#miss you Va

[elismor]

A piece of my personal fannish history came back to me today and I want to share the story of it because, to me, it's about the very best part of fandom: friendship.

In 1996, I went to Syndicon in Baltimore, Maryland and met my friend Virginia in person for the first time. We knew one another from HIGHLA-L (that's an email list for all you youngsters wondering wtf a -l is) and spent an evening sitting on the floor in a hotel ballroom talking about fanfic and life and Highlander while everyone around us danced to Jim Byrnes and his band.

In 1998(ish) two other HL friends and I went to Scotland for a con where Peter Wingfield was appearing and took a day to drive a massive loop through the highlands. We stopped at the highlander monument in Glenfinnan (on the shores of Loch Shiel--because no HL fan can say Glenfinnan without adding that) and, on a whim, decided to bring a bottle of water from the loch back to Virginia. So, we scoured the car for a bottle and got to work.

I fell in while scooping the water out. It was February.

This past summer, Virginia passed away from cancer and her niece contacted her closest group of fandom friends to ask us if we wanted anything to remember her by (as she was a collector of fandom things) and, on a whim, I said that if she still had the water, I would love to have it.

It arrived in today's mail. I always figured that V would decant it out of the Cherry Coke bottle we had on hand and put it into something fancier for display...but she did not. So there it is, stashed on my office bookshelf until I figure out where I'm going to put it for real.

Twenty Seven years of friendship and laughter (and tears) and inside jokes and fandom drama (and real life drama) and joy...and now grief.

Everyone does fandom in their own way and mine has always been more about the connections with fellow fans than the source material. Virginia and I ran a fanfic archive together. She met me at Five Points Station in Atlanta in 1996 when I was there for the Olympics. She came out to me on a beach in Florida in 2002(ish). We went to Dragon*Con together and bought lightsabers. And she kept this bottle of lake water I got her...for all these years.

Cherish your fandom friends, folks. For they surely cherish you.

[gammija]

the real reason tmagp is on break 'til april 11th is so sam can observe ramadan without being chased by a murderous clown blob

[rexecutioner]

Spoilers for all of Mystreet and a small bit of Mcd

So ur telling me. That in ms and pdh. In six seasons and like three prequel seasons. Vylad Ro’Meave. Gets 10 episodes that he appears in. TEN. Over 314 fifteen to thirty minutes episodes (including the side series, pdh and fcu, the spin offs, and the mini series, not including the mini games), Vylad get approximately 85 minutes of screentime in total, with around 40 of those minutes being in pdh, and 45 in Mystreet.

My poor guy got the Laurance treatment, with both of them being very important characters in Diaries, but being pretty much tossed to the side in Mystreet. At least Laurance shows up in more than one season of the main series, because Vylad only gets four episodes in Mystreet, (with three of them being solely Ro’meave centered episodes that he takes a smaller role in) and in those four Big Vylad Return Episodes, he doesn’t show up much without his brothers and ends up taking the back seat again as the main plot is taken up by Aphmau and Zane fake dating to please Zianna.

You’ll never guess what he does in Pheonix Drop High. He gets introduced to us, befriends Travis and Aphmau, and is then never seen without one of his brothers again until Mystreet, in which he gets like, 8 minutes of screen time away from them over the course of two episodes until the main arc plot.

Yes, I did infact watch all of the episodes Vylad is in and roughly calculated the amount of time that he was in each episode, even if he wasn’t talking. I would move mountains for this man.

When I watched Mcd for the first time, I had high hopes for him (and by that extension, poor Laurance) in Mystreet during my rewatch, because I hadn’t watched it in years, unless you count dubbing over s4 with my friends. Yay! Vylad finally shows up! Aaand now he’s gone. With no mention of where he went. And we are left to assume he’s traveling the world again. The next time he is ever mentioned is s4, by Garroth, once. And then radio static once more. I’m pretty sure at some point in s5 Zianna brings him up while talking to Zane but I can’t remember.

Vylad had so much goddamn potential in Mystreet. Affair baby? Canonically Pansexual? Tense relationship with his family? Usually keeps off the radar? Acts completely different from his Mcd counterpart? “Child Prodigy”?

They could have done so much more with him and it makes me so sad that he’s basically just a cameo character to please old Mcd fans and make them say “oh my god! Vylad! From Mcd!”. Yes, it did infact please me, but we get so little of him until he’s gone.

They could have removed him from the plot of Mystreet entirely and it wouldn’t change much. The whole Zanemau fake dating story never really goes anywhere, and thats all we see of him other than Pdh, where he is also neglected as a character, though not as much.

It’s not even the fact that they brought him back from Pdh and then did nothing with him. Thats what they did with Ein, and it worked flawlessly. Its the fact that they brought him back just to show us that “hey guys look it’s Vylad that guy from Mcd and like 5 episodes of Pdh!!”

You know what they could have done instead. Removed Kim from the plot and inserted Vylad instead. She showed up just as a plot point to get possessed. It also would have made Emmalyn a bit less weird in her re-introduction, because if Vylad was obsessing over Zane it would have been weird as hell and they wouldn’t have written that.

I would have watched tf out of an Emerald Secret where Vylad was in town visiting his parents and gets dragged by Garroth to help renovate a new property his parents bought, only for him to

A) get possessed and start acting strange, probably suspiciously glaring at Zane and Aphmau,

B) watch as Zane also starts acting weird, and doesn’t remember himself OR Garroth,

C) Witness as everything goes downhill, probably getting locked in the other jail cell with Garroth (LIKE IN THE BLOOPER REEL) and fleeing back to the cabin to try and get help from literally anyone while Garroth tries to save Aaron and the others, and

D) getting invited to Starlight by the Lycans, where we learn more and more about both Vylad AND Emmalyn, as she starts to recover her memories and tells Vylad about a man quite like him in looks from the past.

We could have gotten more of his relationships with the other characters, like him and Lucinda both gladly breaking into the place where Travis is staying, Not Alone Buddies interactions, his interactions with his brothers now that they’ve all been through A Lot, reacting to Aphmau’s engagement, him watching the other guys as they all fail to pull in amusement, commenting on just how much Travis has changed since high school, his reaction to Garroth getting zapped into a werewolf, an awkward interaction with Garte, the GF invasion, getting used to passing out all the time, missing his old travels and regretting ever going to the lodge, Garroth getting mind controlled, Aphmau’s sudden death, and the burden of both contributing to the possession of Travis, and the responsibility of helping to kill his father.

DO YOU KNOW HOW HAPPY THAT WOULD HAVE MADE ME 😭

plz bring Vylad back s7 🙏🙏🙏

[thekhaninglass]

The truth - as we have painstakingly established across the previous chapters - is this. There is no idea so grand that it may not be murdered one day in the slumber of its own complacence.

There is no tool which may not be repurposed, no meaning which will not turn to nonsense - given time.

Time is the cruellest and the kindest deity, for it mocks those who seek to triumph from it; for it suffers no power, humours no tyrant; it topples every great justice, dismembers reason, rots progress, forgets the stories we laid down at its feet.

@thesiltverses - Chapter 41

[kastillia]

[harbingersecho]

I don't feel pain I never escape I'm under the bed I'm licking the floor

[ashipiko]

OGURO KAFKAAAAAAA what a guy

HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY TO HIM!!!! bonking my head into the art block wall yet again so </3 did a doodle and I like how it turned out 🫶

[deathberi]

🔜🔜🔜 YAMATO ISHIDA x TEEN-AGE WOLVES ALBUM RELEASE 🎤🎸

[hubbman2]

[deus-ex-mona]

scrolled a little too far back on mogetwt and found pure gold:

[bodega-catto]

You ask the hottest girl u know their Roman Empire and she’ll say this:

[sskk-manifesto]

Proof that bsd would be a lot better if they just let it pass the Bechdel test more often

[intofree]

mercedes is also so asmr to me and i miss her

[meownotgood]

pov: you surprise aki hayakawa with a kiss

[lpsgirl109]

Im actually never forgiving Descendants: The Royal Wedding for being all silly goofy happy cartoon and then out of fucking NOWHERE just dropping "I really miss Carlos guys" HEY DISNEY WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM

[vinnigami]

January 26 2024

Aogami’s little gay pose he does in the character art