#i HATE the new stuff and also the stuff before that from 2009 i think

[sporkberries]

Tim Drake and Red robin

 Aka the whole identity problem.

So there’s a lot of discussion over Tim and what identity he is going to take up- this is by no means recent, it's been going on for over a decade. So for a lot of people who are newer to comics I want to explain why Red Robin isn’t really an option as a permanent identity for Tim, and what Red Robin means to Tim personally

So first off, for expositions sake, Tim didn’t create Red Robin. The costume nor the identity.  It originated in the Kingdom Come Storyline and belonged to Dick Grayson

(Dick Grayson, Earth-22) Honestly i don’t want to get into the can of worms of Kingdom Come and it’s not that important to my point so just know this is where Red Robin comes from.

Okay now the first appearance of Red Robin in Main Continuity was in Countdown to Final Crisis where the mantle was taken by * drum roll*

Countdown #14 Jason Todd!! This is also not very important because Jason mainly does multiverse shenanigans that isnt important to my overall point. I just find it very funny that Jason was Red Robin before Tim. Also he kills an alternate universe version of the joker- Good for him!

Now into the stuff that actually affects Tim and why he chooses to don the Red Robin Mantle in the first place-towards the end of Tim’s robin run. Where we see Red Robin stalking Tim around Gotham.

Red Robin in Robin(1993) #177 This Red Robin ends up being Ulysses Armstrong( a gang leader and recurring baddie from Tim’s Robin run) and to say the least he does some not very nice things!! Said things including luring Tim into a warehouse and blowing him up(what is up with robins and warehouses seriously?) anyways looking good tim!

Robin(1993) #181

After this injury Tim wears the Red Robin cowl to hide/protect his identity while he takes care of Ulysses. And in the ensuing fight a bunch of children get blow up- it’s great and definitely good for our protagonists declining mental health, Now for a bit more exposition after this incident Tim helps break Jason out of prison who then dons a cringe batman suit and kills a shit ton of people- the infamous Battle For The Cowl storylines ensues. With Dick Grayson taking the mantle of Batman and Damian Wayne being gifted the Robin mantle. Though Dick wasn’t wrong to do this(which is a whole other thing to argue about) it upset Tim and he needed a new costume to wear on his quest to bring Bruce back. He chooses Red Robin, as it’s an identity he considers dirty and disconnected from both his previous titles and the rest of his family.

Red Robin(2009) #1

Tim is at a VERY dark place in his life during the Red Robin run. A lot of fanon characterizes Tim as pretty depressed and sad and almost all of that stems from this period of time exclusively- and it makes sense. Tim underwent a series of very serious and brutal losses under a pretty short period of time( Steph[briefly],his dad, Conner, Bart, and Bruce all dying). And though pretty much everyone was right to doubt him about the whole Bruce being alive thing that rejection definitely didn’t help things. For Tim Red Robin offers a sort of outlet he doesn’t have to be Tim he doesn’t have to necessarily be a good person he just needs to do what needs to be done( I’d argue for the beginning of Red Robin that’s his main philosophy)

Red Robin(2009) #2

Red Robin(2009) #4

In Adventure Comics(2009) #3 Tim reunites with Conner while he’s in Paris, where in Conner says this

Conner knows Tim better than anyone, keep that word Punishment in mind. As it comes back up again in** Red Robin(2009) #9**

And okay this being brought up again is a joke but i still think its true. Tim IS punishing himself. He hates he situation he’s in he hates that he can’t save anyone he hates that he keeps making the wrong decisions(having the children be near the bombs, helping Jason get out of prison, and basically everything that’s happened in Red Robin as well) Tim IS a good person and he has a very strong moral compass- so betraying any aspect of his conscience- pretending to be someone he’s not HURTS him.

At the end of Red Robin(2009) Tim tries to kill Captain Boomerang, the man who killed his father( see: identity crisis) , or he very nearly tries to anyways. He wants to kill him, HE IS ABOUT TO KILL HIM. but he doesn’t.

Red Robin(2009) #26

Tim is at a crossroads. He’s hurting but he still WANTS to be good. He ends up doing the right thing but is that what Tim wants? Tim is changing he’s not Robin anymore he’s becoming his own person his own individual.

So you may ask, what happens after this? Does Tim figure out who he wants to be? Does he make a decision? HAHA silly you!! NO!! Dc resets the whole universe, retcons Tim’s backstory erases all his character development then un-retcons his backstory etc etc leaving Tim Drake in character limbo for essentially a DECADE.

So all this backstory withstanding why do I think Red Robin is a bad choice for Tim as an identity(discounting the fact he’s not even RR anymore but just robin which is stupid and also dumb) ? Well Red Robin was never MEANT to be permanent- Red Robin was a temporary means to end, a tool to get to his destination. I see Red Robin as a chrysalis of sorts. Tim as Robin was the caterpillar, red robin was the chrysalis and his next identity would be who he becomes, or rather who he DECIDES to be. Having Red Robin as Tim’s main identity is a disservice to his character but also doesn’t allow him to complete his arc. Tim doesn’t have an identity he chose and wanted for himself; he hasn't even moved on from ROBIN. In order to develop as a character Tim NEEDS to discover an identity for himself, abandoning the robin mantle entirely.

I think there is hope, a lot of Tim’s content since and including Urban Legends have been largely about him discovering himself and searching for his identity. Let’s just hope DC actually follows through.

[dustorange]

Hi! I'm a big fan of your Dick Grayson works but also kind of new to the character. And I've learnt that getting reccs from people who's characterization I like is worthwhile, so any comic recs?

HEY thank you so much you are so sweet ! i can’t give you ONLY comic recs that people will think r respectable but i can get you to my dick characterization lol

this is pretty much exactly the order i used when i started reading dick comics so i think its a solid intro reading order for Dick’s characterization OVERALL……it definitely will give u the Dick-as-a-character foundation but it will give u him outside of his element so u see his Essence as opposed to him blending in w the plot/setting BUT TLDR:

Robin Year One

Grayson (2014-2016)

Dick’s run as Batman — i think for streamlining purposes u can start with Damian’s first appearance in Batman #656 and sorta just keep going in Batman issues until you want to stop. There’s also a separate series for Dick-as-Batman: Batman & Robin (2009). I would say gives issues #1-6 a try and see if you like it. THEN READ SCOTT SNYDERS BATMAN BLACK MIRROR

New 52 Nightwing but mainly #1-17

Nightwing (1996)

After that u r free to explore the wonderful deeper worlds outsiders titans etc at ur whims equipped w a solid dg education BE FREE

explanation:

AFTER ROBIN YR 1 I SAY START WITH GRAYSON (2014-2016) because it will make you love reading comics, and it will make you love dick grayson. All (maybe most but mostly all) of my Dick Grayson characterization is a footnote to Grayson. Every DG fic i write is me playing with the Dick who appeared in Grayson. my favorite favorite favorite dick run ever (and my fav comic ever). it’s only like 20 or so issues so it’s VERY manageable. i read it when i was 12 and it was first coming out and its superb its jumpy and funny and warm and clever and just generally fun. its also. FOR THE FIRST HALF. very very VERY well written. To me it’s a skeleton key for dicks character—how hes bright and dark and intelligent and calculating and detached and passionate and contradictorily TOO attached and willingtodowhatmustbedone but above all, most of all, how he’s a performer. This series can get you REALLY FAR in dick’s character. I’ve read a lot of dick stuff but like when i write dick stuff i m writing the dick i learned from Grayson when i was 12. A lot of people rly hate it and they hate Tom king and seeley but Grayson is proof to me that they’re genuine talents. the end of Grayson does fall off but Grayson’s highs are so astronomically high you can’t begrudge it anything. it’s a mostly isolated series and takes place in a weird context but it explains EVERYTHING u need to know abt how Dick got there in the series pretty succinctly . i think it’s a GREAT GREAT GREAT starter series for dick if you’ve already got his robin origin down and it’s genuinely fun and a joy (albeit sometimes emotionally crushing) to read

Robin Year One and then just randomly pick and choose some 1940s detective comics they’re just sweet and good grounding

then i think u should read DickBats. i think it would be really interesting to read Dick-as-Batman before Dick-as-Nightwing because in DickBats, you get SO MUCH characterwork and you FEEL how much Dick loved being Nightwing so it would be a cool experience. i LOVED grant morrison’s dickbats run and I then scott snyders run so HARD REC THOSE some people say they don’t like them but this is also boiling dicks character down to the very foundational essential aspects because it’s placing him in a new situation instead of his typical one (nightwing)

As far as getting introduced to dick specifically as nightwing, i do think n52 nightwing is a good introduction to comics and it’s fun/enjoyable/angsty. Dick suffers a LOT. I also looooooove dick’s red suit and the way he’s drawn by brettbooth and i LOVE the storylines with the circus and Raya Vestri so i think this is a good and accessible intro. I think it gets worse after #17 (MY FAV SIDE CHARACTER DIES) so u can stop there or keep going

Nightwing 96 is very important so u should read it at some point it is the keystone but only read it from the beginning after u already like dick as a character bc I think some of the early issues with Dixon writing r soooooooooooo boring. it is like 25% devastatingly utterly boring and 75% sparkling super gem. which is a pretty good percentage!! but u can delay reading it . people will also tell u that New Teen Titans is critical dick reading. i also think that one is boring but unlike NW96 all of NTT is boring to me but reading NTT is ALSO important TO DO AT SOME POINT but for now u can def skip it

[nancydrewwouldnever]

Perhaps he is basically "quiet quitting" his career. That's what it's starting to look like.

-

Idk if you’ll post this & respond/share your thoughts, but this is what I think:

Chris has been talking about quitting for literal years. He always brings it up, but has also continued to work. From your insightful discussions, Nancy, it’s honestly apparent that Chris doesn’t care/doesn’t have the drive or passion like Pedro, for example, or anyone else in his age range - hungry for work, working towards something, critical acclaim, awards, etc.

It was starting to look that way, though, after Endgame with Knives Out and Defending Jacob - even with last year’s work for Lightyear & Grey Man. But at some point after, for whatever reason, it looked like he gave up. Maybe COVID & his mid-life crisis like you’ve brought up before? Maybe it was because of the $$$ performances, reviews, the fact he got no “acclaim” - Idk. It really seemed like he was trying and giving it all he got, though. It honestly was looking like he had a plan and was driven to get *somewhere* with his career & it honestly did look like he was going to get there. (At least that’s how it was looking to me.)

But then with the recent con appearances and these 3 recent films, Idk - it all just turned into “money grabbing.”

My theory? And I hate bringing it up, but maybe like you said, he gave up easily & around the time you know who came into the picture, and all these “money grabbing” things he’s been doing has to do with his new life, now? Maybe his plans changed because his personal plans changed too, you know? New life? Two weddings? Honeymoon? He’s the “bigger earner,” Idk. Maybe it’s to “pay off” all this stuff and his new life - maybe he truly doesn’t care anymore other than to make quick $$$, and that’s it. He’s going to ride off into the sunset, to live the comfortable lifestyle he wants, with the life he wants (apple picking and pumpkin carving day in and day out, while roller blading with his kids)? And going forward, he’ll do con appearances here and there & similar projects to Red One & Ghosted - because it’s quick $$$ & barely requires any effort on his part, you know?

Just my theory. But I can see this.

Then again, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in this fandom & especially over the course of the last couple of years - who knows anything anymore 🙄

Anyway, thank you for posting & responding in advance if you do!

So here's the thing that used to come up in old interviews all the time until the Marvel years. His ego (or self-esteem, however you want to call it) was obviously very easily bruised by being in projects which turned out to be universally panned projects. It really, really impacted him. He commented on it frequently in interviews, and you could tell it really did a mindtrip on him; he seemed almost despondent about being in "bad projects" for reasons beyond his control. By the time he did press for Push in the start of 2009 he seemed to be seriously considering quitting acting.

But then, a small miracle for him: the Marvel movies got consistent good reviews and consistent great box office. His attitude seemed to lift, and he seemed really happy again with his career. He got lucky with Knives Out being his first project post-Marvel.

But then look what happens when that trend starts to reverse in 2021 with Lightyear. That same equivocal talk from years ago has returned. His seeming disinterest in his career has returned. Despite doing more work over all these years, he still can't hand the criticism or perceived criticism of lackluster projects. I honestly believe this is what's happening now. The difference now is that he has accrued financial assets he never had back in the early part of his career, so he has no need/push to continue work if he's in this negative mind space.

[inosukes-boar-mask]

Random ahh Bernadine 21st century au headcanons because im bored as fuck (if y'all don't like this then just scroll idc this is my hcs and i can type whatever i want 😁 kidding)

She works as an architect because she really likes to draw and design some buildings and stuff. (I mentioned this in the previous au that I've made about the Rochesters so-)

Aside from being an Architect, she still does embroidery as her hobby. But aside from this, she also does some crocheting as well and she sometimes sells them online. (And she gives some of those stuffs to her children)

Before getting to college, she used to be a popular girl at school. She's very smart, very pretty, and she's part of every other clubs there. (Music club, arts club, and she's even part of the cheerleading squad) she gives a mean girl energy at first during her teenage years but when they'll talk to her, she's a softie and she's a really nice person after all.

Dated a random guy at some point in her teenage years but decided to broke it up because she really doesn't see her future with that guy (and she kinda knew the random guy was a redflag so that's why she immediately broke up with him)

She studied at Harvard University and was even torn and confused if she wants to pursue Fine Arts or Architecture. (But she decided to go to Architecture because she wants to try something new) also, she graduated magna cum laude there cuz she's just too good.

A huge bookworm. She literally has an entire library at her house and most of them are full of classic stories. (She hates erotic romance/smut books btw because she thinks they don't make any sense)

She wears glasses sometimes. (Like the same frame as Archie) She kinda has a bad eyesight now so that's why she sometimes wears them when she's reading something or going out

She likes her coffee black. Especially if it's really strong because it keeps her up all day

An ambivert. She's friendly but only to some people that she really likes to talk and to hang out with.

She plays candy crush saga and she's on level 4000+ now. She has been addicted to that game ever since.

Obviously has a Gen X (or a millennial) humor. She gets weirded out on her children's gen alpha humor (she wonders what the fuck is skibidi toilet sigma alpha Ohio is and where did that kind of humor come from)

Secretly likes anime. She doesn't tell everyone about it (except Arthur) but she really likes watching them since 5th grade. Her most favorite anime of all time is Sailor Moon. But she also likes Bleach, Attack on Titan, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and Jujutsu Kaisen too. (Damn she knows peak anime 🙏🏻🙏🏻) And aside from these peak anime that I've mentioned... She also likes studio ghibli movies as well. (Oh and she recently discovered Blue Lock from his son Alex)

Married to Arthur since 2006. They have 3 children together. First one is Leopold Alexander, aka Alex. (born in 2009) and the second one is Alessandra Marie, aka Sandy. (Born in 2012) And the third and the youngest one is Benedict Andrew, aka Ben. (born in 2015).

Her birthday is in August 24th and she's a Virgo (ion fw zodiac signs but I'll just randomly put this here)

A very good mother and also a great wife as well. She doesn't have a specific favorite child something like that. She loves them all and she always cherishes every single moments with them. She also sobbed at her son Alex's 15th birthday btw. Because she cannot believe her firstborn child is growing up so fast now.

Half of the buildings, malls, and the modern, huge skyscrapers in Concordia are mostly designed by her. (Heck even the current house that she's currently living with is also designed by her 👀)

[latentspaceofficial]

research tangent! scp x wh13

so this is something a little bit different than what i normally talk about. i'm putting on a different cap today. ok little nerd moment thats been living rent free in my head for days. ive got an antistatic bag on my desk thats been sitting here for a while and i noticed something familiar

that sure as hell looks like the scp foundation logo

which got me really thinking. so its very obvious to me that the scp logo takes inspiration from this iso or ansi symbol. but whats even more odd was looking at the timeline of the scp wikis birth. im a zillenial (god i hate that word) so my childhood was watching markiplier play scp:cb, scrolling the old wiki, fucking with cleverbot. fun stuff like that. i was still a drooling idiot. when sci-fi renamed to syfy. but i remember the switchover and not being allowed to watch eureka because there were some "goddamns" in there. but i was allowed to watch warehouse 13, in spite of steve's existence. i was way too into the steampunk and lore of warehouse 13 when it was relevant. so much so i had a fucking farnsworth ringtone on my lg shit phone and i thought it was the coolest thing. i'm also still gay as hell for h.g. wells and her fit.

but anyway anyway. the premise of warehouse 13 was finding dangerous "artifacts" that imbued special status affects on people and to neutralize them with "neutralizer grid polyethylene static bags" as they say. their motto being "snag it. bag it. and tag it." or something to that effect.

what im getting at is that warehouse 13 has a similar premise to the scp foundation, but more mainstream comedy and less psychological horror. there's a tangential link between wh13 with scp via anti static bags and the symbol. so i looked into this a bit. through cursory searches, i didn't find anyone really talking about this other than a similar premise. so i looked at timelines. in july 2008 the scp foundation wiki (idk which one) was started, while wh13 piloted on july 2009. with a year delta, it seems clear "who stole from who". but wait. writing, pitching, and filming takes quite a while. is a year really enough time? i can't find any trademarks registered by universal nor any evidence of a canadian filming license. so this is where i stopped typing on my phone and started researching. the waters are a bit muddy, so bear with me. wh13 was co-written by a handful of people and rewritten as well. but the original plot was announced by sci-fi here in october of 2007

according to wikipedia (the free encyclopedia), inspirations for warehouse 13 include the x-files, raiders of the lost ark, something called moonlighting, and this show from the late 80s and early 90s called "friday the 13th: the series". i'd never heard of it, but it shares the vaguest premise with both wh13 and scp to keep bad artifacts away from harming people.

well what about the scp wiki? when did it form? well it's complicated. (i'm sorry for my poor cropping, it will happen again)

the scp wiki itself states that the original scp came from 4chan and that a lot of original organization happened on 4chan. indeed 4chan is the source of famous scps such as 173

posted on june 2007 is the original lore post about 173 and can be seen as the beginning of scps. which pre-dates the announcement of wh13. i don't know about you, but how fast you could go from trolling 4chan to a pilot script? at this point "some government authority retrieving dangerous magic embued items" was not a previously done idea and was indeed original. the x-files kinda did this before with balancing larger plot arcs with mini plot supernatural occurrences, not all aliens. but nothing about being an authoritative group that comes in and cleans up super natural mishaps. nah, mulder and skully just stayed in the basement or took an occasional road trip to see a whistleblower. i honestly love scp far more than wh13, but i'm going to be the devil's advocate and not give the new era spin on an old idea to the scp wiki just yet. 173 is an scp, but the idea of scps is not fully laid out yet. the thread was also deleted days later and thus only lived in the minds of active forum users of the time as fan derivatives were made. so there was a period of time where the fandom had started to form, but no official wiki existed. the semi official scp wiki formed in january 2008. later than the announcement of wh13 but before the pilot of the show ever aired in july 2009. so it's always possible the writers were 4channers and yoinked the idea. again, it's so fascinating how close in time and narrative the scp wiki and wh13 are. i personally doubt the writers were on 4chan at the time, but neither the wiki nor the show writers exist in a vacuum. i think it all warrants scrutiny and there's no smoking gun saying who inspired who, or if it's absolute coincidence. that is unless some ogs from the scp wiki or the writers of wh13 are able to speak on it. i'm curious what other people think.

[corbietalons]

Hey I’m back and a lot has happened! Anyway, I have a new blog but please DM/ask me for the url. I’m sorry to say right now it’s mostly Warhammer 40k in general/Necrons specifically.

Quick rundown of major life events that happened in the last 5 years for everyone who only knows me on here:

1. I finally stopped running from the trans thoughts I’ve expended a ridiculous amount of effort fighting since ~2009. I use they/he and I’m out everywhere but work. I want to apologize for every shitty trans/enbyphobic thing I’ve ever said; it came from a place of deep denial and self-loathing.

2. Related to why I’m finally out: I had a preventive hysterectomy last year. One of the actually valid reasons I had for not medically transitioning was my major genetic susceptibility to uterine cancer. T doesn’t increase the risk much in normal people, but taking it before would have been asking for turbocancer.

3. Through an absurdly unlikely series of events, I went from what looked like a hopeless rock bottom to landing a steady job and two subsequent promotions. I now make about my parents’ combined income when I was a kid, adjusted for inflation. (However, I’m looking elsewhere due to offshoring concerns. If your place is hiring a technical/content writer/manager with low-level management experience, hit me up!)

4. Said job allowed me to buy a nice little house just outside Austin. I’ll hopefully never have to deal with the bullshit of renting again, something I never imagined could happen as of even two years ago.

5. My cat, William, died a few months after my last post here and Mr. Butts followed him two years later. I have since acquired a Chihuahua/Dachshund mix for convoluted reasons, but the short explanation is she adopted me as an emotional support human a couple years ago. I now no longer hate little dogs. I also just got a 4-month-old kitten. They’re both excellent creatures.

6. Between life finally giving me some major wins and continued therapy, I am in an excellent place mentally. Not spending a majority of my waking hours consumed by rage is a welcome new experience.

7. The D&D stuff I was working on in 2018 came out and was pretty well-received (here and here). WotC also contracted me to write a mediocre Adventurers League module that I’m less proud of (but made some nice dosh).

I think that catches everything up. See you around!

[salarta]

Below is a reply I wrote elsewhere to someone who said they were present when the Austen run with Lorna in the 00s was going on. According to them, everyone hated Lorna, and there was no way to root for Lorna in any of the Austen stories until people "in retrospect" learned of the Genoshan genocide (which as I note below, readers would have known back then - New X-Men 132 was before Austen's run).

I'm posting it here because I think these things need to be kept in mind when reading Lorna stuff of the era, and when seeing people talk about it.

I wasn't there. I learned of Lorna in 2009, after everything transpired.

But as a Lorna fan who's got decades of media consumption under his belt, that dealt with similar situations in other communities, it's time for me to say something about this. And I'm going to start not with Lorna or X-Men or even Marvel, but with something else I'm a huge fan of that I dealt with.

Before Lorna, my favorite female character was Rosa Farrell from Final Fantasy IV. Unlike Lorna, I had been a fan of the character ever since the game released way back in 1991 on SNES as FF2. Why did I love the character? Because she was a caring badass. She crossed a desert to warn Cecil about Baron coming after him, and made it by herself, only coming down with Desert Fever which anyone could get! She helped Rydia get over her fear of fire with empathy that Cecil and Edward couldn't give! When Fabul was attacked by Baron, and Kain and Golbez almost killed the entire party then and there, Rosa sacrificed herself to save them and trusted Cecil to come save her. Her willingness to forgive and see good in people led to Kain helping them in their final fight. And when it came time to actually go to the final fight, rather than waste time arguing with Cecil, she stowed away on the Lunar Whale and confronted him about his sexism ("chivalrous" though it may have been intended) when it was too late for him and the others to keep her out of it. And then you factor in the gameplay and she's a literal lifesaver.

That's... not what most people I ran into online saw two decades ago. Because they didn't bother to pay attention to the story, or think it through. To most people I ran into, Rosa was nothing more than a weak damsel in distress who undermined Cecil's mission twice and had no depth to her beyond "loves Cecil." I saw a lot of people insist the game would have been better without her. Many of them also didn't realize that Rosa was THE template for caring female white mage lead heroines from FF7 to FF10 - another issue that meant they didn't see her unique traits, considering them to just be "typical white mage traits." So even though Aeris, Rinoa, Garnet and Yuna each had more damsel in distress scenarios with causes less understandable than Rosa's, that they had other aspects built on meant a lot of people didn't hold that against them like they did to Rosa.

In short, there was nothing wrong with how Rosa was written in the original FF4. She wasn't this frail weak flower who constantly needs saving that people made her out to be. She had more depth than that. People just lacked media literacy and rushed to judging her negatively.

What we're talking about here, with writing of Lorna in the Austen era? It's the Exact. Same. Thing.

She had JUST experienced a genocide. That is NOT something that was retroactive. Anyone with a sliver of media literacy, who put real thought into what they were reading and didn't misjudge her by past depictions, should have kept New X-Men 132 in mind. You don't need to see the explicit scenes of her watching all those millions die to understand that this woman who was just pulled out of the ruins, naked and suffering from the horrendous trauma of a genocide that she had to keep reliving as her powers replayed those final moments over and over, is going to have some issues. She's going to have trouble processing the pain. She's going to have mood swings. She's going to look for ways to ease the pain, she's going to react strongly to perceived threats. Not everyone who experiences trauma does so in the same ways. There are many ways of expressing trauma, and many paths to healing.

It's not Lorna's fault that people back in the 00s refused to acknowledge that trauma means something. It's not her fault that some people had their heads in the sand because they wanted her to go back to their nostalgia-laced ideas of her that say she's not allowed to have a trauma reaction where she reacts in any way other than "I need a man to comfort me." I will grant two (2) missteps. One, when Havok left her at the altar, Lorna should have been blaming and going after Havok - not Annie. It was Havok's choice. And two, maybe Austen should have been clearer about how her behavior was a result of processing her trauma from the Genoshan genocide.

But then again... Austen did that. When he explicitly showed flashback scenes of Lorna during the genocide itself. In other words, he took what people should have understood from the "gaps" of the story, and because they didn't, he pulled those moments OUT of the gaps and put them straight on the page to try to get people to understand that hey, Lorna's been through some shit, that has to actually mean something or else what's the point of even having comic books. And yet, despite Austen eventually spelling it all out in big bright neon letters, some people still insisted on ignoring the obvious so they could keep ragging on Lorna being written in a more complex manner than their nostalgia.

Far from "rewriting history," this is putting history into its proper context. It's the same thing as archaeologists today recognizing that Viking women did, in fact, participate in battle, and the claim that they never did was based entirely on past archaeologists deciding to ignore context and force their presumptions about gender roles ("only men fight and use swords, women stay in the kitchen where they belong") onto centuries old finds.

[bobafett]

stealing this because the boops made me realize how much i miss tag games.

How many works do you have on AO3? A grand total of 14. I am not a prolific writer.

What’s your total AO3 word count? 63,880. Please see above answer.

What fandoms do you write for? Batman and Star Wars. I have a little bit of Supernatural fic posted on an alt account, and I've been turning over an idea for an OW fic in my head for a while, but it takes me a long time to figure out how to write in a fandom in a way that still captures the "vibes" of the source material (which is always one of my goals). So I rarely branch out.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? New Cornerstone (suitless!Vader AU from a million years ago), Brothers in Arms (Jon starts to get an inkling that his best friend has perhaps not had a normal childhood), Setting the Bone (Selina Kyle: reluctant parental figure), In This Twilight (Damian and Jason brotherly bonding, first batfam fic I ever wrote), and Try to Sweep the Darkness Out (batfam Christmas special that I've almost orphaned 10 times because I hate the writing choices I made in it so much). None of the fics I'm actually proud of are on this list. Tragic.

Do you respond to comments? Irregularly and unpredictably! I will if I feel like I have something to say and it catches me in the right mood.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Uh, that would be High Water Mark since it starts with a scene of Cody contemplating suicide and ends with the instant right before Order 66 kicks in.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Probably Problem Solving since it's the only fic I've ever written where I was actually trying to be light hearted.

Do you get hate on fics? Never, thankfully.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? If I thought I could do it successfully, I would. But I'm not, so I don't.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Basically never. There is a Doctor Who/Sherlock fic buried on my old FF.net account. There's also a Super Smash Bros fic on there that I wrote in 2009, which I suppose also counts.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? I can't imagine why anyone would.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, and I never would. I'm too much of a control freak about my writing. Writing, say, shared universe stuff might be fun, but actually co-authoring something would drive me nuts.

What’s your all time favorite ship? What a question. I come back to Jaime/Brienne a lot for reading, but I don't think I'd ever write it. I write a ton of BatCat, but rarely read it because I'm particular. I like Lois/Clark, but I almost never write OR read it. I'm honestly not very ship motivated. Most of the time I filter for a ship because I'm in the mood for its attendant tropes, and if the writing is good, you can sell me on just about anything.

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Hmngh. New Cornerstone again. There's 20k of an expanded version of it on my hard drive that I haven't added to since probably 2017. There's something very fun about suitless!Vader as a character because he's such a sparking, destructive livewire of a person, but also I'm experienced enough now to realize how difficult doing justice to that premise is. Also, I'd have to rewatch TCW to get Ahsoka's voice down, and I just don't got time for that shit.

What are your writing strengths? Description and sense of place. Also pretty good at dialogue.

What are your writing weaknesses? Fucking. Long fic. Plot in general. I'm horrifically bad at it.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I'm usually inclined to keep all my dialogue in English, but it would depend on the context and the effect I was going for.

First fandom you wrote for? Purposefully? Inuyasha. Without having any idea what fanfic was? I created an Artemis Fowl fairy OC and stuck her in Indiana Jones when I was 10 years old.

Favorite fic you’ve written? They Don't Sing Songs For Me. No contest. It's perfectly captures what I think is the ideal form of fanfic: two characters who have absolutely no business interacting with each other building a compelling relationship dynamic over the course of 9k words.

I will be tagging @panharmonium, @apostatefrog, @dead-ghost-walking, @ryehouses, @yellowocaballero, @lazuliquetzal. Also anyone else who wants to. I will bring back tag games by force of will, so help me God.

[zeravmain]

Tell us about your opinions about talking animal movies.

I will try to be brief (1/435)

Before we get into The Opinions, I need to first establish that when I talk about talking animal movies, I specifically mean live-action talking animal movies in all their unrepentant glory, so no fully animated stuff like Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010), or a semi-animated realism one like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and also stuff like The Muppet's movies. We are also including talking animals who are narrated and don't have CGI applied to their faces to make the illusion of talking, so films like Milo and Otis (1986) do qualify, but something like Zootopia (2016) does not. This is exclusively live-action, though of course there can be special effects or CGI included in these selections, even fake animals so long as they work as animals within the story. The main basis needs to be that it is a live-action movie where there are realistic (per the movies) animals talking.

More than anything, these movies tend to be kids movies (of course) but that in itself does not mean that these movies are always intentionally silly. No doubt that the vast majority of them are comedy, mind you, but there's a difference between genuine well-made comedy (for kids) and something like that scene in 50 First Dates (2004) where we have the walrus throw up on the worker (side note I am not including this movie despite how the animals do seemingly communicate with Adam Sandler, already a talking animal himself in some respects).

Now onto my opinion: There are precisely 4 golden questions you need to consider for whether any given talking animal movie is good (subjective), and more than anything is that these are not hallmarks but rather categories these movies fall under and should embrace to be enjoyable.

1. How much suspense of disbelief is the movie demanding from you?

Ah, the classic concept for media engagement that seems to be lost to time. Generally, whenever you will be approaching a new movie or show or etc, there is always the question of realism and the idea of suspension of disbelief, how much you are willing to shutter away that little voice in your head that makes you chronically unfuckable that goes "um ACTUALLY that scene is totally unrealistic-" and other noteworthy lines. For a movie with talking animals, of course you will be expected to give it some ground, but as well you need to keep in mind that you don't just throw it all out.

More than anything, a bad movie made with passion is better than a good movie made with none. How much does the talking animal movie like the fact that it is a talking animal movie? Do they just cash it in for the paycheck like the latter half films of the Air-Bud Extended Universe, or do they double down and go whole hog on the concepts like with G-Force (2009)? Are the movies simple comedies like Marmaduke (2010) that know they are there just to give you a laugh, or do they try their damnedest to make up a moral like Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (2011)?

Once more, a bad movie does not mean a bad movie when talking about this complex topic, so while I do think these questions I posit are subjective, they are recommendations to keep in mind for your viewing experience.

2. Are the talking animals actually animals or just people who happen to also be animals?

Certain scholars might point you to Alvin and The Chipmunks, or Garfield (2004) and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006) for reference on talking animal movies which deal with this subject matter, perhaps the most famous example being Stuart Little (1999), the mouse who actually goes to school and, within the plot of the movie, gets captured by a hate group (of cats) who plan to kill and eat him.

This question can apply to a fair bit of movies, I think the Dr. Dolittle movies could fall under here as those movies actually hinge on how the titular "Dr. Dolittle" specifically has the power to talk with animals, where in turn this power makes said animals genuine characters and it's not treated as a minor quirk. Another good example could actually be Detective Pikachu (2019), where Ryan Renolds does his best to Renolds it up. Paddington (2014) also qualifies for this question under the same rules as Stuart Little, where Paddington is just a person but also a bear.

A more modern variant could be Show Dogs (2018), where the dogs are not understood by the humans, but do in fact hold places in human society. I also want to give a special shout-out to Kangaroo Jack (2003) here, which does not technically qualify for this list given that Jack never really talks (only makes implicit noises that kangaroos can't actually make), but I believe that in spirit it qualifies here. Same with Furry Vengance (2011), who I believe in spirit qualifies due to the animals having human levels of intelligence and primarily having all the markers of talking animal movies, except for that the animals themselves don't directly talk.

3. Are the talking animals actually talking?

Already this one may seem ridiculous given the subject matter, but I do think that it's important to keep in mind. Whenever there is a talking animal movie, there is always the question of "are these animals just actually speaking english in the real world or is this just the omniscient movie viewer translation for them?' George of the Jungle (1997) actually had a very clever opening sequence where they provided translation for realism, except that the translation was [ANIMAL NOISES] while said animals spoke in clear english.

This does not mean that the movie NEEDS to be realistic, mind you. Technically the Narnia movies count as talking animal movies due to Aslan being, well, a giant talking lion, but those are intentionally a fantasy setting which makes it fit, same with a film like The Golden Compass (2007). To a lesser extent, the live action Scooby-Doo movies also fit as talking animal movies due to the presence of Scooby and [REDACTED] Doo, where Scooby and robotic Rowin Atkinson are just actual talking animals as an accepted fact of life within those universes despite being clear anomalies. Once again, Alvin and the Chipmunks live action movie series fit here. Perhaps a more elegant example could be found in Zookeeper (2011), where the animals do talk, and do directly communicate with Kevin James.

Of course there can be duds, such as Ace & The Christmas Miracle (2021), where it falls into the territory of also being a Christmas Hallmark movie with a recycled plot of saving the horse ranch. Conversely, we have a 'So bad it's good' movie like The Karate Dog (2004), which suffers from inglorious CGI, the dog actually speaking to humans, and all the depth you can expect from a dog performing martial arts in what is actually a buddy cop detective film.

4. How much do they take advantage of the animals talking?

Ah, now this one is the classic kaiju movie dilemma: Is the movie actually about the talking animals, or are they simply a backdrop b-plot for the "main character" humans of the movie who are like. usually planning a wedding or something. They always make these romantic. You may remember the classics such as Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) or the Transformers movies (Michael Bay version) where they shoehorned in a plot concerning the humans in order to make people care about the movies or provide some narration, irrespective of how these franchises do better without them.

You can look to films like G-Force (2009), which manage to elegantly intermix these plots by having the human and animal characters goals line up, mainly in that they want to prevent a genocide, or how movies like Milo and Otis (1986) are exclusively about the animals in their adventure. From Babe (1995) to Charlotte's Web (2006) to UNDERDOG (2007), there's a wide range as to how well they incorporate these aspects into their movies, whether it actually be about the animals or the animals serve as a backdrop to the humans.

There are a wide range of archetypes and variances to be found in live action talking animal movies, a rather underdeveloped field all things considered, but I do hope that people keep their minds and hearts open to discussion about this and find the movie that's right for them.

[oodlyenough]

fic 20 questions

1. how many works do you have on Ao3? 127...! I have had the account since 2009, lol.

2. what's your total Ao3 word count? 707,519

3. what fandoms do you write for? Generally I only write for one at a time, which is currently Ace Attorney. Not counting the odd one-offs for ask memes over the years, the other big ones were Arcane, Borderlands, Doctor Who and the wizard books.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

Commutative Law (Arcane)

Window of Opportunity (Arcane)

Where the Air is Rarefied (HP)

Prestidigitation (Arcane)

Contingency Planning (Arcane)

Lmao, 4 of 5 written in 2022. You can see the power of writing m/m in a popular new fandom VS my entire other library at the time. Admittedly at some point I made a concerted effort to try and knock HP down from top spot, which was successful. For now. Jayvik fandom has quieted down a lot.

5. do you respond to comments? Yes. Sometimes it takes a while because if it's a particularly thoughtful comment I try to give a particularly thoughtful reply, and it can take time to gather my thoughts.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I'm going to discount oneshots because the tone in one-shots tends to be more consistent throughout the piece rather than being about the "ending" yknow.

So probably King and Country, a Doctor Who fic cowritten with @go-ldy way back when. Technically a happy ending if you factor in immense amounts of off-screen couples therapy lmao. But we had originally written something much simpler and happier, and it didn't fit the story at all, so we went back and wrote something heavier for the closing chapter, which is why it sticks in my mind.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I think probably Anachronism, the 95k Borderlands epic. I had always had a rough image of the four main characters happy together by the end, and it was also my swansong in Borderlands fandom, so I wanted it to be an optimistic, happy ending (especially in contrast to whatever the hell is going on in the canon there now lmfaoooo). Plus the rest of the fic was quite angsty, and the ending was hopeful and happy.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not in recent memory. Once upon a time I got a couple disgruntled comments in Doctor Who fandom, and perhaps funniest of all found people complaining about my fic on LJ in French, unaware I read French.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Nope I'm a big baby who gets too embarrassed. I've written some pretty soft-focus M rated stuff but nothing I think could rightly be called smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I wrote a short joke crossover between Doctor Who and Inspector Spacetime, the Doctor Who parody from Community. I don't think that one made the leap from Teaspoon to AO3 actually.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes, a number of times. It's very flattering. Mostly Borderlands fics and mostly into Russian iirc, but there's been a few over the years. Sometimes people ask, and I say "sure, drop me a link!" and I never hear back, so I'm not sure if they forgot to link or just never finished translating to begin with.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? My longest and best DW fics with @go-ldy way back when! Not so much since.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? I'm gonna be real it always just feels like whatever I'm into at the moment. And, actually, not necessarily something I write fic for -- like Pricefield is an all-timer for me, easy, but I have never written fic and I haven't read all that much either. If I were narrowing to tree, one of "each" lol, probably Doctor/Rose, Pricefield and Narumitsu.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Don't have any. I know I will never finish them (RIP Fixer-Upper and Silly Love Songs) as I've lost interest in those fandoms.

16. What are your writing strengths? I'd like to think I am good at packing emotional and/or character beats into a concise scene or story. Adding missing scenes or elaborating on canon scenes to give some additional depth or meaning without really deviating from the source.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Definitely plot. I will get stumped on the technicalities of things for ages -- I might know an emotional scene I'd like to write, but hell if I know how to get them there. It's why I primarily write one-shots. Also I struggle with any kind of scenery or set description.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I avoid it as much as I can. (Which so far has been entirely, lol.) I don't speak any other languages well enough to write dialogue in them and feel awkward relying on Google translate or hitting up random friends to do that work for me. I am more likely to use the "said something in [language]" approach.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I actually can't be sure but I think it was 101 Dalmatians. The animated one. When I was like, 7.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I'm gonna cheat and do one per fandom:

Anachronism (Borderlands) -> biggest, most complicated, plotty fic I have ever written, with four main characters and every combination of relationship between them as the focus. Took 3 damn years. Very proud of it.

Unravel (Ace Attorney) -> total recency bias here but I'm very happy with it and it scratched a very particular itch for me, fleshing out a relationship and characters that exist mostly in the fringes of canon, something I used to do lots of but haven't in recent years

Contingency Planning (Arcane) -> an emotional sucker punch fic in my humble opinion, happiest with it

Out of the Howling (Doctor Who, with @go-ldy) -> actually I had a hard time picking a DW fic. But this was our last together and most complex, so it wins. Also the Master is fun as hell to write.

I am supposed to tag people! I am not sure who else has already been tagged. Do it or don't, I'm not your boss, happy new year 🎊 @annalyticall @heavybreathingcatt @sandboxer @mutxnts @tinsnip @tlonista @themirokai

[leohttbriar]

7, 12, 16, 18, 20 - that's a lot so take your pick, I just always like seeing your opinions

right back at you! was secretly hoping you would reblog the game :)

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

never really encountered this phenomena before cobra kai except for the vaguest hint of an aversion to samwise gamgee after everyone kept calling him the "real hero," but that aversion never took, and i'm ashamed to admit such weakness even now.

johnny lawrence was one of my favorite characters in cobra kai season one and then i logged onto tumblr and now i just Do Not Get It. a feeling i think from pre-season 3, even, when he was still a good and consistent character in the show. another character was robby. predictably, he was a bit babygirlified and he got soooo much more attention than sam and tory and even miguel and tbh, that made me pout massively. like. i don't care about him :(

i could be intellectual about this (and, okay, clearly the root of this petty hate is that particular sort of frustration that comes over a girl when all the boys in her fourth grade gym class get mad at her for being faster than them and then they refuse to let her play in their recess soccer game even though she's the best player--and it then sticks with her for the rest of her life) but in a vacuum i probably wouldn't feel the way i do. like, my ire is definitely in response to how other people feel about the bully character from 80's sports movie karate kid.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

you can bet that any female character that has ever been called annoying is at the top of this list. feels like girls like that are always popping up and torturing pop-culture consumers. the only one i can name right now is sam larusso, since that's the most recent model.

but also i read pride and prejudice in seventh grade. didn't get a single word of it, but i did understand that mrs. bennett was extremely annoying. then i read it again a few years later and have been her fierce defender ever since. female characters with high-pitched voices and anxiety: i adore. if you don't like those characters, in my head im thinking you're only as intelligent as me at 13.

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

any sort of portrayal of spock as someone who is violent and angry and just holding it back constantly bc he hates being half human--i do Not Get It. any sort portrayal of an alien species on star trek in which the aliens learn to embrace their humanity, or something. like, i can't stand it.

i want spock to be super-duper logical and stoic. i want that to be a good thing. i want all alien characteristics to be embraced and explored. i want the weirdness. new trek just isn't doing weirdness enough! and if human morality and social structures are so universally important, stop being cowardly and explain whyyyyy.

this also applies to fanfic which is, in fact, disastrously worse on this subject. especially fanfic based on the 2009 star trek movie.

but okay it's like---the roswell conspiracy is really fun and stuff cause it is really just the government stoking some nonsense so the russians can't figure out all the special-stupid weapons and spy-equipment they're making. and then it means that everything in roswell, nm is alien themed: little green faces everywhere, three-fingered hands waving at you on billboards, "greetings earthlings," 50's era space-art, and so on. I am very into that aesthetic, especially in the middle of nowhere southwest desert with not a mountain or forest for hundred of miles. of course people were looking up and being like "there must be Something out there. look how big."

all good, yes, and silly. but people really believe it and they really believe that the aliens look the way they do! the way the "witnesses" described little looking men with big ol eyes in a big ol head and extra long arms. sweeties! that's a primate! that's an earth-creature! there's no imagination! there's no weirdness! what if the aliens didn't have a face. what if they didn't have eyes! what if they were made of a chalky substance that molted every few minutes to maintain a needed basic pH and their way of observing electromagnetic radiation was not light projected thru a lens but like little pores of mucous all over their body like the one's on sharks (ampullae of lorenzini) that absorb electromagnetic radiation and also give the creature poles which means they can block all visible light with special mind powers and maybe photosynthesize or something.

i realize that fanfiction is largely concerned with two attractive men going at it, but for all that people claim to be "monster fuckers," that really hasn't borne out in star trek fanfic. explore eroticism with the weird, with the actually alien. i want that. that'd be great. i know octavia butler and others already Did That but i want to see a star trek go boldly, you know what i mean. also, i want something more like eroticism for the sake of the erotic--not as metaphor about feminine subjugation or something (no offense ms. butler).

even if that doesn't happen, would love to read a fanfic or watch a tv show in which, for example, spock's journey is not about how oppressive being a vulcan is, or whatever.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well, I’ve done it. Finished the Bugle back catalogue. Original run was 295 full episodes, 217 hours. Reboot is currently up to 267 episodes. That’s a lot of Andy Zaltzman. I have heard a lot of Andy Zaltzman, in the last year and a bit. Arguably more Andy Zaltzman than is recommended for your mental health.

To commemorate the end of this era, I thought I'd post a few things I have saved in my Bugle folder. Because it's always fun to go through that. This isn't exactly the same as posting the best moments of The Bugle. I heard plenty of fantastically funny moments that I never cut out and saved. This is just a small selection of Bugle moments that, for whatever reason, I decided to save to my hard drive. Probably so I could put them in a post or something (going with ones from the original Bugle only here, stuff from the reboot could be another post).

An old one, from June 2009, that I saved just because it made me laugh so hard. The time a listener remixed John Oliver’s impression of Delonte West going on a date. Beginning of the era of listeners making weird remixes of The Bugle and sometimes having it played on the podcast.

@lastweeksshirttonight, this one's entirely for you (I don't remember why I first cut it out, but quite probably I did that for you in the first place), the time when John Oliver played a phone message on The Bugle in which his Daily Show colleague Rob Riggle called him a "piece of French garbage" while threatening to murder him.

From late 2014: they found a news story in which the Chinese government tried to ban puns, Andy Zaltzman responds with a nuclear-grade Chinese-themed pun run.

John Oliver: I think we're all aware that they're waving a red flag at a very excitable bull, with you, with this story. And, just before you say anything else... just, over-responding, Andy, would that not be what the Chinese government wants? Are they provoking you into action, and is not the really strong thing here to do to show restraint?

Andy Zaltzman: Uh, no.

Andy Zaltzman's idea for a football chant at a funeral - it's up there with the hardest The Bugle has ever made me laugh. I was on a bus when I first heard it. It was a problem.

The time Andy Zaltzman tried to tell a regular "walks into a bar" joke. About the Queen Victoria. As a way to explain why he has so many stories about people hating him when he tried to perform in comedy clubs.

John Oliver trying to get through his prepared material on the band Pussy Riot, Andy Zaltzman keeps interrupting and making John Oliver laugh, I cut this one out so I could use it to illustrate how well their double act works, based on the fact that they find each other so genuinely funny.

Episode 61 of The Bugle, from January 2009 - Andy Zaltzman missed Obama's inauguration because it happened on a Tuesday so he spent that time playing comedians' football, but did interview some of the other players (Lee Mack, Russell Howard, Daniel Kitson) about the inaguration they'd all missed, and played the interviews on The Bugle.

I didn't have the clip saved, but found it on YouTube because I need to include Andy Zaltzman's iconic dog-themed pun run, featuring the memorable "bored her colleagues" (border collie) and "cold and wet weaver" (golden retriever).

Tumblr won’t let me upload any more audio files here, but I can still add a Google Drive link, and I need to also mention the clip from Bugle episode 112, from April 2010, when it was John Oliver’s birthday and he’d just taken the job of voice acting in the Smurfs and he was so excited to announce that, because it’s the cutest shit I’ve ever heard.

While I’m at this, I’d like to end with a couple of Bugle compilations I made last year. I actually made a few of those, but here are my favourites. One is the one that got wildly, unstoppably, incredibly out of hand. It was meant to be just a short collection of audio clips from a few different Bugle episodes, like my other compilations were. Then I added some pictures. Then a Daily Show clip. Then another Daily Show clip. Then some more pictures. Then some video footage. Then there was more and more of it. And basically, I accidentally made a feature film. It's 74 minutes long.

It features all the aspects you want in a good feature film. Tension, suspense, one man’s descent into darkness, tasteful nudity, explorations of the human capacity for anger and confusion, a battle for the soul of a nation, a tumultuous relationship between two opposing figures at the centre, increasing conflict but a note of hope at the end. At once point, Andy Zaltzman, in his role as one of the main character’s best friends, compares it to a romcom like Groundhog Day. I referenced that in the title. Because I had to give it a title. Because it’s a feature film.

…It’s just a bunch of Bugle and Daily Show clips, in chronological order, taking us through the journey of John Oliver having to cover the career of Sarah Palin. He didn’t enjoy it. He really, really didn’t enjoy it.

Some of the audio clips are overlaid with pictures and videos of the stuff they were talking about. One of those pictures took me several hours to locate, I finally got it by putting the Daily Mail into Wayback Machine, and then going through ages of their archives. But I think it was worth the effort.

And finally, the one thing I’ve made that I actually put on YouTube, because it took me a large number of hours and a lot of work and I was actually quite pleased with the result. The story of the time, in 2011, that John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman talked a lot of shit about everyone involved in the News International phone hacking scandal, even though The Bugle was funded by Timesonline which was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and quite soon after that, they were dropped by The Times.

At the time, they both said this was not a political decision, it wasn’t because of their comments, it was just that they didn’t bring in enough money. Which is probably at least partially true, decisions can be about more than one thing. John Oliver said a couple of things that at least kind of implied it might have been retaliatory, but Andy Zaltzman was more careful, insisting they were parting amicably (even though they clearly weren’t). I suspect the difference in reactions is because John Oliver had a lot of shit going on outside The Bugle so could afford to mess around, while Andy Zaltzman had… in the episode where they announced this, he used the words “Jack K. shit” to describe what else he had going on, and may have been too invested in keeping The Bugle going to say anything that would risk alienating potential funding sources (they succeeded, of course, managing to fund it via listener donations).

In a very recent episode that I just listened to this weekend, from May 2023, the topic of Rupert Murdoch came up on The Bugle, and Andy Zaltzman briefly told the story of how they used to be funded by his company, but were then dropped by that company, “suspiciously shortly” after they talked a lot of shit about Rupert Murdoch and everyone who worked with him. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Andy Zaltzman acknowledge that there may be a connection between those two things. So that’s a cool sign. Twelve years later, and Andy Zaltzman has finally attained enough success and job security so he can say what he likes as well.

[littledidiknow]

Books Read in 2022

Faggots by Larry Kramer (1978)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor by Lisa Abascal (2020)

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)

Arriving Today by Christopher Mims (2021)

But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman (2016)

Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe (2022)

Red Notice by Bill Browder (2015)

How Should A Person Be? By Sheila Heti (2010)

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin (1965)

Human Wishes Enemy Combatant by Edmund Caldwell (2011)

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019)

This is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth (2021)

Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey (1997)

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (2009)

Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis (1937)

A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau (1954)

Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt  (2011)

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019) (reread)

LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin (2021)

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano (2000)

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (2016)

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000)

Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)

The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell (1962)

They by Kay Dick (1977)

Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma (2022)

Status and Culture by W. David Marx (2022)

This was a big year for me both for quantity (nearly twice as many books as i read last year) but also for quality. So many standouts! And I'm learning I'm very here for experimental literature, please send me your weirdo recos.

Where the hell has Helen Dewitt been all my life? How are so few of her books published?! (she claims to have a dozen ready to go and i need all of them).

Chuck Klosterman has really grown up since I last paid attention to him like 15 years ago. But What if We're Wrong? changed the way I look at the world. He looks at the present day from 1000 years in the future and comtemplates what we could be completely wrong about based on what we've been wrong about in the past. Some of the interviews I've listened to of his this year have really opened my mind to new ways of thinking. Will be doubling back on what I've missed from him in years past in 2023.

Fuccboi was a blast and all the literture snobs that hated it are just completely fucking wrong.

I found Human Wishes Enemy Combatant through a newsletter or something. How lucky we are that this was released again! Read if you want to experience someone completely destroying the structure of a novel.

Milkman is gorgeous. Read immediately.

Gentleman Overboard is another that was nearly lost to time and recently published again. A beautiful and haunting little story.

Read Faggots for a very fun and raunchy romp through the gay sex scene of the late 70s moments before the AIDs crisis. You won't be able to keep track of all the characters, but it doesn't really matter.

How Red Notice hasn't been made into a movie by Adam McKay is beyond me. Maybe it's coming. A great window into Russia's transition after the Soviet Union and also the mindset of modern Russians. Also lots of fascinating stock, money stuff.

Read Arriving Today and This is How they Tell Me the World Ends (about the supply chain and hacking/internet security respectively.) for a peak into our modern lives told by very good story tellers in ways that are far from boring.

I could go on and on about Fleishman is in Trouble (and have in person to so many). The story of two women trojan horsed through the tale of one very mid man. The series on Hulu is also good and an incredibly accurate representation of the book.

Status and Culture! I'm still reeling from this book. Marx is so direct when looking at how and why we like the things we like it almost makes you uncomfortable. i don't think i have ever underlined, astricked, exclamation pointed so much in the margins of a book.

The Golden Spur, They, Bliss Montage, Astragal, How Should A Person Be?, Laserwriter ii, Night Boat to Tangier, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead are all well worth reading also. Honestly, I was blown away by almost everything i read this year minus two big exceptions.

I hated The Buried Giant. Read it for a book club. I'm not a fantasy girl. I get what he was trying to do with the language, but i couldn't get into it, it felt like a bad translation. Which is really saying something for a book written in English. If he called her Princess one more time, I can't.

1Q84 I really wanted to love, (my first Murakami, somehow.). I really liked the first section, but it just didn't add up for me in the end and there were so many loose ends for such a long book.

I have found so many of the books that i loved this year on the podcast Backlisted. Two British guys have on two guests to discuss an old, out of print, or a newer book that isn't as popular. They are charming, it's very nerdy. But they have incredible taste and i put at least 5 books into my Thriftbooks cart during every episode. n+1 also did a fundraiser quiz that gives you 10 book recos. i was very excited about all of them and most of them i'd never heard of. Haven't read any yet, but many are sitting in the same shopping cart. Just checked and they aren't doing it anymore, but look for it next year!

[everydayesterday]

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. Then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals.

Pearl Jam - Release (1991) ("I'll ride the wave where it takes me" this was the song that changed how I viewed music, especially the four-minute instrumental outro; my first epiphany back when I was but a boy; I associate it with the old-growth rainforests and the shores of the Pacific NW.) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008) ("Larry made his nest up in the autumn branches / Built from nothing but high hopes and thin air" I should probably listen to more of his stuff, as this is the only Nick Cave album I own; I also quite enjoy the score work that Cave and Warren Ellis did for The Proposition.) The Decemberists - The Rake's Song (2009) ("What can one do when one is widower? / Shamefully saddled with three little pests / All that I wanted was the freedom of a new life / So my burden I began to divest" a recounting of how a father killed all of his children. My ex-laws hated this song.) Doves - There Goes the Fear (2002) ("Think of me when you're coming down / But don't look back when leaving town today" I saw these guys at Temple Bar in Dublin and a drunk accosted them before even starting the show, trying to get a request in that he'd written on a small piece of paper; it turned out that the song he was requesting was their biggest song to date; the lead singer read it aloud, and replied "Yeah, we'll get to it." the crowd found this highly amusing; maybe you had to be there. anyway, this song has absolutely incredible percussion.) Esthero - Black Mermaid (2012) ("And I've spent most of my life deep down inside myself / I've dreamt about the possibility of someone else" she's actually a friend of mine going way back to the geocities/angelfire fansite days before official artist websites existed; I was unofficial marketing and she reached out; we're about the same age, so we hit it off, and I've had the good fortune of some incredible life experiences with her. I had the benefit of hearing this song in its infancy at least 5 or 6 years before it was released and before it had anything more than a chorus. a very cool thing about this song is that it forms a plot point in the film "Nappily Ever After," where Sanaa Lathan actually sings the song herself.)

bonus content (the songs that followed): Manic Street Preachers - A Design for Life (1996), Animotion - Obsession (1984), Bill Withers - Grandma's Hands (1971), Primal Scream - Kowalski (1997)

[launching-a-thousand-ships]

Kurt Glee Rewatch: Acafellas

Oof this ep. Happy to skip all the Will stuff... Honestly, for teen shows, I hate when so much time is spent on the adults? Like, if I wanted that, I’d watch a drama about adults? This is a high school show? We care about the kids? They should be focus. Imagine the show with like... even half the amount of Will plot. More time on the New Directions... would be so much better. Maybe Matt would get a line lol

This outfit will always kill me. Kurt babe, no.

And tbh... Rachel has a point? Legit every ND performance, their choreo is just... not the best? Esp compared to VA. I’ll discuss more later but... they could use some help with the dancing. And once they have more members, they can try something more interesting than standing in a line or walking in circles and jumping.

Anyway...

Aww Kurtcedes!! Notice Kurt not only has hairspray, but also extra clothes in his locker. Prob bc of dumpsters/slushies. Yikes.

And poor Mercedes, all lonely. Does make me wonder about her life before. She has church choir friends and she didn’t seem super unpopular until glee club? Who did she hang with??

And the crush... Like she is sus at first, but Quinn and Santana ofc try to sway her. And I get it, Kurt is the first guy to be sweet to her and they def have fun together. And you know what, kudos for Mercedes for looking past stereotypes and giving it a chance. Bc yah, writers def put a lot of stereotypes into Kurt...

I wonder if he was just making a joke or if he actually practiced kissing his elbow lol. And notice, he’s much more comfortable being close with Mercedes, linking arms. So sweet.

Ah, the Lincoln Navigator. I do wonder how into cars Kurt was... we deserved more mechanic!Kurt (esp since we know he worked in the shop)

First mention of his dad. He’s all set up as prob being anti-gay. I wonder about Burt’s intentions. We see in 2009 how he threatened to take away Kurt’s sewing machine. They aren’t v close yet, so when it comes to laying down the law Burt is kinda flying blind. And part of this is his discomfort with Kurt being fem, but I’m sure part of it is his dad worrying. He doesn’t want his son to have a hard life.

And aw, Mercedes thinking she’s asking out Kurt while he’s just happy to have a friend to watch Liza Minelli with. Oof.

I also love how many VA performances we see and still no Jessie. He was just... away for the first semester. Or something.

So we had the ‘Gay-vention’ bc Kurt is ‘lady fabulous’ oof. 

And he wore a corset to class? And we don’t see this?? Rude.

And the iconic. Kurt is just so relaxed and happy and then Mercedes drops the bomb and Kurt is just. Shook. He just wanted a friend. He’s def not ready to come out, but he thought it was pretty clear without him having to actually say it. 

He says he made it obvious that he liked someone else? But his crush on Finn doesn’t seem v overt yet? Maybe he was more open around Mercedes? Or maybe it was just bc they needed the setup for him to say Rachel?

Either way, poor Kurt gets his windows busted, but he also witnesses the amazing performance. Def one of the best from s1

Him crying int he background, aww poor guy. He loves his car.

Ah, misfits banding together. The lesson we’ll learn every ep this season lol. 

Dakota is a jerk but omg his lines

“Artie you’re cut, you’re not trying hard enough” “At what?” “At walking”

Well, at least he knows Artie’s name??

“Stay away from aerosol cans cuz you could burst into flames at any second” omg poor Kurt. Glad he joins the walkout bc he’s not down for this bs.

Kurt says he has a tiara collection and we never see it. See, we keep getting told that Kurt dresses ‘like a girl’ but never really see it? He plays with gender, sure, but his style is always more masc leaning. Just not ‘typical’ masc so ppl find it weird. Ugh.

Also, his locker. Having guys abs... yeah, not exactly hiding lol. And the quote says “I would never ever have had the confidence to be in a school play” and excuse while I overthink.

I tried googling and don’t think it’s from anything specific? If someone knows, pls let me know. Also, just makes me even more sad he never got to properly star in... any play? We had a bit in Rocky Horror and he was great as Riff Raff but just... I’ll go into it s3 but damn it bugs me.

Anyway, shows how great Kurtcedes is bc she immediately goes to apologize, he trusts her enough to come out... like this is Glee, it could easily have been dragged out, but they settle it here in this sweet scene...

And that hesitation, the little choke on the word, this is definitely he’s said the words out loud and my heart cannot take it. I love that he gets this, he gets to come out. Everyone assumed his sexuality, but he gets this moment with Mercedes where she was ready to accept his crush on Rachel but he takes the step to open up and come out and I just love that.

And interesting how we get this and then the coming out to his dad, but not to everyone else? Maybe after Preggers he just accepts the comments? Doesn’t deny it? Bc ppl all assume he’s gay anyway.

And that also makes it so much harder bc he’s not ‘straight passing’ so even when he’s closeted everyone keeps bullying him for something he was barely able to admit to himself.

And Chris Colfer has talked about this, how after Preggers the media all just assumed he was gay too and he couldn’t really control his coming out and that breaks my heart and I could have a whole rant about media but.... not the time.

So ya, it sucks that Kurt didn’t have as much control, I’ll discuss more in Preggers tho.

[draculaney]

A (not so) brief history of Twilight & me

I was only vaguely aware of it in middle school as it came out, I remember seeing multiple copies floating around in the hands of girls I didn’t really hang out with. High school me hated it on principle and was loud about it. I didn’t like that they had deviated so much from what vampires have “always been”. (like I was some expert lmfao) Vamps to me at that time were gothic or super badass. Buffy, Queen of the Damned, Blade, etc. On the flip side, there was the cartoony vampire like The Count on Sesame Street, Count Chocula, or the Disney movie “Mom’s Got a Date with A Vampire”

I had a group of friends in high school lovingly chide me into reading it before passing judgment. I liked supernatural books already, so I was like “uuuugh fine.” I loved it, and quietly hopped right onto the hype train in about 2009.  I remember getting swept up in the thought of it all and wanted my life to have a lot of the adventure and overwhelming emotional love that Bella experienced while also feeling the drudgery of my normal life. I remember having a desire to leave all of what my life was for something better for the Twi version of vampirism (superhuman abilities, impervious skin, venom based plastic surgery, etc). it was a way to feel like I was a person who could experience the same things as Bella, since she was pretty boring and I was very interesting (lmao)

Enter my tumblr phase: Getting introduced to feminism and learning how to critique media in the same breath, I found a hoard of blogs dedicated to telling my why Twilight was bad actually, but for abuse reasons, and how it was such a bad influence on young girls lives. I had a new reason to beat my chest about how bad twilight was, memes and vitriol included. I ran with it, unchecked for many years without examining the weird undercurrent of misogyny that a lot of these memes and stuff had attached to them. Have you ever had to listen to a grown man tell you what he thinks about something that’s popular for teenagers? Why was I putting so much stock into this hatred? I also went through a VERY intense Buffy the Vampire Slayer phase at this point in my life as well, which on the internet were always put at odds with one another. (side note: I'm gonna k*ll Joss Whedon for the buffy movie version having menstrual cramps when vamps are near. I'm gonna commit a moider.)

One night in like 2017ish, I talked my roommate into watching the first movie with me, as we had a time honored tradition in putting on “bad movie” nights. We both found that while Twilight sucks, its actually like….fun? And it’s bad in a campy way? Like, once you let yourself be taken on the ride of Twilight outside of the context of the Discourse and teenage hormonal soup, it is a buckwild story told by a well meaning but misguided Mormon woman about wish fulfillment.

I'm also someone who has lived with mental illness for my post-adolescent life. on a rewatch/reread of twilight, I resonated with the depiction of Bella more than I used to. The more knowledge I had about my own symptoms and presentations of my own mental health, the more I saw in Bella. It feels like a lot of it was so easy to brush off back in the late 2000s  -oh she's just an emotional teenage girl. -oh she's boring and not proactive in her life. -she had no thoughts and gets everything solved for her. it is so easy to introject those ideas and apply them to my own life and experiences. I have also been so heartbroken I don't want to move. I have also acted out in order to feel the smallest inkling of a happy feeling. I have also been terrified of abandonment and watched it come true before my very eyes.

Learning how to have empathy for the character of Bella swan was an exercise in learning how to have empathy for the parts of myself that exist in a messy and perpetual teenage state. When I hated Bella swan, I denied a huge  part of myself that resonated with her originally when I was a fan. When the stories on tumblr were smugly reblogging the "Edward is a domestic abuser" posts, it felt so easy to fall into the headspace of "yeah, I am so different from Bella that I would never fall for that kind of emotional manipulation!!" but I did, as do so many others.

There is never a twilight meme page that exists today that doesn't have a post that depicts Bella as useless or a burden; how she is the reason everyone in the series suffers. Bella is blamed for the brunt of the actions that happen against her. She's blamed for being too sweet smelling, for being the cause of Edward's obsession. She's blamed for not falling in love with Jacob, eternally friendzoned and who takes it out on her emotionally. She is blamed for not reacting properly when her heart is broken. She is blamed for the Cullens killing James, which begins Victoria's hunt. She is blamed for the hybrid baby which brings on a possible vampire war with the Volturi. She internalizes all of it, as we see in the series.

The part of me that started to care about Bella is the part of me that started to take interest in looking back in my past and realizing that when people hurt me, it wasn't my fault. Pop psychology calls it "healing the inner child" and one huge step is realizing that when you are hurt or blamed about something that happened as a child, you were a child. Bella is a teenager, the awkward stage between childhood and adulthood. where you want to grow up so fast without realizing what that means yet, without realizing what you're leaving behind. Bella is shown to never have a healthy childhood, the hints we get at her upbringing was full of strife and responsibility that any adolescent should never be put through.

So here we are now. A 30 year old who can’t seem to get this out of my head. I might as well write about it in graphic detail, yknow?