#11/19/1986

[remembertheplunge]

The painting I mentioned in my March 30,2024 blog re: Daryl Speicher.

On the back of the painting I wrote the following 2 notes:

Note 1 written on 11/19/1986

“Striking the set” 11/19/1986. A reaction to first weekend of Hand to Hand (volunteer AIDS victim support organization). The AIDS Plague hits.

Note 2: written on 11/29/1987

I later felt this was a picture of Daryl in his last days here. It was a good likeness painted before I met him. He of course was not a couch person ( he was bed ridden the entire time I knew him). But did die 2/3/1987. He was my first match. 11/29/1987. A day of reflection.

[paul-archibald]

Classical Music At The Movies

Classical music in films has long been a staple of the cinema experience and for good reason: music is integral to our emotional experience of film. We’ll look at a few examples where classical music that has made great films even greater and perhaps used in ways that give us a different perspective of the story being told Raging Bull (1980)Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)Intermezzo from Cavelleria…

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Nightwish - The Phantom of the Opera 2002

"The Phantom of the Opera" is a song from the 1986 stage musical of the same name, based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, which tells the tragic story of a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, masked musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opéra House. The song was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics written by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, and additional lyrics by Mike Batt. The song was originally recorded by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, which became a UK hit single in 1986, prior to the musical. Listen to it here! In its theatrical debut, it was sung by Brightman and Michael Crawford in their roles as Christine Daaé and the Phantom. Listen to it here! The Phantom of the Opera was the longest running show in Broadway history, and celebrated its 10,000th performance on February 11, 2012, becoming the first Broadway production in history to do so. It is the second longest-running West End musical, after Les Misérables, and the third longest-running West End show overall, after The Mousetrap. The original West End production at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, ended its run in 2020, its run cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band from Kitee. The band was formed in 1996 by lead songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, and former lead singer Tarja Turunen. The band soon picked up drummer Jukka Nevalainen, and then bassist Sami Vänskä after the release of their debut album, Angels Fall First (1997). In 2001, Vänskä was replaced by Marko Hietala, who also took over the male vocalist role previously filled by Holopainen or guest singers.

In 2002, Nightwish released Century Child, along with the singles "Ever Dream" and "Bless the Child". Century Child was certified gold two hours after its release, and platinum two weeks afterwards. It set a record on the Finnish album charts of most distance between a first place album and the second place. An enduring favorite of fans is the band's version of "The Phantom of the Opera".

"The Phantom of the Opera" recieved a total of 82,7% yes votes!

[beeghosts]

For the latest round of Holmestice, I got to fill @beamkatanachronicles's amazing prompt of editing @lalage's beautiful piece 25 Lives into a multiverse Holmes & Watson one! Did I spend way too much time overthinking every single choice? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Verses cheatlist: 1. The Sign of Four (1923) 2. Sherlock Holmes (1916) 3. A Study in Terror (1965) 4. Мой нежно любимый детектив (1986) 5. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) 6. Sherlock Holmes (1922) 7. Шерлок Холмс (2013) 8. The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1923) 9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1985) 10. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986-1987) 11. Sherlock (2010) 12. ��риключения Шерлока Холмса и Доктора Ватсона (1980) 13. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) 14. They Might be Giants (1971) 15. Sherlock Holmes (1912) 16. Without a Clue (1988) 17. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) 18. Pursuit to Algiers (1945) 19. Sherlock Holmes (1968) 20. Elementary (2012) 21. Sherlock Holmes (2009) 22. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979) 23. ミス・シャーロック (2018) 24. Sherlock Holmes (1954)

[hard--headed--woman]

I know I spent two days without posting any lesbian pride post lol but I swear I'm gonna post two posts per day in the following days to make up for it. I am again going to talk about an artist, but from a different period this time.

Rosa Bohneur !

(I love her name by the way... Bohneur means happiness in french and that's such a pretty name to have)

Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, known as Rosa Bonheur, was born in 1822 in Bordeaux and died in 1899 in Thomery. She was a French painter and sculptor specialising in representations of animals.

She has kind of an interesting family story (mother adopted by a rich guy who found out later who was her real father, siblings all artists, father who met a lot of interesting people, links with many famous people...) but it would be too long to talk about it and I want to focus on Rosa herself. Do check it up if you're interested!

During her youth, Rosa Bonheur had a reputation for being a tomboy, a reputation that followed her throughout her life and which she made no attempt to deny, wearing her hair short and later smoking cigarettes and cigars. Her emancipated lifestyle never caused a scandal, even though she lived in an era that was very concerned with convention. Like all women of her time, Rosa Bonheur had to apply to the Prefecture of Paris for a cross-dressing permit, renewable every six months, in order to wear trousers, in particular to attend livestock fairs, travel or ride horses.

Here's one of her permits, from 1857 :

And though many historians tried to deny the fact that she was a lesbian, she always refused to marry a man, has only ever had relationships with women and literally wrote that she never felt any sort of love, attraction or tenderness for men, "besides a frank and good friendship for those who had all my esteem". After the death of the woman she loved, she also wrote "If I'd been a man, I'd have married her, and they wouldn't have made up all those silly stories..." You got it : even if she didn't shout it from the rooftops, Rosa was very probaby a homosexual woman.

Rosa Bohneur grew up in a fairly wealthy family, thanks to the financial support of her mother's adoptive father. But when her mother's father died, the family was left without any such support, and fell into dire poverty. When Rosa was 11, her mother died, which deeply traumatised her. She kept a lifelong admiration for her mother.

In 1836, at the age of 14, she met Nathalie Micas, who became her lover. Only Nathalie's death 53 years later separated them.

Her father remarried in 1842 to Marguerite Peyrol, with whom he had a last son, Germain, who would also become a painter. Rosa Bonheur did not get on well with her stepmother and when her father died in 1849, she left the family home to live with the Micas.

After her mother's death, Rosa Bonheur went to primary schools, was apprenticed as a dressmaker and then went to boarding school. Eventually her father took her into his workshop, where her artistic talents were revealed. He was her one and only teacher. Gradually, she developed a passion for animal art, which became her speciality.

She exhibited for the first time, at the age of 19, at the Salon of 1841. She won a 3rd class medal at the Salon of 1845, and a 1st class medal (gold) at the Salon of 1848. This award enabled her, at the age of 26, to obtain a commission from the State to produce an agrarian painting (paid 3,000 francs). The painting resulting from this state commission, "Labourage nivernais" was supposed to go to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. But it was so successful at the 1849 Salon that the Beaux-Arts department decided to keep it in Paris, at the Musée du Luxembourg. After Rosa Bonheur's death, the work went to the Louvre, before being transferred to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.

When her father died in March 1849, Rosa Bonheur replaced him as director of the École impériale gratuite de dessin pour demoiselles (or École gratuite de dessin pour jeunes filles). She remained in this position until 1860: ‘Follow my advice and I'll turn you into Leonardo da Vinci in skirts’, she often told her pupils.

In 1860, she moved to a huge house in By, where she had a huge workshop built, and ample space for her animals. One of her relatives wrote: “She had a complete menagerie in her house: a lion and a lioness, a deer, a wild sheep, a gazelle, horses, etc. One of her pets was a young lion she let run around. My mind was freer when this leonine animal died".

In June 1864, Rosa was visited by Empress Eugenie, who invited her to lunch at the Château de Fontainebleau with her husband. The following year, Eugenie returned to see her, to present her with the Legion d'honneur herself. Rosa is the ninth woman and the first artist to receive this distinction. About this, The Empress said :

“At last, you've been knighted. I am delighted to be the godmother of the first woman artist to receive this high distinction. I wanted the last act of my regency to be devoted to showing that, in my eyes, genius has no sex."

She was also the first woman to be made an officer in this order, in April 1894 (first female officer of the Legion d'honneur).

Rosa traveled extensively with her lover Nathalie, herself a painter and mechanical enthusiast (she invented and patented a railway braking system), and painted many pictures inspired by her travels.

In 1889, Nathalie died after some 50 years together. It was then that Rosa expressed her regret at not having been able to marry her.

After Nathalie's death, Rosa met Anna Klumpe, a talented American painter. The two women moved in together some time later.

Rosa Bohneur died of pulmonary congestion in 1899, without having completed her last painting, “La foulaison du blé en Camargue”, a monumental canvas she had planned to exhibit at the 1900 Universal Exhibition.

She is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, alongside Nathalie, her parents and Anna (who died years after her). She left her entire fortune to Anna, who, in 1908, published a biography of Rosa Bonheur and created a Rosa-Bonheur prize at the Société des artistes français. The Société des Artistes français posthumously awarded her the Medal of Honor shortly after her death.

Rosa could have had military honors at her funeral, but she specified in her will that she did not wish this.

There's a lot of interesting things to say about Rosa, her art and her history, so I suggest you do some research on her! She was a very talented and strong-willed woman who had a huge impact on French art and left a considerable cultural legacy.

Here are some of her paintings :

I personally love them ! I am not a painting expert, I just find them sooo pretty.

See you tomorrow :)

[corrodedcoffinfest]

Corroded Coffin Fest Pop-Up: Good Fortune

As we head into 2025, let's all look for a little Good Fortune where we find it. All entries must be posted on January 1st, 2025.

Your prompts come from this group of fortunes I collected and saved from fortune cookies. Use either side of the slip to find your inspiration:

(A text version of the fortune prompts can be found under the cut at the bottom!)

You may interpret these fortunes into prompts in any way you'd like, as long as you've focused on one or more members of Corroded Coffin. Use the fortune, use the word, use a lucky number, or if you're extra ambitious, use a full slip: Fortune, word & a lucky number! It's all up to you. Just read the guidelines below and have fun!

GUIDELINES:

Please tag us here at @corrodedcoffinfest when you post your entries so we can reblog them!

Ring in the new year with a fic word count between 250-2025 words. I'll use wordcounter.net to check your word count before reblogging. You'll get a comment from this blog with a "🥠" when it's been checked and added to the queue.

Submissions can be connected to other prompts from the pop-up, but they should still be able to stand alone.

Feel free to use the ao3 collection after you've been reblogged here!

All submissions should include which fortune you've used, any pairings featured, a rating and any content warnings (CW) or tags that you think are appropriate. All explicit material needs be under a cut. All ships are welcome, as long as they include at least one member of Corroded Coffin: Eddie, Jeff, Gareth & Freak. Please put the prompt you are fulfilling as well, just to keep things straightforward. A sample could look something like this:

Prompt #4: Your example will inspire others. | Word Count: 1986 | Rating: T | POV: Gareth | Relationships: None | CW: None | Tags: Corroded Coffin, Famous, On the Road

For the artists! Art is definitely welcome! Any entries for the prompts must be Corroded Coffin focused, using any combination of the guys, together or solo. Of course, other characters can be included, too! But you need to have at least one of the CC band members in it for it to count for this pop-up event. Thank you!

Please submit your entries between 12:00 AM EST and 11:59 PM EST on January 1st, 2025.

Good luck! 🥠

Text versions of the prompts:

#1 - Your love of music will be an important part of your life | November | Lucky Numbers: 6, 47, 17, 56, 51, 55

#2 - You have a heart of gold. | Neck | Lucky Numbers: 33, 21, 2, 19, 4, 53

#3 - It is sometimes better to travel hopefully than to arrive. | Family | Lucky Numbers: 55, 41, 32, 54, 28, 5

#4 - Your example will inspire others. | Mayor | Lucky Numbers: 39, 34, 4, 44, 5, 52

#5 - Adventure can be a real happiness. | Quench one's thirst | Lucky Numbers: 44, 50, 10, 19. 56, 23

#6 - Everyone feels lucky for having you as a friend. | Strawberry | Lucky Numbers: 1, 8, 56, 25, 19, 30

#7 - A single kind word can keep one warm for years. | Mouth | Lucky Numbers: 48, 13, 46, 27, 31, 18

#8 - Your mind is filled with new ideas, explore them. | Supervisor | Lucky Numbers: 4, 33, 38, 18, 54, 20

[justbelievinginmagic]

˗ˏˋariadne's threadˎˊ˗ series masterlist

pairing(s): hyunjin x fem!reader, hints of jisung x reader, hints of jisung x hyunjin if you read between the lines; all of the characters are intrigued by the reader tbh

series summary: The tale of the LABYRINTH was by far your favorite book to read - even now in adulthood. Wishing for the goblin king to steal you away was your favorite past-time growing up. Everything changes one stormy night when your wish to be stolen away by the Goblin King comes true and a honeyed blonde fae man appears in your bedroom to whisk you away to be his - body, mind, and soul. Do you take his fantasied offer or shall you fight through his Labyrinth in order to reclaim your humanity & free will?

OR - When tempted by an intoxicating offer by Hyunjin the Goblin King, you fight against him to find your own sense of self once more while in the Labyrinth.

warnings/tags: inspired by the 1986' movie Labyrinth, follows majority of the movie's plot points with divergence, 3rd person POV, use of Y/N, mature topics, strong language, faerie lore!!, all of skz show up, txt cameo that i love, tension, slow burn enemies to lovers, unequal power dynamics, manipulation, fear, faerie drugging, labyrinth runner!reader, goblin king!hyunjin, banished!jisung, hunter!chan, knight!changbin, junkland boss!jeongin, sluagh!minho, boggart!seungmin, gancanagh!felix, selkie!yeonjun, changeling!soobin, knight!hoseok, knight!seokjin, war generals!ateez, more tags to be added.

word count: 88k written; ongoing

part 1 - a deal, a deal, a deal!!! (posted 4/12/24) part 2 - never go that way. (posted 4/15/24) part 3 - onwards & downwards. (posted 4/28/24) part 4 - the oubliette. (posted 5/7/24) part 5 - forwards is backwards. (posted 5/12/24) part 6 - the hunter and the hunted. (posted 5/29/24) part 7 - the wild hunt. (posted 6/5/24) part 8 - a green-eyed monster. (posted 7/30/24) part 9 - the bog. (posted 11/19/24) part 10 - betrayal. (posted 11/22/24) part 11 - as the world falls down. (posted 11/24/24) part 12 - forgotten. (posted 1/2/2025) part 13 - tba!!

extra content for ariadne's thread: how i visualize skz in the world

[gunsandspaceships]

MCU Timeline: Iron Man 3

+ "All Hail the King" one-shot.

MCU Phase One

The main events take place in December 2013.

October 12, 1964 - Trevor Slattery lands his first role (Liverpool Royal Court Theatre).

October 6, 1968 - James Rupert Rhodes is born.

1986 - Slattery's mother dies while he is working on a rejected CBS pilot in the US.

Before 2000 - Pepper works with Aldrich Killian.

December 31, 1999 - January 1, 2000 - scientific conference in Bern, Switzerland. Tony, Yinsen, Dr. Wu, and Aldrich Killian meet for the first time.

2007 - Birth of Harley Keener's sister. Their father leaves the family.

2008 - Aldrich Killian injects himself with Extremis.

Note: it could also mean "5 years and then a few more years without them", but given the next date, it's unlikely that the time gap between injecting himself and testing others was significant. And I'll remind you that by the time of the test on volunteers, Killian already looked healthy.

June 25, 2009 17:30 - Project Extremis Injections tests Phase 1. The first human death as a result of Extremis explosion.

2011 - The Roxxon Norco scow spilled a million gallons of crude oil off the coast of Pensacola, and President Ellis let the culprits off the hook.

April 2, 2011 - Killian records a video of Trevor as "the Mandarin" somewhere in the Middle East.

2013 (most likely no more than a few months before the main events) - Chad Davis explosion in Rose Hill, Tennessee.

December 15-16, 2013 ~11 pm - 2 am - Tony's first night without sleep. He (most likely) woke up from a nightmare and avoided going to bed from then on.

December 17, 2013 - An Extremis soldier exploded at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

December 18-19, 2013, ~11 pm - 2 am - Tony implants 48 micro-repeaters for Mark 42 into his body and watches the Mandarin's TV broadcast.

Yes, I determined the date by the phase of the moon.

December 19, 2013 - presentation of Iron Patriot to the public.

December 20, 2013 - Tony and Rhodey at Neptune's Net restaurant. Tony experiences his first anxiety attack. He returns home and orders a custom rabbit for Pepper.

December 22, 2013 (Sunday):

4 pm - Killian's appointment with Pepper at SI.

I don't know why SI works on Sundays, guys. It must be illegal.

4:25 pm - Tony calls Happy via Skype, and Happy tells him that Killian is showing Pepper his big brain.

Note: wrong day of the week on the phone screen. It was Sunday, not Tuesday.

~6 pm - Tony and Pepper's "date". They go to bed, but are soon awakened by Tony's nightmare.

Night - Happy follows Savin to the Chinese Theater, where he is injured by another Extremis explosion.

Tony spends the night at Happy's bedside in the hospital.

December 23, 2013 (Monday):

Morning - Tony challenges the Mandarin upon leaving the hospital.

~4 pm - Savin attacks the Malibu mansion.

5-7 pm - Tony arrives in Rose Hill, Tennessee, sends a message to Pepper, and meets Harley Keener.

Pepper stays at the ruins of Tony's mansion. She finds one of Iron Man's helmets with the message from Tony. She and Maya head to a hotel.

8 pm - Tony and Harley go to downtown Rose Hill to investigate the explosion.

~8:30 pm - Savin and Brandt attack Tony. He kills Brandt and knocks out Savin. Tony almost dies sacrificing himself to save EJ (Harley's bully), but Harley saves him.

~11:30 pm - Tony hacks into AIM system.

Killian takes Pepper hostage. His agent captures Rhodey.

December 24, 2013:

Early morning - Tony makes weapons to storm the Mandarin's mansion.

Afternoon - he reaches Miami and storms the mansion. He meets Trevor and learns the truth about the Mandarin, but Savin knocks him out.

Tony wakes up tied to a bed in Maya's lab. Killian kills Maya.

Killian and Savin take the Iron Patriot suit. Tony escapes and reunites with Rhodey and Trevor. They head to Roxxon Norco.

Evening - Savin captures President Ellis. Tony kills Savin and saves the people falling from Air Force One.

Night - the Battle on the Norco.

December 25, 2013 - The Vice President and Trevor are arrested.

Last days of December 2013/First days of January 2014 - Happy comes out of a coma.

Happy still has bright bruises and scratches on his face when he wakes up, meaning it's been less than two weeks since the explosion.

Early 2014 - Tony stabilizes Extremis and removes it from Pepper's system.

May 2014 - Tony, in gratitude, remodels Harley's garage and replaces his sister's broken watch.

Why May: Harley is still in school, but there is green grass everywhere, some flowers, and his clothes hint that it is May.

~Late May 2014 - Tony undergoes surgery to remove the reactor and shrapnel from his chest in China and stays there with Pepper for some time for post-op rehabilitation.

Note: here Tony gifts Pepper with a necklace made of shrapnel from his heart. They are still in China (Shanghai).

Why it was most likely late May: judging by the weather and clothing, it was no earlier than April and no later than September. Since Tony arranged his gift to Harley in May, it's safe to assume that he did it right before such a risky procedure as open heart surgery (especially when doctors told us his chances were slim).

Second half of 2014 - an agent of the Ten Rings takes Trevor Slattery from Seagate Prison and delivers him to the real Mandarin.

Note: Don't forget about the time a trial takes! This will add months between Trevor's arrest and the one-shot events.

Late 2014 - Tony returns to the ruins of his Malibu mansion to throw the reactor into the ocean and pick up the damaged robots.

Note: look at the plants that have grown in the ruins. It would take them about a year, or even more, to grow.

Late 2014 or Early 2015 - Tony tells his story to Bruce, who fell asleep at the very beginning.

Some argue that the events of the movie take place not in 2013, but in 2012. Why it can't be December 2012:

The movie says it's December 2013.

The Official Timeline says it's December 2013.

Logic says it's December 2013.

All the evidence aside, let's think about it for a second. How long would it take to build all these suits? In The Avengers, Tony's newest suit was Mark 7. Between The Avengers and IM3, Tony created 35 suits, and from May 5 to December 18, 2012, there were 228 days. Creating a suit would take at least several days. That is, if that was Tony's main occupation. But it wasn't. He worked on them at night, and during the day he was SI's R&D department, was working on the redesign/rebuild of Avengers Tower, and was also busy dating Pepper. We can't say exactly how many days it would take to create a new Mark, but most likely at least 10 days (nights): 35*10=350 days minimum, which he would need to create them all. In 2012 we are already out of days. So in any case we get 2013, not 2012.

While searching for existing MCU timelines, I also found this attempt at creating a timeline that went horribly wrong because the author forgot about logic and didn't calculate anything correctly. Let's take this for example, "it's 2012 because Maya said the kid is 13." How old is "the kid" if it is December 23, 2012? Well, conception would have occurred on January 1, 2000. Now we need to add 9 months, don't forget about that! We get October 1, 2000. Now add 13 years and we get October 1, 2013. Before that, "the kid" would have been 12 years old, not 13. Case closed.

[nightmareinfloral]

Jericho- Where to Read?

Joseph William Wilson (Jericho) is the youngest son of Slade Wilson (Deathstroke) and Adeline Kane. Beneath the cut is a complete list of Joey’s major appearances updated as of January 2024. Most important issues are in bold.

The 1980s:

Tales of the Teen Titans (1984) 42-44, Annual 3, 45-48, 50-52, 56-57, 58

The New Teen Titans (1984) 1-2, 3-5

Crisis on infinite Earths (1985) 3-5, 9, 11

Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe (1985) 11

The New Teen Titans (1984) 6-10, Annual 1, 11-13, 14-15

The Omega Men (1983) 34-35

The New Teen Titans (1984) 16-17, 18, 22, 24-31

Action Comics (1938) 584

Teen Titans Spotlight (1986) 3-6

Secret Origins (1986) 13

History of the DC Universe (1986) 2

The New Teen Titans (1984) 33-34

Blue Beetle (1986) 11-14

The New Teen Titans (1984) 35-37, Annual 3, 39-49, Annual 4

The New Titans (1988) 50-55

Secret Origins (1986) Annual 3

The New Titans (1988) Annual 5, 57-59

Batman (1940) 440

The New Titans (1988) 60-61

Secret Origins (1986) 46

The New Titans (1988) 62-63

The 1990s:

The New Titans (1988) 64-67

Hawk & Dove (1989) 11-12

The New Titans (1988) 68-69

Who’s Who in the DC Universe (1990) 1

The New Titans (1988) Annual 6

Wonder Woman (1987) 47, 49

The New Titans (1988) 71, 75-79, Annual 7, 80-85. 86

Deathstroke the Terminator (1991) 1-7, 9, 11, Annual 1

Showcase ‘93 (1993) 2

Batman Shadow of the Bat (1992) 34

Deathstroke (1991) 48

JLA/Titans (1998) 1

Nightwing Secret Files and Origins (1999) 1

The Titans (1999) 10

The 2000s:

The Titans (1999) 25, 46

Teen Titans (2003) 2

Batman Gotham Knights (2000) 44

Teen Titans (2003) 3-5, 7-8

Avengers/JLA (2003) 4

Teen Titans (2003) 9, 11-12, 21

Nightwing (1995) 106

DC Special The Return of Donna Troy (2005) 1

Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files and Origins (2005) 1

Teen Titans (2003) 33, 39-47, 52

Countdown to Final Crisis (2007) 36

DC Universe: Last Will and Testament (2008) 1

DC Universe Decisions (2008) 3-4

Titans (2008) 6-12

Teen Titans (2003) Annual 1, 69

Vigilante (2008) 5

Teen Titans (2003) 70

Titans (2008) 13

Vigilante (2008) 6

Teen Titans (2003) 77-78

The 2010s:

DC Universe Legacies (2010) 5

Titans (2008) 37-38, Annual 1

Deathstroke (2011) 0, 13, 19-20

New Teen Titans: Games (2011)

Deathstroke (2014) 2-6, 17-20

Convergence New Teen Titans (2015) 1-2

Deathstroke: Rebirth (2016) 1

Deathstroke (2016) 1-3, 6-10, 12-16, 18

Teen Titans (2016) 8

Deathstroke (2016) 19

Teen Titans The Lazarus Contract Special (2017) 1

Deathstroke (2016) 20-25

DC Holiday Special (2017) 1

Deathstroke (2016) 26-27, Annual 1, 28 -32, 34-50

The 2020s:

Dark Knights: Death Metal: The Last Stories of the DC Universe (2020) 1

Batman Black and White (2020) 5

Deathstroke Inc. (2021) 1, 5, 7

Future State Gotham (2021) 12

Tales of the Titans (2023) 2

Thank you to @jerichogender for helping me compile!

[amidalaslvr]

Reading list #1: Lian Harper (aka: Shoes/Cheshire Cat)

A list of every appearance of Lian Harper. The daughter of Roy Harper and Jade Nguyen. She first appeared in the 80s and has recently made a come back as Cheshire Cat in Gotham!!

Pre-Flashpoint

New Teen Titans (1984): #21

Action Comics (1938): #615, 618, 627-631, 634, 636-637, 639 (Stories: tracks of a killer, the Cheshire Contract, Rocks and Hard Places, Exiles)

Secret Origins (1986): #38

Green Arrow (1988): #75

Batman Plus: Arsenal (1997)

Teen Titans (1996): #20

Arsenal (1998): #1-4

The Titans (1999): #1

The Titans: Secret Files and Origins (1999): #1

The Titans (1999): #5-7, 9-10, 13, 17-19, 21-27, 30-32, 34-35, 37, 39

Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files & Origins (2003) (story: Who Was Donna Troy?)

Outsiders (2003): 11, 17-19

DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy (2005): #2

Justice League of America (2006) #1, 12, 17

Green Arrow and Black Canary (2009): #25 (story: Bedtime Stories)

Titans (2008): #19

Justice League: Cry for Justice

Rise and Fall (Crossover storyline)

Convergence: Titans (2015): 1-2

Infinite Frontier

Catwoman (2018): 25-28, 30-32

DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration (2021): (Story: Masks)

Catwoman (2018): 35-38, 50

Detective Comics (2016): 1069-1070, 1077-1079

Green Arrow (2023)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

A lot of good sources linked in the original article!

By Bruce Mirken

As the dangers of Long COVID become more recognized, the country's going backwards on preventing new infections.

While I’m far from the only person worried about Long COVID and our society’s general inclination to look away and pretend it’s not there, people like me certainly feel badly outnumbered. It’s beginning to feel reminiscent of how people with AIDS and their loved ones felt circa 1986—and maybe it’s time for the same kind of response.

For those of you lucky enough not to have lived through that era, by the end of 1986, AIDS had killed nearly 25,000 Americans, but president Ronald Reagan had yet to speak the word “AIDS.” His press secretary had joked about it and the White House press corps laughed. While individual scientists were doing important work, the bureaucracies running the NIH and FDA seemed very much to be in business-as-usual mode. Because the casualties had largely been gay men and injection drug users, it seemed like no one with any power cared whether we lived or died.

So, a group of New Yorkers – mostly gay men – decided it was time to start raising hell. Calling themselves ACT UP, they disrupted the New York Stock Exchange and, as chapters sprang up nationwide, they staged protests that shut down the FDA and NIH. Eventually, people like Anthony Fauci began to see they had a point. I joined the Los Angeles ACT UP chapter in 1988 and ended up getting arrested half a dozen times in protests at the LA federal building, the County Board of Supervisors and the U.S. Capitol, among others. We won major improvements in HIV/AIDS care in the Los Angeles County health system, which cared for thousands of people with AIDS who had no health insurance. When I landed in San Francisco in 1993, I connected with ACT UP Golden Gate.

Here I am (with my late boyfriend Tim at the left) at one of the protests in that L.A County healthcare campaign. Most of my closest friends from that era have been dead for decades.

I get that COVID has played out very differently than HIV/AIDS. AIDS ramped up slowly and seemed not to affect “normal” people until it killed closeted gay movie and TV star Rock Hudson in 1985, and even then officials largely looked the other way. Only scientific breakthroughs in the 1990s finally stemmed the tide of death. In contrast, the much more highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 virus came on fast and furious, turning Americans’ lives upside-down almost immediately.

But now, we’ve arrived at what seems in some ways like an eerily similar place. When needed precautions to curb a highly infectious airborne virus spurred frustration and political pushback, officials largely threw up their hands and gave up. Even measures that don’t involve mandates or restrictions on behavior have mostly either been dropped or never happened in the first place.

LONG COVID’S GROWING TOLL

Unfortunately, the virus hasn’t gone away, even if the initial wave of mass death has receded. In August, as a summer surge peaked, US COVID-19 deaths exceeded 1,000 per week, though the latest September data suggests the numbers have begun declining toward pre-surge levels, when deaths were generally in the 300-400 per week range. That’s still equal to a 9/11 every eight to 10 days. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking of SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater—probably the best data on US viral prevalence now that cases aren’t being reliably tracked—showed 15 states with “very high” levels and another 19 rated as “high” as of Sept. 19.

But COVID is not just a matter of cases and deaths. The disease’s long-term effects have disabled millions of Americans, and the numbers keep growing with each new wave of infection. An updated review published in Nature Medicine puts the current global number of Long COVID sufferers at 400 million and estimates the worldwide economic impact at a staggering $1 trillion.

We now have plenty of people experiencing repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections. The good news, if you can call it that, is that these reinfections may produce fewer new cases of Long Covid than a person’s first infection – but they absolutely produce some, and the Omicron variants circulating in the last year or two seem to produce more Long Covid than earlier viral varieties. Every time you get COVID, you roll the dice with your health – maybe for the rest of your life.

If I sound alarmed, well, I am. As longtime readers may know, I have some first-hand experience with Long COVID, though in milder form than many experience. My January 2022 infection left me with peripheral neuropathy—painful nerve damage—in my legs and feet. It’s incurable and nearly impossible to treat, as conventional pain drugs don’t help. I will likely never live another day without pain and walking more than six or seven blocks at a stretch is a struggle. I used to enjoy hiking, but will probably never do it again. Still, I don’t have the more debilitating symptoms like crushing fatigue or dysautonomia—disruption of the part of the nervous system that controls automatic functions like heartbeat, blood pressure, digestion and breathing—that afflict some Long COVID sufferers. Lots of people have it way worse than I do.

We know that COVID can have lasting impacts on many parts of the body, including the brain. A recent study of 52 COVID survivors—about half with mild to moderate initial illness and half with more severe disease—found that compared to healthy controls, both groups “had a significantly higher score of cognitive complaints involving cognitive failure and mental fatigue” 27 months after their original illness, with no significant difference based on the severity of that initial illness. On a series of tests, researchers found “changes in brain function” that may explain the reported problems.

Just as scary, a study of people aged 65 and up just published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reports that “people with COVID were at significantly increased risk for new diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease within 360 days after the initial COVID diagnosis.” This review of the medical records of over six million patients found that the risk escalated with advancing age. As with many of these long-term impacts, the mechanisms involved remain unclear.

Survivors of an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection also have increased rates of high blood pressure, now documented in multiple studies. High blood pressure increases your risk of deadly cardiovascular complications like heart attack and stroke.

I can’t help but wonder whether these issues have affected me, but there’s no way to be sure. My blood pressure, well-controlled for a dozen years with a very low dose of medication, began ratcheting upward about a year and a half ago, necessitating three medication adjustments since then. I’m also definitely more forgetful than I was, mostly little things like walking into a room and forgetting why I went there. But those things can happen to older people with or without COVID, and it’s hard to know cause-and-effect in a given individual.

But I sure as hell know I don’t want to get this virus again and risk these and other issues getting worse. Unfortunately, avoiding it is getting harder by the day, and neither government at any level nor public health authorities seem to care.

PREVENTION? WHAT PREVENTION?

While there’s some evidence that the antiviral drug Paxlovid can reduce the likelihood of Long COVID if administered early enough, the results so far are mixed and not overwhelming. The best way to avoid Long COVID is to not get infected in the first place. As a society, we’ve pretty much stopped trying.

The government is still encouraging vaccination, as it should. But it’s been clear for some time that while the vaccines are very good at reducing the chance of severe illness and death if you get infected, they offer only limited protection against getting infected in the first place. “Vax and relax” can prevent mass death, but it can’t prevent mass infection and an ever-growing number of cases of Long COVID, even if most people get vaccinated. And vaccination rates have been declining for a while, with a new Ohio State University survey reporting that only 43% of U.S. adults have gotten or plan to get the new COVID-19 shot.

And in a bit of absolute madness, Florida’s Ron DeSantis-appointed Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has actually advised against use of the newly updated mRNA vaccines. In a post on Mastodon, Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves called this “beyond irresponsible. It is malpractice.”

Ladapo is an outlier, but even his saner colleagues around the country downplay the fact that we don’t have to limit ourselves to vaccination. It’s an airborne virus, so there are two main ways to stop it from spreading: 1) Get the virus out of the air, or at least reduce its concentration to a very low level, and 2) Protect yourself from breathing in any virus that’s in the air around you. We know how to do both.

Masking works, but the type of mask matters. As the Mayo Clinic notes, “Respirators such as nonsurgical N95s give the most protection. KN95s and medical masks provide the next highest level of protection. Cloth masks provide less protection.” Two and a half years ago, a CDC study found that those who reported regularly wearing an N95 or KN95 respirator in indoor public settings had an 86% lower risk of catching COVID-19.

Recently, during my first return visit to San Francisco after moving in early 2022, I met my nieces for lunch at the Ferry Plaza. It was a Saturday, Farmers Market day, and the place was jammed. In three-plus hours I saw no more than half a dozen people wearing any sort of mask, and only a couple were N95s. In my new hometown of Hilo, masking is only slightly more common. At the supermarket, I see barely 10% of customers and staff in some sort of mask. In some venues, it’s less.

A recent Ipsos survey found that half of Americans believe they’ll never get COVID again. Only 20% described themselves as “trying to stay as safe as possible.”

None of this is a surprise—people are simply responding to the messages they get from the people supposedly leading on health issues. The CDC promotes vaccination but barely talks about masking anymore; it acknowledges the value of indoor air quality but doesn’t seem to be doing much about it. In interviews, CDC Director Mandy Cohen regularly urges vaccination but almost never brings up masking or air quality and says little about Long Covid. Political leaders mostly talk about COVID in the past tense and pat themselves on the back for a job well done in prior years. The result is what you’d expect: Most Americans now treat COVID like a common cold, disregarding most precautions and not bothering to test when they get sick.

Back in 2022, when public policy on COVID was still relatively sane, the Biden administration published indoor air quality guidance and made congressionally-approved funds available that “that can be used in schools, public buildings, and other settings to improve indoor air quality.” It’s unclear exactly how much of that money has been used and for what, although some school systems have definitely made HVAC upgrades. But we’ve never had either enforceable indoor air standards or a coordinated plan to implement them. As Science noted in July, “The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown the vulnerability of society to the spread of infectious diseases. At the same time, with frequent outbreaks in elder care facilities and school classrooms, it became clear that it was a fatal mistake to largely neglect the recommendations of scientists and engineers regarding minimum standards for ventilation and indoor air quality.”

In any case, those federal dollars were aimed at schools and public buildings. It’s been left entirely to the private sector to do, or not do, anything to reduce airborne pathogens in supermarkets, theaters, clubs, malls and other privately owned spaces. Local groups like Chicago’s Clean Air Club and Austin’s Clear the Air ATX have tried to fill the gap by lending HEPA filters and other clean air equipment to arts and performance venues and other gathering places.

A RADICAL IDEA: DO WHAT WORKS

We know what to do. As Clean Air Club founder Emily Dupree and co-author Shelby Speier wrote in Sick Times in May, “We possess the technology to make public spaces safer. Studies show HEPA air purification and far-UVC lamps drastically reduce the number of airborne pathogens in a room and therefore lessen the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission. When combined with other layers of protection, these tools have the potential to finally make our shared spaces more accessible during an airborne pandemic.”

A key word here is accessible. Failure to address indoor air quality and other prevention measures makes public spaces seriously dangerous for those at highest risk, including the elderly, the immunocompromised and those with long-term health issues, including Long Covid.

Such simple, factual messages are rarely heard in official statements about COVID. “What I find the most frustrating about official handling of COVID and prevention is the lack of care, education, and honoring the science around COVID,” comments Clear the Air ATX founder and Long Covid activist Katie Drackert. “Telling people to ‘stay home when they feel sick’ for a virus that spreads asymptomatically? Well, they are just straight up ignoring science.”

Admirable as they are, the small, volunteer-driven efforts of groups like Drackert’s and Dupree’s are not remotely comparable to the scale of the problem. For now, people must take matters into their own hands. “In the year 2024, people still need to be wearing a well fitted KN95 or above for optimal communal and individual protection,” Drackert says. In the absence of reliable information about air quality in indoor spaces, she suggests getting a portable air quality monitor, which can be reasonably affordable. “High CO₂ levels indicate poor ventilation, which may lead to higher concentrations of aerosols that could contain the virus,” she explains. “Some air quality monitors track particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), which are small airborne particles. While COVID is smaller than these particles, high PM levels may indicate poor indoor air quality.”

Most of us can’t entirely avoid being in spaces with poor air quality, and that leaves us with masking, which the country has largely abandoned. Worse, we’re starting to see bans on face coverings in public spaces being enacted—for example, in Nassau County, New York, and North Carolina.

These laws typically contain exceptions for people masking for health reasons, but, as New Jersey’s Star-Ledger noted in a recent editorial opposing a proposed mask ban, “t leaves it up to the cops to decide whether someone has a legitimate medical reason for wearing a mask at a public gathering. “How will they know that? It’s subjective. And based on past experience, we know what that means: Police will disproportionately stop and question Black and brown people, who have also been the most likely to continue wearing masks to protect against COVID-19.” It’s hard to imagine a more demented public policy than making disease prevention illegal. And it’s not hard at all to imagine a COVID-19 prevention framework that would make a meaningful difference without causing a nationwide freakout: Encourage masking. Even if mask mandates are a political non-starter, there’s still plenty we can do. First, officials can talk about it and actively encourage people to wear high-quality protection like N-95s when in busy, indoor spaces. They can remind people of its importance—that COVID is not over, not just a cold, and that even a “mild” case can change your life forever. Federal, state and local governments could distribute N-95s or KN-95s free or at minimal cost. Get serious about indoor air purification. Build on what the Biden administration started a few years ago: Develop medically informed, enforceable indoor air quality standards and create a verification system so that people know when a building they enter meets them. Start with public buildings and the largest, busiest private venues, like sports arenas, concert halls and theaters, and move on from there. Give business owners generous technical and financial support in meeting those standards, and a reasonable amount of time in which to do it. While this program is ramping up, fund the local organizations now struggling with limited resources to fill the gap. None of this is that difficult. It’s not even that expensive when you consider that the federal government is in the process of spending $634 billion to upgrade nuclear weapons that with any luck will never be used. What’s missing is political will, and that won’t be there until people scream bloody murder. That’s why I think it may be time for a new version of ACT UP focused on COVID-19. The issues are somewhat different, but less so than you might think. While the original ACT UP focused a lot on research, treatment and care, it also addressed prevention. ACT UP chapters around the country started syringe exchange programs, handed out condoms at high schools, and sometimes succeeded in shaming the system into doing the right thing. And of course, there are issues to tackle around Long Covid research that I haven’t addressed here, but which I will try to cover in a future piece. The fundamental problem is much the same as people with AIDS faced in 1986: a system stuck in neutral, politicians stuck in denial, and a public closing their eyes, covering their ears and shouting, “I don’t hear you!” The first task must be to break the system–and the broader population, as much as possible–out of its present inertia, complacency and denial. I honestly don’t know whether ACT UP tactics like occupying the CDC and disrupting state and local health commission meetings will have the same effect they did decades ago, but at this point I don’t know what else to try. Nothing good lies at the end of our current path.

[remembertheplunge]

Striking the set

On the back of a drawing  of a man on a couch that I “painted”in 1986, I wrote the following;

Over “Striking the Set” November 19, 2086: a reaction to the first weekend Hand to Hand, The Aids Plague hits.

_________________

I later felt this was a picture of Daryl Speicher in his last days here. It was a good likeness painted before I met him. He, of course, was not a couch person. But he did die 2/3/1987.

He was my first match.

11/29/1987 a day of reflection—

________________________________________

June 27, 1987

This is actually a painting of Glen Miller. His beauty so overwhelmed me. His tragic truth so shocked me, and later, his courage in death’s parlor so inspired me.

His mother called today “Glen passed away at 7 or so last night."

The angel of energy visits the couch. The final curtain descends. 

Of the four men on the couch that November day, Glenn is the first to go.

John Hickman died 10/25/1987

Al Adami died July 3, 1987

Joel,still alive and doing very well. Still with life energy.

God Bless them always.

End of entry

Note:

I have had this painting which I entitled “striking the Set” hanging for over 30 years. I took it down today to relocate it, and realized that I had written notes about it on the back of the painting. 

Those notes are included above.

I lived in Sacramento, California from about may of 1986 to August 1987.

While there, I applied to work in an Aids support group called Hand to Hand. I had to be interviewed prior to acceptance. Al Adami interviewed me. I later learned that Al had Aids. I was shocked as the first person I knew who had it. During the training for Hand to Hand, a Doctor who ran the training named Elizabeth and Al did a dying scene for we 15 or so trainees. Elizabeth helped Al “die”.Powerful experience. As Hand to Hand volunteers, we would help people with Aids through their illness and death. 

I am including a photo of the “Striking the Set” painting and what I wrote on the back in the next blog post.

I had been in three plays in 1985-1986. When a play ends, the stage set is dismantled and taken away. This is called “striking the set”.I borrowed  the term for my painting, since Aids in 1986-1987 usually meant striking the set of a life.

Glen Miller’s tragic truth was that  at maybe age 30, he had Aids and was dying. John Hickman and Al Adami were also about my age then, early 30’s.

Glen Miller wanted to live to see his June birthday in 1987.

A group of we Hand to Hand volunteers went to his house. We brought champagne and cake. We sat around his bed once floor and laughed and talked. Glen drank some champagne, ate some cake and seemed to be happy.

As I was arriving at his house someone from in side was playing the song “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” by the Highwaymen. When I hear that song now, I think of that haunting moment.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

The Year In Doom & Gloom

Doom & Gloom From The Tomb celebrated its 15th anniversary this year, which is crazy. But what can I say, I keep finding cool live tapes and keep feeling compelled to share them with you ... whoever you are! A lot of this website is just me talking to myself, hashing and rehashing and re-re-hashing various obsessions, getting impossibly niche about some of my favorite artists, trying to shine a light into the darkest corners of music history. But that makes it sound like it's a serious endeavor. Mostly, it's fun. I hope it's fun for you too. So, if you need to catch up, here's a tip-of-the-iceberg rundown of what we checked out over the last 12 months ... as always, thank a taper!

Lou Reed - Sister Ray in the 70s

“Candy Says” - Lou Reed, Kongress Zentrum, Hamburg, Germany, March 29, 1979

Lou Reed - October 1974

Lou Reed - Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge, England, October 13, 1972

Lou Reed - City Hall, Sheffield, England, June 1, 1974

Lou Reed - Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden, May 14, 1974

Lou Reed - Parc Des Expositions De Colmar, Theatre De Plein Air, Colmar, France, August 12, 2004

The Modern Lovers - Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 27, 1972

The Modern Lovers - Sword in the Stone, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972

The Modern Lovers - Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, February 23, 1974

Foggy Notion - The Bowery Ballroom, New York City, December 13, 2023

The Feelies - Daniel Street, Milford, Connecticut, July 22, 2011

John Sinclair - BAR, New Haven, Connecticut, September 28, 2003

Meg Baird + Chris Forsyth, Cafe Nine, New Haven, Connecticut, October 26, 2022

John Fahey - McCabe’s Guitar Shop, Santa Monica, California, December 1979

The Go-Betweens - The Gatekeeper To Your Soul

Frank Black - Wetlands, New York City, June 13, 1994

Jacobites - Hearts Are Like Flowers

The Replacements - The Ritz, New York City, June 21, 1986

Willie Nelson - El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, California, December 20, 1997

Neil Young - Razor Love (1984-2020)

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Control The Violent Side

“Peace Of Mind” - Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Community Theater, Berkeley, California, November 2, 1976

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Festival Hall, Osaka, Japan, March 4, 1976

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario, October 31, 1996

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, California, October 1 / October 2, 1994

Fairport Convention - Harlow Town Hall, Essex, England, June 15, 1974

Richard & Linda Thompson - Dublin Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, November 10, 1979

Robyn Hitchcock & Richard Thompson - “First Girl I Loved (Incredible String Band),” The Barbican, London, England, July 19, 2009

Can - Nordseeheilbad, Cuxhaven, Germany, January 7, 1976

Bob Dylan and The Band - “Nobody ‘Cept You” (Outtake)

Bob Dylan & The Band - Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois, Jan. 3, 1974

Patti Smith - Max’s Kansas City, New York City, September 1, 1974

Patti Smith Group / John Cale / Television - The Palladium, New York City, December 31, 1976

Television - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, California, December 9, 1992

Television - Roseland, New York City, October 2, 2004

Grant Lee Buffalo - Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, England, October 11, 1994

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Vredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands, December 4, 1982

Wilco - Orpheum Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts, October 19, 2002

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Zhiying Zeng’s eyes begin to sparkle and her gestures become more animated as she recounts the day her lifelong Olympic dream came true.

She had to wait longer than most athletes, too: At 58 years old, Zeng will be one of the oldest Olympians at Paris 2024.

But for Zeng, whose Olympic journey began in China in the 1970s and culminated in qualification for Chile’s table tennis team earlier this year, it was worth the wait.

She had even retired from professional table tennis aged 20 – something which allowed her the opportunity to uproot her life in Asia and move across the Pacific Ocean to Chile – and at one stage went almost 20 years without playing.

“It was the biggest dream of my life,” she tells CNN Sport with a thick, unmistakable Chilean lilt.

“Even when I was a little girl and they would ask me what my dream was, I would say: ‘Become an Olympian.’”

Chile has now been Zeng’s home for 35 years and she is as Chilean as they come.

She is known in her adopted country as ‘Tania’ – because Chileans struggle pronouncing the Z in her name – and her favorite dish is pantruca, a kind of dumpling soup.

She also eats beans, a staple of the Chilean diet, every week.

Zeng loves empanadas, too, but doesn’t indulge too much now that she’s an elite athlete again. “Too many calories,” she laughs.

From China to Chile

Zeng was born in Guangzhou in 1966 and picked up a paddle almost as soon as she was physically able.

Her mother was a table tennis coach, which meant the then-government housed the family next to a sports complex, allowing Zeng to train every day and surround herself with professional players.

She was trained by her mother until the age of nine when, Zeng says, she became a typical grumpy child that didn’t want to be coached by a parent.

So her mother enrolled her in a school that employed a table tennis coach and after nearly two years, aged 11, she entered an elite sports academy.

Even in China, by far the world’s most dominant table tennis nation, Zeng’s talents were evident from an early age.

She became a national junior champion and won several regional tournaments before turning professional at the age of 12.

When she was 16, she was called up to the Chinese table tennis team for the first time.

“So many players in China have that dream because it’s so hard to achieve,” she says.

However, in 1986, two years before table tennis made its Olympic debut at the Games in Seoul, the “two color rule” was introduced, meaning the two sides of the paddle now had to be different colors instead of both black.

Zeng explains that the two faces of the paddle produce different types of effects on the ball and she would regularly rotate it in her hand to confuse opponents.

The different colored faces meant opponents could better predict her shots.

“The change of rules affected my game a lot,” she recalls. “That’s when I had a big downturn and left the national team.”

It was a painful moment for Zeng, who says she idolized players who were not much older than her that had already become Asian or world champions, and she was desperate to follow in their footsteps.

But the rule change paved the way for the next chapter in Zeng’s remarkable story.

In 1989, she received an invitation to coach schoolchildren in Arica, a city in northernmost Chile.

It was a job she adored, but it wasn’t until 2003 that she picked up the paddle to play competitive table tennis again.

She wanted to introduce her son, who was 13 at the time, to the sport in order to drag him away from playing too many video games and watching too much television.

In 2004 and 2005, Zeng comfortably won two national tournaments but once again stopped playing when her son was old enough to go to training on his own and travel with the team’s coach.

Third time’s a charm

Zeng only picked up a paddle again when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

“More than anything, just to exercise because we weren’t doing anything locked down in the house except eating!” she laughs.

“I got the bug and, once we were able to leave, I immediately wanted to play against someone to see what level I was at – and see if I could I still run or not.”

She contacted the federation in Iquique, where she lives today and owns a furniture business, and was soon playing – and winning – regional tournaments against mostly men given there were few female players.

“That gave me a lot of confidence,” she says.

“I had no problems with running, with fatigue or anything. I wanted to know how much more I could do.”

In 2022, the Chilean Table Tennis Federation sent an announcement to the regional associations that it was hosting a tournament to put together a team for the 2023 South American Table Tennis Championships.

Despite her success, Zeng was skeptical about going.

All of the best players in the country would be there and she doubted that she would be able to keep up.

In the end, she only went because a friend managed to convince her.

“‘Go and find out if you can compete or not. If not, at least you’ll be left with no doubts,’” she recalls her friend telling her. “I thought she had a point.”

Zeng qualified for the team, of course, and led Chile to first place in the team tournament, while also coming second in the singles and women’s doubles.

“I forgot what I was afraid of and what I was worried about,” she says.

But it wasn’t until the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago that her life really changed.

After her first appearance at the tournament, Zeng became a national icon overnight.

After losing the first two sets in her opening match, Zeng rattled off four straight to win 4-2 in front of her new adoring fans.

Chileans gave her the nickname ‘Tia Tania’ – Auntie Tania – and the AP reported that one young fan said he had gone just to watch the “table tennis grandma.”

Even Chilean President Gabriel Boric became a fan and congratulated her on a “tremendous” victory.

Zeng, who will play Lebanon’s Mariana Sahakian in the preliminary rounds of Paris 2024 on Saturday, says being in Santiago as an athlete during the Pan Am Games was a surreal experience.

She spent much of her time with other athletes, going out to dinner and taking photos.

“I lived like that when I was 15,” she says, recalling her time as a professional in China.

“It had been a long time since I experienced something like this. I was like an excited teenager again. I forgot I was 56!”

It proved to be a successful tournament on the table, too, as Zeng won team bronze for Chile alongside Daniela Ortega and Paulina Vega.

Zeng’s sons also noticed that her Instagram following had grown by almost 10,000 in a matter of days and had to teach her how to use social media, so she could keep her hordes of new fans updated.

Finally, 38 years after she gave up on her Olympic dream, Zeng qualified for Paris 2024 at a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament in Lima, Peru, in May this year.

Zeng says she didn’t sleep at all the night before the deciding game as she played out every imaginable scenario in her head.

On match point, when she went to collect the ball, her mind again began to run wild.

“Calm, calm,” Zeng, who says mental fortitude is her biggest asset in table tennis, repeated to herself. “You’ve got one more point.”

After winning match point, the emotion of everything she had experienced in the sport came flooding out.

Her father, who is 92 and regularly visits her in Chile, and her brother stayed up until 5 a.m. in China to watch the match, while her husband and friends were in Lima to celebrate the moment with her.

“My dad was able to see his daughter qualify for the Olympics,” she says, visibly emotional.

“He used to take me to training and to matches when I was a girl and now at 57, I made it. I made it.”

[suddenlymicah]

death note birthdates(dd/mm/yyyy)

for most of these i used aliases, but for characters commonly known as otherwise (jack neylon/kal saydar) i used the more common of the two. these were all retrieved from volume 13: how to read, as well as being in the order they are stated. please please please tell me if i got something wrong!!!

Light Yagami, 28/02/1986

L, 31/10/1979

Mello, 13/12/1989

Near, 24/08/1991

Misa Amane, 25/12/1984

Teru Mikami, 07/06/1982

Kiyomi Takada, 12/07/1985

Soichiro Yagami, 12/07/1955

Touta Matsuda, 14/12/1978

Shuichi Aizawa, 11/05/1969

Kanzo Mogi, 12/07/1973

Hideki Ide, 29/09/1969

Hirokazu Ukita, 09/11/1977

Sayu Yagami, 18/06/1989

Sachiko Yagami, 10/10/1962

Raye Penber, 31/12/1974

Naomi Misora, 11/02/1976

Aiber, 17/07/1969

Wedy, 02/11/1974

Watari, 01/05/1933

Matt, 01/02/1990

Roger Ruvie, 29/04/1939

Kyosuke Higuchi, 06/06/1972

Reiji Namikawa, 03/08/1974

Takeshi Ooi, 31/03/1961

Shingo Mido, 25/01/1972

Eiichi Takahashi, 19/12/1963

Suguru Shimura, 21/07/1968

Masahiko Kida, 20/10/1971

Arayoshi Hatori, 22/03/1971

Anthony Rester, 06/01/1968

Stephen Gevanni, 01/09/1982

Halle Lidner, 18/02/1980

Rod Ross, 13/04/1968

Kal Saydar, 23/02/1973

Hitoshi Demegawa, 04/04/1966

[zahri-melitor]

How old are the bats supposed to be?

During which period? There are variations depending on what time period you're reading.

Pre-Crisis? As at COIE, characters are roughly these ages:

Bruce is in his early 30s

Barbara is in her mid 20s

Dick is 19 or just 20 (depends which side of Crisis you put NTT18)

Jason is 13ish years old

Post-Crisis? (1986-2011) This is the clearest and most consistent period, with regular markers of the progress of time. As at Flashpoint, characters are about these ages:-

Bruce is probably 42

Barbara is in her mid-late 20s

Helena B. is in her mid-late 20s

Kate Kane is in her mid-late 20s (at MOST. Her timeline doesn't make sense otherwise)

If JPV was alive, he'd be 25ish

Dick is about 24-25

Cass is 20 years old

Jason is 19 years old

Steph is 18 years old

Tim is 17 years old and probably about to turn 18

Damian is 10 years old

(the middle kids' ages are all based on Tim being close to a birthday. Cass is 6 months older than Jason, Jason's birthday is a month after Tim's. If Tim's a long way from a birthday, Cass may still be 19)

Then we get the New 52 (2011-2016) and everyone's ages are indeterminate but young! This is my best approximation from not enough age markers and the entire period being about a year in-universe.

Bruce is somewhere between 28-32 (deep sigh)

Kate Kane is probably about 28 years old (it depends on how old Bruce is and how old he was when his parents died; she's younger than he is but not by much)

Julia Pennyworth is in her mid 20s

Barbara is 22-23 years old

Dick is 22 years old

Jason is 20-21 years old, and definitely 21 by the end of the period (SIGH)

Luke Fox is about 20 years old

Tim is 16 years old

Cass is an indeterminate teenage age, probably 16-17

Steph is 16 years old

Harper is 16-17 years old

Duke is, you guessed it, 16ish years old

Damian is 10-11 years old

This is why I don't like New 52 ages.

As of Rebirth (2016 to date), the timeline gets about 10-12 years reinserted in it and some sanity in terms of ages and age gaps starts to re-emerge (though it's clumpy and there's a lot of varying indications). At present characters are approximately these ages:-

Bruce is in his mid 40s

Kate Kane sure is An Age. She's probably about 28-30, unless she's in her late 30s/early 40s (look. Kate's age makes absolutely no sense. Do not look at it too closely. Her timeline is not coherent matched against anyone else's, given the requirement she was kicked out of West Point)

Barbara is probably around 30ish

Dick is about 28-30 years old

Jason is probably about 23-25 years old depending on timeline and writing.

Luke Fox? I haven't sussed out what they've done to all the Fox Kid Ages again in the wake of John Ridley's retcons. He appears to be in his 20s right now.

Cass is supposed to be 23-24 years old but may be written anywhere down to 16.

Steph is somewhere between 19-22, depending on if the writers remember she's not 16 today

Tim is probably anywhere between 18/19 (practical lower limit) and 21 years old

Duke is probably still around 17-19 years old

Damian is 14.

This whole section is messy as the only definite age we have at the moment is Damian being 14. It's mostly assumed that ages have returned to the Post-Crisis gaps, except where noted otherwise (Tim probably lost 1-2 years in his age gap to Damian as of Rebirth, as he is definitely 16 years old at the start of Rebirth. Jason seems to have kept a extra year or few in his gap to Tim, rather than it being 2 years)