#60's/70's TV set

[voxmedia-billsans45]

Practicing more expressions! (And some TV screen stuff!)

[astravv]

PROMPT 11 (SMUT) FOR ALHAITHAM IS SO BEING ON MY MIND RN I CANT GET IT OUT

smut prompt 11 — alhaitham x fem! reader

a/n : NO CUZ ME TOO :,) here’s prompt 11 with alhaitham!!

prompt 11 — ❝i want to watch you take your clothes off❞

cw — sexual content , praising

pairing(s) — alhaitham x fem! reader

story — alhaitham and y/n have been together for awhile, but they have never experienced sex or anything remotely close to it before. y/n wears his clothes, which makes alhaitham feel things he hasn’t felt before with y/n.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

it was so cold. probably the coldest it’s been in sumeru for awhile. usually it’s nasty, humid weather. you didn’t really bother buying clothes for cold weather because it’s not like it ever really got cold. usually the coldest it would get would be 60s or 70s.

today was different however. when you walked outside for some fresh air and to drink your freshly brewed tea, the cold air just hit you like a truck. so you decided to set the tea down inside and dig through you and your boyfriend, alhaitham’s shared closet to find some warmer clothes.

you didn’t find anything that belonged to you that would keep you warm, but you did find something in alhaitham’s clothing. a nice big gray hoodie. you decided to just throw on some of your black leggings on too, just to tie it together.

you didn’t realize how comfy alhaitham’s clothing truly was, even though it was sorta big on you.

throughout the day, you lounged around on the couch and in the kitchen, waiting for your boyfriend to come home. he had to be at the akadeymia today for a meeting. these times always bored you because alhaitham said you weren’t aloud to go with him. so dumb. doesn’t he know that you wouldn’t cause trouble? he just tells you he’s very sorry and gives you a big hug and kiss before he walks right out the door. it’s also not like kaveh was there to keep you company either. he was also gone to do whatever architecture thing he was doing now.

but once that final hour came, you started getting more and more impatient. you just wanted your boyfriend to come home and cuddle with you on the couch as you both watch some movies and enjoy some snacks.

as soon as you heard alhaitham’s keys trying to unlock the door, you immediately jumped to your feet, ready to greet him at the door.

once the wooden door opened, alhaitham appeared at the door, looking up and down at you.

“oh hey, y/n.” he gave me a small smile, still looking at every part of you. “are you wearing my clothes?”

“yeah, it was really cold out today and i didn’t have anything to wear, so i just took one of your hoodies.” you reply. “that’s ok, right?”

“uhh,” he gets lost in his thoughts for a second. “yes, of course.”

you grin and grab his hand, pulling him towards the couch where you already have snacks, drinks and the tv set on a movie.

“i’ve missed you all day, so i wanted to surprise you with a movie date!” you exclaim. he blushes a bit but doesn’t say anything for a minute and you quickly sit him down on the couch. “do you want a soda or just some water? or you can have both if you’d like.”

“water, please.” you notice that alhaitham can’t keep his eyes off you, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, but it starts to make you feel like you got something on your face or you’re doing something wrong.

“is everything ok? you keep staring at me.” you say, as you pour ice cold water into a cup for him.

“um.. yeah, everything’s fine.” alhaitham murmurs, watching you pour the water.

“uh.. okay.” you hand him the cup and he takes a big swig of it, then goes right back to looking at you.

“do you wanna cuddle?” you question. he doesn’t reply, but he wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him. he slowly gets on top of you and you both just look at each other in the eyes.

“al-haitham!” you squeak. he leans in and presses his lips onto yours. they’re a little chapped, but it’s okay, you still melt into the kiss. he starts to push his tongue between your lips, asking for an entrance. you open your lips and he slides his tongue in, licking all around your mouth, feeling every inch of it. you melt into his arms.

alhaitham releases the kiss, looking back into your eyes again.

“take your clothes off.” alhaitham says, still staring into your eyes, like he’s staring into your soul.

“what?” you reply, extremely confused on what your boyfriend just said. he’s never said anything like that before.

“take your clothes off.” alhaitham repeats. “i want to watch you take your clothes off.”

you gulp a bit, pushing yourself a bit away from him, not losing the eye contact. he lets go of you, still keeping his eyes on every inch of your body.

you start by slowly taking your leggings off, which are harder to get off. you pull them all the way down and off your legs, revealing your black underwear underneath. they weren’t anything fancy.

then you grab the gray hoodie, pulling it over your head slowly. you didn’t have a bra on, since you were just at home. your chest now exposed to alhaitham, who averts his attention to them.

your breathing is hitched, and you slowly start to slide your underwear off. once they’re off and thrown into the floor with the other clothes, you sit in front of alhaitham with your knees up to your chest.

alhaitham smirks and leans pushed your chest away from your legs so he can see every inch of you. he takes you all in, all of your beauty outside of the clothes that was previously restraining it.

“alhaitham..” you mutter softly.

“y/n..” he leans down and connects his lips to yours again. his hands can’t help but latch onto your body, feeling up your soft curves and crevices. he grabs your thighs and pulls them up so you wrap your legs around his waist.

“i’m gonna make you feel good, baby.” he says between the passionate kisses. he lets go off your lips and quickly pulls his shirt off, revealing is very nice toned abs and torso. then he moves your legs and tears off his pants and underwear, leaving no time to slowly get undressed.

you can’t help but stare at his dick, taking it all in. alhaitham licks his lips a little and leans down to start kissing your chest. his lips hover over your right nipple, just enough so you can feel his hot breath. it makes you tingle a bit in your stomach, giving you butterflies.

“alhaitham..” you cry out.

“baby..” he answers, immediately latching onto your nipple and sucking on it, making you arch your back and wrapping your arms around his neck. you also slide your fingers all in his gray locks of hair.

his tongue laps around your nipple, sucking at every bit of it. your moan keeps getting louder and louder.

he lets go and continues down, leaving small kisses along your stomach and down to your womb. once he gets below, he rests his lips on your slit, leaving small kisses, teasing you. he then raises his lips to your clit, sucking your clit and licking all around it, driving you nuts. he places one of his fingers on your clit, rubbing it around and pressing on it like it’s a button.

his mouth does all the work below, sticking his tongue as far as he can into you, licking all around your entrance as he licks in and out of your body.

“you’re driving me crazy, ‘haitham..” you moan out, your hands still gripping onto his hair, pushing his face further into your core. he keeps on rubbing your clit and causing you to squirm underneath him. “‘haitham, please!”

all of a sudden, your legs quiver and you cum onto his face. you let out a long sigh and let go of alhaitham’s hair, resting them beside you.

alhaitham sits up and rubs your juices off his face and onto his arm. he then wraps his arms around your body and sits you up. you rest your head on his chest, opening your eyes slightly to look at his still very excited cock. you smile a bit and lean down, taking his length all into your mouth, sliding it in and out. drool spills out of your mouth as you sloppily go up and down on his cock, soaking it.

“mmm, baby, keep going.” he softly tugs on your hair, guiding you.

you choke on his length trying to stick it all into your mouth, you want to show him that you can take it. you hum against your boyfriend’s dick.

“that feels amazing, baby.” he praises you, which makes you feel like you need to keep going to get more praises. you pick up your speed, and then alhaitham presses your head down all the way on his cock. you choke on it, coughing very loudly as he lets out a loud groan, releasing into your mouth.

he lets go of your head and you quickly pull away, coughing up the cum a little bit also trying to regain your breath.

“i’m sorry.” alhaitham apologizes. “it just felt so good, i couldn’t help myself.”

you smile at him, then leave a small kiss on his cheek. you wrap your arms around him, and sit yourself down onto his dick, which is still semi-hard.

“you still want to keep going, baby?” he asks, grabbing onto your waist and hovering you over his dick.

“yes, i want to make you feel good.” you reply, sweetly. you slowly sit down onto him, sliding his dick inside your sopping insides. you rest your hands on alhaitham’s shoulders, helping yourself balance as you bounce up and down on his cock.

you stare into his eyes as he’s watching every part of your body, especially your chest. your chest jiggles as you bounce up and down on him quickly. the wet slapping noises echoing throughout the house. the couch starts making lots of noise too from the impact.

“god, you do this so well.” alhaitham lets out a short, but semi-loud moan. he throws his head back and closes his eyes as he takes in the feeling of you bouncing up and down so quickly.

“‘haitham.. i’m about to..” you cry out as you lift yourself up and cum onto his twitching dick. you slide back onto his dick, stick moving up and down to pleasure alhaitham.

“baby, i’m about to go crazy.” he grunts, digging his hands into your waist, in which he starts to move you faster. “do you want me to cum in you?”

“umm.. probably not for awhile..” you manage to get out as he quickly pulls himself out, ejaculating onto your stomach and chest. “fuck…”

he throw you onto the couch and grabs a cracker off the charcuterie board you had made earlier. he looks at you and smiles softly.

“let me go get a towel for you, then we can continue your plan.”

[scotianostra]

The Scottish actor David McCallum was born on 19th September 1933.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys’ independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70’s. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50’s including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60’s he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt ‘Dispersal’ in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70’s he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Kidnapped.

The 80’s saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90’s saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio “Ducky” Mallard in a remarkable  436 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967,

David McCallum passed away aged 90 on September 23rd last year, he is survived by his wife of 56 years, Katherine McCallum, his sons Paul McCallum, Valentine McCallum and Peter McCallum, his daughter Sophie McCallum and his eight grandchildren. NCIS paid tribute to him in an episode called The Stories We Leave Behind when the tagents find comfort in working on one of his unfinished cases. The episode features clips from several old shows.

[kemetic-dreams]

Go-go is a subgenre of funk music with an emphasis on specific rhythmic patterns, and live audience call and response.

Go-go was originated by African-American musicians in Washington, D.C., during the mid-60s to late-70s. Go-go has limited popularity in other areas, but maintains a devoted audience in the Washington metropolitan area as a uniquely regional music style and was named the official music of Washington, D.C., in February 2020.

Performers associated with the development of the style include Rare Essence, EU, Trouble Funk, and singer-guitarist Chuck Brown. Modern artists like Charles "Shorty Corleone" Garris continue the go-go tradition in D.C.

Origins

Although Chuck Brown is known as "the Godfather of Go-Go", go-go is a musical movement that cannot be traced back to one single person, as there were so many bands that flourished during the beginning of this era that they collectively created the sound that is recognized as go-go of today. Artists such as Marvin Gaye, Van McCoy, Billy Stewart, Peaches & Herb, Black Heat,Experience Unlimited (E.U.), Vernon Burch, Sir Joe Quarterman & the Free Soul, the Moments, Ray, Goodman & Brown, True Reflection, the Unifics, Terry Huff & Special Delivery, Act 1, the Dynamic Superiors, Skip Mahoney & the Casuals, the Choice Four, and the Fuzz that played soul music during pre-go-go era.

The term "gogo" (as it applies to a music venue) originated in France in the early 1960s, at the Whiskyagogo nightclub, named after the French title for the British comedy "Whisky Galore!".The club also featured go-go dancers. In January 1964, capitalizing on the emerging popularity of "go-go dancers", the name was licensed to a Los Angeles club, the Whisky a Go Go, and from there the term "go-go" spread nationwideThe Cafe Au Go Go in NYC was also in business during that time, gaining notoriety when Lenny Bruce was arrested there in April 1964. By 1965, "go-go" was a recognized word for a music club, as evidenced by the TV show Hollywood A Go-Go (march 1965-1966), or the song title of that year's hit Going to a Go-Go by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (released November 1965). At a go-go club, dancers could expect to hear the latest top 40 hits, performed by local bands and DJ's. (The French Whiskyagogo had been one of the first venues in the world to replace live music with records selected by a disc jockey.)

In Washington D.C., minor group Wornell Jones and the Young Senators were formed in 1965, beginning a fierce competition with Chuck Brown and Black Heat on the local club circuit. The Young Senators later became known for their song "Jungle" released in 1970 by Innovation Records. Guitarist and bandleader Chuck Brown is widely regarded as "the Godfather of Go-Go".

Chuck Brown was a fixture on Washington and Maryland music scene with his band Los Lotinos as far back as 1966. By the mid-1970s, he had changed the group's name to The Soul Searchers, and developed a laid-back, rhythm-heavy style of funk performed with one song blending into the next (in order to keep people on the dance floor). The beat was based on Grover Washington Jr.'s song "Mr. Magic," though Brown has said in interviews that both he and Washington had adapted the beat from a gospel music beat found in African churches.

Washington, D.C., funk's early national chart action came when Black Heat (the first D.C. go-go band to be signed by a major record label) released their Billboard top 100 hit "No Time To Burn" from their second album on Atlantic Records in 1974. They then toured with such national acts as Earth Wind & Fire, Parliament Funkadelic, Ohio Players, The Commodores, and others. In 1976, James Funk, a young DJ who spun at clubs in between Soul Searchers sets, was inspired (and encouraged by Brown himself) to start a band—called Rare Essence (originally the Young Dynamos)—that played the same kind of music.

[david-watts]

You want to know why John Tardy is in that Poll? Well I’m here to tell you.

Back in the 60’s there was a Magazine called TV Century 21 it’s original run (and the only one important to this matter) was around 250 issues published weekly. I this magazine was primarily Anderson comic Strips, starting with Lady Penelope (predating her appearance on Tv by many months, Supercar, Fireball XL5, and Stingray. The premise of this magazine was that everything in it happened exactly 100 years after the issue came out, and the at everything was set in the same universe so they had linking material such as the ask 21 feature (which would latter spin of into its own comic) which centred on retired Secret Service Agent 21 asking the readers questions and answering their questions all done as though it was in universe, when he got his own strip it was set 20 years before the main narrative and saw 21 working with Steve Zodiacs Dad, Steve Zodiac Senior.

Now it also included several non Anderson Scripts which were also integrated into this universe, such as Burks Law, and most importantly here, the Dalek! (Exclamation Point included)

No Burks Law was treated as old file reports from the 1960’s and Supercar was seen from the TVC21’s Time Travel Camera, 21’s comic was also seen as file reports from the 2040’s (the main comic happing in the 2060’s)

Now the Daleks were the only non Anderson strip to crossover with the main Anderson narrative regularly. One section saw Lady Penelope interviewing Peter Cushing on his new Propaganda movie created to highlight the threat of the Daleks (which tells exactly what the Daleks Movies are, they are anti Dalek Propaganda), and 21 in his ask 21 strip would often reply readers questions but only about the Daleks and the Anderson sections.

When the Thunderbirds Tv series came out the Lady Penelope Strip was spun of into its own magazine (sadly several issues of this Magazine are un archived and have never been reprinted) which added several narrative to this world but in regards to the Daleks they are of little importance at this point.

The Daleks even made a very brief cameo in the Thunderbirds episode the Man from M.I.5 in which an issue of TVC21 is seen from behind (the page the Daleks! Was printed on) in a place is should have been (it is a newspaper for spies so it would make sense for a spy to have it in his briefcase.)

21 would also go on to cameo in Thunderbirds using one of his aliases.

Eventually TVC21 lost the rights to the Daleks right as they where about to start the invasion of Earth (having just discovered its location)

However this is where things get really interesting.

Over in Lady Penelope Magazine at the same time the Daleks! Gets cancelled the Angles strip starts (these being the angels from captain Scarlet) and in the first strip they are all brought together by a mysterious voice (latter revealed 8 months real world time to be Lieutenant Green) who mentions that a team is needed especially in light of the recent conflict. The conflict goes unnamed but considering that the Daleks will next be named twice in the Ask SPECTRUM feature (which replaced Ask 21) and that Colonel White Mentions that the Daleks Invasion was defeated and SPECTRUM was founded to deal with these kinds of threats. It is clear that the writers very much intended SPECTRUM to have been created because of the Dalek invasion.

But that’s not all going back to 1962 (well before this comic started and even before Doctor Who had started) the Planet Kemble makes its first appearance in Fireball XL5 several Years latter it would show up fully licensed as the main setting of the Daleks Masterplan, looking almost the same (the only change being changes that can easily been been explained by 2000 years of natural causes).

But the story does not end there.

In the Magazine Countdown UFO had a strip alongside Doctor Who proper in the 70’s. Prior to this SID a had already appeared in an episode of Captain Scarlet. But often in the Third Doctor Comics and the UFO comics technology that first appeared being used by UNIT a would end up being used by SHADO and visa-versa.

But wait there is more!

In the 90’s Doctor Who was off screen, sad. As was Anderson, also sad. But in the early 2000’s Doctor Who decided to publishes a novel set in the 2090’s of the captain scarlet world dealing with the fallout of the Mysteron war. Now but this point they could not use the names of the organisation or characters so they changed all the characters names, Colonel White became Colonel Leblanc, the Mysteron became the Myloki, Captain Black became Captain Death you get thew idea, but authorial intent was that this novel (the Indestructible Man) was set in the same Anderson Universe as previously shown.

A similar thing also happened with Blake’s 7 but I won’t get into it.

fascinating! I love how it's not just one thing

[mediamixs]

Top 10 horror movies from the 60's

The 1960s was a pivotal decade for horror films, marked by experimentation and the emergence of new subgenres. Here are ten notable horror movies from that era:

Psycho (1960) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this iconic film redefined horror with its shocking narrative twists and psychological tension. The infamous shower scene remains one of the most memorable moments in cinema history.

The Haunting (1963) Based on Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House," this atmospheric film directed by Robert Wise focuses on a group of people investigating a supposedly haunted mansion, relying on suggestion and mood rather than explicit scares.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero’s groundbreaking zombie film revolutionized the horror genre. Its commentary on social issues, combined with a raw, documentary-style approach, set the stage for future horror films and the zombie apocalypse genre.

The Innocents (1961) Directed by Jack Clayton, this adaptation of Henry James's novella "The Turn of the Screw" is a chilling tale of psychological horror, featuring themes of possession and innocence corrupted.

The Birds (1963) Another classic from Alfred Hitchcock, this film tells the story of a small town besieged by unexplained bird attacks. Its suspenseful build-up and haunting imagery have left a lasting impact on the horror genre.

Carnival of Souls (1962) Directed by Herk Harvey, this low-budget film follows a woman who becomes increasingly haunted by mysterious apparitions after surviving a car accident. Its eerie atmosphere and surreal visuals have earned it a cult following.

Rosemary's Baby (1968) Directed by Roman Polanski, this psychological horror film tells the story of a pregnant woman who suspects that a satanic cult wants to take her baby. Its unsettling atmosphere and themes of paranoia make it a classic.

The Haunting of Julia (1977) Although technically from the late '70s, it reflects the style and thematic elements of '60s horror. Directed by Peter Sasdy, it tells the story of a woman who, after losing her daughter, moves into a new home, only to confront supernatural events tied to her past. The film's exploration of grief and haunting is reminiscent of the psychological horror trends of the previous decade.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) Directed by Terence Fisher, this film features Oliver Reed as a man cursed to become a werewolf. Unlike many other werewolf films of the time, it delves into the character's tragic backstory and explores themes of fate and identity. The film is notable for its atmospheric cinematography and dramatic performances, making it a unique entry in the werewolf genre.

The Night Stalker (1972) While technically a made-for-TV movie from the early '70s, it reflects the style and themes prevalent in the '60s. Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, this film follows a reporter investigating a series of mysterious deaths in Las Vegas linked to a vampire. Its blend of crime and horror, along with its social commentary, makes it a precursor to later horror series.

These films showcase the range of horror from psychological terror to supernatural frights, reflecting the changing landscape of societal fears and cinematic innovation in the 1960s.

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

I've been cooking this one up for a while but early 90s (like set between 91 to 92) college au. Mai, Suki, and zuko are goths who does sokka's makeup every chance they get. they would chilling in sokka's dorm, and Mai would be like "someone hand me the white face paint".

the rest of the gaang + azula/ty lee is still in high school. they're doing a HS trip of the college. azula sees zuko and Mai eating lunch. she gets the attention of the tour guide, points at them, and says "I want THEM to tour us." also azula loves calling Mai and zuko, "Gomez and morticia".

she also does not hesitate to call zuko 'koko' in public and she will do it every time she sees him.

when toph is bored, she likes to fuck around with katara's answering machine at the ungodly hours of night. like when all the tv goes off (bc back in those days, the TV literally turned off. like It was just static), she'll call her, knowing she won't answer and just fuck around. katara would like wake up to fifteen messages on the answering message, all from toph. half of them are just her rambling about random ass shit, and the other half is jokes. Gran Gran would be like "your friend surely does talk a lot."

yue comes into town. she ends up going to the college and meets sokka, whom she becomes friends with. she's really heavily impacted katara's sense in fashion and makeup. yue's fashion & makeup is inspired by the 60s and 70s. she wears a lot of flowy dresses, skirts, and shirts. a lot of white, light blue, and other light colors in the blue family. yue teached katara some brown girl makeup hacks bc she knows how hard it is to find makeup for brown skin. she used to take katara shopping too like she was like the big sister she never had 😭

then zhao did some shit and yue & her family had to move.

SO SOKKA HAD A CAMCORDER WHICH WAS HIS DAD'S AND HE USES IT TO RECORD RANDOM SHIT AND DAY TO DAY LIFE 😭. one of the tapes was sokka and zuko trying to bring up their TV up the stairs since they just brought it. suki was recording. sokka's hand slips and the tv goes down the stairs and breaks. it just gasps and a beat of slience 😭.

and POLAROIDS. SO MANY POLAROIDS.

NDJISNDCNUOXSANUAOXSXNOSAUONAXSUUONASXNUO YOU GENIUS YOU INCREDIBLE HUMAN EATING THIS SHOVING IT IN MY MOUTH THROWING UP!!!!

ohhhhhhhh this gives me so many ideas. I could rave about every single one of these. Katara yue Bestiesm yes pls sharing makeup + fashion ideas would be so them. The 90s college vibes in fic are always immaculate and THIS. Sokka would absolutely use a camcorder ohhhhh I can see it. Nothing has ever been more canon than that. Him recording so many little fun aspects of their life and he gives it as a present to the friend group- like a lil memories vhs thingy. ALSO THE POLAROIDSSSS YES YES. omg that’s immediately reminding me of the wonderful @petricorah ‘s All Time art of modern au zukka in a Polaroid. I need more vibes like this I’ll invest actually.

Also thank u for truthing abt Zuko mai and suki gothism bc it’s so important to me. Also that toph and katara anecdote IM ROLLINGGG. SHE WOULD 💀. like she is such A Little Shit and would make Katara’s life hell (also god forbid in a modern modern au someone gives her discord. she’d abuse the /tts command to its full potential.)

Also omg Gomez and morticia so true bc mai is the hot unbothered kick ass goth lady and Zuko just. follows her around. adores n admires. as he should.

oh and I saw this addition and wanted it to be in the same post cuz. it’s just so amazing I’m LAUGHINGGGG

THIS IS SO CANON SO TRUE THEY WOULD DESTROOOOYYY EACH OTHER FOR THOSE YEARBOOK PICTURES. and like. what’s funny is Zuko’s one is kinda canon. Iroh absolutely did his hair in hs bc that boy was an awkward mess and had no time to worry about his appearance.

this is literally giving me life omfg thank u for this

[widowshill]

How do you think Dark Shadows would differ if made today? Would it still be the cult classic or is that kind of writing lost to us?

with the disclaimers that I don't think you can set out to make a cult classic, and also I only know as much about the entertainment industry as the next person, and also I don't really think the writing in Dark Shadows is that good, I do think it's an interesting question! I'll do my best.

To start: for me, the lion's share of the show's enduring appeal is in its earnestness, and part of that is the palpable shoestring budget. things like flubbed lines, camera man and mic shadows in the shot, and other genuine mistakes are part of what you watch the show for, they do not detract but add to the experience. this contributes a similar sense of watching live theatre (paired with most of the core cast being new york theatrically trained and bringing that acting style with them) because you know you're seeing something usually done in one take, where the mistakes bleed through, where who the actors are as people is alongside them on the stage. they flub, and recover, and this is part of the story: so too do the Collinses make vast mistakes, and go on. it is an imperfect world riddled with faults.

This is not something you're going to get in the current media landscape from one of the big networks like ABC; I find it almost impossible to imagine a daytime show being produced with the kind of natural errors Dark Shadows contains. To capture that same kind of poor theatre troup earnestness you would have better success as either a) actual serial theatre, b) a webseries / tiktok series / etc, c) a low-budget independent or college tv station, or d) a miniseries, possibly. If a major network took it on and purposefully put those mistakes in, it would not feel the same. I'm a bit bored of the constant insincerity/irony in a lot of 2020's media, and I think it would rapidly veer into that genre of work.

As far as being a daytime serial, specifically, I don't think the current media environment is exactly right: part of the reason they aired a gothic horror soap opera to begin with is it was part of the broader cultural conversation, next to television like Bewitched, The Addams Family, I Dream of Jeanie, The Munsters, The Twilight Zone, etc. American entertainment in the late 60's had a love affair with the occult (with witches, monsters, ghosts, the works) and this permeated broad aspects of arts and culture: The Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, Monster Mash was number 1 on the Billboard chart in 1962 (and #91 in '70, and #10 in '73). Pair that with prominent artists like John Zacherle's discography, Vincent Price's film credits, 70's gothic horror comedies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise, and of course the wild popularity of gothic romance paperbacks in the 60's and 70's. This isn't everything, of course, but just to broad-strokes the landscape.

It's not that we don't have supernatural media today — horror is one of the highest performing movie genres, and there are shows like Ghosts and WWDITS, and Watcher Entertainment — but it's not quite the same explosion of culture (in my opinion). Making a gothic romance-horror-vampire serial would be more at home in the 2010's among the love affair with Twilight, True Blood, The Originals, the dominance of horror game Youtube, the height of Supernatural, Crimson Peak, What We Do In the Shadows 2014, etc. One imagines this is why the 2012 film adaption came out when it did; the cultural moment was conducive, overall. Most nighttime network television today (and I am generalizing) is dominated by legal, medical, and police drama; current soap-operas (especially General Hospital) reflect that, and there are only three soaps getting aired, period. Nothing is impossible: but a soap in the Dark Shadows vein (ha) getting green-lit today seems unlikely, vastly unlikely with the ebb in vampire fervor.

What I will say that works better in today's production moment for a potential series revival (revision?) is we're starting to see an embrace of practical set building / prop making / etc that was lost to us for a little while, especially among the horror genre. For example: Blumhouse's FNAF utilizing the Jim Henson creature shop, the beautiful set work on Haunted Mansion 2023, the use of practical effects in Beetlejuice 2. This is something that to me feels integral, for making Dark Shadows. You may disagree! But I don't think the heavy dependence on CGI did 2012 any favors. The magic inherent in the show (curses, ghosts, whatever you want to call it) is supported by movie magic and the invisible (or sometimes visible) artisanal hands crafting the world for us.

Moreover, with Bridgerton, especially (but also Emma, Little Women, The Gilded Age, The Great, etc) there's been a bit of a renaissance of lush period pieces. The current fascination with historical romances (and anachronism!) lends itself very well to a dive into 1795 or 1897. My best guess is that if we produced a revival right now, there'd be a very heavy focus on one of the alternate time periods (probably 1795), and they would lean on anachronism (and sex) very heavily, and the present year would be a very very minor presence, if they bothered with it at all – and maybe they wouldn't!

As for the writing, specifically? There's nothing that extraordinary about Dark Shadows' writing, to me, what is extraordinary is the characters and the actors' management of them (and Lela's direction) and what they are able to do with the script (aside from a few standout moments of memorable lines). There are brilliant television writers out there who could write a lovely gothic adaption. Some of our priorities in terms of storytelling are different: one thing you would have to acknowledge that the original show rarely dealt with and never performed well on is race. However a lot of the dominant concerns in the cultural landscape do reflect the issues at the forefront of the themes in the writing: especially women's bodily autonomy (Barnabas' hypnotism and forcing Josette's identity onto the nearest brunette/the inherent violation of biting and enthrallment, the way his victims are 90% of the time poor women, or sex workers, or the criminalized and otherwise vulnerable); women's economic position (Liz running the house and business, Victoria and Maggie's subject to endless horrors for a wage, Carolyn free to kick getting married down the road because she's economically secure) and the rigid dominance of the hetero-nuclear family structure as it is entwined with economics in America, and its subversions; and, especially, the way that the American houses (architectural, economic, genealogical) are built on the exploitation of those beneath them, often demanding the physical sacrifice of bodies and blood.

If I had my choice — and this is not what I think is probable, what is probable is a lean into the literal vampires and witches and sex associated in a modern-day setting — a current version of Dark Shadows would lean heavily into those themes, and take the reflection of the literal monsters (Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Laura, etc.) on the metaphorical monsters (Elizabeth, Roger, Burke, David, etc.) seriously. Preferably I'd want it set in the 1960's-70's again, because, like Collinsport, we seem to repeat the same sins over and over again, currently we are engaged with and reversing much of the progress that was made by social movements of that era, so in some senses we are returned to that time, culturally. Preferably I would emphasize the mystery? the permeation between the boundary of human and monstrosity? that dominated the early supernatural arcs with Laura and the beginning of Barnabas; and emphasize the terror, especially the terror of violence contained within the charming, and genteel, and refined, and beautiful. Above all I would not begin any first episode of anything with Barnabas, who should be first and foremost a reflection on the family so ready to accept him as like kind.

cult classic? I don't know. I think there's an appetite for earnestness; for long-form storytelling; for the quotidian — to learn about characters as they eat breakfast and bicker, as well as fight monsters. and theatre-trained enunciation that you can hear. I would hope, with sufficient intimacy training, the kissing and sex scenes would be a little better and not make me so very miserable.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Looooong post incoming...

THE INCREDIBLES and INCREDIBLES 2 have been on my mind, lately.

Writer-director Brad Bird’s 2004 superhero movie, done up at Pixar in the days they weren’t owned by The Walt Disney Company, was like a formative film for me. Like STAR WARS was for many kids growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, THE INCREDIBLES was probably that for 12-year-old me, among a couple other movies. (That same year, I was also blown away by SPIDER-MAN 2 and… Umm… I, ROBOT?)

And I’m one of the few weirdos that really, really dug the contested sequel. Well, contested by people online. It did get good critical reception and got an Oscar nom, made a truck ton at the box office, but it’s one of those weird “big” movies that came out, made tons and tons of money, but I hear few talk about it to this day. I feel some other recent Pixar sequels fit that bill as well, like FINDING DORY and TOY STORY 4. These absolutely massive movies that people raced to see, because they love the originals and the characters in them so much, but then seemingly… Forgot about? I think it has a lot to do with just how much stuff comes out now, that it kinda all gets lost in the shuffle. They don’t stick the way TOY STORY 3 did back in 2010, before we got so inundated with lots and lots of stuff oozing out of every pore: TV, streaming, other movies, podcasts, more streaming, etc. etc. Plus, there's that special sauce with the originals that tends to make them hit different than the sequels, no matter how good the sequels may be...

But no matter, I loved INCREDIBLES 2 and still do, even if I think it falls a little bit short of the original. That was a hard act to follow, after all. I did go over some of the few things about the sequel that I thought could’ve been expanded a bit, a few months back… And I’m thinking about them again.

I think the main point of contention with INCREDIBLES 2 was the Screenslaver, and the whole twist being that he was a fictional character, a face that was created by a disgruntled telecommunications company exec who wanted to keep superheroes illegal.

I get it, in a way. Screenslaver looks cool, and that one action sequence with him in the strobe light cage with Elastigirl? I fuckin’ LOVE it. Such a dynamic, well-done action sequence. I guess it made people wish that both Bob and Helen, and the kids and Frozone and maybe those weirdo superheroes like Screech and Reflux, took this guy on. A slender, creepy mask-wearing mind control villain… It's what you expect in a superhero movie, the heroes fighting a rather weird bad guy!

And yet, in a way, I feel like Screenslaver being a mere face. A distraction. Makes INCREDIBLES 2 every bit as subversive as the original. Especially since INCREDIBLES 2 came out in 2018, which was literally a superhero/comic book movie-heavy year. Maybe the heaviest? You had AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, DEADPOOL 2, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES, VENOM, SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (!), am I missing anything? That year was S-T-A-C-K-E-D.

By contrast, in 2004, THE INCREDIBLES debuted opposite of SPIDER-MAN 2 and HELLBOY… And also BLADE: TRINITY, THE PUNISHER, and CATWOMAN… Much different times. Especially when it was greenlit by Pixar in the year 2000… What was happening in superhero movies that year? X-MEN had come out, and that was after a fairly successful BLADE movie… And years after BATMAN & ROBIN was lambasted and put the Batman movie format to rest for a good while. (Now it’s inescapable. Every few years, a new actor portrays Batman in live-action.)

THE INCREDIBLES stood out in 2004, I feel, not just because of the freedom animation allowed for the superhero concept (which put it above many of the live-action spectacles being made at the time), but also because it rung closer to a ‘60s spy movie than a typical beat-em-up extravaganza. It’s clearly set in a midcentury modern world, a stylized retro futuristic early ‘60s that is informed by the presence of superpowered beings. Or “Supers”, as this franchise has always called them. While there isn’t a wealth of material explaining how world events played out, it’s all implied and hinted at in both films.

By the mid-1960s, American animation had kinda been pigeonholed as an outlet for cheap, reliable kids’ entertainment on Saturday mornings. The closest thing to an American “spy” movie in the animated medium back then was, of all things, a FLINTSTONES movie: 1966’s THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE. THE INCREDIBLES almost feels like a lost animated movie made for a slightly older audience circa 1965, but dusted off decades later and done in CGI. That’s a Brad Bird staple. Born in 1957, he loves midcentury modern retrofutures, and just that setting in general. THE IRON GIANT is set in the late 1950s, he had a cancelled take on Will Eisner’s THE SPIRIT that was set around the time it was introduced, his long-gestating RAY GUNN has been described as a 1930s sci-fi noir retrofuture, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE is of course a ‘60s spy show and a series of feature films (Brad’s feels the most ‘60s out of the movies), TOMORROWLAND… Need I say more? Even RATATOUILLE, which doesn’t involve super heroics or gadgets or futuristic technology… It’s literally a movie about cooking! Even that movie has a retro vibe to it. It’s set in the then-present, but it’s timeless in its look and feel.

Anyways, THE INCREDIBLES plays as much James Bond as it does, say, Batman. You have the whole Nomanisan Island lair, close-quarters fights with armed men, Michael Giacchino’s score, it’s a just-right mix. The first INCREDIBLES has a rather conventional bad guy in Syndrome. An evil guy in an eye-catching suit, with all these various man-made powers, as opposed to other Supers’ natural-born powers. INCREDIBLES 2’s villain is merely an average woman, roughly in her 30s? 40s? She has no powers, she’s just a master manipulator, almost a filmmaker in that regard. I mean she’s an artist and a designer, that’s made perfectly clear the minute you see her, so it makes sense that she could pull off this elaborate show. Mysterio in SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME - which was released a year after INCREDIBLES 2 - needed drones and such to do that. That the Screenslaver is merely a brainwashed pizza delivery guy is part of her brilliance.

So, that’s what makes INCREDIBLES 2 stick out from the other superhero movies circa 2018. A year where the majority of the villains were clear-cut, like a big purple alien guy who wipes out half the universe… and here’s INCREDIBLES 2 with a very crafty woman who essentially puts on a big show. And that in the second half, it’s her and her use of mind control technology that are the big obstacle for the Supers. Not a creature or a conventional superhero bad guy. I think it works, honestly. Like, what’s a different kind of challenge? What if all the good guys got brainwashed, leaving a few… Namely the KIDS, to fend for themselves? That’s a very cool idea, honestly. But again, I get why detractors wanted the shadowy mind control guy instead. Part of me would love to see that version of INCREDIBLES 2, too, if it ever existed. According to interviews w/ the filmmakers, Screenslaver was a late addition to the plot. INCREDIBLES 2 was supposed to come out in summer 2019, but Disney had pushed it up a year, which apparently affected a lot of the decision-making. For some, it shows.

Maybe if INCREDIBLES 2 came out in 2008 instead of 2018, and had the same exact villain twist… In a world where other Disney Animation and Pixar movies with twist villains didn’t yet exist (i.e. Hans, Callaghan, Bellwether, Ernesto), it’d be received differently? I do not know. But that’s why it all works for me. I can tune out the succession of “twist villain” movies, and take INCREDIBLES 2 on its own merits.

In my previous piece on INCREDIBLES 2, I did kind of find fault with its rather rushed third act and how the film doesn’t really bite into the meatier political aspect it kind of teases. The whole idea of a society being dependent on superheroes, rather than getting up and helping pitch in to make the world a better place. (Not dissimilar to TOMORROWLAND’s message.) It’s really all just there to serve Evelyn’s character, which I’m totally fine with… It works in that context. But on the other hand, I feel like this could’ve gone further and explored the whole idea of superheroes being - to quote Jenny Nicholson in her review of JOKER - a “band-aid solution” to crime. And it being a PG-rated mass-market Disney release is no reason to keep me from speculating about this version of INCREDIBLES 2.

I get that Brad Bird probably just wanted to keep it simple and streamlined, and that the “who needs Supers anyways” idea is just a device for Evelyn, not there to make a larger statement. I do believe all art is political, even these movies, but how far the creators want to go with the politics is another story. Ultimately, Evelyn’s methods of getting her way are wrong, but she has points… What if a better society could be created that didn’t depend on superpowered beings having to clobber criminals or threats to save the day?

Clearly the world of THE INCREDIBLES needs superheroes, though, because you have things like mole men with massive drill-mobiles cutting through cities like they’re nothing. But I feel that in a world where we are hyperaware of the system’s flaws and how it’s mostly a failure by design and pretty much creates crime (I’m getting political here, heads up), INCREDIBLES 2 could’ve possibly said something about that. Instead of having superheroes, a stand in for the police when the police themselves or the military can’t handle the threat, what’s causing all the crime in New Urbem and Municiberg in the first place? What systemic inequalities are happening? How progressive is this world because of the presence of superheroes/cool tech? Why are there are robberies? What’s the poverty rate? Etc. etc.

And you may be thinking, this is just an animated family movie, it doesn’t have to be that deep… But I disagree. Plenty of family films, and good stories in general, don’t shy away from this kind of stuff. Art is not made in a vacuum. A lot of actual real-life kids LIVE these sorts of things, too.

But even PG-13 Marvel movies, probably because they’re released by Disney - and Disney tries to play moderate when it comes to political stuff (though they are still too far left for dinguses who yell “WOKE” at everything), don’t really go that far either.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR chips at whether there should be government regulation of superheroes or not, until it settles for being a story about two friends turning against each other over a family death… and then a few MCU movies later, none of that matters - the superheroes are ultimately needed to stop the big purple guy in space… THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER asks why, in a post-Blip world, a universe where half of all the living beings just ceased to be… Why are there still such inequalities on Earth, after Thanos’ snap and subsequent revival of everyone who was unalived? It’s all the catalyst for the Flagsmashers, and leader Karli herself. She was so nuanced as an antagonist, and you also had this ersatz Captain America guy who straight up murdered a person in cold blood. I was loving where it was all going, until a few episodes in, they just made Karli a straight-up murderer. All that nuance is flattened, and the final episode is just another big fight scene. Outside of Sam Wilson’s speech at the end, what really changed on MCU’s Earth? What did this Disney+ series have to say, really? Other than bringing up those very real problems we face in the U.S. and around the world?

I think INCREDIBLES 2 is just more interested in being about its characters first, which, again. Is fine. I don’t think less of the movie because of that. The first INCREDIBLES was about the family dynamic first and foremost, too, and not the spectacle. I don’t require Brad Bird to share all of his political views with me. I appreciate that the movie even posits the question to begin with, it’s ultimately why I’ve been thinking about it! Maybe Bird sees that world as simpler because it’s one where superheroes have been around since at least the turn of the 20th century, and things are different because of that.

This is probably why some people get a very Ayn Randian reading out of THE INCREDIBLES, when I think Bird’s conceit was merely “the villain is someone who uses technology to be a pretend-superhero”. It’s all there to inform Syndrome’s character, not necessarily to declare to the audience that people without powers CAN’T be superheroes. Syndrome kills several Supers so he can enact his plan and make everyone into Supers, because he’s big mad at Mr. Incredible, and that’s why he fails. He could’ve just grown up to make super technology to make other people super, not kill a bunch of them. Heck, if he had turned out better, he could’ve singlehandedly ended the outlawing of Supers… And not natural-born Supers… Imagine THAT movie…

The original movie, I feel, just doesn’t necessarily make a case for whether people born without superpowers can be Super. This dichotomy is just there to make the villain what he is, and hint at what he could’ve been instead of a villain. Sure, the Parr family and Frozone saving the day at the end upholds this apparent status quo, but I don’t think Bird was thinking about it like that. He had denied the Ayn Rand comparisons as far back as the release of the first movie.

The likelier reading of this film, and some of Bird’s other films such as RATATOUILLE and TOMORROWLAND, is informed by Bird’s career trajectory. He was mentored by Milt Kahl, of all people! One of the greatest animators, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men… He was mentored by him as a teenager! But most of Bird’s career, as noted by Mark Mayerson, was a long series of denied opportunities. His aforementioned SPIRIT movie didn’t take off in the ‘80s because who during that period - a time when SECRET OF NIMH came and went, and when features like TWICE UPON A TIME couldn’t get an audience - wanted to sink money into an animated action movie of that caliber? RAY GUNN didn’t go through in the 1990s at Turner Animation, and Warner Bros. dumped THE IRON GIANT in the late summer of 1999 with an ineffective marketing campaign that caused it to flop at the box office.

Because IRON GIANT did so badly, Bird took his toys and left Warner Bros. He headed to Pixar with his superhero movie concept, and he got in despite those who didn’t quite want him around. John Lasseter was not fond of an outsider coming in with this very different pitch for a movie. Up until that point, Pixar was literally what I like to call “Team TOY STORY”. John Lasseter, TOY STORY��s director, also directed A BUG’S LIFE and TOY STORY 2. Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton, where instrumental in TOY STORY 1 & 2, directed MONSTERS, INC. and FINDING NEMO respectively. Lee Unkrich, an editor on TOY STORY, co-directed on TOY STORY 2, MONSTERS, INC. and FINDING NEMO. Lasseter fired Jorgen Klubien off of his CARS, which was in the works at the time, and took it over. Tight-knit building. Bird was an outsider, and Lasseter wasn’t thrilled about that. But luckily, Steve Jobs staved him off and also kept Michael Eisner’s doubts about THE INCREDIBLES at bay. Bird got to make his rather outre superhero movie at Pixar in spite of Lasseter, Eisner, etc…. And it was a big hit and an Oscar winner. Lasseter was singing a different tune after that.

Future directors didn’t have Jobs’ protection, though, which meant that Lasseter could fire them more easily… And he did… Brenda Chapman, Bob Peterson, etc.

So then after THE INCREDIBLES, Brad Bird really wanted to get a live-action adaptation of the novel 1906 off the ground, but that didn’t go anywhere. He took over RATATOUILLE at Pixar, made a big hit out of that, and then tried to pursue other endeavors. His MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie (GHOST PROTOCOL in 2011) did very well, but then after that, he made TOMORROWLAND and it bombed… And then took on an INCREDIBLES sequel. He is just now starting to get his cooler ideas off the ground, as his RAY GUNN is finally in production at Lasseter’s Skydance Animation. Funny how that works, right? The guy is over 60 years old and is just getting started.

If anything, his movies are more about that. He’s a guy with really cool, game-changing ideas for animated movies in an industry that isn’t interested in that… So… The INCREDIBLES movies being about superheroes who want to help people but not being allowed to by the system, RATATOUILLE being about an animal that doesn’t belong in a kitchen wanting to cook for people, GHOST PROTOCOL being about spies still trying to do the right thing and save the world after their unit has been shut down by the system, TOMORROWLAND being about people not subverting the system by pitching in to make the world a better place and also being barred from the utopia - by, again, the system - where they can make that happen… Yeah, it’s very clear that Bird’s movies are just him venting about his own hangups via fantastical concepts, not trying to espouse some sort of Ayn Randian ideology. How the hell do you get “if you’re naturally talented, you should hoard those gifts from the rest of society” out of THAT?

I think that’s what it is, and that’s what informs the world of THE INCREDIBLES. It’s simply an Earth where superheroes exist, and the system makes them illegal instead of finding other ways to correct accidents that have happened whenever they are around. Just outright ban them from doing what they do, instead. I mean, governments in real life ban all kinds of people for various reasons, strip away their rights, dehumanize them, criminalize them, etc… Sometimes mere circumstances, such as poverty, are viewed as personal failure and inherently criminal. There’s a level of relatability with superheroes for some people because of that. The late Kevin Conroy, for example, used his role as Batman in the 1992 animated series an outlet for his struggles as a gay man. X-Men stories, and the early 2000s X-MEN movies, are either interpreted as that or ARE largely about that.

But even then, Bird’s world still posits some interesting questions that it doesn’t fully answer. It’s busier focusing on the characters. This is more an observation, as I’m not trying to dock the original or the second movie any points… I just wonder why, in the sequel, the world the movies are set in was so quick to legalize Supers after everything that has happened. All it took was saving a boat and that was it? Not the defeat of Syndrome’s final Omnidroid? Not the other good deeds before that? I feel like that portion in the final third of the movie was strangely very rushed.

The thing is, before I wrap this up (phew), we only have two canonical movies in this series, and a handful of comedic/gag-based shorts. The world of the INCREDIBLES is wide and ripe for exploring, I’d argue, but Brad Bird’s not getting any younger and he should pursue the projects he really wants to make. Again, RAY GUNN, his Western, his horror movie, his musical, etc. Pixar honored him by not having someone else throw together a second INCREDIBLES sometime in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Like, Disney could’ve forced Pixar to make one without him anyways, but no. They waited. And if there’s a third one to be made, or a prequel set during the “Golden Age”, they’ll likely wait for him to be available and willing to do it. Or if he gives it his blessing and leaves it to another director… Like Pixar did with TOY STORY 4 and INSIDE OUT 2, and almost did with FINDING DORY. I wonder if he was gonna do the same with INCREDIBLES 2, had TOMORROWLAND done great and he went straight for a sequel to that.

I’d like to see more of that universe, but it needn’t be forced out of the filmmakers at Pixar. Maybe the little we know of it is what kind of stokes our imaginations when it comes to this series? Look at something like STAR WARS now… There’s a ton of movies and shows and expanded universe stuff, which arguably dilutes the magic of its universe... THE INCREDIBLES isn’t that big wide despite the original movie almost being 20 years old. THE INCREDIBLES doesn’t need to be that huge, but I would like to see a little bit more of that world. Maybe another movie - be it INCREDIBLES 3 or a prequel called SUPERS or something - or a Disney+ series, but not the behemoth something like STAR WARS or the MCU have become.

I feel it’s worth playing around in a little bit more. I’m also biased, because I love the movies, particularly the first one.

[highfiveheroes]

do you have any thoughts on when highcourt would be technologically? i was thinking that the dawns gave off the vibes of 1950s or even 1970s televangelists, but idk if placing highcourt in the 1950s would contradict brennan's lore about solace being the only nation in spyre to have arcanotech

sorry for the late response—i had to take some time to think about it!! i do think a 50's/60's aesthetic would work better realistically than a 70's one, though this is mostly my own bias because of personal experiences. ("violet" the musical is set in 1964 and is about a woman with a large scar on her face who travels across the country to have a televangelist heal her so she'll be beautiful again, and i can absolutely see that being something the dawns encourage or participate in.) i do wonder if there's a happy medium of technology between nothing at all and the latest archanotech, like landlines before cell phones or CRT tvs instead of LCD or LED tvs. i think i'd very much take a 60's approach if i were to officially place them there—less idealistic than the 50's, but not quite as rowdy as the 70's!

[bropunzeling]

i think the research u do for fics is insane... thinking deeply about the logistics of soulbond/omegaverse/cisswap mattdrai where they invoke a partner clause like... policy writing IS fanfiction actually... would u ever consider diving into the logistics of the partner clause...

hello anon! what a funny/good question haha. this got uh long so under the cut are some thoughts about that (also, like, spoilers for linger if anyone cares)

want to set the table by saying (a) im SO not a lawyer, law school VERY not for me, i know a lot of lawyers and they all terrify me (affectionate) and (b) i do not really do much research beyond my ongoing love affair with hockey reference dot com (and stuff to inform characterization ofc!) -- but i think the existence of the idea of these like, bond clauses (explicit in the omegaverse one, may come up if i write more soulbond) comes from a general question that i think about whenever im writing an au concept which is: how would this one wacky change (people have another form of sexual presentation! people can have half physical half mental all emotional connections to another person!) influence other aspects of life besides me smashing my ken dolls together?

obviously the trappings are fun - reality tv! inane pop songs! if people can get bonded do they also have weddings? how does this influence pbs documentaries. but i often think about things from a public policy perspective because it's what i know lol. and with those examples in particular, my thought process was -- here's this thing that can romantically and sexually entangle people, but there's also a physical component. bonding in omegaverse or soulbonds often changes you/has some sort of tangible impact if you’re separated -- you get bond sick, your heat cycle changes, that sort of thing. there would probably be some sort of sociopolitical movement to protect those social structures because you can't have people getting physically fucked up if they aren't allowed to follow/bring a partner with them! maybe it was a given in many cultures and laws developed to formalize social structures. maybe in the us there's some sort of landmark federal legislation to provide greater protections in the 60s and 70s. maybe the un has a body of international standards.

and in any/all of those cases, it would be something that would get bargained in something like a sports cba because in a world where these kinds of intense bonds are possible between members of your same-gender league, inEVITABLY capitalism will run up against those off ice bonds, and people would feel strongly about keeping their partner with them!

also in linger specifically, i knew i wanted the main conflict to be this sort of, matthew vs his body, matthew vs his identity as an omega/what he perceives being an omega to mean, matthew's desire for independence and control vs his desire for physical and emotional connection and leon. and when i was first trying to figure out my way into a plot (especially how to handle The Trade) and spitballing on twitter, a friend was like what if alpha/omega relationships were a really big deal legally? and the idea of bond rights sprung out of that because it was the perfect narrative tool to be like, here is this tangible economic and occupational consequence if matthew gets bonded. here is a real thing that will happen that will cause him to lose that sense of control over his own life. here is the Threat that is always sitting in the back of his mind. and even though it hopefully comes across that like, leon doesn't think of their relationship that way, he wouldn't actually force matthew to stay close if matthew didn't want to, matthew doesn't know that! he's seen bond rights used before! he doesn't want it to be him! and then that really drives the conflict of the story, because he sees holding himself apart from leon as this way to achieve not just emotional independence and self-control, but also very literally control over his own career.

so yeah idk! world building! not only does it provide color and depth but hopefully it can drive conflict and plot as well!

(also tbc there is no such partner clause in the girl!leon verse, they are just being very savvy about contracts and cap capacity and eventually gonna finangle their way to the same team through guile and playing hardball)

[obscureother]

secret f/o unlocked: ✈

this is it. here he is. the secret f/o who's only been known as ✈ for posts since mid-june or something. you guys voted photo/gif dump so here you go:

🇬🇧 Corporal Peter Newkirk ✈

f/o est. June 8, 2024 (but I've actually known about his existence for years before i did f/o things)

from Hogan's Heroes 🌑 played by Richard Dawson (*Family Feud sound effects.*)

Romantic f/o. (what's new.)

LOOK AT HIM BHBRHGBR.

so this is corporal newkirk, ye. he's the secret f/o for the ✈ emoji this whole time. He's from Hogan's Heroes and look guys, he's NOT a villain or terrible person :D no he's a good guy. <3

. 🌑 .

For those of you who don't know Hogan's Heroes, it was a tv show that ran in the 60s and 70s (with reruns of course). I don't know what sitcom means but that's what google and bing call it. It's about Colonel Hogan and his fellow prisoners at Stalag 13 who do things for the Allies that make the Nazis look stupid (this is set during wwii.) I've loved the show for a long time and Newkirk was one of my favorites along with Hogan himself, Klink, and the short little angry man, Hochstetter. He's English, I couldn't stop him from forming. Forgive me.

Corporal Newkirk is one of Hogan's fellow soldiers who works with him at the prison camp. They have tunnels, smuggled goods, whole operations they run from the inside and he's often the one who helps with impersonations, magic tricks, safe cracking, pickpocketing, etc. those kinds of things. He and LeBeau are the ones who get most excited about girls, it looks like kind of a friendly competition for if they ever get to see one come through before Hogan steals the kisses or there's more than one for each to take to before they go back to being POWs. Newkirk also teases LeBeau a lot for being French, but he and the others all care a lot about each other. They're good friends, the lot of them.

f/o-wise, he's most often company or comfort for me. he follows me around or comes along to watch things with me, does little tricks n things, or talks me through things to get going along. He does card games and hosts their gambling sessions. He tells stories from the episodes of Hogan's Heroes or tells me about certain things to do with them or what they're doing or getting. He is Cockney too, so he does some of the things ⛓ does where they let me figure out their Cockney slang or talk me to sleep cos cockney talk go brr. . He goes "ruddy" instead of "bloody" bfbfdf-

there was actually a habit i picked up mentally that came from newkirk when i first saw hogan's heroes. though i dont remember the exact instance(s) that he did this, he was explaining something and said "that's why," but he said it more like "that's rhy," with an R, so every time i hear something explained or think of why something is happening to myself, it always automatically sounds like "that's rhy" instead from how newkirk would pronounce the word. that's been there since i was little, mom says ive been watching it since i was roughly 8 or so. there was a long while where i couldnt watch it, i got too busy or couldnt get to the MeTV channel for some reason. i eventually found the boxset for the whole series and got to take it home. a few years later, i was able to bring it to college with me where ive finally been binging the whole thing between homework + other responsibilities for comfort. as of the blog, im on season 3. from that, he formed into my brain blob again, now he lives there forever.

(i forgot i had actually put his name on the f/o list sometime ago without mentioning it so i forgot you could have found out who he was before, but you didnt look at the f/o list, so he was still low-key secret lolol.)

[scotianostra]

Happy 90th Birthday Scottish actor David McCallum.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr on this day 19933 in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70's. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50's including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60's he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as

Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt 'Dispersal' in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70's he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson's, Kidnapped.

The 80's saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90's saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio "Ducky" Mallard in over 350 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967, David married Katherine Carpenter and they have two children together, a son Peter and a daughter, Sophie. He and Katherine currently live in New York.

In NCIS since 2018, Ducky, played by McCallum, has appeared in fewer episodes. avid McCallum explained that appearing in fewer episodes will allow him to see more of his family, which includes his wife, children, six grandsons, and their cat, Nickie. According to IMDB he has chalked up an amazing 457 appearances in the show, morethan anyother character in the series.

[findafight]

hey i sent that ask a while ago about being unhappy with steves (rogers) ending in endgame, and also related to the stranger things winter soldier au idea. and idk i just had a thought that like there could be steve & bucky and steve & buckley jokes in canon, bc the Captain America comic was published in the 40s, and with the party being "nerds" it would be possible that one of them had read it. idk just a silly thought lol.

everybody talks about batman and robin...missing another iconic superhero duo!! Cap also came back from being frozen in the 60s (I wonder what international events could have spurred on the reanimation of an American nationalist symbol!) and had two made for tv movies in the 70's. So he would have been slightly in the nerd public conscience, except idk if bucky existed in those. Alas, I'm pretty sure Bucky wasn't as popular as (any of batman's) Robin(s), and was only set up as a friend instead of teen sidekick for cap later. I'm pretty sure they were never as big as THEE batman though, so that would be the more obvious joke. (though Steve and Buckley is PRIME and I think someone would maybe try it out to tease?)

ALSO he was one of the three comic book characters up until 2005 or 6? (when he was reintroduced as the Winter Soldier) that very firmly had stayed dead (Uncle Ben and Jason Todd being the other too. obviously Bucky and JT have come back [I think Todd also came back the same year? big year for resurrecting dead comic boys!]), so Uncle Ben is truly the only person in comics that's going to stay dead forever.

Fun Nebs Lore: for some reason when I was but a child in the early 2000s I was under the impression that, instead of just. falling out of a plane and dying (from falling out), I thought Bucky had fallen off a plane wing (where he was fighting someone while the plane was in air?) and been hacked to bits by the wing propeller. (I was probably Primed to believe this because the original Iron Man origin traumatized 5 year old me) When my brother told me later that apparently they were bringing him back I was absolutely confounded because I thought he was. Very Dead. More dead than most dead comic characters. Relentlessly teased for thinking this (and that they'd write a teenager being, once again, violently chopped into tiny pieces to death via propeller in the 40s/50s comics) Though when he fell off the train in TFA my brother and I made Significant Eye Contact and he said "well. there for sure wasn't any propellers there." OKAY I GET IT what a bitch.

[hussyknee]

Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001

“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”

Why America must stop the war now.

By Arundhati Roy

Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •

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

As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.

The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".

After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.

Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.

Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.

Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.

Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."

So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."

Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.

Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.

What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.

Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate ­ usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.

The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.

The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.

Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.

Young boys ­many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.

Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.

They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.

With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony ­ every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.

One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.

By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)

On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.

Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.

Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)

Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.

As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.

Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.

First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.

Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.

Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?

Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.

Where will it all lead?

Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.

Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.

(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)

It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.

People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.

But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?

Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)

The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.

Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.

The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?

Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.

Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.

President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.

Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.

Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper ­The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.

He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.

Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?

Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?

[justabigassnerd]

okay I know you don't write for marvel anymore (unless you do, idk), and this isn't an ask, but just imagine the shock Steve and Bucky must've felt when they see a flat screen tv in color for the first time.

Like we get the scene were Steve runs out into New York for the first time since he and Bucky left to fight in ww2 in the 40's and is shocked to discover that its not the 40's anymore and he has, in fact, been out cold since then and its now the late 2000's, early 2010's and things are completely different.

Because, according to my grandfather, tv manufactures didn't start messing with the idea of color tv's until the 50's, and color tv's weren't very common in most homes until the late 60's early 70's because of how much they costed (I found an article that said a color tv set from a company called Westinghouse that started selling color tv's in New York costed $1,295. the article went on to say how in todays money that would've costed somewhere around $10,000).

So just imagine when one of them walks into the avengers tower or somewhere, whether it be after Steve first woke up and had calmed down or after Bucky was saved from HYDRA and is no longer trying to kill people and they see a fucking flat screen tv... just... the pure fucking time shock.. cuz the last time they both had a good look at their surroundings it was in the 40's when tv's were big, heavy boxes that were in black-and-white, but here they are now sitting Infront of a flat screen tv that's in color!! JUST. JUST THE PURE SHOCK OMG. Imagine how old they must've felt!!!!!

OMG ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY FOUND OUT ABOUT COMPUTERS TOO HOLY SHIT!!! Cuz those didn't come out until the 70's!!!

Anyway have a good day/night and sorry for the long rant lol.

omg don't apologise for the rant because I never really gave this much thought when I was in my Marvel era

but you're so right they surely lost their shit seeing a tv in colour like if I were Steve running out into Times Square when he first woke up I'd be requesting to be back in a coma or some shit bc that would be too much for me to handle right off the bat

Bucky would've 100% been so confused and shocked seeing it all too especially after HYDRA and probably not until after Endgame bc there was so much shit going down he probably barely got a chance to process things but I just know Bucky geeked out at least a little because tv's are not only huge and now in colour, but they've got streaming services so you have damn near every movie/tv show at the press of a button (not to mention if Bucky found the movie version of The Hobbit)

oh and computers? basically portable tv's that you can do more stuff on? they'd be so shocked and awed by them. I think computer's would also kinda scare them a little so they stick to pen and paper to take notes

I actually loved giving this some thought this was so fun, if y'all ever wanna just talk to me about anything fandom-y I'm so down fr

much love <3