#Are there any 311 fans on here?

[ginarely-blog]

CCXP Mexico House of the dragon Info (Ewan, Tom, Eve and Steve) by ginarelyblog

Hello everyone!!!! Mexican Ewangirlie here! I still cant believe that we are having the oportunity to see Ewan in real life without having to go to another continent hehe. OK for starters allow me to translate the post: "Only one fact is needed for the real fans to know who are we talking about. Prepare yourself to discover who they are, because tomorrow we will announce which Max talent is going to be at CCXP Mexico. screams of excitement"

Max is also bringing Tom Glynn Carney, Eve best and Steve Toussaint to the event. The official announcement is supposed to be published today hopefully along with the exact date in which they will be attending. For the event is 3 days long from Friday 3th to Sunday 5th taking place in the citibanamex center #311 conscripto avenue in Mexico city.Most likely the cast will be appearing in the OMELET stage by dos equis (a beer Mexican brand) as they did back in 2023 Brazil's CCXP were the cast is interviewed with established questions by a moderator surrounded by fans.

According to the official app of the event, the cast will also most likely be appearing on the thunder stage by cinemex (a cinema Mexican chain) which will be more restricted but with the same dynamic, check the official instagram accounts of the event for more info and from my side if you have any doubt of the event let's find out together!!! I promise to keep all of you informed :D

@cyeco13 @barbieaemond @flowerandblood @targaryenrealnessdarling @casualhedonists @valeskafics@achaoticeternal @pendragora @ewanmitchellclub @hoosbandewan

[barry-j-blupjeans]

Barry was starting to wish he had bought a suitcase with a handlebar and wheels. Lup and Taako's apartment was on the third story up and, much like Lup had told him, the elevator was still in its constant state of disrepair. At the very least, a suitcase with a handlebar would be easier to lug up here. His back was already aching from the ride over (his body was not fit for airplane seats anymore) and this certainly wasn't helping.

But it'd be worth it. Tonight, for the first time ever, he and Lup would meet face-to-face. And Taako too. He was excited to see Taako. He had heard lots of good things about Taako. But he had never really talked to the guy outside of voice or video calls with him in the background and Barry- well, he had a soft spot for Lup.

That's what he told Magnus, at least, when he bought the plane ticket. Leaving Magnus to housesit didn't seem like a great plan, but Barry had no one else to turn to. Asking his coworkers felt weird and approaching any of his neighbors with the idea seemed even worse. Magnus, at the very least, was capable of fixing anything he broke. Probably. And was willing to do it for free as long as he was allowed to bring his dogs with him (he was, but Barry was very much hoping he didn't have to clean dog slobber off anything when he got back).

Magnus had seemed… uncertain about his plan. Flying halfway across the country without telling the other person you'd be there was, admittedly, not always a good idea. But Barry had planned this through. He and Lup had talked a lot about meeting up one day. What they'd want to do together, where they'd go, the plans they had. She offered to let him crash on the couch and Barry was 100% okay with that. It saved on hotel costs, at least.

And Lup loved surprises! Most of the time! Lup loved the surprises that Barry came up with, at least.

Barry paused at the third story, leaning against the wall to try to get his breathing under control. He had tried to only pack essentials, but that had quickly turned into "oh, I wanna show Lup this thing in person" and, "oh, Lup wanted to have this but I forgot to mail it to her", and "oh, Lup would-", et cetera, et cetera.

After a minute, he finally got his breathing under control. He straightened up and his back popped in at least four different places. Pathetically, he started dragging his suitcase down the hall. 310, 311, 312…

113. Lup and Taako's apartment.

Barry knocked before he could start overthinking it.

Lup would be happy to see him, right? Right. Definitely. She was cool like that.

Seconds ticked by. Barry fanned himself, suddenly feeling too hot. It was from bringing the suitcase up, that's all. He wasn't nervous. He lov- he liked Lup a lot and he wanted to make a good first impression. Second impression? He wasn't sure what it was when you've been talking to someone for years but have only just now seen them in real life.

It must have been a full minute by now. Barry raised his hand, trying to figure out if it'd be a good idea to knock again, but the door opened before he could make up his mind.

It was Taako. All of his opening plans came crashing to a halt. He opened his mouth and just kind of made a strangled sound. He cleared his throat and went to try again, or at least try to ask if Lup was home, but-

"Barry?" Taako asked.

"Yeah," Barry said, hopefully sounding confident and casual. It came out a little like he was choking down a jolly rancher.

"Fuck," Taako said. He shut the door in Barry's face.

Barry… didn't know what to do in this situation. He was hoping for a "hey!" or maybe even an "it's Barry!". This was so wildly off-script from what he had imagined he didn't know how to move forward. Luckily, Taako opened the door again and practically pulled him inside before shutting it again.

The inside of the apartment was warm and cozy and exactly what Barry thought it would be. He recognized the couch where he and Lup often had long conversations via the internet. He could see the beginnings of the kitchen as Taako pulled him further inside. A man popped out from one of the other rooms. Barry vaguely recognized him as Taako's boyfriend. Kravitz, he was pretty sure.

"Barry?" Kravitz said incredulously.

"Hey," Barry said. Taako steered him towards the couch. It was so soft.

"But Lup-" Kravitz started.

"We're getting there," Taako said. He was standing in front of Barry now as Barry sat on the couch. Kravitz leaned over the edge of the sofa. Taako took a deep breath. "Okay. So. Wanna tell me what the fuck you're doing at our apartment, Barold?"

"Uhm," Barry said. "Visting?"

"Visting me?" Taako said.

"I mean," Barry said. "I- I would definitely like to hang out with you too, but, uhm-"

"Lup," Taako sighed. He rubbed at his temples, as if he was developing a headache. "Okay, Barry, I'm gonna need you and Lup to get like, a shared calendar or maybe like- any type of clear communication, 'cus she's not here."

"Like, she's at work, or-?"

"Lup got on a plane at nine AM this morning," Taako said, "to go to fuckin' Maine! to visit your sorry ass."

"Ah," Barry said. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Sure, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was fine. This was normal. This was an everyday thing to him. He was pretty sure stuff like this happened all the time.

"You," Taako said, "are gonna call Lup and tell her she's a dumbass."

"I'm not gonna call Lup a-"

"She'll call you," Taako said. "'Cus you're both real fucking stupid, y'know that? Like, if you're gonna visit your partner then at least call before you show up-!"

"We're not- we're not dating," Barry said, blushing despite himself.

"Uh-huh," Taako said. "Sure."

"We're not!" Barry said. It seemed Lup and Taako had the same "I don't believe that at all" face.

His phone started ringing. Taako's look intensified at the I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston ringtone. Barry's face got even hotter.

"It's a good song," he insisted, struggling to get the phone out of his pocket. The caller ID showed up as Lup.

"Answer the fucking phone, Barold," Taako said.

Barry sighed, answering it. He pressed it up against his ear, unsure if he wanted to laugh or cry at Lup's voice. Maybe both.

"So, uhhhh, we've got a problem," Lup said.

Definitely both.

[nscafe-firehose]

Story time...

During the start of COVID-time, I decided to I wanted to re-collect some comics I had in the early 1990s. I didn't want reprints, I wanted originals.

I wanted to go through Todd McFarlane's Marvel work, starting with Daredevil #241 thru Spider-Man #16 (and then Image's Spawn #1-#25 plus the Violator 3-issue series)... and if you know about his run there, well... there were some pricy titles to collect. However, I wanted to do it, so I did it...

Also, due to COVID-time and my disability, I haven't left the apartment aside from medical appointments, voting and a few random times going out for food and eating outdoors [for the vast majority of the time]. We're both take it quite seriously because I really don't need to get any more sick than I am already. Yes, we're always masking when not in the apartment (and sometimes in the apartment when we have contractors coming in to do work). And we're diligent about as well. We haven't gotten sick yet.

(tldr; I basically haven't left the house unless I had to since Nov. 2020)

Fast forward to 2023 and after some life altering events, we decided to order VIP passes for Calgary Comics+Entertainment Expo, all 4 days. We figured with the early access our odds of not "getting sick" were okay. And also to save my leg from too much stress, we planned to rent a wheelchair.

Fast forward to 2024 and we have our VIP passes to the Calgary Comics+Entertainment Expo... and then McFarlane was announced as a late guest. I thought to myself, sure... I'll get an autograph. I can do that.

But as time ticked on, I felt like naaaah... there are bigger fans who could use waiting in line more than myself. An autograph would be nice but I didn't need one.

Then Fan Expo runs a VIP only context to win free autographs from him. Well then! That I could sign up for. My beloved partner, also a big comics book fan (more on the X-Men side of things [and she was able to get all of the X-Men '97 guests who were here, along with the original animated series Producer and Director autographs... and a selfie with Beast!]), also entered.

We both won (of course I'd get ticket 23... she got 24).

Now I needed to pull some "cool covers" so that we could make some choices (picture 1, above).

She chose Spider-Man #12 (and diligently read that 5-book series to get prepared for the day). I wanted to do Spider-Man #8 (for the very local tie-in) but we didn't exactly need two books signed from that series. So... what to choose, what to choose...

Amazing Spider-Man #311 (and it didn't even make the short list... not in the 1st pic) got the pick. It is a cool cover to be sure but I chose it for the nod to late 1980s Cowboy/Western fashion... and since I've grown up in Calgary, I was very aware of that reference (annual cowboy cosplay celebrations tend to do that... yay Calgary Stampede! [hey, if the comic+entertainment fandom has cosplay for CCEE, why not call the say the same sort of thing for the Stampede... this isn't a negative thing]).

When I told McFarlane why I chose the book I did, I got a chuckle and an "Oh wow!".

The only downside is that due to my disability I'm unable to attend day 4 but my beloved partner gets enjoy a day without pushing me around in a wheelchair (averaging over 9000 steps each of the 3 days)... give her arms and legs a big of a break.

But we did get quite lucky in our timings for things and we appreciated the experiences.

So long as we don't "get sick" and recovery time for this body o'mine doesn't take too long, then I think we can plan to attend again next year.

[domascaini]

Blog 4 - COM 311

Henry Jenkins - Welcome to Convergence Culture 

What is convergence culture?

The word convergence means a flow of content across multiple media, and cooperation between media. Where in today's social media all the tech industries, brands, businesses, and everything that is on social media platforms are available for everyone. The shaping of media content happens top-down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms and bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers' bedrooms. This means that the content that we share on social media is integrated by media industries and that company runs the platforms and owns what we have released. Teenagers with the development of the media, now have a big role in the media area. They are the ones who push up the contents by wanting the media where, how, when they want it, and in what form they want it. If, so it is not possible then they are also willing to get the content or the information even if it's illegal. As Jenkins describes in his book “why media spreads”, even a video shared without permission is considered “piracy’ or “infringement”. Piracy shorts out the conversation of the economic and cultural impact of different types of media sharing. The people that commit piracy, are taking a profit economically from the unauthorized sale of content online. Jenkins argues that convergence is a cultural logic rather than a technological process. This is because consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections between dispersed media content. 

To continue, Jenkins keeps explaining participatory culture, as the new media system where everyone is potentially a producer of media as well as a consumer of media. This is because the interactions of sharing, remixing, reposting, and creating mutually rewarding people are empowered by technology. Important to remember that, to make the distinction between participation and interactivity. 

Interactivity refers to how technology has been designed to give an answer to the user. On the other hand, Participation is a social-cultural phenomenon enhanced by technology for which users can remix and change media content.

Henry Jankins - Why media spreads 

“If it doesn't spread, it's dead”, Jenkins's book “why media spreads” starts with this quote that means if any content that is on media platforms, and it's not spreading, on all the platforms then the idea and purpose are dead. Therefore, this is bad for the economy and for brands and content creators. So it comes back to the concept of convergence culture but explained through spreadability and stickiness. The book focuses on the circulation of content, and why sharing became such a common practice. 

The description of spreadability is a technological resource that makes it easier to circulate the contents on media for their purposes. Jenkins brings back the idea of participatory culture as the cultural production and social interactions of fans and communities. Moreover, we can see this example through the description of stickiness, which is the need to create content that attracts the audience's attention to a website. The circulation of media consumption also becomes collective and is seen as the source of media power called collective intelligence.

Here below we can see an example of spreadability: the performance of Rihanna, a famous singer that participated in the Super Bowl halftime performance, and everyone for a whole week spoke about her show.  

This above gif is a video in the repetition of Rihanna’s super bowl performances, her performance was appreciated by so many people that for a week all social media was spread by her face and choreography.

Here we can see an example of a person copying Rihanna's dance. She went viral as a virus as Jenkins in his book describes media viruses meaning the spreading and remixing of contents as viruses, and stating that they are not ‘like’ but they are viruses.

The spreadable media helped push up Rihanna's performance, by circulation remaking, with a mix of top-down and bottom-up to be viral and reach so many social media platforms. Because the networking communities play in shaping how media circulate and audiences are making their presence by being active. The concept of spread, spreadable, and spreadability is an increasingly pervasive form of media circulation.

[softpunks]

AmeriKate Comic Reading List

Portal-punching queen America Chavez (Miss America) and badass archer Kate Bishop (Hawkeye) are the two awesome girls that make up AmeriKate. Though never made canon, there’s no doubt they’re each other’s “best ones”. If you’re interested in learning more about these two and where they appear in comics, then look no further — this post compiles the issues they’re in together!

More often than not, they have their own partners. Corresponding notes will be made for each recommended reading as a disclaimer, and so you can get a bigger picture of the overall premise! Details about the listed comics (i.e. brief summary), issues about the characters individually, and a sprinkle of OP’s personal opinion of a couple of the arcs can be found under the cut.

The list may not be as extensive as other ships in Marvel Comics are, but AmeriKate makes each issue count.

(Feel free to let me know if I missed any issues!)

AmeriKate Reading List:

→ Young Avengers Vol. 2 (2013) by Gillen and McKelvie

Sequel to Young Avengers Vol. 1 and Avengers: The Children’s Crusade - Young Avengers. 

Kate bishop is/was dating Noh-Varr. 

→ All-New Hawkeye Vol. 2 Issues #2 and #3 (2016) by Lemire and Perez

Continuation of All-New Hawkeye Vol. 1 (2015). 

→ Civil War II: Choosing Sides Issues #2 and #3 (2016) 

Issue #2 by Whiteley and Sauvage; Issue #3 by Doyle and Byrne. 

Part of major storyline Civil War II. 

→ America Vol. 1 Issues #1, #5, and #6 (2017) by Rivera and Quinones

America was/is dating Lisa Halloran. She has a brief thing with Magdalena Velez. 

→ West Coast Avengers (2018) by Thompson and Caselli

Kate Bishop was/is dating Johnny Watts. 

America Chavez was/is dating Ramone Watts. 

→ America Chavez: Made in the USA Issues #1 and #5 (2021) by Vazquez and Gomez

America was/is dating Ramone Watts. 

Miscellaneous Issues + Information!

→ Young Avengers Volume 1 (2005) by Heinberg and Cheung 

Kate Bishop’s debut. Highly recommend reading about this team, regardless of how well (or poorly) MCU does with their adaptation of its members. Here, the Avengers have disassembled, and all of a sudden, a bunch of teen heroes with sidekick-sounding names are popping up and trying to save the city. 

Kate Bishop has an off-and-on again relationship with Eli Bradley (Patriot) and a friendly flirty dynamic with Tommy Shepherd (Speed). 

Lineup: Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Hulking (Teddy Altman), Iron Lad (Nathaniel Richards), Patriot (Eli Bradley), Speed (Tommy Shepherd), Stature (Cassie Lang), Vision (Jonas), Wiccan (Billy Kaplan). 

→ Young Avengers Special (2005) by Heinberg and Cheung

Initial/brief origins of the original Young Avengers Team, including Kate Bishop’s. 

→ Vengeance (2011) by Casey and Dragotta 

America Chavez’s debut. She has a thing with the Ultimate Nullifier, which is brought up and addressed in the 2nd Volume of Young Avengers, where she and Kate Bishop officially meet. 

→ Young Avengers Vol. 2 (2013) by Gillen and McKelvie

Post Avengers: Children’s Crusade event. Though not liked by all compared to Volume 1, Volume 2 still had its own charms, and established how this was one of the first teams to ever be mostly queer canonically — on top of being adolescents too! This was a gift to all the young LGBT comic book fans out there who wanted to see themselves in their heroes. 

Lineup: Miss America (America Chavez), Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Hulking (Teddy Altman), Kid Loki, Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr), Prodigy (David Alleyne), Speed (Tommy Shepherd), Wiccan (Billy Kaplan). 

→ All-New Hawkeye Vol. 2 (2016) by Lemire and Perez

More insight into Kate Bishop’s backstory is presented here. Arguably one of my favorite Hawkeye arcs because Kate was such a sweetheart to the kids of Project Communion. 

→ Siege: Battleworld (2016) by Gillen and Andrade

America goes to another universe (Earth-311) and meets their version of Kate Bishop. Optional read since this isn’t Kate Bishop from Earth-616, but that universe also has other Young Avengers members making an appearance. 

→ America (2017) by Rivera and Quinones

There are two volumes of this and give us a deeper dive into America’s origins. Besides Kate Bishop making an appearance, America goes to a university with David Alleyne (entering the Young Avengers roster in their 2nd volume). 

AmeriKate’s road trip stint was lovely. 

→ West Coast Avengers (2018) by Thompson and Caselli

Kate’s in the West Coast and finds that there’s barely any heroes stationed there to protect the city, so she enlists the help of some other heroes (including her partner Clint, her best friend America, and her boyfriend Johnny). The team’s line-up is really interesting, and the sheer chaos of their dynamics makes it a fun read. This is also where Jeff the Landshark makes his debut! 

→ America Chavez: Made in the U.S.A. (2021) by Vazquez and Gomez

America’s origins about the Utopian Parallel was later retconned here (by a lot). It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, especially for the fans who liked America’s original background since this one pretty much took a massive dump on Rivera’s work in America (2017), though I personally enjoyed the art, if nothing else. It’s any fan’s game as to whether they want to view this storyline as canon or not. 

→ Hawkeye: Kate Bishop (2021) by Nikjamp and Balam

Currently an ongoing series as of now (Issue #3, Jan. 2022)! Kate shows off her skills once again as a private eye and solo hero with this arc. America only shows up in text messages, along with Cassie Lang and Clint, but the events in the story imply they’ll be making an official appearance soon enough. Art is fantastic and the premise is so far interesting. 

[daisiesonafield-blog]

ATTENTION everyone attending ‘Louis Tomlinson World Tour’ NY on Feb 11 & 12 2022

COVID-19 protocol:

Masks are strongly recommended inside the venue at all times for ALL attendees, except while eating and drinking

EVERYONE 5 years and older must provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination

***A negative test will NOT be accepted***

Also, bring appropriate ID matching the name on your COVID-19 documentation.

Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult who must show proof that the child has in fact been fully vaccinated.

You will NOT be allowed into Louis’ show (regardless of age) without proof of vaccination. Yes, even if you have a ticket.

For more details click here

General admission (GA pit tickets):

GA admission is first come-first serve

No wristbands will be distributed

Overnight camping is not allowed and strongly discouraged for safety reasons. Manhattan police may tell fans who are camping overnight to go home.

Please note: They will typically not give you an assigned seat, and you can sit anywhere. So essentially, the whole venue is GA, but the balconies have seats. (x)

Policy subject to change. Contact the venue for updated info.

Door opening times:

Doors: 7PM

Show time: 8PM

Times are subject to change.

More here.

Here are important policies:

You may bring in non-professional 35mm or digital point-and-shoot camera (with no zoom or telephoto lens) or disposable cameras. Video cameras, monopods, tripods, audio recording devices and cameras with professional telephoto or zoom lenses are not permitted. Any photos taken are for personal use only and may not be sold, licensed or distributed.

Outside food and beverage are not allowed.

Gum is NOT allowed

Coolers, beverages (in any type of container) are not allowed.

Weapons/chains, Mace or pepper spray are not allowed.

Sharpies, markers, pens, paints, silly string, etc., Stickers, flyers are NOT allowed

No metal, hard plastic or wooden items

Vapes, lighter are NOT allowed

Drugs or drug paraphernalia, including marijuana are not allowed.

For ADA accommodations call the venue at (646) 293-1080 well in advance.

No re-entry.

Parking is available through Manhattan Center’s partner ParkWhiz

Prohibited items are subject to change at the sole discretion of security and staff or per artist request.

For a complete list of policies and more details, as well as prohibited items click here

Bag Policy

The venue strongly encourages fans to leave bags at home. However, small bags are allowed.

Security may ask that you check your bag (for a fee).

Banners, signs and flag policy:

Signs smaller than 10" x 14.5" are allowed

Only soft cardboards or construction paper

ONLY small flags 10" x 14.5" are allowed

Flags cannot be hung, taped or draped anywhere in the venue

For more details about signs click here

For additional questions please call the venue at (212) 695-6600. Contact them here. Check their twitter here. You can also access their website.

Address:

Hammerstein Ballroom

311 West 34th Street

New York, New York

[vidalinav]

Nessian Headcanon #311

Date Edition 

Shortly after ACOSF ends before everything gets really tumultuous again, Cassian goes to Nesta and asks her to go on a date. Nesta has no idea what that is because casual “dating” is a fae concept, but she’s like okay it’s like courting. Cassian agrees but Nesta is also like... “we’re already mated, why would we need to do this” and Cassian spends a good half-hour trying to convince Nesta to just go with the flow and no he’s not going to tell her what they’re going to do, it’s going to be a surprise. But Nesta HATES surprises, and anything she generally can’t be prepared for, so she is very skeptical about it. But Cassian tells her that they’re going to do something that he’s sure she will like, because he picked it just for her and she’s his other half (Headcanon for another time, but Nesta is the one who refers to Cassian as her other half constantly and mostly jokingly, like oh here’s my other half I’m leaving now, but I digress) and he knows her like the back of his hand, but he’s also still getting to know her and he wants to know everything. He promises that there will be cake at the end, and he can see her skepticism wavering, but Nesta holds up a hand and says fine, they can go on a date, but it has to be something they both like, and not something that just she will like only. So, if they’re going to do one thing that caters to her, then they’ll do one thing that caters to Cassian. And Nesta gets to choose the next date. Cassian agrees to these terms and they go on a date. 

Their first date is a whole day event, because again it’s not just for Nesta by Cassian, it’s also for Cassian from Nesta. He chooses both, the next date Nesta will choose both and that’s how they’ll learn each other’s likes and interests. It’s not in the city, because Nesta is still not good to go with that yet, so the symphony has to wait. They end up going to a fair for most of the morning and afternoon, fun carnival, parade type stuff that they usually have in spring in the Night Court, a bit away from Velaris, in the countryside. Super fun for the both of them, but this is Cassian’s part. Because Cassian loves the fair and he would have taken Nesta to this, but he didn’t expect that to be his first date. He was thinking something more romantic, but it ends up being so fun. Because there’s those games you win stuffed animals, so Cassian wins her a stuffed bat. She names him Temper Tantrums, which Cassian thinks is a long-ass name, but he’s like okay and laughs about it. There’s a maypole, pie eating contests, flower shows, etc. All around they have a good time and buy a good amount of stuff from the farmers market, and they’re just kind of a goofy and fun-loving couple at this point and it’s just really nice. 

Later in the evening, Cassian’s actual date for Nesta is at a dance club sort of. It’s not a club persay, it’s a small studio/restaurant by the water, dim fae lights. It’s really romantic and that heady type of seduction. It’s a place/studio/class for the Tango, which Nesta is like “Interesting! You hate dance,” but the music is fantastic and he just knew that Nesta would like how complicated it seemed, and there’s an instructor of course, who ends up thinking that Nesta is like a gift sent from the heavens. Cassian hates that and the instructor keeps trying to get in the middle and dance with her instead, but Cassian fends him off and they end up learning a few dances, and Nesta is very surprised he’d do this, but he just says that he’s quite happy spending the rest of his life trying to keep up with her. Nesta smiles, suddenly a very big fan of dating. She’s sold. And they go home and have sex after this, of course, because obvious conclusion. 

Anyways, dating starts being a thing they do every week/weekend. Sometimes, it’s the whole weekend. After a while, they just don’t know what to do exactly in the Night Court, so it starts being like let’s point to a city on the map, and see what’s there and so they’ll have weekend trips. Eventually, they actually go to different courts, after getting permission of course, and it just starts being a thing, that Nesta and Cassian are free to roam for the weekends provided they don’t wreck any buildings or start any battles, or curse anything. Cassian is still not welcome in the Summer Court. Nesta’s working on it. And the Autumn/Spring Court are iffy, but Nesta says she’s also working on that. Because if she has to kill Beron herself to go see the large celebrations at Samhain, she will. She really likes that season. 

[manggaetteokkie]

Why 2HA adaptation might not be as bad as we think...

Okay so BL novel “The Husky and His White Cat Shizun” (chinese title: “二哈和他的白猫师尊”) aka 2HA is getting a live adaption which will be called “Immortality” (“皓衣行”). I know that usually, fans of original works are less than excited about this kinds of news and with good reasons. The issue is that those who buy the IP rights to a novel simply see its popularity and think that they can profit off of it without actually trying to understand the reason behind its popularity. Too often, BL fans see themselves forced to endure any of the following: 1) sex change of one of the male leads, 2) creation of a random female love interest, 3) turning a happy end into a bad end, 4) adding a bunch of scenes unrelated to our main pair that ends up dragging the series, 5) turning romance into brotherly affection... the list goes on and on. Sometimes, companies think that as long as they film any two guys together and sell a bit of physical touching here and there, fans will jump on it like rabid dogs which... is kinda stupid because, y’know, we have eyes (and standards) too.

So obviously, with the unprecedented popularity that came with the release of The Untamed, even more producers are starting to see the potential of danmei (BL) novels and with it came an onslaught of IP rights being bought and adapted. The list is pretty extensive, with some big names that I’m sure anyone who’s even slightly in the Chinese BL novel community has heard of before. Of course, included in that list, with the casting for the leads done and filming underway, is 2HA.

Quick overview of the story for those of you that don’t know: the story is set in the POV of the “gong” (top), a character named Mo Ran (also known as Mo Weiyu) who is the disciple of Chu Wanning, the “shou” (bottom) of our story. In his original life, Mo Ran had become the Emperor of the cultivation world through slaughter and tyranny, with the only one ever coming close to stopping him being his shizun, Chu Wanning, who eventually lost his life trying to stop him. After achieving the top by committing pretty much all crimes and sins known to men, weary and tired, Mo Ran decides to take his own life and ends it all. Unexpectedly, instead of dying and going to Hell, he transmigrated to the first year he became a disciple. As a thirty-something man in the body of a teen, he decides to do things right this time around and save the one he couldn’t save the first time around. As he goes through life a second time, truth after truths reveal themselves, with the biggest surprise being that the Shizun he hated so much in his previous life, and who Mo Ran thought hated/scorned him, actually turned out to be protecting him the entire time. 

Mo Ran, in his past life, was powerful, cruel, merciless and arrogant. There was nothing he could not obtain and he knew it. He was cynical, had a very jaded view of the world and was kind of unstable (lots of mood swings and temper tantrums). After his rebirth, he still maintained some of the arrogance and cynicism, but is more mischievous, confident and cheeky. He is very much like a husky, looks kind of scary and big, but can be extremely loyal to the ones he recognizes and can be a bit dumb sometimes. Chu Wanning on the other hand, is an unflappable person with a frost-like exterior, but a heart of gold. Basically, he cares a lot but it’s easier for him to look like he doesn’t than to voice his feelings. He gets embarrassed easily and covers his embarrassment using anger. He is extremely strong, likes peace and quiet, and always abides by the rules. 

Their relationship is kind of complicated. Initially, Mo Ran was in love with a fellow disciple called Shi Mei (despite the word meaning junior female disciple in Chinese, it’s actually the name of a male character). In the original timeline, Shi Mei died and that was the start of Mo Ran’s decline. After his rebirth, Mo Ran decides that he will do everything in his power to prevent Shi Mei from dying again. Don’t be mistaken though, Shi Mei is NOT the male lead. You’ll see as you read more that despite being in love with Shi Mei, Mo Ran is pretty obsessed with Chu Wanning because their relationship was kind of... complicated in the original timeline.

This is pretty much the premise for the story, but do be warned that it goes much deeper and darker than what you might expect (it’s rated R-18 for a reason). So why exactly am I writing all of this? To put it simply, I just kind of want to hype up the series and its adaptation a little, or at least, pique enough interest to give the live action adaptation a chance. Not gonna lie, when I heard 2HA was getting adapted, I was pretty skeptical because how. Mo Ran and Chu Wanning had a pretty physical relationship in the pre-rebirth timeline and that’s partially where the obsession that Mo Ran feels towards Chu Wanning stems from. There’s just basically a lot of unresolved sexual tension between them throughout the novel that I simply couldn’t see getting adapted. However, after thinking about it and reevaluating things from a low-expectations-standpoint, I think it might actually be possible to film something close enough to the original work. Here are some of the factors that influenced my opinion:

First, the series is set to air for 50 episodes (just like The Untamed). Why is the number of episodes important? Because it will determine how closely the adaptation will follow the original story and how much random stuff they can fit into it. Let’s take a step back and evaluate: 2HA’s novel has 311 chapters + extras while MDZS has 113 + extras. Obviously, people might have an issue with the number of episodes (”How are you going to air the same amount of episodes for a series that’s thrice as long??”) but I think it’s a good amount. Why? Because it pretty much guarantees a solid pacing that’ll keep the story moving forward without stagnating. I don’t think there is too much to worry in terms of too much source material being cut because quite a few chapters are R-18/romantic lining scenes that would not have gotten adapted anyways. Once those get deleted, I think 50 episodes is an acceptable amount.

Second, the entire production seems to be solid. The rights were actually bought by Tencent who, if you forgot, was also responsible for The Untamed. With prior success, I believe that they now have a pretty solid idea of how things should be run. Also, the CGI and world-design team is the same one as for Ashes of Love, which has me pretty stoked because while CG in chinese dramas has always been a hit or miss, Ashes of Love is definitely amongst some of the best I’ve seen (see below for examples). (P.S. there are also rumours that Lin Hai, the one responsible for The Untamed’s OST, might be working on 2HA but this is mere speculation at this point.) Overall, 2HA is looking to be like the most high-profile and expensive BL adaption yet.

Third and finally, the casting.

Holy.

Okay.

This is what has me the most hyped. 

Let’s start with Shi Mei, who will be portrayed by actress Chen Yao (or Sebrina Chen).

I know I’ve said that despite the name, Shi Mei is a male. As it turns out, likely for censorship reasons, “Immortality” could not escape from the clutches of the dreaded sex change so they went ahead and turned him into a girl. While not ideal, in my opinion, it actually works out pretty nicely here. In this case, it means that Mo Ran is in love with a female character which would further draw censorship’s attention away from the fact that Mo Ran really has a thing for his beautiful shizun. While it would have been perfect if everything could go according to source material, the fact that it’s Shi Mei that went through a sex change actually works pretty favourably in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention the actress set to play Shi Mei has some good experience acting similar roles so overall, I say that I trust her.

Next, we have Chu Wanning who will be played by Luo Yunxi (or Leo Luo).

For this character, I have no worries whatsoever. If you’re unfamiliar with this actor, I highly recommend you give Ashes of Love a try. He played the 2nd lead and ugh. He’s so good at playing beautiful and elegant characters that are forced to undergo a ton of suffering and pain. Luo Yunxi used to be a professional ballet dancer so he moves with grace and his fight scenes are amazing to watch. Also, he has great control over his facial expressions. He’s able to act out characters that suffer a lot without making them seem weak or powerless. Even the way he cries can be considered both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Finally, we have Mo Ran who will be portrayed by Chen Feiyu (or Arthur Chen).

Mo Ran is an extremely complex character. From pre-rebirth’s insanity and arrogance, to post-rebirth’s hope and reservation, to post-revelation’s love and devotion, the actor’s going to have a lot on his plate. Originally, when I first googled him, I thought that while he’d manage to pull off post-rebirth teen!Mo Ran fairly well given how clean and refreshing his face looks, he’d have a harder time pulling off pre-rebirth’s arrogance, craziness and general “hardness”. However, after seeing some costume designs and makeup edits, I think that the boy might just pull it off. Also, while the actor is nowhere near as solid as Luo Yunxi is, it seems that he’s willing to put in extra time and effort (as seen by his Weibo post about how he’d been studying the source material) to make up for it. I think that with enough dedication, he might just be able to pull it off.

(Psssst! By the way, keeping this strictly between you and me, another reason why I’m such a fan of this pair is because of the height difference. I mean just look at this?? Their height difference is pretty much bang on with the novel height difference after Mo Ran grew past Chu Wanning’s height. Not to mention, don’t tell me you see this and don’t automatically picture a the big dorky puppy following his reserved and cool master around?)

So yeah, all of this just to say that it might be okay to kind of have some expectations for 2HA. I really want to keep my own expectations down as low as possible given the amount of times we’ve been burned but I want to remain hopeful that, with the success of The Untamed, it can pave the way for better and more faithful danmei adaptations, with 2HA being one of them.

[koigoldfish]

[ HQ!! ]

[ 青葉城西三年生 ] ; AOBA JOHSAI THIRD YEARS.

➥ best friends headcanons.

AUTHOR’S NOTE. i have previously published this headcanon on my old blog, @/sapijima (it no longer exists) and instagram. i added some new stuff on, and uh, i pray this is better than the last one. i’m writing this in paragraphs, not bullet points and everyone here is mixed together. i hope it’s okay, because i’m not a big fan of bullet points <//3

WORD COUNT. 311

WARNING(S). other than profanity, none.

BEST FRIENDS WITH SEIJOH THIRD YEARS; is the epitome of chaos. laughing hysterically in the quietest situations, continuing to embarrass yourselves further. loud conversations in a quiet but crowded train. suppressed snorts because one of you made a (bad) joke. it’s iwaizumi constantly face-palming himself and holding the urge to punch every single one of you. it’s filming a video of matsukawa and hanamaki doing tik tok dances in the aisle of a supermarket. collectively laughing at oikawa for getting his hand stuck in a vending machine that one time. ironically, he was helping you get the snack you wanted. “all the things i have done for you, and this is how you repay me?”

planning one-day trips to other prefectures near miyagi. you and oikawa own a canon camera and take a bunch of aesthetic pictures of sceneries and the gang. late night walks from the train station and singing i’ll make a man out of you on the top of your lungs. it’s one of them pretending to be your boyfriend when someone catcalls you.

constantly stealing each other’s food. matsukawa sneakily drinking your boba tea. having crazy bets where the loser has to treat everybody else food. it’s iwaizumi taking every single bet personally, no matter how trivial. “i bet you ten bucks you can’t swallow this slice of pizza in one bite,” you started. “try me, bitch.” iwaizumi glared. hanamaki has tons of unforgivingly ugly pictures of everybody and he turns them into meme stickers for the group chat. once used an ugly picture of oikawa printed on his birthday cake.

wild karaoke nights where either matsukawa or oikawa had too much to drink. singing battles where hanamaki constantly wins them all because he’s a fucking good singer. cramming into a photobooth and ended up with more blurred pictures than clear ones. but still keeping them anyway because ✨memories✨.

MASTERLIST. haikyuu!! best friends series

POSTED. 2020年12月08���

© 2020 | ALL WORK & CONTENT POSTED BELONGS TO IWAKUSA. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MODIFY OR REPOST.

[veliseraptor]

What's 2HA, is it any good? And is it something a MDZS/TGCF fan would enjoy reading?

2HA is the abbreviation for the book whose title I usually see translated to “The Husky and His White Cat Shizun” by Meatbun. There isn’t a complete non-machine translation finished yet - the one I’m reading is up to chapter 149 out of...311 I believe. 

As for if it’s any good - I personally am really enjoying it, but I feel like the first thing to know right off the bat is that it comes with a laundry list of content warnings. (Like, actually. This is what it looks like on the translation I’m reading.)

so like. if any of that’s going to be an issue for you - especially because the main character is someone who has done, shall we say, some nasty things prior to the start of the novel (which come up in flashback), then...be aware of that and probably don’t.

on the other hand, if you looked at...oh, maybe the beefleaf arc of TGCF and were like “this, but more of it, and also worse” then this is a book that might appeal to you! 

I’d say it gets less into worldbuilding than TGCF or MDZS does, and doesn’t have as strong of an ensemble cast in my opinion (at least not so far), but personally I’m really enjoying my reading experience as something that’s extremely, delightfully iddy.

if you’re interested, I linked the translation I’m reading in another post but I’ll go ahead and link it again here.

[sbooksbowm]

The ‘Does This Make Sense?’ Check - Chapter 4, Part 5, Preservation

Part 1 covers the introduction of Chapter 4, The Bookbinders

Part 2 covers the methodology of this chapter and the bookbinders’ motivations

Part 3 covers how fic binding completes the communication circuit via fan reciprocation 

Part 4 covers how fic binding challenges traditional publishing norms 

The Redundancy of Preservation

Anthony Grafton writes that to understand books, we must interview them in their environment, so to understand bound fic, book historians must attend to two fannish environments: the unstable digital distributing platforms from which fic came, and the material preservation form born in fannish response [1]. The history of fandom media illustrates the instability of digital media in myriad ways: links break, sites crash, URLs expire. Many of the binders have experienced fic loss—returning to bookmarked fic only to find it had disappeared, deleted without any indication of what it may have been—but few said that it wholly or significantly influences their desire to bind fic. In response to the question, ‘Who or what do you trust to build a reliable archive of fic, if anyone?’ the binders unanimously cited AO3, but with trepidation. One binder wrote ‘I do not have unshakeable faith that they will be able to remain successfully funded for the foreseeable future or that laws won't be passed that lead to the site being shut down. The key to survival is redundancy, both digital and offline’. Another echoed, ‘the entire internet is ephemeral, and I have had too many technical snafus to put my entire trust into digital format’. And a third: ‘I’m going through my bookmarks and archiving them to the Internet Archive so they are protected against author removal’. The binders share a general wariness towards relying on digital forms, and while preserving fic is not the only or driving reason for binding fic, it is on the list. Preserving works in print also communicates their legitimacy, especially that of queer works, which historically have been condemned or outright destroyed. Bound fic counters the pitfalls of digital sites, where fan work may be lost without warning, but lacks the real-time feedback in comments and kudos and the links to additional fan works, although those still exist online. Bound fic also counters fallacies of traditional publishing, which tends to ignore fan works. As I discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 3, although works like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies emerge from commercial publishing houses, I reiterate that they are not fanfiction precisely because they were not written in nor attend to a fannish context in the way that bound fic does [2].

The binders change the text in preparing it from digital for print form. All of the binders cut comments and many exclude or rearrange any combination of summaries, author notes, and disclaimers, and kudos and hits statistics. One lacks sentimentality around these excisions: binding fic ‘is less of an archive project than a pleasure project’, so the concern for preservation pales to readability. Binders range in their approach to formatting metadata: two binders include metadata (author, title, tags, archive warnings, etc.) as a ‘copyright page’, with content warnings and research notes as appendices. Another includes summaries and tags because to make ‘these books to feel like a true physical version of what’s there on the web’. One binder of 104 fics has modified their typesetting process to expedite the time from screen to print in attempts to bind as many fics as quickly as possible:

Nowadays I drop everything in and go, for two reasons. I try to do a lot of fics and [editing out Author Notes] is a huge time suck. But these notes are also significant as part of the metatext. In the future these will be of interest to any scholar studying early years of online fandom and just contributes to these books being a time capsule of a phenomenon that is very specific to our time and place.

By favoring production speeds over editing, this binder prioritizes print preservation (and documents a book’s environment for a future book historian); ten binders move metadata and extratextual information to appendices or smaller, side bindings to avoid interrupting reading flow without eliminating the information. Although the lack of text editing seemingly counters the attention to craft, the binders distinguished between the craft of the book—its binding, endpapers, and internal ornamentation—from the content of the text itself. Formatting a text can be the most time-consuming task, so reducing that process expedites the production of a volume significantly.

A few themes emerge regarding losses in transforming fic to print form, including accessibility, interactivity, and malleability. Only people with copies of the fic can read those copies, although the fic remains online for the time being. The loss of hyperlinks and comments strips the fic of its community context. Printed versions inhibit the writer’s ability to edit and update the fic, and one binder noted that ficbinding’s greatest strength and weakness is that it makes fic ‘a fossil of a fixed point in time…It leaves no room to adapt’. But the gain is a hard copy and a sense of long-term preservation independent of online activity: ‘As long as Modern English can be read and the book remains undamaged by water, fire or other problematic time-passing problems, it is here and real’. This kind of preservation aligns with a history of recovering lost works via their textual commentaries; were every copy of Harry Potter to be lost and the internet wiped, one could reconstruct the events of the series via bound copies of Annerb’s ‘The Changeling’ and dirgewithoutmusic’s ‘boy with a scar’ series. Similarly, where the digitally-linked community disappears, it is reforged through sharing the copy with the author, who ‘gets to see how a reader put different materials together to best represent their work’. One binder wrote, ‘I think this is a case of having your cake and eating it too: the electronic copy is still there for the wider audience to read, the text is set in a permanent form which has its own artistic value’. The gains of permanence, the opportunity to create a physical object, and the ability to thank the writer for their work through bound fic outweigh the instantaneous losses of accessibility and digital interactivity.

One of my final questions to the binders concerned the long-term preservation of their library: where will their bound works go if they can no longer take care of them or die? One binder was in discussion with the University of Iowa special collections, which is home to a notable fanzines collection. Four posed sending the volumes to fandom friends, two want to bequeath them to family, and two have explicitly stated their wishes in their wills. One added that he firstly trusts fans to appreciate fan-printed books as both ‘stories worth reading’ and as art objects, rather than non-fans who do not understand the connotations of the works. Binding fic is a momentary win in the long-term battle against information loss, and these personal libraries prolong the question of how and where these works will survive. One binder articulated the long-term value of these volumes: ‘I think that people making fine binding versions of fic absolutely validates this place in libraries, and I have no doubt that some of the books made by the fic binding community will make their way into the special collection libraries or museums and other institutions’. Ensuring that preservation will most likely be a self-undertaken project, in the way that all things fandom are.

Citations

Anthony Grafton, ‘Codex in crisis: the book dematerializes’, in Worlds made by words: scholarship and community in the modern West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p.311.

If you actually go back and read the drafts of the Introduction and Chapter 3 that I have posted, I have not yet explained this. Basically, adaptive works like P&P&Z don’t meet Coppa’s criteria (fic made to fannish standards, written about stories currently owned by someone else. Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain, etc.). I’ll have a post next week about this issue with upcoming reimaginings of The Great Gatsby to elaborate further on this really fun question.

[shelovescontrol91]

Shawn Mendes is putting his money where his fans are. The multiplatinum recording artist is investing in 237 Global, the fan engagement company that created and launched his ShawnAccess app, which has been downloaded more than 700,000 times.

Mendes and his management company, the Andrew Gertler-led AG Artists, are leading a funding round and have joined the advisory board for the tech, services and ticketing company founded by entrepreneur and former Warner Bros. Records exec Mark Weiss to superserve superfans of music artists, athletes and other influencers. Via its apps, 237 Global offers direct access to tickets, merch, exclusive livestreams and custom content; the company also provides paid in-person and virtual VIP experiences ranging from meet-and-greets to backstage tours to private Q&As.

Notably, 237 Global also provides clients with a magic bullet they don’t get when they connect with fans via most social media platforms: Access and control of their own data.

“Artists don’t own their own data on these social platforms,” Weiss says. “We don’t say to an artist, Stop using Instagram or Twitter and start using only an app. But we say make it part of your whole ecosystem. I have a passion for  early-stage artists that are starting to buzz; it’s a great time to start collecting your own data.”

The conversation, he says, has grown more vigorous as the live music lockdown motivated both legacy and emerging artists to embrace their direct relationships with fans. At the same time, the company continues to prove its mettle and add features such as internal message boards, commerce opportunities and user-generated content.

Within the past year, 237 Global launched apps for Weezer, Barenaked Ladies, 24KGoldn, Tate McCrae and 311, among others. A New Kids on the Block app is in beta, and Avril Lavigne, Trippie Redd and Iann Dior apps are slated to drop shortly. The company has also provided interactive tour experiences for Justin Bieber and Panic! At The Disco, and is currently activating on the Hella Mega outing featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer, and on tour dates for Alanis Morissette and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

It’s also rapidly expanding to other verticals. Weiss just signed SmartLess, the podcast from Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, as a client and recently offered virtual meet and greets with Philadelphia Eagles’ newcomer Landon Dickerson and culture creator Maggie Lindemann. 237 Global is also working with athletes including Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones to develop an app prototype for the sports arena—an area Weiss believes will soar.

“Athletes are interested in selling merch, building fandom and talking to fans outside of their franchise,” he says. “And they tend to have exposure for a long time, so they can really build their base.”

A Paradigm Shift

Weiss has been evolving what became the core DNA of 237 Global for decades as he iterated his fan engagement vision, most notably through Artist Arena, a company he launched and sold to Warner Bros. in 2011. The core thread has been consistent: Facilitating the ability of talent to connect directly with fans through widely adopted technology, and building out businesses around those connections.

“I saw the paradigm shift happening more than 20 years ago where artists could, in their own way, become their own media play. And then the question was, How do you monetize that,” Weiss says.

When he began working five years ago with former Artist Arena exec Gertler and Mendes, fresh off of Vines, everything coalesced. “Forward-thinking are the best words I can use to describe Shawn and Andrew and everybody in that camp. They’ve pushed the envelope for the live fan experience in terms of VIP for so long, and have been such a great partner for us,” he says. “For them now to show this vote of confidence to be investing in us is just incredible.”

“Mark’s dedication to providing incredible service to fans and artists is unmatched in the industry,” says Gertler. “I learned a great deal from working at Artist Arena and am excited to continue this longstanding relationship with Mark and 237 Global.”

Other seed investors include Bret Disend of Ozone Entertainment, Jonathan Gordon and David Ruttenberg of RGI, Matt Galle of CAA and Photo Finish Records, Steve Greenberg of S-Curve Records, Jeremy Levin and David Silberstein of Megahouse Music, business manager Phil Sarna and entertainment attorney Lisa Socransky. Weiss says 237 Global will be going into a series A funding round in the coming months.

Also coming are additional monetization plays. Aside from generating income from custom app creation and management—which Weiss says runs “in the six figures” per app—the company takes a cut of any income generated directly on the app, be it a VIP experience or merch sale. Artists are able to sell a portion of tickets through the app, Weiss says, via a longstanding arrangement with Ticketmaster based on the fan club model which enables them to directly sell a small allocation, usually 8 percent-10 percent depending on the venue.

Most often, though, fans are directed to promoter and ticketing company platforms for ticket sales, says Weiss. “One of the things we built into our apps is a very robust tour section, and we like to think we’re helping everyone in the ecosystem because we are here to help sell more tickets. And we want to drive more livestreams, we want to drive more audio streams, we want to drive more podcast listeners, more merch sales.”

To that end, he’s exploring an elevated marketing relationship with promoters around the apps’ ability to generate those sales. “We are having discussions around our own internal data and algorithms to see if there’s some kind of marketing arrangement that might happen should we start to prove we really are moving a lot of tickets,” he says.

A subscription model is also in the works. “We think subscription income will ultimately become a big game-changer,” Weiss says. “Download the app and get some level of first access to tickets or content or merch. We’ve experimented with that a bit and we’ve seen that this kind of first access drives memberships.”

[ruanbaijie]

what is 2ha about? do you have a link to the tl???

hello!! oh my god I don’t even know where to begin （๑✧∀✧๑）

2ha is short for 二哈和他的白猫师尊, lit “the husky and his white cat shizun”, a bl novel by 肉包不吃肉 “meatbun doesn’t eat meat”. commonly known as 2ha because 二 is Chinese for the number 2 and 哈 is pronounced as ha. 

the name of the novel sounds really fun and fluffy and innocent... but it really... is not (ﾟДﾟ;)

the main pairing is between a master (Chu Wan Ning) and his disciple (Mo Ran / Mo Wei Yu), and the novel starts off with Mo Ran the tyrannical emperor (30+ yo) taking his own life and then waking up some 15-17 years past, when he was still an innocent (ish) youth and still under the tutelage of Chu Wan Ning and basically before he did all the Bad Things. he takes this as an opportunity to try to change what he knows comes next... but of course PlotTM happens and he finds out that the events of his past life and rebirth were not what he had always thought them to be (*cough* cryptic)

@baoshan-sanren has done another two summaries of 2ha [here and here] which are much more detailed (with minor spoilers)!

the entire novel is quite plot heavy and there are a total of 311 chapters split into 3 books, with a bunch of extras. they’re currently being translated by rynn here which are really good because what’s helpful is that before each chapter/ section, rynn will put in warnings for any triggers that will pop up... and there are a lot of triggers in this novel:

rape, underage sex, explicit sex, gore, corporal punishment, unhealthy relationships, questionable principles, among other immoralities

- from rynn’s carrd

rynn’s currently at chapters ~120-130+ (I don’t keep track), so most people who can’t wait end up going over to read the machine translations here. I’ve not taken a look at these before, but I’ve heard of a mixture of reviews from “I can’t understand it at all” to “it’s quite readable actually” so at your own risk

BUT all these warnings aside, I would really recommend giving this a go because 

1. the plot: it’s a long novel compared to mdzs and even tgcf, but really really well crafted. even in the earlier chapters, meatbun already drops hints as to what will unfold later in the novel. ALSO there are a lot of plot twists and I don’t recommend searching characters ahead because I made the mistake of curiously searching them up on baidu MULTIPLE TIMES and *cough* spoiled a few of these for myself (╯ಠ‿ಠ)╯︵┻━┻

2. the characters: most of them are really well developed and fleshed out and even the side characters have their own backstories. this is one of the cases where it’s difficult to hate the big bad (for me at least, I think there are people who hate them to the core, to each their own I guess) because their motivations are just that convincing

3. THE KNIVES: mdzs was pain but this... this was a whole new level. and for someone who really loves angst and pain (*cough* me), this novel will be RAW.

4. the live adaptation that’s slated to be released in 2021: a dedicated fan had made a fan video (which I can’t find anymore ;_;) compiling scenes starring Luo Yun Xi (in Ashes of Love) and Chen Fei Yu (in Ever Night (? I think)). it started out as a fan cast but it caught the attention fo the 2ha live action drama producer... who really ended up casting Luo Yun Xi and Chen Fei Yu as Chu Wan Ning and Mo Ran respectively. 

filming for the live adaptation is currently underway and if the bts leaks are revealing anything, it’s that they are *perfect* for their roles (right down to the height difference) ﾟ.+(〃ﾉωﾉ)ﾟ.+°

this answer turned out... longer than expected. but hope it helped it some way!! ^^ I am shitting my pants waiting for the live action to be out because I want to cry and also at the same time watch how people react to the plot twists because the ploT IS SO DAMN GOOD (and also very painful)

[ronweasleyisourking]

A Response to “Why Harry & Hermione Should Be Together”, a YouTube Video by the Super Carlin Brothers

First, there are some things that I want to get out of the way:

I harbor no hatred towards Jonathon and Ben or any members of the Super Carlin Brother team and this is not meant as a reason for anyone to leave hate comments on their videos or social media. I have been a fan of theirs for several years now and am simply using their video to get my opinions on the matter out there.

I am all for letting people have their own opinions and people shipping whatever they want, with a couple exceptions such as pedophilia and incest, neither of which is the case here. This is not meant to make Harry/Hermione fans feel attacked or excluded. Again, I am just using the reasons stated in defense of Harmione in this video to create a list of reasons of why I, personally, am against them being together. 

Some quotes might be slightly misquoted due to very quick annotations on my part, but I believe the meaning of the quotes stayed the same.

The video starts out with Ben wanting to get a few things out of the way before getting on to his reasons on why Harry and Hermione should be together and those things were: “Hermione is, like, whatever comes, like, one steo above queen.”, Movie Ginny, and horrible Harry/Ginny moments in the movies which honestly instantly put me into fight or flight mode because while he explains that he doesn’t know if the movies are affecting his judgement, I could tell right away that a lot of the reasons were going to boil down to the movies. 

Then he moves on to his reasons which in summary are: Harry and Hermione are really great friends, Harry and Ginny came out of nowhere, Ron and Hermione fight a lot, and he ships Ron and Luna. Below, I will discuss each of these reasons and my thoughts on it. 

Reason #1: “Harry and Hermione are just really good friends who get along and work well together.” 

Sure, they’re great friends, I’ll give you that, but let me show you how they act when Ron isn’t around: 

Deathly Hallows, Chapter 16 Godric's Hollow, pages 311 and 312

Now let’s get to his actual reasoning

“In the first book it seems like that’s what they’re setting you up for anyway.”

Interesting take, I wonder why he thinks this.

“Ron is straight up mean to Hermione all the way up to Halloween.”

Oh, really, an eleven year old was mean to another eleven/twelve year old and then they became friends. How odd. That never happens in real life. (Note the sarcasm.) And I wonder, was Harry friends with her before Halloween? *thinks back on book* Hmm, nope. 

“...Extremely touching moment right before Harry has to go through and face down Quirrel.”

Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 16 Through the Trapdoor, pages 286 and 287

Listen, if I thought one of my friends was about to die, I don’t need to be their  soulmate to say something nice to them before I may never see them again. Plus, they’re eleven and twelve at this point, and even if Hermione did have a crush on him then, that doesn’t mean they belong together.

“It’s not like the rest of the books are just littered with confessions of admiration. I think it’s just overall the way these two would treat each other, like, it comes with so much more respect, it feels like.”

Friends can respect each other.

“It seems like all the time, she’s throwing her arms around him, like a big hug whenever she sees him.”

I feel like a lot of the hugs are movie scenes but also friends can show physical affection, hugs do not mean someone likes you. 

“She’s like kinda low-key super interested in Harry’s love life.”

This was about Cho and Hermione’s interest in Harry and Cho’s friendship/relationship but I’ve had complete strangers interested in my love life, let alone my friend’s interest, it does not mean any of them liked me. 

I didn’t get a direct quote on these next two, but he goes off on a tangent about Krum and Hermione (which I do not even want to talk about) and ended it with his theory that Hermione only went to the Yule Ball with Krum to make Harry jealous and backs it up with zero proof - unless you count stating that Krum is also a seeker is great evidence, which I do not.

He also brings up the fact that Hermione helps Harry with the summoning charm before the first task in Goblet of Fire but Ron let Harry practice the stunning spell on him repeatedly before the third task so... I’m just saying if we’re going to base ships off people helping Harry with a task, we have better options.

Honestly, a lot of evidence in the video for Hermione and Harry was speculation about Hermione liking Harry and very little on whether Harry liked Hermione, which matters just as much, and we know for a fact that he didn’t:

Deathly Hallows, Chapter 19 The Silver Doe, page 378

Reason # 2: “Harry and Ginny, I guess are, like, fine, but it’s this thing that’s, like, lightly introduced where Ginny has a crush on him in book two and then it sort of evaporates and doesn’t exist at all until it comes on full bore in book six and it kind of feels, like, shoehorned in.”

This reason is given little evidence, other than a theory that Hermione was “eliminating the biggest threat” by telling Ginny to date other guys, which is just weird. 

The build up of Harry and Ginny’s friendship and eventual relationship is subtle but amazing and I really suggest you check out @hillnerd​ ‘s post on it here because they explain the build up better than I ever could.

Reason #3: “Ron and Hermione fight... a lot.”

Disclaimer: A lot of these quotes are less about them fighting and more about Ben trying to discredit Ron and Hermione.

“It’s not that I don’t like Hermione and Ron together, like, I would say they’re a 95 out of 100, it works pretty good, but I’m here to say that Harry and Hermione are a straight up one hundo out of one hundo. Okay, maybe not a one hundo out of one hundo but at least a 96 and when did Hermione ever settle for one point lower than she possible could have on a quiz.”

Relationships are not a quiz that can be graded and Hermione did not settle for Ron, this is just a horrible argument. 

“Hermione and Ron, they don’t exactly always share the same kind of intimate friendship.”

Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 23 Christmas on the Closed Ward, page 503

He specifically uses this book excerpt to back up his point, stating that Hermione’s responses to gifts prove that she likes Harry better than Ron - when in truth, she just likes Harry’s gift better. 

“...Yule Ball though, let’s actually talk about that because I feel like it’s a really great example of Ron not noticing Hermione.” 

Goblet of Fire, Chapter 22 The Unexpected Task, page 400

“He’s only just now realizing that she is someone that he either is or even could be romantically interested in.”

I just want to point out that at this point, Ron is fourteen, and fourteen year olds, at least in my experience, are not the smartest. Yes, he was being a bit of git in this scene, thinking that just because Hermione was a girl and their friend, she should go with one of them, and thinking that it’s impossible she could have gotten a date on her own - but he obviously knew she was a girl. And yeah, maybe he is just realizing that he could be attracted to her, but fourteen isn’t a weird age to begin recognizing attraction. 

Ron and Hermione have a great relationship, and yes, in a lot of the text, they are fighting. But we should not forget that Harry is narrating the books and we don’t get to see the entirity of their relationship. Of course he’s narrating about their fights - that’s the part of their friendship/relationship that effects him.

“Secret” Reason #4: “I think that Ron should have ended up with Luna.”

I can see some of the reasoning for this because there is a little bit of evidence of Luna maybe liking Ron in Order of the Phoenix, but I don’t think we see anything that would suggest Ron liking Luna, which again, is also important. And he gives no reason why he thinks Ron and Luna would have been better suited for each other.

Finally, Ben’s concluding point was 

“And you know what, if I’m reading too much into the books which maybe we do, the movies go out of their way to reinforce the idea.”

This concluding statement is basically my earlier fear coming true, when in the end, all the reasons boiled down to a montage of scene of Harry and Hermione in the movies, which let’s be honest, were basically just Steve Kloves’ Harmione fanfiction.

I’m going to be honest, I watched this video all the way through twice, and I found the reasoning weak and not at all convincing. You can ship whatever you want - even Harry and Hermione - but that doesn’t mean it would work in actual canon. 

[bookiemonsterph]

The Isle Of The Lost

Synopsis:

Twenty years ago, all the evil villains were banished from the kingdom of Auradon and made to live in virtual imprisonment on the Isle of the Lost. The island is surrounded by a magical force field that keeps the villains and their descendants safely locked up and away from the mainland. Life on the island is dark and dreary. It is a dirty, decrepit place that's been left to rot and forgotten by the world.

But hidden in the mysterious Forbidden Fortress is a dragon's eye: the key to true darkness and the villains' only hope of escape. Only the cleverest, evilest, nastiest little villain can find it...who will it be?

Maleficent, Mistress of the Dark: As the self-proclaimed ruler of the isle, Maleficent has no tolerance for anything less than pure evil. She has little time for her subjects, who have still not mastered life without magic. Her only concern is getting off the Isle of the Lost.

Mal: At sixteen, Maleficent's daughter is the most talented student at Dragon Hall, best known for her evil schemes. And when she hears about the dragon's eye, Mal thinks this could be her chance to prove herself as the cruelest of them all.

Evie: Having been castle-schooled for years, Evil Queen's daughter, Evie, doesn't know the ins and outs of Dragon Hall. But she's a quick study, especially after she falls for one too many of Mal's little tricks.

Jay: As the son of Jafar, Jay is a boy of many talents: stealing and lying to name a few. Jay and Mal have been frenemies forever and he's not about to miss out on the hunt for the dragon's eye.

Carlos: Cruella de Vil's son may not be bravest, but he's certainly clever. Carlos's inventions may be the missing piece in locating the dragon's eye and ending the banishment for good.

Mal soon learns from her mother that the dragon's eye is cursed and whoever retrieves it will be knocked into a deep sleep for a thousand years. But Mal has a plan to capture it. She'll just need a little help from her "friends." In their quest for the dragon's eye, these kids begin to realize that just because you come from an evil family tree, being good ain't so bad.

Title: The Isle of the Lost Series: Descendants Author: Melissa de la Cruz ISBN: 1484720970 (ISBN13: 9781484720974) Pages:  311  pages (Hardcover) Published: May 5th 2015 by Disney-Hyperion Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Children, Adventure

My interest in this novel was thanks to initially seeing advertisements for the first made-for-television Disney movie, The Descendants, which, much like the book here, focuses on the offspring of four of the most notorious neer-do-wells in the Disney universe. (And, as a sidebar, the movie is honestly good, clean fun! I know I’m not in the target audience for it but I really did enjoy it, and the songs are super-catchy.)

Overall, I found The Isle of the Lost to be a speedy, entertaining read. Plot-wise, the novel focuses on and fleshes out the lives of four young antiheros: Mal, daughter of the evil fairy Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty; Evie, daughter of the vain Evil Queen from Snow White; Jay, son of the wizard Jafar from Aladdin; and Carlos, son of puppy-hatin’ Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians. These four teens, their parents, and others like them (read: villains) have been eternally banished to the Isle of the Lost by edict of King Beast (from Beauty and the Beast) who rules the United States of Auradon. As far as the four leads are concerned, they aspire to be as bad as their parents, but they’ve not quite earned their proverbial stripes.

I really enjoyed the character dynamics here, which is what caused me to bump this up from three-stars to four-stars. Even though this is a fantasy story, the teens have to contend with making their parents proud (something that’s a part of growing up even in the real world). Mal struggles most of all as her mother rules the Isle; Evie hopes to maintain her mother’s high standards of outer beauty; Jay is determined to be the best thief on the Isle; and Carlos, who is an inventor at heart, struggles with his fur-loving mom and her demanding ways.

Even though these kids are the flesh and blood of notorious folks, I called them antiheroes for a reason. They’re not do-gooders by nature, so the titles of “hero” and “heroine” don’t fit. On the other hand, these kids aren’t full of cold-blooded, black-hearted evil either, so they don’t qualify as true villains. Instead, they’re antiheroes – figures who are neither consistently moral nor abjectly immoral and who make good, moral choices at times. The best instances of this arrive in the book’s latter half where the gang seeks out the Dragon’s Eye, a magical artifact that will cement Maleficent’s power. Even though from the start Mal acts like this is all about her, her attitude changes and she shows that she’s not entirely like her mom in a good way. As a whole, while there is some teenage drama here (something I cringe at if it happens too much), it’s not all-encompassing as the story focuses more on developing the lead characters as individuals, not having them constantly squabble or wallow in angst.

Overall, character-wise, this is a fun romp, and long-time fans of Disney will be pleased with the incorporation of many familiar faces, from the members of King Beast and Queen Belle’s court to the denizens on the Isle. The author clearly knows her Disney neer-do-wells and presents them in a light that, much like a Disney film, doesn’t negate the fact that they’re not heroes but doesn’t make them psychotic and bloodthirsty either.

As stated, the characters saved this from being a three-star read for me. Writing-wise, this novel is a simple, quick read for adults, but at times, it’s almost a little too simplistic though it manages not to insult an adult reader’s intelligence and, to be fair, this wasn’t penned with grownups in mind anyway. That being said, the best audience for this novel would be pre-teens and young teens (i.e. ages 10 to 15). Anyone younger probably won’t appreciate the character dynamics and/or Disney villain line-up (as they might be too young to be familiar with much of the canon), and anyone older than 16 might not be attracted to the novel’s delivery. However, I, an adult reader, liked it enough to keep it on my bookshelf and I’d definitely read any related books if this happens to become a series. It definitely has potential and I’d love to read more.

Content-wise, this is a very age-appropriate novel for its chief audience. There essentially is no profanity aside from some invented words and a PG-level word here or there, but the occurrence is so sporadic, if you blinked you’d miss them. There really is no violence other than some nasty (but overall harmless) pranks some of the villains pull. Lastly, there is no sexual content of any kind and the interactions Mal and Evie have with Jay and Carlos are chaste and appropriate for their characters’ ages. Overall, parents and guardians should have nothing to fear in handing this novel off to their Disney-loving pre-teen or teen (though I always encourage parents and guardians to read books first as everyone has a different spectrum for gauging appropriateness for various ages).

In the end, The Isle of the Lost is a fun, frothy read with colorful characters and plenty of potential for future adventures. While the writing itself can be a bit too breezy in terms of simplicity, it works as a vehicle to carry the plot and characters. For pre-teens and young teens, this is a treat; and adult readers can enjoy it, too, for its homage to some of Disney’s best of the worst.

[blog-fthirteen]

The Long Runs--Cap Connection, Chapter 6: “Captain America #312″

#312: “Deface the Nation”

Writer: Mark Gruenwald Pencils: Paul Neary Inks: Dennis Janke

The short version: Steve Rogers receives his accrued back pay from the Army--a million dollars! He plans to open the Captain America emergency hotline with it, but Flag-Smasher crashes the launch to spread his anti-patriotic message!

I started this feature five years ago, because I was fascinated with Mark Gruenwald’s decade-long Captain America run and wanted to talk about it.

Five weeks later, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.

I didn’t feel like talking much about Captain America after that.

Over the years, I thought back to this blog, and wanted to return to it. For various reasons, I did little more than start, scrap and return to this piece all over again.

But a lot has happened in the last five years, and I guess I’m ready to get back to discussing a fictional symbol of a nation built on a huge lie.

Anyway, let’s talk comics.

Captain America #312 is available to read on Marvel Unlimited, to purchase digitally on Comixology, or as part of the Society of Serpents Epic Collection trade paperback.

“With each flag I smash, the liberation of the world is one step closer!”

In this issue, Captain America fights Flag-Smasher, a terrorist who seeks to destroy the concept of nations altogether. He begins the issue destroying the flags at the United Nations, and ends it trying to attack Captain America at a speaking event the latter hosts.

We don’t learn his name this issue, but he does tell his origin story. Flag-Smasher’s father was a diplomat who truly believed in peace, but ended up trampled to death at a protest outside the Latverian embassy. With his own hero dead, Flag-Smasher adopted a philosophy that peace cannot be achieved unless nations, and their symbols, are abolished.

Flag-Smasher is a bad man doing bad things for what he believes are the right reasons, and if there were any deeper characterization, he’d be a much better villain. As it is, he’s a thought exercise, a debate masquerading as a supervillain.

The event he crashes at issue’s end sees Captain America announcing the creation of a nationwide toll-free number to contact him.

Back in issue #311, editor Mike Carlin happened upon a letter from a fan about something weird in his family’s barn. He gave it to Steve Rogers--if you recall, Steve walked in off the street and became the regular artist for the Marvel Universe’s Captain America comic--and when Cap investigated, he found the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android.

That confrontation stuck in his mind, making him realize he’d focused too much of his time on New York and become too inaccessible to the American people. So how does he change this?

Well, first, he gets a check for a million dollars.

It turns out Steve was never declared legally dead after he was lost in the Arctic at the end of World War II, so his back pay had accrued since 1941. Steve doesn’t actually want the money, but the government disregarded his wish for them to keep it. So he and his fiancée Bernie Rosenthal decide to use the money to create a Captain America emergency hotline.

All of this leads to a big, splashy fight scene that sees Flag-Smasher threaten to kill audience members at the unveiling if they don’t listen to his ideas. And while Cap can see his earnest desire to make the world a better place, he can’t abide willfully placing lives in danger.

Fortunately, a couple of well-timed distractions from the crowd and the police give Cap the opportunity he needs, and he is able to out-fight Flag-Smasher.

Flag-Smasher would return during this run (and a number of times since), but he never became one of Cap’s really iconic villains. Still, some of Gruenwald’s dialogue here is pretty stirring. He writes Flag-Smasher as a man possessed of his ideas, while his Cap is sympathetic, but stands firm for his own ideals.

This isn’t my favorite issue. Sure, Paul Neary’s art is as good as ever, and the action scene at the end is solid. But the Flag-Smasher was a dumb villain in my book, the first dud in Gru’s tenure. I didn’t think he’d amount to much of anything outside of his sporadic appearances in comics, but then time (and Kevin Feige) went and proved me wrong.

Of course, if you’re reading this, you know Flag-Smasher less as a Space Ghost lookalike and more as the anti-nationalist terrorist group at the center of Marvel Studios’ “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” TV series.

The Flag-Smashers of the MCU have a similar motivation, but with an added complexity necessary for a live-action adaptation. That group believes the world was better when nations loosened their borders and helped others during the five years between “Infinity War” and “Endgame,” and yearns to return the world to that state by stopping the MCU’s Global Repatriation Council from restoring national borders and forcibly relocating refugees.

That’s a much better approach than the 616 Flag-Smasher’s literal flag-smashing. But as the series progresses, the MCU group’s methods become more extreme, and given more to collateral damage. I suppose that’s necessary in order to give the heroes reason to oppose them, but I understand critics who think that trope undercuts their valid arguments.

There’s a bit towards the end of this issue where someone in the crowd calls Flag-Smasher a Communist, and he responds that he hates Communism as much as he hates what America stands for. I thought of that during the intense fan debate over the MCU Flag-Smashers and their methods, about how it’s hard to tackle complex issues in superhero comics. 

That isn’t to say it hasn’t been done before. This was far from the first time. But even as superhero comics grew more sophisticated, the genre still found itself facing the limitations of four-color fiction where good guys in long underwear beat up bad guys in body armor. It still pushes back against those limitations today.

Flag-Smasher isn’t the only character from Gruenwald’s run to make it into “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” We’ll get to a pretty big one down the road.

And we will get to him. The Cap Connection is back, and I’m in it for the long haul.