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ave-on-main · 8 months

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“Pre-boot Roy's dynamic with Slade is what fanon wishes Dick's relationship with Slade would be” is a bad faith fanon myth.

I’ve seen this statement go around since Dark Crisis ended last year and wittnessed people actually believe it, so here we go: It’s not true.

First of, lets talk about what allegedly makes pre-boot Roy the person that fanon thinks Dick is to Slade:

One panel that gets taken out of context to prove the statement above is Slade talking about Roy as his “ace in the hole” in Titans (2008) which gets equated to Slade calling Dick a “trophy” in Dark Crisis (2022). In context, these two instances are not the same. Comparing them makes no sense. More on why in the Roy section of this little essay.

Another point of contention is that Rebirth Dick secretly works together with Slade to protect the Titans (2016). People claim that is a rehash of what happened when Roy worked together with Slade while Roy was the leader of the Outsiders (2003), but the premises are entirely different. In Titans Dick works with Slade to protect the other team members. In Outsiders Roy uses Slade’s intel and funding without knowing he’s speaking to Slade. He thinks Slade is Batman.

It is also worth noting that the Rebirth version has more in common with the Apprentice arc of Teen Titans Animated 2003. TT 03 came out at the same time Outsiders did. Slade was revealed to be Roy’s contact in Outsiders #21 (February 2005). The first time Slade appears as Batman is Outsiders #4 (September 2003), but it is not known to readers or characters that Batman is not Bruce. The Apprentice arc of TT 03 started in Season 1 Episode 11 (October 2003). The show didn’t copy the comics, nor assumably did the comics copy the show. It could be a weird attempt at synergy to reveal Slade in 2005 but it is unlikely because DC cared very little about synergy at the time. Worth noting though is, that Slade’s role in Outsiders is extremely limited. Once his identity is revealed, he is no longer part of the plot.

Now, in fanon, the Rebirth version of events is largely ignored. If anyone in fandom wants to talk about Dick working with Slade, they’ll mostly use the more thought out version of the show as a blueprint or the Renegade arc of Nightwing (1996). Both comic and show are also actually written by writers who like Dick unlike Deathstroke 2016.

That Roy is important to Rose’s developement isn’t true. She babysits Lian but she barely talks to Roy or any of the adult Titans while she appears in Titans (1999). Nightwing: Renegade retcons that Dick was there while she babysitted Lian, but all Roy does is villify Rose, not once implying that he had anything to do with getting her on the Titans.

Equally as untrue is that Slade is actually obsessed with Roy over Dick. It’s a purely fanon take.

There’s also this conspiracy going around that Slade & Dick stans working at DC are retconning things to make Dick look better, which is, I can’t say it differently, an insane statement to make. Dan Didio erased the Slade-Dick rivalry from existance, so much so that Higgins could not use them in the same story even though he was writing both New 52 books. Seeley & King could merely put Deathstroke into Grayson (2014) as a papershield target practice. Christopher Priest dislikes Dick, which he not only states on his blog but is also obvious in his writing (Deathstroke #4). Interestingly, the people screaming about retcons ruining everything had nothing to say about Rebirth Roy being part of the NTT roaster while Grant attacks the team (Lazarus Contract).

Infinite Frontier ties Dick and Slade together once more, but it is almost all talk and no show. It’s a distant echo of their pre-boot relationship. There was zero build up to their reconnection. Frankly, a Dick & Slade stan would put a lot more effort into it. The only reason DC brought a semblance of their rivalry back was because of Red X nostalgia and it shows. Dick only dons the Deathstroke mask in Future State: Teen Titans to complement Red X and his hunt for Deathstroke in Teen Titans Academy is mention but never shown, not even as a one panel flashback.

Meanwhile Green Arrow is now the first hero Deathstroke fought (Deathstroke Inc. Year One) and Slade encounters Roy soon after (Infinite Frontier: Secret Files #2). DC is still trying to tie Slade to the JL rather than to the Titans.

But what are their actual Pre-Boot relationships?

Vastly different, that’s for sure.

At first, Dick is largely tied to Slade because of Joey and the similarities (skill-wise) Slade sees in Dick. Later Dick’s ties to Slade’s children and what that causes makes respect turn into hate.

Slade gets involved with Roy because of Cheshire and to manipulate the Outsiders by orders of Dr. Sivana.

Roy Harper and Slade Wilson

Roy in Deathstroke (1991)

The first time Slade and Roy properly meet (aka actually share a word) is in Deathstroke The Terminator (1991) #18. They are both undercover and pretend to work with Cheshire.

Jade introduces Roy to Slade, and Jade “asks” for Slade’s help by using what amounts to a slave ring she can reactivate any time to control him. Together with her other underlings they set out to steal nuclear warheads.

Not knowing they could be on the same side, Roy betrays the team by going after Slade. Slade defeats him, and Roy is left in enemy territory.

Roy makes his way back after Cheshire has already nuked Qurac. The destruction makes Slade and Roy temporarly work together to apprehend Jade and reveal their allegiances to each other (#20).

While Roy is on the Titans when Rose joins the team in the following crossover event, she doesn’t interact one-on-one with him. All he does is give Impulse relationship advice because Bart is crushing on Rose (The New Titans #126).

Titans (1999)

Roy and Slade meet when Tartarus attacks H.I.V.E. which at that point is lead by an incognito Adeline Kane but don’t have a one-on-one interaction in thie story.

Their first true confrontation takes place later. Slade’s been contracted to kill Cheshire due to her nuking Qurac. As Slade and Roy fight, Slade mentions Nightwing as a comparison between the two, and even though Roy temporarly gains the upperhand, Slade escapes to go after Jade. (#22)

Rose starts to babysit Lian after the Deathstroke & Qurac incident, but weirdly enough, she barely shares a word with any of the adult Titans. She’s really just kind of there.

Outsiders (2003)

Roy believes Batman is giving him intel and is funding the Outsiders (#6, #11) . In truth, the Batman who he’s been talking to is Slade.

It's when Dick learns that Roy hasn't been talking to the real Bruce, that Slade reveals himself. Slade fights Roy, taunting him about killing him and adopting Lian to make her an assassin. Slade realizes Roy isn't on top of his game and sees the five direct bullet wounds he's received on an earlier Outsiders mission. Taking pity, Slade decides to leave him alive (#21).

In #43 the Outsiders learn that Slade was hired by Dr. Sivana. The mad scientist saw potential in manipulating the team. It was not Slade’s idea to go after the Outsiders.

Titans (2008)

When Slade creates his own Titans team, Cheshire convinces Arsenal to join the team with her. She wants to use the opportunity to kill Slade. Roy pretends to have switched allegiances and joins the team.

Slade knows not to trust them. He uses Roy’s drug addiction against him by switching out Roy’s “regular” drugs with a substance called “Bliss”. (#27)

Later Slade uses Roy as his “ace in the hole” when the Justice League confronts them. He threatens to blow up his ship with a warhead. The League, lead by Dick as Batman, retreats as not to harm Roy. In this case, “always his ace” means the reason Roy is on the team is to be used as a human meat shield because other heroes still care for him (Annual #1).

At the end of this arc, Roy betrays the team and decides against resurrecting Lian and with that stops Slade from resurrecting Grant. Slade swears revenge on him because Roy literally did what the New Teen Titans did. “Killing Grant.” The Titans comic and the entire Pre-New 52 universe end with Roy and Joey deciding to reform the Titans because Dick still believed in the teams value.

Apart from the initial Qurac storyline, there’s no canon Slade and Roy story in which Dick doesn’t at least get mentioned.

Pre-New 52 Dick Grayson and Slade Wilson

New (Teen) Titans

Dick belongs to the six New Teen Titans that Slade originally takes on a contract against (New Teen Titans (1980) #02). Slade contacts the team soon after their first meeting to take them out. Dick plays the voice of reason during that second encounter and makes the Titans listen to Slade’s plan. Slade fails to kill them (#10).

During the Judas Contract, Slade learns Robin’s secret identity through Tara’s spying on the Titans (Tales of the Teen Titans #42). Slade attacks Dick in his office, telling him he won’t kill him if Dick doesn’t resist because H.I.V.E. wants the Titans dead or alive. Dick knows he can’t win a hand-to-hand fight against Slade and manages to trick him. Slade admires how Dick escapes, ascertaining that Dick is the leader for a reason. He’s the hardest to catch because powers don’t make a man. Just like Dick, Slade was the best even before he got augmented. It’s a first for Slade to loose his target. He blames it on being worried about the contract.

While Adeline and Joey get in contact with Dick, Slade delivers the Titans sans-Dick to H.I.V.E. (#43). Adeline proceeds to tell Dick how Slade became Deathstroke the Terminator. Afterward Joey and Dick team up to save the Titans (#44).

After Tara loses herself in her rage and dies, Dick concludes Slade and she were manipulating each other (Annual #3).

Dick remains in contact with the D.A. office to ensure the Titans are still going to testify against Slade but a Deathstroke imposter attacks Lilith. Slade’s attorney spins a defense out of the imposter (#53). Gar has his own plans for Slade while Dick and the Titans want to focus on aprehending the imposter. Dick gets sworn in as an expert witness on matters of identity, and he tries to use what Adeline told him about Slade in court, but Slade’s attorney uses Dick’s words against the Titans. Slade doesn’t go on further trial but will remain detained in prison and has a small confrontation with Dick. (#54)

Wildbeests are hunting the Titans and Slade gets hired by Dayton to save Gar and the others. He would have gone after them regardless to save Joey. He ends up searching out Dick’s apartment first, probably in hopes he hasn’t been captured yet (#71). Slade doesn’t realize that Dick is one of the Wildbeests he encounters, and the one who helpes Slade escape from the second Wildbeest.

The Wildbeests realize they have a spy and overpower Dick. Slade catches Pantha just as she finds pieces of Dick’s costume (#74). Slade invades the Wildbeest base, and Joey reveals himself to Dick and him (#75). The two end up fighting Joey, but can’t get through to him. Dick implores Slade to calm down and focus as they escape to Titans Tower. There, Slade stops Pantha when she attacks Dick shortly before the Wildbeests attack the base. Slade and Dick escape together. While Slade can’t believe Joey is doing this, Dick is the more realistic of the two.

Later, Slade gets them out of a tough situation by morally questionably methods. Slade expects a response from Dick but gets a proverbial shrug (#76).

Shortly before their final confrontation with Joey, Slade decides he has no other choice than to kill Joey, which Dick is against. Slade kills his son because he knows the real Joey regarded the Titans as friends (#84).

Slade and Dick meet on the Titans Tower island afterward. Dick notices him, which according to Slade not many are able to do. Dick asks why he couldn’t be bothered to show up at the funeral of the son he killed.

Dick attacks Slade in his grief over Joey, telling him to fight back. Slade does if only to tell him he lost someone too. Their fight ends when Dick admits he doesn’t get how Slade and Bruce can just keep bottling their anger up, he’d explode. Slade tells him that losing control hasn’t done him anything good and that he has to believe he freed Joey. He then shows concern for having injured Dick, but Dick denies his help, and they part ways without anything truly resolved (#86).

Dick in Deathstroke, The Terminator (1991)

Bruce calls Dick to get intel on Slade. While Dick knows how dangerous Slade is, he calls him a good man, to which Slade later responds by saying Dick’s wide-eyed and idealistic. (#7)

When Deathstroke gets into crosshairs with the Justice League and has lost much of his powers, the Titans set out to confront him. He encounters Dick and Koriand’r while he tries to escape. Dick tries to stop him and explains to him that if he’s an innocent man, he’ll stand by his side and help him get free of the charges (#14). In fact, the Titans saw what was happening to him on TV and Dick made the decision to help him or take him down depending on whether Joey dying pushed him over the edge (New Titans #89).

Dick and Slade end up working together when Eclipso tries to take over Earth’s heroes. Slade heads to Salvagion to get information about his current situation where he meets Nightwing, who’s been caught spying. Salvagion isn’t the enemy, though, Nightwing is there to retrieve information about Cyborg’s files to heal his friend. The files were lost when Titans Tower got destroyed.

Dick and Slade fight against enemy mercenaries, who are attacking Salvagion, and figure something is wrong. Dick then hires Slade and Pat to save the Titans.

By 1993 Dick’s appearances in Deathstroke and The New Titans apruptly ends because he had been taken back by the Bat Office. Editorial was quite strict at the time, demanding him to be written out of New Titans.

Slade in Nightwing (1996)

As Dick tries to apprehend an out of control Man-Bat, Slade shows up to do just that with tranquil darts, shooting Dick too in the process (#17). Dick learns that Slade has been contracted to capture Man-Bat alive and knows Slade doesn’t work cheap, so he and Barbara figure out who Slade has been hired by.

Dick ends up fighting Slade on a boat, treading barbs throughout, and ultimately taking Slade out long enough to escape with Man-Bat (#18).

While Dick’s working at the BPD, Dick one day comes home to find Slade in his apartment (#79). Slade reveals that he’s searched him out because he has a contract in town. Dick and Joey were such good friends, Slade feels it’s fair to tell him. Dick asks for the name of Slade’s target, but Slade hasn’t come to betray all of his cards, he’s simply trying to make a deal, so Dick stays out of his way. Dick considers calling for backup, but there’s no one he wants to put in Slade’s path.

During his police work, Dick sees Slade again and goes after him. They have a short confrontation in which Slade reiterates for him to stay out of the way, but Blüdhaven is Dick’s city, he’ll protect everyone in it. Slade threatens Dick and shoots when Gannon Malloy, Dick’s partner at the BPD, draws a gun at him. Dick saves him but gets shot in the arm (#80).

The Batfamily visits him at the hospital, and Dick asks Cass for help with Deathstroke. She fights Deathstroke and retrieves a disc from him that reveals who the target is (#81).

Dick succeeds to save Amy from Slade’s first attack, fighting Slade until he takes advantage of his injury. Dick tells Amy to run, stating Slade won’t hurt him. Even though Slade implies that he will, Slade doesn’t further fight Dick, going after his target instead. Dick ignores his own safety to attack Slade in close proximity again. It allows Amy to get far enough away for Slade to temporarly stop his hunt and punch Dick unconscious.

Dick remains by Amy’s side as much as he can, stopping Slade from shooting her by dropping bills on him and fighting him long enough to tell him that Dick s overbidding the contract put on Amy.

Slade responds by saying that he always knew that Dick had a heart (#82).

When Blockbuster dies some time later, new villains want to take his spot and as Dick learns Deathstroke will be the hired help, he considers how he can stop them while Slade knows his secret idenity (#110). Dick hunts down Westbrook to get into contact with Slade. By the time Dick returns home, Slade has received his message (which leads to the famous shower panel) and Slade witnesses how Dick has gotten involved with the Blüdhaven mob (#111). Dick tries to convince Slade that he is one of the bad guys now, but Slade claims he doesn’t have an interest in seeing Dick be a “selfloathing mercenary” now that he has to take care of Rose.

Dick wishes Rose good luck after both Grant’s and Joey’s deaths, and Slade ultimately decides through Rose’s input to let Dick train her. Rose tells Dick she was a nanny to Lian (paradoxially because he knows. He was there in Titans (1999)). They save Sophia Tevis and Rose tells her father, asking him if Dick gets to have a private life from them, which Slade replies to with “obviously not” (#112).

While Rose and Dick investigate another crime, Slade seeks out Amy Rohrbach, telling her he won’t hurt her because she is permanently off his hitlist. He can still kill her family, though. He is searching for Sophia Tevis behind Dick’s back and confronts Dick with her existence and proof that Dick in fact remains a hero (#113). Rose’s training continues, and while Slade does not trust in Dick’s loyalty, he lets him investigate the villains Slade is currently working with (#114). Slade decides to monitor Dick as he sends out Rose and Dick to hunt Superman. Dick has been given a glove through which Slade can monitor and change his heartbeat as well as hear what is going on. Dick uses the fight to show Rose that the ideology of her father is wrong.

When Dick is later confronted by Slade, who is threatening to kill him, Dick reveals that Slade cannot kill him for two reasons: 1. Slade killing Dick would cause Rose to betray him and 2. that Slade has always failed to kill him and that it never fails to make him mad. Slade lets Dick go, but knows Dick is messing with something too big for him (#115).

After Slade betrays Dick, Dick plants geiger counters in Slade’s house and makes sure Rose learns that her father has been poisioning her with the Kryptonite in her eye. Slade and Dick are fighting during the conversation. Slade tries to stay in control of the situation, but Rose ultimately believes Dick, especially when Slade tries to silence him even though Rose wishes to hear what Dick has to tell. Dick makes sure Slade knows he’ll get back at him someday for what he did to Blüdhaven (#117).

Titans (1999)

This Titans story takes place before their fallout. Deathstroke is fataly wounded by Tartarus and goes to the Titans for help. Dick reluctantly offers him a temporary place on the team, but not without putting a tracker on him (#10) and reminding Slade continuously that if he fights with the Titans, he must follow their rules (#12).

Deathstroke brings Dick up while fighting Roy, claiming Arsenal is no Nightwing (#22) and Rose later becomes the carekater of Lian but hardly talks with the Titans on panel.

Teen Titans (2003)

When Slade defeats the Teen Titans by manipulating several young heroes, the original Titans aren’t happy about it. Dick tells Slade to leave (#45). When he doesn’t, Dick and he fight while the other Titans take on his crew. During the confrontation, Slade taunts Dick, but Dick still stops Cass from trying to kill him.

When Slade tells the Titans they’ll never be able to trust Rose and Joey, Dick replies that they have proven themselves and will always have a place on the team. Slade gets away, revealing it was all a test to see if his children will have a good life with the Titans (#46).

Infinite Crisis (2005)

After everything that has happened with Grant, Joey and finally Rose, Slade blames Dick for his misfortune (#7). (The page this panel is from was apparently accidentally erased in the digital version of this issue. It can only be found in the digital collected edition and the print editions.)

Batman & Robin (2009)

Talia hires Deathstroke to kill Dick by letting him take control of Damian’s body. She states that Slade has a “long and eventful history” with the “foolish young Batman pretender”. Slade has waited a long time to get rid of Dick per his own words (#11). Slade wants Dick to know who is going to cripple him, so Talia intensifies the neural bond for Slade to be able to speak through Damian. They are working together because they have both lost their children to the hero community because of Dick.

Damian is resisting the control, which makes Slade unable to do much more than to reiterate his desire to kill Dick. Dick electroshocks Damian, knowing Damian can handle it, but Slade likely can’t because of his enhanced senses making him more vulnerable while connected through the neural link. Slade goes into shock, and Dick later searches him out after infiltrating Talia’s base to give him payback.

Titans (2008)

Deathstroke makes a deal with Mad Hatter, which causes his group of Titans to cause havoc in Arkham Asylum. Dick, then Batman, stops him from taking an inmate with him (#28). Slade calculates whether fighting Dick is worth it and decides to do so. Dick is still furious at Slade for what he did to Damian.

Dick is forced to let Slade get away to save two Arkham guards but pursues him, getting confronted by the new Titans team Deathstroke is leading (#29). Dick and Roy shortly work together. Dick tries to convince him that he is not a villain, but Slade tells Dick Roy is now on his side.

Slade and his Titans are able to leave while Dick deals with the freed inmates off-panel (#30). Ray Palmer point out to Dick that he is taking the confrontation badly, initially only blaming it on the appearance of Slade, who Dick has fought “more times than any [hero]” (#34). Slade reveals to Roy that he chose him for the team to ensure the League could not act in fear of putting him in mortal danger. Dick gives the order for the JLA to fall back but both Slade and Roy know they’ll still be pursued.

As usual, Dick and Slade share a snarky exchange before the serious fight begins. Dick leaves Slade to Ray while he engages with Roy. The hero Isis stops the fight because they are in her land. Dick makes it known that they should have killed Slade long ago but retreats with the League, giving Roy hope in the process to stand against Slade’s goal (Titans Annual #1).

Conclusion

Fans who enjoy the Dick-Slade dynamic whether at DC or in fandom aren’t erasing Roy to slot in Dick. Slade obsessing over Dick isn’t a new concept. He grew obsessed because their paths crossed many times over the years, and Dick has ties to all three of his children. Slade never felt obsession toward Roy.

If you want your fanon Slade to be obsessed with fanon Roy, and you want to transform canon moments, go ahead, nobody is stopping you, but don’t pretend it’s canon simply to erase Dick.

And before you all come with the Gar argument: Simply because the Gar-Slade and Dick-Slade dynamics came up around the same time does not mean they are the same. Gar and Roy are mostly tied to Slade through one person (Tara and Cheshire). Dick was initially tied to Slade through Grant (as were the other NTT) and then Joey, but their dynamic transcended that to something much more personal and the groundwork was laid by Wolfman himself when he made Slade point out how much Dick's capabilities remind him of his younger self.

The Slade-Dick dynamic is unique because it was allowed to transform and build-upon with each appearance (except for Dixon's). Enemies turning to frenemies then bitter enemies is not a story usually experienced like this in comics. It happens, but it happens as a backstory or under the same writer, not in real time.

#roy harper #dick grayson #slade wilson #arsenal #nightwing #deathstroke #fanon #fanon vs canon #fanon myths #robin #new teen titans #titans #joey wilson #rose wilson #grant wilson #ramblings

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i-m-a-leaf-on-the-wind · 10 months

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hi! just saw your repost of tlsp at columbiahalle, milex bumping their noses, and i remembered this one gif that alex is kind of giving miles a skimo kiss?! they bump their noses. i don’t know which gig this was, but i was hoping you’d know what im talking about 😅

Hello Anon ♥️

Well, they bump their noses A LOOOOOT 😅😂

Maybe :

Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland [26-03-2016]

Webster Hall [11-04-2016]

The Catalyst, Santa Cruz [18-04-2016]

Olympia, Dublin [25-05-2016]

De Montfort Hall, Leicester [31-05-16]

Primavera Sound, Barcelona [03-06-2016]

Flow Festival [13-08-2016]

Sziget [16-08-2016]

I don’t know!???

[edit version]

#alex turner #miles kane #the last shadow puppets #milex #tlsp #eycte #2016 #ask

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Future’

Naomi Alderman burst onto the scene in 2016 with The Power, an explosive and brilliant feminist apocalyptic parable. Now, seven years later, she's back with a chunky, propulsive second novel about a very different sort of apocalypse: The Future:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Future/Naomi-Alderman/9781668025680

The Power was a thriller about a mysterious force that gives women the power to administer violent electric shocks – even lethal ones – from the palms of their hands. As this power races around the world, the status quo is abruptly shattered. Abusers get nasty surprises. The Saudi government topples. Parents of teenaged boys demand sex-segregated classes to protect their sons from vicious girls:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/10/10/naomi-aldermans-the-power-in-which-fierce-power-of-women-is-awoken/

In The Future, we get a very different kind of apocalypse: the imagined apocalypse of the prepper. At the core of prepperism is a fantasy: that the world will experience a cataclysm that requires the special skills and supplies of the prepper themselves. Water chemists who turn prepper fantasize about attacks on the water-supply – not because there's any special reason to expect one, but because if terrorists attack the water supply, then water chemists become civilization-rescuing heroes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared

(And of course, if the world ends in such a way that marauding bandits rove the wasteland, eating their former neighbors, then macho, AR-15-obsessed musketfuckers get to reinvent themselves as warlords who defend the sheeple from "bad guys.")

This is what makes billionaire prepper fantasies just so weird – for most of us, it's hard to imagine how the skills of a billionaire are the one thing we'll need to see us through a crisis. But for billionaires themselves, the necessity of billionaires in rebooting civilization is so self-evident as to be unquestionable.

What's more, billionaires are convinced – more than any of us – that the world is about to end. As Douglas @Rushkoff puts it, these guys want to earn enough money to outrun the consequences of how they're making all that money. This is #TheMindset, the idea that your own position has jeopardized civilization itself, but that also, you must survive the cataclysm, because only you can survive it.

Rushkoff chronicles the real-world fantasies of luxury bunkers patrolled by mercenaries locked into explosive discipline collars in his book Survival of the Richest:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

But billionaires don't just suck at running civilization, they also suck at making up stories about its collapse. One thing that's striking about Rushkoff's ethnography of rich people preparing to outlive the end of the human race is how banal their eschatological fantasies are.

It's not that there aren't any exciting stories to tell about billionaire survival fantasies. The granddaddy of these is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 "#MasqueOfTheRedDeath":

https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death

I published an updated version with the same title in 2019 in my novella collection #Radicalized:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#masque

In The Future, we get a cracking, multi-point-of-view adventure novel about billionaires prepping for the end of the world. Three billionaires, the lords of thinly veiled analogs to Facebook, Google and Amazon, each getting ready in their own way. Stumbling into their midst comes Lai Zhen, a prepper influencer vlogger with millions of followers.

When Zhen becomes romantically entangled with Martha Einkorn, the top aide and chief-of-prepping for one of these billionaires, she finds herself in possession of an AI chatbot that is devoted to protecting a very small number of people from incipient danger. This chatbot determines that Zhen is being stalked by an assassin at a mall in Singapore, and guides her to safety.

The chatbot is a closely held secret among the tech billionaire cabal. It is designed to monitor world events and predict when The Event is imminent, be it disease, war, or other cataclysmic disaster. With the chatbot's predictive powers and its superhuman guidance, the billionaires, their families, and their closest confidantes will be able to slip away before the shit hits the fan, fly by different private jets to one or another luxury bunker, and wait out the apocalypse. Once the fires raging without have died down to embers, the chatbot's billionaire charges will emerge to assume their places as wise and all-powerful leaders of the next human civilization.

As you might imagine, not everyone who finds out about this plan – including various members of the billionaires' families who are fully aware of these rich, powerful people's fallibility – is enthusiastic about it. As we build toward a looming crisis, we cycle between these family members, Zhen and her hacker buddies, and members of an online prepper community where Einkorn is a kind of provocateuse and eminence grise.

Alderman skillfully maneuvers all these power players and blocs into position before detonating the crisis that sets off the book's second act, where we get into some damned fine Masque of the Red Death territory, but clad in Tony Stark mecha survival suits and against a backdrop of total disaster.

I won't give away any spoilers here, except to say that there are lots of twists (that won't surprise readers of The Power, which had its own excellent surprises). But without delving too deeply into the fake-outs, crosses, and turns that Alderman lays, I will say that this is a fantastic and incredibly satisfying comeuppance novel that gets very deep into the ideology of wishing the world would end, and dreaming that when it does, you will finally matter.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/07/preppers-of-the-red-death/#the-event

#pluralistic #naomi alderman #the future #books #science fiction #apocalypse #billionaires #abolish billionaires #big tech #maneki neko #preppers #gift guide

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yoonia · 6 months

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schedules & progress ● 2024

⇝— Updated: June 12th, 2024

⇝— 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 ⇝— 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 ⇝— 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐤𝐨-𝐟𝐢

⇝— 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬

✎ 2024 Blog Insight & Sneak Peek: WIP teasers and summaries

✎ January 2024 writing update

✎ Audio commentary masterpost

✎ New banner reveals (January): 01; 02; 03

✎ Fic poll: March project special

✎ Fic announcement: The Stand-In — Wattpad version

✎ May 2024 writing update

✎ June 2024 writing update

⇝— 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬

✎ A Christmas Fix - 01 02 (M) | Taehyung x reader | Secret Baby!au, Second Chance!au, Strangers to Lovers!au | Part of the Jingle All the Way collaboration | posted: Jan 31st, 2024 — Feb 1st, 2024

⇝— 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬

✎ About Time: Story masterpost | Jimin x reader / Jungkook x reader | Time Leap!au, Soulmate!au, Reincarnation/regression!au | updated: Jan 2nd, 2024

✎ Red series: Story masterpost | Yoongi x reader (feat. eventual appearance of other members) | Established relationship!au, smut | updated: Feb 14th, 2024

✎ Shifters Series: Story masterpost | ot7 | Supernaturals!au, Werewolves!au, Vampires!au | updated: Jun 6th, 2024

✎ Bedroom Hymns | Yoongi x reader | Fairytale retelling, Fairy King!Yoongi, Princess!reader - latest update: chapter xix. visions | posted: June 12th, 2024

⇝— 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬

✎ Nefarious: In Motion - A spin off| Jimin x reader | Sex club!au, Smut | est posting date: TBD

✎ Bad For You: Vice - A Spin-Off | Taehyung x reader |Stripper!au, Stripper!Taehyung, Smut, Angst, Mature theme | est posting date: TBD

✎ Blood Moon Rising p.31 | Jimin x OC | Supernatural!au, Vampire!au, Vampire!Jimin, Werewolf!Reader, Smut, Angst, part of Shifters Series | est posting date: TBD

✎ Alpha’s Inferno | Namjoon x OC | Supernatural!au, Werewolf!Namjoon, Vampire!reader, Angst, Fluff, part of Shifters Series | est posting date: TBD

⇝— 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

✎ Ever a Never After | Jungkook x female reader; Seokjin x female reader | Strangers to lovers!au, Fairy tale retelling!au, Smut - (adaptation from Enchanted movie) - latest update: Ever A Never After: Act 1 | posted: May 21st, 2024

✎ Hot Mess (M) | Taehyung x female reader | Model!Taehyung, Photographer!reader, Enemies to Lovers!au, Smut | est posting date: TBD

✎ Blooming Wallflowers (M) | Namjoon x reader | Firefighter!Namjoon, Single mother!reader, Smut - | est posting date: TBD

✎ Bed & Boyfriend(s) 2: Kiss It Better (M) | Taehyung x female reader; Jungkook x Yoongi; Jungkook x female reader x Yoongi | Established relationship!au, polyamory!au, Smut | est posting date: TBD

⇝— 𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬

✎ G.H.O.S.T: The Hacker’s Tale — Carousel side story | Hoseok x reader | Hacker!Hoseok, assassin!reader, Suspense Thriller

✎ Alpha’s Inferno | Namjoon x OC | Supernatural!au, Werewolf!Namjoon, Vampire!reader, Angst, Fluff, part of Shifters Series

✎ Flux: Blindsided | Jungkook x reader x Yoongi | Established relationship!au, Smut, polyamory!au

✎ Nefarious: In Motion - A spin off | Jimin x reader | Sex club!au, Smut

⇝— 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞:

➛ 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥: ✎ [public masterpost] Patreon guide book ✎ [public masterpost] 2024 fic commissions masterlist

➛ 𝕞𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕝𝕪 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥: ✎ Monthly Writing Journal & Tracker

➛ 𝕛𝕒𝕟𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕪: ✎ [free content] audio commentaries — repost ✎ [fic teaser] The Dark Room II: Decadence — In Motion Side Story | Taehyung x reader | sex club!au

➛ 𝕗𝕖𝕓𝕣𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕪: ✎ [fic teaser/excerpt] Blood Moon Rising ✎ [free content] Red: the series | Visual concept and music playlist

➛ 𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕙: ✎ [special content] Carousel: story mapping — event timeline ✎ [fic teaser] Bad For You: Vice — Side Story | Taehyung x reader | strippers!au

➛ 𝕒𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝: ✎ [special content] Ever A Never After | Pinterest inspiration board ✎ [wip graveyard] So Good | Jungkook x reader | bad boy!Jungkook, good girl!reader ✎ [fic teaser] Ever A Never After : Act 1. | Jungkook x reader; Seokjin x reader

➛ 𝕞𝕒𝕪: ✎ [fic teaser] Ever A Never After : Act 2. | Jungkook x reader; Seokjin x reader ✎ [special content] Shifters Series: story mapping — event timeline

¸¸.·¯⍣✩ 𝔤𝔬 𝔱𝔬 𝖓𝖆𝖛𝖎𝖌𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖕𝖆𝖌𝖊 ¸¸.·¯⍣✩

#misc: work in progress #misc: posting schedule #please keep in mind that the posting schedules mentioned above may change anytime

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seoul-bros · 3 months

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Jikook Week 14 Complete (12-19/03/2024)

Their fourteenth week in the military is now complete. It's time to celebrate this milestone with a look back at this week in 2016.

Most Beautiful Moment in Life Part II was riding high and this week (15/03) the Japanese version of Run was released.

The MV came out a few days ahead of the single's release and..

youtube

behind shots of Jimin and Jungkook were published on 13/03/2024.

Also this week BTS recorded their KBS1 Open Concert (15/03/2024) which was shown on television on 10/04/2026. They sang Dope, Run

youtube

Finally, BTS was gearing up for the release of there Now 3 photobook which was filmed in Chicago in July 2015. BTS released a teaser and a Naver article with a preview of the contents of the photoshoot.

youtube

Watch original content and things start falling into place and the timeline gets a lot clearer. So this is photoshoot where JK is kissing the camera and Jimin is totally endeared.

It's also has the infamous, "I want you" kitchen scene.

TwiX Link

Part 1, Part 2

Post Date: 19/03/2024

#jikook #park jimin #jimin #jeon jungkook #jungkook #bts in 2016

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namor-shuri · 1 year

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Marvel Studios Assembled & Wakanda Forever Podcast: Namor/Shuri + Tenoch/Letitia Moments

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Wakanda Forever [available on Disney +] [w/ time stamps to follow along]

▻ The whole cast comforted and gave Letitia a group hug at San Diego Comic Con as she broke down [Tenoch kissed her shoulder] [0:27]

▻ “We know what Black Panther is but what makes it a Black Panther movie? If we were to do another one….how would audiences recognize it?” - Ryan Coogler [Director] [5:44]

▻ We learn that Namor’s character was discussed to be in Black Panther 2 while the first movie was being written. “In the comics, the two worlds have a great rivalry” - Joe Robert Cole [Screenwriter] [13:25]

▻ Ryan was interested in Meso-American culture for the Talokanil and “…upon research it became more clear that the people of the Yucatán made a ton of sense.” - Ryan Coogler [Director] [14:40] They wanted to give Namor a culture/background different from the comic book version [a white man]. “Their [Mayan] artwork and their advanced agriculture…all of these things that they accomplished, it was a perfect palette for us to delve into.” - Joe Robert Cole [Screenwriter] [16:40]

▻ Namor’s costumes and headpieces are curated from post Yucatec Mayan culture roots. “We used a lot of kelp and things to make the headdress and hand wove his cape, but we kept it pure to what he looked like in the comics.” - Ruth Carter [Costume Designer] [17:50]

▻ Ryan and Hannah Beachler [Production Designer] show us the set of Namor’s cave and explain the time/labor that went into creating this elaborate set. Ryan points to the mural painting of Namor and the Black Panthers fight. “This one’s my favorite one” - Ryan Coogler [Director] [22:25] We learn that the style of art is “Bonampak”

▻ Letitia had to learn how to swim for her role, along with the majority of the cast. “I struggled with it. Ryan called me and he was like ‘Tish, can you swim?’ I was like ‘Sir, sir, I’m in the lab. What more do you need from me coming out of that lab?” - Letitia Wright [Shuri] [26:06]

▻ All of the water scenes were half filmed under water, called “wet for wet”, and filmed outside of the water, called “dry for wet” scenes. The exosuits [Shuri is shown wearing one when exploring Talokan] were real suits that were also filmed underwater and were about a million and a half dollars each [explained by Chris Denison, Stunt Coordinator] [29:40]

▻ A clip of Letitia Wright’s “Screen Test (2016)” from the first Black Panther is shown [41:54] and we learn that Dominique Thorne [Riri Williams] also auditioned for Shuri’s role a while back

▻ The cast had differing emotions/opinions than Ryan about the decision to kill Queen Ramonda [played by Angela Basset]. “When I read that Ramonda was going to die by the hands of Namor, I was very upset. I think I almost cried on the phone to Ryan.” - Letitia Wright [Shuri] [43:43] Ryan and the writers felt her death would be a big “motivator”/ transformative moment in Shuri’s development and the eventual break down of her character to become the Black Panther [her arc]

▻ Ryan supported and pushed Letitia during the whole process of becoming the Black Panther to do her best work and continuously reminded her of who she was and what she was capable of when stepping into the role. Letitia wished Chad could have passed the torch to her himself to do it [46:02] + [55:03]

▻ [Referring to the making of Shuri’s Black Panther suit] “We were working with the design language of silver being representative of T’Challa, gold being representative of T’Chaka, and the little bit of where Killmonger’s coming from…We’re essentially taking those two elements and combining them.” - Ryan Meinerding [Head of visual development] [46:58]

▻ “Shuri vs Namor. We put alot into that fight.” - Aaron Toney [Fight Coordinator] [49:59] We see that a lot of the BTS of their big fight on the desert were shot with different individual sets with Tenoch, Letitia and stunt actors, separately and together. “I’m so proud of it. Shuri’s looking amazing, Namor’s looking amazing.” - Letitia Wright [Shuri] [50:27] Their fighting styles are explained to be very different, where Shuri is more calculated and Namor is more in his body. “With Namor, when it came to fighting styles, I pulled from….cultural aspects like Lucha Libre…asian cultures…I pulled from a style called Baji.” - Aaron Toney [Fight Coordinator] [50:49]

▻ “Processing in a way of expressing her pain and fury towards Namor, she thinks that’s going to be satisfying to her soul and it’s not….I think that’s a beautiful way to complete that arc, to realize that my brother wouldn’t do this, my mother wouldn’t want this for me….We see Shuri become a woman in her own right.” - Letitia Wright [Shuri] [53:00]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Wakanda Forever: The Official Black Panther Podcast [Hosted by Ta-Nehisi Coates]: Chapter 5 w/ Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta, Dr. Gerardo Aldana [available on Spotify]

▻ “What does it mean when Wakanda and Talokan give us a beauty created not to justify enslavement but to celebrate freedom?” - Ta-Nehisi Coates [Host]

▻ Tenoch continues to put the spotlight back on indigenous communities/culture and does not claim to be apart of their experiences. “I don’t practice the culture so it is impossible to name myself indigenous….I’m not pretending to be something that I’m not…I’m just trying to honor my ancestors.” - Tenoch Huerta [Namor]

▻ A fan went to the movies with his Mayan grandma and she began to translate scenes herself while watching the film with him. “The Mayan group in LA said it [the character’s Mayan in the movie] sounds beautiful. You have an accent, it sounds good! They were happy with it.” - Tenoch Huerta [Namor]

▻ “Why are these two groups [Wakandans and the Talokanil] fighting each other? Why can’t they get together and go beat the colonizer?…I am a huge Black Panther fan but I was sitting there and found myself rooting for the Talokanil!” - Ta-Nehisi Coates [Host]

▻ Letitia was bullied in school for her appearance when she was growing up (ex. her size, being African, etc) “I kind of let that go…I talked myself out of the idea that I should be like anyone else.” She found comfort/ amusement in going viral on TikTok. “It’s definitely flattering but I’m really shocked…I’ve never been crushed on before in school…As a black woman, I’m moving into a space where I’m finally being called beautiful but I didn’t wait for them [the media/world] to tell me that at first. I told it to myself.” - Letitia Wright [Shuri]

▻ “This is the highest grossing movie with the lead character as a black woman and it’s you [Letitia]. How does that feel?” - Ta-Nehisi Coates [Host]

▻ “The love that Shuri has for T’challa is the love that Letitia has for Chadwick and that’s intertwined.” Letitia shares her initial hesitancy about doing the film without Chadwick after his passing and taking on the mantle as Black Panther. “I see it as I’m a vessel. I’m a trusted vessel that’s here to honor my brother.” - Letitia Wright [Shuri]

▻ Letitia laughs about fun moments they had on the set of Wakanda Forever. “He [Ryan Coogler] would say Namor and the Black Panther are having a conversation. It’s a big movie. Turn your phones off!” - Letitia Wright [Shuri]

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courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme · 3 months

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The Hateful Eight (2015, Quentin Tarantino)

02/03/2024

The Hateful Eight is a 2015 film, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Channing Tatum and Bruce Dern.

This is Tarantino's second western film after Django Unchained. The film was announced in November 2013, only to be canceled a few months later when its script was leaked online. Tarantino later rewrote part of the script, changing the ending, and started production, which began filming on December 8, 2014 in Telluride, Colorado.

Distributed in the United States by the Weinstein Company, the director opted for a limited distribution starting from December 25, 2015 in Ultra Panavision 70mm film, a format that has not been used for about fifty years. It was distributed digitally and on a large scale on January 24th, while in Italy the two release dates were respectively January 28th 2016 for the film version and February 4th for the digital one.

It was well received by critics, but did not surpass the box office records of its predecessors Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. The soundtrack was entirely composed by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who received an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Critics' Choice Awards for this work.

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datusaguy · 9 months

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All TMNT Shredder’s Revenge Color References - Karai

Been playing Shredder’s Revenge recently due to the new dlc and since I haven’t seen much discussion in terms of references the new dlc, I decided to look into a lot of it myself. This is just Karai’s colors for now and definitely isn’t complete (updated: I have done all the characters by now, check out the bottom of my post for links to all the other posts), but feel free to give me any additional info you might know and I hope you enjoy checking this out.

I wanted to add numerous move references as well, but I don’t think I’d be able to put enough pictures for that and colors so it’ll probably be a different post.

# 1 - Default - AFAIK, Karai hasn’t actually appeared in the 1987 show nor related media (besides Tournament Fighters), so I think this is a new design.

# 2 - Mirage Shredder Outfit - In the mirage run, Karai at one point did don the Shredder outfit which shares a similar color scheme in colored depictions of Mirage characters. Since practically every version of Karai also having some heavy links to the Shredder story wise, it makes a lot of sense that she would have a Shredder pallet.

# 3 - 2007 Movie? - There’s a lot of different things I think this could be a reference to, including Foot Soldiers in general, the IDW design, the 2014/2016 movie Karai, the older 2003 design etc. Slot 3 seems to be for the 1990 movie designs for most of the cast, so as the 2007 movie debatably shares the same universe as the 90’s movies, I think that would make a lot of sense, although she has even less red on her than this in-game color.

# 4 - 2003 Show - This slot seems to be universally for the 03 show and it appears to also be the case for Karai. The blue is quite pronounced compared to Karai in most of the earlier seasons she appeared in, so either it’s supposed to be based on the S7 design or they just wanted to make it more visually distinct.

# 5 - 2012 Show (Mutant) - This one was confusing me for a while as I haven’t actually watched all of 2012 yet, but I have seen enough to recognize her standard design which this almost definitely isn’t. Slot 5 seems to be mostly for the 2012 designs however, so I looked more into it and found out she did turn into a purple and white snake which seems to fit.

# 6 - Tournament Fighters Genesis - This slot seems to generally be reserved for the Rise variations of characters (specifically the turtles, Splinter and Casey), but Karai’s surprisingly isn’t (nor does that color seem to be anywhere in this game). I do like this color variant though.

Also worth noting that I don’t think any of her colors reference the alternate pallet for the Genesis Karai. While an alternate pallet exists, from what I know, she wasn’t playable in the original release of the Genesis version so I don’t think there was any way to see the alternate pallet legitimately (it is available in the Cowabunga Collection however).

# 7 - Tournament Fighters SNES (Alt) - Don’t know why her Alt is listed first when you have all the colors, but it seems to be.

# 8 - Tournament Fighters SNES

# 9 - Aska? - This is by far what I’m most stumped on. The red and gold seems close enough and I can kinda see the blue/purple on Aska as white for her gameplay sprites, but a lot of other art involving Aska tends to display that clothing as a clear purple or blue. I haven’t been able to figure out any other potential reference for this however.

# 10 - Mirage Comics - The original TMNT Comics produced by Mirage were produced in black and white, which this design reflects.

If you have the dlc, this is quite clear given that the survival mode included a “Mirage” dimension which is black-and-white, alongside many waves having comic book panels.

# 11 - NES (General) - AFAIK, Karai never actually appeared in a NES TMNT game, but the simple color pallet and the fact that other characters have actual NES color pallets they’ve used before in their 2nd-to-last color slot.

12 - Gameboy - Essentially the same situation as the NES color.

All other (currently made) Color References posts:

1. Karai

2. Leonardo

3. Michelangelo

4. Raphael

5. Donatello

6. April O’Neil

7. Master Splinter

8. Casey Jones

9. Usagi

#TMNT #teenage mutant ninja turtles #Karai #oroku karai #shredder’s revenge #TMNT shredder’s revenge

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shinigami-striker · 4 months

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Evolution of Knuckles | Friday, 02.02.24

Here's an evolution of Knuckles the Echidna throughout the Sonic video game franchise (since his debut in 1994 with the North American of Sonic the Hedgehog 3) down below.

1994

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (GENESIS, 02/02/1994)

Sonic & Knuckles/Sonic 3 & Knuckles (GENESIS, 10/18/1994)

Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble (GAME GEAR, 11/15/1994)

1995

Sonic Drift 2 (GAME GEAR, 03/17/1995)

Knuckles' Chaotix (SEGA 32X, 04/20/1995)

1996

Sonic the Fighters (ARCADE, May 1996)

Sonic 3D Blast (GENESIS/SATURN, 11/09/1996)

Sonic Blast (GAME GEAR/MASTER SYSTEM, 12/12/1996)

1997

Sonic R (SATURN, 11/18/1997)

1998

Sonic Adventure (DREAMCAST, 12/23/1998)

1999

Sonic the Hedgehog: Pocket Adventure (NEO GEO POCKET COLOR, 12/20/1999)

2000

Sonic Shuffle (DREAMCAST, 11/13/2000)

2001

Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) (DREAMCAST/GAMECUBE, 06/19/2001)

Sonic Advance (GBA, 12/20/2001)

2002

Sonic Advance 2 (GBA, 12/19/2002)

2003

Sonic Pinball Party (GBA, 06/01/2003)

Sonic Battle (GBA, 12/04/2003)

Sonic Heroes (MULTI-PLATFORM, 12/30/2003)

2004

Sonic Advance 3 (GBA, 06/07/2004)

2005

Shadow the Hedgehog (MULTI-PLATFORM, 11/15/2005)

Sonic Rush (DS, 11/15/2005)

2006

Sonic Riders (MULTI-PLATFORM, 02/21/2006)

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) (PS3 & XBOX 360, 11/14/2006)

Sonic Rivals (PSP, 11/16/2006)

2007

Sonic & The Secret Rings (WII, 02/20/2007)

Sonic Rivals 2 (PSP, 11/13/2007)

2008

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (PS2/WII, 01/08/2008)

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (DS, 09/25/2008)

2009

Sonic & The Black Knight (WII, 03/09/2009)

2010

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (MULTI-PLATFORM, 02/19/2010)

Sonic Free Riders (XBOX 360, 11/04/2010)

Sonic Colors (Nintendo DS version) (DS, 11/11/2010)

2011

Sonic Generations (MULTI-PLATFORM, 11/01/2011)

2012

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (MULTI-PLATFORM, 2012)

2013

Sonic Dash (MOBILE, 03/07/2013)

Sonic Lost World (10/18/2013)

2014

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (WII U, 11/11/2014)

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (3DS, 11/11/2014)

2015

Sonic Runners (MOBILE, 02/25/2015)

Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom (MOBILE, 07/01/2015)

2016

Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (3DS, 09/27/2016)

2017

Sonic Mania (Plus) (MULTI-PLATFORM, 08/15/2017)

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle (MOBILE, 09/08/2017)

Sonic Forces (MULTI-PLATFORM, 11/07/2017)

Sonic Runners Adventure (MOBILE, 12/20/2017)

2019

Team Sonic Racing (MULTI-PLATFORM, 05/21/2019)

Sonic Racing (APPLE ARCADE, 09/19/2019)

2022

Sonic Frontiers (MULTI-PLATFORM, 11/08/2022)

2023

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (PC, 03/31/2023)

Sonic Superstars (MULTI-PLATFORM, 10/20/2023)

Sonic Dream Team (APPLE ARCADE, 12/05/2023)

2024

Sonic X Shadow Generations (MULTI-PLATFORM, Fall 2024)

and many more to come soon...

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the-victor-brothers · 1 year

Video

youtube

Another Frankenweenie animatic by StudioRedRobin

Okay, remember the post that I shared long time ago? (If not, here’s a post that I was talking about. https://the-victor-brothers.tumblr.com/post/151447831243/okay-to-everyone-including-theshadowsofevil-and ).

Well, this new animatic video shows a Maypole dance scene, but different from the other version from Patrick Collin’s blog. http://dickiethedolls.blogspot.com/2016/03/deleted-scenes-maypole-dance.html

According to the video’s description, the scene was cut from the edit during the production. Though, from Patrick Collin's blog, the reason why the Maypole Dance scene was cut was because it might be too dark, or the timing was too long.

So, for both of these versions, seeing what happened to Edgar was too dark for a Burtony animated movie itself.

#storyboard #storyboarding #frankenweenie

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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 1 month

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BRUCE LEE IS TURNING IN HIS GRAVE, BUT IT REMAINS A CLASSIC POSTER DESIGN OF ITS ERA.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on cropped and original version of a 1997 original silkscreen poster design for GROOVE MERCHANT record store on the Haight in San Francisco, CA. Artwork (with that infamously hilarious Bruce Lee graphic art) by the late, great Frank Kozik (1962-2023). 97 37 S/N.

Resolution at 1282x2004 & 1112x1831.

Source: http://backstageauctions.blogspot.com/2016/03/kings-of-concert-posters-frank-kozik_9.html.

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cataldodarker · 1 month

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Pitchfork says... (1/3)

01/30 - Elephant

Artisti: The White Stripes

Data di rilascio: 01-04-2003

instagram

02/30 - Silent Alarm

Artisti: Bloc Party

Data di rilascio: 02-02-2005

instagram

03/30 - Fleet Foxes

Artisti: Fleet Foxes

Data di rilascio: 09-06-2008

instagram

04/30 - MY WOMAN

Artista: Angel Olsen

Data di rilascio: 02-09-2016

instagram

05/30 - U.F.O.F.

Artisti: Big Thief

Data di rilascio: 03-05-2019

instagram

06/30 - Return To Cookie Mountain

Artisti: TV on the Radio

Data di rilascio: 03-07-2006

instagram

07/30 - Twin Fantasy

Artisti: Car Seat Headrest

Data di rilascio: 02-11-2011 (prima versione) / 16-02-2018 (versione 'Face to Face')

instagram

08/30 - Strawberry Jam

Artisti: Animal Collective

Data di rilascio: 09-09-2007

instagram

09/30 - AM

Artisti: Arctic Monkeys

Data di rilascio: 09-09-2013

instagram

10/30 - In The Aeroplane Over the Sea

Artisti: Neutral Milk Hotel

Data di rilascio: 20-02-1998

instagram

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Big Business can't stop its illegal, fantastically lucrative gossiping

Seven years ago, I called Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows “the perfect anthem for our times.”

Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That’s how it goes Everybody knows

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/11/11/leonard-cohen-wrote-the-perfect-anthem-for-our-times/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/16/compulsive-cheaters/#rigged

That was just after Cohen died, and while the world seems to want to settle on Hallelujah as his totemic song, Everybody Knows keeps inserting itself into the discourse, in the most toxic, hope-draining way possible. Whenever some awful scandal involving the great and the good breaches, we’re told that “everybody knew” already, so let’s move on.

This current has been running through our society for decades now. Remember when the Snowden leaks hit and a yawning chorus of nihilists told us that they knew already and so should anyone else with the smallest iota of sophistication? Back then Jay Rosen coined a rejoinder to this counsel of despair: “Don’t savvy me”:

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369

Everybody knows. It’s what we heard after the Panama Papers. Swissleaks. Luxleaks. The Paradise Papers. Everybody knows! It’s what the nothing-to-see-here crowd said about Propublica’s explosive IRSLeaks, back in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The leaks revealed the tax-dodges of the richest and most powerful people in America, which were jaw-dropping in their audacity and shamelessness. Sure, maybe you suspected that the 400 richest people in America paid less tax than you — but did you really guess that the means by which they did this was through taking massive deductions on their elite hobbies?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

Maybe “everybody knows” that the game is rigged, but did you know how? Like, did you know that REITs — a tax shelter for mom-and-pop investors who buy an income property for their retirement — have become a primary vehicle for gutting unions at hotels, slashing wages and imposing brutal, dangerous working conditions?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#reit-makes-might

The leaks are cumulative. By combining data from one leak with another, we can build out a far more detailed picture of the conspiracy — and it is a conspiracy — among the utlrawealthy and their Renfields in the law, real-estate and accounting trades to duck their responsibilities and mound ever-more treasure on their hoards.

Take the Jersey Offshore leaks (2020), comprising the internal memos of La Hougue, a fantastically crooked firm of fixers on the Isle of Jersey, one of the lawless tax-crime jurisdictions that the UK pretends it has no control over. La Hougue has a playbook, 11 tactics for lying about your taxes. The remarkable thing about these 11 tactics is how flimsy they are, how easy it is to penetrate their lies. When Parliament says it can’t possibly do anything about the criminal havens in the Channel, remember the Jersey Offshore leaks and remind yourself that not even Parliament is that credulous. They know. Everybody knows:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity

Why do working people think the Democrats are just another party for the ultra-rich? Maybe it’s Pelosi’s relentless opposition to meaningful curbs on insider trading. Or maybe it’s the kinds of politicians that the Democratic Machine likes to rally behind — like Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who raised millions in 2021, in large-money donations from Democratic finance-sector donors in her bid to become the DA of Manhattan. Farhadian Weinstein and her husband have more than $100m in annual income, and yet, paid no federal tax in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2014, they paid $6,584:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/17/quis-custodiet-irs/#trumps-taxes

Propublica isn’t done with the IRS Files. Today, they published a long investigation into ultra-rich corporate executives who buy and sell their competitors’ stock for massive profits with suspiciously precise timing. The data comes from 1099-B filings, which brokerages file with the IRS with each trade, but which the IRS doesn’t share with the SEC:

https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-irs-files-trading-competitors-stock

Here are some examples:

Ohio billionaire August Troendle, CEO of Medpace, repeatedly bought and sold shares of $Syneos — his company’s archrival, timing the transactions with a management shakeup that dropped the stock by 16% in one day, and an SEC investigation that crushed Syneos’s stock by 25%. His precision timing made him at least $2.3m in profit.

Isaac Larian, CEO of Bratz-maker MGA, made $28m trading shares in Mattel, MGA’s nemesis and frequent litigant — during a period when Mattel stock crashed by 57% (!). Larian boasts that “I made a LOT more money shorting Mattel stock than they did running a $4.5 billion toy company.”

Larian’s trades also involved some very precise timing. Sometimes, he took positions just before his own company announced its upcoming products, and others positions immediately preceded major disclosures from Mattel. Larian’s subordinates told Propublica that he is “is a boss with an endless appetite for information about his company and its competitors, constantly grilling subordinates on minutiae about the industry.”

Larian couldn’t explain the timing of these trades. His lawyer told Propublica that it was “false and defamatory” to suggest that he “possessed material, nonpublic information that Larian knew was obtained in breach of a duty.”

Next up is Gerald Boelte, founder and chair of the massive oil company LLOG. LLOG partners with other companies for its oil drilling. Companies like Stone Energy. Boelte bought a huge position in Stone the day before the company’s 2015 earnings report, in which they revealed an increase their reserves’ value, pulling in a 65% one day profit. He’d never bought shares in Stone before.

Boetle told Propublica, “I do not and have never traded on any material, non-public information of competitors, business partners or others… Any implication that I was investing based upon advance knowledge is therefore clearly false.”

Jim Sankey is CEO of Invue. He bought $3.2m worth of shares in his rival Checkpoint, while checkpoint was in secret negotiations to be acquired by CCL Industries. Sankey was already thoroughly connected to Checkpoint, having sold a $150m product line to them in 2007. There’s no record that he’d ever traded Checkpoint before. He made $2.3m. Sankey says “he did not know Checkpoint was going to be acquired.” He says that his company was not approached by Checkpoint as a potential acquirer.

Barry Wish was a board member of Ocwen, a company he co-founded. After the Great Financial Crisis, Ocwen bid unsuccessfully to buy $215b worth of Bank of America mortgages. The winning bidder was Nationstar. Three weeks before Nationstar’s winning bid was announced, Wish bought $600k worth of Nationstar shares. After the bid was announced, he sold them for for a $157k profit.

Wish told Propublica that he never traded competitors’ stock: “No, not at all.” Propublica read him the details of the trade from his leaked 1099-B. He said “You might see it, but I don’t have any recollection” and hung up.

Steven Grossman is a cardboard heir — a nepobaby who inherited Southern Container Corp from his grandpa. After he sold the company to Rock-Tenn for $1b in 2013, he stayed on as a senior exec. Over the next 5 years, he traded large blocks of shares in Rock-Tenn’s competitors, companies like Temple-Inland, a company that he made a 37% profit on after its acquisition was announced in 2011, one week after Grossman started buying its shares.

Grossman falsely told Propublica, “I haven’t traded stock since then.” IRS records show that Grossman continued to trade. Grossman also told Propublica that he had no role with Rock-Tenn, despite being on their payroll for five years. When asked about his extremely lucky timing buying and selling Temple-Inland, he said “That was 10 years ago” and hung up.

As Propublica’s Robert Faturechi and Ellis Simani write, Securities regulations have their origins in the crash of 1929, and the subsequent collapse in confidence in markets and capitalism, the sense that the system was rigged for the wealthy and political insiders. That is a pretty good summation of sentiment today:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

It’s not just that corporate executives are corrupt, it’s that they’re lavishly, shamelessly, endlessly, incorrigibly corrupt. Take Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, the sixth- and seventh-largest Class I railroads in the USA, whose merger was just approved by the Surface Transportation Board.

There are plenty of good reasons for the STB to have blocked this merger. The rail industry is already excessively concentrated, and its top execs are so convinced that they’re both too big to fail and too big to jail that they’re rendering entire towns permanently uninhabitable in order to eke out a few more points in profit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

But there are specific reasons to have blocked this merger, starting with the whistleblower report about CP and KCS executives illegally coming together for a three-day “retreat” at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, a notorious site for Republican operatives to collude with the business lobby:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2023-03-16-canadian-pacific-kansas-city-southern-rail-merger/

As Luke Goldstein writes for The American Prospect, both companies spent millions in 2020 and 2022 on campaign contributions to “grease the skids” for the merger — in particular, ensuring that the combined company could transport Alberta tar sands oil (the filthiest, most energy intensive oil in the world) to US ports.

Though the STB was informed of the illegal meeting — in which the two companies behaved as though the merger had already been finalized — STB chair Martin Oberman told Goldstein that the Board did not write to the companies for an explanation before waving through their merger.

Instead, Oberman dismissed the complaint on the grounds that “Railroads have to be able to talk to one another to function.” Typically this takes place over a free phone call, though — not on a three-day executive junket at a hotel where the rooms run $1,500/night.

Oberman knows what happened at that meeting.

Everybody knows.

It comes as no surprise to learn that before FTX imploded and destroyed the savings of its depositors, it paid out $3b to its top executives, including the criminal Sam Bankman-Fried:

https://gizmodo.com/sbf-ftx-crypto-sam-bankman-fried-1850232043

It comes as no surprise that Silicon Valley Bank paid out bonuses to its execs and employees hours before it collapsed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-employees-received-bonuses-hours-before-takeover.html

Everybody knows.

It’s comforting to think that the tax code loopholes that the ultrawealthy exploit are an epiphenomenon of complexity, an unavoidable consequence of the technical requirements of a big regulation that spans 300m+ people. But the truth is, the loopholes in the US tax code were inserted by politicians who got massive campaign contributions from donors who directly benefited from those loopholes. Senator Ron Johnson got $20m from the owners of Uline (Dick and Liz Uihlein) and roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, then he blocked the Trump tax bill until his fellow lawmakers inserted a loophole that produced $215m for the Uihleins and Hendricks, in just the first year:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory It’s not even surprising that a sitting US Senator amended a bill to give hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires who gave him tens of millions of dollars.

Everybody knows. It’s weirdly comforting to think that everyday people vote for demagogue wreckers because Facebook hired a legion of evil sorcerers to fashion a mind-control ray out of Big Data and AI, but Facebook lies about everything, and everyone who ever claimed to have a mind-control ray was a liar.

Maybe people vote for demagogue wreckers because they believe the system is rotten, and maybe they believe the system is rotten because the system is rotten. Maybe the self-described evil sorcerers of Big Tech aren’t “hacking our dopamine loops” — maybe they’re just helping opportunists target people who are justifiably angry:

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

The problem with this explanation is that it requires “progressive” parties to actually do stuff to demonstrate that they are on the side of people, not the side of paperclip-maximizing immortal colony organisms and the corporate executives who pretend to run them:

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1184004730722217984

I try to have hope — that is, I try to believe that if we can only make changes to our material circumstances, however small they may seem, that we might attain a new vantagepoint that reveals more possible changes within our grasp:

https://gen.medium.com/hope-not-optimism-943e88291b

Some days, it’s hard to have hope. Some days, it’s so obvious that everybody knows, all that I can muster is fury. Fury is not a full substitute for hope, but it’ll do. It’s a far superior alternative to the fatalism that “everybody knows” and thus nothing can be done.

Some fights you win, and other fights, you just fight, because surrender isn’t an option. Everybody knows, right? If everybody knows, then everybody might just decide to do something about it.

Next Monday (Mar 20), I’m doing a remote talk for the Ostrom Workshop’s Beyond the Web Speaker Series.

[Image ID: A smoke-filled room lit by candles. Around a large formal table sit various 19th century gentlemen-type people. One of them stands and reads from a memo. The shadow he casts is in the shape of a dollar-sign.]

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Text

HAUNTED MANSION (2023)

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Chase W. Dillon, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto, Creek Wilson, Hasan Minhaj, Charity Jordan, Steve Zissis, J.R. Adduci, Lindsay Lamb, Fedor Steel, Terence Rosemore, Mike Benitez, Erika Coleman , Christopher Winchester, Jo Koy, Marilu Henner and Winona Ryder.

Screenplay by Katie Dippold.

Directed by Justin Simien.

Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 123 minutes. Rated PG-13.

If the goal of this film was to top Eddie Murphy’s admirable trainwreck version of the Haunted Mansion from 2003, well then, mission accomplished.

That is not to say this version isn’t without its own shortcomings and issues, but for the first time in a long while with Disney, I went into this movie genuinely excited. This excitement could be possibly attributed to the fact that the Haunted Mansion has been my favorite, and most visited ride at the Disney Parks for almost 20 years now. Or it could be the early childhood nostalgia I had from repeated viewings of the 2003 version on DVD and being the most scared kindergartner you could find in the state of Pennsylvania whenever I would sit down to watch it. Call it whatever you will, but I was excited, nonetheless.

This film is the next big budget Disney film in a long line of commercial flops, and I’m sure the House of Mouse is hoping that this film will break the streak with its loaded cast (LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Jared Leto, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson) and screenplay written Katie Dippold (The Heat, Ghostbusters 2016). Unfortunately, for all 999 happy haunts, this movie is sandwiched in between two of the most talked about summer blockbuster films in recent memory, Barbie and Oppenheimer, or what is now known as Barbenheimer.

Walking into the theatre through the nearly 300 people all dressed in pink going to Barbie, we got to our seats and there was a really fun and excited vibe going through the audience, people actually cheered when the movie started (first time I’ve seen that since Avengers Endgame 2019). And overall the movie went over well with the crowd. The jokes for the most part landed when they needed to, and I felt the impact of a good amount of the emotional beats in the film.

Especially LaKeith Stanfield, who delivered a beautifully eloquent and emotionally powerful tearjerker of a monologue describing the things he loved about his deceased wife (much in contrast to Eddie Murphy’s painfully stiff and hard to watch line said to his abruptly killed wife “Sarah, I love you so much.”)

Another standout performance was Chase Dillon, who played Travis, the socially awkward young son of Gabbie (Rosario Dawson). You really felt for the kid throughout the movie, the loss of his father, not fitting in and, obviously, the fact that his house is extremely haunted. Of course, you get the usual on-brand performances from Wilson, DeVito and Haddish, although it’s nice to see that what they bring to the film is relegated to their supporting lead comic relief moments and doesn’t take away from the emotional moments and overall story.

This version of the Haunted Mansion is also filled to the brim with Easter eggs relating to the lore of the actual rides in the Disney Parks. It’s also great to see the hitchhiking ghosts make an appearance as they have been a personal favorite for the longest time. On that note, the spirits in this version have taken a massive leap in quality compared to their ‘03 counterparts as now some of them have genuinely scary moments (but let’s not forget the childhood trauma-inducing crypt scene that still sends shivers down my back just thinking about it.)

This version’s main antagonist is also a reference to Disney Park lore. The Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto) was an animatronic placed in the attic scene that debuted alongside the ride itself but was removed in 1969 and wouldn’t be seen again until 2015. Leto himself in the role delivered some truly imposing moments of terror. Always as this black figure looming somewhere in the shadows until his big reveal. The scares in this film are also done fairly well as the film uses very modern horror techniques in its first scene with the mansion itself, which is very reminiscent of the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

But here are the downsides. The film for the first two-thirds feels decently paced, thorough, and exciting, but jeez, if they didn’t lose themselves, and the plot in the last third. It felt like the movie had taken a complete turn and I felt as if I was watching a different movie.

Secondly, as much as I love Jamie Lee Curtis, I have to say Jennifer Tilly was significantly better as Madame Liotta, and throughout a majority of the film I just kept wishing she were back in the role, especially when Mrs. Curtis attempted whatever unspecified accent she was going for there.

And, as weird as this will sound, and I already know it will, I miss Terrence Stamp, General Zod himself, as the main antagonist. Ridiculous, over the top vibrato and all. He felt like such an imposing figure, and most importantly for me, he wasn’t CGI. Don’t get me wrong the Hatbox Ghost design is great, but I miss just a spooky old British guy popping up behind you and just being an intimidating presence on screen.

Again, is it better than the ‘03 version? Yes. Does it have flaws? Absolutely. But this film is the kind you can bring the family to when there’s nothing else to do and everyone will have a fun time based on the spectacle alone.

Early box office results for this film have it significantly below Barbenheimer and looking like another project where Disney is coming in below where they would like to be financially. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. But hey, if you’re a fan of Disney’s best ride (this is a non-arguable point, it’s been backed by science, just don’t ask which scientists) or you’re looking for an easy watching experience, this wouldn’t be a bad option whatsoever.

George Seth Wagner

youtube

#Haunted Mansion #2023 #Movie Review #LaKeith Stanfield #George Seth Wagner #Youtube

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