to acknowledge the hurt they cause more readily.

And I wish that, as a DID system, I didn't have to become a historian on endogenic as a term, as a community, and as a personal source of pain.

Does this all make sense?

[marsoid]

I discovered your works on tapas almost by luck because I was reading something else and the app suggested me Long Exposure, which I deeply loved and connected with.

I'm reading Ride or Die and I am loving it too! I love the plots you make, how original and unique they are, your drawing style which yes, it reminds me of late 90s/early 2000s Cartoon Network drawing style (like Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Ed, Edd & Eddy and even Catdog).

All of this to say I'm so thankful for your art and creativity 🩷 keep doing this amazing work and yes, thanks thanks thanks 🥹

AW MANN thanks so much!!! i love that my style is reminiscent of old 90s/2000s cartoons because they were so formative... so cool to think that they are still recognizably coming through in my art

which reminds me, i found this old sketchbook from when i was TODDLER and look who i found inside

JONGY BRABO??? WOAH MAMA??

[unhetalia]

jealous England sounds fun until he realizes america truly has no clue when someone is flirting with him or not. I mean how is England going to woo him in the future?

I could never say how these two get together but in terms of what I like to read (and don't get enough of) I always ALWAYS want Arthur rescuing Alfred so that would be fun to think about...

Also, it kind of goes against any previous "Arthur badly courting Alfred" headcanons that I've previously talked about but recently my mind has flipped to a different relationship scenario between Arthur and Alfred.

Arthur is still a horndog who has way more sex than anyone expects (except Francis, who has been accidentally Arthur's best friend for many years).

Alfred, on the flipside, is either a virgin or someone who has sex very very rarely. Exclusively into men (does he know?), very demisexual. Doesn't have much interest in sex, but this is because he's either never been a good match with the men he's had sex with or, if he's a virgin, it just doesn't seem like it'll be that interesting.

Arthur has never seen Alfred as someone to be sexually interested in BECAUSE he's so busy living in the past aka wishing for the times that Alfred was a child.

Alfred is the one who has been in love with Arthur since before his revolution. I like the headcanon people have that his bid for independence was his attempt at getting Arthur to see him as an equal. (It doesn't work.)

It's near-modern times. Maybe late 90s or early 2000s, Alfred is VERY used to unrequited love. He and Arthur are... cordial, but they have different circles.

It's something that hurts Alfred a lot. How Arthur was never interested in Alfred when he grew up. Arthur only ever wanted a colony - and apparently Alfred wasn't even a colony Arthur considered important. He knows Arthur and India were together for a long time, and Alfred sees the longing looks they still throw at each other. She tells Alfred she's completely over Arthur, but how can you date someone for 50 years* and look at them like THAT and have it be "nothing"?

Then we have one of the bits that changes for me, depending on what fic I want. Something needs to happen to get Arthur to see Alfred as he is. I've talked about this before, but in previous posts I've always gone: friends -> fall in love -> get over revolution hang ups -> end up together. NOW, for England, I want to change it up to: get over revolution hang ups -> friends/fall in love (these two are interchangeable to me for England) -> lovers. Meanwhile, Alfred's journey is: fall in love -> everything else (I find his journey can be more flexible).

SO what can make Arthur get over himself? I think it would need to be something big that'll shake him up a little. Alfred-in-distress is one way. Arthur realises how much he wants to save Alfred-the-Nation, and not just who Alfred-the-Colony ended up being.

OR, with the jealousy theme we've been having: another Nation starts pursuing Alfred, and Arthur is forced to see Alfred as an object of desire for someone else, which then jiggles something loose inside him and allows him to see Alfred as someone who is incredibly desirable.

Alas, in the new ... dynamic? Timeline? that I have for these two, Arthur doesn't do any wooing - even when he does fall for Alfred, or becomes jealous of others wanting Alfred, he'll desperately want that shit HIDDEN, and will be glad Alfred's oblivious.

Them actually ending up together needs to somehow happen without planning. At this point in time I've thought myself into a corner with these two. The world might need to be near-ending before the feelings get squeezed out in the open.

[spooksalotnoel]

Mbav pairings within the fandom

requested by @ilovebennyweir

I want to start by saying these are just hc!

First off, remember that CANNONICLLY these are 14–16-year-olds. Anything within my hc I put into a more modern time. I don't know as far as aging up character's so all of these will also be within my moral thinking. I'll be providing some type of explanation with all of these. And for fun I'll be ranking them too!

5. Sarah and Ethan

Okay I know that in the show they do like each other but just a reminder Sarah was 17 and Ethan was 14, they started dating end of season 2 leaving Ethan 15. Guys I am not sure, even when I was younger, I never really liked this ship regardless of it cannon-ness. When it all came down to it, this just felt extremely forced.

4. Rory and Erica

again 14 to 17 age difference! And not to mention they look like they could be related. I think this one is more on Rory's part since he's a huge flirt. Other than that, I don't have much to say.

3. Benny and Erica

(Couldn't find a gif of them together.) Again, very similar to what I Say'd about Rory and Ethan.

2. Rory and Benny

Actually, one of my mutuals put me on to this pairing! In season one episode two, after rewatching it I noticed that Benny was really into the idea of Rory liking him. As for Rory, he is canonically pan. My mutual and someone else on here had said that this was Benny's one time he could be comfortable with his identity. They were pretty much late 90's babies, going into high school in early 2000's so it isn't surprising. I can write more about this if anyone is interested, just keeping it short for now.

1. Ethan and Benny

Now this is definitely a fan favorite and my favorite. Honestly there's a lot of reasons why this would work why it wouldn't work but again, it's something I can write a longer post about.

Honorable mentions: Rory and Ethan, Benny, Rory and Ethan, Sarah and Erica

(Now just want to add that Rornny and Rorthan are pretty much at the same rank)

Again, if anyone would want me to elaborate anything just let me know!

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

hmm. conversely, most ADHD car?

(A dab o' context for y'all, this ask came hot off the heels of my most autistic car post, hence the "conversely".)

Well, when I read this, I had nothing. But then I thought about it a little, and suddenly, I continued to have nothing.

But you already know that, dear asker, because you're in the blog's Discord server which I turned to for suggestions. And in fact, you chipped in yourself with not one but two picks, first of which the fifth generation Ford Mustang!

So, pray tell, what brings my elementary school self's favorite car ever ever into this list?

uhh from like a cultural view its an unfocused and hyperactive car with a reputation of not going the way people want (see: crowd meme)

Oh, come on, are we really still not over that stereotype whereby late model Mustangs are owned by people both too eager to show off not to leave a car meet flooring it and too inept to actually keep it under control when they do?

Well, I guess to get over it it'll need to stop being true.

But also, being so much of an exhibitionist as to cause physical pain is not about ADHD at all!

Anyone I invite at my house gets bored to tears with a tour of my every possession...

...but not because I have ADHD!

Actually, you know what? That may really be it now that I think about it. Well, anyway, your submission is funny enough to earn a pass even if we don't see eye to eye on this anyway.

How about your second, though?

alternatively: late '90s to early 2000s tuner Civic, for the same reasons

While he included this picture, he advised to use a worse example, so I took the liberty to present you a historical picture.

I say historical because this picture was the definition of rice, the textbook example. If Wikipedia had a page for "rice (automotive)" it would feature this picture, probably second behind that blue early 90s Civic which in hindsight we were all wrong about and was actually sick.

Did you know this was made by a teenager out of metal? I'm digressing.

Friend of the blog (well, pillar of the blog at this point) @demoness-one agrees and suggests:

Honestly riced out clapped out honda civics did come to mind also But i feel like the car that most represents adhd is probably one that isn't finished lol Abstract concept of a car

But she wasn't the only one to vote for her own cars, as friend of the blog and Saturn SL1 owner @chevyventure posted a simple but effective contribution:

zero executive function between those eyes

Not as simple as friend of the blog @brick-enthusiast's, however, who just posted a Suzuki Cappuccino without comment.

In respect of that approach I will not comment either.

However, it's time to make my pick too, as in the process of writing this post I finally understood the assignment, and thus came up with something.

What's ADHD? As this blog demonstrates, sometimes it's being hyperfocused on something exciting, much to the detriment of things that actually matter in daily life. Sometimes it's said focus earning amazing results that seem disproportionate to one's means. Sometimes it's taking comfort in the routine, in deeply ingrained habits and tradition that still have to constantly be actively enforced as conscious choice. Sometimes it's being darty, shooting from point to point with speed other minds can't even keep up with. Sometimes it's having too much energy to contain. Sometimes it's... being loud? Oh really! I thought I was just being Italian!

And if you've read my 100th post, you'll know a car that fits that description to a T. (And if you haven't, click on here before reading on because you really want to.)

Indeed, what could be a better pick than a car that's stayed the same for nigh on seven decades in its devoted preservation of its ability to dart around like nothing else on the road, a car so perfromance-focused the comfort spec is the one that gets windows, a car not one bit less deafening than legally required? What could be a better pick than the Caterham Seven 620R, the literal world record holder for spinning around in circles?

And also just look at it.

If you're wondering about the number plate, it was made to celebrate its Lego version - yes indeed!

And if you can believe it, people still gifted me clothes for Christmas.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question: if you liked this post, you might like those - or the blog’s Discord server, linked in the pinned post!

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Nintendo-vember Level 3: Dobson and his Toxic Nintendo Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be toxic. Now bear in mind, I did not say that it IS toxic, but that it can be toxic. This assumption that because we have pleasant memories of something, that it was always good all the time. A desire to get that back, ignores all the good that’s come since then. As well as all the bad stuff that was there too. And it poisons you. Making you more suggestible to deception and your own greed. Who is to say that your own past is more important than someone else’s future? And because you want something that may not have been real at all, the farther the goal post gets. Because you can’t really reclaim it. So it just gets worse and worse and you get greedier and more desperate for it, because what you really want is never going to come. Until in the very end, you become the thing you hated in the first place. Lewis Lovhaug – March 2018, Infinite Crisis

Everything I did for this month so far, was going to lead directly into today’s , actually long in the works, post. Cause today we go over the comic, that as far as I see it, may actually be Dobson’s most (in)famous one out there. The one that painted the public’s opinion of him more so than anything he would ever do when starting to draw “political comics” under Trump. The one that defined him for all of deviantart and kiwifarms from 2010 onward. A comic that will always show up, whenever someone online even remotely talks about him. The one that I have seen more times than any other being used for threads on /co/ for Dobson. A comic that is neither about politics, feminism or even part of any of his comic series. A comic that is truly centered around the concept of toxic nostalgia, rather than whatever Andrew Dobson was going for and that fits perfectly to the theme of this month.

Ladies, gentlemen and inbetween… I give you, the Localization one.

Released in 2010, a time when Dobson was still trying (and failing) to sell himself more on the image of just being a quirky nerd and Nintendo fanboy whose work you should support because he only wants to make others happy, this became a comic that genuinely cemented further in the eyes of others, how much of a self-indulgent and extremely manchildish prick with dumb taste he really was.

How, some here may ask who are a bit too young? Well, let me give you context…

For starters, by the time Dobson released the comic, he had already quite a bit of a reputation online for being a prick to other nerds. His infamous “West vs East” comic which he created “as a joke” to vent about the popularity of anime in the mid to late 2000s had been published three years prior and had, in combination with a lot of derogative journal entries and posts on deviantart and other pages, earned him the ire of many people. In addition, his failed or outright aborted “original” content had painted him as a quitter, who despite wanting all the fame someone could muster online, was not willing to put the necessary work in it.

Dobson was, for a lack of a better word, a bully among nerds who tried to use his platform to shame people for being “nerdier” than him or enjoying stuff he didn’t, while also playing the victim card for people not interested in purchasing his product or calling him out on his hypocrisies and flaws in opinions.

In that regard, Dobson was pretty much ahead of the curve to some “woke” companies. Insulting your customer and then being surprised when no one wants to buy your shit.

The other thing to be aware of, has to do with the history and popularity of Nintendo characters at least pre-1995 in America.

For the few not quite aware and as a quick reminder to everyone: Videogames back in the 80s and very early 90s (like 1990-92) did on average not necessarily have what we can call “complex” lore when it came to videogame stories and characters. At least not to a degree as we would get later in the mid-90s and onwards. Aside of (J)RPGs most games were simply focused on moving a character from one end of a level to the next and the story as to why we even bothered for Megaman to fight the Robo Masters and who the heck Dr. Wily was, was printed in the manual on a small page.

And Mario and Link were no exception to that. Mostly because they also had only very few genuine main titles under their name. By 1989, The Legend of Zelda had only two NES titles under its name, while Mario had (if we don’t account for non-jump n’run games in which he was shoved into because of his status as Nintendo’s mascot) the three main Mario Bros games for the NES, one game for the Game Boy, Mario Bros and the two Donkey Kong titles.

Lacking quite a bit in characterization game wise, Nintendo of America in order to sell the stuff had to partly make the characters appeal to the audience via localization done through merchandise and non-game related products. And early fans of these characters would obviously crave for it.

Enter The Super Mario Bros Super Show, a cartoon series produced on order of Nintendo of America by Haim Saban and DIC Enterprises (the same ones who would give us “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”, “Captain N” and “Inspector Gadget”) that ran from September 1989 till December of 1989. Using the first two Mario Bros games for the NES as basis for the character design of the show, the show itself had otherwise little to do with the games. Ignoring the live action segments, the actual animated episodes would have plots in which Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach (the later going by the then American official name of Princess Toadstool) traveled into whatever territory and had to deal with Bowser (or King Koopa as he was known) in a plot that had elements of some book, movie or anything else to parody.

In addition the show would later have Legend of Zelda based animated segments, of which 13 were produced. Those featured Link living in Hyrule castle with a more active “power woman” Princess Zelda and a fairy companion named Sprite and the two having to deal with Ganon, who was more of a dark wizard than a warrior based demon.

Overall, the shows were not really all that great compared to other stuff that existed cartoon wise, with some aspects of the characters feeling jarring nowadays. But honestly, for the sake of this article, I watched some of them and frankly they were not that terrible. They were typical 80s cartoon fanfare, which among other things included some animation errors and dumb slapstick. Especially the Mario segments were very slapstick heavy and Mario and Luigi were mostly characterized by Luigi being a bit of a scaredy cat even before the games did show him like that, Mario being rougher than you would think and dumb jokes about Luigi and Mario loving pasta and other Italian dishes. Because you know, Italians are only known for their cuisine!

The Zelda segments also had a bit of an “odd” character dynamic imagined for Zelda and Link. Zelda was a bit of a jerkass commanding bitch and Link could be a horndog trying to always flirt with her or trying to get a kiss.

There is one moment in an episode for example, where Zelda sits on Links bed after just having stopped some condor from stealing a piece of the Triforce guarded in Link’s room. Right then Link enters the room, sees the Princess sitting there and immediately says “smooching time” and tries to jump her to make out.

Minute 3:15 – 3:20 more or less Yeah, I think Pepe le Hyrulian would not really sell well with more modern audiences and sensitivities.

All that said, I can understand people having a soft spot for the show and enjoying it unironically. It is just that I think most of them would also be intelligent and understanding enough to see, that these shows did NOT give the ultimate interpretation of who or what these characters and their games were. Truth be told, even back then those things weren’t really acknowledged by Nintendo. Sure, Nintendo of America may have given the okay to do those things. But in Japan, global headquarters gave more or less a rat’s ass about it. They were busy making the NES and Gameboy profitable and worked on Mario Bros 3.

Truth be told, the most “characterization” Mario even got in Japan at the time was as followed: Shigeru Miyamoto thought he should be Italian and from New York. The former because he “looked” Italian to him (as a result of the mustache), the later because Donkey Kong, the game Mario originated from, was inspired in part by King Kong and King Kong is set in New York. Mario didn’t even have a name originally, having been known by Jumpman once. The origin of his Mario name is, that after Minoru Arakawa (president of Nintendo of America at the time) got into an argument with a real estate developer named Mario Segale, who Arakawa owned rent money, the game developers decided to name the character Mario. Which may or may not have been meant as a “take that” against Mr. Segale. But if so, it’s one that backfired.

But I digress. Point of that entire elongated history lesson is, that Mario and Link were in terms of characterization mostly defined to some 80s kids, by their depiction in the American cartoon, which had however very little in common with what the games were about. It was e.g. the cartoon who popularized heavily the entire idea of the brothers being from Brooklyn and having been transported via a magic pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom, while in the actual games, such a backstory was never really given. As evident by even the actual American instruction manuals for Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 I checked out online for this. Look them up.

And again, most people, even the kids, could accept that the animated show and what the games were, differed.

Then came the 90s, and with more titles under their belt, Nintendo of Japan decided to flesh out their mascots more to increase their popularity, resulting in Mario, Link and others getting “official” personalities as shown by their behavior in games and not just the inofficial ones via non-canon foreign material. And again, most kids and people were okay with that. After all, the games were what really mattered to them in the long run. Plus I think that as long as the games would simply “capture” the spirit of whatever they liked in the characters iand games n the first place, they would be okay with it.

But not Andrew Dobson.

Born in 1981 and likely not owning a NES up until the cartoon aired, he jumped onto the show as an eight year old and became a fan of it. In fact he enjoyed the Zelda cartoon so much, even as an adult he would draw fanart about it

Nothing at all wrong with that in my opinion. You like something, you have the ability to create fan content for it, go for it.

But as we more or less already established via the Howard and Nester comic, Dobson was as a person dead set that only the thing he liked or was first exposed to counts and not whatever others thought. Something that supposedly may explain why he genuine hates Bowser Jr and Yoshi, as evident by these tweets made a few years after the Localization comic was made.

And yeah sorry, but how can one hate Yoshi? Yoshi is an adorable pet dinosaur you can ride. You know how many kids would have loved someone like that in their life? Gues if Yoshi was less into vore and more into inflation, Dobson would have liked him more.

Speaking of the comic -and to finally get back to it- even Dobson admitted years later that the entire point of it is to simply piss all over Nintendo and that he was annoyed that his “beloved” American continuity got erased in favor of the “dirty Japanese” one. Despite the fact that the Japanese one is, as he himself admits, official.

And boy does he take the piss on it. To the point I want to call him R. Kelly.

So lets dissect how his stand is just the typicla strawman affair, unfunny and at times quite frankly outright homophobic, sexist, hypocritical and racist.

First, the art. As always, it is just “great” to see the degree in animation being fully utilized here. No background but skyblue, everyone looking more like a doodle, the use of the fillbucket, the director having 5 fingers on his hand in the second panel, but four in the fifth, getting the numbers of fingers on Mario completely wrong, missing out on Peach in the last panel and so on… brilliant! How come Disney would not hire someone who could draw like that! Oh right, because standards. Though those have gotten quite low over the years

Every single person working on this needs to be blacklisted.

But of course, the true brilliance comes through the writing. Starting with the strawman executive coming off as if what he does is something new. That he is the “evil soulless corporation” who doesn’t care for his employees and creations true personality and forces them to fit into some mold for the audience to enjoy. The “audience” and consumers also being more or less indirectly insulted by the way Dobson presents the entire affair, as he seemingly wants to blame “those damn kids” for ruining his favorite childhood characters.

But Dobson, I thought you loved corporations hating on fans.

Then we come to what the characters are supposedly changed into.

(warning, upload of the comic for the third time, so you cna always see what I refer to)

First, Mario being no longer from Brooklyn and that he is supposedly an Italian stereotype. As a non American, I have to ask: Why is it so important that Mario has to be from Brooklyn? I get the feeling the only reason people like Dobson or Moviebob care about it, is because they want to deep down culturally appropriate the character. Assure he is in some way of American culture and doesn’t belong to some “dirty, foreign country”, even if they have to go for a compromise and make him a dirty half blood Wop. I mean, I will say this: Yes, Mario has an accent that is stereotypical. And? I take a stereotypical accent and being otherwise a determined but friendly everyday hero over him being stereotypically obsessed with pasta and no personality conveyed through his actions aside of being a bit mean and bossy to his brother, as was the case in that dang cartoon.

The thing here is, Dobson was genuinely convinced that Mario’s portrayal as given by Charles Martinet, Mario’s VA from the early 90s up until August of 2023, wasn’t just stereotypical, but also racist, harmful and culturally insensitive. Something he believed even back in 2017 and resulted in a minor twitter meltdown

Look, I will say this here: Yes, Martinet’s voice for Mario is kinda stereotypical. And I did my research. Unlike Martinet, Lou Albano, the original voice of Mario in the Mario Bros Super Show, was actually of Italian heritage. Born in 1933 in Rome, having immigrated to the USA shortly after he got baptized in the Vatican (you can’t get more Italian than that!), he certainly was more authentically Italian than Martinet, who was born in California. Heck, Martinet’s father is actually French and he spend more time in France in his youth than in America or Italy. The story of how Martinet got his gig as Mario is also well known and painted by a rather stereotypical joke involving Italian food.

But to paraphrase the twitter user Dobson argued with, I think that all things considered, Martinet gave Mario and all the other characters he voiced over the years just a certain warmth and fun to their personality with the way he delivered his lines, that he managed to convey and define the cartoonish true nature of Mario and Co for many generations to come. And even now that he has been retired from the role, he is still a name recognized for the character. A character no one, not even freaking nationalistic Italians, seem to have a problem with. So, mangia un cazzo, Dobson. You sound just like the assholes who tried to get rid of Speedy Gonzales and in doing so pissed off all of Mexico.

Next the way he talks about Peach. Okay first, the Popeye arms are again just something from the cartoons. Or at least he believes it cause…. Well

Does that look like Popeye arms?

Second, he is essentially saying that Princess Peach, unlike the cartoon version, is a bimbo. Why, because she is blonde and you have some sort of deep seated hatred for blond people? Also, Peach hasn’t fought with Mario together in really any NES videogame either, Dobson. Oh what, Mario Bros 2? Aka the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic? The way he talks here about Princess Peach is just utterly sexist, as he essentially devalues Peach as a character, just because she plays a damsel in distress often times. Which doesn’t even necessarily mean, that she isn’t a badass in her own way, even in that role. I mean, she is still the sovereign ruler of an entire nation and in Super Princess Peach -which seems to be the game he references when it comes to her being “over emotionally”- she saves the day all on her own. Sure, she is emotional in the game, but the entire premise of the game is centered around everyone’s emotions going haywire along Vibe Island, including the villains. Bet Dobson hasn’t even played the game back in 2006 and just went off on some shitty rumor. Not to forget that this statement is utterly false. Peach has also been a great supporting character and fighter in games such as Super Mario RPG and Super Paper Mario, which were released BEFORE that comic. And nowadays she is also known as a great character in stuff like the Mario + Rabbids games plus she will get her own upcoming Princess Peach: Showtime game for the Switch. Lastly, let us not forget every game where, even if she played a damsel, was still important to the plot by defying the villain as best as she could. Not to forget the current movie, in which she still kicked ass while going out all in pink.

So, after he has been racist towards Italians indirectly as well as sexist towards women embracing their brand feminity (boy, don’t want to know how 2011 Dobson would have then reacted to the Barbie movie of 2023), let Dobson be judgmental about anime fangirls and also rather homophobic, by the way how he tries to tear down “modern” Link.

There are four things I hate the most about the Link panel, which make it frankly in my eyes the one where Dobson’s hatred and own nastiness really shine through.

First, the accusation that the “changes” to Link’s design past “Link’s Awakening” can be attributed to anime fangirls. Showing both his true hatred for women when they don’t fall in line with his views and his stuck up shitty opinion about anime fans and combining it with latent misogyny. Look, I have seen thirst anime fangirls myself a lot over my lifetime. But they were not the demographic to “ruin” Link. If anything, I think that the popularity of Cloud Strife in general with others may have slightly influenced Link’s design for Ocarina of Time. Which in itself also had been in development at least since spring of 1996, till its release in November of 1998. And even then, that is a stretch I came up with, cause in my opinion someone in the development team likely just thought “Hey, what if we move on from the more cartoony look of the late 80s and early 90s and try some “darker” fantasy elements, without going full Berserk?” And that is how we got Link in that game. Because of some developers trying to appeal design wise to a general audience, not just a random group of made up strawmen. You want to see games pandering to actual Yaoi fangirls aesthetically? Play Enzai or Twisted Wonderland.

Second, again his hatred towards blond people. I really would like to know where that comes from, because I doubt it was only related to some random bully in school being blond.

Third, the way he uses the word effeminate and describes post Ocarina of Time Link essentially as “nonthreatening”.

For starters, considering Link rams his sword into Ganon’s skull in Ocarina of Time and slashes away at many of his enemies, which is way more threatening and violent than just poking them with a stick in 2D overhead view, I wouldn’t really consider him “non threatening”. I like to call him and many of his future incarnations, badass as fuck. Even the cartoonish, childlike Link from the Wind Waker continuity, who didn’t just stab Ganon in the head, but put his sword in there for good. It also is kinda laughable how Dobson uses the word “non threatening” in a negative manner, seeing how over the years ever since he sucked off Steven Universe, he would whine on twitter and other social plattforms again and again how males in media are always resolving conflict only via violence and are not in tune with their emotions. In other words, he once considered being more or less pacifistic a negative trait.

Also, “effeminate”? Okay first, Link looks like this in Ocarina of Time…

What exactly looks “effeminate” about male Link here, or at least let’s say more “effeminate” than for example in a character like this?

Second, we all know that if Link all off sudden looked more like Guts from Berserk or the protagonist of DarkSoul (you know, more “manly”), Dobson would throw enough of a hissy fit, he would likely come back from his sabbath and whine how Nintendo is embracing toxic masculine traits in his characters. All while also blaming PS3 games for some reason for that.

Third, how exactly would Dobson define effeminate here? I mean, the term is already defined as being derogatory, the most common definition I found by Merriam-Webter online being as followed

Effeminate: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner

Effeminate: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement

So, Andrew “I hate all men” Dobson, has a problem with a character not being “typical” or stereotypical manly male? The same guy who praised the She-Ra reboot for its portrayal of Bow and fucking worships that fat fuck below as one of the best protagonists in a cartoon of the last decade…

Has actually deep down a problem with people embracing more female interests, qualities or just looking more feminine in appearance, even though the later may not be by choice but rather genetics? All while also having the audacity to say then this years later?

I find this just genuinely hate- and hurtful. Not just a simple complaint about a design choice regarding his supposed favorite fantasy game hero, but a “deep cut” towards people who just enjoy things not considered “stereotypically manly” or may feel not comfortable falling in line with gender expectations. I mean, what? Is a man now supposedly not manly in Dobson’s eyes because they like musicals, sweets are capable of showing empathy and other emotions or like to dress up in certain ways or take care of their appearance?

It is just disgusting to me, because I know people, both male and female, who had to deal with bullying and name calling a lot simple because they didn’t quite fall in line with expectations by others or struggle with their own identity partly because of expectations vs reality. And as evident by THIS comment TheHypocrisyofAndrewDobson received once it isn’t just “a joke” to people genuinely affected by that sort of mentality. And again, this derogatory use of the world and complaint towards “modern” Link comes from someone who years later would whine about toxic masculinity, put women on pedestals even if they are abusive, likely jerked it off to Link in Gerudo gear following Breath of the Wild and in the biggest ironic “twist”, loves the cartoon incarnation of Link, whose catchphrase is “Excuse me, Princess” and needs a restraining order as much as Warner Bros gave Pepe lePew.

And to finish this panel off (yes, we are still not at Samus), of course the next complain is how Zelda and Link are “no longer love interests” … now I apologize in advance towards any moderate shipper out here, but I am going full snarker mode now for this part. Okay?

Dobson… the fact that you cared so much about shipping two fictional characters in a series of children games, for a console primarily played by kids, while you were being in your 20s and above is pathetic as shit. I know that you have no one in life who genuinely loves you, because among other things you are incapable of either feeling or identifying true love while also being a selfish little shit, but to be so thirsty for affection that you project that need on some pieces of data or lines of color, makes you a bigger loser in my book than any republican who lost the primary against Donald Trump in 2015. The fact that you look at a piece of fiction and your immediate thought is “oohh, these two characters together would look very cute hugging, kissing and doing things I touch myself to at night”, while things such as plot progression and character development likely play second, third or fourth fiddle, only confirms to me that shippers (at least the once acting like you in that regard and other fields) are a fucking blight on any fandom and the world at large.

Now with that shit vented, I once again apologize for going that far, even for “comedic purpose” towards the people who actually can recognize when they go just a bit too far with shipping. But this isn’t just annoying in regard to this comic, it is annoying with Dobson in general. If you are even remotely aware of how he treats the LGBT subject for real as well as what he truly enjoys about Legend of Korra and Miraculous Ladybug, you know he is thirstier than someone stranded in the Gobi desert. Just look at his pic of Zelda and Linkle he made in honour of Hyrule Warriors.

I can kinda taste his urge to touch himself there.

To me it is just dumb to define any story out there and the characters in it by simply “are they getting together or not” because romance to me in storytelling is an additional flavor, not the main ingredient. It is one reason I really do not like Miraculous Ladybug for example. And the fact that Dobson seems to define Legend of Zelda a lot as a franchise by the “shipping potential” of Link and Zelda as implied by that panel, irks me in all the wrong ways.

I mean, for the most part the appeal of the Zelda games isn’t the “romance” between the two, it is traversing the land of Hyrule and saving it from evil while going on a big adventure. And let us be real here, Link and Zelda weren’t really an item pre-Ocarina of Time either. In the NES and SNES games they were essentially strangers to each other, with one filling the role of damsel in distress even a bit harder than Peach did. After all, Peach may be a princess, but she actually rules her kingdom. Zelda on the other hand is daddy’s little girl in those and other games post 1998. And the relationship they had in the cartoon, the one Dobson likes to call a “may they, won’t they” thing is in my opinion not cute, but toxic. She is a demanding bitch that calls him names at times, he is a horndog who needs a lecture by Sexual Harassment Panda and none of them improves character wise over the show.

What a misogynistic piece of shit

There is a reason I consider Tetra, Zelda from Skyward Sword and the “Wild” Zelda the better interests, because not only do Link and Zelda here have better chemistry and are both nicer and more respectful to each other in a manner, they also support each other in very heroic ways. I mean, Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom willingly sacrificed her own conscious just so Link can have a shot at defeating Ganon and saving Hyrule in the future, while Link wants to do everything to save his friend. If that isn’t impactful, tragic and has so much romantic potential, I don’t know what else would count.

But hey, supposedly the cartoon is better. And the 365 Days Trilogy is a great love story with no unfortunate implications involving sexual relationships and abuse. *snark*

And then it is Samus turn. And I really have to wonder, if Dobson ever even played a Metroid Game before Other M anyway, as he hates games with scary elements and FPS.

Aside of once again whining about changing the hair color (Dobson seems to be something of a reverse Aryan enthusiast), he acts as if the addition of the Zero Suit in Metroid was a cardinal sin and “sexist crap”, to entice more men to playing her game.

Okay… for starters, the Metroid games were already enjoyed by a huge male demographic long before that or before even Metroid Prime. Samus wasn’t a “played by females thirsty for representation” only character, as that comic seems to imply. She was considered a female badass hero from the moment she first appeared and her design is deliberately inspired by Ripley from Alien. And skimpy? Again, Dobson doesn’t seem to know what certain words mean. Skimpy would be when the outfit would show more off her skin or was barely there. This is a skintight jumpsuit, that also has a function in the game as a less movement restricting suit compared to Samus armor. Heck, just watch this video, that guy gives some decent explanation on the suit itself.

And yeah, I can agree that in certain cutscenes more so than the actual game, it does put quite a bit of emphasize on Samus “attributes” so to speak. But are we really trying to insinuate that the Zero Jumpsuit is more sexist than the character stripping off to her underwear as was the bonus ending content of the initial Metroid games?

And if the issue is that the skinsuit makes Samus more “sexy” and that Dobson does not want to see sexy characters in Nintendo games…

He should reevaluate the fact that he enjoyed the above later.

There is also this little tweet I found after the fact, Dosbon would make later in 2015, where he actually more or less confirms the idea, that he thinks the Japanese only care for Samus in a “sexy skintight” manner, by making this dumbass “joke” comparison

Ignoring the fact btw, that the pic on the left was drawn by Samus original designer Hiroji Kiyotake. Again, Dobson trying to discredit the Japanese. And don't get me even started that he enjoys Other M or takes more offense to the shoedesign of Samus in Smash Bros than anything

Finally, and to wrap this thing up, we reach the final panel, showing the executive declaring that the “old” stuff shall from now on be brushed off like Dobson tried to brush off his fetish artist days, all while the “new and improved, but truly despicable” pretenders of his favorite childhood heroes are behind him. Mario lobotomized to say MAMA MIA while his eyes look like he is possessed by the retardation of Talus, Link being a “silly girl who makes silly movements with her hands and likely just wants to hang out with cute boys”, while Samus looks pissed and just wishes she was in something less degrading for her than this comic. Like Other M.

Honestly, this comic just stinks of loser entitlement and as stated prior, toxic nostalgia. Dobson has never really been a creator of decent stuff, only a consumer who demands the next product as soon as he hungers for it and will be utterly judgemental to petty and spiteful degrees, when he doesn’t get what he wants or suddenly thinks he sees something “problematic” to it. And to him, already the fact that stylistic choices and aesthetics changed over time, a natural progression of things if you ask me, is “problematic” in his eyes. Dobson would have rather had for Zelda, Link, Mario, Samus and Co to be undefined postholders he could have projected himself on, or outdated 80s stereotypes and toxic men, because that is the first thing he was ever exposed to when it came to those characters. Why not go even further, Dobson? Erase the Switch, the Wii and any other game console post 1989 from history, so that gaming itself never evolves past the 8-Bit era. Let’s destroy Pokemon, God of War, Kirby, Sonic and many other franchises and characters, because they are not the “true heroes of the Golden Age of gaming”. Let’s see how you will like that, when they come for your beloved Skyrim.

Bottom line, Dobson is a nostalgic pig, stuck in a past he looks at through rose tainted, grease covered glasses and this comic more than anything written before and after that embodies the mentality quite as well. And even though he tried to play it off as a joke, anyone with half a brain saw through what it was really about. And they made Dobson know, partly through less words than I used here, why they thought his opinion and by extension he, sucked.

Dobson wasn’t just playing the overzealous Nintendo fan for shit and giggles. He was, this overzealous, almost destructive and utterly disrespectful fan, who believed in the superiority of his favorite childhood toy over the consoles of others, even if that included pissing off his own “kin” or accussing Nintendo of being problematic dirty foreigners. Just look at anything he would type in regard of Super Smash Bros for the Switch, like how pissed he was at the fact he had to put effort into getting his favorite character to play as. Essentially insinuating, the game and people enjoying it were crap, just because he was biased towards fighting games to begin with. And look, being critical of aspects of a game, is one thing. But some of the things Dobson found to complain about? Pathetic, childish and utterly irrelevant in the bigger picture of anything

I want to punch him in the throat for this voice alone...

And if you think Dobson being an opinionated Nintendo fanboy is cringe, wait till we get to him being an opinionated PS3 hater.

But before that, I want to tear at least one of his shitty Zelda opinions a new one…

[imnottheonlyone]

what happened to high school?

When I was young, I thought high school students were so cool and grown up. I watched as they started driving, dating, having sex, and going to parties and I couldn't wait to be that fun age. Now that I am in high school, where has the fun gone?

As people have realized, generations are starting to look younger and younger. When you imagine a senior in high school, you often don't imagine the people that I go to school with. Their baby faces haven't gone away and the growth spurts have not hit yet. Part of the appeal of high school is the feeling of adulthood and maturity, not only in the classes you take or your social endeavors, but in the way you look. I don't know if it's because there isn't as much of an age gap between myself and a senior in high school now, but when I was little, they just looked so old. I don't see that anymore. 

Also, technology is nowhere near new and exciting. It's a part of our everyday lives and I will resent that for the rest of my life. While it comes in handy for teaching and grading, and Google is a major plus, it shouldn't be our only source of school these days. I rarely get assignments on paper and honestly, I wish they were. I want physical copies and mementos from my high school days. Not to mention, I don't even have a real school identification card. It's in an app. 

When social media and technology was new and exciting, it acted as a third space for teenagers. Like malls and roller rinks in the eighties and nineties, Tik Tok, Instagram and Tumblr are the "hang-out spots" for teenagers in the late 2010s and 2020s. In the early to mid-2010s, teenagers still went to malls and roller rinks to hang with friends while also adjusting to the new online world. It was a place for teenagers to communicate their ideas and express themselves. Now it has become a part of everything. I almost never have conversations where someone doesn't whip out their phone mid sentence

Also, we have no defining trends for our generation. Social media has brought forth something called the microtrend. A song, make-up look or body type will be a trend for two weeks before out short-attention spanned peers decide it's not interesting or cool anymore and move on to something else. While the nineties had grunge and glamor and the eighties had acid wash denim and big hair, the 20s has....leggings? And Utah curls? What I mean is, when you think of the 1990s, a specific image comes to mind. Grunge music and dark eye make-up. When you think of the eighties you picture big curly hair and neon spandex. When you think of the 2020s, nothing in specific comes to mind because we can't decide on one thing. Nothing is interesting or cool enough anymore. We live in such a capitalist, consumerist society that once we engage in something too much, it becomes boring and we have to find something else. Social media and influencers only amplify that. I don't know if it's Gen-Z's push-back on being categorized or defined by anything, or if nothing is good enough anymore. 

And don't even get me started on the music. In the 20th-century, different music trends came and went. In the 70s hair metal and power ballads became huge. In the 80s glam metal, synth, and pop started to materialize and in the 90s alternative rock, grunge, nu metal, and boy-bands made their breakthrough. This overbearing control of the music industry made music a novelty and allowed teenagers to be a part of a subculture. When punk came about in the 70s and goth in the 70s and 80s, it allowed teenagers to interact with another and create relationships because of the subculture they identified with. This made high school the stereotypical version we see in 90s and early-2000s movies. The goths sit over here and the popular kids sit over there. Even in the 90s with grunge and the 2000s with emo. Though to come it seemed “clique-y”, it made making friends and self-expression more cohesive and less stand-out. Even into the early 2010s, those who liked pop punk, didn’t hangout with the kids who like mainstream pop or trap beats. 

With the rise of the influencer and easy access to higher paying or earning jobs, anybody can make music, even if they’re horrible at it. Content creators online put out singles or albums that sample the same beats as everybody else and have the same dense and shallow lyrics, where it is obvious they’re trying to sound deep and meaningful but they’re fully missing the mark. It’s hard to want to claim a genre or use a specific sound or style of music to identify your generation or simply the people you hangout with. New music doesn’t have that power anymore. New major music genres have not been pioneered since the 90s with grunge and nu metal. People that are making music aren’t creative and the creatives aren’t making music. 

The things people listen to and the way that they dress says a lot about them. For teenagers, it has said everything about them. However in the last ten years, social media and technology has ripped those ideals away from us. Nobody wants to be perceived as one thing. They want to be everything and nothing is good enough to define anybody anymore. Tik Tok has ruined the essence and the glowing aura that once was the teenager. 

[gwynndolin]

Kitschke recs, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L by Panchiko

I'm skipping around here for a few reasons, mainly that I couldn't really get into Liz Phair (sorry if you love her!), Sludgefest is fun and interesting as an art piece that I've already listened to, but I don't have much to say about it other than that, and 69 love songs is such a daunting task that I don't have time for AT THE MOMENT.... So I will reserve it for a later date, when I finally feel like I have the fortitude to spend enough time with that album. That being said, I've already listened to DEATH METAL quite a bit before now!

So, my main understanding of this album is that it was initially speculated to have been dropped as a part of sort of an ARG; something about it being a lost media album from the early 2000's that had been found and posted online, but it seems like they were actually a real band? Seems like the jury is still out on the matter, but I can totally understand why it feels like it would be a faked period piece.

It feels remarkably out of place for being an early 2000s album, very ahead of its time in a lot of places, though there are notes of some of the late 90's grunge and early 2000's production sensibilities, in the song "Stabilisers For Big Boys" for instance, the chorus with the blown out vocals over nothing but a simple drum machine and a almost imperceptible bass synth tremolo underneath feels very much like a Savage Garden track with just a touch of some early 2000s alternative grunge, thinking like, Finger Eleven or something like that.

That being said though, I think a decent comparison, maybe not necessarily tonally, but in similar "difference" to the time period would be Of Montreal, mainly in songs like "Laputa" (one of my personal faves from this album, though every time it starts playing I think its Bear by The Antlers for just a moment); the track is a little slower, has a good mix of physical and digital instrumentation and production, just a little bit strange lyrically... Definitely lump it together mentally with Cherry Peel. I also taste some hints of The Bends/ OK Computer on this album too, particularly in "Sodium Chloride", the outro especially reminding me of the outro to "No Surprises". Also, to go back to an earlier review, there's also some Portishead (or, generally, triphop) vibes in some of the songs that opt to use a drum machine, e.g. "Kicking Cars".

My first go around with this record was probably a year or two ago, I think probably around the time I started dipping out of my punk phase to start listening to some more alternative stuff; and started to dip into the 90's a bit more. It actually took me a while to get around to want to listen to 90's and early 2000's; as I was born in '96, a lot of the music from this time is just completely out of my purview for the most part, until about 2007 or so. And, around that time, when I had become conscious about music, I had remarkably insular tastes, I refused to enjoy anything on the radio. My Ipod had like, Linkin Park, one or two Queen songs, and I think an entire Jim Gaffigan comedy special. This kinda sensibility continued into my middle school years as well; I had gotten really obsessed with Motion City Soundtrack and the British Pop Rock quartet, Mcfly and refused to listen to just about anything else.

I think, even into my early 20's, even as I had really allowed my horizons to broaden, I had really held on to this notion that the early 2000's and 90's were an overall Bad Time for music, and just never bothered to really engage with anything from the era. Of course, that's totally not true! Although I will admit, some of the radio hits from then are still absolutely grating, it will be too soon if I hear a Five For Fighting song ever again.

Anyway, where I was going when I started listening to this album, I actually really didn't like it at all when I started listening to it. The point I was trying to make with how long it took me to listen to this era of music was that I had to start allowing myself to appreciate this particular genre, I was coming out of a different phase that was much faster paced and raw, and so the mellow nature of this album was kind of lost on me.

But now that I've had the chance to let it sit with me... I actually really kind of love this album. I wouldn't put it as a personal All Timer necessarily, I think it's lacking some of my particular sensibilities that really make me obsess over an album or a band, but it absolutely has a certain pull to it that kept me coming back, even after I had decided I didn't like it! Which is certainly a hallmark of a Good Album. And at the very least, it deserves to be placed along side the accolades of many of the other excellent albums from this era.

It seems like the digital/streaming releases of the album released with a few versions of the songs originally uploaded to /mu/ with the significant CD rot, which is a fun inclusion for sure, I'm a big fan of things like this. Brings to mind Brian Eno's quote from his book A Year With Swollen Appendices, "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart." though, I don't think I've ever heard any examples of this kind of degradation. Perhaps something to look forward to once CD's fall even further out of the public consciousness, and right back in when the 30 year cycle loops around again.

Fave Tracks: "Laputa", "The Eyes of Ibad", "Sodium Chloride", "Kicking Cars"

Pretty solid 8/10 for D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L. I really expect this album to grow on me as time goes on. Sorry that this review was mostly just a digression on reminiscing about my experience with music in general and not any especially deep analysis! And I thank you for giving me the chance to really engage with it, as opposed to me just listening to it every now and again when my algorithm decides to show it to me again.

[mysterious-prophetess]

Things to keep in mind when writing works set in other decades PART 2!

Part 1—I touched on Tech

Part 2—Culture/Pop Culture

Culture

This part is a potential minefield, but it does bear commenting, so here goes.

Culture has shifted a lot between different decades. Especially the last fifty years.

A lot has happened in the past ten/fifteen years that would be unthinkable in the early 2000's, let alone the 70's, 80's, or 90's.

So, just keep in mind that we—as a society—are different now than we were then.

So, onto a less fraught topic: Pop Culture!

Make sure certain Pop culture things actually existed in whatever time your work is set.

E.G. social media (I consider this more pop culture than tech).

Prior to the late 00's, the only major "social media" was MySpace. Facebook wasn't a big thing until just before the 2010's, YouTube was brand new in 2004, our beloathed blue hellsite(affectionate) didn't exist until 2009, and Twitter(I will never call it anything else) 2013, and TikTok didn't spawn out of hell until 2016. Ergo, any works set before certain years should not have different combinations of these.

One should also check to see if certain books/movies/games/songs/tv shows were out too.

We fans can often know a lot about a LOT of things, and nothing is more jarring than seeing someone in a work set in the 2000's talk about watching a movie from years later.

Slang is something else to consider.

Unless it's part of a catchphrase or particular speech pattern, it can also be a bit jarring. That's why I often avoid using slang, when possible, because it is the quickest way to date a work.

This happened to the 2007 film Juno.

BONUS ROUND—Fashion!

Fashion is also part of pop culture and I gotta say, you really need to double check this too because it has fluctuated the most!

For example, with all the 80's nostalgia, I have to rain on parades because I've seen pictures of 80's fashion from family albums of the era, and the neon stuff they like to push as "totally 80's" was toward the END of the decade and overspilled onto the early 90's.

Again, Tl:Dr—Do the research if your work is set in our world, but not the current day, because it can really show in a bad way.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Also, apparently this... Something that raises questions...

John Leguizamo apparently confirms a new ICE AGE movie is in the works...

That's merely a kernel of a possible announcement. It could all be moot, but... I do wanna talk about what the future of ICE AGE could be...

I wouldn't put it past Disney to barrel ahead with another ICE AGE movie, despite the fact that they shut down the studio that originated the franchise, Blue Sky Studios.

And suppose a new ICE AGE movie comes out a few years from now, as a 20th Century Studios Animation film WITHOUT any Blue Sky logo or mention, because they no longer exist as a studio... Well, that'll certainly sting, for sure.

Interestingly though, ICE AGE did not begin life at Blue Sky. It was originally going to be a 2D animated film that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman would've been involved with, and it was going to be made at the long-defunct Fox Animation Studios. The studio where Bluth and Goldman made ANASTASIA and TITAN A.E in 1997 and 2000 respectively. The latter feature's flopping put the nail in the Fox Animation Studios coffin by the end of 2000, but before that movie came out, ICE AGE was shifted over to Blue Sky once 20th Century Fox acquired them. So, if we do see an ICE AGE 6, it'll certainly suck remembering what Disney did to Blue Sky, but at the same time I understand that ICE AGE could continue either way with or without the studio where the first movie was made. Sad animation facts-of-life things, you know?

When Disney acquired Blue Sky as part of the Fox package from the Murdochs, it was made clear that Iger and all of them saw potential in future ICE AGE and RIO stuff. RIO's the only other Blue Sky picture to have gotten a sequel. HORTON HEARS A WHO!, EPIC, FERDINAND, etc. didn't. THE PEANUTS MOVIE curiously has a sequel happening at WildBrain, but that's because... It's PEANUTS. I just find it neat that the new PEANUTS movie coming out is using the same style and look of THE PEANUTS MOVIE, so it's basically the sequel to that. Albeit, from another studio. Some of the same crew involved.

That BUCK WILD thing will probably be brought up, but I always saw that as what it is: Some direct-to-video/TV caliber thing like RETURN OF JAFAR. It was first envisioned as a TV series anyways, and Blue Sky had no involvement. Blue Sky's final ICE AGE media was that fun little series SCRAT TALES, that was on Disney+. A fitting send-off to a pioneering studio that did not need to be shut down.

The spirit of Blue Sky, I feel, lives on in Annapurna Animation, who got Blue Sky's NIMONA - which was deep in the works when Disney pulled the plug on Blue Sky - and got it to the finish line. ICE AGE and RIO director Chris Wedge, among other notables, are at Annapurna right now working on some neat-sounding stuff.

But no, Disney likes money, many of the ICE AGE movies are among the highest-grossing animated movies. DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS and CONTINENTAL DRIFT each made over $870m worldwide. COLLISION COURSE saw something of a good-sized dip in 2016 ($408m worldwide, half of what the last two took in), suggesting that maybe the juice was running low... But, ICE AGE is now a 22-year-old movie, soon to be 23 in March 2025... Enough time has supposed, Disney probably could ride the sorta SHREK 5 approach with nostalgic late '90s/early '00s kids who grew up on the ICE AGE movies. Boom, instant big buckeroos.

And who would make it? Well, it'd be a 20th Century Studios release I reckon, with animation services provided by like a DNEG-type studio (they finished NIMONA for Annapurna). I doubt they'd have Disney Animation do it, ditto Pixar.

The only animated 20th Century Studios movies that went to theaters, post-Disney buyout, were pictures that were already in the works prior to that... RON'S GONE WRONG, THE BOB'S BURGERS MOVIE. All waylaid by COVID, no less. What else? Nothing, and nothing on the horizon, either.

With Blue Sky's shutdown in February 2021 also came the kibosh of everything they and 20th Century Fox Animation had lined up. Disney also jettisoned their deal with Locksmith, the studio that did RON'S GONE WRONG (which DNEG also provided animation services for), sooo their future pics are either with Netflix (the upcoming THAT CHRISTMAS) or Warner Bros. (BAD FAIRIES, THE LUNAR CHRONICLES, et al.)

The only post-2019 animated features to come out of 20th Century were Disney+ titles, those DIARY OF A WIMPY KID movies, the BUCK WILD thing, and the animated NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM pic. Since Disney has always had Disney Animation and Pixar, and not only shut down Blue Sky, but also Disneytoon Studios back in mid-2018, it just seems like they're not interested in having a third animation studio. But I can see occasional animated movies coming out of 20th Century Studios every now and then, but only if they're from a well-established franchise.

ICE AGE, obviously, is that. So is RIO. And of course a second SIMPSONS movie is inevitable, probably a FAMILY GUY movie at some point. But that's about it... So, if ICE AGE 6 even happens... I suppose that's how it'll happen.

I find it funny how this all came up... A few days after someone did fanart of the original ICE AGE, with the three friends reuniting with the human baby all grown up... Legacy sequels are a big deal now, sooooo... Uhhhh, maybe that could happen? I don't know lol.

Also funnily enough, to go off on a tangent... I've been listening to this song lately...

You might be thinking... What does that have to do with ICE AGE?

That song above is by a group called Rusted Root, off of their first album - CRUEL SUN, released in 1992. CRUEL SUN also had a song on it called 'Send Me On My Way', which Rusted Root remade in 1994 for their album WHEN I WOKE. That version of the song is the one that became a hit single, and the very version that you hear in the mid-movie montage in the first ICE AGE... An iconic folky worldly-sounding '90s song... and ICE AGE was where I - at age 9 1/2 - first heard it...

I just thought that was kind of a fun coincidence, really.

That was THE era of putting pop songs like that into animated movies, or having the hired musicians write songs like that in lieu of theatre-style musical numbers (think Randy Newman on the TOY STORY movies). ICE AGE used 'Send Me On My Way' in the same way the SHREK soundtrack used its more eccentric song choices, the year prior. And by the end of the 2000s, it became a real norm for these kinds of films... Needledrops, as the cool folk say...

[thisaintascenereviews]

Yellowcard - Southern Air (Twelfth Anniversary Retrospective) [Featuring @jakeh2987]

In the summer of 2012, I dove headfirst into the genre of pop-punk. I was familiar with the genre already, having already been a fan of bands like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, and Blink-182, and having heard some stuff from New Found Glory, Man Overboard, and some other random bands, the album that opened the floodgates was 2011’s Under Soil & Dirt by The Story So Far. That album really introduced me to the genre, and I was head over heels for it. I needed something new to listen to, because I was getting bored with metalcore and post-hardcore, but that album opened up a whole new world to me. It came out in 2011, but I think I found it in the summer of 2012, because I remember finding it later.

That summer also happened to have four major pop-punk releases, although they were major to me. All Time Low first dropped Don’t Panic, which was a return to form for the band after going to a major label, but then in the span of two weeks, With The Punches and I Call Fives dropped their debut albums, then Yellowcard dropped Southern Air. I was familiar with them, knowing the title track to 2003’s Ocean Avenue, but that was it. I heard “Always Summer” a few months before the album came out, and I really enjoyed that song, so I made a note to check out the whole thing. Sure enough, Southern Air ended up being one of my favorite albums of the year.

The album turns twelve this year, and I wish I would have done a 10-year retrospective on it a couple of years ago, but better late than never, right? This is an album that means a lot to me, not only for being one of the first pop-punk albums that I got into, but it still holds up all these years later. This record means a lot to me, especially for the sense of nostalgia I get every time I listen to it, but I’m not here to talk about this album alone. I’m bringing along my buddy Jake to talk about this album, as he’s a big Yellowcard fan. I couldn’t imagine talking about it this with anyone else, so to kick things off, what’s your history with Yellowcard, as well as this album?

Firstly, thanks for having me back to do this! I'm always down to talk about Yellowcard; they're the band I credit most with really getting my foot in the door as far as my love of music goes. Ocean Avenue was the very first album I ever bought in the summer of 2006, and I just fell head over heels for it. It was really one of the first times I could call music "mine," so to speak, because up until then, I'd listen to whatever my family was listening to, and that was a lot of 80s hair metal or the boy bands of the 90s and early 2000s. Funnily enough, though, I didn't keep up with Yellowcard, or pop-punk as a whole, until much later in life. My music tastes kind of shifted a bit after I discovered Linkin Park, and eventually I got into a lot of the super big hard rock bands of that era, like Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin. Yellowcard wasn't particularly on my radar for a long time, until one day in 2012. I was in an FYE, just browsing the new releases when I saw there was a new Yellowcard album out that week. I remember thinking "Aw man, I loved Ocean Avenue, I should check this out for kicks!" So, I bought Southern Air that day, and I had no idea that this band was about to change my life again. We'll get into more about what works about this album, both on its own and in terms of Yelllowcard's discography, but man, hearing this thing for the first time hit me like a wave of nostalgia; six years afrer I discovered Ocean Avenue, it was like I was catching up with an old friend, and we picked up right where we left off.

You’re absolutely welcome, man! I’m glad to have you aboard for this, because I know you’re a huge fan of Yellowcard, especially being the band that got you into music. I can completely relate with having music that feels like “yours,” and that’s what Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High was that album for me (despite listening to a few other albums before then, but that’s the one that stuck). Southern Air came out at the right time for me, because I was just getting into the genre throughout that summer, and after hearing a lot about them, I figured I’d check it out, but I didn’t realize how important that album would end up being, especially all of these years later. It’s always awesome when bands can make you feel like you’re catching up with an old friend, especially after them coming back after so long, whether you haven’t listened to them in so long, or they hadn’t released an album in years. That’s how I felt when Fall Out Boy finally came back last year, but I digress. Before we talk about this album, I think we need some context as to where the band was at the time, because there was a lot going on with them for the last few years before this thing. I listened to this as a stand-alone album, but what was the context surrounding this album and what makes it so important in their discography?

So, after they put out Ocean Avenue, and that album catipulted them into siccess, they put out two more albums, 2006's Lights and Sounds and 2007's Paper Walls. Both of those albums I I feel are very good or even great (Paper Walls in particular I think is actually pretty underrated), but they didn't do as well sales-wise or in terms of fan enthusiasm as Ocean Avenue did, and that, combined with the members wanting to take a break for various life reasons, led to a hiatus in 2008. That would last until 2010, and then they would release their comeback album, When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes. I often think because Southern Air is so beloved and turned out so well, this album gets overlooked, but thinking about it for this piece, it almost feels like a beta test for what would come next. When You're Through Thinking really reignited the love for Yellowcard both for the members themselves and for the fanbase, and they had such a great time making that album, it ended up being a pretty quick turnaround to get to Southern Air in 2012. And boy did it pay off for them; Southern Air ended up debuting in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, their highest charting album since Lights and Sounds in 2006, and the fanbase was universally happy and loving the album. I think outside of Ocean Avenue, many fans would consider Southern Air to be the best thing they've ever done, and honestly, I can't really argue against that. I think you said this when we first started talking about doing this, but it really is a lightning-in-a-bottle type of album. Let's get into why this thing works as well as it does.

Yeah, Southern Air is one of those “lightning in a bottle” kind of albums where everything fits so perfectly into place, and there’s no way that it could ever be replicated. Every moving part came together in such a perfect way to make something that is truly one of a kind, and Southern Air is just one of those albums for me. Even without any context going into this, you can hear a renewed sense of energy and vigor that the band seemingly hadn’t had in so long. There’s so much energy here, minus for what I argue to be the emotional crux of the album (and one of the most heart wrenching and unique pop-punk songs I’ve ever heard, even 12 years later), but you can tell they were having a blast working on this, and aside from When You’re Through Thinking, this truly feels like a return to form, so to speak. This isn’t just one of my favorite albums of 2012, but it’s one of my favorite pop-punk albums, period. A lot of the genre is youthful in tone, and it’s not meant to be so timeless, but I’ve found that this album has only aged better with time, both for its music and its lyricism. It just keeps getting better after every year. If anything, this album retains the youthful spirit of their earlier work, but there’s a sense of maturity and growing up that lingers throughout it. I was a year out of high school when this album came out, and I didn’t have any idea what I was doing with my life, but this album felt so relatable to me, because one of its biggest themes is getting older and feeling lost, and that’s a theme I still relate to all these years later. What do you think, though? What makes this album work so well for you?

You know, I think you really hit the nail on the head when you talked about the youthful energy mixed with this almost world-weary maturity that makes Southern Air work so well and why it's held up as well as it has. The themes of growing up yet feeling uncertain of where life is going or being afraid to take that next step I think is something almost anyone can relate to, especially at our age. So often, there's this pressure to have it all figured out by the time you hit your 30s, and as someone who turns 32 in December, this album really cuts to the heart of that. "Here I Am Alive" is the song that really drives this home for me; it's a song about being unsure of what's ahead, but ultimately being okay with that and being ready to take that on. You alluded to it earlier, but we also gotta talk about the song "Ten," because man, what a gut-punch this one was when I first heard it, and even still now. The song was written about vocalist Ryan Key's then-girlfriend suffering a tragic miscarriage, and when I was listening to the album again for this, I had this thought about this song that I hadn't really thought of before; it's an incredibly emotional song on its own, but within the context of the album, it's a sort of flip on its themes, talking about what could have been and being heartbroken that he'll never get to experience those things with his unborn child.

But even outside of all that, the band as a whole is just in top form here. Southern Air was actually the last album (not counting the acoustic version of Ocean Avenue they would release a year later to celebrate its 10th anniversary) featuring their longtime drummer Longineu Parsons III, and you can tell he's having an absolute blast on this thing. There are so many cool little drum fills he does on this album that always get me hyped when I hear them. The band's secret weapon, violinist Sean Mackin, also has plenty of moments to shine; that solo he has on "Always Summer" really brings that song home. And vocalist Ryan Key had never sounded better than this to that point. I always really liked Key as a vocalist, but here, he's still got that youthful energy in his delivery, but he'd also really improved as a vocalist, and he really sells the emotions in these lyrics, especially on the aforementioned "Ten."

Ryan Key is certainly an integral part on why this album works, and I already mentioned the lyrics a bit, as well as the themes of growing up, getting older, and wondering where you’re going and where your life could be headed, but “Ten” is what I referred to as the emotional crux of the album, especially for what you said about the song flipping those themes about an unborn child and what he would be missing out on by not being born into this world. Miscarriages are a very taboo topic already, and certainly not spoken of in the pop-punk scene, but it brings a lot of the themes of the album together. Key as a vocalist is a big part of why this album works as well as it does, because he’s got such an energetic and invigorating delivery that sucks you into his woes and revelry. His delivery is youthful, but world weary, so it has that nice balance between jaded and naive.

The rest of the band is killer, too, and I think this album works so well for me, personally, because it’s the perfect distillation of their sound, but a modernized and mature version of it, albeit at the time, anyway. I also think they made this album knowing full well they would never be a full-fledged pop-punk band, and it might seem to be a farewell to their old sound, at least until their latest EP from 2023. Even then, that EP certainly does not try to top their classic material, let alone this album. Their last couple albums before their hiatus were some of their more adventurous albums, and they dove into stuff that they hadn’t done before, so this feels like a farewell to their youth, both literally and metaphorically.

Before we close this out, I have one final question to ask, and we can discuss a bit — I know you said was a fan favorite, but where do you rank this among their body of work, let alone would this be a good album to recommend someone new to th band? Personally, this is my favorite Yellowcard album, both for its nostalgia and musicianship. Ocean Avenue is a close second, but I don’t have that nostalgia for it the way I do with this one. I also would say this album is perfect for new fans, because of its immediate sound, and its very mature and adult themes.

It's interesting, because while I think I'll always put Ocean Avenue above anything else because it was *the* album for me, I can't really argue against Southern Air being their magnum opus. It has all the best parts of what makes this band so special, and it's packaged in a modern coat of paint that, like you said, is a pretty good way for someone to get into them. Not to discredit their other work, either, but I do think Suothern Air and Ocean Avenue are at the top, and then it's kind of the rest of their discography. But you know, it's gotta be pretty damn cool to know you've made two classic albums that have stood and will continue to stand the test of time, in two different eras of your career, no less! I will say, though, for this album especially, I think When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes is an important album in that it was a launching pad for what we'd get with Southern Air, and without that initial comeback, we're not sitting here today talking about this album. And for their later mateial, I'm more mixed on Lift A Sail, and their self-titled album is probably not gonna have quite the same impact now that it's not their final release, but they're all very soldi in their own ways and worth a listen. I'm hoping the Childhood Eyes EP ends up being much like When You're Through Thinking, in that it's a great first step for what will come next.

Ocean Avenue is always going to be their biggest album, just for how important it was to the 00s pop-punk scene, but Southern Air has that maturity that Ocean Avenue doesn’t. It doesn’t make that album bad, by any means, but Southern Air hit me at the right time. That’s the best way to go out talking about this album, though — Yellowcard have one hell of a legacy. They dropped two classic albums in a ten-year period, as well as many other albums people love, and how bands can say they have two, let alone one, classic albums under their belt? I’m excited for their future, especially if their future material is anything like Childhood Eyes. That’s a great stepping stone, especially in the way that When You’re Through Thinking was. It’s good they’re back, because the pop-punk scene was missing one of its best bands, even if their later stuff doesn’t quite have the same critical appeal as their earlier stuff. As always, though, it was a real pleasure talking with you about an album we love! There’s never any time I wouldn’t want to talk about this album.

Thank you again for having me! This has been such a great time, revisiting this album in general and thinking about it and talking about it like this. I can't wait to see what we get up to next!

[thenineofus]

Man, the late 90's/early 2000's had the right idea of horror remakes, because for a brief period they were making decently budgeted wacky horror movies based on 50's and 60's low budget films, but they were very loose adaptations and made a great job of taking a base idea and building something else entirely out of it. House on the Haunted Hill (1999), the Haunting (1999), Thir13en Ghosts (2001), House of Wax (2005). They are all so far removed from their original counterparts and yet, such a great time!!!

[tiltedsyllogism]

FAM S4 is coming HELL YEAH LFG fandom ask meme

In an effort to turn my hyperventilating about the S4 trailer in a (slightly) more productive direction, I thought it would be fun for the FAM enthusiasts on tumblr (the few, the proud, &c) to talk about what we love about the show so far and what we’re hoping for from the new season.

you can skip some of these questions if you don't feel like answering them! But if so, and if you tag people, point'em back here so that they have the full list.

non-main cast character you're hoping will return: crossing my fingers for Wayne Cobb, though I'd love to get Bill Strausser and Sally Ride back too. (I’d have said Will Tyler, but he’s already listed on IMDb for 4.1 HOORAY)

ongoing plot line you're most excited/anxious about: Margo's new life -- both what it's like and how she gets out of it (fingers crossed)

characters you’re hoping will finally interact: Danielle and Aleida

these two characters better get to interact again, or I will punch a wall: tie between Margo and Aleida and Margo and Sergei, I feel extremely strongly about both of these

character you're still mourning: Nick Corrado. You deserved better, my dude

fashion/design element from the late 90s/early 00s that you're hoping to see: track suits! (truly grieved that we won't get to see Karen Baldwin in a high-fashion tracksuit)

song from the late 90s/early 00s you're most hoping to hear: "One Week" by the BNL could be amazing if they had the right setting for it

awesome new tech you anticipate: some more efficient and convenient form of mass air transit

who do you think wins the 1996 presidential election? the 2000 election?: I'm convinced it's gonna be Al Gore both times.

your best guess about something that's in the newsreel: some sort of Iraq-Iran peace accord, driven by economic necessity since they can't rely on oil money

Something that probably won't be in the newsreel, but it would be amazing if it were: Prince and John Lennon play a benefit concert together! (Also I really wonder what they were planning to say about Middle-East politics that is now frantically being edited out)

tagging @tinyboatbigshark , @fangirlintheattic , @yamelcakes , @preraphaelite-wombat , @brightdarkly , @philippageorgiou , @reginaldbright , @destinationtoast and @midnight-els, although anyone else who sees this and wants to answer, please do and please tag me!!

[just-antithings]

Sometimes I really do think the years of which people were born play an impact on their views of fiction and their beliefs regarding them.

I was born in 2002, and let me tell you, the world and the internet was not like this back then. When I started venturing into more public sites when I was an older child and actually talking to people and making friends, there was none of this. No ship wars, no raging at people who have ships you don't like, no screeching and demanding purity, nothing. My early days on fandom Wikias, Wattpad, DeviantART, there was nothing like this. There was nobody breathing down your neck, nobody wishing death threats, nobody saying you deserved your abuse, no buzzwords getting thrown around and phrases that used to hold serious meaning being watered down to the point of being damn near almost laughable when you hear someone accused of being it.

Nothing.

I noticed things going downhill around 2016, but I've heard people say it's been a downhill spiral as far back as 2012, a goddamn decade ago. I cannot, for the love of god, fathom how things have gotten this bad. I don't understand it, I just don't! How did we go from Warrior Cat RPs and Saturday morning Cartoon Network to sending gore and wishing harm to people just because they like a different character? What in fuck's name happened to the world?

Maybe it's because I was born into late 90s and early 2000s culture where people just didn't care and were far more sensible and logical. Kids nowadays are coming onto the internet for the first time and seeing all this seething, vile hatred and hostility and thinking it's normal and getting all the wrong ideas instilled into them by the more than borderline cultlike and fear mongering behaviour from antis.

Then again, I've seen antis my age and older, so who knows if the generation you were born into plays any part in it at all.

I just can't understand how it's gotten this bad. And I hate knowing that it's most likely only going to continue getting worse, and that there's innocent children out there, being warped by these people's twisted puritanical black and white beliefs that, essentially, common sense = bad, fiction = real, and that sharing all your personal information online is the only way that people will know you're "good" like them, among so, so, so many other equally as horrible things.

Where did we, as a human race, go wrong? What irreversible tragedy has to happen before people finally get it and do something? Who else has to be hurt? When will enough be enough?

.