#Fight of Fury 2020

[batboyblog]

Don't just protest, remember to VOTE!

Yesterday's Hands Off protests were great, thousands of people in thousands of cities and towns across America turned out to wave flags and signs and chant and generally say "fuck this, fuck Trump!" Which is lovely. However it's just one step, if those people don't organize and show up to vote it'll be sound and fury representing nothing. And you don't even have to wait till next year to vote to show Trump, Musk, and the Republicans what you think of them, there are important elections this year, some in the coming days!

Virginia

Virginia will be the single biggest test of Trump's popularity and the biggest chance any group of people in 2025 have to reject him. Right now all 3 of Virginia's statewide offices, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General are Republicans and that is a disaster. As Musk is laying waste to the federal workforce thousands of whom live in Virginia their governor is cheering not fighting back. This November is a chance to change that

Governor

Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger is the Democratic nominee. Spanberger flipped a red seat in 2018 and defended it in 2020 and 2022 in some of the toughest races for Democrats, a consistent critic of Trump, a supporter of pro-choice, and LGBT rights she has campaigned hard against Trump's mass firing of federal workers. The Republican his current Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears who refers to herself as "Trump in Heels" if Earle-Sears is elected Virginia will get one of the most Trumpy and crazy governors in America.

So if you're in Virginia make sure to vote, of course, but if you went out protesting Yesterday, get your ass in gear and volunteer to take your state back, and anyone anywhere can donate this is most likely the most important race in the nation this year.

Attorney General

Across America Democratic Attorneys General have sued the Trump administration over its illegal and insane orders, and won. But the emergency injections pausing Trump's orders, including the mass firings of workers only apply to states that sue. Since Virginia's AG is a Republican federal workers living in Virginia unlike Maryland or DC have NO voice in court. Indeed Republican AGs including Virginia's Jason Miyares are filing briefs supporting Trump in court. If every day Virginians want a voice in court against Trump, want emergency court orders to apply to them not just their neighbors, they need to WIN this.

the Democratic nominee is likely to be Jay Jones, a former state rep and candidate in 2021, If you're in Virginia sign up to help him today, if you're anywhere in America and care about fighting Trump in give him a dollar

Lieutenant Governor

Virginia's Lt. Governor is a lot like a Vice President, doesn't do a lot, but like a Vice-President its a set up to be governor, Virginia governors Douglas Wilder, Tim Kaine, and Ralph Northam were all Lt. Governor and of course the current Republican Lt. Governor is trying to use it to launch herself into the Governor's office. Also winning all 3 statewide races would send the clearest anti-Trump anti-Republican message. There are a number of people running check them out and figure out who you like

Ghazala Hashmi Babur Lateef Aaron Rouse Levar Stoney

Virginia State House

All 100 seats in Virginia's House of Delegates are up for election. In 2017 Democrats holding onto the Governor's seat was a big deal, but flipping 15 seats in the State House even in deep red territory was the first big sign that Democrats were on the march against Trump. Today Dems hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the State House and defending and expanding that is so important. A strong majority will allow a Governor Spanberger to marshal the resources of the state to combat the damage Trump is doing, and send a clear message that Virginia is fed up. I believe there's a Democrat running in all 100 districts, so if you live in Virginia sign up to help

If you live in Virginia, or in Maryland, DC, Delaware, southern Pennsylvania, the border areas of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, or North Carolina, please please PLEASE some time before November give a weekend of your time to Volunteer knocking doors and wherever you live in America you can phone bank and donate nation wide mobilization made all the difference against Musk's sea of money in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race

New Jersey

Governor

Like Virginia New Jersey has a statewide election this year. Lots of people think of New Jersey as a blue state, but it wasn't that long ago that sometime Trump friend and whipping boy Chris Christie was governor, and in 2021 Democrat Phil Murphy was only narrowly re-elected so New Jersey take it Seriously! A Republican Governor would empower Trump, and work in lock step with him to hurt people in New Jersey particularly trans people, but really teachers, federal workers, racial minorities, women, immigrants etc this is too important to sit out or sleep walk through. There are a number of candidates so please sign up now to volunteer for the nominee when thats decided in June. And check out the candidates maybe there's someone you feel strongly about volunteering in the primary

Ras Baraka Steven Fulop Josh Gottheimer Mikie Sherrill Sean Spiller Stephen Sweeney

State House

Like Virginia New Jersey's state House is up for re-election, all 80 seats. Democrats are running in every single district and if you're in New Jersey please please sign up to help them

Electing a Democrat by a strong margin and growing the Democratic majority in the State General Assembly will send a strong message and better enable New Jersey to resist Trump and mitigate the damage. So if you're in New Jersey don't make the mistake America did and sleep walk through this election, Volunteer get involved Donate and for everyone outside of New Jersey if you know anyone in the state, friends, family etc call them, text them check that they know whats up.

Pennsylvania

Supreme Court Retention Election

Supreme Court Justices in Pennsylvania are elected to ten year terms and when a term is up face and up or down vote, a retention vote, on if the voters want them to have another 10 year term or to call a special election to replace them. This year 3 Democrats on the court face retention elections and like in Wisconsin Elon Musk will pour money into these races like water to try to unseat the Democrats and then elect Republicans in the special elections that follow. If Musk were to be successful, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would flip from Democratic to Republican control. This would put abortion rights and LGBT rights on the chopping block. In 2020-21 the PA Supreme Court proved a key stop to Trump's attempts to steal that election and a Republican majority paid for by Musk would likely roll over for Republican fraud claims.

The Democrats are

Christine Donohue Volunteer Donate

Kevin Dougherty Volunteer Donate

David Wecht Volunteer Donate

Mississippi

Redistricting elections

10 State Senate and 5 State House elections are going to be held in Mississippi in November after a federal court ruled that the state was illegally discriminating against black voters and needed to increase the number of black majority districts in the state. A lot of people discount Mississippi as a deep red state, and it is, but in 2019 and 2023 Democrats Jim Hood and Brandon Presley got amazingly close to winning the Governorship, Republican Tate Reeves is literally the least popular governor in America. Even in Mississippi Republicans are in trouble and if you live down there you can get in some Good Trouble. So Volunteer with the Mississippi Democrats

US House Special Elections

The two House special elections in Florida got a lot of attention but there are two more coming up. They're both in deep blue districts but strong turnout and wider than normal margins send a message and getting involved now is good practice for the future

Arizona's 7th

Called to fill Congressman Raúl Grijalva seat after Grijalva passed away last month it'll be held on September 23, 2025. I normally wouldn't endorse but someone I've followed and liked for a long time is in the race, Daniel Hernández a Mexican-Jewish American, former state rep, former aid to Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who saved her life during the 2011 shooting, he's a good egg, if you're in Arizona please support him

Texas 18th

Texas 18th needs a new Congressperson after Freshman Congressman and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner passed away after just a month on the job. Turner himself stepped in to replace Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee after she passed away in late 2024 after already being re-nominated for the seat. Since it's a safe blue seat thats largely black and hispanic Republican Governor Greg Abbot is just refusing to call a special election, with House Democrats and Texas Democrats threatening to sue if he doesn't soon. Any ways I also have a candidate I've followed for a long time, 26 year old Isaiah Martin, who was a senior aid to Congresswoman Jackson Lee and briefly ran for the seat before Jackson Lee decided to run for re-election. He's a loud voice attacking Trump and is running an aggressive campaign all about standing up to Trump and bring the fight to the Republicans, Please Support Him

State Special Elections

there are state legislative special elections coming up in 15 states and some as early as this month!

Alabama

California

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Iowa

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

New Hampshire

New York

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Washington

Finally wherever you are there is almost certainly a city, town, county election going on many states hold those elections at weird times in June or September check out Run For Something for young first time progressives running for local office near you

Run For Something 2025 Candidates

[utilitycaster]

I love the current discourse because a "woman with a crippling traumatic pasts, gets help of her party to heal from it and spends the rest of her life living a simple quiet life with her lesbian partner" is not the problem, and it has been done before in CR, it's Yasha

If you think about it, Laudna and Yasha's characters mirror each other in more ways than just a monochromatic palette, but one wound up being more interesting and earned her epilogue better and it's not the one that was present for all 100+ episodes of her respective campaign

Yeah; this has come up a TON but like. I have watched/listened to all or part of the following actual play series:

Critical Role (almost everything barring a few one shots, mostly from C1-era)

TAZ (afaik everything except a couple of the most recent episodes)

NADDPod (everything)

RQG (only main campaign and main-campaign canon sidequests, not one-shots, but I listened to all of that)

Relics and Rarities (all)

D20 (most)

Desiquest (first 2 episodes)

Into the Motherlands (first 2 seasons)

Burnt Cookbook Party (haven't listened the last few months for life reasons but intend to catch up, was otherwise caught up)

WBN (first 3 arcs, intend to catch up)

I also am a regular listener to NADDPod and Critical Role's talkback shows. I've been a regular DM since 2020 and had DM-ed one shots prior; I've been playing D&D and occasional other TTRPGs since 2016. I've read a number of articles on the topics of actual play as a form and TTRPGs and discuss it with friends. I'm saying all of this to make it clear: people can tell themselves that I'm stupid and uninformed and don't know what I'm talking about, and I think we all know they're just mad I disagree with them and am a better and more convincing writer to boot, and they're entitled losers who want me to write posts that make them feel good solely through what I'd call bullying but really it's more like if someone tried to shove me in a locker and accidentally gave themselves a concussion running headfirst into a locker, and I filmed it.

ANYWAY getting to the point yeah Yasha tells a story that hits the same core beats while also being a superior character on every level. She also had a difficult and abusive childhood (starting from a younger age) and experienced great loss and injustice, and also committed great harm. In her grief she was taken advantage of by sinister forces that sought to use and control her, and while she was able to escape with assistance, the bindings followed her. She continued to experience loss, and despite fighting back succumbed to her past controllers until her friends - not some stranger, but the people she'd met, coupled with her own abilities - broke her free, and she was able to meaningfully and rewardingly end her servitude. She messily worked through her feelings and in the process found love, and, having been forced to be a weapon and killer, made a choice to set that aside and find her own identity.

Any claim that Laudna's story manages to touch in a meaningful way on the same notes, when she never takes charge of her own destiny and simply drifts and flops about through various paths of least resistance until settling back in a rut, is a desperate and sad lie told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I say this as someone who thinks that Critical Role campaign 2 is the best longform campaign of D&D I've seen, and that Candela Obscura Circle of Needle and Thread, Moonward, and EXU Calamity are all some of the best shortform campaigns of actual play: there is nothing I can think of that Campaign 3 does, across the board, that something else in actual play (ie, in this improvised format) doesn't do in a far superior fashion. That's really it. It's mediocre at best. None of these were the casts' strongest character nor relationship and it's certainly Matt's weakest plotting. If you liked it, that's great, but yeah there's nothing special about it.

[whenlifeisscaryanddepressing]

A message to my American brothers and sisters whose candidate lost this election:

Firstly, I am neither American nor did I vote for your election so do take what I say with a grain of salt.

I’m writing to you guys because I know how you feel. I’ve been there.

During the 2020 Presidential election of the Philippines, I too supported a movement. Not a candidate—a movement. A female presidential candidate who raised hope, became a champion for marginalized communities whose only goal was to create opportunities to shift my country away from the vitriol that came from a previous president who strong armed my country into a bloody war on drugs that saw the death of thousands of poor people.

And like you, I lost.

With the spread of misinformation and lies, my country elected the son of a dictator who proved himself to be the ineffective, incompetent and dishonest leader we all secretly hoped he wouldn’t be.

Our hopes dimmed.

Tears were shed.

Resentment flowered in us like a storm.

It was difficult to swallow the results of an election that had so much at stake. You see, like your President-elect, our current President spent millions of pesos contesting a fair election that saw him losing out to the vice presidential position during the previous election.

Through bullying and intimidation, he sought to undermine a fair election that took him out of power.

And like your current President-elect, he still managed to win at the end.

It would have been easier to accept the results had it not been for the mocking of 31 million Filipinos who voted our current president into office.

We all heard them tell us, “You’re crying over an election? You need better things to worry about.”

I want you to know that it’s okay to cry.

Your frustrations and disappointment are valid.

It is rare to find a candidate you’re able to place so much hope in and to have that hope dashed away is a bitter pill that is difficult to swallow.

I know, you’re probably tired of hearing it.

“Turn the other cheek.”

“Accept it and move on.”

“It is what it is.”

“There’s nothing more to do.”

It’s okay. I’m tired of it too.

I know you’re probably scared and angry and so, so, so tired. Two years after our election and I am still all of these things.

I still think about the what if, the what could have beens. I think a lot about how better off we would have been if the right person won.

I want you to know that it’s okay. It’s okay to mourn those things.

You did your part. You voted and you campaigned and you fought hard. Sometimes, we just lose.

If there’s any advice I can impart, it’s that I hope you take your frustration, your sadness, you exhaustion, your anger, and turn it into righteous fury.

Take that fury and do something with it.

Because the movement cannot stop here. The moment we stop fighting, they win.

To lose hope means victory for the other side.

I get it. It’s easier to get mad at the people who voted for him. It’s even easier to spew the same vitriolic hate towards them when they start complaining about how things don’t change and how your country is worse off but theirs is the vote that put a wannabe-dictator in power.

Don’t do it.

Because that divide is precisely why they keep winning. It’s the same divide they sowed into my country and we are still struggling to fight that division everyday.

Losing this election is a step backwards but losing hope would be another step back.

Even to this day, my presidential candidate continues to inspire hope for change in my country.

I know yours will too.

It’s not the end.

I need you to remember to breathe.

Breathe in the hope you desperately fought for;

breathe through the hurt of the loss;

and breathe out the fear they so badly want you to feel.

The road is long and it’s scary.

But there’s about 50 or so million other people on that road with you. You might not be the majority but even David was small when he killed Goliath.

Cause if you voted for Kamala Harris, you already know you have the courage and righteous fury to fight for change and you cannot give up now that you’re so close.

You lost the battle but it’s not the end of the war.

So tonight, grieve. Cry. Hug your friends and family who are right there with you. Be sad and mourn the loss of what could have been.

Because tomorrow, when you wake, you will continue fighting for change.

Because no one else will.

[hboww2rewatch]

Please read the movie descriptions below

Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action. Dir. by Steven Spielberg

A League of Their Own (1992) - American sports comedy drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) during WWII. Dir. by Penny Marshall

Greyhound (2020) - The film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, and follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four, defending an Allied convoy from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Dir. by Aaron Schneider

Mudbound (2017) - The film depicts two World War II veterans – one white, one black – who return to rural Mississippi each to address racism and PTSD in his own way. Dir. by Dee Rees

Twelve O'Clock High (1949) - A tough-as-nails general (Gregory Peck as General Savage) takes over a B-17 bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape. Based on a novel by the same name. Dir. by Henry King

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - three United States servicemen re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life after coming home from World War II. The three men come from different services with different ranks that do not correspond with their civilian social class backgrounds. It is one of the earliest films to address issues encountered by returning veterans in the post World War II era. Dir. by William Wyler 

The Monuments Men (2014) - An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from German thieves and return them to their owners. Based on the 2007 non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Dir. by George Clooney

Dunkirk (2017) - Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Commonwealth and Empire, and France are surrounded by the German Army and evacuated from Dunkirk. It is shown from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. Dir. by Christopher Nolan

Fury (2014) - A grizzled tank commander makes tough decisions as he and his crew fight their way across Germany in April, 1945. Dir. by David Ayer

Valkyrie (2008) - A dramatization of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup plot by desperate renegade German Army officers against Adolf Hitler during World War II. Dir. by Bryan Singer

[louisupdates]

Former world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury will join Wayne Rooney as two of England's co-managers for Soccer Aid 2025.

Former England striker Rooney will also come out of retirement to play in the annual charity match against a World XI on Sunday, 15 June.

This year's fundraiser for Unicef returns to Old Trafford, home of Rooney's former team Manchester United.

Last year's game took place at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge and raised more than £15m for charity.

"The prospect of leading my England team to victory this June fills me with just as much excitement as any heavyweight fight," said Fury.

"Everyone knows that I am a huge Manchester United fan too, so it's even more special for me that the game is at Old Trafford this year, and I get to manage one of my heroes, Wayne Rooney."

Rooney, 39, managed at the 2020 Soccer Aid and played in the following year's game.

He said: "I'm a big boxing fan, so to do it alongside Tyson Fury is fantastic. We have this in common - we'll both be taking it incredibly seriously.

"It's great to lace up the old boots again - and see some old friends."

Rooney will play alongside former team-mates Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, while Joe Hart, Steph Houghton and Toni Duggan will all make their Soccer Aid debuts.

Singer Louis Tomlinson will also return along with the likes of Sam Quek, Paddy McGuinness, Tom Grennan and Sir Mo Farah.

Former Italy defender Leonardo Bonucci and Denmark forward Nadia Nadim will make their Soccer Aid debuts as part of the World XI, with the rest of the squad to be confirmed.

Since the first match in 2006, Soccer Aid has raised more than £106m for charity.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Leyland Cecco at The Guardian:

A lone figure takes to the stage, a giant maple leaf flag rippling on a screen behind him as he gingerly approaches the microphone. “I’m not a lumberjack, or a fur trader,” he tells the crowd. “I have a prime minister, not a president. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it ‘about’ – not ‘a boot’.” The crowd, indifferent at first, grows increasingly enthusiastic as the man works his way through a catalogue of Canadian stereotypes, passing from diffidence to defiance before the climactic cry: “Canada is the second largest landmass! The first nation of hockey! And the best part of North America! My name is Joe! And I am Canadian!” The ad, for Molson Canadian beer, was immensely popular when it aired in 2000. And now, with Canada’s identity and sovereignty under threat, it has roared back into the public consciousness. In recent weeks, Canadian patriotism has surged in response to Donald Trump’s suggestion that the US could annex its northern neighbour. His threats have prompted an outpouring of disbelief and defiance, but – in a very Canadian way – they has also revived questions over the complexities of national identity. Trump began his campaign of diplomatic trolling before he had even assumed office, questioning Canada’s viability as a nation, suggesting that it could become the 51st American state, and deriding the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, as a “governor”. In response, Canadians have taken to acts of patriotism, small and large: one pilot flew his small plane in the shape of a maple leaf; sports fans have booed US teams; hats insisting “Canada is not for sale” have gone viral; consumers have pledged to buy only Canadian-made products – a pledge skewered in a viral sketch in which one shopper berates another for buying American ketchup.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked “We’re in a trade war, you traitor!” “It’s been absolutely crazy and overwhelming,” said Dylan Lobo, who runs MadeInCa, a website that catalogues products made in-country. “We’re struggling to keep up with all the listings. People are really frustrated and they want to find a way to support Canadian and buy Canadian.” Politicians, aware of a looming election, have wrapped themselves in the flag. And in a show of bipartisan unity, five former prime ministers have called for Canadian unity. “We all agree on one thing: Canada, the true north, strong and free, the best country in the world, is worth celebrating and fighting for,” the leaders wrote in a statement. A recent poll found pro-Canadian sentiment has surged in recent weeks – with the biggest leap towards patriotism found in francophone Quebec, a region historically ambivalent towards federal patriotism. The shift marks a dramatic rebound from 2020, when the divisive policies of the coronavirus pandemic shifted how many Canadians viewed the flag – especially after the maple leaf was appropriated by the by far-right Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa. At the same time, new stress has been put on Canadian national identity amid growing recognition of the historical injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. Statues of monarchs and founding statesmen have been pulled down, and buildings renamed amid a heated national discussion about the legacy of colonial rule.

Donald Trump’s comments calling for the annexation of Canada have ignited a fury like no other across Canada, and even Québec (which prefers to show support for its province rather than Canada as a whole) is uniting to show support for Canada.

[marveltrumpshate]

November 2024 MTH fills

The best way to see all the fills that have been shared with us is our monthly roundups tag or our #MTH-fills channel on our Discord, but you can also view them through the following methods:

Our Tumblr tags: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

Our AO3 collection (only has works posted to AO3; see "subcollections" for specific auction years)

Completed works tag list

To find specific content, use our completed works tag lists above which includes instructions on how to search for a particular character, gen or romantic relationship, universe, and fanwork type. 

SOLO CHARACTERS

Bucky Barnes

deleronicas/@yourheartswerethesame - MCU Bucky fanvid set to "The Apparition" by Sleep Token for @theeternalghost

RoseRose/@tehroserose - "Wakandan Goat Therapy" (a set of haiku about Bucky in Wakanda with goats) for @sofreakinmanyfandoms

Foggy Nelson

thelonebamf/@amazing-spiderling - Custom 616 Foggy toploader for @pomegranate-belle

Frank Castle

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom 616 Frank Castle toploader for castlesprincess

Ikari

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom 616 Ikari toploader for pomegranate-belle

JARVIS

Kerr Avonsen - JARVIS-themed infinity scarf in shades of electric blue, turquoise, and teal for @airas-story

Jessica Jones

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom manga-style Jessica Jones toploader for @castlesprincess

Matt Murdock

@deehellcat - Crochet doll of a smiling Matt in his Daredevil costume, holding his billy clubs/batons for @rufferto9's friend

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom Earth-65 Matt toploader for pomegranate-belle - Custom 616 Matt toploader for castlesprincess

Miguel O'Hara

@caiabresebun - Art of chibi cat Miguel in his suit huffily swiping at a mouse for Phoenixx - Art of angry and sad chibi cat Miguel sitting near spilled coffee for @t0nystark1er

Ororo Munroe

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom 616 Ororo toploader for pomegranate-belle

Scott Summers

Jason K Jones/@jkjones21 - Art of Scott in his X-Men '97 outfit costume fighting Sentinels for @oerbally

Stephen Strange

DeeHellcat - Crochet Dr. Strange dragon for RoseRose

GEN/PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS

Alpine & Bucky Barnes

RoseRose/tehroserose - "Bucky and Alpine" (a sonnet about Bucky and Alpine) for sofreakinmanyfandoms

Bruce Banner & Nick Fury & Steve Rogers & Thor & Tony Stark

Lalaith Quetzalli/@lalaithquetzallicaresi - Fic cover of Bruce, Fury, Steve, Thor, and Tony plushies for "The Plushyverse" for @noxelementalist

Bucky Barnes & Yelena Belova

Vostok/@vostok3-ka - "Пачка сигарет by KИNO" (MCU Bucky & Yelena go on a post-Soviet Russian winter holiday trip, adrift and grieving Natasha) for Snooze

Dum-E & Tony Stark

HT/@hundredthousands-art & KandiSheek/@kandisheek-art - MCU art by HT of Dum-E handing Tony a bag of ice for his bruise and coming over when Bucky and Tony are hugging, animated by Kandi for @massivespacewren, @soliloquent-stark, @iseult-1124, @otpcutie, @whinysteve, @polizwrites, and @dracusfyre

Jeff the Land Shark & Matt Murdock

thelonebamf/amazing-spiderling - Custom 616 Jeff & Matt toploader for pomegranate-belle

Jubilation Lee & Logan

@tiffycat - Art of a happy Jubilee elbowing Logan, who's looking fondly at her for @twentyghosts

Peggy Carter & Sharon Carter & Steve Rogers

Lalaith Quetzalli/lalaithquetzallicaresi - Fic cover of Sharon, older Peggy, and Steve on a motorcycle for "You've got my number" for noxelementalist

Remy LeBeau & Jubilation Lee

c_art - Handpainted clock featuring Remy and Jubilee showing off their sparkly powers for @ruquas (also on Tumblr)

SHIPS

Agatha Harkness/Rio Vidal

yeahitshowed/@tadpoleeater - "real hot ghoul shit" (post-Agatha All Along Agatha/Rio fic where a ghostly Agatha decides to give into Rio's pursuit and Rio swears that she's finally done with the pursuing) for @kayedium-writes

Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton/Jason Todd

@carcrash429 - Podfic of "Parade," a Bucky/Clint/Jason Todd AU fic by ClaraxBarton where Clint meets Bucky and Jason while housesitting for Nat for @esoxwrites

Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers

Hermit/@hermit-writes - Typesetting for "Backhoe," a non-powered Steve/Bucky AU for @zenaidamacrouras1

SucculentHyena/@succulent-hyena - "Heart's Devour" (MCU Bucky/Steve body horror fic where Steve comes out of the Vita-Ray chamber wrong) for @bulkyphrase

Bucky Barnes/Tony Stark

DeeHellcat - Hand-knitted fingerless gloves inspired by Bucky's metal arm and Tony's gauntlet for @coralreefpool

Golden_Asp - "Murder and Baseball" (canon-divergent MCU Bucky/Tony AU fic where Hydra sends the Winter Soldier to win a date with Tony, kidnap him, and bring him back for conditioning—a plan that goes awry) for massivespacewren (MTH 2022)

HT/hundredthousands-art - Art of MCU Bucky with a knife and Tony with a gauntlet, ready to fight for massivespacewren, soliloquent-stark, iseult-1124, otpcutie, whinysteve, polizwrites, dracusfyre, and rufferto9

HT/hundredthousands-art & KandiSheek/kandisheek-art - MCU Bucky/Tony art by HT of Bucky handing Tony a towel for his bloody cheek and then hugging him, animated by Kandi for massivespacewren, soliloquent-stark, iseult-1124, otpcutie, whinysteve, polizwrites, and dracusfyre

@tikiwhip - 616/MCU Bucky/Tony comic where fugitive Bucky visits Tony whom he's in a secret relationship with for massivespacewren (MTH 2023)

Clint Barton/Loki/Natasha Romanov

Eustacia Vye/@eustaciavye28 - "Midst of Death" (MCU Clint/Loki/Natasha fic where Loki is recovering from extending himself past the geas placed on him) for wanderingflame

Logan/Wade Wilson

@panties-on-boys - "Play Fight" (MCU/X-Men universe Logan/Wade fic where Logan goes soft on Wade after learning Wade's in constant pain, but Wade still wants to play dirty) for Rayne

Steve Rogers/Howard Stark

Jeniouis - "The Moments In Between" (MCU 1940s fic of Steve and Howard sharing quiet, secret moments alone) for @ladygigiart

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Becci_chan/@becci-chan - "Assembling New Beginnings" (Steve/Tony non-powered IKEA meet-cute AU fic) for @captainneverever (MTH 2023)

Bee42/@bumble-bee42 - Two illustrations of 616 Tony flying with a besotted Steve in his arms for @oluka

[blogstandbygo]

FTH 2025!

This year, it's more important than ever to contribute to @fandomtrumpshate, so I'm honoured to come back for my seventh (!) year!

My works are here

Past FTH works are:

2024: Scheherazade of the Thrift Shop and In the Arms of the Ocean

2023: The Adventure of Lord Grey and the Yellow Bird and The Skin Over My Heart

2022: Furie and Waiting in the Wings

2021: Nestled Between Head and Heart

2020: Million Dollar Coin and Hunger/Lust

2019: Puzzlebox

My auction site is here but also look at all the other people who are ready to share their art with you!

Bid early, bid often, bid high, and let's fight creatively!

[metalsongoftheday]

Friday, December 20: Van Halen, "Honeybabysweetiedoll"

R.I.P. Edward Van Halen (1955-2020)

A few years after his passing, the general perception of Eddie Van Halen continues to evolve away from the seemingly effortless virtuoso with a boyish smile to a more complicated and frequently troubled genius.  And when that is taken into consideration, certain aspects of Van Halen’s music begin to take on different dimensions.  For instance, while so much of the band’s music radiated effervescent joy there were moments where Ed went out of his way to bulldoze just to prove how heavy he could be, even though nobody ever doubted or even remotely questioned his capacity to tear the roof off.  This strange fixation lasted to the very end, and if ever there was any point when one might’ve felt sympathy for David Lee Roth it was on “Honeybabysweetiedoll”: the track was first written in 2000 when the original lineup tried (and failed) to get back together, and 12 years later Diamond Dave still couldn’t figure out exactly where he fit in the maelstrom.  Eddie’s guitars absolutely smothered the track, and while it was nice to hear Alex roaring with a percussive fury he hadn’t delivered in decades he was also fighting to be heard alongside his brother.  All of that said, the Van Halen family had a telepathic way of locking into each other, and with Wolfgang snapping his father into focus the magic was still there.  In that respect, Dave was almost an afterthought, but he sounded engaged and committed both here and throughout A Different Kind of Truth, seeming to recognize that he was generally considered the weak link and therefore stepping up to at least justify his place in the band.  The smothering ferocity of “Honeybabysweetiedoll” obscured some of Van Halen’s natural talents, but at the same time ripped with such force that, if nothing else, it illustrated that Eddie and Alex had lost none of their power some 35 years after their debut.

[satoshi-mochida]

DOKAPON! Sword of Fury coming to PC in English - Gematsu

Sting will release DOKAPON! Sword of Fury for PC via Steam in English and Japanese “soon,” the developer announced. A specific release date was not announced.

The game, a remastered version of the 1998-released PlayStation title of the same name, first launched for Switch on August 1, 2024 in Japan. It is currently unclear whether the English PC release means Sting plans to release the Switch version outside of Japan.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

About

Engage in good-natured fighting with soon-to-be ex-friends! The ultimate relationship-ruining board game x RPG is back, where the best way to succeed is to play dirty! Spin the wheel and set off on an exciting adventure with your friends! Defeat monsters, purchase weapons, and level up, just like in an RPG. Once you’ve gathered enough strength, face off against powerful bosses in epic fashion! Your journey will take you across a wide, diverse world… Just don’t forget that your true goal is to get filthy rich! Money is everything! Anything goes, as long as it lines your pockets…and as long as you’re cool with it! Will you walk the path of thievery and plunder, or will you hold firm to your morals? Will you join hands with your friends, or plot to betray them? It’s dealer’s choice around these parts! Play even with faraway friends in Online Mode, and feel free to pause your adventure anytime with the Autosave function; it’ll be ready and waiting for you whenever you’re available again! There’s also a full range of display settings on offer, including HD and widescreen support, allowing full immersion like never before! Game too slow for you? No problem! Speed options up to 5x ensure you can always keep things moving along at your own pace. A virtually endless array of options allows you to play the game your way: you can substitute in battle background music from earlier titles, set the number of weeks to play, adjust game balance, and more! You can even give yourself an advantage if you’re new to the Dokapon experience; come one, come all, as this game’s for everybody! The Iron Sword of Rage returns to cut through all the nonsense of the 2020s in style. Come grab its hilt and give it a swing for yourself!

Key Features

-Stick it to your friends and aim to become the richest of the rich!

Whosoever winds up wealthiest in the end (meaning, the bearer of the most assets) shall be deemed the winner!

How do you achieve that? Well, by fighting monsters, plundering, pillaging, and betraying your best buds; that’s how! All the rules are made to be broken in this board game!

Need to fast-track your earnings? No problem! Try engaging with the alliance system, entering the Tenkaichi Tournament, or participating in other unique events to ka-ching like a king!

And hey, if you just want an RPG adventure in an expansive (expensive?) overworld, that’s perfectly within your reach here too!

-Possibly the most heinous Dokapon game of them all?!

Can this even fly in the 2020s?! I guess we’ll find out, since this remastered version retains all the same irreverence the original was known for!

That classic pixel-art world from before is kept intact, but with all illustrations and 3D models updated and given new effects for their debut on the big, high-def screen!

Every 3D model is a full-on ‘toon now, while the illustrated 2D art has been fully smoothed out. But if that’s too much change for you, no problem: the original pixel art can still be tagged in as desired!

-“Rock-Paper-Scissors”-style battles anyone can enjoy!

Encounter an enemy and it’s battle time! But not to worry, because these battles are simple as can be.

First off, a coin toss decides who goes first. When it’s your turn, you choose one of four possible attack types.

Choose wisely, and you’ll be doing some good old-fashioned weak-point hitting for massive damage!

But fail to predict your opponent’s defense type, and that massive damage may be yours to bear instead…

Will you be able to read your opponent like a book? Will your opponent be able to read you? The tides can turn in an instant with a single slip-up, so make your move and cross your fingers!

-Same old multiplayer madness, but now with online matches, too!

Up to four players can rumble locally, with only a single copy of Dokapon among them!

Don’t have any friends nearby? (Lost them all to Dokapon fights?) No problem! Online multiplayer’s got your back. The world’s your oyster now!

Best of all, you can stop playing anytime you’d like (you swear!), then jump right back into the fray later on by loading up your save data!

-Utilize the speed multiplier and up the game’s tempo to your liking!

Yes, you can even speed things up to make the game match your pace.

At 3x or 5x speed, even the busiest players have no excuse not to give Dokapon a try!

The speed multiplier can even be used online, cutting down wait times and making the sparks fly faster than ever!

-Add some sugar and spice to make everything twice as nice!

Call them X-factors or secret ingredients; either way, you can access them in the System menu and rebalance the whole game as you see fit!

Just give it a pinch of this and a dash of that—only as much as you’d like.

Maybe turn down the number of rounds, for example, if you’ve got a busy schedule and can’t quite handle the usual length?

Or fine-tune the gameplay experience by giving yourself infinite magic, or limiting the number of times Wallace appears!

You can even change the background music to some classic battle themes from past Dokapon games, for that little extra kick of nostalgia!

What would a remaster be, after all, without that certain “je ne sais quoi” that gives this series its edge?

Watch a new trailer below. View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.

PC Announce Trailer

[tanadrin]

In Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany, Esra Özyürek describes the way that German politicians, officials and journalists, now that the far right is in the ascendant, have been cranking up the old mechanism of sanitising Germany by demonising Muslims. In December 2022, German police foiled a coup attempt by Reichsbürger, an extremist group with more than twenty thousand members, which was planning an assault on the Bundestag. Alternative für Deutschland, which has neo-Nazi affiliations, has become the country’s second most popular party, partly in response to economic mismanagement by the coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Yet despite the undisguised antisemitism of even mainstream politicians such as Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy minister-president of Bavaria, ‘white Christian-background Germans’ see themselves ‘as having reached their destination of redemption and re-democratisation’, according to Özyürek. The ‘general German social problem of antisemitism’ is projected onto a minority of Arab immigrants, who are then further stigmatised as ‘the most unrepentant antisemites’ in need of ‘additional education and disciplining’. ...

Netanyahu, too, has learned from Germany’s postwar efforts at whitewashing. In 2015 he claimed that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had persuaded Hitler to murder rather than simply expel the Jews. Three years later, after initially criticising a move by the Law and Justice Party in Poland to criminalise references to Polish collaboration, he endorsed the law making such references punishable by a fine. He has since legitimised Shoah revisionism in Lithuania and Hungary, commending both countries for their valiant struggle against antisemitism. (Efraim Zuroff, a historian who has helped bring many former Nazis to trial, compared this to ‘praising the Ku Klux Klan for improving racial relations in the South’.) More recently, Netanyahu accompanied Elon Musk to one of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas, just days after Musk tweeted in support of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Since 7 October, he has seemed to be reading from the Eichmann trial script. He regularly announces that he is fighting the ‘new Nazis’ in Gaza in order to save ‘Western civilisation’, while others in his cohort of Jewish supremacists keep up a supporting chorus. The people of Gaza are ‘subhuman’, ‘animals’, ‘Nazis’. ...

In a more unnerving illustration of the postwar German-Israeli symbiosis, the German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, approvingly retweeted a video in which Douglas Murray, a mouthpiece of the English far right, claims that the Nazis were more decent than Hamas. ‘Watch and listen,’ retweeted Karin Prien, deputy chair of the Christian Democratic Union and education minister for Schleswig-Holstein. ‘This is great,’ Jan Fleischhauer, a former contributing editor at Der Spiegel, wrote. ‘Really great,’ echoed Veronika Grimm, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. The S��ddeutsche Zeitung, which in 2021 ‘outed’ five Lebanese and Palestinian journalists at Deutsche Welle as antisemites, with equally flimsy evidence exposed the Indian poet and art historian Ranjit Hoskote as a calumniator of Jews for comparing Zionism with Hindu nationalism. Die Zeit alerted German readers to another moral outrage: ‘Greta Thunberg openly sympathises with the Palestinians.’ An open letter from Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn and other academics criticising Jürgen Habermas’s statement in support of Israel’s actions provoked an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to claim that Jews have an ‘enemy’ at universities in the form of postcolonial studies. Der Spiegel ran a cover picture of Scholz alongside his claim that ‘we need to deport on a grand scale again.’ ... Susan Neiman, who wrote admiringly of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Learning from the Germans (2020), now says she has changed her mind. ‘German historical reckoning has gone haywire,’ she wrote in October. ‘This philosemitic fury ... has been used to attack Jews in Germany.’ In Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, which examines the German response to mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans, Andrew Port suggests that their ‘otherwise admirable reckoning with the Holocaust may have unwittingly desensitised Germans. The conviction that they had left the rabid racism of their forebears far behind them may have paradoxically allowed for the unabashed expression of different forms of racism.’

(source)

[contemplatingoutlander]

The former Republican David French does a good job of explaining what keeps MAGA folks continuing to support Trump. It's all about the "culture" of MAGA and the sense of "belonging," combined with years of propaganda that have painted anyone even slightly on the left as being "bad" and "out to get" conservatives and their families.

And if we don't understand that, we won't know how to combat it. Here are some excerpts:

I live in Tennessee outside Nashville, a very deep-red part of America. According to a New York Times tool that calculates the political composition of a community, only 15 percent of my neighbors are Democrats. I’ve been living here in the heart of MAGA country since Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the world of my friends, my neighbors and many members of my family. That is perhaps why, when I’m asked what things are like now, eight years into the Trump era, I have a ready answer: Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not. And unless we can understand what’s normal and what’s not, we can’t truly understand why Trumpism endures. [...] It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties. Or take the Trump rally, the signature event of this political era. If you follow the rallies via Twitter or mainstream newscasts, you see the anger, but you miss the fun. When I was writing for The Dispatch, one of the best pieces we published was a report by Andrew Egger in 2020 about the “Front Row Joes,” the Trump superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally the way some people used to follow the Grateful Dead. Egger described the Trump rally perfectly: “For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.”

[See more below the cut]

[...] Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election. At the same time, their own joy and camaraderie insulates them against external critiques that focus on their anger and cruelty. Such charges ring hollow to Trump supporters, who can see firsthand the internal friendliness and good cheer that they experience when they get together with one another. They don’t feel angry — at least not most of the time. They are good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand. Indeed, while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy. Once you understand both dynamics, however, so much about the present moment makes clearer sense, including the dynamics of the Republican primary. Ron DeSantis, for example, channels all the rage of Trumpism and none of the joy. With relentless, grim determination he fights the left with every tool of government at his disposal. But can he lead stadiums full of people in an awkward dance to “Y.MC.A.” by the Village People? Will he be the subject of countless over-the-top memes and posters celebrating him as some kind of godlike, muscular superhero? [...] Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of [the MAGA] fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad you are. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met. In fact, they often don’t even know about the excesses of the Trump movement. Many of them will never know that their progressive neighbors have faced threats and intimidation. And even when they do see the movement at its worst, they can’t quite believe it. So Jan. 6 was a false flag. Or it was a “fedsurrection.” It couldn’t have really been a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government, because they know these people, or people like them, and they’re mostly good folks. It had to be a mistake, or an exaggeration, or a trick or a few bad apples. The real crime was the stolen election. It’s the combination of anger and joy that makes the MAGA enthusiasm so hard to break but also limits its breadth.  [...] The battle and the booze cruise both give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging. They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do. [...] During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail.

[sharksfood]

An Aromantic Look at Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Spoilers Ahead

When I first watched Mad Max: Fury Road, I was 5 years past my last romantic relationship, but I still had the baggage of being a failure at love. I knew I was aromantic, but the weight on needed a relationship, a romantic connection with someone, still loomed over my life. Seeing that film, specifically seeing the character Furiosa, it changed me, and I knew I didn’t need romance. She was living without it, fighting not for it but not even addressing it. Sure, she had Max, but they were practically strangers, and in the end, more like siblings. They were willing to die for eachother, Max gave his life blood, and yet he left her, so she could heal and grow without his burden. They didn’t end up together, Furiosa didn’t magically have a man or woman to kiss in the end, she had the Mothers and the Citadel. She didn’t need romantic love, as family love and revenge was fulfilling enough.

I saw myself in Furiosa, I had my friends and family, and now revenge on the world for forcing love onto me this whole time. It wouldn’t be until 2020 that I’d find someone I could love and I didn’t feel burdened by it. Someone who was also demiromantic (as I’d come to understand I was too) and she became my precious flower amongst the Wasteland. But enough about me, why does George Miller want Furiosa and Praetorian Jack to fall in love?

‘Burke explains that he, Miller, and Taylor-Joy “wrestled the whole thing out,” talking through all the different possible permutations of the relationship. Miller was insistent that there was something of a romance between them. Taylor-Joy saw it as a kind of marriage, but in a “weird environment where one is having to be very careful.” Burke, meanwhile, fought for the notion that the two of them push romance to the side until they believe they are riding off to a safer place.’

Furiosa was burdened with everything, she didn’t need the additional burden of romance. She had enough on her mind, enough to fight through to become safe, she didn’t need someone to love in that way. She did bond with Praetorian Jack, whether that be through a similar struggle, their mutual desire to escape this harsh world, or their rawness in the moment they teamed up. I immediately saw them as a friendship, a kinship, a bond between two people who wanted a better life and had so much taken away from them. They were a found family, just like Max became swooped into Furiosa and the Wives’ found family. I never saw them as a couple, and I didn’t want them to be a couple. Mad Max as a franchise (at least the reboot spinoff franchise) was never involved with romance, so it seems ridiculous to me that Miller would want this pair to become romantic. Why? Why would he try to insist that? But thank God Burke talked him out of that path, as I think the ambiguity of their relationship is so much better. It’s better for the story, Furiosa’s character growth, and the movie as a whole.

‘Miller leaves it open as to whether the relationship between Furiosa and Jack blossoms into a full-fledged romance. [...] According to Burke, there was a lot of discussion over just how explicit their connection was going to be.’

In 2017 I was having one of the worst times of my life. It wasn’t anything to rival life in the Wasteland, but it was horrible, and romantic love was thrust onto me without my consent. It made everything worse. I couldn’t trust someone I had considered a friend anymore, they lied to me, they beat down my boundaries by force, and then I was scarred for what seemed to be forever. Furiosa was scarred. She was scared and full of rage, almost all her life she fought to survive and do what she promised her late mother she would do. If Furiosa had a romantic relationship, that could come crumbling down. She did insist that Jack come with her back to the Green Place when they escaped the Bullet Farm, but not because she loved him as a romantic partner. She knew he wanted a better life, too. She knew his life was scarred and he wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t covered in sand and rust. That’s not romantic, thats just kind. Furiosa trusted Jack, and if he had made any advancements for romance towards her then that trust could’ve been broken.

Its true that all of this is up to personal interpretation. I see Furiosa and the series as a whole as aromantic, or at least somewhere on the spectrum (coming from a demiromantic person). But you could also read it as asexual. Furiosa’s mother was sexually tortured in front of her. Furiosa escaped from sexual assault at the hands of Ricktus. Fursioa left a future of sexual slavery under Immortan Joe. She and the films could be asexual. But you could also see her bond with Praetorian Jack as any sort of relationship, which is totally valid. It’s just not what I consider to be correct, given all that the film and Furisoa as a character builds to. I disagree with George Miller’s earlier vision for Furiosa, and I’m forever thankful that she didn’t “fall in love” with anyone, at least not explicitly.

‘There is little actual dialogue between Furiosa and Jack [...] Furiosa and Jack’s relationship thrives in what isn’t said rather than what is.’

I am fully aware that fandoms crave relationships. They love to ship characters, draw ship art, and write ship fanfics. And yes, I did it too for Mad Max: Fury Road. The only bond I could see flourishing into romantic love was between Nux and Slit or Nux and Capable (the latter being the most obvious in the film). So of course the Mad Max fandom would grab at the closest relationship the film shows in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as being romantic (or sexual), which would be between Furiosa and Jack. I completely understand and accept this, but I don’t have to enjoy it. Furiosa will always be aromantic to me, and she’s probably asexual too considering everything that’s happened to her. 

Finally, I wanted to touch on what is probably the most divisive aspect of Furiosa and Jack’s bond; their age. We don;t know how old either of them are when they first meet or when they become a team. My guess is that the film starts with Furiosa at age 8, and ends with her at age 22 (given that she tells Demetus he killed her mother 15 years ago). Jack is harder to guess, but the Wasteland is cruel, so he could be anywhere from 24 to 36 when we first meet him. That would make him 30 to 42 at his death, and approximately 26 to 38 when Furiosa’s Black Thumb training is complete and she officially joins him on the War Rig. Say what you will about the acceptability and morality about age gaps and “dating” someone you met in their teens, but in the Wasteland they don’t seem to care about that sort of thing. Immortan Joe and Ricktus definitely don’t considering they are keen on keeping a child as a bride (and plaything). Let’s just say Jack is definitely kinder than those two, so I’d assume he wouldn’t romantically pursue a teenager. But this is another reason I don’t read their bond as romantic; it just wouldn’t work for each of their ages.

All that said, Mad Max is very special to me, Furiosa especially. I have a long history of becoming attached to interesting and powerful women who are either queer or GNC in some aspect, and Furiosa is no exception. Whether she is aromantic, asexual, a lesbian, nonbinary, or her gender/sexuality isn't even important for the story, I love her. And the reboot franchise will always be aromatic to me in some aspect, even with its hints of romance. As I eventually discovered my ability to love in my own special way, growing from aromantic to demiromantic, so too can my reading of Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Its Pride Month, and Furiosa killed another one of her abusers in righteous fury, breaking the way for us to celebrate with rage for the queer experience.

“You have to go for a real specificity yourself,” Burke says. “But the right kind of specificity has the right kind of ambiguity.”

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

All quotes taken from this article: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/furiosa-tom-burke-praetorian-jack

Image was edited by me and is free to use without credit. Original photo of Furiosa: https://nofilmschool.com/the-ending-of-furiosa-explained

Thank you for reading! I mean no ill will towards anyone who has a different interpretation than me in regards to Furiosa or the films. Every angle is valid!

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Literally flew right by my radar.

The next ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE is not going to be released by Sony/Columbia, it'll instead be a Paramount release. In theaters, no less. It's penciled in for January 29, 2027, nearly eight years after the previous movie in the franchise. Thorup van Orman is back to write it, under director John Rice.

Soooo, the Paramount animated movie runway as of now...

07/18/2025: SMURFS

12/19/2025: THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS

01/20/2026: THE LEGEND OF AANG: THE LAST AIRBENDER

07/31/2026: PAW PATROL: THE DINO MOVIE

10/06/2026: UNTITLED TMNT: MUTANT MAYHEM SEQUEL

01/29/2027: THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 3

In addition to a bunch of recently-announced movies with no release dates/frames.

DROPZ, MUTTNIK, ONCE UPON A MOTORCYCLE DUDE, SWAN LAKE, at least two more 2D animated LAST AIRBENDER movies, and former DreamWorks picture YOKAI SAMBA.

And there are a few other Paramount animated movies announced over the past 5 or so years - like SUPERWORLD and REAL PIGEONS FIGHT CRIME - that we've heard nothing about that could make a surprise appearance some time in the future. Who knows? If I had my way, TRANSFORMERS ONE's sequel would be in the hopper like right now, but alas. Director Josh Cooley supposedly has something else in the Transformers verse in some form of development, so we'll see about that.

Plus, you have the pending merger of Skydance and Paramount, set to be completed in a few months. And as we all know, Skydance Animation has several films in the works, like Brad Bird's RAY GUNN and Nathan Greno's POOKOO. As far as I know, they're still set for Netflix, where SPELLBOUND debuted, but that may change and they may get upped to theaters. I'd love to see the new Brad Bird animated sci-fi noir movie, one he had been trying to get off the ground since the mid '90s, on the big screen, for sure.

Again, we'll see how it all plays out. Paramount has been up and down w/ theatrical animated movies for a while, with plenty of slates and game plans that just never panned out. Plus movies that ran into various dilemmas, and lost money even.

They keep falling back on the tried and true of SpongeBob and Nickelodeon stuff, well-established franchises, etc. Their past three more original, more untested ideas didn't see a traditional theatrical release. MONSTER ON A HILL adaptation RUMBLE skipped theaters after being meant for such a release for years. A trailer ran in early 2020, I remember seeing that in front of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG. COVID resulted in it being delayed a few times, eventually all the way to early 2022; I saw a RUMBLE trailer before ENCANTO in November 2021... Then not too long after that, it was announced that it wasn't going to theaters and instead it went straight to Paramount+. UNDER THE BOARDWALK lost its summer release date to PAWS OF FURY - which Paramount just randomly picked up out of nowhere. Thus, BOARDWALK had had a tiny theatrical release somewhere, then got a home video release thereafter. Weird rollout. THE TIGER'S APPRENTICE, meant to debut theatrically in early 2024, also skipped theaters for Paramount+. CEO Brian Robbins had made some weird remarks about these kinds of movies around the time as well, which drew a lot of criticism.

I'd like to see them eventually get it together, lol. I love MUTANT MAYHEM and TRANSFORMERS ONE, great reinventions of arguably oft-visited wells, but I'd like to see some relatively newer stuff too.

[hboww2rewatch]

Help Pick the Movie for Our 3rd Rewatch

Please read the movie descriptions below

A League of Their Own (1992) - American sports comedy drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) during WWII. Dir. by Penny Marshall

Greyhound (2020) - The film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, and follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four, defending an Allied convoy from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Dir. by Aaron Schneider

Mudbound (2017) - The film depicts two World War II veterans – one white, one black – who return to rural Mississippi each to address racism and PTSD in his own way. Dir. by Dee Rees

Twelve O'Clock High (1949) - A tough-as-nails general (Gregory Peck as General Savage) takes over a B-17 bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape. Based on a novel by the same name. Dir. by Henry King

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - three United States servicemen re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life after coming home from World War II. The three men come from different services with different ranks that do not correspond with their civilian social class backgrounds. It is one of the earliest films to address issues encountered by returning veterans in the post World War II era. Dir. by William Wyler 

The Monuments Men (2014) - An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from German thieves and return them to their owners. Based on the 2007 non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Dir. by George Clooney

Fury (2014) - A grizzled tank commander makes tough decisions as he and his crew fight their way across Germany in April, 1945. Dir. by David Ayer

Valkyrie (2008) - A dramatization of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup plot by desperate renegade German Army officers against Adolf Hitler during World War II. Dir. by Bryan Singer

The Cranes are Flying (1957) - A Soviet war drama that depicts the cruelty and the damage done to the Soviet psyche as a result of the Second World War, which was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War. Dir. by Mikhail Kalatozov

Ivan's Childhood (1962) A Soviet war drama based on Vladimir Bogomolov's 1957 short story "Ivan" is the story of orphaned boy Ivan, whose parents were killed by the invading German forces, and his experiences during World War II. Dir. by Andrei Tarkovsky

The Great Escape (1963) Adapted from Paul Brickhill's 1950 non-fiction book of the same name, the film depicts a heavily fictionalized version of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in World War II. The film made numerous compromises for its commercial appeal, including its portrayal of American involvement in the escape. Dir. by John Sturges

[mariacallous]

Forty-seven years ago today, everything changed. True believers might already know what it was: On May 25, 1977, Star Wars hit movie theaters and irrevocably altered nearly everything pertaining to the act of moviegoing. Lines around the block, overly excited nerds, an appetite for action figures. Star Wars taught Hollywood that certain genres—sci-fi, fantasy, anything that percolated in the offbeat TV shows, books, and comics of the 1950s and ’60s—had fans, and those fandoms would show up. Star Wars made a meager $1.6 million in the US in its opening weekend. But people kept coming back, and by the end of its initial run it had made more than $300 million. Hollywood’s Next Big Thing had arrived.

Common wisdom dictates that Jaws, which came out in 1975 and made some $260 million, was the first summer blockbuster. That’s true, but it was Star Wars that shifted the idea of what kind of film future popcorn flicks tried to be. In the years after its release, a trove of sci-fi and genre films landed in theaters: Blade Runner, Alien, E.T., the Mad Max sequel The Road Warrior. By the ’90s, the summer movie energy had shifted to action fare—Twister, Speed, Jurassic Park, Independence Day—but nerd stuff still ruled. For every Forrest Gump there was a Batman Returns or Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Then came a little juggernaut called Marvel. By the time Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies started clearing nine-figure opening weekends in the aughts, it was obvious that comic book heroes’ true superpowers involved making your money disappear. The Avengers opened in early May 2012 and nearly recouped its $200-million-plus production budget in three days. Suddenly, there were at least two superhero movies every year, if not every summer, and some new Star Wars flicks at the holidays.

The one-two punch of Covid-19 theater closures and streaming pretty much kneecapped this entire process. The summer of 2020 had virtually no blockbusters, and by the time moviegoers returned to multiplexes in 2021 and 2022, there had been a vibe shift. Movies like Black Widow and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did well, but they weren’t events. Rushing to Fandango for tickets didn’t feel as urgent as it once did. Last summer, Barbenheimer was the buzziest thing in movies. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made money, but they still got beat by Barbie’s might.

Overall, this year could be a wake-up call for studios that superhero fatigue has fully set in, says Chris Nashawaty, author of The Future Was Now, a new book out in July about how the movies of 1982—Blade Runner, E.T., Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, among others—ushered in the current blockbuster era. That epoch, he says, “was always going to be something that couldn’t last forever; I’m frankly surprised that it lasted as long as it did.”

Nashawaty says the success of Barbenheimer—both movies—indicates that audiences are hungry for smart films, but Hollywood’s risk aversion likely means studios will greenlight more projects based on toys and games like Monopoly rather than movies about physicists. “This is a real existential moment in Hollywood right now,” he adds, and studios need to be bold to stay relevant.

Summer 2024, which unofficially begins this weekend, promises a move away from the formula that has been in play for decades. There are only a handful of big popcorn-ready movies coming, and they’re decidedly less family-friendly than the blockbusters of yore. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which dropped on Friday, is a teeth-chatteringly gritty prequel about a kidnapped woman (Anya Taylor-Joy playing the younger version of Charlize Theron’s character from Mad Max: Fury Road) who ends up in a war between two overlords and has to fight her way out. Deadpool & Wolverine is a Marvel movie, yes, but it’s apparently a paean to pegging and cocaine so hard-R that Ryan Reynolds won’t shut up about it.

The series of weird indies coming in the next few months—the thriller Cuckoo, Ti West’s latest horror flick MaXXXine, a new collab from Poor Things pals Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos called Kinds of Kindness—finally have some room to get into the summer movie conversation.

Make no mistake: I am typing these things with glee and admiration. Glossy family movies have their place, but they’ve grown awfully predictable. Safe—not necessarily in their plots, but in their substance. No matter how fun last year’s barn-burner The Super Mario Bros. Movie was, you can’t say anything about it was surprising, much less new. No one walked into the theater for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and walked out as gobsmacked as they were when they saw Star Wars, or even Speed.

This is not a “Hollywood is so homogenized” argument. Rather, it’s a reminder that Tinseltown wasn’t always this way. Its influence used to introduce people to the future. What’s happening now has the potential to mark a return to the kind of startlingly original movies that used to be hits. Between the pandemic, streaming, and the Hollywood strikes of last summer, a lot of old habits got broken, and there’s a sense that a renaissance is afoot.

This revitalization won’t come easy, if it comes at all. Summer 2024 still has its share of redos and sequels—a new Inside Out movie, reboots of ’90s summer staples The Crow and Twister. (The latter is the aptly-named Twisters; there are more tornadoes this time, apparently.) But even those movies at least feel like they’re grasping for the prefranchise days, even if they’re birthing franchises in the process.

Furiosa is currently projected to bring in more than $40 million at the US box office this weekend, a figure that would bring it close to Fury Road’s tally but may not convince Hollywood execs that it should bankroll more R-rated, original shockbusters. It would, presumably, best The Garfield Movie, which is also out this weekend and has the makings of a more surefire hit: well-known IP, animated, PG-rated. (For the record, though: Critics seem to think it sucks.) Early ticket sales for Deadpool & Wolverine are already breaking records for an R-rated movie. Should it dominate the conversation for a couple weeks while also raking in money, that embrace of a very not-Disney Disney movie—coupled with Furiosa and Hot Barbenheimer Summer—could signal a tipping point.

Look, nothing will ever completely derail Hollywood’s reliance on sure things. Video game adaptations remain poised to take the crown long held by superhero flicks. (Borderlands, starring Cate Blanchett, is coming to theaters this August.) But if this summer’s ever-sprawling slate turns up just enough weird hits, maybe we’ll once again know the feeling of walking out of Star Wars for the first time.