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Now, my only question is if this is before or after Merlyn has started crying. Living his life the wrong way around, he knows that the first time the Wart meets him is the last time he will ever see his old friend. Upon being told they'd only been speaking for half an hour or so, he begins to weep.

Art by Alan Lee for The Sword in the Stone by TH White (1977)

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🍌

Reblog this to give The Librarian a banana*

*very, very carefully

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So, in my case, the answer is actually kind of interesting. My name is Antonio. That's the name my parents gave me and it's one I bear proudly, but up until I was eleven, people called me something else.

I'm Italian on my father's side and his father was named Salvatore (or Sal, for short). When he came over to the UK, there was a little concern that the less kind might call him Sally, so he began to introduce himself as Sam. I'm named for both him and my mother's father in terms of my middle names and so thinking that my actual name would be difficult for me to pronounce, they called me Sam as well.

I'll be 30 next year and I've already gone by my birth name longer than I haven't, but I think it's kind of funny that I go by it because I chose to.

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He captained a doomed ship, led the men of the Riddermark and he taught us to be Heroes.

Rest in Peace, Bernard Hill 🤍🕊

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So as it happens, I've been making my way through Walt Simonson's Thor recently (which by the way, ten out of ten, cannot recommend enough). Pretty jarring to see a place so iconic these days for not being there anymore featured surprisingly prominently. The part where the Asgardian forces under Beta Ray Bill use it in a strategy to distract and funnel the forces of Surtr made me put the book down for a moment.

So this is not by a long shot the only piece of media to show the Twin Towers destroyed before 9/11; it's not even the only Marvel comic.

And you see a bunch of people acting like OMG HOW DID THEY PREDICT THIS or worse think it was some sort of message from "them" that "they" were going to destroy the Twin Towers

Here is the thing to keep in mind, before 9/11:

1975 - a disgruntled worker tried to set a fire in the towers

1981 - an Aerolíneas Argentinas airliner almost collided with the North Tower

1993 - Islamic fundamentalists set off a bomb in the World Trades Center, killing 6 and injuring over 1000

Plus, in 1945, a plane did fly into the Empire State Building due to inclement weather

And even besides that, many times have you seen the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the White House, or the Golden Gate Bridge destroyed by something?

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I should really just set this to post every year...

Happy Easter. You should have killed me when you had the chance, I promise you will not get another. 

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Good going, Netflix!

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I'm just going to leave this here...

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Yes, Tyrone, There is a Santa Claus

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I LOVE THIS.

The Canadian League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was founded in 1910, and consisted of Dorothy “Dott” Pilgrim, a talented martial artist and bar fighter from Toronto, Anne Shirley, a schoolteacher from Prince Edward Island, and Sam McGee, a prospector who died during the Yukon Gold Rush and cremated on the marge of Lake Lebarge near Whitehorse, Yukon.

Together they fight crimes or whatever

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Look at what arrived today! I shall keep it well, cherish it and perhaps even frame it. By the way, @magicratfingers, it is an address. I just live in Wales! Thank you so much and I wish you and yours the very best of the season.

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It won't let me comment on this, so I'll just say for any who happen to see this reblog that I was freed from this hell when I was young and this is how I did it.

It's come to my attention that a good portion of the younger generation has not been made aware of one of the greatest and most hated PILLARS of millennial society.

So I apologize, but I must take on this task. A new hand must touch the beacon. The knowledge must be passed on. The chain can not be broken.

So.

The Game.

The following are the rules of The Game:

there is no winning The Game

once you know of The Game, you are always playing the game

the point of The Game is to not think about The Game

if you think about The Game, you have lost The Game, and must announce this to those around you - causing them to also lose The Game

A "reset period" of roughly an hour or two before loss announcements is common in colloquial rules to allow yourself and those around you to properly temporarily "forget" about The Game, however that is not an official rule.

Go forth, you next generation, and I am sorry.

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True then, true now, true forever more.

Hellblazer (1988) #3

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Man, I can't stand when people start talking shit about Neelix over his relationship with Kes. You don't have to like him, and he's definitely not a character to everyone's taste, but some of the claims people make about him are just wild.

First, Neelix is not a pedophile. That's an incredibly strong word that fandom likes to throw around far too readily. Yes, Kes is only a year old at the start of the show -- but her species has a much shorter life span than humans, and she therefore ages differently. Ocampa are considered adults at age one, and she is older than that in season one. People act like Neelix is dating a literal toddler, but she is well-established to be an adult by her people's standards, and she is clearly meant to be a young adult based on her characterization and her role in the series. There is an age gap between her and Neelix, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Second, Neelix's jealousy over Tom is a character arc, and a fairly short one -- it lasts for about three episodes in season two. In "Elogium" he overreacts to Tom's relationship with Kes, claiming that she's too innocent and can't recognize how Tom is treating her, but later apologizes for it. In "Twisted" it's strongly implied that he's still feeling jealous, but is actively trying to push it down, telling Kes directly that she's seen the last of his jealousy and asking Chakotay for advice on how to deal with it. And in "Parturition" Neelix and Tom finally figure out their little rivalry over Kes' affections, with Neelix admitting that he overreacted, became jealous, and now realizes that he was wrong. The jealousy arc then never comes up again (as far as I recall). It's a bit of an annoying arc, but it is definitely an arc -- a character working through a flaw and becoming a better person for it. And it feels ridiculous to hold that against him.

And third, you know why Neelix works through that jealousy in the first place? Because Kes calls him out on it. In all of those episodes, Kes tells him that he's massively overreacting, he's not showing enough trust in her, and he needs to knock it off. And then he does. Fandom tends to act like Kes is this naive child who's completely incapable of standing up for herself, and therefore extremely susceptible to Neelix's manipulations, but that's far from the truth. She's an extremely competent character with a mind of her own. She's incredibly intelligent, capable, and a valued member of the crew -- and she isn't afraid to speak up for herself, as seen by how she is always the first person to call out Neelix when he's out of line, and is clearly unwilling to put up with someone who doesn't treat her well. Quite frankly, the fandom infantilizes Kes more than Neelix ever has.