#holiday spin 2012

[almostgenerallyalways]

mamas (don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys)

Pairing: Jake Seresin x fem!reader Category: angst / fluff / run-on sentences Word count: 3,1k CW: language, I’ve been to Texas once okay forgive me, divorce Author’s note: this was supposed to be a holiday fic but I got stuck on it and almost abandoned it, but here it is rescued from my drafts, shoutout to all the amazing tgm fic writers your writing truly astounds me

Summary: Every year around the holidays, you hear from your ex. This year when you don’t respond, he decides to show up at your door. 

2022

Jake UT  [November 23, 2022 at 10:24 PM]

Hey stranger

Visiting my mom for Thanksgiving

How’ve you been?

You ignore the message. How you’ve been in the last twelve months is not something you feel up to discussing with him.

You spend the next weeks dealing with crisis after crisis at work, leaning into the chaos like you have been all year. Your personal life? Garbage fire. Reconfiguring your entire pump setup two weeks before going to production, because the DoC slapped an import ban on one of your key suppliers in China? You’re on top of it.

But then, the week before Christmas, another message comes in:

Jake UT  [December 17th, 2022 at 3:47 PM]

Hey

In town for the holidays

Would love to see you if you’re free

Brett welcome too, of course

A pang in your chest, but curiosity gets the better of you, so you text back:

Thanksgiving and Christmas? Judy must be thrilled.

You’ve met Jake’s mom all of one time, ten years ago, but she made a lasting impression. Fiercely protective of her only son, she’d been wary of you at first (you were, in order of importance: Too non-Texan, too vegetarian, and too focused on trying to rescue an almost-due group project for your sustainable water management class in which no one was pulling their weight).

And yet, over the Thanksgiving weekend you’d spent at Jake’s mother’s house in Colton, she’d slowly warmed up to you. You’d asked her endless questions about her job as a project manager at Austin-Bergstrom, and she’d poured you half glasses of wine (still exotic, to you, back then) at the kitchen island, shooing Jake back into the living room.

She’d even called you, after you guys broke up, to say she was sorry to hear it, and to tell you to call her up any time you needed someone to talk to. You’d tried your best to keep your voice even, not to break down in tears for the seventh time that day, and never called her again.

* * *

“Dude. Put your phone away for two minutes.”

Jake looks up apologetically at his friend, and pockets the device. “Sorry. Just expecting a text.”

Sandeep holds out his bottle of Lone Star, and Jake clinks it with his own. “It’s good to see you, man. Sorry I wasn’t around at Thanksgiving, we were visiting Jed’s family in NC. I didn’t expect you to be back so soon.”

Jake takes a swig of his beer, the cold liquid feeling like a balm to his throat. “Yeah, well. It’s been a big year, work-wise, so they owed me one. I wanted to spend some extra time with my mom.”

Bringing up his drink to toast again, Sandeep says: “Here’s to you, bud. And to getting that permanent assignment in California. At least we knew where to send our holiday card this year.”

Condensation drips down the neck of his bottle, and Jake spins it slowly in his hand, stopping himself from peeling off the label. He feels on edge, unmoored, despite this 6th Street dive bar being as familiar to him as the back of his own hand.

Sandeep’s got his number. “Seeing anyone else while you’re in town? I don’t know, Myers?”

Jake doesn’t look up, but feels his cheeks heat up fractionally.

His friend takes another swig of his beer. “I guess I should stop calling her Myers. You know, with the divorce and all.”

The bottle escapes Jake’s grip, and amber liquid sloshes across the table, into Sandeep’s lap. “Shit, Seresin! Grab some napkins, will you?”

* * *

 2012

 You’d always known there was an expiration date on this thing with Jake, which is why you’d been reluctant to meet his mom to begin with.

You wanted fundamentally different things. He, the Navy: Adventure, excitement, a chance to serve his country. You: Stability. A family. A place where you belonged.

Both of you: an opportunity to prove yourself.

It’s civil, as far as breakups go.

“You always knew I wanted to fly.” He says, over breakfast at Magnolia Café. There’s a hard set to his jaw that makes you soften in contrast, because of course you do, everyone who’s ever been near Jake Seresin for longer than ten minutes knows he’s always wanted to fly.

From your first date he told you about how Judy used to park him in her office at the airport when her summer childcare fell through; little Jake happily spending the day watching commercial jets taxiing and taking off in quick succession.

How her coworkers, the civilian engineers who’d stayed on after Bergstrom Air Force Base was decommissioned and commercialized, would regale him with stories about generations of F-4 Phantoms. Or the British Airways Concorde, one of only twenty of the ill-fated aircraft ever made, bringing the Queen to Austin in a little yellow hat. The Reconnaissance Air Meet bringing in the best fighter pilots from across all divisions of the military and abroad, to compete and show off their skills.

Jake would listen to them with stars in his eyes.

You pick at your migas, your appetite gone. “I know, Jake. I would never stop you.”

But you look at him, and you know your face mirrors his determination. “But I can’t come with you, Jake. I can’t start my career following you around from camp to base year to year. I’m forty-thousand dollars in debt getting this degree, and I need to follow my own plan.”

You haven’t moved in together, though Jake spends most of his nights at your tiny off-campus apartment, where you’ve made him countless cups of black coffee trying to fuel weekend study sessions. Where he would come in past midnight, back from the late shift at his part-time job at the H-E-B, and bury his face in your neck, waking you up even though you’d been asleep for hours. Where you would hold his sleeping head to your chest, his deep breathing somehow felt inside of you, and run your fingers up and down the bare skin of his back, trying to memorize him.

You’re twenty-two, you tell yourself. This is not the end of the world.

So you see him off at the front door, a box of his things clutched to his chest, and you force yourself to be strong. “You better be,” and you try to smile up at him, but you’re not sure you’re doing a convincing job, “You better be the best goddamn pilot the Navy has ever seen, Jake.”

For a second, he looks like he wants to say something, but then he just puts down the box, and pulls you into a last embrace. You sink into it, the fundamentally safe feeling of his arms around you, then make yourself pull away after a minute, pretending you don’t see the wet stains on his shirt.

Later you look at all the spaces in your apartment he is now conspicuously absent from (no dog-eared volume of Game of Thrones on the nightstand, no boots by the door), and it hits you then; the crevasse he’s left in your life. It may run deeper than you thought.

* * *

Jake had gone to Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island, then designator-specific training in Pensacola, Florida, and done his best not to think about you.

It helped that his days were intense and exhausting. It helped that, on liberty weekends, girls would flock to him and his friends in bars.

It helped to be several states away from you.

It helped to be living his dream.

* * *

There is a bit of a backslide, that first Thanksgiving after, where you both think it can’t hurt to see each other for one drink, for old time’s sake, which ends in him taking you up against the door in your new apartment, your legs wrapped around his waist because he does not have the willpower or presence of mind to figure out the way to your bedroom.

He knows it was a mistake, at about five AM the next day, when the blue light of morning starts streaming through a gap in the curtains, illuminating your tousled hair fanned out over the pillow, the steady rise and fall of your chest so familiar to him he could cry.

Untangling himself from you hurts, and he does perhaps the most cowardly thing he ever will: he sneaks out before you wake up. But next week he’s shipping out, and the thought of the same dead-end conversation over coffee made just the way he likes it is unbearable, so he makes himself walk away.

Somehow it’s worse, the second time around.

* * *

You’d met someone else, like he’d known you would. He sees the engagement announcement on Facebook, browsing on his phone between drills, and likes the post. It’s the third year he’s been away, and he’s at TOPGUN by then, so he has a lot on his mind. He has a girlfriend, even, a local: cute as a button, beats him savagely at pool.

It doesn’t fully hit him until the first time he sees you with your then-fiancé, at a little holiday reunion of college friends. He sees you with that ring on your finger, another man’s arm around your shoulders, and he gets an acute sense of the alternate reality that could’ve been his.

It feels a little like losing altitude too fast.

Your initial reception of him is understandably frosty, but you seem too genuinely happy to hold a grudge. By the third round, when he sidles up to you at the bar, you give him a quick hug, looking up at him with a smile that squeezes his heart: “I’m so proud of you, Jake.”

He nods, not quite trusting himself to speak, and pulls you back in, just for a moment, tucking your head under his chin. You smell like apple and magnolia, like nights spent with his nose pressed into your back.

You don’t invite him to the wedding, and he’s all too glad not to have to make up an excuse not to go.

* * *

Things settle, after that. Jake gets deployed and reassigned, breaks up with his girlfriend and eventually gets another. You get promoted to senior engineer, then project lead. You see each other, not every year but close enough, sometimes with your husband there, sometimes without.

He braces himself for the next Facebook post; that you’re pregnant, but it never comes. Over time, even that seems to lose some of its potential emotional impact on him.  

Until three weeks ago, when you don’t text him back.

* * *

 2022

 You kick your shoes off in the entryway, then head into the kitchen to pour a glass of water. Before you can reach the tap, the doorbell rings, and for a second you think somehow, some way, your terrible Bumble date has followed you home.

Grabbing the biggest kitchen knife you own off the magnet strip over the sink, just in case, you creep back to the door, barefoot, to press your face up to the peephole.

You don’t really expect to see the guy you just left, the ice in your glass not even melted before you were thinking up excuses to get out of there, but you sure as fuck don’t expect to see Jake either.

The door feels heavier than usual as you slowly slide it open, or maybe you’re just a little stunned. The night air hits your skin, and you can make out the sound of dogs barking in the distance.

For a long moment, Jake just looks at you, but then he says: “What were you planning on doing with that, sweetheart?”

You follow the jut of his chin down the line of your arm, and contemplate the knife for a second, Jake’s sudden appearance having made you forget all about it.

“I thought someone might have followed me here.”

“Ah.” He says, a spark in his eyes, clearly suppressing a smile. “If you were going to defend yourself in hand-to-hand combat, a knife is a terrible choice. I could give you some tips, though.”

Putting the damn thing down on your entryway console, you turn back to look at him. It’s not cold, exactly, in December in South Central Austin, but he looks underdressed: a long-sleeved light grey t-shirt, hands shoved in the pockets of a faded pair of jeans.

He looks good, you can’t deny it: he’s always had an immediate effect on you.

Jake, your somewhat gangly, sweet college boyfriend had it. Jake, ten years of military training later: older, filled out, fine crinkly lines starting to appear at the corners of his eyes (helped along by the California sun and God knows what far-off places), irrevocably still does.

You shake your head, trying to clear your thoughts. “What are you doing here, Jake?”

At that, his expression sobers, and he looks at you for a long moment before he says:

“You didn’t tell me.”

* * *

Fucking Sandeep, you think, rubbing the back of your hand across your eyes, because that fucker has not been subtle with the hints lately, tutting like a Victorian matron while you pass the time evaluating your Bumble matches with his husband during Monday night football’s ad breaks.

The granite of your kitchen countertop feels reassuringly cool beneath your thighs, and you take a deep breath, keeping your eyes on the tile below:

“I wasn’t ready.”

Jake huffs, or so you assume by the little sound that escapes him, as you determinedly face only his sneakers: “It’s been a year. You sure told everyone else we know.”

That makes your head snap up, emotion rising in your chest in a way you don’t like, have always had to tamp down when it comes to him, these last ten years. “Fuck off, Jake. You know it’s different when it comes to you.”

He leans back against the fridge, arms folded, just slightly lifting his right eyebrow at you in that irritating way of his: “I could’ve been there for you.”

Fuck it, you think, all cards on the table then. “I was heartbroken, and embarrassed, and trying to figure out how to exist on my own again after being married for five years to someone who didn’t turn out to be who I thought he was, Jake. Sorry my first impulse wasn’t to come cry on my hometown hero ex-boyfriend’s shoulder.”

His eyes soften, and he pushes off the fridge to come stand next to you, running his fingers over the edge of the countertop. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice quieter than a moment ago. “I’m being a dick. It’s just, you have to know, I would’ve been there for you.”

He pauses for a second, takes a deep breath: “It’s always been different when it comes to you too, sweetheart.”

You start to shake, a little, or maybe it’s your imagination. But your voice wavers as you say his name, everything about your tone a warning: “Jake.”

He closes his eyes, shakes his head: “Our timing sucked, and I don’t regret our decision from back then. I’m proud of who I’ve become in the last ten years, and I’m proud of you. You think I don’t keep up with what you’re doing? The articles you’ve published?”

This stuns you, momentarily. “No, Jake Seresin. If I’m completely honest, I didn’t think you gave a shit about the latest advances in Texas drought management.”

Just being near him, the familiar smell of him bringing up memories you’ve had years to unsuccessfully repress, is overpowering.

He makes it worse by turning to you, face so goddamn heartbreakingly earnest as he says: “I couldn’t give you what you deserved, ten years ago, but I always told myself, if I was ever in a position to…” He swallows. “I tried to forget about it when you got married, I tried to root for you and Brett, I swear.”

His hand settles next to your thigh, not quite touching, and your hand comes down on its own accord to cover his. He straightens almost imperceptibly, uses his other palm to wipe a tear that’s made its way down your cheek.

Cupping your face, he draws a deep breath. “I have a permanent assignment now, in San Diego. I know it’s…”

“Jake.” You interrupt, squeezing your eyes shut, grabbing the hem of his shirt. “I’m not remotely the same person I was back then.”

He moves to stand in front of you now, and you draw him in between your thighs. Suddenly it seems imperative that you feel him, that he holds you.

Dipping his head to yours, you can hear the smile in his voice, watery, tentative: “Then let me get to know you again. Get to know me again.” He leans one hand on the counter, the other tracing your cheekbone. “No pressure. I’m totally very cool about this. Whatever you want.”

You laugh, a little choked up through tears, but genuine. It feels liberating. “What if I say yes? How does this work?”

His smile broadens, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he’s so goddamn close, nudging your nose with his. “Come visit me, for a start. I’ll show you the sights.”

You draw him in a little closer still, legs wrapping around his waist, one hand finding its way into his close-cropped hair, and you could cry for how familiar he still feels after all these years.

But when you close the gap between your lips and his, it’s like coming home and yet not at all: he’s different and rougher and sharper and it floods you with emotion, something big and terrifying and old and new.

He leans into the kiss, grinning, cards his fingers through your hair before he moves to cover your chin, your brow, the space next to your ear with kisses, and you remember this with a jolt to your heart – how singularly intense it is to be the focus of Jake Seresin, like the strength of the sun is aimed at you, how he never does anything by halves.

You take his chin in your hand, kiss him again for good measure, before saying, into the stubble of his jaw: “One visit. No pressure.”

The grin he gives you in return could power half this city: “One visit. No pressure.”

He dips his head to yours again, kissing the skin behind your ear as he tells you: “Southern California has a lot of drought problems, you know. I’ve actually been reading some really scary articles about it.”

.

.

.

i hope you enjoyed :):) - if you liked this I hope you’ll check out some of my other work:

where the wild things are (rooster x reader)

cross my heart (hangman x reader) masterlist

[21kmoonz]

Ralph Macchio as Ruben in Holiday Spin (2012)

[ccomilk]

i wrote a snippet for @vanillavengeance's fic Mystic Malfunction! it's based on the idea of the 2012 boys learning about cloaking brooches :D also shout out to @pasteilian for betaing the human mikey bit!!! hope y’all enjoy!!!

~

Mikey shifted awkwardly on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position. He grunted as something solid dug into his back under his shell.

“You okay dude?” Michelangelo asked from where he was sprawled over the armrest, pausing his DS momentarily. His legs dangled over the edge while he lay down on the seat cushions, so he had to crane his neck back awkwardly to see Mikey.

“Yeah, I just can’t find a comfortable spot.” Mikey grimaced, before deciding to copy Michelangelo and fully roll over onto the opposite armrest. The pressure shifted to just under the back of his ribcage, so Mikey groaned and started twisting again.

Michelangelo snickered and turned back to his game. “Maybe Leo finally had a point about flinging yourself out of canons, and you got yourself an egg.”

Mikey giggled at the mention of the previous night’s shenanigans. “Mamanardo is a coward and a party pooper, and I will never bow under his reign,” he proclaimed indignantly. Mikey flipped over onto his belly again to no avail. “But if he is right, then whooooo mama, that’s one hell of a bruise,” he grumbled quietly.

As he twisted, the feeling gradually inched up to between his shoulder blades. Sitting up, he winced in anticipation as he tenderly reached his arm back to try and touch the mysterious pressure in his shell. It was still a little far down, but with a bit of stretching his fingers finally brushed across…

Metal?

He gently pulled it out, and after a moment of confusion realised he was staring at Sunita’s cloaking brooch.

Huh.

Sunita had been spending a few weeks down in the Hidden City, and had lent the brooch to Mikey and his brothers since she wouldn’t need it while she was gone. Of course, this was under very strict orders to take exceptional care of the brooch and return it when she finished holidaying. I guess I forgot to take it out of my shell before all this happened…

Whoops.

Oh well, he’d take good care of it until he finally got home. But until then…

Mikey glanced over at Michelangelo, confirming he was still preoccupied with his game. Grinning, he silently clipped the brooch onto the strap on his chest, and tried not to laugh as he waited for Michelangelo to notice the “human” sitting next to him.

It didn’t take too long, as Mikey couldn’t contain his giggles and the noise quickly caught Michelangelo’s attention.

Pausing his DS, he grinned and leaned back to see what Mikey was doing. “Dude, what are you snickering aboUAAGH! HUMAN!!” Michelangelo scrambled back in shock, rolling off the couch in the process.

Mikey burst out laughing, clutching his stomach and falling back against the arm of the couch. “HAH! OH my god your FACE!!” Laughter continued to wrack his body, while Michelangelo sat up from his place on the floor.

“Wh-… wait, Orange??” Michelangelo exclaimed as Leonardo and Raphael sprinted into the main room.

“What about a human?” Leonardo rushed, darting eyes immediately landing on Mikey.

Raphael pulled out his sais and stalked towards him, spinning them threateningly. “How’d this guy get in here?“

Mikey held his hands up in a shaky surrender as laughs racked his body. “WAIT wait it's- it's just me- wait…”

Raphael froze, his face shifting from protective anger to visible disturbance. “…What the fu-”

“Can you guys keep it down? I'm trying to work in here.” Donatello's door swung open as he stepped out, still typing on his laptop.

Leonardo broke out of his shocked stupor the quickest, stepping forward uncertainly. ”Orange, I- are you… what happened?“

Donatello looked up confusedly, pushing his goggles onto his forehead as he finally took in his surroundings. ”What are you- oh my shell."

”DID YOU GET DE-MUTATED?!” Michelangelo blurted. He leapt over the couch to grab and lift Mikey, pinning his arms to his torso in the process. “DID YOU TURN HUMAN AGAIN?!”

Donatello shoved Michelangelo's head aside, pulling his goggles back down to examine the still dangling Mikey. ”No, Mikey, he wasn't retro-mutated. He was born as an ordinary turtle, remember?“

”Ohhh, right.“

Donatello hummed. “But that doesn't explain why Orange is human now. Did you come into contact with more mutagen and further mutate? Is this a side-effect of your ninpo returning? Is this to do with how you were designed?”

Leonardo and Raphael crowded around them as Donatello continued rambling theories about Mikey's current state, whose laughter had finally calmed to the occasional giggle whenever Donatello prodded his sides.

Raphael looked him up and down, eye-ridge raised suspiciously, before landing on the green brooch attached to his chest. He pulled it off, interrupting Donatello as Mikey transformed back into his regular, turtle-y self.

Donatello blinked. “WHAT?!“

In his surprise Michelangelo finally dropped Mikey, who instantly sprung back up and deftly snatched the brooch from Raphael's hand.

”HAH! I got you all gooooood,“ Mikey teased, pinning the brooch back on his chest and dancing away from Donatello's desperate grabs.

”You have to let me see that,“ he whined, pushing his goggles up for a clearer view of Mikey.

”Nuh-uh! I promised I'd look after this,“ Mikey smirked, dashing forward to smush Donatello's goggles back over his eyes.

Before he could make his escape though, Raphael grabbed the tails of his bandanna and spun him around, trapping him in a noogie-headlock combo. “Spill.”

Mikey tried to wiggle from his grasp, but his hold was iron-strong. Raphael's knuckles dug into his skull and Mikey finally had to relent.

“Okay, okay!! I was looking after my friend Sunita's cloaking brooch before I got teleported here and I forgot I had it!! It's just an illusion!!” Raphael's noogie-ing dug harder for a second before he removed his hand - though he didn't let go of Mikey just yet.

Donatello, having evidentially won his battle to readjust his goggles properly, leaned close to inspect Mikey's human form. “Fascinating… such a life-like illusion - it even feels real to the touch,” he murmured, fingers fluttering over the sleeves of Mikey's jacket. “Does it show the same image for each- MIKEY!!”

Michelangelo nimbly plucked the brooch from under Donatello's nose and pinned it to his belt, immediately transforming in a quick swirl of light to a human.

Mikey himself appeared as a young Afro-Asian teenager, with vitiligo painting his dark skin where his orange spots usually were. His hair sat in short, beaded locs, and he wore the paint-splatter jacket from Hypno's montage trap along with all his usual gear.

Michelangeo, meanwhile, had medium-brown skin speckled with freckles, and loose curls that hung in ringlets over his eyes. He grinned and admired the orange zipper hoodie he was suddenly wearing.

“Dude! This is sick!” Michelangelo exclaimed. “Someone take a picture!”

Donatello fumbled for his T-Phone, although his expression seemed torn between intrigue and concern over the fact that Michelangelo of all people had possession of the brooch. “Hang on Mikey, just stay still for a second - don't break anything.”

Michelangelo paused to stick his tongue out indignantly. “I'm not gonna break it, don't worry,“ he retorted, then squawked as Leonardo seized the brooch.

He held it above his head while Michelangelo leaped for it to no avail. “No one's using the brooch - we don't know fully what it does.” He shot Donatello and Mikey a stern look as they whined about research and fun.

“Aw, c'mon, Fearless. You're not even a little bit curious?” Raphael drawled. He'd relaxed his hold on Mikey and was now just sort of leaning against his shoulders, eye-ridge raised.

Leonardo's resolve seemed to waver for a moment, but he straightened his back and passed the brooch back to Mikey. “No. Besides, Orange said he had to look after it.”

Michelangelo and Donatello both groaned as Leonardo turned away, returning to wherever he'd been when this whole fiasco started.

Donatello sighed reluctantly and opened up his laptop again. ”Well, that was interesting, I suppose,” he muttered, heading back into his room to keep working on his project.

Mikey snickered as the door shut, prompting a curious look from Raphael and Michelangelo, who were slumped over himself (still) and the couch respectively.

“Mamanardo,” Mikey whispered cheekily. Michelangelo snickered conspiratorially, and Raphael flashed a sharp grin.

“Well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him,” Raphael purred. A giddy feeling bubbled in Mikey's chest.

Oh, they were going to have so much fun.

[milkytheholy1]

Turtle Power! : Part 1

A/N: What if you included even more turtles in the hit tmnt movie, TMNT:Turtles Forever? This isn't an X Reader fic and takes places in the 2012 universe...well, for the start at least.

Tmnt masterlist. Ultimate masterlist. Turtle Power! Masterlist.

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

"Donnie, what's happening!" Leo bellowed out, lunging forward to take down a Kraang bot. His blades sliced threw the alien metal with ease before he kicked the slimy brain into next week. Another bot launched at him, luckily the leader in blue was able to duck away in time. Leo grabbed the Kraang's head, kneeing him in the face, "Donnie!" he was becoming irritated.

Donnie's fingers worked magic along the alien keyboard, though most of it was guesswork when it came to this sort of technology. Donnie grounded his teeth together, sweat pooling along the edges of his purple bandana, "Yes, I can hear you, y'know!" he snarled out, clearly under a lot of pressure.

In the next second a bunch of files illuminated the giant monitor, a huge grin appearing on the tech wiz's face, "Aha! Yes, I got it!" he cheered. Though now began the tedious task of going through every file and finding the Kraang's true plan.

"Less talking and more fighting!" Raph growled out, ramming the pointed tip of his sai into the unsuspecting head of a Kraang droid. He tore the head from its body with a vicious war cry, though Mikey just assumed it was a generic yell. Speaking of which, the youngest brother was slinking around the room; jumping from one bot to another.

Though his energy wasn't particularly the same as usual, no, he wasn't so fully invested in the fight as any other day. Mikey landed on the shoulders of a Kraang bot, trying to pilot him around like he was wearing a mech suit, "I still can't believe we're missing Halloween for this." he grumbled, most definitely sour.

Leo sliced the legs of the bot Mikey was riding, watching him wobble before tucking into a forward roll and landing haphazardly onto the floor, "We can celebrate Halloween tomorrow, Mikey." he compromised. The young teen still moped around, crossing his arms along his chest, "It's not the same though, this is the one day of the year where we're not freaks...and we're MISSING it!"

"Mikey, do you really think some dumb holiday is more important than stopping the Kraang?" Raph argued, plucking another head off of his sai; he hated when they got stuck. Mikey didn't even get a chance to open his mouth before a loud and whiney scream interrupted the group. Donnie's body came flying over to them, taking Raph out as punishment for his sins.

The two remaining brothers looked over at them in shock, "Donnie, what happened?" Leo questioned, lightly shaking his brother awake. Donnie waited until his eyes stopped spinning and the room was no longer a pretty shade of yellow, "Ugh, my head feels like an exploding hotdog." he groaned out.

"MMmm, hotdogs..." Mikey's stomach rumbled, "I know Mikey Jr, I know." he sympathised with his belly's cries for food. Raph released a sound halfway between a groan and a growl, but he soon shoved Donnie's body off of him. "Get off of me, Donnie!"

"What happened up there? Were you able to get any intel?" Leo continued to interrogate the poor genius. Donnie shook his head, "I was in the middle of it when-"

"When what?" Leo asked, confused. Donnie's eyes widened, he pointed a finger to the second floor where a huge robot stood, "I bumped into him." Donnie's voice got smaller as he spoke. The group stared with wide eyes and slacked jaws as the huge robot bashed its fists together, menacing pink eyes glaring into their souls.

"He seems...nice?" Mikey whispered out, his head shrinking further and further into his shell. Raph shook his head, gripping his sais a little tighter than before, "I've seen bigger." he smirked. Leo shook his head, "Don't get cocky, Raph. We've never seen the Kraang use something like this before, we don't know what it's capable of."

"Well it doesn't know what I'm capable of either." the red-banded turtle beamed, charging at the giant robot. Leo groaned, "Raph- you can't just- Raph!" he darted off after his sibling, dodging laser fire and swinging fists. Donnie and Mikey shared a similar look before Mikey shrugged his shoulders and joined the fight.

Donnie, however, decided on a different approach. The lanky turtle crept around the moving robotic bodies, avoiding their gaze as he drove to find any available computer. With a little luck, he managed to find one with very few guards, but he soon took those out.

"Now if I can just figure out what the Kraang are up to, maybe I could put a stop to it right now." he mumbled to himself, his tongue sticking out as a sign of full concentration. Donatello continued to tamper and peek into folders and unnamed documents, eventually finding a plan for a portal of some kind.

But in a language he had no way of deciphering here, there wasn't much use for the plans. Growing irritated that all his attempts so far seemed futile, Donnie pounded a fist against the motherboard beneath him. The machine sizzled and sparked, the keys becoming hot on his fingers, scorching the very tip of his skin.

Pulling back with a yelp, Donnie watched as a jet of bright pink light shot from the control panel he was at all the way along the walls and across the ceiling until it pinged against a large metallic structure on the other side of the room.

"Uh oh."

"Do you dudes smell burning?" Mikey questioned, sniffing the air a little more. Raph was holding his own up against the robot, using his sais as a barricade as he pushed away the robot's foot; moments from crushing him.

"Mikey, this is no time to be thinking about pizza!" he huffed out, a little out of breath. Mikey cringed at the thought, his stomach going ten to a dozen, "No, it's not that!" he whined. Leo slashed one of the many casualties from this night, shifting to stand beside Mikey, "Hang on, I think he's onto something."

"Ugh, not you too." Raph cried out, rolling away from the metal fist that just narrowly missed his face. Leo grabbed Raph by the shell as he ran past, jostling the poor teen, "Smell." was all he said. Raph rolled his eyes but reluctantly agreed, "Huh, what do you know? Mikey was right about something."

"I heard that." Mikey pouted. The next thing the brothers knew the burning smell grew and grew until they could physically see smoke coming from a huge metal doorway. With a flickering light, the doorway seemed to explode with colour, turning from pink to purple to the most enchanting shade of green then ending with a sky blue.

Its swirling gaze was hypnotic.

Donnie rushed back to the group, his mind buzzing, "Guys! Guys! You are not going to believe what just happened-" he looked up at the swirling portal, "Nevermind, I see you're all caught up." he gulped. Leo turned to Donnie with a frown, "What did you do?" he sassed.

"Me? You think I somehow did this?" Donnie pointed an accusing finger at himself, more so out of disbelief than acceptance of blame. Leo shrugged his arms, letting his katanas hang in a looser grip, "Well you were the one messing with it."

Alas, Donnie couldn't continue any further for something was causing the portal to ripple. Any remaining Kraang bots that were beside the portal were perched and awaiting with guns held high. Seems as though they too weren't expecting this.

The room went eerily quiet, there weren't any sudden movements, just a short pause; stagnant air. Out of nowhere, a spinning weapon flew out from the portal, its edges jagged and its aura lit in flames. It wrapped around one of the Kraang bots, pulling it back in through the blue waves like a fish on a hook. Its metal fingers clawed at the ground, but it served no purpose in delaying its demise.

The brothers looked on in shock, whatever was on the other side of that portal was potentially dangerous and seemingly struck at random. Leo clenched his fists, alerting the brothers to be on guard while they waited for more to happen.

More sound alerted out from the portal, and with their lack of an advantage point, they wouldn't be able to see anything from the ground floor. There was a lot of whooping and laughing, some sounds of metal against metal and fists being pounded into something hard.

Leo's eyes were white, his lips set into a permanent frown. He nudged his head to the side, slinking across the edges of the room while his brothers followed in a similar route. Once they had obtained higher ground, the group could finally get a grasp on what was happening; this Halloween was getting awfully confusing.

Setting their sights on the fight below, Donnie could make out four figures fighting against the remnants of the Kraang. Their weapons seemed to fizzle and glow with each swing, almost by magic. Donnie shook his head with an amused smile, don't be silly, magic isn't real he chortled to himself.

"Woah, are you dudes seeing this too?" Mikey hummed out, in awe as he watched these mysterious figures fight. Raph wanted to see their faces, wanted to know who he had the pleasure of fighting next, "I'm gonna get a better look." he sounded out before jumping down, though thankfully he remained in the shadows; much to Leo's relief.

It wasn't long after Raph had left until his brothers joined him, as they slowly approached the figures, their voices sounded out.

"Oh ho hooo, looks like we got a whole Kraang-kebab! Do you think it'll taste as disgusting as it looks?"

"Leo-" a voice growled out, "Would you just focus, we need to figure out how this whole situation happened!"

"Do you think it was magic?" a rather innocent voice beamed, their voice wavery and rather dreamlike.

"Considering magic is the clown of science, it's safe to say no, Miguel, not magic." a more robotical and sarcastic voice replied.

"Wait a minute, are they using our names, dudes?" Mikey whispered, Leo shook his head in utter disbelief, "It can't be, maybe we're just hearing things. R-right, Donnie?"

Said genius was rubbing his chin deep in thought, "Well, it has happened once before. Who's to say it can't happen again?" Raph pushed past his brothers, cracking his knuckles and neck, "Well I ain't hiding no longer, I think it's time we give our otherwordly counterparts a warm New York welcome."

Before Leo could stop him, Raph charged out from the shadows and leapt onto the shell of the first turtle he saw. Unfortunately for Raph, this happened to be the biggest and buffest turtle in the room.

"Ugh, Raph-a-doodle, buddy? I think you got a little something on your back." Leon smirked, Raph quirked a brow and turned around to reveal a smaller, angrier turtle on his back. Mikey erupted into hearts, "Oh mi gosh! Another turtle! Can we keep him?" his eyes throbbing with love.

Raph plucked the turtle from his back, holding him at arm's length as to avoid the sais and fists being flung his way.

"Huh, he's a feisty little guy."

"Interesting, a diamondback freshwater turtle..." Donnie hummed, slanted eyes examing the specimen as he rapidly shifted and rustled around in Raph's grip.

"Let go of me, you mutant copycats!" Raphael growled out. Raph flicked his gaze to Donnie, who was still studying the unnamed turtle, "Perhaps we should bring him back to my lab so I can further investigate."

"Let go of our brother." came a stern voice from the dark, three pairs of white eyes were staring back at the group. Slowly emerging, three more turtles were cast in the light, "There's more of them!" Mikey screamed.

Raphael landed a painful kick to Raph's fist, accidentally dropping the turtle as he quickly scurried to join his mysterious brothers. Leonardo raised the bladed tip of his katana to their counterparts, "We don't want any trouble."

"Hmmm, that's gonna be a problem. We've been told we're very troublesome, by like MANY bad guys." Leon smirked, perched against his Odachi. Raph began sweating, he was feeling awfully nervous, was there a certain smell in the air right now?

"You guys are us?" Donatello muttered out, examining each turtle with a sturdy gaze, "And you're all different species? That's new." he whistled. Donnie folded his arms, ever one for dramatics, he scoffed aloud "And you're all the same, rather boring if you ask me."

"Now, er, let's not be mean guys." Raph tried to settle the looming fight between both geniuses. Leonardo shook his head in agreement, "For once a Raph that speaks logic." he joked, earning a rather loud groan from his hot-headed brother.

"Enough joking around, how are they even here!" he barked out, waving his arms at the brightly coloured counterparts. Donatello went into deep thought again, the dull ache of his fingertips giving him a momentary hypothesis.

"Maybe when that Kraang tech burned my fingers, it took some DNA samples. A-and that was sent through the computer and helped power the portal."

"DNA can't power things, it's not a conduit. Perhaps, it simply allowed the portal for a more refined search." Donnie huffed, but he couldn't lie and say this wasn't a stimulating experience for his brain.

Donatello nodded his head, "You're right, this device must have been a teleportation device or had some sort of interdimensional properties. My DNA was essentially a jumping-off point and brought the closest thing it could find that would relate to it."

"If that's the case, Donnie. Then how come it wasn't those other versions of us who were stuck in the 80s?" Leonardo questioned. Donatello shook his head, "I'm not sure, I'd have to run more tests."

"Tests are easy, it's answers that are hard." Raph slumped, Donatello looked up in amazement, "You're so right, that's genius!" the small praise caused Raph to blush a deep crimson.

"This is some great bonding and all, but, uh...what dimension is that one from?" Leon pointed to the large creature in the darker depths of the huge Kraang lab. Its mechanical movements finally brought its face into the light, crushing any object that was in its way, "Aw man, I forgot about that guy." Michelangelo whined out.

Leonardo and his brothers pulled out their weapons, stuck in a defensive stance, "Get out of here while you can, we'll make sure to keep the portal open and- HEY LET GO OF ME!" he screamed out. A large green hand grabbed the brothers, fast legs rushing back to the Kraang portal. Leonardo had a clear view of the giant robot as it got smaller and smaller the further away they got.

Soon everyone had made it through the doorway and landed in a pile on the ground. Leonardo jumped up as fast as he could, running back to the portal before it could close. With an outstretched arm, he ran, his muscles straining, "No, no, no, no, no!" he rushed out. The view of the robot got smaller and smaller until it disappeared just like the portal.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" Raphael yelled, dragging his sai under Raph's throat. The other Raph gulped, his adam's apple bobbing onto the sharp object. Everyone was tense, the situation had clearly escalated and there didn't seem like there was a way to bring it back down.

"Hehe, l-listen, erm, me? T-that thing would have crushed us, I-I called for a tactical retreat."

"Tactical retreat? You're starting to sound like Lameonardo, you trying to be a wannabe leader?" Raphael growled. Raph quirked a brow, Leon stepped in to help him, "Actually, he was our leader. Yeah, for like a real long time too."

This new burst of information stunned the other brothers, Raphael was so affected by it that he backed away entirely, looking to Raph with wide eyes.

"Y-you were the leader? Like, an actual leader? Not just a one-day replacement?"

"Ugh...yeah? A-are you not the leader?" he asked back, his shoulders broadening. Michelangelo jumped up from the turtle pile, jumping up and down and pointing to where the portal once stood, "Dudes, what are we gonna do about the Kraang?"

"Mikey's right, that things gonna tear up the entire city." Donatello reasoned, worry flashing behind his eyes. Leonardo stood tall, trying his best to comfort his brothers, "We just have to hope April, Casey and Master Splinter can handle it until we get back."

Leon wrapped a casual arm around Leonardo's shoulders, "Sooooo, since you guys will be staying a little longer...how about a tour?"

[popculturebuffet]

Next up for Nickelodeon era of shows, who is your favorite character from each of the early 2020s Nicktoons shows you've seen like: It's Pony, Glitch Techs, Kamp Koral, Rugrats 2021, The Patrick Star Show, The Middlemost Post, and Star Trek Prodigy? While the last batch had signs of it with The Casagrandes spin off and Pinky Malinky being on Netflix instead of Nickelodeon, this is when Nickelodeon really started to get heavier on Nicktoons based on the older IPs over original ones. This was also when they began premiering Nicktoons on streaming such as Netflix and Paramount Plus before the main Nickelodeon channel, likely with streaming getting more popular.

Okay to get this out of the way this time I haven't seen Glitch Techs (Heard it was good), enough of Middlemost post to properly talk about it, or Progidy, though I do want to see those last two. I also haven't seen shared between this and paramount+ show earthspark or the just release paramount+ show but counting it here since i talked about nick's other three tmnt shows, tales of the tmnt. By the last era we'd already cut the cord and most of these shows didn't last long enough or in progidy's case.. I've just procastinated. So i'll be throwing in two brucy bonuses to compensate.

Anywways

It's Pony: didn't see as much as i'd like, hope it's on plus, but I thought it had a nice cozy charm to it. Dont' raelly have a faviorite character but did want to mentoin it as it was quite good I just never had a chance to catch it.

Kamp Koral: Honestly Iike the fact the Sardines are a cabin.. larry may be close second as his fitness cabin is wholesome. But honestly.. .there isn't a lot here for me to grab onto despite having seen a LOT of this with my neice with watching her back when it first started. This show is meidocre at best which is disappointing as I LIKE a good summer camp set show (I'ts weird I never watched more of summer camp island with that in mind), or film, but this.. is just nothing. It has good ideas: the various other cabins, letting side characters like lady upturn, larry, kevin, or the sardines return or have a sizeable roll, and the retcons are at least given an explination (Sandy rewrote history). It's hampred both by the impressoin that this show happened quite ltierally over stephen hillenbergs dead body.. and just being mid as hell. The animation is cheap, as tmnt 2012 already proved nick COULD do a cgi show on a tv budget that looked really nice and would prove it again just a few years later. Without the expressivenes spongebob has in it's 2d form (something that sponge bout of water and the sandy cheeks movie were able to copy much better), this feels lifeless and it feels like they really didn't have a ton of ideas to do with this unique setting that hadn't been done before aside from the sardines episode. It's just kinda there at best. It's so boring.

Rugrats 2021: Hadn't seen this one either, still gets it's own entry as I tried part of the first episode.. but couldn't get into it. Not knocking the voice actors too hard, but It just never really caught on with me. We stan Betty being an out of the closet lesbian in this house and Susie getting upgraded to main cast, but it dosen't seem like there's anything I really want from this reboot not helped that I didn't appricate the original at the time, so why would I watch a version that was okay. Might watch it this holiday season for some reviews coming up but that's about it honestly. Still sucks it was removed from paramount +, hope they sell it to someone else instead same with something.. else we're going to get to

The Patrick Star Show: Squidina: she's adorbale, compliments pat well and while her inclusion is a retcon, honestly spongebob continuity is so paper thin it just dosen't matter. At this point how he met sandy has been changed entirely by time travel, patrick's had two sets of parents and another sister who dosent' exist. Making what I was shocked to find was an unrelated side character his nerdy adopted sister to make his show work better is fine by me. The first episodes were fine, just nothing really specail to me, but I heard the show did get better and do want to try it in this form as the soft reboot seemed to have worked and seems to be more in the spirit of the classic seasons while being i'ts own thing.

It's why while this show was also made over stephen hillbergs dead body, it feels less souless... Talented people did put genuine effort into saving it unlike Kamp Koral which is just.. there, and it seems to have worked. And honestly while I like a good camp story.. the patrick star show is the more unique concept. Kamp Koral is just "spongebob but a child at camp" . It COUDL work but it's hampred by using almost the entire same cast as the parent show.

In contrast while Spongebob, Sandy, and Squidward are also present here, their not the main focus. Patrick is. And while that honestly sounded like living in a living nightmare... in the pre revamp episodes it worked okay. Unlike planet sheen it's clear even in it's larval form, they got what made pat work as a character, so simply switched up the dynamics slightly: squidward is still annoyed by him, but the main foils instead the oft annoyed but far more patient with her big bro squidina. Spongebob and co are there.. but their there in support of patrick, flipping thingsj ust slightly enough and it makes sense his best friends would be there. It helps they have some really fun designs as teens. I love spongebob's slick backed hair and squidwards acne and shirt. Small changes on his and sandy's front but it' smore than kamp koral.. just making them smol and giving them outfits. So a show I honestly want to see more of as it geninely seems like it turned a corner. Could be wrong but evne then it's at least a worthy side dish to spongebob and feels less like digging up a corpse for money.

Big Nate: This one also DOES count in my eyes as it was reaired on the network, but is one I hope gets transfered somewhere. Faviorite is the boy himself, as they transitoined him well and ben giroux does a great job, though Gina as always as close. i've bene honest about loving comic strips before in this retrospective, and at the time this show aired big nate.. was fine. Stuck in a rut it's since got out of, but kinda stuck as some strips gets going through the motions and repeating gags that didn't work the first time.

Big Nate the cartoon... is a great adaptation in part because it takes some of the strips weaknesses and does away with them. Not all sadly as yelly outdated coach sterotype coach john and nate's stalker kim are kept for reasons I can't process. The former maybe, as he's useful for jokes and faculty plotlines, but the latter..

But for the most part it instead fixes a lot of aspects of the strip that didn't quite work anymore or needed a refresh: Nate's friends Teddy and Francis are more loyal and more resonable foils than "assholes who constantly insult him", with Francis in paticular being far less insufferable, instead being a truly fun friend group you root for. Gina is added from the jump and god bless them for it. I love that theater kid. (With Chad also there and pretty much a member of Team Awesome, as he should be). Nate's "hit on women like a jackass" tendnenices, while sadly relaistic to a 5th grader, are toned down, and his family gets more to do: Marty is still pathetic but it's not his oly schitck and dove cameron does a great job as his sister.

Overall the show was really good having a gorgeous peanuts movie style art style that matched the strip, it got the tone down right while adjusting it and while it wasn't always perfect I have a LOT of respect for it. Sadi it got screwed over. Hope it gets another chance

Fairly Odd Parnents: A New Wish : I need to watch more of this but... man is this good. Faviorite is Cosmo with Peri a close second as he was my faviorite in the og and that's still true as while he keeps the voice that can be mildy grating but is fine by me from the later seasons he's back to peak idiot and back to half a whohle idot.

After what I hear was a diaster with fairly odder, A New Wish is everything a revivial should be: it respects the original amazingly with TONS of callbacks I wasn't expecting thus far or have read about, and a premise that's so obvious i'm shocked it took this long to try it: Timmy's gone having moved on naturally at some point as the series constantly hinted would happen which is sad, as he looses his real parents, but means he's doing okay for himself as an adult instead, and we get Hazel instead, a new kid for a new decade. Hazel is the perfect foil too lacking Timmy's arrogance and selfishness , but still keeping the short sightness that comes when you give a child the power of a god. Hazel is a kind, wonderful little bean who like Timmy will often use her powers to help others, but due to the series having a heavier continuity, actually learns from her wishes.. it dosen't always work but it's nice that it's not a death loop of terrible mistkaes. Not saying that death loop wasn't funny, but it works better in this era

The show keeps the basic premise that works but weeds out the stuff that didn't: gone are the sadistic teachers (not saying those don't still exist but we've been there), and neglectful parents (the only one left is played dead seriously), kept is the magic hyjinks. It seems like the bulk of the cast from the original who'd make sense to show up (and i'm sure more could), do. The revamp of peri got a ton of buzz and rightfully so having him be the seemingly suave but really just very tired foil to both his own god kid and his parents is perfect, especially with wanda rest from the nag to half of a whole idiot and having the very plausable reason for him not having been around simply been them smothering him a bit much, which fits both perfectly. He dosen't hate them, he just wants to find his own way while honoring the family buisness.

As youc an tell by the several paragraphs.. I love a new wish. I hope it does well and gets to go on a while, the creators certainly have the ideas for it and frankly we could all use a little magic.

[toonrandytalkstoons]

Pony in the Spotlight: An “It’s Pony” Retrospective

Today, January 18, marks the third anniversary of It’s Pony – an unique original Nicktoon in which it’s mainly produced out of the United Kingdom instead of the usual Nickelodeon Animation studios in the United States. Created by illustrator, animator and writer Ant Blades, It’s Pony chronicles the antics of a talking pony and his human best friend who live in an urban farm on the sixth floor of an apartment.

  In my mind, It’s Pony stood out from many other Nicktoons when it aired – while it did have its moments in wacky moments, it has an unique charm to it. It has its own brand of humor – probably because most of its writers are British and the Brits have their own sense of humor – and the stories themselves have their twists and turns. When watching the series, you’ll never know when the story would lead because of an unpredictable pony. And with any animated series filled with quirky characters, great music, hilarious situations, unique character designs and art style and heartwarming moments, I fell in love with It’s Pony.

  Alas, with many other Nicktoons, It’s Pony didn’t last well. While it never achieved the same amount of success as SpongeBob SquareParents and The Loud House, Nick’s two current biggest Nicktoon franchises, to me it was a breath of fresh air when I was growing tired of the latter aforementioned series, and for reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph.

In this retrospective, we’ll look back at the series as well as its merits and highlights from all two seasons of It’s Pony. Let’s begin!

Having launched in 2012 and lasted until the end of the decade, the Nickelodeon Animated Shorts Program garnered so many pilots. For the 2016-17 season, a pilot called Pony made the rounds as part of a slew of submissions from the program’s international edition. Luckily, it got picked up for a full series. British-born Ant Blades has made a name for himself as a creator of various animated shorts. Among other things, he’s also the creator of the comic strip Bewley, about a family of blue-colored birds, that ran on the British newspaper Daily Express for a number of years. (The strip appeared on the website GoComics in the United States about a decade ago, but it's since removed as its rights have expired.)

Enter Nickelodeon a few years later. When Blades’ Pony got picked up, the decision was made to have the series produced mainly out of the UK. Blue Zoo, a renowned London-based animation, was known for its CG productions in the preschool programming field. Recently, they opened a 2D animation unit – and its first production was Pony, since renamed to It’s Pony. (Blue Zoo also produces the animation for 2019’s The Adventures of Paddington, which is also on Nickelodeon in the US, and they are also currently working with the network on producing the upcoming series HexVet, based on the graphic novel series.) While its artists and writers are mainly based in Britain, much of its voice cast are based in the US.

                                                        -----

So, how did I get invested in It’s Pony? In early 2018, during Nickelodeon's Upfront, the series was announced during the event. When Nick’s other announcements of a fourth season renewal of The Loud House as well as its spin-off The Casagrandes garnered so much attention within my friends and the online animation community at large, while I was fine with those announcements, one look at It’s Pony’s promotional image sold it for me. At that moment, I knew I’m for something special despite it being ignored from the beginning.

  Since then I was counting the days til the day It’s Pony made its debut. However, over a year has passed by that time I became a little desperate as there was no new news about the series. Finally, during the holiday season in 2019, Nickelodeon announced that there will be a sneak peek of the series on YouTube on Christmas Day, with the series officially premiering on January 18, 2020. I was excited. However, Nick didn’t upload the sneak peek on Christmas as announced, only to finally appear on YouTube the next day. (If that’s the first time Nick attempted to mistreat a new Nicktoon before its debut, then I don’t know what is. :D)

  The sneak peek was a 10 minute segment of an episode called “Plants!” I wrote my first impressions back then and I liked what I saw. After a few more watches of the same segment, however, “Plants!” became one of my favorite episodes/segments of It’s Pony. I laughed more and more. The upload wasn’t an immediate success, however: When I wrote about “Plants!”, its view count at the time was 188,000 – the video didn’t reach one million views months later. By comparison, the sneak peek of The Casagrandes’ first segment on YouTube a few weeks earlier surpassed over a million views within 24 hours. If my memory is correct, I think Nickelodeon promoted The Casagrandes’s sneak peek over It’s Pony’s, or they had promoted It’s Pony’s sneak peek but lots of people were only interested on The Loud House spin-off.

  It kinda bothered me, because I wanted It’s Pony to succeed. But it doesn't matter. I was looking forward to the series premiere.

It’s Pony’s arrival came at a critical yet tragic time for me. 

Several years prior, I got back to watching Nickelodeon. The Loud House was my main cartoon from the network during that period. But even then, Nick continued to can some other Nicktoons I also liked watching while putting so much attention to TLH – the last Nicktoon I loved by this time was Welcome to the Wayne. Secondly, I grew dissatisfied towards The Loud House and felt that its quality had dropped while it became a show that was unfamiliar to me, and I also dealt with an increasingly hostile fandom that took a toll on my mental health. Thankfully, a new animated series on Netflix called Archibald’s Next Big Thing brought me some respite from it all – I loved it so much that I even rewatched the first season multiple times.

  The tragic part – and most important of all – is that while all of this was going on, my mom was dying and I found myself into heavy depression at times. A few weeks after Mom’s funeral and while I was coping with grief, It’s Pony arrived to bring me much joy. A half hour’s worth of silliness, great characters, and tons of heart to shield from the harsh realities of life, thanks to an unlikely pony-girl friendship and the hijinks that surround them.

I frequently brought up TLH here, but It’s Pony did have ties to the popular series: One, a handful of  writers from TLH including Bob Mittenthal (also served as the series’ head writer) and Jacob Fleischer contributed to It’s Pony. Finally, Jessica DiCicco – the voice of sisters Lynn and Lucy – starred as Annie Bramley, while Grey Griffin (Lily, Lola and Lana), Yvette Nicole Brown (Mayor Davis) and Joe DiMaggio (Mr. Grouse) make frequent appearances in the series. Because of the TLH/It’s Pony connection, I often told people who love The Loud House to check out It’s Pony. Obviously, it didn’t work most of the time, but only a few people I know did.

  Imagine my surprise when I found out that Josh Zuckeman, the voice of the starred character Pony, also appeared as Young Evil in the movie Austin Powers in Goldmember. The Austin Powers series is one of my favorite film series, and I was ecstatic when I found that out after I started watching the series. He’s great as Pony. Pony is one of my comfort characters – his character design as well as his voice are what makes him so adorable.

                                                             -----

What is the tone of It’s Pony? For starters, it features the antics of a talking pony who’s not only naïve, but also causing havoc throughout the city, which later came to be called Pickleton in the second season. Yet, Pony always means well and while he’s good – well, chaotic good mostly – he has always come through for the people he loves, including Annie and her parents George and Helen, and his friends.

  As mentioned earlier, when watching the series you’ll never know when things would go when Pony’s around, and I think the writers worked so hard to make it happen and miraculously pulled it off. Pony drives much of the series’ comedy. When I noticed people who had tried to watch the series, they found Pony to be annoying. To me, it’s just a part of the series’ charm.  I just love him and he has always made me laugh!

Amid all the chaos, however, It’s Pony can also be surprisingly laid-back. It gives the effect of the series to be soothing when it’s not in chaotic mode. The series’ soundtrack usually features a string instrument being heard, which I do think it helps give off that kind of vibe. It’s also appropriate given the fact that the Bramleys are a farming family.

And the heartwarming stuff, oh the heartwarming stuff. At the series’, um, heart, are Annie and Pony’s relationship. They’re the best of friends, they love each other, and they can’t imagine being separated from each other. A segment from season one, “Teacher’s Pet”, touches on this, with an emotional beat. There’s also Annie’s friends: including her closest human friend and rich but sweet Clara, sportster Heston, smart Gerry (whom Clara has a crush on), geek Brian, slightly-deranged animal lover Beatrice, weirdo Fred, and kinda dark yet sometimes frenemy Henrietta. Beatrice, Fred and Henrietta aside, the friends – despite some conflicts that appear between them every once in a while – they’re very supportive of each other. There are tons of other heartwarming moments in the series, which I’ll also mention in the episode highlights later in this retrospective.

In addition, It’s Pony came out in a time when the world was (and still is) already in despair, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic was in its beginning stages, with the pandemic arriving in the US nearly two months later after the series premiere and millions of people were ordered to stay home. The New York Times named It’s Pony as one of the new series for parents to watch with their kids. Nickelodeon’s Twitter account tweeted their article. It’s Pony seemingly was destined to move to greater things if good reviews and decent ratings were any indication. However, we all know what happened next…

                                                          ----- I’ve talked about how the series came to be and my personal history with it. Now, we begin the brief recaps of my favorite episodes from both seasons! While it’ll only be about the episodes, It’s Pony also has a series of shorts available online – all of them are great!

Season 1

“Nosy Pony”

In the series’ debut segment, Pony does what the title suggests: being nosy. He really gets in the business of strangers and what they do. That, of course, causes problems and not only that, George and Helen need them to temporarily run their produce stand at the city market. After a fix to correct Pony’s nosiness, it worked…until Pony nearly got himself in danger. “Nosy Pony” is a great segment to start off the series, and it’s full of twists and turns.

“Plants!” I mentioned before that I liked this segment when it was shown as a sneak peek, but it has grown on me and it’s now one of my favorites. Pony being afraid of plants does sound silly from a bad moment he experienced. However, while hilarity ensues – including scenes where a therapist who’s helping Pony ends up with a phobia of her own – you can’t help but feeling sorry for Pony. He wants to go on a camping trip with his friends in a forest that is obviously full of plants. You may even end up cheering for him, including him saving Annie from certain danger. And there’s this gem of a line: “The plants are out to get me!”

“Distractions” This segment is so much fun, and it also best demonstrates how unpredictable It’s Pony can be. Annie agrees to help out Gerry on his science project. However, Pony keeps distracting her, and each time it happens it leads the duo on unexpected adventures – and a great heartwarming moment between the two aside from all the chaos. “Distractions” speaks to me because I am easily distracted at times. I’m set on doing something I want to do, only for me to do something else later on – or nothing at all.

“Gerry’s Birthday” It’s Gerry’s birthday, and his friends plan a surprise party for him. Pony stalls him, while Annie and the rest set up the party at the Bramleys’. Along the way Gerry gets hurt (Gerry always gets the worst, doesn't he?)  and the planned surprise(s) ends up disastrous. However, while Gerry appreciates Annie and Pony’s gesture, he only wants a quiet birthday, even with a few friends by his side. I think it was this segment that Gerry has become one of my favorite characters on It’s Pony.  Like him, I’m reservedly quiet. I have preferred quiet birthdays for years now, and I don’t like a lot of noise. However, I don’t mind having some people by my side. Also: “Pirate burglars! Call the police!”

“Loud Horse” A noisy neighbor is playing her tuba from Annie’s bedroom below, giving her a sleepless night – multiple sleepless nights to be exact. Having enough, she speaks to her neighbor, Marti, about her tuba playing – it turned out that she had to do it because Pony’s the one who annoyed her with his noisy antics. Annie and Pony proceed to rectify the situation – including a (sort of) marriage proposal involving Marti’s girlfriend Meg, and having Marti go on tour with her band so Annie can finally rest easy. It’s a fun episode. And this scene:

“Annie-versary” A special day has arrived for Pony that involves his best friend in the world. He drops subtle hints at Annie, but the problem is that Annie is having trouble with what the “Annie-versary” is about. Later, Helen shows her pictures from the past of Annie meeting Pony for the first time and their activities together. Annie is finally convinced that it’s the anniversary of the day their friendship was formed, but when she catches up with Pony he finally reminds her that it’s the anniversary of the very first day of them eating pizza together. A hilarious and heartwarming episode, and it’s also the episode that will forever remind fans of a touching scene showing a very young Annie and Pony.

“Bramley Holiday” In this Christmas episode, the Bramleys’ holiday tradition involves visiting George’s mother Ruth in her cabin up in the mountains near Clifton.  However, their trip is thwarted after Pony’s mishap at the airport, leaving Annie behind while her parents have already taken off. George and Helen did return to a heartbroken Annie, who wanted to see her grandmother. However, an opportunity arises when the Bramleys disguise themselves as part of a troupe on a bus heading to Clifton. But Pony blew their cover and they found themselves stranded in the forest; and along the way they face obstacles including fending off a bear before they finally reach Ruth’s, and their Christmas tradition happily resumes.

  While many Christmas episodes from various television series involve stories characters who are Scrooges or Grinches – or even what happen to their families and friends in Christmas if they don’t exist – “Bramley Holiday” involves a family heading to a relative’s for the holiday as well as the meaning of family. George has thought of Pony as a nuisance and it was the reason why he intentionally kept Pony away as the family headed to the airport. However, Pony has always been good to the family – Annie adores him and so does Helen. George realizes he does care for Pony deep down, and while he acted as a grump towards him early in the series in subsequent episodes he has  warmed up to him. See the ending of “Teacher’s Pet”!

Season 2

“Annie vs. Pony”

Annie and Pony inexplicably found themselves competing against each other in a pet competition, which might threaten their friendship. And – spoilers – Beatrice was the one who started it all. She’s at her best here in the whole series – a great moment for her. I absolutely love the battle of the pets between Pony and a lizard he entered into the competition. Very Godzilla-like if you ask me!

“Second Best Friend” A crazy episode involving a fly that everyone needs to believe in to save the day, and also an episode involving second best friends. Pony introduces the fly named Michael, his second best friend, to Gerry, who mistakenly injures him while he was shooing him away. Suddenly the whole city stops and begins rallying around Michael, who’s being sent to the hospital. Unfortunately for Gerry (you still can’t feel sorry for him enough), he’s being attacked by a large swarm of flies as revenge. While the city has to believe in Michael to save Gerry, it takes longer for Annie to accept it, and Gerry is saved…but only to be dived into a pool of paint as it has always planned. This episode is just out there in terms of craziness when you consider that It’s Pony was normally laid back, but it’s really funny and sweet.

“Pony Car” A snobbish rich cousin of Clara’s, Barrington, invites her friends to a party being thrown at the pier, which they accept. Clara disdains Barrington’s rude attitude towards her friends and says their friendship is more important than any riches. Later, when Annie, Gerry, Heston and Brian need a ride, Pony arrives with a car he built, which is assembled of various parts presumably from the junkyard. And thus begins a seemingly never-ending ride of wackiness, with them passing by Clara and Barrington at the pier several times until it all finally ends. An amazingly funny episode, and I think this episode has some of Pony’s best moments, including when he pretends to be the car’s radio.

“Wedding Planners” A (scam) honeymoon is awarded to the Bramleys by mail, which excites Annie for her parents. The problem? George and Helen aren’t legally married as their marriage certificate is fraudulent! So Pony and Annie do what they do best: getting themselves into messy situations – in this case it’s in order to have their parents remarried. However, Helen got them as she revealed that she and George are legally and happily married after all and it’s all a ruse to trick Annie and Pony. Helen’s really a smart trickster, and here she did it because she knew the best buds would mess it up. But in the end they’re family and they’re happy together. Plus, Helen’s one of my favorite characters in the series – she’s really sweet, and even fun for a mother like her.

“Song of the Soil” I love “Song of the Soil” for two things: one, it’s an episode full of creativity and fun, and second it has a cute song! Annie and Pony take over tending to their urban farm because the backs of George and Helen break. And behind their parents’, ahem, backs, Pony decides to pull a Phineas and Ferb (!) and builds a giant roller coaster at the top of their apartment building. This temporarily sets back Annie and Pony’s job of harvesting their produce on time, but they complete their job before George arrives and Annie develops a green thumb through the song of the soil.

“Raiders of the Lost Cinema” Being the second Halloween episode (“Scarecrow” being the first), “Raiders of the Lost Cinema” not only has the usual Halloween hijinks but also, unusual for such a Halloween episode, there’s a heartbreaking (when you think about it) backstory of a man who secluded himself for decades after a love of his never arrived for a date – and a movie theater of his went with him, never to be seen again. And thus begins the journey of Pony and friends searching for the theater and its legendary display of (long expired) candies. But standing in their way is a group of high school kids who also want to get to the candy. “Raiders” is one of my all time favorite Halloween episodes, and it also comes with an awesome dance scene from Brian!

“City Pony/Country Pony” In another half hour episode, the Bramleys fear that Pony isn’t having a suitable life in the city due to the havoc he creates and decide that the country life should be perfect for him. George accepts a deal with his Uncle Fitz to stay at the apartment while the family is away at his farm. Upon arriving, the Bramleys face a rundown house (which terrifies Pony), and then they have difficulty adjusting to the country life. Pony, meanwhile, brings the city life of Pickleton to the country life. Everything’s back to normal for the Bramleys in the end, but it is a great episode.

“Annie the Influencer”

A fun episode but also a cautionary tale of sorts as a popular app appears in Pickleton -- and Annie’s hooked into it. The search for being popular and gaining at a lot of clicks by Annie cause a rift between her and her friends, and Pony’s concerned. Then suddenly, Annie finds herself on an island apparently without any modern conveniences, and tries to break free from her addiction. She eventually realizes what she did and makes amends with Pony and her friends, and the end of the episode reveals how she ended up on the island. This episode is notable for the fact that even though Pony is known for being naive, he’s being shown as the straight man, er, pony. It also brings the point that social media can be very addictive and also brings the worst out of people. I’m kinda addicted to social media, mainly Twitter -- but recently I made some strides to limit things that made me negative there. 

“Bowled Over” While some episodes of It’s Pony gave hints that Annie may like Heston more than just a friend, in “Bowled Over” it shows her having a clear crush on someone for the first time. She tries to woo a boy named Theo at the bowling alley by trying to improve on her bowling skills. Meanwhile, Pony wishes that he has fingers and he did just that by taping some hot dogs into two of his hooves, giving them “fingers” of his own. But Theo’s constant belittling of Pony and Annie realizing that she put her friendship with Pony over Theo got her to dump him, and the girl and horse duo happily sing about their toes. It’s a favorite episode of mine for only one thing: Pony’s song about fingers! It’s so, so cute!

“Pony, Come Home” The penultimate segment sees Pony unlikely get himself in a new home thanks to a pompous wealthy kid. Annie and friends hatch a plan to get Pony back. This and the accompanying segment which also serves as the series finale “Special Sauce” (which has Gerry in Annie and Pony-style adventures with a pet rock), I feel, celebrates the series as well as the special relationship between Annie and Pony. “Pony, Come Home” features a flashback to a fun time the celebrated duo had from an earlier episode during a scene where Annie reminisces about Pony. (Despite these segments that make up the actual series finale, Nicktoons network premiered a holdover episode a week later, “Beachy Weachy Weach/Bee In a Jar”, presumably because it was close to the summer season at the time. Other countries had access to this episode about a year prior.)

Epilogue

Anyone who knows about Nickelodeon and their tendency to get rid of animated series that aren’t successful to them almost immediately. That’s what happened to It’s Pony despite showing promise. Nick gave up on it more than halfway through the first season, and after that two episodes only premiered throughout 2021 and then burned off the rest of the episode through the first half of 2022. I mean, there’s that and the fact that The Loud House and SpongeBob continue to get more attention. (In addition, by mid 2021 some It’s Pony shorts appeared on Nickelodeon while the main series was still on hiatus, though they were never advertised and other shorts were released online only.)

Like many fans of It’s Pony, I was disappointed but also not surprised. Was it like TLH or SpongeBob? Obviously no, but at the same time other Nicktoons that stood out uniquely from those that are now exist to be milked by the network. And there are lots of animated series I watch that have at least some flaws. However, I can’t seem to find any with It’s Pony in my view. It’s a great show for those who want to forget their worries for me. Like many series within a similar vein, it’s perfect for me to cheer up.

 It’s Pony and its creator Ant Blades deserve better. The show and the fact that he’s also an illustrator is the main reason why I want to have a career as a professional artist. Blades’ illustrations are fun, energetic, and have a cuteness to them. Maybe one day he would announce a new project to the delight of his fans, and hopefully it would be much more successful, though It’s Pony deserves to have a lot of success.

I’m closing this essay to paraphrase Blades’ statement from the day It’s Pony had its final episode: the show may be over, but rest assured that Annie and Pony will continue to have their adventures in Pickleton with their special bond together. 

Thank you, Ant, and to everyone who made the series for what it is. Happy Annie-versary!

[allmypink]

Movies

A curated list of some of my favorite movies in my own categories.

"They can't order me to stop dreaming.": The classic Cinderella and all her inspired spin-offs about dreamers.

Disney's Cinderella (1950)

Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997) A Cinderella Story (2004) Ever After (1998) Ella Enchanted (2004) Maid in Manhattan (2002) Legally Blonde (2001) Last Holiday (2006)

"Get in loser. We're going shopping.": Makeovers and shopping are central themes. Mean Girls (2004) The Devil Wears Prada (2006) Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) Pretty Woman (1990) Miss Congeniality (2000) The Princess Diaries (2001) Clueless (1995)

"Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count.": The feminine urge to commit murder. Heathers (1998) Teeth (2007) Ginger Snaps (2000) The Craft (1996) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) Jennifer's Body (2009) Carrie (1976) Midsommer (2019)

"Thirty and flirty and and thriving.": Movies starring older actresses. 13 Going On 30 (2004) Freaky Friday (2003) Never Been Kissed (1999) Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion (1997) Juanita (2019) Uptown Girls (2003) The First Wives Club (1996)

"Your girlhood an incubation for madness.": Movies about growing pains, physical and otherwise. Barbie the Movie (2023) Black Swan (2010) Girl, Interrupted (1999) But I'm A Cheerleader (1989) Teen Witch (1989) Bring It On (2000)

“Why would you want to marry me for, anyhow?" "So I can kiss you anytime I want.”: Plain and simple romantic comedies. Sweet Home Alabama (2002) You've Got Mail (1998) When Harry Met Sally (1989) Sleepless in Seattle (1993) Falling Inn Love (2019) Wedding Season (2002) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Bonus: Pure fluffy serotonin: Barbie Life In The Dreamhouse (2012, 5 seasons) Love 020 (2016, 1 season)

[lizzygrantarchives]

Mojo, April 2021

Is Lana Del Rey – the Springsteen-approved laureate of L.A. darkness – lightening up? In 2021, a new album opens a sunnier chapter in her controversial roman-à-clef, and folk legend Joan Baez advocates her acceptance in the pantheon. But while serenity seems almost in reach, some wounds still burn and grievances rankle. “Fame can put you on the peripheries,” she tells Victoria Segal, “where the vultures can pick at you. It’s dangerous on the edges.”

IT’S MIDNIGHT IN MODESTO AND LANA DEL REY HAS swung into the backyard, pulled up in her fast car. “I told my boyfriend I was going to go out and sit in the car because I hate it when people listen to me talk,” she says. “I’m at his parents’ farm, so we’re in, like, the guest house. It’s pretty idyllic: Northern California, pretty cold, 40 degrees and a little fireplace. We had a sweet little night singing all the old Disney and holiday songs – not what I expected after a long car ride, but everyone was in a good mood.”

Tomorrow, Del Rey will hit the road back home to Los Angeles, preparing to spend Christmas Eve “with my sister and brother and just two girlfriends.” After the holiday, it will transpire she fractured her arm while spinning on her “beautiful skates” through the “twilight of the desert”: that’s why she’s wearing a sling in MOJO’s cover photograph.

Ever since she studied philosophy at New York’s Fordham University in the late 2000s, there’s been a question lurking in Del Rey’s mind: what if something happened to make the world stop? “So when it did,” she says, “I was kind of shocked.” The pandemic has inevitably hampered her movements – festivals cancelled, studio time with producer Jack Antonoff truncated – but it hasn’t slowed down her creative jumps (or her willingness to crash into social media).

September saw the publication of her poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass. In November, she covered Summertime as a fundraiser for the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras; covering all bases, she also recorded You’ll Never Walk Alone for a documentary about Liverpool FC.

The most significant landmark, however, was the completion of Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the album she has been promising (sometimes as White Hot Forever) since the release of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Bruce Springsteen, who knows a bit about the flipside of the American dream, loved that album: “She just creates a world of her own and invites you in,” he said. The cover showed Del Rey standing on a boat, one arm around Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke, the other reaching towards the camera as if to save the viewer from the water. Behind her, the Californian coast is on fire. The Greatest, Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s defining song, was the cover’s aural analogue: “Hawaii just missed that fireball/LA is in flames it’s getting hot… Kanye West is blond and gone/Life On Mars ain’t just a song/I hope the livestream’s almost on.” But where do you go after burning America down? Did she know what was next?

“No,” says Del Rey lightly. “I felt totally fucked.”

YOU’D HAVE GOT LONG ODDS, IN 2012, on the internet phenomenon of the previous year’s Video Games becoming the decade’s most remarkable and provocative pop star. Back then, Lana Del Rey was more think-piece cipher than Boss-approved songwriter: “a young fiction,” sniffed the Los Angeles Times, “daughter of a domain-name magnate.”

The record states that Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born in New York in 1985; as a baby, she moved with her parents upstate to Lake Placid. Music was around, but not unusually so. “From what I was told,” she says, “I sang verses before I spoke words, but I don’t think that necessarily meant I had to, or was going to be a singer.” Much else in her supposed biography, she says, is misinformation.

“People said I came from money,” she recounts. “It was really tough to get over some stigma of this idea of having my dad buying my album and giving me a record deal and us being some rich white family when we fought over money constantly when we were young.” Later, she says “I was not from the right side of the tracks, period.”

Sent to boarding school to address an alcohol problem – a period she captured in This Is What Makes Us Girls from her Born To Die album of 2012 – she “was made fun of mercilessly for being white trash. It was so hard, every minute of it was super-tough, not having come from Greenwich. Being super straight-edge in college was just, like, crazy. It’s been the road less travelled the whole time.” She has no interest, she insists, in properly telling her own story, “beautiful” though she says it is: “I don’t give a fuck about people knowing [mocking little voice] my inner thoughts as a third grader.”

Early detractors, chasing down a narrow idea of “authenticity”, were bothered by her musical prehistory – stalled experiments and false starts that might once have been called “paying your dues”. In 2006, she made Sirens under the name May Jailer, spindly alt-folk with a Linda Perhacs wobble that was never officially released. Her next ‘first’ album, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant, was removed by her managers from the internet in 2010, preparing a clean slate for the post-Video Games era.

Yet as the plausibly deniable satire of Brooklyn Baby from 2014’s Ultraviolence indicates (“Well my boyfriend’s in a band/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed”), she put in the hours on New York’s grottiest stages.

In 2008, Del Rey was living in the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in New Jersey. She would also take the light rail to record with producer David Kahne on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District – sessions that would ultimately become her first EP, Kill Kill, and the since repudiated Lana Del Ray. She had a deal with David Nichtern’s 5 Points Records; Lady Gaga’s manager Bob Leone secured her some classes at the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame; her senior year of metaphysics at Fordham was ending. Odd little paths opened up: she auditioned for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the musical scored by Bono and The Edge, and “maybe thought about Broadway. You’d get like a hundred dollars for singing background on records that would lead to nowhere. There was this company that emerged called The Orchard that was taking submissions for, like, toilet paper commercials and I probably did one, like, under a pseudonym. Definitely the happiest I’ve ever been. Stay in the middle, no dog in the race, people would even hire me for background stuff. I tried to act so cool on every sofa I sat at.”

It was only in 2010, when she met her current manager Ben Mawson at the CMJ Festival in New York’s Chinatown, that gears shifted and she glimpsed a significant future for herself: “Then I moved to London with him that week and he got me out of my deal that day.”

Success was not immediate. “I lived in a shitty flat with no heat, it was so awful – but they told me it was on Camden Road near where Amy Winehouse used to play at the Roundhouse, and I loved Amy.” Her voice softens dreamily. “I loved Amy.”

Fed up with trying to write songs for other people, one day she “just said ‘fuck it’” to her collaborator Justin Parker: “‘I’m going to write what I want to write now.’” In a Dolly Parton-style fit of productivity, within 72 hours she had Video Games, Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Ride.

On July 23, 2011, just under a month after Video Games appeared on the internet, Del Rey was on a train to Glasgow when Mawson told her she had received her first review. “I had 10 seconds of the most elated feeling,” she remembers, “and then the news everywhere, on all of the televisions, was that Amy had died on her front steps and I was like no. NO.” She breathes in sharply. “Everyone was watching, like, mesmerised, but I personally felt like I didn’t even want to sing any more.”

TEN SECONDS OF ELATION seems to be as much pleasure as Del Rey has ever taken from her press. When she covered Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood on 2015’s Honeymoon album, it was not casually chosen: anger at the way she feels she has been misrepresented surges through her conversation, despite the four billion streams, the four UK Number 1 albums, and the validation of famous fans from Stevie Nicks to Courtney Love.

Even Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s ecstatic reception was no antidote. “I knew they were going to like Norman… because there’s kind of nothing not to like about it,” she shrugs. “Norman…’s just cool, it’s easy to cheer for that.” She doesn’t, however, believe people are cheering for her: in September, she declared she still felt like an “underdog”.

“When I’m in London I’m reminded of what other people think of me in a great way. Being on the cover of MOJO – I fucking love MOJO. It’s crazy to me, crazy to me, crazy to me that I could be on the cover of MOJO but it’s a little different – ha! – over here,” she says, ie, in America. “I mean, I guess I’ll never forget my first four years of interviews. They just fucking burned me.”

There was the one where the journalist “made fun of me mercilessly, for like, five hours about how I adopted a New York City accent and that everyone knew it was fake, so just give it up. It was embarrassing – he humiliated me. So by the time he asked me about feminism, I said I just wanted to talk about aerospace travel.”

A 2014 Guardian interview headlined “I Wish I Was Dead Already” is another thorn in her psyche. “I didn’t say I wanted to die because of the 27 Club – I said I was having, like, a fucking hard time. The way people talk about mental health in 2020” – she makes the noise of an explosion – “mind blown. Talk about a different world compared with five years ago. You said anything remotely like you’re not feeling so good that day and it’s like, ‘Woah, you’ve set women back like 200 years.’ Or ‘Witch!’ It was super-hard to be a real person.”

Instead, Del Rey continued to build her musical world, creating a reality nobody could dismiss. ‘Evolution’ suggests dramatic Bowie-like shape-shifts; instead, her six albums have been a process of refining her core material – the palette of upcycled hip-hop, vintage Hollywood glamour and Laurel Canyon classicism. But Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s widescreen dazzle was a dead end of sorts – “I had to turn back inward,” she says – and Chemtrails Over The Country Club appears to reveal a more vulnerable Del Rey: lighter on the LA menace, more innocently emotional: “We did it for fun/We did it for free,” she sings sweetly on the song Yosemite, “we did it for the right reasons.” It’s an album that looks at the road ahead, but also, back to where she’s come from, making her strongest connection yet with her antecedents.

“I’ve been covering Joni and dancing with Joan,” she sings on Chemtrails…’ Dance Till We Die – and it’s all true. In October 2019, Del Rey duetted with Joan Baez on her 1975 song Diamonds And Rust at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre; a night of non-stop dancing with the 80-year-old folk hero followed. And as promised, Chemtrails… includes a Joni Mitchell cover from Mitchell’s 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. Reprising their October 2019 performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Del Rey shares the verses out with Arizonan singer-songwriter Zella Day and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering. A bittersweet commentary on the value of art, Mitchell contrasts her “velvet curtain calls” with a busker’s purity – it’s a song, says Del Rey, that means “everything” to her.

“The way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn’t like that,” she says coldly. “Because I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a fuck.”

For one, Natalie Mering doesn’t doubt Del Rey’s investment in For Free. “I think the verse that Lana sings – “Me, I play for fortunes” – it’s her story too,” she says. “She understands the ephemeral quality of music and that it can’t be completely commodified, even though she’s done such a great job of doing that. I think Joni is very similar.”

BAEZ AND MITCHELL, DEL REY says, are “like unicorns”. “Joan, Bob, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, it’s less the albums and more the songs – the single perfect songs. Like Diamonds And Rust or Woodstock.” She rummages on You Tube to find a “staggering” 1962 coffeehouse performance from Baez. “I see a lot of people now wanting to be like other people – and hey, it’s not like I don’t want to be like other people too – but I think there were so many less options to look at in the ’60s, so you kind of just got what you got. You got a Janis or you got a Joan or you got a Jimi – it wasn’t like there was Jimi One, Jimi Two, Jimi Three. When I’m producing things alone, it’s impossible for me to sound anything other than a singer-songwriter. Actually, that’s not true,” she corrects herself. “I’ve got my own little ways about me.”

Mering, comparing Del Rey to Peggy Lee “if she was, like, I’m just going to write everything myself,” agrees. “She’s very free and she’s loose. What she goes for in terms of when she’s writing and working, it’s very magical and intuitive and it’s not very calculated – even though I think maybe she’s been accused of that in the past.”

That looseness – a willingness to wander – feels more present on Chemtrails… than previous albums, yet she insists it has been “so much harder than any other record I’ve made.” Covid separated her from Antonoff – also a collaborator with St. Vincent and Taylor Swift – in the final stages of recording and she missed him. “Everything that could be terrible is hilarious in Jack’s world. I think that’s why he does so well. It’s a rare quality for a man to have that softer kind of side – all hilarity and no inappropriateness.”

She says she finds listening to the new album “a fight”, conceding that she’s offering a pre-emptive critique. “It wasn’t so much that I thought the songs fantastically fit together with like seamless, sunkissed production – but you know, there’s a life lived in there.”

Del Rey has long used Los Angeles to colour and contour her songs. But Chemtrails roves further – Tulsa, Nebraska, Florida – a fitting backcloth for a record about freedom in a world where everything has a price. Not All Who Wander Are Lost – a song whose sky-high trill reminds Del Rey of “Cinderella in the movie where she’s holding the bluebird” – romanticises wanderlust. Wild At Heart and the title track (“I’m not unhinged or unhappy/I’m just wild”) hint at something untameable. If For Free is the record’s presiding spirit, you can also feel the vibrations of Mitchell’s Cactus Tree, a song that acknowledges the hard work of “being free” – shedding compromise, swerving control.

It’s a struggle Del Rey maps onto her folk and country influences, most explicitly on Breaking Up Slowly. A mournful lament riffing on Tammy Wynette and George Jones’s notoriously turbulent relationship, it was written with Tennessean singer-songwriter Nikki Lane, who supported Del Rey in 2019. In a hotel room, Lane mentioned that somebody told her she was “breaking up slowly”. Del Rey immediately sang “…is a hard thing to do”.

“One of the most incredible things about being around her is like, she is a song,” says Lane of Del Rey. “It’s just coming out of her at all hours of the day.”

They have written four more originals; there is also, says Del Rey, “a cover album of country songs” and one of “other folk songs”. Del Rey expects “scepticism,” but explains her father and uncle Phil Madeira (one of Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Boys) exposed her to country music in her youth. Her tastes are “stark and blue, somewhat outlaw”: Hank Williams, Bobbie Gentry, Patsy Cline, Wynette. “With a little Marty Robbins and Johnny Paycheck. I went back and listened to Ride [from 2012 EP Paradise] and Video Games and thought, you know, they’re kind of country. I mean, they’re definitely not pop. Maybe the way Video Games got remastered, they’re pop – but there’s something Americana about it for sure. So let’s see how these things come out – I’m not going to have pedal steel guitar on every single thing, but it is easy for me to write.”

A YEAR OR SO AGO, DEL REY attended a party with Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent at the house of Guy Oseary, manager of Madonna and U2. “Something happened,” she says, “kind of a situation like – never meet your idols. And I just thought, ‘I think it’s interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try my best not to change because I love who I am.’ I said, ‘Jack, it’s dark.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s dark – but I mean, it’s just a game.’”

The incident inspires a song on Chemtrails… Dark But Just A Game mixes Portishead, Ricky Nelson’s song Garden Party and Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl (“The best ones lost their minds”) into a potent statement of defiance.

“Dark But Just A Game is so her to me,” Antonoff will tell MOJO: “fly down the rabbit hole and smile in the same breath.”

The game, however, takes its toll. As Del Rey talks, it frequently feels as if she’s dusting herself down from past humiliations, brushing off old slights.

“People are constantly inferring that I’ve done so much to myself, when I’ve never even been under anaesthesia or whatever,” she says unprompted, apparently still stung by 2012 speculations over the size of her lips. Occasionally, she makes grand statements: “I wanted music to change in the early 2000s and I wanted it to be better than it was. I think it is and I genuinely think I had a hand in it for female singer-songwriters.” They don’t land like shots from a weaponised ego – more the affirmations of someone who still feels as if she doesn’t say it, nobody will.

On a Chemtrails… song called White Dress she sings in a breathlessly rapt whisper of being “only 19”, working as a waitress, listening to The White Stripes and Kings Of Leon. “Look how I do this,” she sings with trembling innocence, “look how I’ve got this.” Then comes the fall: “It kind of makes me feel that I was better off.”

“I’m sure the grass is always greener,” Del Rey says, looking back on her waitressing days, “but I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next. Also, I really liked being of service and I still do – I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space. How I kind of grew up was to be a man amongst men and a grain of sand on the beach and I preferred to stay in the middle of the boat in that way. Sometimes I feel, with fame, it can put you on the peripheries, where the vultures can pick at you. It’s dangerous on the edges.”

“It’s not that I aspire to be the girl next door,” she says later, “but it’s just that I actually was and I think what some people don’t understand is that the girl next door has things going on, too. A lot of these other people who I see portraying that image are not that way at all – they’re like the biggest bitches who live in, like, insane mansions and who rip people off. This is not bitterness speaking at all. It’s literally just kind of just the facts, ma’am.”

In May 2020, Del Rey posted a “question for the culture” on Instagram. In it, she expressed her belief that artists including Beyoncé, Cardi B and Kehlani were applauded for portraying their sexuality in all its messy complexity, while she was accused of “glamorising abuse” in songs like Ultraviolence, where she quoted the title of The Crystals’ Goffin & King classic He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). The culture’s answer was not sympathetic: Del Rey was held to account for appearing to single out artists of colour, and criticised for asking feminism to save a place for “women who look and act like me… the kind of women who are slated for being their authentic, delicate selves.”

“I wasn’t saying white like me,” she insists, emphasising that the women she mentioned are artists she loves. “I was saying people who are made a joke of like me.”

SHORTLY AFTER SPEAKING TO MOJO, Del Rey issues another pre-emptive social media strike, pointing out the new album’s artwork – a photograph of the singer surrounded by her friends – does feature women of colour. Three days after that, she posts a video railing against magazines suggesting she told Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac that she didn’t believe Donald Trump meant to incite the Capitol riot. In fact, she says, she was accusing him of sociopathy – a subject, she tells MOJO, she studied for six years, along with “psychopathy and narcissism and delusions of grandeur”.

“When Trump became President, I was not surprised,” she says, “because the macrocosm is the mirror of what goes on in our bedrooms. In our inner lives.

“A lot of the things I was writing [songs] about, people shamed me for,” she continues, “but I like to think now I was actually writing about what thousands of housewives were experiencing and no one ever said a thing from Brentwood to Boca Raton. I just dyed my hair black and talked about it and I got a lot of shit for it.”

She declares that “It takes a more dignified-looking person with a better reputation to call out the world, or the President or some guy who runs a restaurant. I’m going to be the person who corroborates that story, the blonde at the end of the bar… The reason why I can’t be a person who starts certain movements is because of what people have written that isn’t true. And that’s too bad – because I know a lot.”

Does she feel she’s been discredited?

“I was discredited for seven years,” she says, her voice rising so fiercely it’s briefly unclear whether she’s laughing or crying. “There’s no other way of looking it.”

In the poem SportCruiser from Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, Del Rey wonders if learning to fly could help her navigate life, if learning to sail would show her which way the wind was blowing. Then she realises writing is all the adventure she needs.

“I certainly have to circumnavigate the globe quite a few times to come back to the fact that what I do is that I write, that I live here in LA, that I know who I am,” she says. “I think I’m very hopeful that I’ll feel more and more serene, because that is an objective for me. I just like the idea of waking up peacefully, rather than waking up in a sweat, throwing my feet down on the ground and being like, ‘Oh, what’s going wrong today!’”

Talking earlier about her whispery vocal on White Dress, Del Rey said it was not only close to unedited “journaling” but “also, not too afraid about being kind of stupid. The way I sound in the chorus – because I know it’s… not great, you know,” she laughs.

It sounds perfect for the song, though – trembling, awestruck. The voice of somebody on the brink of something. She agrees – not because it catches her teenage perspective, but because it speaks to her now.

“I actually said to a friend the other day I feel something brewing,” she says. “And that’s the first time in a long time. I have no idea what it is. But I know that it’s good.”

Originally published in the April 2021 issue of Mojo with the headline Wild at Heart.

[watusichris]

Merry Christmas your arse

Originally published on Facebook on this date in 2012. **********

As many of you know, I do a radio show. Every year I dutifully pull out my shopping bag of Christmas music, which I keep segregated in a corner of a closet, and attempt to compile a few sets of Yuletide music for my listeners who may go for that sort of thing. But there's only one song I spin every year: "Fairytale of New York," from the Pogues' 1988 album "If I Should Fall From Grace With God."

It's always seemed, to me, a perfect Christmas song, though it begins in an NYPD drunk tank. It manages an extraordinary feat: It is sentimental and unsentimental at the same time, romantic without ignoring the contusions that romance scores on us all (in what other Christmas tune can you hear someone call their loved one "a bum, a maggot...a cheap lousy faggot?"), celebrating the holiday while acknowledging the disorder and gloom that sometimes settles on celebrants at this time of year. As a composition, its melodic beauty never fails to captivate me. The performance is full of zest (especially in the lilt of its tin whistle), and the orchestral swell at the end always creates a palpable feeling of being uplifted.

The song was a lovely vocal collaboration between the Pogues' bibulous lead singer Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, daughter of the English folk icon Ewan MacColl and a U.K. star in her own right. So realistic and effective is their give-and-take on the song that if you didn't know it, you'd never believe the pair of them were not actually involved in a relationship. MacColl's turn, which plays in sweet counterpoint to MacGowan's drunken catarrh, is especially splendid, a poised mixture of affection and bile. ("Happy Christmas your arse.")

The song is probably best known visually from its original black-and-white video, but this live performance from 1988, filmed before a vocal audience, is the most winning version I've seen:

This wonderful 2006 BBC documentary about the song also serves as a hip-pocket history of the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, who was killed in a 2000 boating accident. It's very funny and revealing; it's in six parts, so follow the adjacent links: [video now unavailable; thanks Warner Music Group.]

The original video is linked in this recent story about "Fairytale" in the Guardian by the fine British writer Dorian Lynskey:

I never get tired of "Fairytale of New York." It's a part of the fabric of this maddening holiday, which calls up so many conflicting emotions in me -- sadness, longing, remembrances of drunken Christmases past, a kind of spiritual craving, and even sometimes a sort of disjointed joy. My mother died two days after Christmas a few years back; I never had the chance to play this song for her, and don't know if she was aware of it, but I think she probably would have appreciated it.

In October six years ago, my younger son Zane sat in with his brother-in-law's band the Filthy Thieving Bastards at a gig by the reunited Pogues at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I flew up to attend the show, and Zane and I sat in the VIP section when the Pogues performed.

They played "Fairytale of New York," with the young daughter of Jem Finer, who co-wrote the song with MacGowan, taking MacColl's part. During the song's climax, as fake snow drifted down from the ceiling, MacGowan soddenly swept her into his arms and slowly danced with her like a drunken bear. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on a stage. I was on verge of tears. [here's video of Shane and Ella Finer performing the song in 2012:] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIh6-aD-Cc0

"Fairytale of New York" perfectly defines my Christmas every year. Perhaps it does yours as well. Merry Christmas to all (especially to my boys Max and Zane). May the wind be always at your back, and hopefully you won't spend tonight in the drunk tank.

[libertyreads]

December TBR--

December might be my weirdest TBR of the year. Let's go out with a bang shall we? I have a couple of new releases to read this month as well as a couple of library books for the holidays. And I'm starting a series that I'm really unsure about. Let's get into the books. Starting with the ones I don't have in physical form (at least not yet).

The Ex-Mas Holidays by Zoe Allison (library)-- Another Christmas novel for me to read. I'm loving that I'm giving myself the space to read these this year when I haven't for the past few. I normally do a Christmas in July and then don't read any more but it's so fun to feel the festive spirit while reading. The synopsis for this one will be taken straight from GoodReads: "It's hard to escape your ex when you're working together over Christmas in the Scottish Highlands, but being stuck together might be the best possible present in this sparkling new contemporary romance."

Holiday Kisses by multiple authors (library)-- This is a holiday anthology featuring stories from Alison Kent, Jack Burton, HelenKay Dimon, and Shannon Stacey. I've already read the one from HelenKay Dimon (it's actually how I found out about this anthology after the fact). So, I will probably be logging these as the separate entries they are in my spreadsheets and updates. But we follow: 1) a man who gives the gift of trust and receives a second chance at love in return, 2) a woman who helps to heal the wounded heart of a soldier, 3) a couple who finds that true love knows no distance, and 4) a young window who learns that there can be two great loves in a lifetime. Festive and romance filled these should be good, quick reads for me.

Freshman Year by Sarah Mai (NetGalley)-- A contemporary graphic novel that follows Sarah as she goes to school in Minnesota and hopes to impress her professors, meet interesting new people, and stay close to her friends and boyfriend back at home. What seems manageable at first quickly unravels as Sarah's high achieving roommate puts her to shame, her summer love dissolves, and she is quickly overwhelmed with the freedom, isolation, and possibilities that college gives her. This looked so cute on NetGalley and I'm excited to read it this month.

The Ruined by Renee Ahdieh (new release)-- The finale to The Beautiful comes out this month and I'm excited to finish this one out. This hasn't been a stand out series for me but I'm connected to the characters enough to see it through. Especially with the way the last book ended. This series is about vampires set in 1800s New Orleans but it definitely becomes more involved as the series goes on. In this one we watch as the Sylvan Vale and Sylvan Wild go to war while our beloved Bastien and Celine are separated and dealing with their own dramas.

Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes-- This is the series starter that I'm unsure of. This is a 2012 Fantasy novel with four p.o.v.s so it can go one of two ways: 1) I love it, 2) I hate it. There will probably be no middle ground. Synopsis? In the three kingdoms of Mytica, magic has long been forgotten and hard-won peace has reigned for centuries. But underneath it all a deadly unrest simmers. Each ruler grapples for power while the lives of their subjects are brutally transformed. Four key players find their fates forever intertwined; caught in a dizzying world of treacherous betrayals, shocking murders, secret alliances, and unforeseen love.

Defiant by Brandon Sanderson (new release)-- This is the final book in the Skyward series (but I've heard rumblings of a spin off series) and I'm sort of just ready to see it finished. I agree with a lot of the people who are out there saying that it's basically flight school in every novel which has gotten stale. The Skyward series follows Spensa who wants to train to becoming a pilot for the military but has to deal with her father's past. The world expands and expands as the series goes on. It's an okay series that I enjoyed more in the beginning. I think this final book is what will either make the time I've spent on the series worth it or a waste of time. It's Sanderson so I'm kind of hoping what I've heard about his finales holds up.

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden (library)-- This is a pretty well loved Sci-Fi graphic novel from what I can tell. We follow Mia who joins a crew that rebuilds run down structures throughout the deepest reaches of space. It flashes back to Mia's pivotal freshman year of school and a mysterious new student she falls in love with. We also find out the true reason Mia joins this crew. I love space. I love found family. I'm here for it.

All of these books are pretty much being sourced from different places: preorders, my physical TBR, the library, NetGalley. So, I'm happy to see that. I just hope I have a good time completing a couple of series, starting a new one, getting into the festive spirit.

[theultimatefan]

Linda Hamilton, Jeff Ward, Peter Weller Head Next Wave of Celebrity Guests At FAN EXPO New Orleans

Linda Hamilton (The Terminator franchise, Dante’s Peak), Jeff Ward (“One Piece,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”), Peter Weller (RoboCop, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension) and Felicia Day (“The Guild,” “Supernatural”) headline the next wave of celebrity guests appearing at FAN EXPO New Orleans, set for January 5-7, 2024, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The four will be joined by Lana Parrilla (“Once Upon a Time,” “Spin City”), Ethan Suplee (“My Name is Earl,” Remember the Titans), Sonequa Martin-Green (“Star Trek: Discovery,” “The Walking Dead”) and Eman Esfandi (“Ahsoka,” King Richard) as new additions to the convention lineup.

Tickets for FAN EXPO New Orleans are available at fanexpohq.com/fanexponeworleans/buy-tickets, with a variety of individual single day, 3-day and Ultimate Fan Packages to choose from.

Hamilton first turned heads in 1984’s The Terminator, following up with a co-starring role as “Assistant District Attorney Catherine Chandler” opposite Ron Perlman in “Beauty and the Beast.” She reprised her “Sarah Connor” role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator: Dark Fate, and has shown versatility in her more than 80 credits with spots on “Frasier” and the lead in the Lifetime holiday film Home by Christmas.

Ward currently stars as “Buggy” in the action Netflix series “One Piece,” following up on a three-year, 45-episode spin in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” as “Deke Shaw,” the complex character who proved popular with fans. He also co-starred in the 2021 Netflix horror/drama mini-series “Brand New Cherry Flavor” and portrayed Charles Manson in the Lifetime TV movie “Manson’s Lost Girls” in 2016.

Accomplished actor, director, voice over artist and occasional professor Weller’s amazing career has taken him from the mean streets of old Detroit to the final frontier of space. He has appeared in more than 50 films and television series, notably in the title role in 1987’s RoboCop and its sequel RoboCop 2 and as the title character in the quirky 1984 sci-fi cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Day has more than 100 credits, from films to TV series to voice work, with many highlights including a 66-episode run on “The Guild” and recurring spots on “Supernatural” and “Eureka.” She teamed with original series host Joel Hodgson for a five-year run on the recent iteration of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and had her first big fandom exposure in a recurring role as “Vi” on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Parrilla appeared in 156 episodes of the ABC hit fantasy/adventure series “Once Upon a Time” between 2011-2018, for which she earned several awards, including TV Guide’s Favorite Villain, and numerous nominations. She has had recurring roles in hits “Spin City,” “Boomtown,” “24” and “Windfall,” and co-starred as “Lana Trammell” in this year’s Netflix release of the second season of “The Lincoln Lawyer.”

Suplee has had nearly 100 film and TV roles, from comedies like the Kevin Smith productions Mallrats, Dogma and Clerks III, “My Name is Earl,” and “Boy Meets World” to dramas such as Remember the Titans and The Butterfly Effect.

Martin-Green portrayed “Sasha Williams” on “The Walking Dead” from 2012-17, and has wowed fans as “Michael Burnham” in “Star Trek: Discovery” for the past six years. Some of her other major credits include Space Jam: A New Legacy and recurring roles on “Once Upon a Time” and “The Good Wife.”

Esfandi co-starred opposite Rosario Dawson, David Tennant and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in this year’s Disney+ miniseries “Ahsoka,” part of the Star Wars universe. He has also been seen in King Richard with Will Smith and The Inspection with Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union.

The eight newcomers join an already impressive autograph area that includes Danny Trejo (Machete, The Book of Boba Fett), the "Daredevil" tandem of Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, Katee Sackhoff (Star Wars’ “The Mandalorian”), Jon Bernthal (“The Punisher,” “The Walking Dead”), Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, “Avengers: Infinity War”), the “Charmed” duo of Holly Marie Combs and Rose McGowan, Peter Cullen (Transformers), Jason Lee (Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous) and voice acting stars of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Barry Gordon (“Donatello”), Cam Clarke (“Leonardo”), Townsend Coleman (“Michelangelo”) and Rob Paulsen (“Raphael”).

FAN EXPO New Orleans features the biggest and best in pop culture: movies, TV, music, artists, writers, exhibitors, cosplay, with three full days of themed programming to satisfy every fandom. More guest news will be released in the following weeks, including line-up reveals for comic creator guests, voice actors, and cosplayers.

FAN EXPO New Orleans runs January 5-7 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. Show hours are Friday 4 - 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Tickets start at $28 during the advanced prices window until December 21, and begin at $38 from December 22 through the end of the show; 3-day passes and VIP packages also available at fanexpohq.com/fanexponeworleans/buy-tickets. More information and updates can be found at fanexpohq.com/fanexponeworleans.

New Orleans is the first event on the 2024 FAN EXPO HQ calendar; the full schedule is available at fanexpohq.com/home/events/.

[sughoshperur]

Add a Splash of Adventure to Your Ganesh Chaturthi Holidays with Flyboarding in Goa

Flyboarding: The Art Of Defying Gravity

Be the star performer of the dreamy dance with the mighty waves of the Arabian Sea.

Whenever we talk about flying we think about birds. Next, when we talk about water we think of fish. But when we talk about both aerial and water adventures, what comes to your mind?

Soaring above the azure waters of Goa, there's a new adventure that has captured the hearts of thrill-seekers and water sports enthusiasts - flyboarding. This exhilarating water sport allows you to defy gravity, feel the rush of the wind against your face, and experience the sheer joy of flying, all while enjoying the stunning coastal scenery of Goa.

A Dash of Adventure to Your Ganesh Chaturthi Holidays

If you're looking for the perfect time to explore this activity and make the most out of your Goa vacation, what better way to infuse your holidays with unforgettable memories than by indulging in the thrill of flyboarding in Goa? 

Ganesh Chaturthi is all about embracing new beginnings and celebrating life with joy and enthusiasm. Adding a flyboarding adventure to your holiday plans not only aligns with the spirit of Ganpati but also creates cherished memories that will last a lifetime.

Celebrate One of the best Ganesh Chaturthi in Mumbai

What is Flyboarding?

Flyboarding is a relatively new addition to water sports.  The sport of water flyboard in India has the perfect blend of the excitement of jet skiing and the sensation of hovering in the air. Developed in 2012 by French watercraft rider Franky Zapata, this adrenaline-pumping activity has gained popularity worldwide for its unique and thrilling experience.

At its core, flyboarding involves strapping a pair of specially designed boots onto your feet, which are connected by a long hose to a jet ski. The jet ski pumps high-pressure water through the hose, propelling you into the air. With careful control of the water pressure, you can hover above the water's surface, perform gravity-defying tricks, and even dive back into the water like a dolphin.

Why Goa?

Goa, known for its pristine beaches, vibrant culture, and a wide array of water sports, is the perfect destination for flyboarding. The combination of warm tropical waters and a stunning coastal landscape creates an idyllic setting for this adventurous activity.

One of the primary reasons why Goa is an ideal place for fly boarding in India is its well-established infrastructure for water sports. Many tour operators along the Goan coastline offer flyboarding experiences, ensuring safety and professional guidance. Moreover, the moderate climate and calm waters of Goa make it possible to enjoy flyboarding almost throughout the year.

The Thrill of Flying

The first few moments of flyboarding might be slightly daunting, but as soon as you get the hang of it, the sensation is nothing short of exhilarating. The feeling of being propelled out of the water and soaring above it is nothing short of magical. You'll truly feel like a superhero as you hover, twist, and turn in the air.

As you become more confident, you can attempt various tricks and manoeuvres, including 360-degree spins, backflips, and even dives into the water. Flyboarding offers an incredible sense of freedom and control, allowing you to explore the sky above the sea.

The Experience

Before you take off on your flyboarding adventure, a certified instructor will provide you with a safety briefing and basic training on how to control the board. These instructors are experienced and knowledgeable, ensuring your safety throughout the activity. They will also be in constant communication with you through a helmet-mounted intercom system, giving you real-time instructions and tips.

Once you're strapped in and ready to go, the real fun begins. The jet ski operator will gradually increase the water pressure to lift you into the air. As you gain confidence, you can request higher altitudes and more thrilling manoeuvres. The feeling of hovering above the water's surface is surreal, and the panoramic views of the Goan coastline are simply breathtaking.

Tips for a Memorable Flyboarding Experience

Wear the right attire: Opt for comfortable swimwear, and don't forget sunscreen to protect your skin from the Goan sun.

Stay hydrated: Flyboarding can be physically demanding, so make sure you drink plenty of water before and after your session.

Listen to your instructor: Follow their guidance closely to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience.

Capture the moment: Many operators offer photo and video packages, so you can relive your adventure and share it with friends and family.

Relax and have fun: The most important tip of all is enjoy every moment of your flyboarding experience in the beautiful waters of Goa.

Chapter of Fly board price

The matter of fly board price is unpredictable as it gets affected by various factors. The operator, services, quality, duration, time period, location, group members and experience decide the cost.

And to give you a brief idea here we present the packages and rates which we offer.

Flyboarding (Panjim) will cost around ₹2,999 per Person.

Flyboarding (Calangute) will be for ₹2,499 per Person.

You can visit our official website for more details and information regarding the inclusions and exclusions.

Grab The Thrill: Defy The Gravity

Flyboarding in Goa is an unforgettable adventure that allows you to experience the sensation of flying while surrounded by the natural beauty of this coastal paradise. Whether you're an adrenaline junkie or just looking to try something new, flyboarding is an activity that should be on your bucket list when visiting Goa. 

And with the season of celebration of Ganapati in Mumbai and nearby areas, Goa flyboarding is the perfect way to enhance your holiday.

So, the next time you find yourself in this tropical haven, don't just dip your toes in the water, strap on a flyboard and float like a butterfly above the waves!

Among the various activities available in Goa, another delightful option is to relish a yacht ride in this beautiful coastal destination.

[devilishdemise]

DevilishDemise and FieryInnocence - December 24th, 2012

12/24/2012 Darius: Merry Christmas, darling @FieryInnocence. 

Anna Belle: [Kisses your face.] I love you.

Darius: -Chuckles, taking the kisses as I bestow some of my own- There's my beauty.

Anna Belle: [Smiles softly.] Oh?

Darius: Yes. -Smirks devilishly-

Anna Belle: [Kisses you again.]

Darius: -Growls into the kiss, cupping the nape of your neck- How are you enjoying your holiday?

Anna Belle: [Swallows a whimper, rasping out thickly.] I'm loving it.

Darius: -Growls louder at the sound of your soft whimper, dark eyes gazing down into your twinkly blues- Good, Darling.

Anna Belle: [Sucks my lower lip between my teeth, glancing down.] Missed you..

Darius: -Slides my hand away to tilt your face up- Did you? Well I missed you as well. -Grins down devilishly at you with a wink-

Anna Belle: [Clears my throat, face heating at your gaze.] Yes, Sir.. [Stands on my tiptoes, kissing your cheek.]

Darius: -Chuckles, wrapping strong arms around you, pulling your soft body tight to mine- Sir? -Groans low- Hm...what is my darling up to this evening?

Anna Belle: Hm, nothing. [Smiles.]

Darius: Nothing? -Shakes head- We should remedy this. What would you like to do?

Anna Belle: Um. I don't know. [Laughs.] You always know!

Darius: -Chuckles darkly- Well if you are not too cold we could try some ice skating on the lake or stay warm inside with smores.

Anna Belle: [Closes my eyes at the mention of staying warm, ideas of how swirling through my mind.] We could.

Darius: -The images flood through my mind, your heartbeat and breathing increasing slightly. I lean down to rub my scruffed cheek against the side of your face, husky whispers sounding close to your ear- Mm I see you want to start a fire, love.

Anna Belle: Oh darn it! I've gingerbread cookies to finish! [Smirks to myself, letting another image come to mind, quickly moving to the kitchen.]

Darius: -Whisper groans out a curse, shifting to adjust and clear my throat before darting after you. I reach you, pressing my hard body against your back, my hands on each side of you- You baked cookies?

Anna Belle: [Tries to catch my breath, nodding slowly.] Baking. For the help. It's Christmas. [Closes my eyes, leaning back against you]

Darius: -Rocks into you slowly a rumbling hum in my chest- That's kind of you, darling. How much more do you have to finish? -Slides a hand free from the counter edge, snaking it under your shirt to trace over your warm silky skin-

Anna Belle: [Breath hitches, biting down on my lip.] The gingerbread ones... [reaches down to wrap my fingers around your wrist.]

Darius: -Leans in to press firm lips to the column of your neck allowing your hand to pull mine free.- And you are doing what to them? -Lifts my dark eyes, taking in the icing. I move my hand to dip a finger inside, moving the dallop up to your lips-

Anna Belle: [Moves my eyes up to yours, parting my lips to wrap around your finger, tongue licking over its tip slowly.] Mmm..

Darius: -Lids lower, another groan releasing as I pressed tighter behind you- Fuck. I think the cookies can wait, love. -Swallows thickly, sliding my thick finger free from your warm parted lips- If not they may all go to waste. -Rolls my neck feeling my shoulders and body tightening-

Anna Belle: [Nods, replying breathlessly.] They can wait..

Darius: -Whirls you around, one palm grazing over the underside of your thigh to hook onto my hip- Are you ready for bed?

Anna Belle: I am now. [Kisses your neck, wrapping around you.]

Darius: -Chuckles, moaning at the touch of your lips. I lower my palms to cup your cheeks and spin us around to rush up to our bed chamber for the night-

[candy-floss-crazy]

Vekoma, A Manufacturer Profile

In 1926 Hendrik op het Veld formed Veld Koning Machinefabriek (Veld Koning Machine Factory). This was abbreviated to Vekoma, and another legendary Dutch ride builder was created. Only inline with many amusement ride manufacturers, it actually wasn't. Originally it built farm equipment, and equipment for the mining industry. After the 1956 closure of the Dutch mining industry, the company switched to producing pipework for the petrochemical industry. 1970's And The Move Into The Entertainment Industry The US based roller coaster manufacturer Arrow Dynamics contracted Vekoma to build the steel work for their European rides in the 70's. As demand in Europe increased Vekoma eventually licensed the technology from Arrow and began building rides in their own right with 3 coasters being produced in 1979. Super Wirbel, Vekoma's First Own Brand Coaster Named the Super Wirbel the first coaster was an inverted double corkscrew installed in Holiday Park, Hassloch Germany. Two of the first riders were the German Formula 1 drivers Rolf Stommelen and Harald Ertl , eventually they produced 7 examples. They went on the produce the Invertigo, Boomerang and Whirlwind coasters. Invertigo Coaster Boomerang Coaster Revolution2 Alliance With Chance Morgan In 2006 they formed an alliance with the USA based manufacturer Chance Morgan, with Chance building the steelwork for the coasters. They produced four in total during this period. Acquisition Of Bussink Wheels Of Excellence Vekoma acquired the Wheels of Excellence range from Ronald Bussink, whereby Bussink would continue to build the 100 metre wheels and Vekoma would build wheels in the smaller 40-80 metre market. They terminated the agreement with Chance in 2012, but licensed the R60 metre wheel to a new offshoot of chance called Chance American Wheels. Vekoma Wheel, A 50 Metre Wheel Operated At 6 Flags Park In Darien Lake Madhouse And SkyShuttle Vekoma also manufacture a couple of other attractions. The most curious in the aptly named mad house. Designed to give the riders the illusion of weightlessness and spinning upside down. In actuality, it is an updated version of the 'Rib Tickler', a ride that graced British fairgrounds in the 80's, though never presented as well as the Vekoma version. Madhouse Vekoma Madhouse The other is the SkyShuttle. Raising riders upto 50 metres into the sky with a gently rotating gondola, the ride allows spectacular views over the full site. SkyShuttle Acquisition By Sensei Technologies In 2018 Vekoma was acquired by Sansei Technologies a Japanese based company who specialises in both Amusement rides and elevators. The agreement was that Vekoma would continue to be run as a separate entity, so hopefully the brand will continue. Read the full article

[stormy333]

Texas Charm

So keeping with the theme of my love life (face palming right now). We’re going to talk about the “Texas charmer” who stole my heart for two years and never knew until it came up again pretty recently and well now sadly our roles have reversed. I feel for him. I honestly do.

Some context, we met sometime during 2016. I believe it was late June early July, maybe possibly August? Here’s the thing in 2012-2016 I had some unexplained health issues going on but we were seeing doctors and specialists A LOT and around those three months (June-August) we had gotten some answers. My mom had been given some support groups and had been talking to this one girls mom and they kinda set us up and I met Texas through the girl. They both had illnesses and we understood each other in ways healthy kids our age can’t really understand.

It wasn’t hard to tell that Texas was really REALLY into let’s call the girl North. So Texas and North had actually just met that day as well and we were all in a Skype voice call talking and getting to know each other. North was the oldest of the group and Texas the middle and myself the youngest. The more and more we got to know each other the more I became sort of an outcast in the group and about a month in they were now a couple and unfortunately my feelings had grown, because even though in the group I had become an outcast Texas and myself had bonded as friends as he and I had a little more in common. We were both the youngest child of our siblings and we kinda just related better to each other. It was hard to describe but I was just drawn to him.

About two or three months after they started dating he came to me for advice and I did the best I could do. I told him the honest to god truth about how I felt. I’m not talking about my feelings for him as during this time I was still working on deciphering what those feelings were, but the feelings of the situation. It hurt his feelings and we stopped talking for a bit, except for on holidays. During that time of us not talking I was very depressed and constantly thinking about him trying to figure out what those uncontrolled raging feelings were. That bit lasted about 2-3 months, we did this A LOT. Anyways, Texas messaged me and told me he was thinking of breaking up with North. This was around February of 2017. He and North had gotten into a fight and he came to me, again asking advice and he again wasn’t thrilled with what I had said but was happy that I had promised to stay and support him no matter his decision.

Okay so fast forward a month and we hadn’t talked since that night. Except the word document I sent to him expressing how much I cared about him as a friend but I wanted more. I understood he wanted her. I would never come between them and if she made him happy I was happy for him but when she was hurting him it was hurting me as he was one my best friends and I cared very much for him. Texas messages me. This time I knew exactly what those burning passions and everything I felt for him was now but now I was trying to deny it because it hurt to much. Texas sent me my letter, and asks me if I still feel that way. He says he’s about to break-up with North. He wants a “back-up” girlfriend though. Texas wants me to be his back up… He wants me to be a rebound.

My best friend stopped me. I almost agreed. “You are more than a backup!” I tried to defend it “Maybe thats not what he meant”. But to be honest anyway you spin it when your “Texas Charmer” asks you to be his backup after everything , sending your feelings back to you only to tell you when you ask if he actually likes you like that, that no. No I think you’re a sweet girl and I like you as a friend and I think maybe we could work? That stabs you in your heart. I remember not talking to him for the rest of the night then I asked my older brother for advice. I never do that. I needed one more unbiased opinion. His response was the one that broke me down and made me truly start the process of getting over Texas.

We stayed friends and only talked rarely and gamed together then about the end of 2017 and the start of 2018 we were on another break and things were quiet. I was still working on getting over him. It really wasn’t an easy process until I actually said what I felt. It was actually sometime in the summer of 2018 when I finally said it. We were swimming (myself and my best friend) and all of a sudden I stopped after my flip and looked at my sister and said “I love him. I don’t know how or why but I love him.” She asked who and I said Texas Charmer.

Fast forward to March 19, 2019. Texas out of the blue texted me. Part of me moving on had involved me deleting his number, deleting all of my socials from my phone that I was friends with him on. Not the accounts just the apps. I remembered his number though and instantly replied with “Texas?” and he said yeah and my dumb self fell back in the hole after a panic attack. Luckily I was sorta “with” someone at the time anyways so it was just old friends catching up, the slate wiped clean. We start talking a bit again and go back to our old ways of only going 2-3 months without talking.

Fast forward another few months, Texas again messages me randomly this time it was late at night and I was heartbroken dealing with something else, immediately I get defensive because he sends me the messages I sent him a while back. But then he sends “You were right”. With those words the sobs that were already happening got worse but because I appreciated it. I appreciated him. Always had. Always have. But never did I feel appreciated by him until that moment and that started to mend the us.

Fast forward to November 2019. Um to put it lightly the guy I was sorta with in March kinda started a domino effect that wasn’t good. But that is another story. You have to know that because in November I had recently gotten out of a relationship which again another story but it was a bit of a mess. In November Texas and I were talking again and he dropped the bomb. He had feelings for me now. We’ve known each other for 4 years now and are still best friends no doubt and no doubt you can feel the flames when we talk but it’s different. He told me and had to tell him that I just didn’t feel that way anymore. It hurt a lot. We still talk, I try to distance myself so that he won’t get hurt, but also I know loneliness sucks too. The thing is I do love Texas Charmer but not in the “I wanna marry you way”. It’s more platonic you were my first love and you taught me patience but you also taught me to respect myself and I am going to forever be grateful for it.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #572

Top Eleven Top Tens

So here’s a funny thing. I've been doing this blog for over ten years. I know that, because I know I was writing it before my eldest was born. In fact, 2012 was my tenth anniversary. And yet – and yet – somehow, in my idiocy, I missed it; I totally forgot about it. Despite frequently making a huge deal when I reach milestone numbers – 100th Top Ten, 250th, 500th, with my six hundredth blog going up this autumn unless I die or the world ends - I somehow, catastrophically, comedically, counter-intuitively failed to recognise when I'd actually been doing this for ten whole years.

I mean. You'd have thought the 520th Top Ten would have been a bit of a giveaway, y’know?

So having missed my proper anniversary I've decided to go on the hunt for another. Because doing this for as long as I have is quite an achievement, even if I do say so myself. I write these things every week for an audience of, like, four people maybe. But I enjoy it and it gets the creative juices flowing! And doing it for over a decade, whew. It's quite an undertaking, when I think back to what it was like at the beginning. I remember writing some of those early ones sat at my desk at Granada Studios. There was hardly any blurb, hardly any explanation; it was an exercise in list-making rather than creative writing.

Nowadays it’s more of an effort, in more ways than one; they take longer to write because I write more. But I've also ticked off a hell of a lot of things to make lists on; it’s increasingly difficult to find new things, or new spins on the old things. I make no apologies for going back to the well of Transformers, the MCU, or Xbox games; those are three pretty big things in my pop cultural life. I know barely anyone reads this thing, but I do hope I keep it entertaining and my lists varied and mostly interesting.

So how did this all start anyway? It was definitely the lists rather than the writing. I used to think how, if ever I was a columnist at The Guardian or something, I'd end my weekly column by just doing a random list of ten things. It could be anything; favourite Ninja Turtles villains, favourite BBC2 idents, favourite flavours of ice cream. I do remember distinctly one I thought of was favourite videogame weapons; that was always high up there. And then I got a Tumblr, and I decided – hey! – why not actually do that? Why not just write a list? Do it every week. Originally it was going to be “Friday Top Ten” but I very smartly realised before I even began that tying myself down to getting one of these out every Friday was probably impossible. And so it proved, because I tell ya, there have been a few weeks where it nearly missed Sunday. On the other hand, I don’t think I've ever missed a weekend since this began – with the possible exception of one list appearing on a Bank Holiday Monday. But really, eleven years, a number of holidays, work, kids, Civilization VI – and I've still got one of these out every week. That’s no small feet, as Bart said to Sideshow Bob.

So by my reckoning – which might be wrong – this week is the eleventh anniversary of my first Top Ten blog. And so, in lieu of doing a tenth birthday special, we have eleven. Like Matt Smith or Millie Bobbie Brown. And those guys both rock. Anyway, what we’ve got here is an entirely self-indulgent list of lists: my favourite of my own lists. I think I did this before, in the foggy mists of time, but one of the beauties of my Sisyphean quest to keep putting things in groups of ten every sodding week is that the number of weeks increases and stuff keeps happening in between and old lists are old now and I get to do the same thing but with new stuff. Like how every four years I list my favourite MCU moments. Like how I did Top Christmas Films again, a decade after I first tackled it. Like how many times I've managed to write about Transformers. Like how I accidentally did Best Films of 1999 twice. Like how every four years I list my favourite MCU moments. I get to go back and tweak things and make jokes that some people think are mistakes and not jokes! I get to change my mind and reflect on the passage of time. I get to fill lists with references to shows my kids are watching that, seven or eight years later, I have next to no recollection of.

Bringing us to this: a list of my favourite lists, a window through time. It’s in chronological order, from oldest list to most recent. So kick back and take a trip down memory lane: lines of dialogue, stuff to do with babies, Christmas, Star Wars, and my most popular Top Ten list of all time.

See you in 2032! Or maybe 2033, who knows.

Moments in Spielberg Movies (as Illustrated by a Line of Dialogue): the first ever list I did and already we’re into one of my ongoing preoccupations (Spielberg) and also a recurring “bit”: lists of quotes. Something I’ve tried to do a few times, although it’s not always easy. Not sure I agree with all of these moments; I must have really loved A.I. in 2012, because I barely remember that scene now.

Emotions After Reading About Disney Buying Star Wars: it was a big deal finding out Lucas had sold Star Wars, and that we were going to for-realsies get new films. Of course, there was a good degree of doubt and trepidation too; hence my simple but (if I do say so) rather witty reaction, ending with a cute Star Wars joke.

Things a Christmas Film Must Have to be Called a Christmas Film: my first Christmas writing these Top Tens and as you can see I’m already banging the drum for Die Hard. I like this list because, whilst I think I’d write it better today, using Die Hard as a template to explain what defines a Christmas film – rather than attempting to justify Die Hard as adhering to a Christmas movie template – is quite a nice idea.

Toy Story Questions: an example here of when I do a really deep dive into something largely because I have to watch it a lot with the kids (note the references to Brave and Frozen). So I seriously over-think the Toy Story trilogy (and there were only three back in 2015!) in relatively amusing fashion. I’ve since learned that loads of people ask these same questions. I did another similar list back when Daughter #1 was obsessed with The Snowman.

Gritty Films That Could Become Kids' Show: jumping ahead to 2017 and I attempt to unpick the whole “grim and gritty” motif that often sees ostensibly children’s properties get all serious, usually because their original audience are older now but still want to like the things they liked as kids. So I viewed it in reverse, and adapted some distinctly sweary and violent films so they were suitable for nippers.

TNG Characters With the Best Episodes: nothing too complex in this 2020 list, but I quite like the way I chose to look at The Next Generation; which characters are best served by episodes dedicated to them. Prompted largely, I think, by my realisation that Geordi is a great character but most of “his” episodes were a bit pants.

Characters Who Came Back From the Dead: this was to coincide with Easter 2021, and was an example of a list where, despite being a relatively obvious subject, I didn’t get round to it for ages for some reason. In this case I think it was partly an assumption that I’d already done it! But it’s an amusing topic, and I think relatively well-written.

Violent Moments in Transformers: still in 2021, and one of my recent favourites: listing the goriest moments in Transformers history. I’ve written about Transformers A LOT, often either quite simple lists or bigger, more philosophical things. This splits the difference by having an amusing topic and allowing me to wallow in depictions of rent metal and shredded wiring. But to be honest the thing I love most is the gif I found to illustrate it.

500 Films of my Lifetime: several times over the past eleven years I’ve done really big lists; Top 100 films, Top 100 games, that sort of thing. In those cases it’s really just a ranking job because, well, writing about 100 things would take a while. For my 500th list in 2021 – which I really made a bigger deal about than the tenth anniversary the following year, for whatever reason – I decided to just go utterly crazy and do a Top 500. I think the hardest part was just remembering 500 films that I’d seen without forgetting really obvious ones. Anyway, fun times.

Books That Could Be Muppet Movies: ah, here we are. Around Christmas ’21, inspired by the perennial Muppet Christmas Carol, I had a good long think of what other books could you adapt for the Muppets. They only did Carol and Treasure Island (and Wizard of Oz, sorta), but what else was there? Anyway, for whatever reason this took off. Now, look, nobody reads my blog, I know that; I’m not saying it was an intense viral sensation. But for ages I was getting notifications that someone had liked or reblogged it, and it even spiked a bit again last year.

Moments in the Lost Light Saga: and we return to Transformers, and one of the philosophical ones. But I’ve written so much about More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light, I had to include it. This recent (December ’22) list highlights my favourite moments, but also tries to go into why this run on the comic meant to so much to me. It was popular and shared relatively widely among TF fans, who are Quite Online at the best of times. But really it’s just a distillation of a terrific comic and a popular thread for my Lists. And it might be more-or-less my final word on it, too.

Well, there we are; the only Top Eleven I think I’ll ever do, so I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back to a regular number of items in a Top Ten next week.

This was fun but a little daunting. No wonder I’ve only tried it once before – and back then I only had 52 lists to choose from! But it was hard ditching some of my other favourites; how to tell if someone’s a geek, favourite Starfleet uniforms, useful superpowers for a parent, and arguably the list that inspired the whole thing, favourite videogame weapons (sadly a rather dry, pedestrian ranking compared to some other efforts). But it was good to see the evolution. It's interesting that some of the early ones from the first couple of years have really stuck with me, and there are quite a few from the last couple of years, but the sort of middle period – the 200s and 300s, I guess – fade from memory and didn’t really stand out. I think there are a lot of rather specific things going on there – stuff I was excited for then, stuff that’s less well-written – and maybe they’ve not stood the test of time. Or maybe next time I’m foolish enough to do this, I’ll find something to celebrate from 2016. That’d be impressive.